Smart Industry 1/2020

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The IoT Business Magazine 

7.50 EUR 01.2020 

URBAN 

ROBOTS 

HYBRID 

DESIGN 

The Future of 

Fashion 

EYES IN 

THE SKY 

Next-Generation 

Satnavs 

LI-FI 

Revolution 

IoT at the Speed of Light

With faster design cycles and 

increased competition, you need 

more than parts. 

You deserve solutions. 

THINK ON 

avnet-silica.com/think-on

Editorial 

Europe Takes 

the Lead 

Tim Cole 

is the editor of Smart 

Industry – the IoT Business 

Magazine. His latest book, 

Wild Wild West – What 

the History of the American 

Wild West Teaches Us 

About the Future of the 

Digital Society is published 

in German by Vahlen/Beck. 

The Internet needs fixing, there’s no 

doubt about it, but whose job is it? 

Much can be left to the IT industry itself, 

which has shown itself quite competent 

in the past to self-regulate, standardize, and 

hold itself to high moral standards. 

Unfortunately, that is not enough. The invisible 

hand of the market needs help from national 

and international legislators. In the old Wild 

West, they would have called it Law ‘n’ Order. 

The logical body to regulate a transnational 

network like the Internet, you might think, is 

the United Nations but, given the diversity of 

economic and political systems with their competing 

and, more often, conflicting goals and 

ethics, that hardly seems likely. So, who else? 

The Internet was born in the United States and 

for decades US authorities exercised a selfassumed 

authority in cyberspace. Then regulation 

became the watchword – of conservatives, 

at least – and the current administration 

is more likely to loosen than tighten things like 

antitrust regulation, much less put Big Tech 

on a leash for things like hate speech, child 

pornography, or unfair business practices. The 

other big player, China, is more interested in 

putting the Internet under the control of party 

apparatchiks, which is unacceptable to Western 

liberal democracies. 

Only one remains: Europe. The third-largest 

economic bloc in the world is powerful enough 

to enforce rules and regulations on its own 

turf and influential enough to persuade other 

countries to follow their lead. 

More important, Europeans appear to be the 

only ones willing to tackle the many problems 

in the digital realm. In 2016, the European 

Commission fined Google $5 billion for abusing 

its mobile operating system to ensure the 

popularity of Google apps and services over 

others. Last year, the EU hit Google again for 

$1.6 billion for abusing its market dominance 

by imposing a number of restrictive clauses 

in contracts with third-party websites which 

prevented Google’s rivals from placing their 

search adverts on these websites. European 

authorities also have forced the likes of Facebook 

and Twitter to remove extremist or sexist 

content – or face the consequences. And, in 

2017, Amazon was ordered to pay the EU $294 

million in unpaid taxes. 

Europe, it seems, is the only authority in the 

world willing to take a hard line. Add to that 

the unfairly criticized General Data Protection 

Regulation (GDPR), which turns out to be the 

only strong attempt by any national regulation 

system to solve the problem of data ownership. 

California is reputedly considering introducing 

its own legislation following the lines of 

Europe’s new data law. 

The European Union, it seems, is just getting 

warmed up. In June 2019, the new EU Cybersecurity 

Act came into effect. Once more, critics 

were quick to denounce undue government 

meddling and overregulation, but any serious 

student of the new legislation will have to admit 

that, for the very first time, manufacturers 

have a standardized framework to guide them 

in implementing security across their products 

and proving to their customers that they have 

done so. 

In fact, the act will not make life miserable for 

ICT product manufacturers, but instead make 

it easier. Companies doing business in the EU 

will only have to certify their ICT products, processes, 

and services once to see their certificates 

recognized across all of Europe. 

A better way to understand what is going on 

is to consider what happens when buying a 

fridge. For years there has been a universally 

accepted energy-efficiency scale (A+++ down 

to G) that lets buyers compare products from 

many manufacturers. The EU wants to make 

this available also with security. 

Once again, it can be expected that the EU cybersecurity 

act will lead the rest of the world, 

triggering similar legislation in the US and Asia, 

moving security standards and certification 

methods across borders and applications. 

After all, somebody has to do it! 

3

contents Imprint 

CONTENTs 

03 Editorial 

04 Contents/Imprint 

06 Smart People 

Smart Business 

10 AI Means Business 

12 Plugging the Leaks 

15 Why AI Initiatives Need CIO Support 

16 Can AI Be Evil? 

19 Microsoft Study Looks at AI Adoption in Europe 

22 When and How Should AI Explain its Decisions? 

24 Business Forecasting: Rethinking Risk 

28 IoT in Mining: Deep Connectivity 

32 Blockchain: Smart Contracts 

38 Interview with Professor Dieter Kempf, BDI 

Smart Communications 

40 Next-Gen GNSS: Eyes in the Sky 

46 Agencies: Jump-Starting IoT 

52 A Network for Everybody: Interview 

with Senet CEO Bruce Chatterley 

54 Urban Robots: Street Smarts 

60 Li-Fi: IoT at the Speed of Light 

12 

Title Story: 

AI Means Business 

Around the world, applications for artificial intelligence 

(AI) are popping up all over the place. Once 

something only for nerds, AI is transforming virtually 

every aspect of business, from supply chains to 

hiring, manufacturing to marketing, and customer 

services to medicine. And managers everywhere are 

asking themselves: how can I best seize upon the 

business potential of AI? 

Smart Lifestyle 

64 Hybrid Design: The Future of Fashion 

68 Wearables: Smart Buds 

72 Brain–Computer Interfaces: Smart Connections 

Smart Solutions 

76 Logistics: Automating the Last 50 Feet 

80 Home Threats: Security and Things 

82 Bernd Schoene: IoT is Not for Free 

84 Augmented Reality: Making a MES 

86 Huawei: The Monsters Are Back 

88 Marco Giegerich: Cooking up Next-Level IoT 

90 Smart Companies 

94 Smart Products 

98 Gerd Leonhard: The Ethics of Technology 

64 

IoT Is All the Fashion 

Designers and manufacturers of men’s 

and women’s apparel are exploring 

ways to predict trends faster and more 

accurately than ever before. They are 

helped by researchers who are looking 

for ways to utilize artificial intelligence. 

76 

Automating 

the Last 50 Feet 

Everybody’s talking about the 

“last mile,” but in fact it’s the last 

50 feet that are the biggest bottleneck 

for e-commerce growth, 

ac counting for between 25 percent 

and 50 percent of total shipping 

costs. This offers a huge market 

opportunity for innovation 

in logistics. 

4

40 

Eyes in the Sky 

Viewed as a utility often taken for 

granted, GNSS enables real-time and 

accurate product tracking, telematics, 

timing, and other positioning-enabled, 

machine-to-machine communication. 

As the IoT market continues to expand, 

so will the demands and expectations 

placed on these satellite systems. 

IMPrint 

Publisher 

Avnet Silica (Avnet EMG GmbH), Gruberstrasse 60d, 

85586 Poing - Germany 

Production and Project Management 

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pmc active GmbH, Bretonischer Ring 10, 85630 Grasbrunn 

Tel. 089 / 45 45 577 28, Fax 089 / 45 45 577 0 

Project Manager Richard Spitz 

Editor-in-Chief Tim Cole 

Text editor Eric Doyle 

Art Director Sara D’Auria, www.inframedesign.de, 

Harald Sayffaerth, www.01graphics.de 

Contributors Alan Earls, Eamon Earls, Gordon Feller, 

Marco Giegerich, Gerhard Kafka, Jürgen Kalwa, Greg Langley, 

Gerd Leonard, Stian Overdahl, Christ Parsons, Bengt Sahlin, 

Bernd Schöne, Oliver Schonscheck, Marcel Weiss, 

Chris Young, Anthony Bourne, Rainer Claaßen 

Pictures Shutterstock, fotolia 

Production Manager Stephan Quinkertz 

Printing Westermann 

Managing Director Richard Spitz, Stephan Quinkertz, 

Alan Markovic 

© 2020 RSP Management GmbH and pmc active GmbH

Smart People Behind the scenes 

Behind the Scenes 

Smart people 

All over the world, brilliant individuals are hard at work creating the technologies and 

solutions that will one day make the Internet of Things come alive. We visited a few 

of them and listened to their fascinating stories. 

source ©: Transfer. Das Steinbeis Magazin 

Csaba Singer of 

Hybrid-Airplane Technologies 

The Sky’s No Limit 

Csaba Singer hates the word “drone,” 

which may seem surprising because 

that’s what his small company makes 

– except that his drone looks like a giant, 

inflatable frisbee with two, tiny, 

diametrically opposed wings. 

Based in Baden-Baden, Germany, 

Hybrid-Airplane Technologies was 

Surveillance 

flights can now 

be done with 

unmanned 

systems. 

Csaba Singer 

Founder, Hybrid-Airplane 

Technologies 

Next-Gen Drones 

Is it a blimp, is it a 

plane? H-Aeros is as 

energy efficient as a 

Zeppelin but as agile 

as a helicopter, making 

it far superior to 

conventional drones 

in terms of safety, 

payload, and endurance. 

founded to produce a completely different 

kind of unmanned aerial vehicle 

(UAV): one that can stay airborne 

for days or weeks on end and even fly 

indoors, automatically following preprogrammed 

routes or be piloted 

over the Internet. 

H-Aero, as Singer calls his brainchild, 

is a combination of airplane, helicopter, 

and balloon. It can take off 

and land horizontally, fly from A to B, 

or hover indefinitely, recharging its 

batteries on the fly via built-in solar 

panels. Consisting of a helium-filled 

lenticular hull, the H-Aero is as energy 

efficient as a Zeppelin or a balloon 

but is as agile as multicopters or airplanes, 

he claims. 

In an interview with Droneii, an online 

trade magazine, Singer expounded 

the virtues of his company’s invention. 

“Compared to conventional 

drones, H-Aero is far superior in terms 

of flight endurance, safety, payload, 

and capabilities. This proves [useful] 

especially in the field of agriculture 

and forestry. Surveillance flights 

which were previously only possible 

with manned systems (because of 

flight endurance or safety reasons), 

can now be executed with the H-Aero 

as the first unmanned system. For 

source ©: Hybrid-Airplane Technologies 

6

the client, this means a cost saving of 

around 20 times and a low-emission 

and friendlier option due to noise 

protection and no CO2 emissions.” 

Applications for H-Aero are many, 

he believes. The flying frisbee can 

be put to use inspecting bridges or 

tunnels, keeping track of inventory in 

warehouses, or keeping an eye from 

above on crops or forests. Thanks to 

its extended operating span, it could 

even serve as a hotspot for local wireless 

networks where antenna towers 

are impractical or impossible to build. 

With a payload of 10 kilograms, it can 

even be used for transporting small 

cargoes, for instance medicines to remote 

locations. 

The best thing, Singer believes, is 

that his company’s first product isn’t 

subject to many of the laws and restrictions 

that apply to conventional 

drones. “We just received a positive 

safety certificate as ‘harmless’ even 

over public gatherings,” he claims, 

adding that if a malfunction occurs, 

the craft simply glides to the ground 

like a parachute. “Besides, our starting 

mass is below the limit that requires a 

human operator and instead of using 

a camera, which would be a problem 

for most missions, we use sensors to 

measure things like pollution or heat 

spots,” he says. 

Hybrid-Airplane Technologies already 

has plans for a much larger 

version of H-Aero that can carry passengers. 

“Maybe we can become the 

Uber of air taxis,” he hopes. A loworbit 

version could be produced to 

expand the use of dirigible UAVs to 

the edge of outer space itself. In fact, 

Singer is talking to NASA about using 

the H-Aero on a future Mars mission. 

Obviously, when it comes to bright 

ideas, for this young man not even 

the sky’s the limit. 

Brent Seales of 

University of Kentucky 

Virtually Unrolling 

Ancient Scrolls 

Mount Vesuvius in Italy erupted in 

79 AD and buried the towns of Pompeii 

and Herculaneum in ash and lava. 

