Autonomous Mobile Robots: Built for Demanding Environments

Posted on by Micah Kaplan

The autonomous mobile robot (AMR) is one of the most exciting technological developments to be enabled by computer vision. Using sensors and AI to operate independently and make real-time decisions, these intelligent machines help businesses alleviate labor shortages, improve efficiency, and boost sustainability.

But it’s not always easy to deploy AMR solutions. “In sectors like agriculture and mining, AMRs can be difficult to implement,” says Bob Dang, Product Director at ASUS IoT, a global AIoT solution provider. “In such settings, AI inferencing must be done at the edge due to network limitations, but most hardware platforms lack the computing power for this—or the ruggedization features needed to operate in harsh outdoor environments.”

The good news is that there are now powerful, general-purpose industrial PCs (IPCs) built for performance at the remote edge. These solutions help businesses in sectors like agriculture and mining accelerate their digital transformation—and catch up to their peers in manufacturing and logistics who are already taking advantage of AMR technology.

Transforming Agriculture with Autonomous Mobile Robots

The ASUS IoT experience with a large fruit producer in France is a case in point. The company was facing several common agricultural sector pain points. Their reliance on manual labor limited harvesting to daylight hours and favorable weather conditions—and made the company vulnerable to staffing issues. The business was also under pressure to use land more efficiently to improve crop yield and support sustainable agricultural practices.

The producer was looking for an automated fruit-picking solution. But due to the nature of their operating area, any such solution would have to function without network connectivity and survive adverse environmental conditions.

ASUS IoT worked with the grower to develop an AMR solution to meet their needs. They equipped an autonomous vehicle with mechanical harvesting arms and sensors. The sensors included a LiDAR unit—the same light-based remote sensing technology used in self-driving cars—and multiple exterior cameras.

The “brain” of the AMR is the ASUS IoT rugged IPC PE3000G, running a computer-vision AI algorithm designed for agricultural use cases. Powered by Intel® Arc™ MXM GPU module, it enables the robot to make real-time decisions based on sensor data, allowing it to navigate dense, unstructured orchards, and identify fruit ripe enough to pick.

The result was an automated fruit-picking solution capable of operating 24/7/365, making harvesting more stable and predictable for the agricultural business. In addition, the compact form factor of the AMR unit provided a major operational benefit. “With our AMR solution, there’s no need for such wide spaces between rows of plants or trees to accommodate workers and their tools,” says Sophia Lee, Product Manager in the ASUS IoT edge computing division. “This means more efficient land use and better crop yields, because growers can plant more trees and plants without increasing the area of their orchards and fields.”

ASUS IoT’s partnership with Intel was instrumental in bringing this innovative solution to market. “Intel CPUs and GPUs make an ideal hardware platform for AI at the edge,” remarks Dang. “We also see great customer demand for computer vision solutions based on Intel software toolkits like Intel® OpenVINO™, which makes our technology partnership with Intel even more valuable.”

A significant benefit of industrial #PC platforms is their flexibility because they can be adapted to multiple use cases. @ASUS via @insightdottech

AMRs in Industrial Environments

A significant benefit of industrial PC platforms is their flexibility because they can be adapted to multiple use cases. For example, ASUS IoT developed a separate AMR solution for the mining industry based on the same IPC unit used in their autonomous fruit-picking robot.

But operating at the edge in the mining sector is perhaps even more difficult than in agriculture. “You have the same environmental challenges as in agricultural settings: extremes of heat and cold, inclement weather, and so on,” explains Lee. “But the locations are extremely remote and undeveloped. The roads are rocky, and there’s a lot of debris and dust everywhere simply due to the nature of mining.”

In such scenarios, ruggedized IPC platforms are crucial to stable, high-performance edge computing. The ASUS IoT IPC used in their mining AMR offers essential physical features:

  • Thermal design to ensure consistent operation through a wide range of temperatures (-20°C to 60°C)
  • Anti-shock and vibration-resistant capabilities to protect against the rigors of rough terrain
  • Fanless design to shield internal components from ambient dust and particulate matter

Combined with real-time computing capabilities, these features mean that modern IPCs can bring AMR technology to the harshest locations. The upside for companies in these sectors is increased efficiency and cost savings. In industries like mining in particular, there are also benefits for workers, since AMRs can perform risky tasks and enter hazardous areas, reducing the likelihood of physical injury.

The Future of AMRs in Industrial Use Cases

IPC platform adaptability will likely attract the attention of solution integrators seeking ways to offer AMR solutions for heavy industries beyond just agriculture and mining. And as AMR adoption in these sectors grows, there will be opportunities to expand their use throughout the value chain.

“The future of smart agriculture will be marked by increased efficiency and intelligence in all areas where manual processes are still prevalent,” says Lee. “AMRs will quickly find use cases in agriculture beyond harvesting, such as sorting fruit or shipping fresh produce.”

From a big-picture perspective, the real promise of edge IPCs is that they will help more businesses participate in the ongoing convergence of IT and OT. “ASUS IoT has moved from being a purely IT company to an OT company as well because this is where the market is going,” says Dang. “IT/OT convergence, along with rugged edge computing, will put the benefits of digital transformation within reach for businesses in every sector—no matter where they operate.”

For more insights listen to the IoTChat podcast: Advancing Ruggedized IoT Through Collaborative Partnerships.

 

Edited by Georganne Benesch, Editorial Director for insight.tech.

Intelligent Vending Machines Power Retail Innovation

Posted on by Micah Kaplan

Most people have experienced the frustration of inserting cash into a vending machine, only to have it fail to deliver the snack they wanted. Today’s intelligent machines offer a very different experience. Looking more like a digital kiosk, an automated retail machine can interact with your mobile device, allow for touchless payment, make product recommendations, and blend a familiar online shopping experience with goods available immediately.

As retail embraces digital transformation, brands look for ways to maximize sales and build relationships with customers through omnichannel experiences. Automated retail machines provide new avenues for customer connections—and create a delivery system for digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising, unlocking new revenue streams for retailers.

When adopted by regional operators and fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) brands like Mars Wrigley, Invenda Group AG, a creator of automated retail solutions, provides vending machines that change the game. “Our machines merge a physical location with a digital presence,” says Mark Crandell, Chief Commercial Officer at Invenda. “We believe this is the next innovation in retail.”

For example, one Invenda global partner is an FMCG brand that has deployed several thousand smart machines around the world. The company carried out its own case studies to test performance—replacing traditional machines with intelligent ones, or placing them side by side to evaluate which performed better. In both cases, the Invenda Intelligent vending machines consistently generated between 20% and 70% more sales than their traditional counterparts.

Because they are connected to the internet, automated retail machines are also easier to service. “We can fix 90% of issues remotely, without a truck roll,” says Crandell. The machines can also report inventory from afar based on a predetermined planogram, and notify operators when certain products need restocking. That data allows them to load trucks intelligently and efficiently instead of showing up to find out what the machine needs. According to Invenda analyses, these efficiencies reduce overall technical Interventions by about 30%.

“Our machines merge a physical location with a #digital presence. We believe this is the next innovation in #retail” – Mark Crandell, @invendagroupag via @insightdottech

Automated Retail Machines Offer Real-Time Engagement Data

The Intel-powered Invenda automated retail machine functions as an ecosystem of both hardware and software components that serves as a point of sale (POS), an advertising platform, a remote management system, and a source of valuable consumer insights (Figure 1). Every machine has an oversized touchscreen display with a menu system and familiar user interface similar to that of an online store. Customers can interact with the machine through the touchscreen or by scanning a QR code and accessing the menu system on a mobile device.

Invenda’s connected automated retail machine is a digital POS, an advertising platform, and a source of consumer insights.
Figure 1. Invenda’s connected automated retail machine is a digital POS, an advertising platform, and a source of consumer insights. (Source: Invenda Group).

“Whether they’re in front of the machine or not, we enable a digital shopping experience that’s familiar and easy to navigate,” says Crandell. When consumers interact with the platform, operators can gather anonymized data on sales trends, demographics, and cross-selling opportunities. Crandell explains, “For example, data might reveal that when someone puts a candy bar in their cart, if you offer them a coupon for a soft drink, the likelihood of those two items being purchased and consumed together goes up by a certain percentage.”

The data often reveals unexpected information about consumer behavior—information that may be difficult to obtain in other ways. For example, when a shopper visits a brick-and-mortar store after seeing an ad in the newspaper, their decision-making may be very different than when they are standing alone in front of a vending machine, making an impulse purchase. Crandell says, “Those two buyer behaviors are very different, and we want to create the data to inform brands that you might have more than one persona buying a certain product, depending on the situation.”

Operators and brands can access data through a centralized dashboard where they can view real-time reports on all the machines they have deployed. They can see a snapshot of sales on a particular day in aggregate or by specific machine or location—and they can run their own analytics to delve for deeper insights or have Invenda create a report for them for an added fee.

The system also includes a machine learning algorithm that tries to understand pricing in relation to the time of day, events in the surrounding area, and variables such as weather. For example, one of Invenda’s partners operates machines on university campuses throughout the United States. On football game days, it can schedule ahead to raise the price of soft drinks and snacks to be in line with other vendors around the stadium.

Digital Out-of-Home Advertising Unlocks New Revenue Streams

Using the machine’s screen for DOOH is another important component of the ecosystem. “DOOH is the fastest-growing part of the advertising business today,” says Crandell. “Whether consumers are purchasing items from the machine or not, we’re able to produce revenue for the location owner by selling that advertising real estate.”

For example, a smart machine placed in a high-traffic airport terminal with a traffic sensor reports how many people walk by each day. When that traffic information is combined with demographic data—determined in real time by the Invenda platform—brands can make strategic moves to reach their target audience.

Connectivity will play an ever-increasing role in the future of retail, says Crandell, adding, “As consumers, we’re comfortable making purchases with our mobile devices, and brands want to make direct connections with customers. If we’re able to facilitate a true omnichannel experience, we believe brands can understand relationships between their products and customers in new ways.”

For brands and operators that want to stay ahead of the competition and discover new revenue streams, it’s time to join the latest retail revolution and embrace digital solutions like automated retail.

 

Edited by Georganne Benesch, Associate Editorial Director for insight.tech.

