Ronni and Brittany talk about some exicting new startup companies after a coworker attended the annual CES Trade Show.

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Here’s a transcript of our conversation:

Ronni: Hey, Brittany.

Brittany: Hi, Ronni.

Ronni: Hey, so you probably already know this, but just in case any of our listeners out there don’t know. So, Tuttle Twins, which is of course the books and the podcast, and the magazine, the Tuttle Twins is actually an educational arm or part of a larger organization called Libertas Institute. And I think Brittany, you’ve known about Libertas for a while, haven’t you?

Brittany: Yeah, I was there when it first started, not at Libertas, but in Utah because of where it’s centered. So, yeah, I was there in 2012, which is probably around the time that a lot of our listeners were born.

Ronni: Oh yeah, I guess that’s true. My daughter was born in 2011 and she’s 11 now, and she’s a big Tuttle Twins fan. Well, speaking of, I mean, even for myself, when I first learned of the Tuttle twins, I had no idea that it was just a part of Bertus and not Bertus is actually doing so much more work, especially within Utah, and they do a lot of policy work. And what that means is that they work with the government, the Utah government, to help try to pass laws. So, when the Utah government is in the legislative session, which they’re in right now, then people from Libertas will go and they’ll sit in the sessions and they’ll make presentations and they’ll try to get different bills passed or not passed.

Brittany: And they’ve helped write laws and everything.

Ronni: Oh, a lot. In fact, they’ve done a lot of laws that have influenced many laws and other states as well. So, depending on where you guys live, it’s very likely that there’s been something that impacts your life that actually came from Bertus. So, they do a lot. But, so one of the guys that works at Bertus, he recently attended this trade show called the CES Trade Show, and do you want to know what stands

Brittany: For what that, yeah, what did that stand for?

Ronni: Well, it’s funny only because when I read about this, it took me a little bit of Googling to figure out what CES stood for because it was only ever used as the initials apparently. It used to be called the Consumer Electronics Show, but I guess no one calls things electronics anymore. I guess that’s very uncool.

Brittany: Wait really?

Ronni: That’s weird. Well, I mean, you do call things electronics, but when we’re talking now, if we’re talking about things that have to do with computers or phones, now it’s considered technology. So, now it’s no longer considered a Consumer electronics show. It’s now the Consumer Technology Association Show, but they still call it CES because they do. Anyways, so, one of the guys that works for Libertas attended the CES trade show, and then he wrote a Twitter thread about a bunch of new startups and innovations that were coming out. And I just thought could be fun to do a podcast talking about some of these ideas.

Brittany: Right. Because we do.

Ronni: We talk a lot about innovation here at Tuttles, twins.

Brittany: We do. And I love hearing about the new set. This sounds like a really cool conference.

Ronni: Yeah, I mean, I didn’t go, but now that I know about it, I do kind of, maybe in the future I’ll go, but it was nice still that he did a little writeup for it. So, let’s see. Some of the inventions that I was checking out are see, one of them was called, it’s from a company called, I’m probably going to pronounce lots of names wrong. I’m not the best at pronunciation, but it’s something like Merapi, maybe

Brittany: It sounds right. I dunno.

Ronni: But they created this, it’s basically a little robot that is used for farmers or anyone who is growing a lot of crops will use it, and it’s this little, it looks like a little robot, and it just goes up and down all the fields and it scans the fields. So, it scans all the crops and it looks for things like plant diseases or weeds or pests, and then it will alert the farmer. So, right now.

Brittany: It checks the health of the plants kind of.

Ronni: Yeah. So I mean, already there’s phone apps, so if you’re walking around your backyard or on a walk, you’re like, oh, what is that plant? You can scan it and not only, yeah.

Brittany: I do that all the time when I go on hikes. Yeah.

Ronni: And not only can you scan it, but it will also tell you the health of the plant. So, if you’re gardening or if you have a houseplant, it will tell you, oh, the plant health is good, or it looks bad, or it needs water. It’s crazy what technology can do today, not electronic technology.

Brittany: It would be cool. I know that there’s been people talking about that maybe someday there’ll be something that you can put in your body that does the same thing that goes through your body and says like, oh, this cell is damaged, let’s fix it. That would be really cool, I think.

Ronni: I mean there probably will be, but I tend to get very cautious about anything going on my body.

Brittany: Me, I’m like, I’m so scared of getting sick and I just want to be like, yeah, whatever. Fix me.

Ronni: That’s so funny. I know we’re all different, but, so the little robot, it has a name, I forgot the name of it. So, it goes over all the crops, so it just keeps scanning the crops and then we’ll let you know if there’s any disease starting or there’s a pest colony starting. What’s great about this is because that if you’re able to find like, oh, there’s some fungus or something attacking part of the crop here, you can administer then only the pesticide in that one place instead of having to dust your crops. So, for me, someone who cares about what I put into my body, I do care about things like different pesticides and things. So, for me, I think that’s fantastic. If it can eliminate having to spray entire crops and being able to limit only to certain areas, pesticides, or anything that would kill fungus or anything else. But I dunno, I just thought that was a great idea. And yeah, it’s this little machine, so it even seems like something that’s not huge that could only be used in industrial farms that could be used just kind of for smaller farms, so.