Everything was buried in the inferno, 

including an invaluable library of 

scrolls whose contents were rendered 

unreadable – or at least they were 

considered lost until Brent Seales 

came along. As director of the Center 

for Visualization and Virtual Environments 

at the University of Kentucky, 

Seales was fascinated by the hundreds 

of carbonized papyrus scrolls 

that were unearthed in 1752 in a villa 

in Herculaneum that allegedly once 

belonged to Julius Caesar’s father-inlaw. 

Today, the scrolls are kept at the 

National Archaeological Museum in 

Naples and are believed to be the only 

intact library from antiquity to survive. 

Except, of course, that nobody could 

actually read what was written on 

them. 

Historians have been searching for 

centuries for lost works from classical 

antiquity such as Sappho’s poems or 

Mark Antony’s treatise on drunkenness 

– works which are known only 

through references to them by other 

writers. 

Until now, reading the scrolls from the 

Villa of the Papyri, as it has become 

With ultrabright 

light, 

we will be 

able to see 

the internal 

structure of 

the papyri. 

Brent Seales 

University of Kentucky 

known, has been impossible. Various 

attempts in the past to unroll some 

of them have led to their destruction 

– they simply fall to pieces. Seales 

believes he has found a way to “virtually 

unroll” them using artificial intelligence, 

machine learning, and highenergy 

X-rays. 

To get there, he first traveled to Oxford 

in England. There, at the Harwell 

Science and Innovation Campus, a 

small university spin-off named Diamond 

Light Source was operating 

the UK’s national synchrotron. The 

device is a giant microscope that 

harnesses the power of electrons to 

produce ultra-bright light, allowing 

it to be used to study anything from 

fossils to jet engines, to viruses and 

vaccines – and perhaps fossilized papyrus 

rolls, too. 

“With the ultra-bright light, we will 

be able to see the internal structure 

of the scrolls in more definition than 

has ever been possible,” Seales believes. 

The machine-learning tool he 

and his colleagues are developing will 

amplify the “ink” parts of the signal by 

training a computer algorithm to recognize 

them pixel-by-pixel, from photographs 

of fragments of the damaged 

scrolls that still show clear traces 

of writing. This data is then compared 

with the corresponding tomographic 

data (slice images) of the same fragments 

gathered by the synchrotron 

using multi-voxel pattern analysis. 

A voxel is a 3D image produced by 

combining the 2D slices. This offshoot 

of MRI imaging used in medical 

examinations produces by far 

source ©: University of Kentucky / College of Engineering 

7

Smart People Behind the scenes 

Interview 

keting but they really didn’t have 

the technology that gives you the 

visibility about what’s going on in 

those networks. Industrial networks, 

in those days, were really a black box. 

Often, nobody really knew who was 

taking care of security; sometimes 

it was the automation engineers 

themselves, sometimes the IT department. 

That’s where I saw my opportunity 

so, in 2014, I left Siemens 

and teamed up with two guys from 

Israel who were at the cutting edge 

of technology. They were working 

for Unit 8200, which is sort of the 

equivalent of the NSA [the US National 

Security Agency]. 

Being Available 

Galina Antova cut her teeth in IT working 

for IBM and then at Siemens but 

she is now making her mark as a successful 

entrepreneur in the operational 

technology (OT) space. Smart Industry’s 

editor Tim Cole caught up with 

her in the restaurant at the top of Munich’s 

600-foot TV tower to talk about 

how the company she cofounded 

four years ago, Claroty, can help protect 

critical IoT infrastructures. 

You bill yourself as an expert in 

OT security. How does that tie into 

IoT? 

I had the privilege to work in the 

wonderful world of industrial automation 

services at Siemens where 

I discovered that the whole world 

runs on industrial automation – lit- 

Lots of companies 

are involved 

in critical 

infrastructure 

– whether they 

know it or not. 

Galina Antova 

CEO, Claroty 

Who are your clients? 

There are a number of large vendors 

in the OT area like Siemens, Schneiphoto 

©: Helmut Weissenbach 

erally everything! About this time, 

Stuxnet became public – the worm 

virus that targets industrial control 

systems affecting critical infrastructure 

systems like electrical grids, 

water supply, telecommunications, 

and so on. Suddenly, OT security was 

on everybody’s minds – protecting 

operational technology, namely the 

hardware and software that monitors 

and controls physical devices. 

Companies started talking more 

openly about it and budgets were 

starting to be created. 

Traditionally, that sounds more 

like the responsibility of the IT security 

people. 

At this point I realized that IT security 

companies weren’t doing much 

when it comes to industrial cybersecurity. 

Maybe they did some mar- 

What do you do differently from 

other security companies? 

We wanted to create technology 

that fits right into the world of industrial 

automation. That means it 

should not interfere with the processes’ 

uptimes. Availability is the 

number one thing we need to protect. 

That meant we had to spend 

a lot of time studying the different 

components of networks and understanding 

how they communicate 

with each other. We had to find 

a way to passively listen to what’s 

going on in those networks and 

extract information without disrupting 

the process itself. By analyzing 

that data, we can monitor security 

in real-time, machine-to-machine 

communication, which is the nature 

of industrial automation. 

How long did that take you? 

We were in stealth mode for almost 

two years. When you go to a really 

big customer like these, they have 

pretty much everything under the 

sun, so providing comprehensive security 

means you have to understand 

all the different devices and protocols. 

We have a pretty sophisticated 

research team that is separate from 

our development team whose job is 

just blind analysis of the protocols. 

8

der, Rockwell, and GE who provide 

the basic equipment for big national 

and international infrastructure systems. 

We are currently about 150 

people around the world. Our R&D 

is based in Israel but our headquarters 

is in New York. We started officially 

selling in 2016. Today, we have 

customers in 15 vertical markets, 

everything from mining to oil and 

gas, all kinds of manufacturing from 

automotive to petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, 

food & beverage – all of 

them large companies all over the 

world. 

How do you plan to expand your 

business? 

The nice thing about our market is 

that lots of companies are involved 

in critical infrastructure – whether 

they know it or not. Even if they’re 

not an industrial company, they 

all have an office, and offices have 

building management systems; they 

have elevators, they have lights, and 

they’re all operated by OT networks. 

So, we were able to start expanding 

to data centers, commercial real estate, 

and many other industries. Recently, 

we branched out to include 

IoT devices that may not be so visible 

but are still critical, things like 

security cameras or your Apple TV 

or your printers. It doesn’t matter if 

we’re dealing with an industrial network 

or an enterprise IoT network, 

if you don’t know how they’re communicating, 

they are potential attack 

vectors. Our business proposition is: 

“We cover all the invisible devices in 

your network.” 

Are companies today in the process 

of repeating the same mistakes 

they made 25 years ago in IT 

security, namely let’s build it and 

if security issues crop up we’ll fix 

them later? 

You’re right, we’re going through the 

same cycle. The difference is that we 

simply don’t have 25 years to evolve 

the defenses. In IT, it happened very 

gradually and naturally, first anti-virus, 

then firewalls, then IPS; attackers 

and vendors sort of played a game 

of catch-up. The reality today is that 

operational technology and IoT 

are everywhere and they’re all connected 

to other networks, and both 

pretty much lack any kind of security 

footprint. 

How do you close the gap? 

One way Claroty is different is that 

we don’t build products, we built a 

platform. Each one of the features 

that we offer, in IT security they’re 

a separate product category. For 

example, we do asset management 

and there are a bunch of companies 

on the IT side that do that. The 

same for vulnerability management, 

for virtual segmentation – think 

VMware for OT networks. We build 

all kinds of different products into 

a consolidated platform including 

secure remote access. That makes 

it easy to gain visibility and monitor 

threats within OT and IoT networks. 

Doesn’t that create rivalries or 

even conflicts of interest between 

old-school IT security departments 

and OT? 

[laughs] People are always the problem, 

aren’t they? A major reason companies 

aren’t adjusting faster lies in 

their organizational structures. There 

are geographical differences. The 

US, for instance, appears to be moving 

faster than Europe in terms of 

governance structures. What we see 

with the great majority of companies 

is that once awareness reaches the 

board level things really start moving. 

Top brass starts asking, “Who’s 

responsible for OT and IoT cybersecurity?” 

and the answer is nobody, 

because engineering does engineering, 

and IT security does IT security, 

they don’t do OT security. So typically, 

the chief information security officer 

gets the responsibility and starts reshuffling 

priorities. The question becomes, 

“Where do I spend my next 

dollar? Do I spend it on the third or 

fourth end-point security protection 

products, or do I spend it on a technology 

that lets me see the true state 

of my critical infrastructure components 

for the very first time?” 

source ©: University of Kentucky, College of Engineering 

Super Scanner 

Using the machinelearning 

tool, the team 

hopes to amplify the 

“ink” parts of the signal 

by training a computer 

algorithm to recognize 

them pixel-by-pixel, 

from photographs of 

fragments of the 

damaged scrolls that 

still show clear traces 

of writing. This data is 

then compared with 

the corresponding 

tomographic data (slice 

images) of the same 

fragments gathered by 

the synchrotron using 

multi-voxel pattern 

analysis. 

the best resolution of any scanning 

technology. By applying that same 

logic to the still-rolled scrolls, it’s 

hoped that ink that is otherwise invisible 

to the naked eye will be revealed. 

“The first thing we are hoping to do 

is to perfect the technology so that 

we can simply repeat it on all 900 

scrolls that remain [unwrapped],” says 

Seales. So far, his team has tested the 

method on two intact scrolls and four 

smaller fragmented ones from the Institut 

de France. 

“We ... shine very intense light 

through (the scroll) and then detect 

on the other side a number of twodimensional 

images. From that we 

reconstruct a three-dimensional volume 

of the object ... to actually read 

the text in a nondestructive manner,” 

Seales explains. The goal is to 

train the system to pick out and learn 

subtle differences between inked and 

blank areas in the X-ray scans, such as 

differences in the structure of the papyrus 

fibers. Once trained on the fragments, 

it is hoped the system can be 

used with data from the intact scrolls 

to reveal the text within. 

Many of the writings of the formative 

thinkers of the classical age have 

been lost. For instance, only one third 

of the writings of Aristotle survive. 

The founders of Western drama were 

the brilliant playwrights. Aeschylus 

and Euripides wrote around 90 plays 

each but only seven and 19 remain 

respectively. Historians would love to 

lay their hands on other lost gems like 

the missing texts of Livy’s History of 

Rome. After 2,000 years, their dream 

may be coming true – who knows 

what the scrolls may reveal? 

9

Smart Business Title Story: Smart Companies 

10

Smart Companies 

AI Means 

Business 

Around the world, artificial intelligence (AI) is almost everywhere. In just a 

few years, it has spread beyond something only technology nerds 

get excited about, to permeate every realm of business, from supply chains 

to hiring, manufacturing to marketing, and customer services to medicine. 

Established companies are spending big to acquire the technology 

and pundits are not only offering impressive growth predictions 

but also deployment models for those aiming to seize upon 

the potential of AI. 

n By Alan Earls 

Applications for artificial 

intelligence (AI) are popping 

up all over the place. 

For example, French home 

improvement retailer Leroy Merlin 

is running algorithms against historic 

sales data and other information, 

such as weather forecasts, to 

help drive what appears on shelves, 

and in what quantities, allowing the 

company to cut inventory costs and 

improve sales in the process. 

Or take Merantix, an AI research 

organization in Germany, which 

has spun out a company called MX 

Healthcare that can analyze mammograms 

and find indications of 

cancer with startling accuracy. 

“People are sometimes skeptical 

about the growth of AI just because 

not all AI is exotic deep learning or 

extremely complex, a lot of it involves 

familiar but very useful things, 

like bots and virtual assistants,” says 

Greg Schulz, senior advisory analyst 

at StorageIO. Clearly, there are also 

plenty of examples of much more 

advanced deployments, he adds, 

such as autonomous road vehicles 

and automated drone delivery undergoing 

testing around the world. 