IT/OT Convergence Starts with Software-Defined Platforms

Posted on by Micah Kaplan

To compete in dynamic markets ruled by evolving customer demand, manufacturers must make quick changes in production, shifting workloads as needed from one system to another to adjust output capacity and boost product quality.

Software-defined industrial platforms that operate in hybrid environments, combining edge, cloud, and on-premises infrastructure, can help them achieve flexibility. These containerized solutions decouple the hardware in computers that drive industrial functions—Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC) and Distributed Control Systems (DCS)—from the software that runs production processes.

The approach solves a lot of problems for industrial operations, explains David Rapini, Industrial Technology Strategist at Red Hat, a provider of enterprise open source software solutions. One of the biggest issues involves technology upgrades. Legacy industrial systems are siloed and proprietary, and therefore complicated and expensive to upgrade when new technologies become available.

“Being able to adopt new technologies sooner means you can increase yield, reach new production targets faster, and make significant improvements to product quality. The faster you get new technology into your facility, the faster you can take advantage of what that technology brings,” Rapini says.

Proprietary Systems Create Challenges

Historically, controllers are dedicated to specific functions. So a PLC cannot easily be repurposed for a different application. “Even though I may have horsepower, bandwidth, and connectivity on that PLC, I have to go buy another piece of hardware,” Rapini continues. “So that hardware being dedicated to a specific task raises not just the initial cost but adds long-term ownership burdens.”

Integrating controllers with additional applications, sensors, and other devices has also been a big challenge. For instance, if a controls engineer wants to connect a vendor’s controller to a competitor’s industrial-historian application (which compresses and retrieves OT system data), it takes significantly more time and money than using the original vendor’s software. This forces manufacturers to lock into specific vendors and proprietary Inter-Process Communication (IPC) systems, so manufacturers often get locked out of other vendors’ technology advances.

Then manufacturers face cybersecurity issues. Traditionally automation systems were air-gapped or ran disconnected, which is no longer the case in today’s digital world. Patching these legacy systems isn’t easy, and in some cases may require an expensive upgrade. But a software-defined approach takes care of that, Rapini explains.

“Being able to patch more frequently without a million-dollar price tag helps you keep those cybersecurity holes closed and ensure a more secure environment that aligns with your corporate policies,” he says. And that means manufacturers can rest easier knowing their systems, which increasingly connect to hybrid cloud and edge environments, are up to date on cyber defenses.

“We can have an #industrial component that runs whatever process—safety, motion, discrete control, process control, analytics, #AI—on the same piece of #hardware.” – David Rapini, @RedHat via @insightdottech

Open Systems: Key to Industrial Automation

To address these issues, Red Hat works with Intel and a variety of partners to provide a software-defined, containerized edge platform to modernize industrial operations. The open platform delivers the infrastructure—or “plumbing”—that enables flexibility so that PLCs and DCSs are no longer dedicated to specific functions. Instead, control engineers and operations can swap out software and hardware as needed.

The platform integrates Intel® Edge Controls for Industrial (Intel® ECI) with Red Hat® Enterprise Linux®, Device Edge, Ansible® Automation Platform, and OpenShift® to deliver functions such as real-time factory control, AI, and augmented reality.

This open, containerized approach does away with the restrictions imposed by siloed proprietary systems. It lowers the cost of hardware, and simplifies lifecycle management, especially the IPCs that allow applications to talk to one another.

And it eliminates the dreaded vendor lock-in that inhibits flexibility and agility. “We can have an industrial component that runs whatever process—safety, motion, discrete control, process control, analytics, AI—on the same piece of hardware,” Rapini says. “It opens the ability to migrate platform to platform. It allows manufacturers to take best-in-class vendor capability so they can pick the one that they want, and easily change between vendors if they need to adopt a new technology or find a spare component.”

These changes can occur without costly upgrades or interruptions to production. In a refinery, for instance, adding or moving a workload from Bioreactor 1 to Bioreactor 2, or Distiller 1 to Distiller 2, becomes a lot easier because containerized applications are designed to be modular.

Also easier is load leveling, which involves balancing production lines to reduce waste and increase efficiency by making sure underloaded or overloaded systems don’t happen, says Rapini, who before joining Red Hat had worked in industrial environments.

“One of the big challenges I used to always struggle with in the industrial automation space is load leveling. So I’d have PLC 1 running at 95% utilization and PLC 2 sitting next to it running at 10%, with a high-speed vision system running on a third machine, but it wasn’t easy to transfer workloads. This containerized solution makes load leveling just so much easier. I can move workloads where they have capacity and free up bottlenecks on systems that are working at the edge of max capacity.”

Production flexibility helps not only industrial operations but also the communities they serve. For instance, during COVID some manufacturers had to switch from making one product to another. Let’s say an air filter manufacturer needed to start making face masks. A software-driven approach creates a more agile, flexible manufacturing environment. 

IT/OT Convergence Still Evolving

Rapini says adding flexibility to industrial processes is the natural next step in industrial automation and IT/OT convergence. “Ten years ago, if you talked to somebody about IT/OT convergence in the OT world, we would say things like, “We have Ethernet on the plant floor,” he says. “Now, we’re seeing deeper integration of IT technologies into the OT space.”

Automation has replaced a lot of manual tasks, such as connecting different systems or deploying a Cisco switch, for example. In the past, spinning up a DCS server would require as many as 700 mouse clicks. “By leveraging Red Hat’s Ansible for automation, you can cut that error-prone, labor-intensive installation process down to one-third, but more important, take out variability system to system, site to site,” Rapini says.

The integration of partner technologies will reduce those clicks even further. The software-defined, open-platform approach will bring levels of flexibility and agility to industrial operators that proprietary systems could never deliver.

The transformation won’t happen overnight. “Process industries are notoriously conservative, so they’re going to move nice and slow,” Rapini says. “But as the technology proves itself, more companies will adopt it when IT/OT convergence will become just industrial technology.”

 

Edited by Georganne Benesch, Editorial Director for insight.tech.

Telemedicine Solutions Revolutionize Rural Healthcare

Posted on by Micah Kaplan

Some situations can test anyone’s patience, like waking up with a fever and body aches in the middle of winter and needing to schlep over to the doctor’s office for treatment. Who knows how long it will be for you to be seen by a doctor once you get there? Minor inconveniences can feel major in the digital age, and it’s easy to forget that in some parts of the world, access to healthcare in and of itself is a hurdle.

Luckily, recent groundbreaking advancements in telehealth solutions help transform rural healthcare by bringing medical expertise to places where geography or sparse population previously made permanent medical infrastructure impractical or prohibitively expensive.

Experts Leonardo Melo, Co-Owner of Diagnext, a telemedicine solution provider; Jason Miao, Sales Director of imedtac, an Internet of Medical Things technology provider; and Moji Ghodoussi, Vice President of Business Innovation and Partnerships at Teladoc Health, a leader in virtual care, convene to discuss advances in telehealth solutions, the challenges of bringing healthcare to rural residents and remote areas, and the means for equity of patient care (Video 1).

Video 1. Diagnext’s Leonardo Melo, imedtac’s Jason Miao, and Teladoc Health’s Moji Ghodoussi discuss how advancements in telemedicine solutions improve access to rural healthcare. (Source: insight.tech)

Why is it difficult for rural or remote areas to get access to quality healthcare?

Leonardo Alves de Melo: It’s a variety of problems. Hostile environments and the lack of basic inputs for healthcare such as medications and medical equipment are two of them. But it’s mainly the lack of qualified professionals. All of this is further amplified by the complex logistics: There are few hospital clinics, and a lack of financial resources and reliable energy sources. At Diagnext we have had operations in parts of Latin America and in the Amazon rainforest for 12 years, and it’s very difficult to bring healthcare to these populations.

Moji Ghodoussi: There have also been significant changes in the last couple of years; obviously we are all familiar with what happened when Covid hit. But healthcare is always very complex, and the complexities are not specific to geography. Regarding the rural healthcare landscape, it comes down to the lack of timely clinical expertise available to these populations. City centers have all these specialists available to their populations, while rural areas by default do not. And this cannot be addressed through any mechanism but telehealth.

What is amazing is that telecommunications-technology platforms have been available to do this for over a decade. Teladoc Health was founded over 20 years ago to take advantage of the technology to create a healthcare-specific platform that enables doctors to care for patients regardless of geography or time zone. Today, any rural area can have access to any specialist it needs for its population through the adoption of telehealth solutions. And over the last three years, the adoption has significantly increased.

Jason Miao: Even right now some of the countries in Asia are still not allowed to do telemedicine by the regulations and laws. But during Covid time, the governments thought that they probably needed to allow in some special conditions so they could use telemedicine at that time.

Some big cities in Asia—Taipei, Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City—do have good and sufficient medical resources. But there are still a lot of rural areas, mountain areas. So how are we going to use this technology to help? Covid changed a lot, and the technology is helping us to move forward.

“In the last few years, #telehealth has already become the reality everywhere, and #AI is going to help us increase the care” – Jason Miao, imedtac via @insightdottech

What infrastructure is necessary to provide quality healthcare services in remote locations?

Leonardo Alves de Melo: Any kind of infrastructure, even the most common, can be a challenge in these regions. In rural regions, for example, for medical-equipment computers to function, they require energy, air conditioning, and good air quality. To exchange information, they need computers and the capacity to support even a minimal technology environment. They also need telecommunications that are minimally stable, because communication is essential.

But the financial cost increases greatly when you want to increase capacity, security, and stability to distribute more complex care to more people. With this in mind, at DiagNext we develop technologies with reduced implementation and operation costs; low energy consumption and air-conditioning demands; a reduced cost for local equipment; and high process and capacity with reduced physical sites.

Tell us about the evolution of telehealth over the past couple of decades.

Moji Ghodoussi: The challenge 20 years ago was on the connectivity side, as well as with ease of use. Back then the connectivity was cellular, was 3G—and actually 3G was new. So the bandwidth was not there. And technology has become easier for the population in general to use since then. You’ve got to make sure that it not only gets better and faster but that it’s also easy to adopt, because not everybody has a PhD in telecom.

