Four Questions with Panasonic CTO Yoshiyuki Miyabe

Yoshiyuki Miyabe: It all starts with Panasonic’s core purpose: to make life better and the world a more enjoyable and sustainable place. This is what we call – A Better Life, A Better World. It’s a human-centric model for technology.

Yoshiyuki Miyabe: Manufacturers have been taking a “product out” approach: making products for millions of faceless consumers. We are shifting the focus from the product to the user. And that means creating technology that senses, anticipates and responds to human needs. In a human-centric model, value is not found in a device. Value is found by integrating devices and service into a solution that meets the needs of the user.

In other words, bringing together the physical and digital worlds.

Yoshiyuki Miyabe: We have a few great examples in our Human Insight Technologies, such as Physical Stress Sensing and Human Characteristic Sensing. Using only a digital camera, our AI and image processing technology can recognize someone’s face and determine their age, sex and vital signs. Another example is Emotion Sensing Technology. Using cameras and image processing we can detect a person’s emotions. By understanding a person’s emotional state, we can tailor their environment to their needs. In driving, for example, Emotion Sensing Technology can be used to improve safety and prevent accidents by detecting when a driver is becoming drowsy.

Yoshiyuki Miyabe: Today Panasonic products in the home have over one billion active daily users. Our work in human insight takes some of our technologies and learnings in consumer electronics and applies that expertise to new markets and spaces.

See more on Panasonic’s innovation plans in “Next is Now: Booth Highlights from CES 2019.”