Frictionless Checkout: The Future of Retail Technology

Posted on by Micah Kaplan

Anyone who has ever braved a grab-and-go counter, fast-food, or quick-service location at the airport understands the anxiety that comes with long lines—especially when you face a time crunch.

Do you wait and risk missing your flight? Or do you rush to your gate and resign yourself to nibbling on peanuts and pretzels for your entire three-hour flight?

UST Global, a leading digital transformation solutions company, is working to solve this dilemma for consumers. Its next-generation retail technology, UST Vision Checkout, uses machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) at the edge to innovate touchless checkout for plated and non-barcoded items in airports, corporate cafeterias, and other food service locations. The solution automates and accelerates the checkout experience, removing friction for customers and boosting operational and cost efficiencies for food service providers.

Challenges at Checkout

Customers spend an inordinate amount of time in the checkout line and at retail kiosks, but companies historically haven’t focused on improving this experience. But rising consumer expectations now compel companies to innovate and focus on the total shopping experience, according to Subhodip Bandyopadhyay, Global Head of Frictionless Commerce at UST Global.

“This whole thought process of giving more value to the customer by saving their time and giving them an outstanding checkout experience is a key driver behind frictionless commerce,” he says.

The Great Resignation also is fueling innovation. Food service operators face labor shortages and rising labor costs that have increased the need for AI-driven automation to augment staffing resources. Bandyopadhyay says retailers must retrain their workforce to adapt to new customer fulfillment processes without reducing their margins, so they’re looking for more ways to streamline and digitize the process and give customers more control over the checkout experience.

Vision Checkout can deliver all these capabilities for food service operators.

“What #AI brings is a new way of delivering the user experience. The #shopping experience is completely changed from a customer’s point of view.” — Paul Reddy @USTglobal via @insightdottech

Transforming the Checkout Experience

UST Global solution uses AI at the edge, machine learning, and computer vision to make checkout frictionless. Unlike traditional touchless checkout systems, Vision Checkout scans non-plated items and items without barcodes.

“What AI brings is a new way of delivering the user experience. Computer vision can see multiple items at a time, and with this new technology you can identify items using Vision AI in less than a second. The shopping experience is completely changed from a customer’s point of view,” says Paul Reddy, Head of Vision AI Product Development at UST Global.

Reddy says the company has developed a solution called Product Box, which allows it to collect images from thousands of product SKUs for a particular food service location or retail kiosk. The company then uploads this information into a database to train its AI models, which it then deploys to locations that have Vision Checkout. Vision Checkout also uses the Intel® OpenVINO™ Toolkit and Intel® Smart Edge platform to process massive amounts of data, providing the low latency and processing power necessary to speed the checkout experience and ensure items are tabulated accurately.

With Vision Checkout, there’s no serial scanning since all the product data for each item is already in the system. Customers can check out and purchase multiple items at once—like a sandwich, soda, banana, and granola bar—without searching for a barcode to scan and subsequently holding up the line.

Bandyopadhyay says computer vision also helps food service operators reduce fraud.

“In a self-checkout counter where vision is not deployed, there is a possibility of creating fraud,” he says. “The moment it is computer vision, it’s like the human eye—you see a chicken sandwich as it gets scanned, so the possibility of gaming the system is reduced to a bare minimum.”

Bringing Retail into the Future

In addition to airports and corporate cafeterias, Vision Checkout can be deployed at sports arenas and midsize grocers.

For example, UST Global has worked with Nourish + Bloom Market to deploy a range of digital transformation solutions and create the first African American-owned autonomous grocery store in the country. So far, Nourish + Bloom has installed two Vision Checkout devices. The grocer uses the solution for a large merchandise assortment outside its autonomous store and to facilitate checkout for products such as age-restricted items, fruits and vegetables, and frozen foods. Nourish + Bloom plans to launch more than 500 stores in the U.S. using Vision Checkout and UST Global’s other digital solutions.

Bandyopadhyay says UST Global plans to enhance Vision Checkout in several ways. Soon, Vision Checkout will include an enterprise-scale image repository, voice recognition, and hover detection capabilities. Currently, the company’s AI model can ingest data for 10,000 items, but as AI advances, UST Global hopes to have the capability to ingest tens of thousands of SKUs, so it can serve large grocers and other enterprise food service operators.

Bandyopadhyay says all these efforts are part of the UST Global vision to create a more connected retail ecosystem, one where every device can talk to every other device and deliver human-centric machine learning experiences.

“In simple terms, what does it mean? That every single device, if they work in harmony with each other, can give the customer—any customer, retail or enterprise—a very different kind of experience,” he says. “That’s the dream. That’s our vision.”

 

This article was edited by Georganne Benesch, Associate Editorial Director for insight.tech.

Reproducible Framework for Industrial Sustainable Operations

Posted on by Micah Kaplan

Over the past few years, there have been increasing efforts to improve industrial sustainable operations. But the accelerating pace of climate change means sustainability projects can no longer afford to tinker only at the edges. We need scalable green solutions, and we need them fast.

“Three years ago, sustainable operations were nice to have,” says Daniel Coudriet, Manufacturing Intelligence Offering Lead at the global technology consulting firm Capgemini. “But with recent studies that the world is in danger of never meeting its climate change goals, today they’re a must.”

The Growing Business Case for Industrial Sustainability

In addition to addressing the climate change challenge, optimized use of resources like energy and raw materials leads to cost savings. “Achieving sustainability goals is also becoming increasingly important for talent attraction, for good citizenship, and to comply with regulations,” Coudriet says.

Sustainability also “opens new doors to a lot of new opportunities and helps companies expand their markets into new ones,” says Guillaume Pichard, Senior Architect at Capgemini.

And as imperative as sustainable operations might be, execution challenges are aplenty—especially in manufacturing. Crucially, obtaining high-quality and real-time data can be problematic. But it is key in being able to leverage AI and machine learning algorithms at the edge and in the cloud, Coudriet says. The questions that enterprises need to ask, he explains, are: “Can I get some data? Can I rely on that data to make decisions? Can we reliably get this data? Do I have a reliable infrastructure, a data acquisition, and aggregation gateway that will work all the time to support my critical manufacturing processes?”

Macro-level insights are not enough. Companies need the end-to-end process to be digitalized to extract reliable data throughout the production process. When it comes to energy consumption data, for example, “you need to take a magnifying glass and put it on your electricity bill to pinpoint exactly where you can save costs,” Pichard says.

But many companies working with brownfield equipment might not be able to extract the right data from such legacy systems, Coudriet points out. Therefore, additional sensors may need to be added in parallel to existing systems to provide the missing data.

Another challenge is change management, being able to adapt or modify business operations to set and meet new KPIs, according to Francois Calvignac, Digital Manufacturing Enterprise Architect at Capgemini. In addition, companies’ second- and third-tier suppliers’ operations must come under the sustainability microscope. “This creates an organizational and technical challenge. It expands and tightens the requirements you’re placing on your ecosystem,” Calvignac explains.

#Macro-level insights are not enough. Companies need the end-to-end process to be #digitalized to extract reliable #data throughout the #production process. @Capgemini via @insightdottech

An Accelerator Framework

To help manufacturing enterprises overcome these various challenges, Capgemini has developed a reproducible framework that can be customized and deployed for each organization. The framework is designed to help companies meet their industrial sustainability goals quickly, and at scale.

“We bring a streamlined, highly effective, tools-based methodology, which is a good framework to understand the current state of the customer’s operations, where they want to be, and where the gap is between the two,” Pichard says. “Second, we come with prebuilt technological components, whether it’s hardware thanks to Intel or software based on Capgemini’s own development.”

For every customer, Capgemini draws a roadmap with specific ROIs. Implementations mix and match cloud-based architecture configurations depending on needs. Most solutions use Intel IIoT edge infrastructure with near real-time capabilities and artificial intelligence in the cloud using the Intel® Distribution of OpenVINO™ Toolkit.

“Thanks to the framework and prebuilt technological components, we’re able to fast-forward projects and deliver desired results quickly,” Pichard says.

Actions for Sustainable Industrial Operations

Quick results are exactly what a global consumer product company was looking for when it approached Capgemini with a proof of concept for sustainable business operations. It needed help rolling out the concept at scale.