Alex Bekker, head of the data analytics 

department at ScienceSoft, an 

IT consulting company, comments, 

“Nowadays, companies from different 

business spheres can make use 

of different types of AI.” He notes the 

case of a manufacturer which could 

have robots on its assembly lines 

with automated visual inspection 

systems ensuring quality control. The 

company could also employ deep 

neural networks to assess the risks 

associated with their Tier 1 and Tier 

2 suppliers – in other words, a mix of 

functional, visual, and analytic AI. 

But that’s only the beginning, he 

says. 

In Europe alone, researchers from 

Ernst & Young, working on behalf 

of Microsoft, identify hundreds of 

major companies benefiting from 

AI (see “Microsoft Study Looks at 

AI Adoption in Europe”). Likewise, 

industries, including telecommunications 

service providers, are 

poised for transformation and likely 

to spend more than $11bn on AI by 

2025, according to analyst firm Tractica 

in its report, Artificial Intel- 

11


source ©: YouTube 

ligence for Telecommunications Applications. 

The authors outline likely 

use cases such as network operations 

monitoring and management, 

predictive maintenance, fraud 

mitigation, cybersecurity, customer 

service, and virtual digital assistants 

(VDAs) for marketing. 

According to the Global Artificial 

Intelligence (AI) Market Report 2019– 

2024: Trends, Forecast and Competitive 

Analysis from market insight firm 

Lucintel and recently made available 

through the Research and Markets 

store, the worldwide AI market is 

expected to be worth around $71bn 

by 2024 with a compound annual 

growth rate (CAGR) of 26 percent 

from 2019 to 2024. The researchers 

predict that machine-learning 

technology will remain the largest 

A lot of AI 

involves familiar 

but very useful 

things like bots 

and virtual 

assistants. 

Greg Schulz 

Senior Advisory Analyst, 

StorageIO 

segment and likely to see the greatest 

growth but the impact of this 

spending on the global economy as 

a whole is truly eye-popping. 

An earlier report from PriceWaterhouseCoopers, 

Sizing the Prize: 

What’s the Real Value of AI for Your 

Business and How Can You Capitalize?, 

global gross domestic product 

(GDP) could rise by up to 14 percent 

in 2030 as a result of AI investments, 

or some $15.7tn in net gain. China 

alone could see a boost of up to 26 

percent in GDP, while North America 

would likely grow at the global 

rate of 14 percent, it said. 

The Nature of AI 

AI is a very broad phenomenon, 

says Anne-Laure Thieullent, AI and 

analytics group offer leader at consulting 

firm Capgemini. “We see 

three big building blocks of AI technologies 

with great traction at the 

moment,” she says. 

First, and probably the most recent 

in terms of use cases and uptake, 

is computer vision which, coupled 

with deep-learning techniques, can 

enable features like image classification, 

object detection, facial recognition, 

or even emotion recognition. 

“This has great applications in manufacturing 

but also, interestingly, 

in entertainment to get real-time 

feedback about content from an audience,” 

she adds. 

Second, natural language processing 

is now getting more widespread 

adoption, Thieullent notes, 

with cognitive document processing 

and intelligent content recognition, 

semantic search for enterprise 

knowledge, summarization solutions, 

and even intelligent agents 

for conversational interfaces. 

Third is automatic speech recognition 

(ASR) solutions based on deep 

learning. These are also ramping up 

for a variety of applications around 

sentiment detection, tonal analysis 

from voice data, keyword identification, 

text-to-speech, and translation. 

“All of these can have great 

applications in customer service 

centers,” she believes. 

Expert Assessment 

Despite encouraging beginnings in 

Europe, illustrated by Leroy Merlin 

and MX Healthcare, some say the 

region has been too slow in launching, 

and too limited in sustaining, 

its AI initiatives. A 2019 report from 

the McKinsey Global Institute, Notes 

from the AI Frontier: Tackling Europe’s 

Gap in Digital and Artificial Intelligence, 

says that early digital companies 

have been the first to develop 

strong positions in AI, yet only two 

European companies are in the 

worldwide digital top 30. Encouragingly, 

though, Europe has about 25 

percent of all AI start-ups. 

Intelligent Leak Detection 

Plugging the HOLES 

Water leaks, even small 

ones, can add up to 

large volumes of wasted 

clean water and 

increased costs for property owners. 

And, of course, leaks can sometimes 

have disastrous consequences like 

flooding, equipment damage, and ruined 

walls and floors. Wasteful water 

use practices also hit the bottom line. 

Fantastic Tools 

AI has proven to be 

invaluable in enabling 

Aqualytics to understand 

water flows with 

fewer false positives, 

chief product officer 

Yaron Dycian claims. 

source ©: Ctoforum 

To tackle this challenge, UK-based 

Aqualytics offers an AI-powered 

water conservation and leak detection 

system called Flowless that integrates 

with plumbing systems. It 

can lead to double-digit water use 

reductions – some clients say they 

are using almost one third less. 

In one instance, a new unoccupied 

structure had a catastrophic leak 

on an empty floor. Fortunately, the 

Aqualytics system detected the abnormal 

event and shut off the water 

before serious damage occurred – 

and long before humans could have 

reacted. 

12

source ©: MX Healthcare GmbH 

If Europe scaled up its efforts, the 

authors note, AI could potentially 

add up to €2.7tn in GDP to the 

€13.5tn European economy, dependent 

on its current set of skills, 

state of digitization, and other factors. 

This would translate into a 1.4 

percent compound annual growth 

through 2030. However, the report 

notes, realizing that potential will 

depend on achieving a diffusion of 

skills and knowledge. 

According to Thieullent, organizations 

in Europe are already ramping 

up their investments and deployments 

of AI technologies. “We see 

various interesting use cases deployed 

at scale in manufacturing, 

where not only can machine learning 

help detect failures in production 

lines or optimize overall equipment 

efficiency but also computer vision 

is used to assist in quality defects 

detection,” she says. For consumer 

products, the focus is more about 

using AI to support marketing efficiency, 

by anticipating market trends 

from other regions and allowing the 

trends to modify product launches 

to fit market specificities in a much 

more proactive manner, she adds. 

For retailers, she sees a great uptake 

of using AI to improve sales-forecast 

accuracy and decrease inventory 

costs, as well as progressing on a 

demand-driven supply chain. “That 

also helps them with their sustainability 

agenda,” she says. 

Public sector and government agencies 

in Europe are also strongly ramp- 

Reducing the 

Workload 

Radiologists are 

held back by an 

increasing workload of 

examinations without 

any findings. So Merantix 

Healthcare built Vara, 

a platform powered by 

machine learning which 

reduces repetitive work 

for radiologists and 

enables them to focus 

on cases which really 

matter. 

ing up their AI investments to improve 

their services, says Thieullent. 

Here, the goal is to optimize administrative 

processes and offer a more 

digital experience to people. On the 

positive side of the ledger, Thieullent 

says European business is “definitely 

past the early-adopters phase.” However, 

she warns, a good number of 

organizations are now in the phase 

she calls the “AI Death Valley.” 

Thieullent explains that her phrase 

stems from how AI has gone 

through several “winters” in the last 

decades, where storage and compute 

power or advances in deeplearning 

research were not yet adequate 

to fulfill the promises implicit 

in the mathematical theory behind 

AI. The Death Valley situation 

AI is a fantastic tool for analyzing 

complex data such as water flow and 

identifying specific anomalies and 

characteristics, explains chief product 

officer Yaron Dycian. “It has proven 

invaluable in enabling us to effectively 

understand water flows with 

very low false positives and very high 

detection rates,” he adds. And while 

he cautions that AI is not a cure-all, 

combined with other technologies 

such as signal processing, pattern 

recognition, and data-processing 

tools, it can be highly effective. 

“AI will continue to disrupt industries 

while providing solutions to 

problems that were never thought 

possible,” says Dycian. And, he adds, 

“there are probably not many areas 

of business that will not be impacted.” 

The Flowless system 

uses machine learning 

to understand how a 

building uses water and 

detects any changes. 

source ©: Aqualytics 

13


source ©: Connect-World 

today is similar but not caused by 

technical shortfalls. Some organizations, 

she explains, are in a situation 

where a lot of different pilots, proofs 

of concept (POCs), and minimum 

viable products (MVPs) have been 

launched but often with neither a 

clear business strategy nor a strong 

operating model – something one 

expert at the recent Industry of 

Things Expo in Berlin referred to as 

“proof-of-concept hell.” 

Thieullent observes that many AI 

deployments require cloud computing 

from the very beginning but 

many companies are still at the start 

of their cloud journey. On the other 

hand, many initiatives are currently 

underway globally to boost AI. 

For example, within the European 

Union, the “France is AI” initiative is 

When Failure Is Not an 

Option 

Machine learning can 

help to detect failures in 

production lines and to 

optimize overall equipment 

efficiency. Already, 

computer vision is being 

used to assist in automated 

quality control systems. 

In Europe, a 

good number 

of organizations 

are now in the 

AI Death Valley 

phase. 

Anne-Laure Thieullent 

AI and analytics group 

offer leader, Capgemini 

now gathering together many companies 

and start-ups, and the AI4EU 

collaborative platform got going 

earlier this year. 

One area where Europeans may be 

ahead of the curve is in their focus 

on the ethical aspects of AI (see 

“Can AI Be Evil?” on page 16) – proactively 

addressing potential biases 

in data sets or algorithms, building 

explainability and visibility into AI 

solutions, and adopting a more 

transparent approach about the finality 

and intent of AI applications. 

“Companies like Telia have published 

clear ethical AI guidelines 

to provide a framework for these 

applications,” says Thieullent. With 

greater sensitivity toward data privacy 

as well as the trust and consent 

of the general public, especially 

after the Cambridge Analytica incident, 

this may turn into a competitive 

advantage in the long run for 

European organizations that will 

implement a human-centric approach 

to AI – or an AI that makes 

sense to humans, she says. 

While conditions for AI adoption 

and expansion may not be perfect, 

companies and organizations 

around the world are moving ahead. 

Cogito, a young US company with 

roots in the Massachusetts Institute 

of Technology’s (MIT) Human 

Dynamics Lab, trains machines to 

detect and interpret the social signals 

in human communication. The 

company now offers in-call guidance 

to call center agents for every 

phone conversation. 

AI Meets IoT 

Hong Kong-based Orient Overseas 

Container Line (OOCL) provides 

shipping containers for the world 

market and has been applying AI 

extensively in its operations. The 

company recently upgraded its 

MyOOCLReefer (MOR) service for 

refrigerated containers by combining 

AI, Internet of Things (IoT), and 

mobility to provide transparency, 

visibility, and convenience to shippers 

when monitoring their cargoes. 

In Vietnam, agriculture is get- 

14

Top Down 

Why AI Initiatives Need 

CIO Support 

Use Cases for AI Application Categories 

AI Strategy Framework With Examples 

Build Your AI Business Case 

Swarm 

Event lights 

show 

Reconnaissance 

Smooth 

traffic flow 

Organization of Individual Entities 

Federation 

Stand-Alone 

Faster data 

entry 

Automated 

claims handling 

Speedy order 

fulfillment 

Improved 

customer 

service 

Expanded 

market 

Mobility as 

a service 

High-speed 

trading 

Medical 

diagnostics 

Reactor Categorizer Responder Learner Creator 

source ©: Gartner 

Low Individual Entity Intelligence High 

According to a recent presentation 

at a Gartner event 

Source: Gartner 

in Cape Town, South Africa, 

vital new digital initiatives 

such as AI will ultimately depend on 

the CIO, in partnership with the chief 

of human resources, to help lead the 

cultural change that must accompany 

technology evolutions. 

Mindsets and practices shape culture, 

and technology is only an 

amplifier of that culture, according 

to Daniel Sanchez Reina, a senior 

research director at advisory firm 

Gartner. In other words, technology 

by itself rarely changes an organization. 

However, technology 

is now often the backbone of how 

source ©: Amadeus 

work gets done and reinforces the 

company culture, which is why he 

believes culture change is becoming 

an increasing responsibility of IT. 