Of course, security is paramount when you’re dealing with any digital tools, cloud-based tools. And in healthcare and telehealth that’s now related to privacy concerns, too. At Teladoc Health we go way beyond our own security protocols, encryptions, etc., to third-party certifications to adhere to all key standards—from ISO international standards on InfoSec to NIST certifications and even high-trust CSF certifications.

What technological advancements are at the forefront of digital healthcare transformation?

Jason Miao: The first thing is the Internet of Medical Things. We already have a lot of the medical devices for vital data collecting—like the ECG, like the endoscopy devices. But very powerful edge computing can connect with those devices, and with good quality for video and very stable data transformation.

Another thing is 5G bandwidth. Doctors can use that high quality to see almost exactly the real video. Even if the patient is in a rural area, 5G can overcome those infrastructure problems. And imedtac can pack the hardware plus the software and the cloud as a ready solution.

Can you share some use cases of successfully providing telemedicine solutions in rural areas?

Moji Ghodoussi: We have partnerships with major healthcare institutions through a hub-spoke model, and we enable clinicians in urban settings to deliver care to rural areas every day of every week. Here’s one example of how telehealth can benefit a rural population.

Imagine a person living in a rural area: They have stroke symptoms, and they’re brought to a local hospital that doesn’t have a stroke neurologist on staff 24/7, which is the case in a majority of geographies. Now with telehealth they can ping the doctor who is on call for that area; the doctor connects through telehealth to that location; and within 15 to 30 minutes of looking at the lab results, CT images, etc., they can determine if it is a stroke or not. And 80%-85% of these patients do not have a stroke. So instead of transporting this person for two, three hours—with the added costs associated with that—they can actually get the care they need in the same local hospital.

Leonardo Alves de Melo: DiagNext became famous for its work in the early identification of breast cancer in the Amazon rainforest. It used to take months to identify there; today it takes just a few minutes. Tens of thousands of patients can be screened in a year, with several thousand at-risk patients identified, and over a hundred surgeries.

Jason Miao: Another thing is that even in the hospitals in Taiwan—in the branch hospitals and in the emergency rooms—some of the doctors don’t have the confidence to take care of all cases. So even in the hospital they can still use telehealth to get a second opinion or a consultation.

How do you collaborate with ecosystem partners to make healthcare in rural areas a reality?

Jason Miao: Because we are using edge computing as the gateway to connect the different medical devices and upload to the cloud, edge computing is very important for us. So when we go to different countries in Asia we find the right local partner that already has local service. Different countries have different regulations, different reimbursement or insurance, and also different cultures.

Intel is always linking those resources together. We have a whole partner chain in Asia led by Intel. Whenever we have found there’s an interesting new model or new case, we will be able to get the right resources from Intel. So we are very appreciative of that support.

Moji Ghodoussi: We have also been partnering with Intel for a number of years, and we’ve used specific Intel hardware as part of our offerings. More recently, and more significantly, we’re using Intel chipsets as part of the custom-designed and custom-manufactured electronics that are part of our telehealth-device portfolio.

How do we keep improving healthcare in rural communities?

Leonardo Alves de Melo: We need to include the populations of rural communities in their healthcare. Having minimum technology makes a lot of difference in individual care, but it needs to be customized. New means of communications and equipment with lower operation and input costs are also important, as are investments in information technology for hospitals and clinics in rural areas.

With our expansion integration, with new medical equipment and systems, we will be better able to bring healthcare without physical borders. We are bringing technology-enabled, tele-assisted surgery, we are bringing AI tools—all to make medical care more efficient. We are also building training tools for remote teams.

Jason Miao: In the last few years, telehealth has already become the reality everywhere, and AI is going to help us increase the care. The next issue we are seeing is age related. People are getting older, and we don’t have enough manpower to take care of them. At imedtac we are also thinking about this next step, and including telehealth can definitely help us to have a better retirement life.

Moji Ghodoussi: Technology keeps advancing, which provides additional tools to the clinicians. Diagnostic aspects can actually help the doctor maybe even before they see the patient. These advancements in technology really enable clinicians to take better care—and more care—of the patient population.

We have a partnership with the nonprofit World Telehealth Initiative, which enables doctors and surgeons who donate their very valuable time to deliver care to countries such as Malawi, Togo, Ethiopia; Haiti and Puerto Rico; Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Cambodia. These doctors would otherwise need to—and used to—travel to these destinations. This is admirable, but now they can avoid travel and therefore deliver even more healthcare to these parts of the world.

I do want to take advantage of this opportunity to thank Intel for its partnership in the last few years, and to congratulate the vision of enabling platforms and solutions that further advance technology, and therefore telehealth. Because telehealth, in my opinion, is the only way that we can have true health equity.

 

This article was edited by Erin Noble, copy editor.

Digital Health Solutions: Closing the Rural Healthcare Gap

Posted on by Micah Kaplan

When you have easy access to services like healthcare, it’s easy to take them for granted. But rural areas all over the globe struggle to secure quality healthcare services. Due to a shortage of healthcare professionals, resources, extensive travel distances, and infrastructure limitations, many rural communities find themselves in an unfortunate position. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Digital health solutions have made significant progress in recent years, allowing rural areas to overcome these challenges and ensure patients receive top-tier healthcare regardless of their location.

In this podcast, we discuss the many benefits of digital health solutions for rural communities, as well as some of the challenges that need to be addressed to ensure the accessibility and effectiveness of these technologies. We also hear from experts about how digital health is used around the world to reshape the healthcare landscape.

Listen Here

[Podcast Player]

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Our Guests: Diagnext, imedtac, and Teladoc Health

Our guests this episode are:

Podcast Topics

Leonardo, Jason, and Moji answer our questions about:

  • (5:09) The struggle to bring quality healthcare to different regions
  • (7:02) How digital healthcare solutions have evolved over the past few years
  • (10:48) Challenges hospitals and healthcare providers face in rural areas
  • (13:03) Breaking down barriers with new tools and technologies
  • (15:33) Types of infrastructure necessary for virtual healthcare
  • (18:17) How to successfully deploy digital health solutions
  • (21:01) Lessons learned from end users and customers
  • (27:23) The value of partnerships for rural healthcare
  • (30:07) Healthcare opportunities still on the horizon

Related Content

To learn more about virtual care and digital health solutions, read Telemedicine Solutions: Closing Healthcare’s Digital Divide, IoMT Technology Automates Vital Signs Measurement, and Teladoc Charts the Future of Telehealth.

For the latest innovations from Diagnext, imedtac, and Teladoc Health, follow them on:

Transcript

Christina Cardoza: Hello, and welcome to the IoT Chat, where we explore the latest developments in the Internet of Things. I’m your host, Christina Cardoza, Editorial Director of insight.tech. And today we’re going to be talking about advancements in healthcare technology, what that means for patient care, and how it’s being used to improve healthcare access in rural areas with DiagNext, imedtac, and Teladoc Health. But before we jump into this conversation, let’s get to know our guests. First, I want to introduce Moji Ghodoussi from Teladoc Health. Moji, welcome to the show. Please tell us more about yourself and what you do at Teladoc.

Moji Ghodoussi: Thank you. A pleasure to be here. I’m Moji Ghodoussi, as you heard. I’m Vice President of Business Innovation and Partnerships at Teladoc Health. I started my career in healthcare technology after receiving my PhD in Robotics from UC Santa Barbara in the nineties, pioneering the field of surgical robotics, and we actually innovated in the field. And one of the key accomplishments of mine and my team was the historical telesurgery Operation Lindbergh, which took place on September 7th, 2001, when surgeons in New York operated on a patient in France, 4,000 miles away, which was precursor to telehealth, if you will.

And if you fast forward to the last decade in my current position at InTouch Health, now Teladoc Health, I partner with other innovative medical-device companies to advance healthcare technology, leveraging digital tools. And these are all leading healthcare-technology companies. Many are today’s surgical robotics innovators. And at Teladoc Health our core focus of course is healthcare. And we serve a significant public population—millions of people—with their primary and chronic care, including working with healthcare institutions and hospitals for urgent and related care. And we do so globally.

Christina Cardoza: Great. Yeah, can’t wait to dig into all of that. And that example you gave, you know it used to be something that was very expensive and complicated to do, but recent advancements with digital health, it’s now becoming much easier.

But before we get into that, I want to introduce Leonardo Alves de Melo from DiagNext. Please tell us more about yourself and the company.

Leonardo Alves de Melo: Okay. Thank you a lot for the opportunity. Well, 14 years ago we came together out of curiosity and an interest in offering innovation without physical, technological, and user borders. We are all researchers, and we advise methodology, processes, technology, and tools to increase efficiency in healthcare regardless of its physical location and how difficult, critical, or hostile this activity requires. Our joint knowledge is an extension in development of system and process and in the quality and efficiency of the service provided.

We constitute an important sets of patents, technology, innovations, process, etc., creating a more—turning more efficiently the healthcare for mission critical and hostile environments through IT. We operate exactly where we make a big difference when there’s a strong demand for healthcare, such as a forest, desert, mountains, swamps, cities and small cities, and forest.

Christina Cardoza: Great. And, last but not least, Jason Miao from imedtac. Please tell us more about yourself and the company.

Jason Miao: Thank you, Christina. Hi, everyone. I’m glad to be here. This is Jason Miao from imedtac. Imedtac, our company is a digital-healthcare solution provider from Taiwan. As everybody knows that Taiwan is very good in the semiconductor and ICT technology, so our company basically is using the ICT technology from hardware to software to integrate a turnkey solution to provide the customer like the hospital, like the age-caring institution, even the clinic and the pharmacy. And we cover mostly in Asia market, especially Southeast Asia.

So, I’m in charge of the overseas market. So we are trying to use those technologies to find the local partner, so we’re able to provide like the telehealth or like the smart hospitals solutions for those countries.

Christina Cardoza: Great. So, lots to dive into here with the three of you. I want to start off, we were talking in the introduction, especially with Moji’s introduction, being able to provide healthcare to someone thousands of miles away. And, Leonardo, you said all of these different areas that you guys are providing telehealth or digital-health solutions. So I’m curious, if we could start off the conversation thinking about other areas where healthcare may not be as easily accessible. I mentioned in my introduction rural areas. Can we set the stage a little bit, in certain areas why it has been difficult to get proper access to quality healthcare, what the struggle has been?