Capgemini deployed its tried-and-tested framework again. It worked with the organization “to build a roadmap from the current situation” and to drill down into the details of what kinds of data and data sources would be needed to meet the use cases and train the algorithms, according to Calvignac.

Energy consumption data from edge devices (existing HVAC unit controllers) are routed to a cloud-based algorithm that precisely regulates the operation of 500+ HVAC units in about 20 industrial sites around the world. “We combined project management skills with data science, IoT connectivity, HVAC systems knowledge, and thermodynamics know-how to drive a fast-paced rollout at scale,” Coudriet says. “Industrialization and rapid rollout at scale was possible thanks to the use of Capgemini’s digital manufacturing architecture framework.”

After a year of operations, the company has seen a 20% reduction in HVAC energy use and has saved millions of euros in utility bills by adopting Capgemini’s HVAC control optimization solution.

The Future of Sustainability

The smart HVAC optimization solution was born out of one reproducible framework that scaled around the world, and expect more automation and variations for different kinds of operations in the future. “The predefined frameworks are at version 1.0,” Coudriet says. “The next step is to prebuild cases for certain types of production and for certain types of assets, whether that’s in manufacturing or agrichemical or other sectors. The goal is to deliver easily deployable and self-optimizing use cases via our accelerator platform as libraries of prepackaged solution modules that accelerate the implementation of sustainability solutions for our customers.”

“It’s a huge market for us and for Intel, and we have to be able to meet that demand,” Coudriet says. A reliable and reproducible framework gets it done.

 

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

Video Analytics Boost Citywide Safety

Posted on by Micah Kaplan

The great migration is on. By 2050, two out of every three people will live in cities or urban centers. Keeping an eye on the future, cities are working hard to stretch their budgets to make significant and necessary investments in infrastructure.

Unfortunately, they frequently lack the know-how to integrate it all and make the most of their investment. “Some of the infrastructure is a year old, some are 30 years old, so integrating existing systems to get a true understanding of what’s happening is a challenge,” says Matt Powell, Managing Director, North America for Intelligent Security Systems (ISS), a supplier of intelligent video management systems and analytics. In addition, Powell adds, “there’s never enough people or money to solve every challenge, so cities have to figure out how to leverage technology to empower city workers and residents.”

Rounding up disparate infrastructure systems to generate usable data for AI in city planning is another problem. Addressing this challenge—the paucity of data—is where AI-driven video analytics from ISS can help. The company provides notifications about events unfolding in real time, and identifies long-term trends about pedestrian behavior, vehicle crashes, traffic jams, and more.

“Better environmental data, combined with video analytics, provides a lot of information that can help in terms of cities’ safety and security planning.” Powell says.

“Better environmental #data, combined with #VideoAnalytics, provides a lot of information that can help in terms of cities’ #safety and #security planning.” — Matt Powell, Intelligent Security Systems via @insightdottech

Walking the Walk: Pedestrian Safety

City safety and security can mean a lot of different things, but decreasing the number of pedestrian incidents—2021 registered 7,000 pedestrian deaths in the United States—is an important concern. ISS is part of an ecosystem of Intel partners working together to help cities realize their goals for VisionZero, a strategy to eliminate all traffic fatalities and severe injuries, while increasing safe, healthy, equitable mobility for all.

Focusing on crosswalks is one component of this equation. A pleasant bonus: Getting pedestrianism right is a path for local governments to achieve ambitious carbon reduction goals.

Lighting on crosswalks frequently falls short of keeping pedestrians safe, Powell says. Earnest efforts, adopting a range of approaches, are underway. Singapore, for example, is bathing sidewalk curbs in red light so pedestrians on their phones can notice danger more easily. Flashing lights on crosswalks are becoming more ubiquitous in the United States. But these safety measures continue to put the burden on pedestrians for their own safety.

Drivers, too, can miss pedestrians as they make corner turns or are in poorly lit conditions. At the same time, too much illumination in crosswalks can be blinding.

ISS’s SecurOS Soffit Intelligent system addresses these problems by using dynamic illumination that tracks pedestrians in sidewalks. The spotlight consists of a group of LED modules that illuminate different sections of the pedestrian crossing. The system, which also includes an IP camera and video analytics controller, delivers low-powered static lighting of the sidewalk in standby mode.

AI-driven algorithms detect pedestrians from any angle of approach and activate lights to shine on the specific portion of the crosswalk the pedestrian occupies. As the pedestrian moves, the corresponding LED module switches on, too. The system can provide dynamic lighting for multiple pedestrians on a sidewalk at a time, approaching from different directions and at different speeds.

Analytics-First Approach to Safety and Security

ISS uses edge AI algorithms to process video. “The analytics require powerful computing, which is where we utilize Intel as a partner,” Powell says. “Intel has worked with us to develop processing kits that allow us to go out and install these systems – mobile with a small footprint – and put it in GPU cores.” ISS extensively trains its AI algorithms on neural network models to detect and classify road users, whether they’re vehicles, pedestrians, or animals.

Most cities do not need an extensive infrastructure reboot to incorporate the Soffit solution. By this point they have the IP cameras with servers feeding back to a command center of some type. And ISS works along with integration partners to train them on solutions. “We don’t just drop it off on the doorstep,” Powell says.

Powell stresses that ISS is “an analytics company first and a video management platform and decision management system second,” which means it’s extremely receptive to integrations with other components. An open API and easy-to-use software development kit help. “The future is non-proprietary. We do have our own system, but we have always recognized that we’re a value-add to any module that’s deployed,” Powell says.

The analytics-first approach enables ISS to do more with video. Intelligence derived from Soffit, for example, can forecast peak usage times, which direction people come from, and when. The solution also documents near misses. “When such information is fed to a planning department, they can understand what changes need to be made to the environment – does the area need a stop sign, is it a blind curve…?” Powell says.

Shaping IoT and Smart Cities

Better planning will be key in shaping the smart city of the future. And video will shape these new landscapes, Powell says. “To accommodate smart vehicles and smart communications, we’ll need video analytics to see how these systems play out. They will have an important role in understanding the changes we need to make to create a safer, smarter environment, one that has better traffic flow and fewer casualties.”

This article was edited by Georganne Benesch, Associate Editorial Director for insight.tech.

Smart Buildings Enrich Workforce Collaboration and Culture

Posted on by Micah Kaplan

Today’s smart buildings aren’t just reducing costs and boosting sustainability efforts. They’re becoming an essential part of an organization’s digital transformation.

A world-class healthcare provider, for example, turned its hospital and clinics into smart spaces to meet its mission of delivering better care through its practice, education, and research facilities. Working with GPA, a global collaboration strategy consultant with locations in 50 countries, the organization delivered audio and video (AV) technology that enables their culture and knowledge sharing foundation to connect teams of doctors around the globe to share their discoveries and be leaders in transforming healthcare outcomes in the future. The solutions provided allowed the organization to record as many as 30 different channels of content each day—cataloging, curating, and meta-tagging them for searchability.

“Technology connects people and moves initiatives forward,” says Brad Sousa, Global GPA Innovation Leader and CTO for GPA’s U.S. business unit, AVI Systems. “But it’s not just tech and spec; it’s about connecting that to real human outcomes. In the case of the customer above, it’s about a child in the neonatal unit who could go home with their parents because we brought together a team of people from around the globe to structure a treatment plan for this infant, collaborating and delivering something amazing.”

Smart Building Technology Engages Employees

In addition to supporting outcomes like patient recovery, smart building technologies in their many and varied forms can drive core organizational goals and outcomes beyond just connecting a remote and global workforce—in today’s market it has the capacity to foundationally support and enhance an organization’s culture.

In the U.S., for example, 58% of employees can work remotely full- or part-time, according to McKinsey & Co. Having a large portion of the workforce out of the office each day introduces a new level of complexity. When remote employees want to feel connected to their peers and the organization in all senses, they may venture to the office. But in the office, they want to optimize the time they spend there and ensure it is both personally and professionally rewarding. Smart buildings and smart spaces that help create a new relationship between the worker and the workplace are the solution.