The good news, according to a recent 

Gartner CIO Agenda Survey, is 

Technology is 

now often the 

backbone of 

how work gets 

done. 

Daniel Sanchez Reina 

Senior research 

director, Gartner 

that artificial intelligence, while only 

coming in sixth for new or increased 

spending in 2019, was identified as 

the number one game-changing 

technology area by chief executives 

around the globe. The report states 

that EMEA CIOs are “setting the example” 

when it comes to harvesting 

the results of digital initiatives. Their 

specific strength, Gartner believes, 

is taking new initiatives to scale 

more successfully than their counterparts 

in North America, Latin 

America, or the Asia/Pacific region. 

They did so through better collaboration 

with the business and by reducing 

silos and internal complexity, 

the survey concluded. 

15


Biased Algorithms 

Can AI be Evil? 

While killer robots may 

exist only in science 

fiction, a growing 

number of people 

inside and outside the world of 

technology are concerned that AI 

can do harm through embedded 

and latent prejudices. For example, 

AI systems have produced embarrassing 

mistakes related to facial 

recognition based on inadvertent 

training with a narrow input set and 

may also embed bias in the hiring 

decisions they help make. 

The most famous example occurred 

in 2015, when Google was forced to 

apologize after its new photo app 

labeled two black people as “gorillas.” 

It turned out the algorithm was 

trained using a database of facial 

16 

People are 

only needed 

to train AI – 

and that’s the 

problem! 

Edna Kropp 

Digital engagement 

specialist, LivePerson 

photos that only included whites. 

Similar problems have occurred 

with people (of all races) being 

tagged as dogs, for similar reasons. 

source ©: LivePerson 

Racist tags have also been a problem 

in Google Maps. For a while, 

searches for “nigger house” globally 

and searches for “nigger king” 

in Washington DC turned up results 

for the White House under former 

US president Barack Obama. 

It is not just Google that has run 

across problems with biased algorithms. 

Flickr’s auto-tagging system 

came under scrutiny after it labelled 

images of black people with 

tags such as “ape” and “animal.” The 

system also tagged pictures of concentration 

camps with “sport” or 

“jungle gym.” 

“More and more companies are 

using AI. The software can manage 

large amounts of data and react 

independently to inputs,” says 

Edna Kropp, digital engagement 

specialist at LivePerson, a provider 

of conversational commerce solutions, 

based in Berlin. People are 

only necessary to train the AI, she 

notes, and this is exactly where the 

problem lies. Even though artificial 

intelligence is an emotionless appliance, 

it is only as unbiased as the 

data provided by the trainer. In fact, 

she says, “The machines are usually 

programmed by white men.” 

In response to this concern, the 

EqualAI (Equal Artificial Intelligence) 

initiative founded by LivePerson 

CEO Robert LoCascio has been gathering 

support. The organization is 

pursuing a four-pronged program 

to encourage more women and 

people from a range of ethnicities 

to learn to code. This would enable 

them to pursue degrees in technology, 

to work with companies in 

eliminating bias in human and AIcentric 

hiring and promotion, and to 

identify and eliminate bias embedded 

in new and existing AI systems.

Kropp says current estimates are 

that around 80 percent of software 

developers and programmers are 

male. “The data with which these 

people train artificial intelligence 

represent their world,” she says. 

For example, if a programmer has 

mainly white friends, he will show 

the AI photos of white people for 

facial recognition. As a result, the AI 

will only be able to fall back on less 

diverse image material and will distinguish 

faces of non-white people 

less successfully. 

The problems do not stop with racial 

proclivities within the AI, notes 

Kropp, by mirroring the world in 

which the dominant white male 

programmers live, many other 

problems can arise. 

AI Needs Better Data 

“The solution to this problem is obvious: 

AI needs better data, more 

data, and, above all, more diverse 

data,” says Kropp. This will only 

happen when people from different 

social and cultural contexts 

program such machines. Unfortunately, 

too few people with these 

backgrounds have so far decided 

on a career in software development. 

“The EqualAI initiative is 

working to ensure that more women 

and people from minorities are 

trained in the technology,” says 

Kropp. 

On a similar note, Stephane Rion, 

senior deep-learning scientist for 

Teradata in France, says that a key 

aspect of AI implementations within 

financial organizations is transparency: 

“More and more banks and 

financial institutions are focusing 

their efforts not only on developing 

the most performant predictive 

models to catch fraud or agree on a 

loan but also in understanding why 

a model made a specific decision.” 

In the area of deep learning, neural 

networks can have a large number 

of neurons or parameters that will 

affect the final decision; being able 

to understand this is vitally important 

for a bank when it comes to 

meeting regulations or even running 

an audit, he explains. 

AI allows 

us to 

improve 

the safety 

and reliability 

of our 

infrastructure 

and 

production 

process. 

Meghan Sharp 

Managing Director, 

BP Ventures 

Pumping Data 

Instead of Oil 

Through its partnership 

with Beyond 

Limits, gas and oil 

giant BP hopes to 

improve the safety 

and reliability of 

its infrastructure 

and production, as 

well as changing 

the way it locates 

and refines crude. 

By harnessing collective 

knowledge, 

BP believes it can 

improve the speed 

and quality of its 

decision-making. 

ting a boost through Sero’s crop 

monitoring which uses AI to analyze 

photographs and identify likely 

diseases or infestations. The system 

will have the ability to diagnose and 

recommend treatments to farmers. 

BP, the British multinational oil and 

gas company, has invested $20m 

in Beyond Limits, an AI company 

with roots in NASA’s Jet Propulsion 

Laboratory, to help it accelerate the 

delivery of AI software that shows 

promise of offering the energy sector 

new levels of operational insight, 

source ©: Beyond Limits Inc. 

business optimization, and process 

automation. 

A hope of the partnership, according 

to BP, is that it could enable a 

change in the way it locates and 

develops reservoirs, produces and 

refines crude oil, and markets and 

supplies refined products. Beyond 

Limits’ software will help support 

improvements in the speed and 

quality of decision-making and 

manage operational risks by harnessing 

the collective knowledge 

and experience of BP’s experts. 

Beyond Oil and Gas 

The company says it hopes the software 

will also allow the oil company 

to improve the safety and reliability 

of its infrastructure and production 

processes. Meghan Sharp, managing 

director of BP Ventures, believes 

the investment is an example of BP’s 

ongoing support of entrepreneurs 

and innovators that goes beyond 

the traditional world of oil and gas. 

Watson, IBM’s famous cognitive 

supercomputer, has been applied 

extensively in health-care management 

both within the US and 

17


source ©: Medium Corporation 

globally. For example, it supports 

a Care Manager function that can 

sift through both structured and 

unstructured data to help tailor care 

programs in conjunction with human 

medical professionals. Watson 

has also been applied to the hunt 

for new therapeutic drugs and in 

optimizing cancer treatment and 

care using historic data and patient 

information to fine-tune regimens 

to the needs of the individual. 

Dreamstime is a European stock photography 

company which has started 

to use AI to improve the experience 

of its website users, for instance during 

the photo-vetting process. Horia 

Beschea, an AI specialist working 

with the company from Bucharest, 

Romania, explains: “Before photos 

are posted onto the website, AI is 

used to sort through them. That allows 

us to distribute content to our 

users at a much faster rate than ever 

before. Our AI models recognize hu- 

18 

Watching Out for 

Subtle Signals 

AI can be trained to 

detect and interpret 

the social signals in 

human communication, 

thus offering 

in-call guidance to 

call center agents 

for every phone 

conversation. 

AI is a huge 

win for an 

industry that 

relies on 

heavy 

reporting. 

Oscar Macia 

ForceManager 

AI allows us 

to distribute 

content to our 

users much 

faster than ever 

before. 

Horia Beschea 

AI specialist, 

Dreamstime 

Conversation Starters 

LivePerson has access to data that 

helps inform the brand–consumer 

relationship and interaction, he explains. 

This data can be leveraged to 

reveal within each product category 

and subcategory why people are 

reaching out to customer care. The 

system is built on 24 years of customer 

call center data. According to 

Fischaleck, more than 18,000 companies 

currently use LivePerson. 

Finally, Stephane Rion, senior deeplearning 

scientist for Teradata in 

France, says his company is delivering 

AI customized solutions “built 

from the ground up” and based 

on the client’s requirements, using 

a blend of the latest open-source 

technologies and Teradata’s Vantage 

analytics platform. 

“We deliver fraud detection solutions 

based on deep recurrent neural 

networks, financial products recommendation 

systems, and document 

processing and automatic validation 

for the back office,” Rion says. 

Teradata is currently working with 

Abanca and other major banks in 

Spain on the implementation of a 

solution to accelerate the loan acceptance 

process for bank customers. 

The product is up and running 

and enables the validation of hundreds 

of loan requests per day, Rion 

claims. It processes and classifies 

necessary client documents (proof 

of address, pay slips, etc.) for a loan 

request using natural language processing 

techniques and machine 

learning. It also extracts and validates 

specific information such as 

national insurance numbers and signatures 

from the documents using 

optical character recognition and 

deep-learning models. 

Beyond those adoption stories and 

the range of views on AI’s progman 

models in images, image type, 

and content that should be filtered 

[e.g. adult/health/violence] and run 

on all new images at once.” 

Applying AI allows Dreamstime to 

get an automated understanding 

of the image content and its potential 

value as stock photography. 

Freed from the onerous and timeconsuming 

tasks of sorting images, 

editors can focus on quality issues. 

In Barcelona, ForceManager, which 

specializes in mobile CRM, says it 

is the first in Europe to incorporate 

machine learning and conversational 

AI technology (along the lines of Siri 

and Alexa) to help field sales representatives 

working away from the 

office. The system delivers insights 

on upcoming deals, recalls data from 

previous visits, and even recommends 

certain products or services 

for promotion to specific customers. 

“We’re seeing many of the consumer 

AI trends carry over to business to cut 

out menial tasks and drive efficiency,” 

says ForceManager’s cofounder 

and CEO Oscar Macia. One of the 

company’s creations is a virtual, AIbased 

sales assistant called Dana. 

On average, according to Macia, field 

sales reps spend 63 percent of their 

time on non-selling activities. With 

Dana’s help, they can use their commuting 

time to report on a meeting 

in real time and stay up to date on 

their pipeline. “It’s a huge win for 

an industry that relies on a heavy 

reporting funnel to survive,” he says. 

AI-enabled artificial assistants are in 

many ways similar to what’s on of- 

source ©: ForceManager 

fer from LivePerson, a provider of 

conversational commerce software 

that can work semi-autonomously 

or in concert with employees. “We 

are changing the very nature of 

brand–customer interaction,” says 

Moritz Fischaleck, a product evangelist 

at LivePerson in Berlin.

Strong Commitment to AI 

Microsoft Study Looks 

at AI Adoption in Europe 

A 

recently completed study 

conducted by Ernst & 

Young for Microsoft examined 

the outlook for AI 

in Europe for 2019 and beyond, as 

well as current practices. 

Of the 307 companies surveyed, 59 

percent say they expect AI to have 

a major impact on aspects of business 

that are “entirely unknown 

to the company today” – though 

only about four percent indicated 

that their own use of AI is currently 

making a large contribution to operations 

or could be considered to 

be “advanced.” 

More than a quarter of the respondents 

say they have already put AI 

to use and over 60 percent claim to 

be in the planning stages. 

Overall, the researchers found a 

strong, and apparently permanent, 

commitment to AI spending 

and innovation and the report 

concluded, “It is no understatement 

to suggest that AI will be a 

chief protagonist in the change 

transcending all elements of business 

in what has been labelled the 

Fourth Industrial Revolution.” 

source ©: Ernst & Young GmbH Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft | Microsoft 

19


source ©: Teradata 

ress, Thieullent at Capgemini sees 

three big impediments to success. 

The first is that the different AI initiatives 

aren’t necessarily focused 

on the right use cases or that these 

use cases aren’t aligned to the organization’s 

strategic objectives and 

therefore cannot scale from a business 

perspective. 