Leonardo Alves de Melo: Well, the search for full health in regions, in this kind of region, a constant challenge for these people. There are a variety of problems they had faced given the hostile environments they find themselves in, starting with the lack of basic inputs for healthcare, such as meds and medical equipment, hospital supplies, and mainly qualified professionals whether healthcare or not.

Another point that we know that affects them are different, and have a different impact, than those that affected in urban regions—there are often diseases typical of the places where they live not fully identifiable or treatable with conventional or every medical care. All of this further amplified by the complex logistics: few hospital clinics, lack of reliable energy sources, and few financial resources. I’m talking about the parts of the Latin America that was in the Amazon rainforest, is a big example of that, and we have operations there 12 years. And that’s so difficult to make healthcare to this population.

Christina Cardoza: Yeah, and it’s a difficult challenge just thinking about they’re in, sometimes, these remote areas, they don’t have connectivity and, like you mentioned the diseases could be higher there, but yet they can’t access proper medical resources, supplies, things like that. And I think the last couple of years have maybe extrapolated that a little bit.

Moji, so I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit more about recent evolutions in the healthcare landscape—how have things changed over the last couple years? How has that added to these challenges of getting proper, quality healthcare?

Moji Ghodoussi: Absolutely. Significant change in the last couple of years. Obviously we are all familiar with what happened when Covid hit and the pandemic. But, reality overall, healthcare obviously is not simple and is rather very complex. Complexities are not specific to geographies—rural versus urban—yet specific to the question regarding rural healthcare landscape, it comes down to lack of timely clinical expertise available to those populations. City centers have all these specialties available to their local population, while rural areas by default and, naturally, they do not. And this cannot be addressed through any mechanism but telehealth, which is a key area of our business and focus.

What is amazing is that telecommunications technology platform has been available to do so for over a decade. And we were actually founded over 20 years ago to take advantage of the technology to create the healthcare-specific platform that enables doctors to care for patients regardless of geography and time zone. Today, therefore, any rural area through adoption of telehealth solutions can have access to any specialist they need for their population, as we have done this for over a decade. And over the last decade the adoption of telehealth has significantly increased, and more so in the last three years.

And, through our launch of “whole-person care”, we focus on the whole person and not merely a point solution or episodic care, which means that we focus on the person’s episodic needs considering their chronic conditions and other health attributes. And of course with our focus in leveraging AI we can actually go towards individual care that is relevant to the patient rather than broad-based population healthcare remedies of today.

I can give you actually one example of how telehealth can benefit a rural population, and if you can imagine a person living in rural areas, they have stroke symptoms and they’re presented to the hospital, local hospital, who doesn’t have the stroke neurologist on staff 24/7, which is the case in majority of the geographies. Now, with telehealth, they actually ping the doctor that is on call for that area, and the doctor essentially connects through telehealth to that location and within 15 to 30 minutes of looking at the lab results, CT images, etc. they can quickly determine is it a stroke or not. And 80%, 85% of these patients do not have a stroke.

So instead of transporting this person for two, three hours to essentially get them the care that they need, which actually was to keep them in the same local hospital, now this person has to be transported to the wrong place, added costs associated with that, etc., etc. And in case of an actual stroke patient, now they have to wait another two, three hours to get the care. And we know what happens in those situations, unfortunately.

Christina Cardoza: Yeah, and to your point, Covid certainly changed the game in providing telehealth. It’s now more widely accepted for providers and in these different areas. I’d be curious to know how—because when Covid happened everyone was just rushing to be able to provide healthcare—now that we’ve had some time and we’re sort of out of the woods a little bit, I’d be curious to hear how we can be smarter about implementing these types of technologies.

But before we get there, Jason, I just wanted to ask you—you mentioned in the Asian region where you guys are working there are hospitals and other things, so there is that expertise there of being able to get medical access. But I’m curious what challenges do these specific hospitals and medical organizations face in these areas, and how the last couple of years have added to the challenges that we’ve been talking about?

Jason Miao: So I think I want to echo—Moji mentioned about the Covid has definitely changed a lot in Asia. Even now, right now, there are some of the countries in Asia are still not allowed to do the telemedicine by the regulation law. So during the Covid time the government, they are thinking about probably they need to allow in some special conditions they can use this telemedicine. It’s very significantly changed everything.

So I think just like some big cities in Asia, like Taipei, like Bangkok, even Ho Chi Minh City, in the big city they do have the good and the sufficient, the medical resource. However, there are still a lot of the rural areas in the mountain area. So how are we going to use this technology to help? And another thing I think is the ICT and the 5G. Especially like Intel providing some of the good new technology, Asia is very accessible for those new stops. So we are trying to find those technologies to become a ready solution in Asia market.

Just like in Thailand—actually right now I’m on business travel in Thailand. We have joined the treasury right here; we also meet the government right here. They have the program to establish this telehealth system in some of the mountain provinces, and those budgets is coming from the 5G. So I think that’s very, very interesting that we are still facing some of the challenges, but we do see the Covid change a lot and the technology is also helping us to move forward.

Christina Cardoza: Now, Jason, you mentioned Intel technology and 5G. I’m wondering if you can expand a little bit on the types of tools, technology, or network capabilities you need to actually make this happen. Especially when we’re talking about Intel technology and things like that, what are the advanced technologies available today that weren’t available before that are helping us break down these barriers?

Jason Miao: So actually what we are talking about is we use those technologies to help the digital transforming for the healthcare. So the first thing is those things basing on the IoT, Internet of Medical Things, we definitely need, because we already have a lot of the medical devices in the vital collecting, like the ECG, like the endoscoping. However, right now we have the edge computing, the very powerful edge computing. It can be able to connect with those devices, and with the good quality for the video and very stable for the data transforming.

So we are able to pack—it’s just like the highway plus software and the cloud as a ready solution. So you will be able to be very fast to also move to any of the different areas. Another thing is the 5G bandwidth. I think before that we were still facing some difficulty to have the live video teleconference, but right now the 4G, 5G is very popular. The doctor can use a high quality to see exactly the almost real video. So no matter the patient in the rural area, the 5G can overcome those infrastructure problems.

So I think it’s a very significantly help in Asia, especially in those rural area. And I believe in western countries the EMR is very popular, but in Asia, some of the areas, they are starting to build the EMR system. So right now we are trying to help those countries so they will be able to have the very reading from the device, from the edge computing with the bandwidth and bandwidth and the cloud system. So I think those are the new technologies that we can see is happening for the telehealths.

Christina Cardoza: Yeah, absolutely. And you mentioned you have some of these devices already, and I’m sure when you’re looking at a hospital, it has some of the infrastructure already available to make this happen. I’m curious, Leonardo, from your point of view, when you’re not in the hospital or you’re in a rural area, maybe you’re getting care or service in your own home or something like that. What type of infrastructure do you need to really successfully gain access to these types of healthcare?

Leonardo Alves de Melo: Any kind of infrastructure, even the most common can be a challenge in these regions. In rural regions, for example. For medical equipment computers to function they require energy, air conditioning, and air quality. To exchange information they need computers and telecommunication that are minimally stable and have capacity to support the need in a minimal technology environment. Communication is essential.

However, the financial cost increases greatly with the increase in capacity, security, and stability. Thus it becomes more complex to care for patients and distribute care to more people. I’m talking about the forest of Latin America. With this in mind, we develop and use technologies with reduced implementation operation and low costs, low energy consumption, little air conditioning demands, reduced cost for local equipment, and high process and capacity with reduced physical sites.

In terms of sites here, principally with new technology that open, we spend a lot of development intelligence on process patterns that maximize the use of this kind of technology, make it as optimized as possible. Here we use a lot of this kind of equipment, how gateways of healthcare communications. Then this equipment helps a lot for us to verbalize more than one communications channel to add this capacity and provide this infrastructure to the medical doctors, and then using 4K and telehealth surgery, in 4K or telehealth or whatever else.

Christina Cardoza: Yeah, absolutely. And, Moji, going back to what you were talking about earlier, a lot of the recent struggles we’ve had over the last couple of years has really enabled telehealth, or opened people more up to receiving this type of care. But I’m curious to hear how the implementation of telehealth has changed since you’ve started in in your career. How today it’s being implemented, and what are some of the things that we should be thinking about when we’re implementing this care, this type of care in regards to the infrastructure, the technology. As well as that we’re talking about medical health here, so it’s a lot of personalized and sensitive data. So what should we be thinking about when we’re deploying these today?

Moji Ghodoussi: Absolutely. And, as I mentioned earlier, we got into the field about over 20 years ago. Back then the connectivity was cellular, was 3G, and actually 3G was new, because you just transitioned from 2G to 3G. So bandwidth was not there, although the healthcare needs obviously were still there.

So the challenge back then was on the more technology and connectivity side and ease of use, versus today, as we mentioned already by the other guests, that we have 5G, which gives you significant bandwidth, throughput, and reliability. And also technology has become also easier to use for the population in general, because not everybody has a PhD in telecom. So therefore you’ve got to make sure that it not only gets better and faster, but it’s also easy to adopt and use, as everybody now has a cell phone, etc.

But what’s significant is that of course security is paramount when you’re dealing with any digital tools and cloud-based tools. And the added significance here is that in healthcare and telehealth it’s related to privacy concerns. For telehealth companies security and privacy concerns are significant aspects of the platform, in addition of course to developing workflows, tools that allow clinician, doctor, surgeon, nurse to have access to all the information that they need, and easy and secure mechanisms to deliver their care to their patients.

This is why, for example, at Teladoc Health we go way beyond our own security protocols, encryptions, etc., and we go through significant costly but also necessary third-party certifications to adhere to all key standards—from ISO international standards on InfoSec and to certifications to NIST, and even high trust, the CSF certifications, which all of these allow us to be very secure adhering to global standards, which is very important in healthcare. And that includes of course GDPR as one of those requirements.

Christina Cardoza: I can’t imagine being able to provide all of this type of healthcare today that we are doing on the 3G network. It’s almost like Covid came at a perfect point, where we had the technology available to start doing some of these things.