A comprehensive and integrated #SmartBuilding #technology approach expands past the collaboration mandate within the meeting room, and beyond real estate priorities like #EnergyEfficiency or building footprint optimization. @GPA_AV via @insightdottech

“I believe we’re in a new realm,” says Byron Tarry, CEO of GPA. “We have to make the office experience better, or people will stay at home. And as a result, we are seeing a shift away from a technology-first focused customers toward one where that human-centric premise of smart workplaces is at the forefront. It’s changing the conversations themselves, but also who we are being asked to engage with.”

“We believe ideally organizations want to buy AV like they buy IT,” Tarry continues. “It’s the 80-20 rule. They want the 80% to be simplified so they can spend their time on the 20% of the important stuff.”

In the case of GPA customer, the scope they sought was around outsourcing the management complexity of standardizing, deploying, and supporting more mainstream meeting technology solutions within thousands of rooms to free up internal resources. “This would enable them to focus on more strategic internal efforts and to plot the evolution of their overall workplace technology approach. But increasingly customers are looking to us to go beyond the meeting room and support them in architecting and delivering the depth and breadth of that overall workplace evolution strategy,” says Tarry.

A comprehensive and integrated smart building technology approach expands past the collaboration mandate within the meeting room, and beyond real estate priorities like energy efficiency or building footprint optimization. It leverages a unification of all the disparate systems these encompass to intelligently help to remove friction from an employee’s day.

As just one set of examples among many, a comprehensive solution approach might coordinate and automate how one enters and traverses the workplace, offer IT or other services available within the facility, and recommend, understand, and sync schedules with known peers. From there, users can proactively facilitate meetings and make the most of the time spent in the office. Tools and technologies can also understand or provide context around different meeting space options and availability to recommend the best places to gather, or even understand group preferences to suggest nearby restaurants when ordering lunch for a group.

How to Create Smart Spaces

Smart buildings allow organizations to focus on outcomes and culture; but they can be difficult to scale and deploy, creating both challenges and opportunities. Instead of piecemealing collaboration and video solutions, organizations can get help from multi-disciplined integration companies like GPA that build systems supporting a smart workplace in consistent ways.

A comprehensive smart-workplace solution may include intelligent cameras, high-definition video screens, conferencing software, content production and streaming services, and smart workplace UIs for apps. A majority of these systems leverage Intel technology both at the edge and/or in the cloud to provide the computing needed to power each of these solutions.

“Time is as critical a commodity as cost in this race to adapt and compete in this new era. Intel provides a credibility factor—both in perception and in reality—in addressing key factors like security issues and enterprise-grade network environments that can really ease the approval and implementation path,” says Tarry. “And that’s a critical consideration in design considerations, and in how we and customers look to manage project and program risk.”

When one understands the importance of customization and alignment of these complex and integrated solutions, opportunities align to a company’s needs and culture. While there is no one-size-fits-all solution, there are best practices an organization can follow. GPA uses a consultative process to select a combination of hardware and software to achieve an organization’s goals. That’s difficult enough to do within a single region, but understanding the disparities in culture, workflow, regulatory, or otherwise that occur at global scale makes it critical. Global understanding and experience are at the core of that consultative skill set, according to Sousa.

“Ultimately, we believe our role is to help our customers imagine the right way to solve their problems within their regional and global culture,” Sousa explains. “We offer the ability to deliver on a global footprint, to optimize and refine regionally, and then continue to optimize and sustain those solutions with a human outcome-oriented, services-centric approach that’s consistent and measurable—ensuring the tools driving those outcomes never become outdated.”

The Opportunity Ahead

In this new post-COVID world order, we’re seeing a shift to where the entire workplace is becoming an experience center, Tarry adds. “An organization’s customer is not just an external third party, the employee is also now the customer. The office—and the technologies that directly or indirectly support and facilitate meeting and collaboration—has become the very foundation for employee engagement. We believe that’s an incredible opportunity for us, for our customers, and for our partners like Intel to be a part of.”

3D Tech Drives the Immersive In-Store Experience

Posted on by Micah Kaplan

“The worlds of the metaverse are already being used in business for conferences and homes for gaming,” says Dr. Johannes Troeger, Senior Vice President of Strategy and Business Development for Ameria AG, a touch-free customer experience solution provider. “We believe that there is a great value to also use it in public spaces like stores as part of a hybrid virtual and real world.”

With a futuristic feel, solutions like the Ameria Touchfree Interaction Kit invite consumers into an experience that’s part digital and part physical. Just like traditional touchscreens, they can interact with text and graphics using clicking or scrolling gestures without ever touching the surface of the screen. But unlike flat-screen capabilities, they can also grab and rotate things for 3D engagement (Video 1). It feels just like a science fiction movie that has become real, which is one of the many reasons it was showcased at the 2024 Integrated Systems Europe event, one of the largest events for AI and systems integrators in the world.

Video 1. Interactive retail kiosks engage passersby, creating an immersive brand experience that provides a wow factor. (Source: Ameria)

“A touchscreen is a wasted 2D surface,” says Troeger. “You touch it and interact with it, but that’s all you can do. With touch-free control, you can project a large image that’s much more immersive than a standard 43-inch or 55-inch screen. Any kind of visual content can be made interactive.”

The solution provides benefits beyond the wow factor. Cameras detect what’s happening in front of the virtual screen and can trigger the technology to react to people passing by, inviting them to interact. And because the system is touch-free, the tool is more hygienic. Customers don’t have to touch surfaces that a lot of other people have touched.

Fusing physical and #digital experiences creates a unique experience that boosts #CustomerEngagement. @ameriapioneers via @insightdottech

A New Kind of Retail Kiosk

The Ameria Touchfree Interaction Kit can be used on any device, which allows retailers to easily scale the solution to any kind of visual medium for flexibility with use cases. For example, the technology is installed a few meters in front of an LED wall, or it can be completely independent of screens. The solution is connected to a cloud platform, which allows content management, data collection, and analysis.

Ameria Touchfree Interaction Kit uses multiple Intel® RealSense™ cameras to create 3D interaction spaces and optical sensors to detect motion. The software, developed using the Intel® OpenVINO™ Toolkit, displays the content and interprets what’s happening in front of the screen. “OpenVINO makes our solution a lot more intuitive and helps us install deep-learning models,” says Troeger.

The solution can gather business intelligence, such as traffic and product data. It also has QR code scanning capabilities for continued connection after shoppers leave the store. “There’s value in just tracking how many people walk in certain areas of a store, but because we create engagement, it also entices people to leave personalized data,” says Troeger.

The retailer’s IT team or systems integrator will upload and calibrate the software, and then it’s ready to run, says Troeger. Once it’s installed, Ameria offers consulting services as well as full-service support.

Enhancing the In-Store Experience

Using the Ameria technology can feel like play. So it’s no surprise that a toy store is using the solution to promote new products. In the past, the retailer would create a shelf display and maybe include a video that showed a demo of the product. But fusing physical and digital experiences creates a unique experience that boosts customer engagement.

“Our solution is especially relevant in the case of new lines of products that also have a digital aspect to them,” says Troeger. “It can be difficult to convey features and capabilities in classical retail settings.”

While toys are a natural fit, the use cases for this technology are virtually endless. Troeger says the Ameria solution is especially good for items that are complex, like consumer electronics, where you need more advice and consulting than the staff in the store may be able to give. Grocery stores can also leverage the platform to provide customers with recipes and direct links to the online store for ordering the ingredients.

Troeger believes the future of retail is moving into the metaverse. “We are creating hybrid worlds where people are still in the real world but are also partly immersed in virtual worlds,” he says. “They get the best of both with an interesting entry point. I think in 10 or 15 years when you go into a store, it’s going to be completely normal that part of your experience with physical products will be digital.”

 

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

This article was originally published on December 5, 2022.

Digital Kiosks Create Interactive Home-Buying Experience

Posted on by Micah Kaplan

The home-buying and -selling process needs a renovation. Today’s digital natives find two-dimensional sales sheets a tad ho-hum. On the other side of the fence, developers can’t parse much information about prospects through these sales methods either.

Recognizing this problem, Sign Build, an innovative UK signage company that designs, manufactures, and installs signage to the UK housing sector, approached Solutions Integrator, Scan Computers International LTD to bring the concept of a digital kiosk and sales center to life. UK-based SCAN is already renowned for its work in the retail sector and knew it could apply some of those lessons to the residential housing sector. “Our experts at SCAN are very experienced in understanding customer requirements and finding a way to articulate that into technology,” says Peter Davies, Head of Digital Signage and Analytics at SCAN.

