Google announced today that the Nest Hello doorbell is now notifying owners about the arrival of packages at their doorstep. The Nest Hello uses machine learning to detect packages within its field of view and alerts the owner via the Nest app.
Rosie Buchanan, a senior software engineer within Google Nest, confirmed the update, which will be available only to Nest Aware subscribers in the U.S. She said it's one of the most requested features of the doorbell.
Buchanan explained the idea behind the new feature:
“In particular, we’re trying to solve problems based on what users want. Home safety and security is a huge area for our users.”
Her team uses supervised learning to teach Nest cameras in identifying packages with the help of image data such as photos of deliveries. These pieces of data are then fed into the computer to create an algorithmic model.
It's important to note that packages must be within the view of Nest Hello and stay there for a short period for this feature to work. The same condition is required for package retrievals. Packages must be at least 8x10x1 inches, according to Google. This detection capability is turned on by default, though there's an option, of course, to switch it off.
4 Comments - Add comment