So I’m curious, because obviously you guys have all been doing this for years, and you’ve worked with many different customers, I’m wondering if you guys can paint a picture for our listeners a little bit more of any success stories or customer examples you can share with us about how they did this—how they successfully provided healthcare to rural areas or overcame some of the challenges that we’ve been talking about, and if there’s any lessons learned from there. So I want to hear from each of you, but, Moji, I’ll start with you again on this one.

Moji Ghodoussi: Okay, great. For Teledoc Health of course delivering healthcare to rural health areas is an everyday, standard business practice for us. I gave an example earlier about a stroke use case when a stroke patient is presented. And of course with our partnerships with major healthcare institutions through hub-spoke models we enable clinicians in urban settings to deliver care to rural areas every day of every week.

But as such, I would like to actually instead provide success stories from our partnership with the nonprofit World Telehealth Initiative, which is a 501(c) entity, where Teladoc Health provides our technology and global platform that enable doctors and surgeons who donate their very valuable time to deliver care to less fortunate parts of the world, from African countries such as Malawi, Togo, Ethiopia; to Haiti and Puerto Rico; to Asian countries like Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Cambodia. And of course since the war in Ukraine, to Ukraine.

These doctors would otherwise need to, and used to, travel to these destinations, which is admirable, but now they can avoid travel and therefore deliver even more healthcare to these parts of the world that would really need such help. And we are very proud of this partnership with doctors and WTI.

Christina Cardoza: Yeah, absolutely. That’s a great example, especially when you think that these doctors had to travel to all of these different locations. They can only go be in one location at once, but now they can visit multiple different locations in one day and start providing access and health to all of these different areas. Jason, I’m wondering from imedtac, do you guys have any customer examples or lessons learned over the last couple of years you can share with us?

Jason Miao: We do have some very interesting cases that we would like to share with you. The first thing is in Southeast Asia, like Thailand. The government is leading this kind of project, because the government realizes that people are a national issue. So they are trying to use government policy and resources to help lead this—what we would say is equal rights for all the citizens, no matter who you are in the big city or in the rural area. So it will be very significantly the issue in the Southeast Asia market right now. Like in Indonesia, there are so many islands. If you don’t use telehealth, if you don’t use the 5G, you will not able to provide the good service, the healthcare service for all the people.

Another thing is even inside the hospital; we do have another case in Taiwan. Even in the hospital they have the different branch areas, but in the emergency room somehow some of the doctors, they don’t have the confidence to take care all of the cases. So even for the hospital in between the branch and also the main hospital, the emergency room, they still can use the telehealths to do the second opinion to do the consultation. So I think there will be a very interesting tool of the different models that we see. The telehealth is really very useful for all the citizens, and also for the hospital systems.

Christina Cardoza: Yeah, absolutely. And that it, just in addition to being able to provide this access to healthcare like you’re mentioning, it just provides better patient care, takes some of the burdens off of the hospital staff, so all around providing a great solution for everyone. Now, Leonardo, anything from DiagNext that you can share with us about any customer examples or use cases?

Leonardo Alves de Melo: Yeah, sure. I think in the Amazon rainforest it became famous for our work and efforts in the early identification of breast cancer, which took months to identify, today manages to take just a few seconds. The same technology helps mobile healthcare units in all Latin America by trucks and vessels. This project is a responsible for solving, with minimal operation and technical costs, more than a hundred thousand patients per year in more than 60 hospital units there. Approximately seven and a half thousand patients at risk of breast cancer identified it, and almost 200 are taken to treatment or surgery. I think that’s an exact example of how our technology can help.

We use that in another state in Brazil, like São Paulo, in the Covid period, that we need to turn it on some emergency hospitals for a true emergency, and eight hospitals in two days. And I began using all the tele-radiology, using mobile phones to communicate the systems 5G, 4G or else. Of course the integration is created by an Intel processor and computer server that our team, our developer team, created so fast.

Christina Cardoza: What’s interesting, as we’re talking about all of these different use cases, is we’re talking about using 4G, 5G video cameras, AI edge computing, and, Leonardo, you just mentioned Intel processors—I assume those are being used for performance and the edge computing that we’re talking about. But it seems like there’s a lot that goes into making all of this successful. And I should mention the IoT Chat and insight.tech as a whole, we are sponsored by Intel.

But I’m curious, how do you collaborate with ecosystem partners to make this happen, especially in rural areas. Jason, if you can expand a little bit—you talked a little bit about using Intel technology earlier in the conversation. So what’s the importance of Intel in making this happen, as well as any other ecosystem partners you’re working with?

Jason Miao: Yeah, I think because we are using the edge computing as the gateway to connecting the different medical devices and uploading to the cloud, so the edge computing is very important for us. And, as you know, that Taiwan is good in the semiconductor, good in the multiple laptop, and also for those computers. So we have actually the whole partner chain in Asia, in Taiwan, and leading by Intel.

So when we go to the different country, like the Vietnam, like the Thailand, so we will be able to find the right partner who already has the local service and the warranty. So it provides a very good flexibility for us. We are very appreciative for Intel support. Intel is always into linking those resources together. So whenever we found there’s an interesting new model or new case, we will be able to get the right resources from Intel, and we can just get the local warranty from the different country, I think it’s very important.

And another thing is we need to also connect with the local partners for us to do the local service, because the different countries, they have the different regulations to have the different reimbursement or insurance and also the different cultures. So we need to have the local partners who help us to adjust our service model to the different country. So once again, Intel is not only providing the technology but also helping us to link those resources together. We also participate several of the Intel RTR projects for the last two, three years. So we win the success cases in Thailand, in Vietnam, in Malaysia, and also in the Middle East. So I will say it will be a very good model that we will create a win-win synergy together with Intel.

Christina Cardoza: Yeah, and I can just imagine, when you’re talking about those new models or new use cases, especially working with a company and partnership like Intel, it’s just being able to get access to the latest technology that’s coming to be able to implement this for your users and continue to improve your solution for the company and the customers that you are serving.

Moji, I’m curious, as evolutions keep happening, what we’re talking about yesterday can completely be different tomorrow. So I’m curious what additional opportunities lie ahead—how do you see us being able to continue to improve and help rural communities and address some of these ongoing healthcare challenges that we face?

Moji Ghodoussi: Absolutely. We have actually been partnering with Intel for a number of years, and we’ve used Intel’s specific hardware like NUC, as part of our offerings. And also, more recently and more significantly, we’re using Intel chipsets as part of our custom-designed and manufactured electronics that are part of our telehealth-device portfolio.

And there’s significant opportunities of course lying ahead in telehealth, and specific to rural communities—further adoption and availability of telehealth in these communities, and enabling and adopting the “whole-person care”—so, versus just episodic care that we have been talking about a little bit. In addition to advances in AI, of course—which will definitely impact healthcare and care diagnostics, and delivery—it can and will have significant impact on healthcare in general, and more so in specific to rural communities. And of course all the advancements in technology are the enablers of what we do and what others do in this space.

Christina Cardoza: Yeah. And, as you mentioned, we’ve been focusing on one very small subset of healthcare—providing telehealth and access to rural areas. But there is still healthcare and all these advancements—it’s still moving and changing, and there’s still so many other things that I think we could talk about in so many different areas that we can take.

Unfortunately we only have a short amount of time on the podcast, and we are nearing the end of our time. So, before we go, I just want to throw it back to each of you all if there’s any key takeaways or anything you’d like to add. So, Leonardo, I’ll start with you. What additional opportunities do you see ahead of us in the next couple of years, and is there anything that you want to leave our listeners with today, as we continue to improve and help with the healthcare in rural communities in the future?

Leonardo Alves de Melo: Well, I think there’s a lot to do. We need to include these populations in the care of everything, particularly in health. The minimum technology makes a lot of difference in our individual care, but it needs to be customized with our expansion integration. With new medical equipment and systems both remote, we will be better able to bring healthcare without physical borders. Today we are bringing technology-enabled, tele-assisted surgery, AI tools to make medical care more efficient. And we are building training tools for remote teams and population, new means of communications and equipment with lower operation and input causes are also important, as are investments in the information technology for hospital and clinics in rural areas.

Christina Cardoza: Yeah, I love that, that thought you have to include the population and everything. It’s not just providing this technology or this solution because we see that there is a problem, but what is the problem that the population or the area is actually facing, and how can we develop customized solutions that work on both ends. So, great, great final thoughts.

Jason, anything from you? Any final thoughts or key takeaways?

Jason Miao: Yeah, I think in the last few years the telehealth is already becoming the reality everywhere. And the next step will be the AI, and it is going to help us to increase the care and the technology. And the next thing we are seeing is the age-care topic. Because in Asia—I think in United States and Western countries—the people are getting older, and we don’t have enough manpower to take care of them. So for our company we are also thinking about the next step, probably will be the age-care issue. So I do think we are using Intel and all the new technology. Including the telecare will definitely can help us to have the better life for our retirement life.

Christina Cardoza: Yeah, absolutely. And I see AI and edge going hand in hand, being able to be able to provide these real-time updates, high performance, low latency with edge, and using the advancements of AI and the capabilities to really provide that extra level of care. Moji, you talked a little bit about AI throughout the conversation, so is there anything you wanted to add there, or anything you want to leave our listeners with today?

Moji Ghodoussi: Absolutely. Telehealth will grow because of the benefits it provides to healthcare, enabling doctors to take care of more patients—especially going out to rural areas that we’ve been discussing as well. But technology keeps advancing, which provides additional tools to the clinicians—from diagnostic aspects, so that it can actually help the doctor before even maybe the doctor shows up as to what they should do for this specific patient specific to that patient’s healthcare and chronic care, etc., in addition to the fact that with advancement in technology—which is where the area of focus for all of us is on this call—is to really enable clinicians to take better care and more care of the patients populations.

I also want to take advantage of this opportunity to thank Intel for their partnership in the last few years and congratulate the vision and goal of enabling platforms and solutions that further advance technology, and therefore telehealth. As telehealth, in my opinion, is the only way that we can have true health equity. I also want to highlight and thank Teladoc Health for its mission and focus on enabling workflow solutions that enable our amazing clinicians to deliver care to their patients regardless of geography. And I would like to also thank you for this opportunity to share my thoughts.