Signtouch is the result of the Sign Build ‑ SCAN partnership. Through an interactive touchscreen, Signtouch delivers a house builder’s sales and marketing collateral to the buyer’s fingertips. Its centralized data platform also captures prospects’ behavioral data for targeted developer outreach and personalization.

The Foundation for Digital Transformation

Digital transformation might be revolutionizing other industry sectors, but the housing market, at least in the UK, is still playing catchup, says Mark Cowin, Managing Director of Signtouch. “The housing sector appreciates the need for digitalization and the need for the potential buyer to be able to do the research before they can make the biggest purchase of their life. But that hasn’t been the way the UK housing market has traditionally sold its product.”

Instead, a 200-sq.-ft. portable cabin on-site with basic photography and wallboards are all that used to be typically available to describe each home for sale. Buyer data can be a rich vein of information for developers to mine, but pen-and-paper solutions—a tally sheet recording how many people walk into the office—don’t lend themselves easily to advanced analytics.

More recently, there has been a focus on developing more relevant content, but the delivery mechanisms still don’t measure up. “It’s like trying to fit four elephants into a Mini; you just can’t do it. You must find a way of increasing the size of the car,” Davies says. “Signtouch is that bigger and smarter car.”

Building the Signtouch Digital Kiosk

Beyond providing interactive site plans and 3D tours to homebuyers, Signtouch needed some heavy lifting at the back end to connect to CRM systems. So, SCAN developed the front end and back end for the Signtouch digital kiosk from the ground up and created a proprietary API so the solution could communicate with third-party platforms.

Content had to be centrally controlled, but regional and local offices needed to be able to customize it at the individual-buyer level. “Signtouch can update a picture, a price, or a sale status on their CRM, and it automatically publishes to any number of screens at the push of a button because it’s all connected to the cloud,” Davies says.

The #digitally driven integrated #kiosk solution had to be easy to use both by #RealEstate salespeople and prospective #homebuyers. @ScanComputers via @insightdottech

The digitally driven integrated kiosk solution had to be easy to use both by real estate salespeople and prospective homebuyers. Buyers can route the solution’s live chat option to the phone using a QR code. Signtouch proactively manages the customer-facing displays and media player, 24/7. “We use Intel technology because it gives us foresight to understand if there’s going to be any problems with hardware and to make any necessary changes,” Cowin says.

In addition to technical expertise, Cowin appreciates that SCAN could flex its muscle to “introduce hardware partners like Samsung and Intel into the solution.” Bringing high-profile names into the equation enabled Signtouch to get in front of many high-profile new-home builders in the UK,” Cowin says.

“Intel is our engine and it’s reliable,” Cowin says. “If something goes wrong, you can always get a mechanic—it’s like a Ferrari but with a Ford servicing agreement.”

The Transformed Housing Landscape

Using Signtouch, housing developers can now personalize their marketing and sales content at scale, in individual locations. Footfall and real-time traffic analytics dynamically customize content shown. Potential homebuyers can access interactive site maps, view details of each individual house type and explore neighborhood information. The digital-kiosk solution frees staff to concentrate on engaged buyers whilst potential buyers can research the details of the development without interaction from sales staff.

“Anecdotally, housebuilders describe bespoke home upgrade options and details of local amenities and public services as game-changing,” Cowin says. “Sales and marketing directors are equally impressed by the functionality to connect each site-based screen back to a regional or head office sales and marketing department.”

Cowin predicts the future of the residential housing sector is moving toward a “car-configurator approach” to new homes: “Think personalized home creation through both external and internal design packages.”

Davies and Cowin appreciate the strengths their teams bring to their partnership. “Signtouch will continue to drive thought leadership in the digitalization of the home-building industry and look for applications in new industries and markets,” Davies says. “The synergy here is SCAN’s global reach to technology providers and our ability to convert designs and ideas into viable commercial propositions.”

 

This article was edited by Georganne Benesch, Associate Editorial Director for insight.tech.

Why Unified Security Solutions Matter: With AxxonSoft

Posted on by Micah Kaplan

Are you getting a full picture of what is going on in your business or industry? Whether you are in healthcare, retail, manufacturing, education, or smart cities, it’s important to be able to understand what is happening at all times. But too often security and video surveillance solutions are not connected, which can result in loss of data, false alarms, and missed opportunities.

By having a unified security solution to monitor, maintain, and manage your physical assets, users can easily get a single view of everything going on in their business and abstract valuable data.

In this podcast, we talk about the benefits of unified security solutions versus standalone systems, how to overcome the challenges of deploying these solutions, and the latest capabilities in the physical security space.

Listen Here

[Podcast Player]

Apple Podcasts      Spotify      Google Podcasts      Amazon Music

Our Guest: AxxonSoft

Our guest this episode is David Trujillo, Sales Engineer at AxxonSoft, a leader in video management software. David recently joined AxxonSoft after working as a Project Manager at the Harvey Mudd Clinic Project. He has a bachelor’s degree in computer science, where he studied data structures, object-oriented programming, and discrete mathematics.

Podcast Topics

David answers our questions about:

  • (1:21) Recent evolutions and changes in the security landscape
  • (4:43) Integrated versus unified security solutions
  • (7:45) Privacy considerations for video surveillance systems
  • (11:12) Challenges businesses face when deploying security systems
  • (12:11) How to leverage existing infrastructure
  • (13:41) Business opportunities that unified security systems present
  • (15:00) The role of artificial intelligence across verticals
  • (16:48) Business use cases for unified security

Related Content

For the latest innovations from AxxonSoft, follow them on Twitter at @AxxonSoft_EN and on LinkedIn.

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, Associate Editorial Director of insight.tech. And today we’re talking about unified security systems with David Trujillo from AxxonSoft. But before we get started let’s get to know our guest a little bit more. David, welcome to the podcast. What can you tell us about yourself and the company, AxxonSoft?

David Trujillo: Hi, Christina. Like you said, I’m David Trujillo, I’m a Sales Engineer at AxxonSoft, so I often give demos about our security systems and some of our VMS platforms, and we’re really excited to share with you today some of the topics to discuss about the Internet of Things and how that relates to some of the platforms and unique capabilities of our VMS.

Christina Cardoza: Absolutely, and I’m excited to learn more about it. You know, security systems aren’t anything that’s new for businesses. They’ve had them for quite a long time, but they have evolved quite a bit over the last few years, especially with new capabilities and features out there. So, David, I’m wondering, to start off this conversation, if we can talk about some of that evolution and changes in terms of new approaches, features, and efficiencies today in the security landscape.

David Trujillo: Yeah, absolutely. So, there’s a few major trends in the physical security industry right now. So, really the first thing I would mention is the service approach in providing security solutions, which in and of itself is connected with cloud technology. So, some examples of those cloud-based solutions offered as a service are things like video surveillance and access-control systems. So, given that security systems themselves have to be on the premise anyways, what does that necessarily mean in practice, you might be asking?

So, a cloud service typically acts as a managing system that collects, stores, and analyzes data from the devices, manages user rights, and provides access to administration and control-monitoring interfaces for multiple users. So, this is akin to a software as a service, or SaaS, approach that encompasses different types of systems depending on their architecture. For instance, video surveillance as a service, or VSaaS, systems can store video archives in the cloud and you can have only cameras installed at a site, or you can have a hybrid deployment with the cameras and video storage both on site but the cloud service is used for remote video monitoring and system management.

So, the market of cloud systems is growing, as they offer users many benefits. There’s low upfront expenditures, there’s easy scaling for large-scale deployments, out-of-the-box remote monitoring, and there’s clear cost planning through a pay-as-you-go model. Of course cloud solutions have their pros and cons, which are an extensive topic for a separate discussion. The other two big trends to take note of are integration, and the use of artificial intelligence—namely neural network video analytics.