The second problem is that it is still 

too difficult for IT departments to 

put AI solutions into production, often 

either because their data landscape 

is not managed well enough 

for the right data to be used in a 

recurrent manner or because their 

cloud strategy hasn’t been fully 

implemented (see “Top Down: Why 

AI Initiatives Need CIO Support” on 

page 15). 

AI solutions are sometimes doomed 

to stay in proof-of-concept hell for 

an unreasonable amount of time, 

Thieullent explains, before making 

it into production, where they are 

fully integrated into the IT landscape 

in a recurrent manner to 

serve business users. 

The third impediment, she says, 

is that organizations still haven’t 

completely figured out what the 

right operating model is for AI to 

“work” at scale for their teams. For 

instance, she notes, they need to 

think through how to programmanage 

the initiatives, how to fund 

them, and how to properly measure 

and recognize tangible success and 

business outcomes. 

Implementors also need to think 

about how to prioritize the next set 

20 

There needs 

to be a single 

point of truth to 

avoid duplication, 

stale data, 

and silos. 

Stephane Rion 

Teradata 

Finding the Right 

Framework 

A clear AI strategy 

roadmap defined by the 

business stakeholders 

and the data science 

team is crucial for the 

smooth deployment 

of successful AI prototypes 

into production. 

“Don’t just jump into AI 

for the sake of jumping 

into AI,” says Teradata’s 

Stephane Rion. 

#1 

Consumer 

Trial/ 

Samples 

DISRUPTIVE 

TECHNOLOGY 

Discover 

Sales Data 

Scan Data 

Market 

Economic 

Data 

Assortments 

Display Space/ 

Equipment 

Fast Load 

Many Data Types, 

Sources 

Pre-built 

Analytics, 

Visualizations 

Product Portfolio 

Transformation 

Marketing 

Messaging, 

Brand 

Campaign/ 

Coordination 

COGNITIVE LEARNING 

GROWTH STRATEGIES IDENTIFIED 

Consumer 

360 o Data 

Social 

Feedback 

Data 

LEVERAGE INSIGHT 

In Segments, Market to 

Cross sell, Upsell, Replenish 

REPLICATE SUCCESS 

In Profiled Stores, Segments, 

Markets, Campaigns 

PROFITABLE GROWTH 

FUELS SUCCESS 

Pinpoint investments 

Meet 

consumer 

needs 

Improved Rank 

to #1 in Sales 

DATA 

Decision 

confidence 

Analyze 

Incorporate 

multiple 

data types 

and sources 

Improved 

Margin 

Predictive 

Models 

Best Practice 

Success— 

Customers, 

Channels, etc. 

Market 

Basket 

A ty 

Analysis 

>2% 

Package Size/ 

Configurations 

Trade 

Promotions/ 

Pricing 

Predict 

OPEN SOURCE 

ANALYTICS 

Micro target 

growth 

investments 

+$$$ 

RESULTS 

MULTIPLIED 

nPath 

Binning 

C-Filter 

Success 

Multiplied 

$ Saved 

ROI 

Leverage 

proven, 

predictive 

analytics 

Share 

Growth 

source ©: 2018 Teradata Corporation 

of use cases, how to build the right 

skills, and how to harness the necessary 

transformation of the workforce. 

Solving these three big aspects 

of scale – business adoption, 

production-grade technology, and 

operating model for AI at scale – 

will be conditional for AI to become 

fully mainstream in the next 12 to 18 

months; and organizations that will 

succeed in this will become clear 

winners in their market, Thieullent 

believes. 

A Single Point of Truth 

Rion at Teradata warns that, as a 

practical matter, a strong data foundation 

is vital to take advantage 

of AI. “This means the data needs 

to be in the right format so that it 

can be exploitable by the data science 

or other analytics team. There 

needs to be a single point of truth 

to avoid data duplication, stale data, 

and silos, and there also needs to be 

enough of it. Volume and variety of 

data is crucial to build performant 

machine-learning-based solutions,” 

he says. 

In addition to this, a clear AI strategy 

roadmap defining some simple use 

cases to start with is vital. “These 

should quickly provide returns on 

investment and are typically defined 

by the business stakeholders 

and the data science team through 

workshops and discussions,” he 

maintains. Finally, a robust methodology 

designed by data architects 

and the development team to 

ensure the smooth deployment of 

successful AI prototypes into production 

is also key to avoid delays 

or even potential failure, Rion adds. 

Above all: “Don’t just jump into AI 

for the sake of jumping into AI. First 

consider where it could have a real 

impact in your organization,” Schulz 

of StorageIO advises. “Look at some 

of the easier entry points. The leading 

cloud providers such as Azure 

and AWS [Amazon Web Services] offer 

many powerful cognitive AI and 

machine-learning tools that can give 

an organization a good start without 

making a huge investment,” he concludes.

Accelerating Industry 4.0 

Scalable Industrial and Healthcare IoT Platforms 

Across Edge and Cloud


In AI We Trust 

When and How Should AI 

explain ITS Decisions? 

As artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly makes decisions, there are growing 

concerns around AI decision-making, and how it reaches its answers. 

n By Sam Genway 

AI can be complex. Unlike 

traditional algorithms, AI 

does not follow a set of 

predefined rules. Instead, 

they learn to recognize patterns 

– such as when a component of a 

machine will fail or whether a transaction 

is fraudulent – by building 

their own rules from training data. 

Once an AI model is shown to give 

the right answers, it is set loose in 

the real world. 

However, getting the right answer 

does not necessarily mean it was 

reached in the right way. An AI model 

could be successfully trained to recognize, 

for instance, the difference 

between wolves and huskies. However, 

it might later transpire that the 

AI model really learned to tell the dif- 

22 

Right now, 

completely 

automating 

decisions is 

considered a 

step too far. 

Sam Genway 

Tessella 

ference based on whether there was 

snow in the background. 

This approach will work most the 

time, but as soon as it needs to spot a 

source ©: Russell Publishing Limited 

husky anywhere outside of its natural 

habitat, it will presumably fail. If we 

rely on AI (or indeed humans) being 

right for the wrong reasons, it limits 

where they can work effectively. 

We may instinctively feel that any machine 

decision must be understandable, 

but that’s not necessarily the case. 

We must distinguish between trust 

(whether we are confident that our AI 

gets the right answer) and explainability 

(how it reached that answer). We 

always need to have a level of trust 

demonstrated when using an AI system, 

but only sometimes do we need 

to understand how it got there. 

Take an AI model that decides whether 

a machine needs maintenance to 

avoid a failure. If we can show that the 

AI is consistently right, we don’t even

Says Who? 

As AI turns to solving 

problems further from 

human experience, the 

utility of explanations 

will surely be called 

into question. Concerns 

around how explainable 

these decisions are 

bound to grow. 

stand how the AI model functions in 

its entirety. For example, users of an 

AI model which classifies animals in a 

zoo may want to drill down into how a 

tiger is classified. This can tell them the 

information that it uses to say what is 

a tiger (perhaps the stripes, face, etc.), 

but not how it classifies other animals, 

or how it works generally. This allows 

you to use a complex AI model, but focus 

down into local models that drive 

specific outputs where needed. 

need to know what features in the 

data it used to reach that decision. Of 

course, not all decisions will be correct, 

and that holds whether it’s a human 

or a machine making the decision. 

If AI gets 80% of calls on machine 

maintenance right, compared to 60% 

for human judgement, then it’s likely 

a benefit worth having, even if the 

decision-making isn’t perfect, or fully 

understood. 

On the other hand, there are many 

situations where we do need to know 

how the decision was made. There 

may be legal or business requirements 

to explain why a decision was taken, 

such as why a loan was rejected. Banks 

need to be able to see what specific 

features in their data, or which combination 

of features, led to the final decision, 

for instance to grant a loan. 

How Do We Know When 

AI Decisions Are Right? 

In other cases, it is important to know 

why the decision is the right one; we 

wouldn’t want a cancer diagnosis tool 

to have the same flawed reasoning 

as the husky AI. Medicine in particular 

presents ethical gray areas. Let’s 

imagine an AI model is shown to recommend 

the right life-saving medical 

treatment more often than doctors 

do. Should we go with the AI even if 

we don’t understand how it reached 

the decision? Right now, completely 

automating decisions like this is considered 

a step too far. 

And explainability is not just about 

how AI reaches the right answer. 

There may be times when we know 

an AI model is wrong, for example if it 

develops a bias against women, without 

knowing why. Explaining how 

the AI system has exploited inherent 

biases in the data could give us the 

understanding we need to improve 

the model and remove the bias, rather 

than throwing the whole thing out. 

As with anything in AI, there are few 

easy answers, but asking how explainable 

you need your AI to be is a good 

starting point. 

If complete model transparency is vital, 

then a white-box (as opposed to 

a black-box) approach is important. 

Transparent models which follow 

simple sets of rules allow us to explain 

which factors were used to make any 

decision, and how they were used. 

But there are trade-offs. Limiting AI 

to simple rules also limits complexity, 

which limits its ability to solve 

complex problems, such as beating 

world champions at complex games. 

Where complexity brings greater accuracy, 

there is a balance to be struck 

between the best possible result and 

understanding that result. 

A compromise may be the ability to 

get some understanding of particular 

decisions, without needing to under- 

As AI turns to 

increasingly 

challenging 

problems 

further from 

human experience, 

there will 

still have to be 

human experts 

who can help 

qualify the 

explanations. 

Who Should AI Be 

Explainable To? 

There is also the question of “explainable 

to whom?” Explanations about 

an animal classifier can be understood 

by anyone: most people could appreciate 

that if a husky is being classified 

as a husky because there is snow in 

the background, the AI is right for the 

wrong reasons. But an AI which classifies, 

say, cancerous tissue would need 

to be assessed by an expert pathologist. 

For many AI challenges, such as 

automating human processes, there 

will have to be human experts who 

can help qualify the explanations. 

However, as AI turns to increasingly 

challenging problems further from 

human experience, the utility of explanations 

will surely come into question. 

In the early days of mainstream AI, 

many were satisfied with a black box 

which gave answers. As AI is used 

more and more for applications 

where decisions need to be explainable, 

the ability to look under the 

hood of the AI model and understand 

how those decisions are reached will 

become more important. 

There is no single definition of explainability: 

it can be provided at 

many different levels depending on 

need and problem complexity. Organizations 

need to consider issues 

such as ethics, regulations, and customer 

demand alongside the need 

for optimization – in relation to the 

business problem they are trying to 

solve – before deciding whether and 

how their AI decisions should be explainable. 

Only then can they make 

informed decisions about the role of 

explainability when developing their 

AI systems. 

23

Smart Business Business Forecasting 

24

Business Forecasting 

Rethinking Risk 

Forecasting, as every manager knows, is essentially a guessing game but, 

now, in the age of IoT and AI, the ancient art of predicting the future 

based on past experience is being replaced by forward-looking strategies 

and scenarios. The magic phrase is “risk thinking.” 

n By Gordon Feller 

Every decision we take today 

affects our future. Yet, 

whether we are a bank, corporation, 

or an individual, 

our decision-making is primarily 

guided by our attempts to forecast 

our future. This is the case despite 

the fact that we know most forecasts 

do not actually come true. 

This predicament spans nearly every 

commercial and noncommercial 

sector from finance, insurance, 

energy, and transportation to local 

and federal municipalities. We 

know that we cannot predict the future 

based on past experience and 

until now scenario generation was a 

guessing game. 

There is a need to replace forecasting 

with risk thinking and to 

compare risk under alternative forward-looking 

strategies and across 

institutions, stress-testing decisions 

under a well-defined and consistent 

set of scenarios. This will save money, 

time, resources, and potentially 

lives. This is especially relevant in 

today’s highly volatile world. 

This idea is not new, but it certainly 

was when Ron Dembo started Algorithmics 

(now owned by IBM) 30 

years ago with a vision that a bank 

should be able to measure and 

manage its risk at an enterprise level. 