Christina Cardoza: Yeah, of course. And I’d like to thank all of you for the insightful conversation. Like you said, Moji, technology keeps advancing, and I can’t wait to see what else Teladoc Health, DiagNext, and imedtac do in this space. So I encourage all of our listeners to visit their websites, keep up with what they’re doing here, as well as visit insight.tech as we continue to cover these partners and the latest trends and technologies in this space. Until next time, this has been the IoT Chat.

The preceding transcript is provided to ensure accessibility and is intended to accurately capture an informal conversation. The transcript may contain improper uses of trademarked terms and as such should not be used for any other purposes. For more information, please see the Intel® trademark information.

This transcript was edited by Erin Noble, copy editor.

Video Walls Broadcast Advanced AI Solutions

Posted on by Micah Kaplan

When considering digital walls, most of us picture simple use cases like digital advertising and entertainment venues. But they provide so much more, including critical real-time decision-making, warehouse control, and centralized situational monitoring. Thanks to performant edge computing, advanced AI technologies, and customizable hardware, interactive video walls can be tailored to support these use cases and many more.

“Experiential video walls designed for engaging passers-by, like the ones found at casinos, airports, and entertainment venues, are among the most common uses right now,” says Samuel Recine, VP of Global Strategic Partnerships at Matrox Video, a developer of component-level solutions and video technologies.

Video Wall Design and Implementation Challenges

With the variety and richness of options, it’s essential to keep innovating at a fast pace. And the multitude of use cases means that designing, building, and implementing advanced AI-enabled video wall solutions is a complex challenge.

If the goal is advertising, most commercially available systems will allow daisy-chaining the displays and scale the content to fit a video wall of various sizes. But at the other extreme is a truly complex and multifunctional system that might include different sources like PC content, camera content, newsfeeds, sensor monitoring, and signal monitoring—all coming into a display via an application interface. The technology must be smart enough to bring together all these sources with their different content types and coding; and organize how they will be displayed in the video walls.

Think about the case where many signals come from different parts of a business or school campus. The capability to bring those disparate signals into one display space is critical. A control room video wall could show sensor data about water leaks, video feeds from security cameras, mobile radio from guard stations, and any number of other incoming signals. Sometimes, even protected content needs to be captured and displayed right beside open content coming in live. In those cases, advanced AI tools, processors, and screens act as an intelligent aggregator of these different baseband and IP signals across many different protocols across many different network types.

The multitude of use cases means that designing, building, and implementing advanced #AI-enabled #video wall solutions is a complex challenge. @MatroxVideo via @insightdottech

Conquering the Technology Behind Video Walls

“There’s lots of solutions for how to light up all of these pixels that form these big canvases we call video walls,” Recine says. “And every time you get to the point where you’ve solved the problem and everything is finally perfectly working as you would like on your video walls, there is always something that changes and all of a sudden you have to make that work.”

One of the secrets to making it work is the combination of the Matrox LUMA Graphics Cards, capture cards, software, and hardware designed to manage real-time video encoding and decoding. In particular, the LUMA Graphics Card uses Intel® Arc™ GPUs and Intel CPUs for advanced AI applications and to implement live data feeds while powering IP-based digital signage and video walls.

“The LUMA Graphics Card is our next-generation platform we’re introducing for our video wall solutions,” says Recine. “Our developers are essentially beginning to characterize the capabilities of this new lineup and we’ll be productizing lots of new features and capabilities that derive from the new processing power available on the Intel® Arc™ GPU.”

Recine adds that Matrox and its downstream software development partners are excited to leverage all the unique Intel libraries for accessing the media processing capabilities of both the Intel CPU and GPU families all under one roof.

The Limitless Possibilities of Visual Storytelling

As video wall technology gets even more sophisticated, what does the future look like?

Portability and miniaturization are the first steps, Recine explains: “We’re literally moving into the age where you almost have a video wall on a chip. A huge element of why we selected the Intel® Arc™ GPU for our video wall family is because of the incredible density afforded to us and the variety of signals that can be managed on one GPU. This helps drive down cost, drive up performance, and increase flexibility.”

In the sense of video walls applications in the future, the capabilities for mixing reality and rendered content can’t be ignored. For example, augmented reality might be integrated with command centers through video walls, allowing much greater visibility and insight into enterprise operations or industrial facilities. In the same vein, digital twins operating in real time to drive predictive maintenance and operational monitoring can be married with advanced AI to give engineers and operators endless opportunities to find more efficiency and avoid downtime.

The future is bright for video walls, and the time to get started is now.

 

Edited by Georganne Benesch, Editorial Director for insight.tech.

Partnerships Key to OT Cybersecurity

Posted on by Micah Kaplan

Cyber threats are becoming an urgent problem for operating technology (OT), the hardware and software that controls industrial machines and equipment. OT ransomware attacks rose by 87% in 2022, and cyber incidents cost businesses a staggering $140 million in damages on average. In this milieu, businesses and governments are eager to implement effective industrial cybersecurity solutions. But unfortunately, the OT environment is notoriously difficult to secure.

“OT cybersecurity is fundamentally different from IT security because in an industrial setting, there are multiple operating systems and proprietary data protocols to manage,” says Ray Lin, Vice President of Sales at CASwell, a hardware manufacturer that specializes in networking, security, and industrial IoT applications. “In some circumstances, even basic security measures like server and network patching can be challenging. It’s also difficult to implement or upgrade OT security systems, because in a high-value manufacturing environment, downtime is unacceptable.”

The good news for the manufacturing sector is that hardware specialists and industrial cybersecurity experts team up to meet these challenges with purpose-built OT security appliances. These flexible, high-performance solutions offer manufacturers the security they need—and also foster dynamic new business relationships.

How Partnerships Boost OT Cybersecurity

Case in point: CASwell’s collaboration with an industrial cybersecurity company and Intel to develop an OT security solution for a large semiconductor manufacturer. The manufacturer was using IT infrastructure to protect manufacturing equipment but realized this approach no longer provided the level of security required in its high-stakes industry. On the hunt for a dedicated security solution, the company approached the cybersecurity company, an industrial specialist focused on addressing the challenges of OT convergence.

In #manufacturing settings, flexibility is essential—both to meet the diverse requirements of different manufacturers and also to facilitate upgrades of existing deployments. CASwell Inc. via @insightdottech

CASwell and its partner had deep experience in OT cybersecurity, including developing an intrusion prevention system (IPS) for industrial use. Due to its work in the Japanese automotive industry, the security provider also had an extensive database of manufacturing protocols, allowing it to secure a wide array of industrial equipment. But the semiconductor manufacturer had a unique and challenging requirement: It wanted a security appliance with 96 ethernet ports to secure multiple network segments from a single device.

CASwell and the cybersecurity partner worked together to engineer a solution. With support from Intel’s engineering teams, CASwell found a way to implement the unprecedented 96-port configuration the customer wanted. The large number of ethernet ports enables effective and easy-to-manage network micro segmentation, a foundational security practice that involves breaking OT networks into sub-networks. That improves threat visibility and can stop cybercriminals from spreading malware from one workload to another—an important concern for factories running thousands of processes.

Intel CPUs provided the low-latency, edge computing performance the solution needed. CASwell and its partner’s IPS software runs on the security appliance and inspects data packets on network segments for malicious activity in real time. The IPS software also protects legacy devices running unpatched software with virtual patching technology. OT network data is inspected for attacks based on known vulnerabilities, stopping suspicious traffic before it reaches the vulnerable equipment.

In addition, CASwell designed the security appliance to ensure high availability and withstand harsh conditions in industrial environments. Ruggedized design and thermal protections enable higher operating temperatures than standard IT servers and firewall devices can support, while redundant power sources protect against unexpected downtime.

After CASwell and its partner’s security appliance successfully resolved this complex problem, the semiconductor manufacturer decided to use it to secure liquid, electrical, and gas systems at the facility as well.

Flexible Solutions Enable Multiple Use Cases

It’s no accident that the OT security system CASwell and its partner developed could be deployed beyond its intended use case. The solution was designed for flexibility from the ground up.

In manufacturing settings, this kind of flexibility is essential—both to meet the diverse requirements of different manufacturers and also to facilitate upgrades of existing deployments. The large, 96-port solution developed by CASwell and its partner, for example, is also available in 16-port and 48-port configurations.

This flexibility also means that the potential for OT security applications extends far beyond the semiconductor industry. For example, CASwell sees use cases for its security appliances in automotive manufacturing, critical infrastructure (CI) security, and sensitive manufacturing operations such as chemical and pharmaceutical plants.

The company’s technology partnership with Intel has been crucial in this respect. “This solution would not exist without Intel. They offer a powerful and versatile suite of CPUs and network control devices, enabling tremendous flexibility in terms of the different combinations we can offer our customers,” says Lin. “Along with Intel’s excellent technical support during the development process, that lets us offer tailored ODM solutions to our partners to fulfill their mission-critical OT applications.”

The Future of OT Cybersecurity Solutions

As the need for OT cyber protections grows, collaborations like the one between CASwell and its partner are likely to become increasingly common.

“The IT security market is relatively stable, but OT cybersecurity is an emerging market with huge growth potential,” says Lin. “We see numerous possibilities for partnerships with systems integrators and software developers.”

That’s good news for the industrial sector—particularly for businesses just getting started with digital transformation of their manufacturing processes. These organizations will enjoy the benefits of an increasingly mature OT cybersecurity marketplace, with OT systems integrators and their technology partners ready and waiting to deliver customized solutions.

“Attacks on OT networks are on the rise, but OT cybersecurity providers are responding,” says Lin. “In the future, companies will be able to leverage increasingly sophisticated security solutions to move from simple protection to proactive defense.”

 

This article was edited by Teresa Meek, Editorial Contributor for insight.tech.

Advancing Ruggedized IoT Through Collaborative Partnerships

Posted on by Micah Kaplan

Integrating new IoT devices into operations isn’t always easy. Businesses often face challenges when incorporating new solutions, like overcoming interoperability or future scalability.

But in some cases, businesses have more than just the run-of-the-mill concerns, especially when their needs call for using IoT devices in rugged and inhospitable environments. How can they find devices that can function under extreme conditions, like areas with temperatures constantly below zero or in mines 2500-6500 feet underground? And how can they guarantee those devices will last over time?

Luckily, ruggedized IoT is advancing rapidly to meet the needs of businesses operating in out-of-the-ordinary environments.