So, first of those, integrated solutions, improves efficiency through new and more effective configurations that wouldn’t be possible with standalone systems. Video surveillance can be combined with access control, smoke and fire detectors, intrusion alarms, and even building automation systems using certain interaction scenarios. For example, when an alarm sensor is triggered, the video monitoring software can be configured to immediately give the operator video feeds from nearby cameras, enabling them to quickly assess the situation and react accordingly. Or, another example, when the last employee leaves the premises at the end of the day, you can set it so the lights automatically go out and the ventilation switches to a lower intensity. So—you can also arm the intrusion alarm at the same time. So, there’s plenty of scenarios like this, where automation can make facilities more secure, energy efficient, and cost effective overall.

Christina Cardoza: Great. And I like how you mentioned at the beginning of that physical security. So we’re not talking about necessarily cyber securities or protecting our devices that we’re using like our computers and stuff, but we’re talking about, you said surveillance, so, looking within stores for any alerts or threats, analyzing customer behavior, employee behavior, things like that. And you also mentioned integration is a big part of it, and a big part of the trends that have been happening.

So, when we talk about these type of security systems, I’ve heard people talk about unified security, which we’re talking about today, but also integrated security systems, and I know you mentioned that’s a feature of this. So, is there a difference between integrated and unified security, or are we talking about the same thing in those two terms?

David Trujillo: So, these terms—often you hear them used interchangeably, and there’s no real strict definition for either. But in general, however, the term “integration” usually comprises a wider variety of solutions. So, let’s consider an example where you have video surveillance and access-control systems. So, when someone swipes their access card to the reader, the video-surveillance system receives an event from the access-control systems, which then triggers video recording. So this way you get recorded footage of everyone passing every time someone passes through an access point. The event itself may contain the employee’s name and their ID number, so it can quickly search for the footage with those parameters. So this is an example of event-based integration, but in general the systems are independent, with each one having its own user interface, the separate configuration, hardware, and so forth.

“Unified” implies a deeper level of integration, though usually unified software manages all devices, both video cameras and access-control devices in our example. So, what are the benefits of this? First, there’s a single interface for video and access control, which is complemented by other features like 3D map, for example. So when the door is opened you can see the passage on video in real time; the photo of the ID-card owner from the access-control database might be displayed next to the face image captured by the camera along with, for example, their name, their job title, and any other pertinent information. So you can grant access manually if the photos match, or you can take appropriate action if there’s a mismatch. You can do all of this from just one interface, without a need for switching between windows, and you can monitor technical perimeters like hardware status or system health all in one place.

So, a unified solution provides another benefit in the form of a standard and easy way of configuring complex automated scenarios involving different systems, and allowing complex problems to be solved with less effort. Additionally, integration of standalone systems can be performed using third-party software for monitoring purposes. So all the systems will run themselves with their own management software, but this solution will provide most of the features I mentioned. Often when people say “integrated,” they’re actually implying unified, but that would mean a solution that provides the benefits expected from unification. So integration is a broader concept which can be done in various ways, including unification.

Christina Cardoza: Great. Well I’m glad we went over that, because I know these terms can trip up people very often, so it’s good to know what we’re talking about and how we should be talking about it in that way. I want to talk a little bit about the benefits that customers get from this. Not only the people of buying these systems, but the customers in store being monitored. But I know sometimes when we cross the topic of surveillance it could be a little bit of a scary term. People want to make sure that their privacy is being protected, their identification is being protected. So can you talk a little bit about the benefits and the security itself that AxxonSoft provides with the unified security systems?

David Trujillo: Absolutely. So, in a lot of different regions around the world, especially Europe with the GDPR, and California, for example, in the United States with the CCPA, there’s various regulations on a local level that regulate and protect the rights of people in general. So we don’t want some kind of Big Brother situation where every person is being scrutinized individually, and AxxonSoft of course offers features that allow the VMS to be in compliance with this. And we have plenty of different functions on the video level which are able to maintain this.

So, various things that we can do include a blurring of people’s faces or even their whole body, and this allows you to still see what’s going on on the footage because these privacy features are totally integrated with things like AI analytics, which are able to detect where a person is and accordingly blur only the person’s details instead of blurring, for example, the entire image. We can also block off certain areas of the footage that might not want to be seen, and control exactly who is able to see these in terms of the access control and operators. So, quite a few different things that we can do to ensure the privacy of people that are seen on the cameras, and then not revealing every single detail.

Christina Cardoza: Great. Yeah, thanks for that. It’s always good to hear how companies are protecting their users and their customers, especially as privacy becomes an ongoing trend across all verticals and industries. I want to move on a little bit to how businesses are actually implementing these security solutions, how they’re deploying them. But before we move on to that topic, is there anything else about the benefits of unified security or the different types of unified security systems that is going to be important to this conversation?

David Trujillo: Yeah, absolutely. So, some of the benefits include the enabling of implementation of new features that aren’t available within self-contained systems, which in turn gives several benefits. They can reduce the amount of information that the operator must process, while producing improved situational analysis based on information from multiple sources. Furthermore, you can automate decision making for even mundane situations. This way the operator’s work can be more efficient, which in turn reduces the likelihood of making mistakes. Additionally, open-platform solutions allow you to combine equipment from different manufacturers and manage it from a single control center. So this helps minimize the cost of equipping the facility by reducing the amount of software and hardware needed, as well as connecting existing equipment to the system.

I know one concern that a lot of people have and tend to ask is, will this work with my existing cameras? And that’s something that we definitely keep in mind, is that we want to have our system always work with existing systems, and not need an entirely new setup where people have to tear out all cameras and install new ones.

Christina Cardoza: Yeah, that’s great to hear. Being able to leverage existing infrastructure I know is always a huge benefit to end users, and all of these benefits sound great, but I know when it comes to actually putting systems in use or taking advantage of some of these new features and capabilities we talked about, it can be challenging sometimes for businesses. So, can you talk about what are some of the challenges businesses are facing as they add new devices or these new advanced capabilities?

David Trujillo: Definitely. So, implementing a unified security system is more complex than implementing a standalone one. For this you’re going to need a more qualified integrator, who can connect and set up each of the devices as well as configure the interoperation of all the systems. Additionally, you might need custom integrations and functionality enhancements to get a well-honed solution for your needs. This is crucial for high-end installations like systems for large enterprises, or citywide–public safety setups. So, most common requirements can be solved through standard tools, but either way, a more qualified integrator will be necessary for unified security systems than it would be for standalone ones.

Christina Cardoza: Great. And, you know, since we were talking about, it is possible for businesses to leverage some of their existing infrastructure, I’m wondering, how do you know when you can leverage your existing infrastructure? And what type of new investments businesses do need to make—so, other necessary components or investments to implement a unified security system versus a standalone system?

David Trujillo: One of the most notable investments is getting it set up properly. So, there may be situations where it’s not necessarily a plug-and-play situation, where you can expect to just install the software, install the cameras and other access-control devices, and then expect to have your solution ready to go right away. You’ll need to know exactly what you want and what you’re trying to do, and for certain tasks—like automation, I mentioned earlier, for example—situations where it might just be even to increase efficiency, like, we want to turn off the lights at the end of the day; we want to lower the air conditioning system when no one’s in the building—you will need to set up these kinds of scenarios, and automation configurations and these sorts of things might not always be available or set up by default. So you may need to do that on your own or have an integrator for that.

Christina Cardoza: Great. And we mentioned that this is physical security we’re talking about, where analyzing customer behaviors and workers for, I’m guessing, industrial settings for worker safety. We’ve mentioned a couple of these use cases throughout the conversation already, but I’m wondering if you can expand on some of the additional use cases or business opportunities that unified security systems are presenting.

David Trujillo: Certainly. So, like you mentioned, integration isn’t just limited to security only, for example, time and attended systems that are typically included as part of access-control systems can be integrated with corporate accounting, which provides for an efficient and automated workflow. Traffic-enforcement cameras can be integrated with systems for issuing fines for violations. So, I also mentioned earlier the example of building automation and energy efficiency. So there’s plenty of solutions where interoperation cannot just improve security, but also optimize business processes.

Christina Cardoza: Great. I love that this is hitting across manufacturing, smart cities—I’m thinking even, like, healthcare and education for that. Monitoring retail environments. You know, it’s great to see all of this, and I’m assuming since they are integrated or unified security systems they’re continuously monitoring different parts of a building or a store, and so that’s creating a lot of data and a lot of information. And we mentioned how that information overload can sometimes be challenging to businesses, and how AI is really playing a role in this. So I want to talk a little bit more about the role of AI in enabling some of these opportunities across these multiple different verticals.