Stress-testing was not in the dictionary 

then and no banks had an 

enterprise risk function. He pushed 

for stress-testing at a system-wide 

level even then. 

Looking Ahead 

Today, it has been widely accepted 

that stress-testing is necessary to 

determine the systemic health of 

banks. Many regulators have adopted 

it in a form similar to the Federal 

Reserve CCAR stress tests that are 

carried out annually today. Unfor- 

AI is particularly 

suited to 

situations 

where there 

is significant 

uncertainty. 

Looking Ahead 

Regulators, including 

the U.S. Federal Reserve, 

have adopted 

stress-testing to 

replace conventional 

forecasting methodologies. 

Ron Dembo 

Riskthinking 

source ©: Federal Reserve 

tunately, this has not filtered down 

to corporations. Just witness how 

this could have helped GE (as well as 

their investors) had they tested their 

financing strategy. 

It is also accepted by the Financial 

Stability Board of the G20 which has 

initiated a very successful initiative, 

the Task Force on Climate-related 

Financial Disclosures (TCFD), to 

get companies, banks, sovereign 

funds, fund managers, and others 

to measure their financial risk due to 

climate change. Theirs is a perfect 

case for stress-testing because of 

the complexity of measuring exposure 

in a setting where past data is 

very sparse and potentially not useful, 

the horizons are far out, and the 

impacts profound. 

Royal Dutch Shell was using scenario 

analysis in the 1980s to help form 

and test their strategies and many 

companies tried to emulate it. 

source ©: Flickr 

25

Smart Business Business Forecasting 

However, there was one fatal problem 

in their methodology, which 

could explain the poor pickup from 

others – the stress tests were designed 

by individuals in the company, 

with all their biases, and could 

not be applied systematically across 

industries. Without a systematic, 

consistent algorithm for generating 

scenarios, this meant it could not 

spread easily. 

Weather Report 

AI is particularly suited 

to situations where 

there is significant 

uncertainty, the data 

is sparse, distributed 

worldwide, and the outcomes 

are potentially 

huge – for example, as 

encountered in weather 

forecasting and predicting 

climate change. 

source ©: riskthinking.ai 

moods of markets. Dembo’s algorithm 

and risk-thinking methodology 

captures sentiment using artificial 

intelligence (AI). The amount 

of data an AI can gather worldwide 

and analyze using automatic, natural-language-processing 

translation 

is staggering. 

Dembo’s proposed methodology 

aggregates this data from all available 

sources and uses machinelearning 

models to capture the sentiment 

in voice recordings, video, 

and scholarly articles from respected 

institutions, in order to build a 

picture of the risk factors that affect 

a specific industry. This data is analyzed 

and interpreted and is used 

to construct the data required to 

generate forward-looking risk scenarios. 

This could not have been 

done even a few years ago and is a 

result of the tremendous progress 

that has been made in developing 

deep-learning models in AI. 

AI is particularly suited to situations 

where there is significant uncertainty, 

the data is sparse, distributed 

worldwide, and the outcomes are 

potentially huge – for example, as 

encountered in climate change and 

cyber risk. There is every reason to 

believe that these problems will 

be exacerbated by a very volatile 

climate and that risk systems will 

undergo significant evolution in the 

face of AI. Dembo says his company 

aims to capitalize on this. 

Spanning the Gap 

That is where Ron Dembo has reappeared 

today, with an algorithm 

that can generate a “spanning set” 

of scenarios, one that covers both 

very good and bad events. He 

claims to have solved the problem 

of automated, consistent scenario 

generation in an elegant way which 

can be easily explained to boards 

and nontechnical management in a 

wide variety of institutions. 

Dembo says his nascent company, 

Riskthinking.ai, will soon be offering 

a product that proves the concept. 

The power of this is that it could 

offer a way to compare companies 

within industry sectors against each 

other over a wide variety of consistent 

stress tests without any single 

company exposing its proprietary 

business secrets. 

The Mood of the Market 

The key missing ingredient in risk 

management and stress-testing 

is the need for an effective way to 

capture market sentiment, which is 

often a precursor to a risky event. 

Essentially, it’s about judging the 

Far Horizons, 

Big Impact 

The G20’s Financial 

Stability Board has 

initiated a Task Force 

on Climate-related 

Financial Disclosures 

(TCFD) which provides 

a perfect case 

for stress-testing of 

the complexity of the 

financial risk due to 

climate change. 

source ©: TCFD 

26

AI Discovery Day 

Discover, create, Differentiate 

Discover new technologies, applications and solutions for Artificial 

Intelligence and Machine Learning in one single day 

register now! 

avnet-silica.com/ai-discovery-days

Smart Business IoT in Mining 

Europe built its Industrial 

Revolution in the 19th and 

20th centuries by converting 

natural resources into valuable 

new products like steel, chemicals, 

and fertilizers. Now, as some 

pundits see a looming Industry 4.0 

powered by the insights offered 

through connected IoT devices, 

one of the continent’s fundamental 

industries is beginning to adapt to 

changing technology. 

Mines operate in almost every European 

country, extracting coal, iron 

ore, bauxite, kaolin clay, gravel, and 

Soon, most 

mines are going 

to have Wi-Fi 

mesh networks 

with very good 

connectivity. 

Daniel Palmer 

COO, Datacloud 

source ©: Datacloud 

many other valuable commodities. 

The industry has adopted significant 

mechanization over the last 50 

years but, until recently, was slower 

moving in its adoption of IT. The 

rise of IoT in other industries has 

spurred new thinking about the 

role of technology for enhancing 

efficiency, safety, and compliance 

with environmental regulations. 

Digging a Hole 

Although it has the potential to be 

applied to mine safety to detect 

dangerous gas or indications of 

28

IoT in Mining 

Deep connectivity 

Almost a mile below ground in an iron mine in northern Sweden, 

human operators control what is going on and plan their attack on valuable 

seams of iron ore. But unlike the hands-on extraction of decades past, 

these mining professionals are sitting in an office a thousand 

kilometers away, relying on IoT sensors, cameras, underground Long-Term 

Evolution (LTE) networks, and a powerful private cloud to guide 

their blasting and tunneling in real time. 

n By Eamon Earls 

source ©: Boliden 

The company deploys sensors 

on drill strings to gather data and 

combine it with preexisting measurements 

to inform blasting plans. 

Datacloud works closely with European 

mining companies, chiefly 

those headquartered in London, 

that often have the most technologically 

sophisticated operations 

in very large mines in Canada or 

Australia. In addition to sensors on 

drill strings, vehicle and equipment 

manufacturers are at the head of 

the pack, with heavy-haul trucks 

and excavators being increasa 

potential tunnel collapse, IoT is 

mainly being used to help mines 

plan and become more efficient. 

“Basically, companies drill hundreds 

of thousands of holes in the ground, 

fill them with explosive, blow it up, 

and then dig the fragmented rock 

pile. Globally, mining companies 

are responsible for $400bn a year 

in operational spending [much of 

it on basic extraction],” says Daniel 

Palmer, chief operating officer of 

Datacloud, an IoT services company 

focused on improving the characterization 

of the geology of mines. 

Drilling for Data 

Sensors on drill 

strings gather data 

and combine it with 

existing measurement 

systems to 

improve blasting 

plans. GPS tracking 

also makes for better 

machine health. 

source ©: Datacloud 

29

Smart Business IoT in Mining 

source ©: Ericsson 

ingly equipped with GPS tracking 

and machine-health tracking. 

Whether for fleet management or 

characterizing an area’s geology, IoT 

is also starting to make its way deep 

below ground following its initial 

adoption in near-surface, open-pit 

mines. “Most mines are going to 

have a Wi-Fi mesh network, with 

connectivity being pushed into every 

corner in the mine. We assume 

most mines are already going to 

have pretty good connectivity in 

the pit [with GPS, Wi-Fi, and LTE connectivity],” 

says Palmer. 

Smart Bolt 

Rock bolts stabilize mining 

tunnels by distributing stress 

evenly. For Ericsson, a 

team at Luleå University of 

Technology developed a bolt 

containing sensors and electronics 

that senses stress 

changes and vibrations and 

can warn of future failures. 

Digging Deeper 

As current seams are mined 

out, mining companies 

need to dig deeper. LKAB is 

teaming up with ABB, Epiroc, 

Combitech, and Volvo Group 

to set a new world standard 

for sustainable mining at 

great depths. 

Reaching New Depths 

Sweden and Norway may be the European 

hubs of IoT in mining, with 

deep, advanced iron mines above 

the Arctic Circle. Swedish equipment 

makers like Sandvik and Epiroc 

are rigging their machines with 

IoT devices while a telecom team 

at Luleå University of Technology, 

working with Ericsson, produced 

sensor-equipped “smart” rock 

bolts. Swedish state-owned iron 

mining and processing giant LKAB 

(Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara AB) has 

put the technology into practice. 

Founded in the 1890s, LKAB operates 

mines that stretch more than 

a kilometer below ground in Kiruna 

and Malmberget, as well as owning 

ports and mineral processing facilities. 

“[IoT] isn’t some fluffy buzzword 

from the industry like Industry 4.0 or 

digitization. To us, it’s a very tangible, 

practical thing we use on a daily 

basis on our way to fully automated 

underground mines, which is where 

we’re headed,” said Tim Peco, development 

engineer at LKAB Wassara, 

who helps to lead the company’s 

future drilling system initiative. The 

goal of the project is to create an advanced 

drill rig capable of more efficient 

curved and steered drill holes 

with sensors and connectivity. 

“We are 1,000 kilometers south of 

the rig [which is almost a kilometer 

below ground and controlled from 

Stockholm]. For the moment the 

IoT deployed on this rig is simply a 

two-way link with surveying and 

communication systems. There is 

a steering and real-time surveying 

system,” Peco explained. 

LKAB was early to adopt Wi-Fi deep 

below ground and now has LTE as 

well. Although the rig is run from 

Stockholm, eventually the command 

center for such machines will 

be in Kune closer to the mine site. 

Data from surveying computers 

gets uploaded by Wi-Fi to a locally 

hosted database and eventually 

passed off to a cloud service within 

LKAB’s intranet for processing in an 

Aspen Tech data analytics system. 

LKAB isn’t alone in the Swedish 

mining sector as a user of IoT. Boliden, 

another major iron mining 

firm, is using Aqua Ductus’ IoT water 

monitoring equipment to track 

potential mine runoff into streams 

and Sandvik is operating an IoT test 

mine in Tampere, Finland, using the 

underground-capable Nokia Digital 

Automation Platform. 

Gaining Experience 

IoT in European mines isn’t restricted 

to Scandinavia. In 2014, Canadian 

company Dundee Precious Metals 

managed to achieve a self-reported 

400 percent production increase in 

its Chelopech gold mine in Bulgaria 

by adding sensors to conveyor belts 

source ©: LKAB 

30

Business Applications 

Mine 

operations 

optimization 

Workforce 

efficiency 

and safety 

Asset 

optimization 

Digital Value Platforms 

Industrial 

automation 

Cognitive 

analytics 

Digital 

operations 

Multi-cloud 

Local 

edge 

Distributed 

edge 

Hybrid 

cloud 

Dynamic 

Security 

High Performance Networking 

Dedicated deep connectivity 

(wireless/wired) 

Smart 

network fabric 

and lighting, and RFID tags to workers’ 

helmets for better asset tracking. 

Dundee reportedly gained valuable 

experience during the implementation, 

such as resolving radio-signal 

scatter caused by large deposits of 

quartz in the mine shafts, which it 

subsequently applied to its mine 

in Armenia. Back in 2008, the European 

Commission created the Raw 

Materials Initiative with 26 corporate 

and university participants focused 

on improving raw material 

efficiency and achieved a 17 percent 

increase in some deep deposit 

mines. 

Mining Magazine and Mining Journal 

(both published by Aspermont Print 

Publications) are slated to co-host a 

Future of Mining EMEA conference 

in London, during June 2020, with 

planned sessions on IoT, automation, 

and analytics. 