David Zhu-Grant, Senior Product Manager at global industrial-PC manufacturer OnLogic; Jason Lu, Product Manager for IoT with computing-hardware leader ASUS; and Chad Hutchinson, Vice President of Engineering at Crystal Group, a leading designer of rugged computing hardware, explain the best approach for implementing industrial rugged IoT devices and the key role partnerships play in rapidly advancing this technology (Video 1).

Video 1. OnLogic’s David Zhu-Grant, ASUS’ Jason Lu, and Crystal Group’s Chad Hutchinson discuss the best approach for successfully integrating rugged IoT devices in harsh environments and the recent advancements that have made it possible to do so. (Source: insight.tech)

What industries benefit the most from ruggedized IoT devices?

David Zhu-Grant: It is a pretty broad spectrum—manufacturing, warehousing logistics, smart agriculture, smart cities, mining, and energy. These industries have environments with conditions that range from very cold to very hot; there’s vibration, impacts, or shock to vehicles; and it can be quite electrically noisy as well, from a radio frequency-emissions perspective.

Jason Lu: As more and more IoT devices are coming online, they are being deployed in different environments. For example, an IoT device in a McDonald’s drive-through might need to survive below-zero conditions in wintertime, and the temperature inside the display enclosure could go as high as 70°C during the summer. The LCD display that you see the menu on also needs to be waterproof against rain and snow. Along with damage, waterdrops on outdoor touchscreens can also cause a false touch that triggers an unwanted operation. Ruggedized IoT devices are designed to operate in that kind of environment, among others.

“None of these #technologies works in isolation; it takes a lot of interconnected systems and knowledge to successfully implement a winning #IoT solution” – David Zhu-Grant, @OnLogic via @insightdottech

What are the biggest deployment challenges you see in these harsher environments?

Chad Hutchinson: One thing we see in industrial applications is sand and dust. For example, in mining you have very fine coal powder that gets into nooks and crannies where it can interrupt cooling systems and electrical connections. In the field, cooling in particular is an absolutely huge issue. On the other hand, you would think that electronics wouldn’t mind being in a cold environment, but if you get down to 40°C and below, commercial electronics don’t want to operate then either. Then you have maritime environments with salt fog. We see IoT devices deployed in things like oil rigs—a very dirty environment, but also a high-moisture environment.

One of the other big challenges that we run into is the power interface. Generally, IoT devices are designed for an office environment, someplace with regulated input voltage of 120 volts AC. Out in the field it varies: in switch yards 125 volts DC is common; aircraft, it’s 28 volts DC; automotive, 12 volt DC distribution.

David Zhu-Grant: They’re called non-carpeted environments: they’re still indoors, but they’re not really like an office environment. You still see temperature extremes and airborne particulates there. As Chad mentioned, dust can really impact cooling, and also reliability from a circuit board perspective. Electrical interference is another big one. A lot of warehouses and factories have big machinery that starts and stops, like air conditioning units, and that can cause EMI issues.

Even indoors you still have to deal with reliability and long-term usage. If it’s staying too hot for too long, your computer’s not going to last.

How does the environment itself play a role in creating or improving a ruggedized device?

Chad Hutchinson: Take shock and vibration. From a mechanical perspective, you have to prevent any differential movement between the circuit cards, because those are target places where dissimilar movement causes problems. So if you can prevent that movement with a really rigid chassis, that can help.

With humidity, salt fog, even fungus, believe it or not, you’re trying to put a barrier between the outside world and the electronics itself—generally a conformal coating of some kind that’s providing an insulating barrier.

When you have high temperatures and need cooling sources, creating a formal heat sink for devices that originally lack one is an option—even if the device is in the open air. Another thing you’re seeing in electronics these days is the converting to liquid cooling and plumbing via a source of cooling water.

In short, you look at each of the factors in the environment that is affecting the device, and you knock them down one at a time. For each of those things I mentioned the industry has pretty much found a way to solve for it.

What’s better for operations: buying off-the-shelf or seeking out custom ruggedized devices?

Chad Hutchinson: When you’re looking at IoT, in many cases you’re looking first at the functionality and capability that it brings to the table. If you can find an item that’s commercially available with the functionality you need, you can deploy that, test it in the environment, and see the ways in which it does and does not perform. If it works for you, provides the functionality, and lasts, then you’re probably done.

In other situations, you may not identify a commercially available item that has the functionality you need for your application, in which case you’re into a custom solution right from the get-go.

But let’s assume that there’s a commercially available item that can meet your needs, but it just won’t survive in the environment you have. That’s when ruggedized off-the-shelf electronics can really come into play—and be considerably cheaper than a pure, ground-up custom solution. That’s where you start going through and identifying only those functions of your specific environment that are causing a problem. If humidity isn’t really an issue, then you don’t add coatings and things of that nature.

Jason Lu: A rugged device will of course be more expensive from a cost or development perspective, so the idea needs to be planted in the very early stages. First, the solution needs to work in the intended operating environment. In order to achieve that goal the design, review, and validation times will be longer.

During development you can start thinking about whether to build it in-house or to outsource it. And then, how do you want to maintain it during operation? Do you want to consider remote update capability? Because of the time it takes in development validation, the initial cost is usually more. Once you take all this into consideration, then you can start thinking about whether the return on investment can be justified.

For example, a kiosk. If it’s an indoor environment, a regular, fan-based commercial PC might work. But if this kiosk is going to be outdoors, then most likely you have to go the rugged route, even though that’s going to be more expensive. But in terms of the operation life cycle, that will keep you running for the longest time. So with those kinds of consideration you’re making during the design phase, you would be able to justify your investment in the long run.

What are some use cases you’re seeing with rugged IoT devices?

Jason Lu: A good example I can share is of a robotic arm using AI vision computers to do the sorting and picking in a recycling plant. That’s not a very friendly operating environment for computers; they get dirty very quickly. For the vision processing you need a GPU card to be quick enough to react to the conveyor, and GPUs consume power and so come with a cooling fan.

A very dusty environment, a GPU, and a fan. So they put it in an air-conditioned enclosure, which is still expensive to build and hard to maintain, because that environment is not friendly to an air conditioner either.

We developed a fanless solution for this very high-performance CPU and very high-performance GPU. They have a machine that’s inside a big, aluminum enclosure with a fin sticking out. It’s heavy, but once it was deployed they didn’t have to think about it because the fanless design doesn’t care about the dust. Right now that project is in the DVT phase, and the customer is very excited to see how it’s working in the field.

David Zhu-Grant: We’ve got one really good example in the mining-industry space. It’s a company called Flasheye that uses LiDAR, laser-scanning technology, to detect anomalies and to prevent stoppages, malfunctions, and accidents within a mining-materials transport application.

Think of a conveyor belt with mining materials, rocks, and so forth going down it. And they’ve built this really smart solution using computer vision, so the AI is simultaneously looking at what’s happening with the rocks, the flow, the belt, any spillage over the sides, and whether any people are in dangerous zones around the belt. The system is also in a really harsh environment. It’s mining, so there’s that dust element to it, but it’s also in northern Sweden.

They really needed a computer that was going to be rugged. Obviously they picked an OnLogic computer! But the overall solution has been so successful that it’s won them some innovation awards in the mining industry—making things safer, and basically improving efficiency so they can have less downtime when those belts are damaged or there are issues with the material flow.

Chad Hutchinson: My example is an autonomous-vehicle application. It was a computer using LiDAR, radar, and sensors for computer vision and figuring out the driving scenario. So it needed considerable computer horsepower out in the vehicle itself.

The challenges were primarily thermal, with multiple GPUs and trying to get that heat out of the automobile. But then also power interface, because generally computers, servers, and IoT devices are designed to operate on 120 volts AC, as I mentioned before, and automotive is a 12 volt DC system. During a starting surge that voltage can actually get pulled down to 9 volts.

So we designed a custom power supply for the specific environment of 12 volts DC input, with an ATX power output that interfaces with commercially available motherboards and electronics. The GPUs had custom heat sinks that were liquid cooled and brought the heat to the outside of the cab to an external radiator.

Tell us what role partnerships and collaboration play in advancing rugged IoT.

David Zhu-Grant: Obviously from our point of view the hardware is a really big part of it. But the software layer and stacks on top of that really unlock the features in the hardware. That’s where Intel has been a great partner for us at OnLogic. The Intel vPro® platform in particular has been really good for us. And Intel has helped us connect the dots between the hardware we provide, the software providers, and the integration partners.

None of these technologies works in isolation; it takes a lot of interconnected systems and knowledge to successfully implement a winning IoT solution. And ultimately the customer succeeds from that collaboration.

Jason Lu: At ASUS, we develop motherboards and system solutions, but based on the CPU developed by Intel and other companies. The less power the CPU consumes, the less heat you need to deal with, which makes it easier to put together a system solution.

The Intel technology is usually on the leading edge, and on top of that it’s embedded. Intel is also very good at providing longevity support for selected CPUs, and that’s one reason we picked those CPUs to base our development on.

I think it’s a very good collaboration between the companies, one that provides a solid foundation for IoT applications to build upon. And companies appreciate it because it saves a lot of development time.

What should businesses be prioritizing as they move forward with integrating rugged IoT devices?

Chad Hutchinson: When you’re operating at the edge, out in the field, with harsh conditions, and you’re trying to include IoT devices in any kind of technology, you need to be thinking about those challenges as part of your project development.

Do your testing, figure out what challenges you have, and then go find targeted solutions for those problems. And get in touch with a partner that has those capabilities and can bring its expertise to bear.

David Zhu-Grant: I agree that it’s really important to pick a partner—not just one that’s going to sell you a box, but one that’s going to understand the industry you’re in and the challenges you’re facing. One that’s going to help guide you to that right solution.

 

This article was edited by Erin Noble, copy editor.

AI Monitoring Boosts Robot Efficiencies

Posted on by Micah Kaplan

Today, more and more warehouses and fulfillment centers leverage preprogrammed robots to zip through the aisles and pick merchandise at warp speed with not a human in sight.

But who oversees their work?