David Trujillo: Yeah, absolutely. So, we see AI used in video analytics in the security industry, as well as other verticals exactly like the ones you mentioned, like healthcare and retail, industrial use cases, as well as many others. So, AI is often used for accurate detection of specific shapes and objects. So, in the context of security-related applications the greatest demand for this, of course, is detection of humans when you need to detect intrusion in a protected area and there’s a large amount of nonrelevant motion, such as foliage moving around, glare off of rippling water, or precipitation, weather events, etc. A simple motion detection will produce numerous false alarms when it picks up everything that’s moving. So AI helps to filter out false alarms so operators won’t be distracted and can focus only on real threats. When every single possible thing is causing an alarm, operators will quickly learn to ignore those alarms. So you don’t want that happening because they’re going to miss when something actually serious happens.

AI models can also be trained to detect specific objects for special applications. Besides video analytics, AI is also used in biometric devices that are applied in access-control and time-attendant systems. For example, palm-vein scanning utilizes neural network–based pattern-matching algorithms. That’s one of the most accurate methods available today. And returning to integration for a moment, it can be complemented by access-card reading via the same device or using entirely separate readers and integration software. So this kind of multifactor authentication can ensure the highest degree of security.

Christina Cardoza: So, I’m curious how AxxonSoft is making this all possible, is helping businesses reach some of these opportunities that we talked about, as well as addressing some of the challenges we mentioned earlier. And if you have any customer examples or use cases you want to provide that would be great also.

David Trujillo: Certainly, absolutely. We have a few great examples. For an example of AI human detection we have several implementations of this technology across wildlife refuges in South Africa. So, systematic poaching of wildlife is devastatingly epidemic in the region, within the last decade especially. Most of the parks where these poaching crimes occur are fenced, but attempts to protect these areas with perimeter security systems and video surveillance weren’t really effective. The system generated quite a few false alarms because the animals themselves frequently bump into the fences. So because of this, security staff could not possibly monitor every single event, and they frequently misread the threats when poachers intruded in the park.

AI human detection has helped solve this problem by being able to distinguish humans from animals. As soon as there is a breach and a person is detected the surveillance center is immediately notified. The camera can identify where the breach has occurred, and the staff can know the exact location of the threat. The guard center immediately has the necessary information, and they can dispatch an antipoaching unit. So this has proved very successful in preventing killings, as a team is now quickly able to get to the scene of the crime.

A particular example of custom-trained AI analytics is detection of personal-protective equipment. So, this tool is used for enforcing workplace safety by locating individuals not wearing their hard hats, high-visibility vests, or protective clothing. So this is actually really quite a powerful analytic, if you’ve ever seen it in operation. It can actually detect someone’s head and their arms and their torso and even the legs for boots, for example, independently. So you can have cameras for monitoring personal-protective equipment and install them throughout construction sites or production facilities, and integrate that with access control so the system becomes even more efficient through preemptive detection. You can have the camera mounted at an access point where people go in through a certain barrier, and when an employee swipes their access card the turnstile will open only if they’re wearing their protective equipment.

Another example of combining custom-trained AI and integration is monitoring maintenance of railcar wheel sets. So, video analytics detect when wheel sets are passing by a certain area, while ignoring, like, a person moving by the same area. And with the use of virtual line-crossing detection they can detect when wheel sets roll onto a vibration platform and when they roll off. So, these events are sent to third-party software that measures how long each wheel set is on the platform, and then counts the number of wheel sets that have been serviced. So, this is an example in business automation that involves integration with a nonsecurity system. Integration of video surveillance with third-party systems is widely used for cashier operations and supervising the operation of a point of sale. So, the video-surveillance system receives data from cash registers themselves, and then links it to video feeds. So, what you can do is you can superimpose the text of a receipt, for example, on the video, or even display on a different pane. So you can use a receipt’s data, such as product names or prices or certain transaction amounts, to quickly search for transaction videos and recorded footage. So this really offers a full picture of what’s happening at the checkout, and could be used to reveal violations that would be almost impossible to detect via conventional video surveillance. Another example is how video surveillance could be integrated with truck-weighing scales in the same way, by displaying scale readings on the video corner, or in a panel just like that cashier stand information.

Christina Cardoza: I love all those examples, because when you hear about the security systems you’re often thinking about theft or damage, but in the examples you just provided it really is helping improve everyday life and solve real-world challenges. And an ongoing trend that I’ve been seeing with all of this is that it really takes the work of multiple companies and partners to make this happen and to make some of these impactful changes that you’ve just mentioned. And, I should mention, the IoT Chat and insight.tech as a whole, we are sponsored by Intel®, but I would love to hear how AxxonSoft is working with other partners in the industry, like Intel, to unify these security systems to make changes, and what the value is of working with others.

David Trujillo: Yeah, absolutely. So, mentioning Intel, we’re in constant cooperation with Intel, as well as other software and hardware manufacturers. But Intel processors are at the core of most security-systems servers our clients use. So, our software is developed and tested using Intel computing platforms. AI video analytics are very resource intensive, so hardware-AI acceleration is crucial for building cost-effective solutions, while GPU is often used for AI acceleration. We also use Intel’s OpenVINO toolkit for computer-vision applications, which maximizes performance by extending workloads across Intel hardware, including accelerators. So therefore our AI analytics can run on both Intel processors and accelerators. This includes support for integrated GPUs and AI-acceleration features and Intel processors, as well as support for Intel Vision Accelerator Design products with Movidius video processing units, like Mustang acceleration cards.

We also apply Intel Quick Sync Video technology, which is available on Intel processors with embedded GPU. It provides hardware acceleration for video decoding. Other compressed video feeds would have impractical storage- and network-bandwidth requirements. So, IP video cameras transmit video feeds as compressed streams using codec, like H.264 or H.265. You don’t need to decode the video for recording, but you do need to decode it when applying video analytics on the server, or just displaying the video feeds on the client.

So, AI analytics are not the only processes with heavy computer requirements. This video recording can be a demanding task too, so we use Quick Sync on both the server and client side. In terms of other collaborations we have, we collaborate with IP-camera manufacturers to support embedded video analytics, and other advanced capabilities, such as smart codec.

So when I speak about embedded video analytics, that in particular refers to cameras that are running their own kind of AI detection, and that kind of detection will integrate perfectly with our own. AxxonSoft is a contributing member of ONVIF, which is an open-industry form that provides and promotes standardized interfaces for the interoperability of IP-based physical-security products. We strive to support the newest standards as they appear. So, for example, ONVIF develops new interface profiles to allow software and cameras to communicate, and AxxonSoft is one of the first video-management software vendors to support the new ONVIF M profile when it was released. This profile provides a standardized way for devices and services to communicate metadata and events collected by analytics. You can use ONVIF—any ONVIF M–compliant camera—with our video-management software, which allows you to integrate those embedded video analytics I mentioned earlier seamlessly.

Speaking of third-party security, our physical-security information-management platform, or SIM, was initially developed as an open platform for unified integration. So it offers unified interfaces, flexible configuration of system interactions, and it supports as many as 59 access-control, fire alarm, and perimeter-intrusion-detection systems. We’re now expanding the integration capabilities of our other product, Axxon One; it’s video-management software. And in the next major release we will be adding integration with access-control alarms and perimeter detection, as Axxon One is intended to be our new unified security-management platform.

One more important thing to know is that AxxonSoft is an extremely partner-oriented company, and many integrations and functionality enhancements have been made based on partner requests and their specific project requirements. We’re always open to listening to our partners and customers, making for the most suitable solutions for a wide range of industries and applications.

Christina Cardoza: I love hearing all of the Intel tech going on in these systems, as well as how you’re working with some other third-party partners in the ecosystem. You know, this has been a great conversation. Unfortunately, we are running out of time, and I know we’ve only scratched the surface of some of this—like you mentioned the cloud piece or the AI piece could be a whole separate conversation. But it was great to learn about what unified security systems are, the impact they’re making, and the business opportunities out there, as well as how businesses can start implementing some of these things. Before we go, David, I just want to turn it back to you one last time. Are there any final key thoughts or takeaways you want to leave our listeners with today?