Going Underground 

IoT is gaining a seat at the table in 

European mining circles but still has 

significant room for growth. “One 

issue that underground mines face 

when monitoring critical processes 

is that the specific asset being 

monitored is located underground. 

This can make sensor installation 

difficult. For example, attaching 

condition-monitoring sensors on 

a conveyor that is deep underground 

requires sending an engineer 

underground, which can be 

expensive,” says Jeffrey den Outer, 

business development manager at 

Semiotic Labs, a Dutch producer of 

motor-monitoring equipment. 

“The mining industry in general 

can be quite conservative when it 

comes to adopting new technology. 

This means it is important to 

focus on results and ROI as quickly 

as possible after installation, therefore 

helping to quickly build trust in 

the product,” he adds. 

“[IoT] is invaluable to us … Planners 

sitting many miles away can 

send plans to execute. Someone 

sitting in an office with three rigsteering 

systems can operate three 

machines. This will only get more 

Mining the Future 

Future X architecture 

for mining by Nokia Bell 

Labs aims at creating 

an intelligent network to 

help mining companies 

adapt to demand, control 

operational costs, and 

boost worker safety. 

Meeting of Minds 

Heads of mine operations, 

tech companies, 

and service start-ups 

meet up regularly at the 

About the Future of Mining 

Conference, held last 

year in London. 

necessary to have the deeper we 

go and the more environmental 

restrictions and norms we have to 

abide by,” LKAB’s Peco says. 

“Probably the highest value place 

for IoT is nuclear reactors or space 

exploration where you can’t send 

people – but mining is a close second. 

Commercial or retail work can 

be done by a person cost-effectively 

but with a location in the middle 

of Siberia where you need to fly 

people in and out, or potentially 

hazardous air and temperatures 

thousands of meters underground, 

IoT is absolutely worth the investment,” 

says Palmer at Datacloud. 

source ©: EMEA source ©: Nokia 

31

Smart Business Blockchain Smart Contracts 

Blockchain Smart Contracts 

Mutually 

Reinforcing Power 

Two young technologies are poised to remake business processes around the globe. 

Ubiquitous data access and control technologies (IoT) are now being combined 

with the “guarantee” of distributed ledger (aka blockchain) 

to produce startling new business opportunities. 

n By Alan Earls 

32

33


source ©: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX 

Blockchain, also known as 

distributed ledger technology 

(DLT), and the Internet 

of Things entered the popular 

lexicon at roughly the same time, 

and they have both been advancing 

rapidly from bleeding-edge, experimental 

concepts to broad, mainstream 

implementations. 

Insurance organizations, for instance, 

have found in blockchain a 

basis for an entirely new approach 

to their business and risk model. And 

organizations ranging from consumer 

goods retailers to large industrial 

concerns have found IoT devices can 

provide real-time intelligence that 

has never before been available. 

The combination of IoT and blockchain, 

by comparison, is still in its 

infancy but pioneers across the 

continent and beyond have been 

changing all that. For example, in 

Paris, public infrastructure is tracked 

and managed using embedded IoT 

sensors while blockchain makes 

possible a transmission network 

that keeps the data “honest” and 

immutable. 

For IoT technology to work, it demands 

access to a substantial 

amount of data. “Managing that 

data via a blockchain system makes 

for not only more secure processing, 

but also faster, more efficient, 

and more accurate recall of data,” 

says Monica Eaton-Cardone, cofounder 

and chief operating officer 

No technology 

is perfect. 

The goal is to 

find tools that 

address one 

another’s shortcomings. 

Monica Eaton-Cardon 

COO, Chargebacks911 

Disappearing Benches 

Park benches which were 

designed back in 1850 

are a fixture of Parisian 

life and are often stolen. 

Today, they are being 

equipped with data 

beacons and Bluetooth 

to keep track of their 

whereabouts. 

source ©: WWD / Penske Media Corporation 

of the global fraud prevention and 

chargeback mitigation company 

Chargebacks911, based in London. 

“The fact of the matter is that no 

technology is perfect; there will always 

be certain vulnerabilities,” she 

adds. The goal is to find tools that 

are complementary, and which address 

one another’s shortcomings, 

and blockchain technology and IoT 

fit this description. 

According to Eaton-Cardone, the 

two concepts are complementary 

in two ways: blockchain secures 

data, while IoT technologies enable 

smooth, seamless connection 

between data points. For instance, 

you can store customer information, 

tracking data, and order histories 

using a blockchain system. This 

data can then be recallable using an 

IoT-enabled system to facilitate improved 

and less error-prone tracking 

of items from one point in the 

process to the next. 

Smart Benches 

In the case of Paris, the approach is 

even more leading edge, with something 

very old and very new. The 

old part is the historic Parisian park 

bench which was first introduced in 

1850. The design has long been a 

fixture of Parisian life, nearly as iconic 

as the red telephone booths that 

served the UK for so long. Today, IoT 

and networking company Nodle 

and manufacturer Groupe Saint 

Léonard are building on the iconic 

design with data-transmitting beacons 

that will effectively assist city 

managers in tracking these historic 

assets. The result of their efforts was 

designs for “smart” benches and 

other urban elements for public 

use, each equipped with Bluetooth 

Low Energy technology to allow 

transmission of real-time data to 

city officials about bench locations 

and possible movement of benches 

between parks over time. Nodle 

has worked to deploy 3,000 of the 

smart benches and other public infrastructure 

in parks as well as in 68 

Métro stations. 

What is particularly unusual about 

the whole project is how blockchain 

takes Low Power Bluetooth and 

gives it range. The secret is Nodle’s 

Citizen Network – the willing provision 

of data collection and transmission 

services by mobile device owners 

who join in voluntarily. How does 

that work? Self-interest. According 

to company founder Micha Benoliel, 

who got his start in France but is now 

based in Silicon Valley, the secret is 

the company’s Nodl coins, built on 

distributed ledger technology, that 

pay participants a nominal sum for 

participating, eventually earning 

the right to modest but worthwhile 

rewards. He explains that with this 

simple concept the Nodle network 

is able to dramatically reduce the 

costs of providing IoT device communications. 

Present in some 50 countries, the 

company has built a network for 

34

Putting IoT and DLT “On the Road” 

source ©: blog.iota.org 

■ Cross-Border Tracking 

The Iota Foundation is currently investing efforts and resources in collaboration 

with international organizations to test how its new IoT and 

DLT-enabled approaches to global trading can improve cross-border 

management, track consignments, and manage trade certifications 

between governments and customs points. More immediately, the organization 

has set up a program with Jaguar Land Rover through which 

drivers will be able to earn cryptocurrency and make payments on the 

move using innovative connected car services and by using its Smart 

Wallet. According to Michele Nati, a technology analyst with Iota, owners 

can earn credits by enabling their cars to report useful road condition 

data and then redeem the rewards for payment of tolls, electric car 

charging, or other goods. The technology has been undergoing trials at 

the Jaguar Land Rover software engineering base in Shannon, Republic 

of Ireland. 

connecting and collecting data via 

hundreds of thousands of devices 

and smartphones collaborating to 

provide Internet access. The same 

NODL coin mechanism also provides 

an incentive for app developers to 

monetize their work via the Nodle 

Software Development Kit (SDK) 

and earn NODL coins as a reward for 

helping the network to grow. 

source ©: IOTA Foundation 

Reinventing Commerce 

Beyond Paris and the current technology 

deployed by Nodle, blockchain/DLTs 

and the Internet of 

Things are highly intertwined, says 

Michele Nati, a lead technology analyst 

with the Iota Foundation, which 

is developing an open-source distributed 

ledger for IOT. He believes 

that DLT and IoT can work together 

to deliver a new form of commerce. 

Blockchain can already address 

some of the problems that are currently 

affecting IoT, in particular in 

the consumer market, he says. Convenience 

for IoT devices, especially 

in smart home and other consumer 

sectors, often comes at the price of 

security risks and privacy threats, 

says Nati. Denial-of-service attacks 

initiated by IoT devices are on the 

Convenience 

for IoT devices 

often comes 

at the price of 

security risks. 

Michele Nati 

Iota Foundation 

rise. Nati claims that most of them 

are the result of those “unaware 

and uneducated to cybersecurity 

best practices,” noting that most of 

the consumer devices are used with 

their default password and do not 

receive regular firmware updates. 

Blockchain should limit the risk 

of poorly maintained IoT devices 

becoming security and privacy 

threats, he maintains. Further down 

the road, building IoT devices with 

decentralized identity linked to 

their owners’ identities will allow 

IoT devices to transact on behalf of 

their users, he adds. 

The recently demonstrated Iota and 

Jaguar Land Rover partnership has 

proved how IoT-enabled devices 

can become much more powerful 

when enabled with a verified digital 

identity, thus enabling them to generate 

money on behalf of their owners 

and users, he says (see sidebar). 

35


Blockchain in 

supply chains 

can increase 

transparency. 

source ©: OpenBay 

Marc Fleury 

CEO, OpenBay 

The broader implications of 

blockchain and IoT may also become 

quite profound in regard 

to the operation of supply chains, 

according to Paris-based JBoss 

creator Marc Fleury. Fleury is an 

advisor to Michael Yuan, CEO of 

OpenBay, a decentralized global 

marketplace. He is also an investor 

in Second State, which developed 

the middleware for smart 

contracts used to operate Open- 

Bay. “Blockchain in supply chain 

management can increase transparency 

and verify authentication, 

which can limit fraud [such 

as counterfeit goods],” he says. 

Enhancing Capabilities 

Online marketplaces, the primary 

type of multichannel e-commerce 

systems, are ripe for streamlining, 

he believes. In addition to enhancing 

capabilities like ordering and 

auctioning, blockchain technology 

can better enable customer 

transactions to be processed by 

the marketplace operator or administrator 

and then be delivered 

and fulfilled by the participating 

retailers or wholesalers, he says. 

“Given that mobile and IoT devices 

are now ubiquitous, the future of 

e-commerce depends on safe, 

robust, and fast mobile applications,” 

says Fleury. Moreover, by 

linking IoT data and blockchain 

technology, it can add value to 

businesses through legal contracts, 

with blockchain providing 

authentication. 

36 

Countering the 

Chargeback Threat 

Credit card chargebacks 

represent a real and growing 

financial threat to merchants, 

costing them both 

merchandise and revenue. 

Using a blockchain system, 

Chargebacks911 stores customer 

information, tracking 

data, and order histories and 

uses an IoT-enabled system 

to facilitate improved and 

less error-prone tracking of 

items from one point in the 

process to the next. 

Food companies 

can identify 

perished 

goods and 

thus reduce 

wastage. 

Ruslan Gavrilyuk 

CEO, TeqAtlas 

Furthermore, notes Ruslan Gavrilyuk, 

cofounder and president of 

TeqAtlas, based in Zug, Switzerland, 

using IoT devices, paired with 

Blockchain for supply chain, can 

also help businesses to track and 

report the conditions of goods. 

Companies operating within the 

source ©: TeqAtlas 

food industry, for example, can 

benefit from reduced wastage 

since they can identify perished 

goods or those on the verge of 

rotting. Smart sensors that provide 

real-time visibility of resources 

and products across the entire 

supply journey reduce the need 

for buffer stock, Gavrilyuk says. 

Proving Your Case 

Product condition and other metrics 

can then be visible in real 

time to all vested parties. “By incorporating 

blockchain into the 

process, proving and paying out 

claims and refunds is simplified,” 

says Gavrilyuk. 

In short, the IoT–blockchain combination 

means fraud claims can 

be eliminated and accountability 

ensured through data record 

time-stamping and unique hashing, 

he adds. 

source ©: Chargebacks911 and Kount / The State of Chargebacks 2018

YOUR THINGS HAVE A 

STORY TO TELL – 

ARE YOU LISTENING? 