Brittany: That’s really cool.

Ronni: Yeah, I thought it was pretty cool. There was another, oh, so do you remember, we’ve been talking about 3D printing a lot. Yes, we have last month or something. So, there was another company there, and they 3D printed musical instruments. So, they are starting with a violin. So, they, it’s 3D printed violins. I mean, this shouldn’t surprise me. They can 3D print everything. But I hadn’t yet seen the musical instruments. But what’s great about that, is my daughter is taking violin this year and we’re just renting a violin because they’re very expensive.

Brittany: What I always did. They’re very expensive.

Ronni: Very expensive. So I think it’s great. I love the idea of being able to have more affordable violins or other instruments, especially as students in starting out.

Brittany: Because they grow too. You have to get new ones, yeah.

Ronni: You have to get the different sizes for how big you are. Yep. Anyways, I thought that was pretty cool. Let’s see, there was another company for, well, they advertise for truckers, but I immediately started thinking about all the other things you could do with it. Oh, so here’s a question for you, Brittany. I feel as though I’ve just been talking about all the things. So, here’s a question for you. What do you think is the biggest safety hazard for long-haul truckers?

Brittany: I would assume, I just want to say car accidents in general, but is it something specific?

Ronni: Well, it would be car accidents, but more specifically, what do you think would be one of the biggest fears? Concerns when you’re driving long distances, that can often happen to people you are driving.

Brittany: I guess maybe falling asleep in the car for so long and there’s truckers driving all through the night. So I guess that’s what I would be most scared of, I think.

Ronni: That’s what I was going for. So, yes, so, that’s always a big fear because even the most disciplined trucker, it’s when you’re driving for a long time, it can be hard. Sometimes you get into that zone. So, there’s this company called Raju. I know something like that. I think you might pronounce it that way.

Brittany: We’re really bad at pronouncing things.

Ronni: I’m really bad at pronouncing. I’m so sorry everyone.

Brittany: Because they’re original company names and they are, I’m looking at how it’s spelled. It’s pretty weird.

Ronni: Maybe we’ll have to include a link with this podcast so people can actually click on these different companies so they can find them instead of relying on our pronunciation to try to look them up.

Brittany: That’s a great idea.

Ronni: So, there’s this company or Ragio or something like that. So, they make these wearable headbands for truckers to wear. And although I do have to say the headbands look a little kind of sci-fi-ish, I assume at some point they will do remodels on them and they’ll look a little better, but still, they sit around the head kind of like a crown almost, but it’s just a band. And it can tell if a trucker is starting to fall asleep and then it can wake them up. I’m not exactly sure about the technology of that, but somehow it, I dunno, brainwaves or does something, but I dunno. I thought that was really cool and I could see it being something that big trucking organizations could use with their drivers just to help them from falling asleep.

Brittany: Yeah, absolutely.

Ronni: I’m trying to think, oh, go.

Brittany: Ahead. Cool things. Oh no, I was, I’m interested to see what else. These are really cool ideas.

Ronni: Let’s see. There was one called water site. Oh look, I can pronounce that one. I like that. But so right now, if you need to test your water, let’s say you’re drinking water or your tap water is tasting weird or smelling weird, you would have to do a water test. So, you would have to get the water and then take it to someone who can test it or have someone come to your house who can test it. But the only way to test your water is after it has come out through the pipes, it’s not something that you could test beforehand to know before you’ve even allowed the water to come out if the water is good. But so water site is this invention, it’s this little device and you attach it onto the pipes underneath the sink somewhere. So, you would have to cut the pipe and attach it, but it has a sensor in there so it can test the water before it even comes out. So, I know we have things like water filters, but even still, you could have a water filtering system that could go off or wrong or some bacteria could get in there, but this is an actual sensor to test the water itself, just knowing how important water is. I thought that was also kind of a cool thing. I can imagine that becoming more regular as well. We have everything now, right on our smart houses.

Brittany: Yeah. And it’s funny, back when we were, well, I don’t know if, so there was a Disney movie called Smart House. I don’t know if you remember that.

Ronni: Oh, there was No, it was a movie.

Brittany: So, it was in junior high. There’s a movie called Smart House and it was where the house had a robot assistant and all this stuff. And it was obviously more extreme than it is today. But it’s funny, I have a Google Home in my house. I have an assistant, and I know it’s funny because I don’t like spying, but it’s so convenient in my house.

Ronni: There’s another place where I get paranoid about that. So, I’m like, I don’t want one of those in my house.

Brittany: A lot of people feel the same way. It’s funny, my parents have one and my dad always plugs it in and then my mom will walk around and unplug it and always gets me that. But yeah, these are really cool ideas. I think it’s always great. We love talking about how great innovation is, right, and it’s really a good reminder that these new things are coming from individual entrepreneurs and not from the government because the guy really doesn’t have that many good ideas if any at all. So, great topic, Ronni. And guys, don’t forget to like and subscribe, and share the podcast with your friends. And until next time, we will talk to you later.

Ronni: All right, see you soon.