David Trujillo: Yeah, absolutely. Today, artificial intelligence and integration are major trends in the physical-security industry. More businesses and public agencies are taking advantage of integrated and intelligence solutions to enhance security and optimize business. So you can visit our website, AxxonSoft.com—that’s with two x’s—to learn more about our products, intelligent technologies, integrations, and case studies. You can also find links there to watch our videos on YouTube, and follow us on social media. Stay connected, and don’t hesitate to contact us using the forum on the website if you have any questions. We really appreciate your time today, listening and giving us some really great questions as well that I think we managed to fit in. So thanks for having us on today.

Christina Cardoza: Great. Yeah, thanks again for the insightful conversation. I can’t wait to see what else AxxonSoft does in this industry, and thanks for joining the podcast. Thanks to our listeners for tuning in. If you liked this episode, please like, subscribe, rate, review, all of the above on your favorite streaming platform. 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.

Smart Classroom Tech Transforms Learning

Posted on by Micah Kaplan

The shift to remote learning pushed the fast-forward button on the digitization of education. Innovative and engaging new ways of teaching, such as interactive blackboards, touch displays, and computer-aided learning, are improving the student experience and preparing students for the requirements of the world of work in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

There’s just one little catch. Today’s educators, who are tasked with leading kids into the future, are learning as well. Performing a juggling act of their own, they must master the new tools that administrators roll out and meet curriculum standards—all in real time. Administrators are being challenged, as well, trying to connect multiple and different systems to save important funds.

“Educational tools like digital blackboards are meant to help teachers simplify their everyday life in schools,” says Daniel Kruger, Digital Learning Expert for DELO, a German distributor of large-format digital display screens and signage solutions. He adds, “But they often bring questions and requirements that need to be clarified. This can be a challenge that educators must address.”

Simplifying Digital Display Screens

To close this digital gap, educational systems are leaning on the expertise of technology distributors and their partners who can help ease their transformation by providing not only the end devices but the support needed to use them. For example, DELO offers school administrators the step series Kassandra 4.0, a reliable, end-to-end system customized to foster learning in a modern educational environment. The bundle integrates hardware and software elements from DELO partners such as Intel, LG, and Microsoft.

Kassandra 4.0 runs on Intel-based Open Pluggable Specification (OPS) PCs, which standardize the system architecture between displays and media players. Its cost-effective design connects hardware, and pre-installed Android and Windows systems, which helps speed deployment. In addition, the solution offers advanced functionality, such as interactivity and anonymous audience analytics.

The solution, which can be customized depending on the needs of the teacher and students, consists of a variety of hardware and software components, which include:

  • Pre-installed Android 8.0 (display) and Windows 10 Pro (PC)
  • WPS Office and ScreenShare Pro—compatible with Android, Windows, and iOS
  • Ultra HD for best image quality with all-round metal housing and hygienic glass pane
  • Air Class, which connects up to 30 students, and allows voting of all mobile devices on the same network
  • IR touch with more than 20 touchpoints
  • Writing software for precise font recognition
  • Web browser
  • Including two pens (usable with commercially available pens)
  • OPS PC powered by Intel® Core™ processor

The centerpiece is a digital blackboard available in three sizes. In addition to performing traditional blackboard functions, like writing and erasing, the interactive display offers a wide range of digital teaching options. Students can view a variety of content, including charts, videos, and more, on the screen as well as on connected laptops and tablets that can be placed on their desks. Learning comes to life with touch displays that help engage all styles of learning.

“The evolution of the modern classroom will continue to focus on flexibility, allowing #students to participate on any #device to further enhance the #UserExperience.” – Daniel Kruger, Delo Computer GmbH via @insightdottech

Teachers Get a Lesson on Smart Classrooms

DELO furthers its value proposition by offering expertise, service, and support to make the transition and use seamless. To get teachers up to speed on the capabilities and functions of digital blackboards, DELO teamed up with Intel to help educators acquire the skills they need to become a “teacher 4.0,” preparing their students for the requirements of “Industry 4.0.”

Intel® Skills for Innovation (Intel® SFI) envisions a world that empowers students to become innovators. To achieve this vision, today’s youth need to learn skills they’ll need for the jobs of tomorrow. That means teachers must introduce technology, skill building, and higher-level thinking in their classrooms.

With student-centered training that helps educators focus on 21st-century-relevant skills, Intel SFI allows them to focus on teaching instead of worrying about technology. Participating teachers go at their own pace, with on-demand content that is relevant to their individual interests and needs. Since it was launched, Intel SFI has reached more than 15 million teachers in 70 countries.

“Intel Skills for Innovation is very important for our solution,” says Kruger. “Educators can make the most of our system to provide the best education for their students. Our partnership with Intel also brings us the newest up-to-date solution knowledge and trust to the end customers.”

The Future of Learning Is Digital

Innovative teaching tools like digital blackboards are just the start. Kruger says he believes the evolution of the modern classroom will continue to focus on flexibility, allowing students to participate on any device to further enhance the user experience. Connectivity also creates virtual classrooms when students are learning remotely.

“We think that the future of learning will be more flexible,” says Kruger. “Students will be able to connect, using any device. And teachers will have the ability to incorporate more videos, podcasts, and 3D augmented reality.”

In fact, students may just find that going to school is the most exciting part of their day.

Edge Computing + LiDAR Support Nonstop Mining Operations

Posted on by Micah Kaplan

It’s no secret that mining is a harsh endeavor—the airborne dust and wind alone can be daunting enough. One of Europe’s largest iron ore producers, operating in the northernmost regions of Sweden, faces an additional challenge: the weather. The location, north of the Polar Circle, registered an astounding -44 F as the lowest recorded temperature. Here, the sun never rises for weeks in the winter.

Despite such grueling conditions, mining operations must continue unabated so companies can recuperate their investments. Since dispatching workers to such extreme-weather places can be risky and difficult, the industry relies heavily on automation. And in Scandinavia, a solution powered by OnLogic Inc., a provider of hardware solutions for technology companies, is keeping these automated systems running.

Even automation is not the fix-it-and-forget-it panacea that companies hope for. Operating under challenging conditions accelerates wear and tear on equipment, which can lead to machine breakages, endanger personnel safety, and cost billions in unplanned downtime.

To avoid such steep costs, the industry needs early detection of deviations—a way of monitoring both the material and the equipment to prevent costly breakdowns and accidents.

Real-Time Control and Early Warnings Using LiDAR

In the mining sector, conveyor belts used to transport ore are the most significant causes of safety risks, production variances, and downtime. Belts might fail because of large chunks of ore adding weight strain or from unexpected vibrations. Analysis of how the belt is moving can be used to detect changes early and plan maintenance of the belt before damage occurs. Parameters used to analyze the belt movements include side movements, velocity (where being alert to deviations can help prevent fires), and more visible belt damage. Material parameters that can be tracked to prevent breakdowns are spillage, overfillment, particle size distribution, top size estimation, volume flow, and detection of foreign objects.

Computer vision-based algorithms for material and equipment analysis run on data feeds from cameras that don’t work well in the dark Scandinavian winters. “Light detection and ranging (LiDAR) is fast proving to be the game-changing alternative,” says Julian Kjaer, Account Manager at OnLogic.

LiDAR works by sending a laser pulse to an object and measuring the time it takes for the pulse to return. Mapping these results estimates the size of the object and its distance from the sensor. The ore producer uses a LiDAR-based system born from a collaboration between OnLogic and Flasheye, a Sweden-based developer of real-time LiDAR monitoring software solutions. The product monitors conveyor belts and finds unexpected deviations from routine operations.

“#LiDAR is especially useful in applications where privacy concerns rule out #camera-based monitoring.” – Julian Kjaer, @OnLogic via @insightdottech

OnLogic-Flasheye Partnership

Before Flasheye’s LiDAR monitoring solution was ready for primetime, it was a proof of concept on a low-computing-power Raspberry Pi device. To help large mining industry partners, Flasheye needed to scale the application.

To efficiently process the high volumes of data from LiDAR sensors, the solution needed much more computing power at the edge than a Raspberry Pi could provide. The hardware had to have a small form factor so it could be embedded into the LiDAR solution and be able to withstand extreme temperatures.