It’s becoming an increasingly important question as logistics managers—who face demanding customers and an acute labor shortage—invest deeply in factory automation. While fleets of robots can operate in synchrony to stock shelves faster and load trucks better than people who prefer higher-level work, safety is paramount in these situations. Often, these robots can be put into “cells” to work, sealed off from human contact. But that also means no one is around to hear a squeaky ball bearing or notice a bot veering off-track. When precision instruments become even less precise, the carefully orchestrated ballet of automated operations breaks down, reducing productivity and throughput.

As a result, retailers and manufacturers seek partnerships with companies that can help them deploy these factory automation solutions while mitigating risks through essential checkpoints and verifications. For instance, Wachter, Inc., a U.S. systems integrator, offers specialized consulting services and tailor-made edge solutions, actively working with numerous clients to address these challenges and adjust to their evolving needs. This involves leveraging AI and smart video cameras to oversee robotic operations and maintain seamless functionality. Through this approach, they can promptly notify technicians of potential issues, facilitating swift repairs and enhancing overall efficiency.

Deploying Supply Chain Automation

Part of what makes Wachter’s partnerships successful is that setting up supply chain or factory automation with computer-vision robots is a collaborative effort. First, retailers figure out what they want the machines to do. Then they work with a technology partner to train the robots to handle specific products.

Next, the machines are programmed to stack and shrink-wrap a mixed arrangement of goods to be loaded onto trucks at maximum density. A human-packed shipment requiring three truckloads to deliver may need only two if packed by robots.

“Robots see the entire manifest of a shipment and use AI to arrange goods like it’s a Tetris game,” says Matt Tyler, Director of Strategic Innovation and Business Development at Wachter, Inc.

Delivering goods with fewer truckloads cuts down on emissions and lowers costs. For example, facilities using robotics developed by warehouse automation provider Symbotic Inc. can save companies up to 33% on transportation. That enables them to service more distribution centers in the same amount of time. The cumulative efficiency gains add up to substantial savings. “It leads to a reduction in building more distribution centers, which cost $250 million to $400 million,” Tyler explains.

A similar dynamic plays out within the distribution center. Robots operate in teams to distribute new goods onto shelves and pick and pack others for shipment, traveling at speeds of up to 25 miles per hour (Video 1). The better they synchronize operations, the greater the efficiency.

Video 1. Robots work together to pick and pack goods for maximum efficiency and throughput. (Source: Symbotic)

But the reverse is also true. A robot wearing down impedes overall operational performance. If it isn’t serviced in time, it could grind to a halt, collide with other machines, or damage shelves and merchandise. With multimillion-dollar facilities on the line and customers demanding just-in-time deliveries, these are disturbing scenarios for companies to contemplate.

Systems Integrators Ensure Reliability

That’s where the third leg of working with computer-vision automation comes in: monitoring the robots.

A large North American retailer’s experience illustrates how monitoring can help. Working with Symbotic, the retailer deployed advanced robotics throughout its nationwide distribution centers. Though they didn’t experience problems with the robots, managers wanted a monitoring platform to avoid issues in the future, as the machines accumulate service hours.

“It was a proactive engagement to ensure reliability and uptime,” Tyler says.

Symbotic executives contacted Wachter, which was using video cameras for security monitoring at the centers. As a systems integrator, Wachter thrives on repurposing technology to suit custom client needs. Together, the companies saw an opportunity to transform the existing video management solutions into anomaly detection applications.

“We selected video cameras and audio systems to observe robots at friction points and choke points, where we can capture the most data,” Tyler says.

Wachter assembled servers with Intel® processors and edge analytics capability, allowing the cameras to “see” minuscule alignment flaws and “hear” mechanical problems such as the squeak of faulty wheel bearings in real time. When the system detects an anomaly that could cause failure, it alerts a technician to repair the robot before it breaks down on the floor and creates an efficiency-sucking traffic jam.

Edge Data Analytics for Factory Automation

Video monitoring with edge analytics also helps manufacturers, which, like retailers, struggle to attract and retain workers. Wachter deployed video cameras at a steel plant using 2,000-degree ovens to melt iron ore. The factory was racking up $2 million a year in EPA fines because its ovens occasionally experienced leaks.

The manufacturer had initially planned to hire 12 full-time employees to manually monitor Wachter’s video screens all day and report any smoke leaking out of the ovens—but given that steam normally escapes as part of heating, they found this could be very difficult and expensive to maintain.

“It probably would have been a $500,000 per year investment—if they could find anyone to do the work,” Tyler says.

Instead, Wachter added edge analytics to the cameras, which now detect smoke leaks in real time, automatically generate EPA reports, and schedule maintenance if needed.

“The EPA was satisfied with the self-generated reports and corrective actions. They eased all fines in the first year,” Tyler says.

#VideoMonitoring with edge analytics also helps #manufacturers, which, like #retailers, struggle to attract and retain workers. @WachterInc via @insightdottech

Harnessing the Power of AI

As AI evolves, robotics monitoring will incorporate more efficiency-generating capabilities. For example, in Phase 2 of the retail distribution center monitoring system Wachter and Symbotic created, video cameras will inform robots of problems and instruct them on how to fix themselves or travel to the shop, resolving issues faster and keeping humans away from the potentially dangerous cells. Within a couple of years, the cameras will likely incorporate radar and lidar, monitoring robot activity in three dimensions instead of two.

Advantages like these are quickly turning AI monitoring from a nice-to-have to a must-have solution.

“Not a day goes by where I don’t have a conversation with a customer about AI and analytics,” Tyler says. “With the labor shortage, manufacturing and logistics operations have to adapt in order to survive.”

 

This article was edited by Christina Cardoza, Editorial Director for insight.tech.

Managing the World of Embedded Android Devices

Posted on by Micah Kaplan

Service at shops, hotels, and restaurants has undergone a sea change in recent years. Quick-serve restaurant patrons can skip the line and order from a kiosk, browsing the menu without hearing sighs from impatient customers behind them. Mall shoppers can navigate and play games on interactive touchscreens. Hotel guests unlock their doors with a phone app, and some rooms have infrared body-heat sensors advising cleaning staff when to stay away.

Customers love the ease and personalization remote technology provides, but managing it can be a headache for business owners. The tablets, point-of-sale equipment, kiosks, sensors, and digital signs they use are all produced by different manufacturers and run on systems that don’t sync well with enterprise technology. That makes it tough to spot malfunctions and keep peripherals updated and secured. As Android devices flood the market, the problem is growing worse, making it nearly impossible for managers using Windows and Linux terminals to resolve problems without sending a technician to the site.

To address these frustrations, new endpoint solutions have emerged, enabling companies to manage a worldwide fleet of remote equipment running on any system—Windows, Linux, or Android—from a single desktop console.

Improving Reliability in Smart Retail Solutions

Facing acute labor shortages and customer demand for self-service, retailers are expanding their use of connected devices, and some now have thousands in their operations. Peripherals are intended to boost efficiency, but when they don’t work right, they can backfire, impeding operations and frustrating customers. Self-service equipment is particularly vulnerable.

“If an unattended kiosk is out of order, you no longer have the backup of staff to step in and take care of the customer. Retailers regularly see dissatisfaction, abandoned merchandise, and people walking away,” says Leonard Gilbert-Wines, Director of Product and Markets at Flytech Technology, a producer of customized computer peripherals and firmware.

To help solve these challenges, Flytech ventured into the software realm to develop a unified endpoint management solution called inefi Spotlight, which gives companies full visibility of their remote devices’ operating systems, firmware, and software. Because Flytech works closely with most major peripheral manufacturers, inefi can accommodate virtually any make or model of equipment.

Managers and service providers can be alerted to problems as they occur, and often resolve or prevent service interruptions with a real-time remote fix.

For example, a UK home improvement retailer that was experiencing problems with a store network noticed some devices worked fine, while others failed. Retail managers couldn’t pin down the issue, but after installing inefi Spotlight, they quickly discovered that the nonfunctioning devices needed a firmware update, which solved the problem.

“Without this visibility, they would have had to send agents on-site. There could have been weeks of troubleshooting: Is it a network problem? An OS problem? A hardware issue? Instead, they were able to apply a fix and move on,” Gilbert-Wines says.

“The @Intel platform provides longevity, consistency, and #security, with great performance and low power consumption.” – Leonard Gilbert-Wines, Flytech Technology via @insightdottech

Extending Unified Endpoint Management to Android Devices

To get remote applications up and running faster, retailers are increasingly using Android, which has become the leading mobile operating system worldwide, with a market share of over 70%.

“With Android, you don’t need to pay a license fee to Windows. It’s also easier to find Android developers, and it’s faster and less costly to develop applications,” says Eric Lin, Product Marketing Director at Flytech.

But Android processors tend to evolve at a faster rate than others, requiring companies to replace their remote equipment sooner or lose support. The devices also don’t give companies the visibility and remote management capabilities they need. Until recently, they didn’t work with inefi Spotlight, which was created for Windows and Linux systems before the Android boom.

To address these problems, Flytech created inefi Aura, which allows retailers to remotely provision and update Android devices without using the Google Management System. Companies deploying inefi Aura also have the option of using inefi Spotlight to manage all their Android, Windows, and Linux devices on a single platform.

Inefi Spotlight’s universal endpoint management is enabled by Intel processors and Intel vPro® remote management software. “The Intel platform provides longevity, consistency, and security, with great performance and low power consumption,” Gilbert-Wines says.

Because inefi Spotlight works with any operating system, it gives companies flexibility in selecting devices, helping them expand to new locations without friction or extra costs. “Device requirements and pricing in Indonesia may be different from that in Germany,” Gilbert-Wines says.

Enhancing Endpoint Management with AI

In addition to serving the retail and hospitality industries, endpoint management can keep operations running smoothly in manufacturing plants, where downtime may cost millions of dollars. It can help medical facilities with patient monitoring devices, where delays or malfunctions could cost lives. Adoption will likely expand as machine learning and AI add new capabilities.

For example, Flytech plans to use AI to perform preventive maintenance. Other solutions in the works include managing computer vision applications, which can improve accuracy in retail checkout scanning and prevent shrinkage, Gilbert-Wines says. “We are investing to bring these solutions forward because the future is about choice for the consumer, and about empowering a new generation of developers who are mobile-facing and very agile.”

 

Edited by Georganne Benesch, Editorial Director for insight.tech.