Keeping these conditions in mind, OnLogic recommended the Karbon 400 series, which is engineered to operate over a wide temperature range: -40 to 70 C. Fanless cooling means one less piece of equipment that might potentially fail. Flasheye test-drove the OnLogic recommendation through their monthlong TryLogic prototyping program before committing to build its LiDAR software solution on the backs of the Karbon 400 series.

Karbon 400 is powered by Intel® processors. “Our box runs on Intel; it’s a great partnership,” Kjaer says, adding that Intel helps with lifecycle management of products. “When you want to scale a product, you don’t want to do so on something that is at the end of its lifecycle,” Kjaer says. “You want a scalable platform.” Intel’s ability to stay current with the latest in hardware and processing helps OnLogic offer the best to its customers.

Mining the Future

On the ground in Scandinavia, the Karbon 400-powered LiDAR solution monitors all visual parameters that indicate unwanted changes or deviations. The solution also looks for any unexpected movement of the belts that might strain the equipment. In addition, the machine can be programmed to halt operations if it detects workers in danger, close to the belts.

As for the future of the mining industry, Flasheye is exploring solutions with the OnLogic Karbon 800 series, with even more powerful Intel computing option that can accommodate multiple LiDAR sensors. LiDAR technology promises to help the mining industry by borrowing from the principles of digital transformation that have already revolutionized manufacturing. “I’m excited about getting this industry up to speed with the principles of Industry 4.0 from manufacturing,” Kjaer says. “The mining industry has been lagging behind, but we can improve processes with machines running 24×7 thanks to predictive maintenance.”

Kjaer points out that LiDAR is especially useful in applications where privacy concerns rule out camera-based monitoring. Advanced iterations of LiDAR enable not just location and size of objects, but also their speed, an especially useful feature for use in autonomous driving.

No matter the technology, OnLogic helps see proofs of concept through to reality. “We’re about providing value-added services. If a company approaches us to buy systems, rather than just packaging them up and shipping them off, we’ll ask the right questions to find out what else we can do for them. If we can pre-image systems with their software, or provide custom branding or fulfillment services, we want to help with those elements, too,” Kjaer says. “We can ship a system that’s ready to use right out of the box, saving our customers a lot of time and resources.”

 

This article was edited by Georganne Benesch, Associate Editorial Director for insight.tech.

The Future of Retail Technology Is Spatial Intelligence

Posted on by Micah Kaplan

The future of retail technology is driven by some unlikely sources, like babies learning to speak and basketball players guarding a net. On the surface, these two actions don’t seem to have much in common. But the technologies that gave researchers insights into how each group succeeds are combined to help retailers better understand their customers.

The journey started in 2009 for George Shaw, founder and CEO of Pathr.ai, a provider of retail spatial intelligence solutions. As a graduate student at MIT, Shaw worked with Media Lab Professor Deb Roy on the Human Speechome Project—a study of how infants learn languages. For the first three years of his son’s life, Roy collected data from video cameras and microphones, examining where and when the child started learning and using words.

“Even though from what we know it’s mathematically impossible, just about every child learns to speak. Clearly there was a gap in our knowledge, and the goal of the Human Speechome Project was to begin to fill that gap,” says Shaw.

The team realized that the approach to study language acquisition could also be used to understand consumer behaviors. The Media Lab technology was installed at Bank of America and Best Buy, tracking traffic to help understand what prompts people to open a loan or buy a cell phone.

Later, Shaw worked at a sports analytics startup, Second Spectrum, that tracks players on a basketball court, applying machine learning to the data set to collect insights coaches could use to help their teams win more games.

Spatial intelligence is a cognitive layer that sits on top of #AI. “It provides higher-level reasoning and is the business #intelligence layer that says, ‘Here’s what this tracking actually means.’” – George Shaw, @Pathr_ai via @insightdottech

Connecting the Dots with Retail Technology

By studying a baby’s babble and a basketball player’s dribble, Shaw discovered that regularities and interactions in an environment could create valuable retail industry analytics. The Pathr.ai Spatial Intelligence solution uses machine learning models to track the movement of people inside stores. Spatial intelligence is a cognitive layer that sits on top of AI. “It provides higher-level reasoning and is the business intelligence layer that says, ‘Here’s what this tracking actually means,’” says Shaw.

Pathr.ai’s solution leverages existing video cameras, with devices fed into a local server. The camera’s learning model is designed to detect people anonymously, producing dots moving around a map, and those dots move into the Pathr.ai Behavior Engine.

“It’s where the playbook lives,” says Shaw. “We extract business intelligence from the movement of those dots in real time to make decisions.”

“All these operations—sending real-time analytics to the store to efficiently work or instantly identifying a customer who is in need so you can send a store assistant to help—all of this is possible with AI. We have lots of business problems to be solved and there are huge opportunities where industries can leverage AI models to improve customer satisfaction,” adds Anisha Udayakumar, AI Evangelist at Intel.

Since artificial intelligence is run on the local server, Pathr.ai’s solution requires the most compute horsepower. “We’re able to run in various environments, but the most efficient and cost-effective is with systems built on Intel processors and OpenVINO™ for our computer vision,” says Shaw. “With Intel, we have the best technical solution.”

Retail Analytics Address Today’s Challenges

This is because tracking dots allows Pathr.ai to address retailers’ biggest pain points. Lower foot traffic in stores due to an increase in eCommerce makes customers who enter a location more valuable, but staffing shortages can make it challenging to properly serve them.

“We’re able to optimize each customer’s experience,” says Shaw. “If they have a more enjoyable shopping experience, they may buy more things. And we can make more efficient use of each staff member’s time and ultimately require fewer staff hours, which have become scarcer and more expensive.”

For example, a jewelry counter inside a store may see only 10 customers a day. Instead of dedicating an employee to service a small percentage of customers, you can task the person with other work. When a customer needs help at the jewelry counter, Pathr.ai detects them and sends a notification to the employee.

“It’s zone defense instead of a person-to-person coverage,” says Shaw. “It’s a more efficient use of the people you have available through dynamic staff allocation.” (Video 1)

Video 1. Pathr.ai’s spatial intelligence understands retail technology trends and helps customers move around stores, gleaning insights and retail analytics. (Source: Pathr.ai)

A major grocery store chain in the United States uses the solution’s real-time data to measure queue lengths and adjust the number of open checkouts. “In a grocery store, the checkout experience is a huge part of how grocers differentiate themselves,” says Shaw. “Many of them have similar products, store layouts, and promotions. So the experience you have at the checkout matters a lot.”

Pathr.ai measures queue lengths and understands wait times. The system can make a prediction on how long a customer with a full cart of groceries will wait. If the expected wait time goes above a threshold set by the grocer, it will notify a staff member to open another checkout. If all the checkouts are open, the grocer will open more self-checkouts.

“By leveraging OpenVINO, we provided real-time queue and wait time insights in a cost-effective manner using Intel CPU-based edge servers. This eliminated the need for expensive, power-hungry GPUs and helped our client improve in-store operations and labor resource allocation,” says Shaw.

When expanding its smaller deployments into much larger deployments, like a shopping mall, Pathr.ai had to deal with the unique processing, deployment, and infrastructure challenges these layouts presented.

The company leveraged the Deep Learning Workbench in OpenVINO to explore different configurations: Open Model Zoo to accelerate deployment; Intel® DevCloud for Edge to prototype and experiment with AI inference workloads; and the OpenVINO Model Server to deploy new model versions quickly.

According to Shaw, these technologies provided by Intel helped the company achieve huge improvement in edge analytics performance, system costs, and operating costs for its large-scale deployments.

The Future of Retail Technology Is Driven by Consumers

Going even further, Shaw sees spatial intelligence eventually being used to help retailers understand other pressing issues, such as shoplifting. “Discerning that behavior in real time in an anonymous and unbiased way can help end shoplifting,” he says. “That’s a benefit not just to our enterprise customers but to all of society.”

Meanwhile, retailers need an ability to understand changing consumer expectations and act on them to stay relevant, says Shaw. “It’s up to technology providers and retailers to align with consumer desires and expectations,” he says. “We need a way to understand what consumers want when they come into a physical location and act on that. To understand behavior, we need more and better data.”

 

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

This article was originally published on November 28, 2022.