THE INTERNET OF THINGS (IOT) IS MADE UP OF BILLIONS 

OF SMART DEVICES, LIKE SENSORS AND CAMERAS AND 

CONTROLLERS, ALL USING WIRELESS TECHNOLOGY 

TO COMMUNICATE WITH US AND WITH EACH OTHER 

WHY 

CONNECTING TO THE 

INTERNET OF THINGS 

SHOULD TOP YOUR 

PROJECT LIST 

Currently, there are around 15 billion devices in the IoT, 

with 5.5 million new ones connecting each day. And the 

insights gleaned from the data provided by all those 

connections is rapidly reshaping the world we live in. 

From self-monitoring restrooms to self-adjusting HVAC 

systems, the IoT is empowering new capabilities and 

opening up new possibilities. 

Whether you’re looking to cost-effectively automate an 

existing structure, or build a smart new one from the 

ground up, the IoT empowers you to monitor, manage, 

and maintain all aspects of your building that impact 

operations, energy, and comfort. 

intel.com/iot

Smart Business Interview: Professor Dieter Kempf 

Interview with Professor Dieter Kempf 

“Germany is 

Well-positioned” 

SI talked with Professor Dieter Kempf, the president of the 

German Industrial Association (BDI), about small to 

medium-sized businesses (Mittelstand) and the race to lead in IIoT. 

Germans talk a lot about “Industry 

4.0,” whereas Anglo-Saxons usually 

prefer “Industrial IoT” and believe 

we are still stuck in the Third Industrial 

Revolution. Do Germans count 

differently? 

There is a whole bunch of idioms that 

are used internationally to characterize 

what we are experiencing today, 

from “Industrial IoT” to “Industrie du 

futur” and, yes, “Industry 4.0.” They all 

describe the transformation caused by 

the networking of industrial production. 

No matter how you count, this is 

a true revolution; one that is leading to 

a unique degree of flexibility in manufacturing 

as well as empowering a 

whole new range of services. German 

industry needs to unlock the resulting 

value-creation potential if it wants 

to maintain its position as one of the 

world’s leading industrial economies. 

A recent study commissioned by 

Deutsche Telekom concludes that 

many German SMEs are going about 

IoT transformation “with the handbrake 

on.” The main reasons seem 

to be security and privacy concerns 

and, above all, their own employees, 

who they believe lack motivation and 

the necessary skills and know-how. 

In fact, digitization is way up there 

on the list of priorities amongst the 

Implementation of IoT Projects in German Industry 

Discrete Manufacturing 

Process-oriented production 

Industry of Things 

German companies 

focus less on new 

business opportunities 

and more on 

securing their 

market position and 

optimizing internal 

processes, a recent 

IDC study suggests. 

Logistics 

Trade 

Utilities 

20% 

19% 

24% 

30% 

German Mittelstand. I know tons of 

examples of small and medium-sized 

businesses that are putting Industry 

4.0 into practice as we speak and are 

poised to take a leading role in connected 

manufacturing. This is not 

to say there aren’t serious problems 

that SMEs need to overcome. Unlike 

large enterprises, some of which are 

founding separate companies to handle 

their digitization activities, SMEs 

have limited resources with which to 

achieve digital transformation. That 

means they face a whole set of challenges 

and they require specific advisory 

services tailored to their special 

needs. Policy makers need to focus 

on supporting the Mittelstand in their 

efforts to transition to Industry 4.0. If 

not, small and medium-sized players 

42% 

will struggle to reach the next level of 

technology and, as for their employees, 

I personally feel they are both able 

and willing to play their part. 

One participant is quoted in the 

study as complaining that “manpower 

is hard to get.” He is not alone. 

Do you have a solution? 

Talent shortage is one of the big barriers 

to implementation of Industry 

4.0 in many fields. Enterprises are well 

advised to invest more heavily in training 

and advancement of their own 

people. The German Federal Ministry 

of Economics and Technology, for instance, 

has set out viable pathways for 

companies to follow in preparing their 

workforce for the new job requirements 

in a brochure entitled “Shaping 

source ©: IDC 2019 

38

photo ©: Jörg Carstensen | dpa 

Digital Transformation in Business.” In 

addition, our education system needs 

to keep pace with changes in the work 

environment in the wake of digitization. 

The aim must be to develop digital 

job skills in a targeted way. 

Some 60 percent of German SMEs 

say they already use IoT technologies 

to remotely monitor and control machines, 

vehicles, and plants. Some experts 

jokingly call this “IoT 1.0.” However, 

more complex IoT solution such 

as apps and digital assistants, predictive 

maintenance, augmented and 

virtual reality (AR and VR), or energy 

management are still rare. Do German 

entrepreneurs lack vision – or guts? 

Many companies prefer to invest initially 

in digitizing their existing processes 

to make sure they will remain 

competitive in their established markets. 

A foresighted strategy also requires 

being open to new ideas and 

business models. German companies 

are increasingly investing in digital 

services, and that makes me optimistic. 

Having said that: yes, a little more 

risk appetite and willingness to innovate 

would stand business culture in 

Germany in good stead. 

According to the German Federal 

Statistical Office, Germany ranks 

only fifth in the world with 4,195 

patent applications. That compares 

to China with 41,845 and the US at 

37,595. Even Australia – not exactly 

known as an innovation powerhouse 

– has more, with 4,321. Is Germany 

falling behind in IoT? 

The study you’re quoting doesn’t distinguish 

between consumer products 

and IoT patents in business applications 

– and that really makes a crucial 

difference in judging Germany’s ability 

to compete in the area of IoT. As everyone 

knows, US and Asian companies 

have their forte in the B2C sector. 

In B2B, German companies are among 

the biggest innovation drivers. German 

industry is well-positioned in the 

race to create the Industrial Internet of 

Things (IIoT). 

The KfW Entrepreneurship Monitor 

claims that German founding activity 

“remains low-level.” Does that 

worry you? 

Fortunately, the labor market is running 

smoother than it has for a long 

time, which means there are lots of 

socially protected jobs available. The 

downside is that in times of low unemployment 

many prefer a safe job 

rather than setting out on their own 

– with all the risks that involves. But 

economic success calls for far-sighted 

Policy makers 

need to focus 

on supporting 

the Mittelstand 

in their efforts 

to transition to 

Industry 4.0. 

Professor Dieter Kemp 

President, 

German Industrial 

Association (BDI) 

innovators, be they start-ups or people 

working in the R&D departments 

of established players. We need more 

founders in research and technology 

in this country. We should work 

on our start-up culture. That means 

we also need to improve the framework 

conditions for founders – less 

red tape, more seed capital and, especially, 

more social appreciation of 

outstanding entrepreneurial achievements. 

It’s not all bad news. In 2018, more 

than 216,000 women founded companies 

in Germany. That’s a plus of 

four percent – a glimmer of hope? 

The fact that more and more women 

are taking the plunge and becoming 

founders is a great development. We 

should give them all the help we can 

by creating more counseling services 

for them. In addition, and this is something 

I take very seriously, we need to 

find ways to interest more young girls 

in considering a career in the scientific 

and technical professions. My organization 

actively supports the Girls’ 

Day movement, which gives young 

women and girls a chance to check 

out the many career opportunities 

and degree programs on offer in IT, in 

technical trades, as well as in science 

and technology. 

39

Smart Communications Next-Gen GNSS 

Next-Gen GNSS 

Eyes in the Sky 

For years, different navigation satellite systems, primarily the 

United States’ GPS and Russia’s Glonass, have allowed people and 

organizations to detect their devices and compute locations accurately 

and securely. However, the more that 5G, automated driving, and 

smart cities become mainstream, it’s becoming clear that a broader 

range of location-based applications will need to be supported 

to meet specific market and individual needs. 

n By Steve Feeko * 

40 

*Steve Feeko is an analyst for Telit, a specialist in IoT enablement

The Internet of Things (IoT) is 

steadily becoming the “Internet 

of Everything” as every 

possible object – from 

buildings, utilities, and cars to baby 

bottles, forks, and medication – 

can be connected to networks that 

capture a steady stream of information 

about their use. However, 

none of this growth is possible 

without location awareness provided 

by global navigation satellite 

systems (GNSS). 

Viewed as a utility often taken 

for granted, GNSS enables real- 

time and accurate product tracking, 

telematics, timing, and other 

positioning-enabled, machine-tomachine 

communication. As the 

IoT market continues to expand, 

so will the demands and expectations 

placed on these satellite 

systems. 

Getting IoT off the Ground 

Now that connectivity and mobile 

devices are natural aspects of everyday 

life, more people are expecting 

to stay connected. Whether they, or 

their possessions, are located in a 

remote forest, mountainous environment, 

or the middle of a city lined 

with blocks of skyscrapers, no one 

wants their services disrupted whenever 

a receiver’s line of sight to the 

navigation satellites is blocked. 

The European Union (EU) hoped its 

Galileo satellite navigation system is 

a step toward satisfying evolving IoT 

need and enabling manufacturers 

and developers to create new devices 

and applications that leverage 

stronger GNSS signals. It now looks 

like the EU was right as the chipset 

market is already producing 

41


How Secure Are Satellites? 

Cybercrime in Space 

Unlike their military 

counterparts, civilian 

GNSS systems are 

vulnerable to jamming 

and spoofing. 

This must change. 

Although there is a deepening 

reliance on using a 

global navigation satellite 

system (GNSS) to give position 

and time data, these systems 

are increasingly vulnerable to signal 

disruption. Nation states and some 

non-state actors have developed 

or acquired sophisticated highpower 

jammers, with signal emissions 

frequently registered in Syria, 

Weapons still 

receive the 

lion’s share 

of money for 

research and 

development. 

Miriam Pemberton 

Institute for Policy Studies 

Eastern Ukraine, and North Korea. 

In April 2013, navigation systems of 

South Korean aircraft and mobile 

telephone networks in the South 

Korean capital Seoul were severely 

disrupted by a 50-watt jamming 

source ©: The Solutions Journal 

system apparently transmitting 

from North Korea. 

Due to their orbits at over 2,000 kilometers 

above the Earth, navigation 

satellites are particularly vulnerable 

to jamming. Signals are relatively 

weak compared to most other commercial 

radio signals, which usually 

travel only tens or sometimes a few 

hundred kilometers. Cheap and 

simple jammers that can interfere 

with commercial applications are 

widely available. 

Even more sinister are spoofing devices 

that compromise true GNSS 

data and can manipulate the positional 

and timing information sent 

to receivers. While jamming simply 

blocks navigation devices from receiving 

any signal at all, spoofers 

have the potential to sway decisionmaking 

and actions by generat- 

42

consideration: 

• Assets connected within a network: 

With a geofencing capability, 

companies can manage and 

track their assets remotely in real 

time and be alerted when that asset 

moves. The latest low-power 

and energy-efficient technologies 

provide longer battery life. With 

the latest advancements in cloudbased 

computing, the amount of 

assets tracked and managed has 

multiplied greatly. 

• Intelligent vehicle and highway 

systems: With the increasing interest 

and innovation of autonomous 

driving, IoT can provide 

critical, real-time information, not 

only to aid the GNSS receiver for 

navigation in harsh environing 

false positioning and timing. 

GPS anomalies around Russia’s 

president Vladimir Putin have led 

researchers to believe that Russian 

authorities use spoofing to disguise 

where he is located. 

While military-grade GNSS systems 

such as the encrypted version of 

P (Precise) code, known as P(Y), in 

GPS are immune to such attacks 

(or so the generals and fleet admirals 

believe), most civilian applications 

rely on weak encryption – or 

lack any kind at all. Galileo’s Open 

GNSS and its Commercial Services 

are more or less unprotected, but 

its Public Regulated Service (PRS) is 

an encrypted navigation service for 

government-authorized users and 

sensitive applications that require 

high continuity, similar to the military 

version of GPS. 

US authorities are even worried 

about the use of rapid-transit railway 

rolling stock built in China and 

equipped with their GNSS systems. 

In an article published by the Washington 

Post, an unnamed official 

warned that the passenger cars 

could be full of software back doors 

or be programmed by the manufacturers 

to send pictures back to 

China from on-board surveillance 

cameras. At the same time, they 

worry that hackers could access the 

software and take control of the 

trains themselves, causing crashes 

Well-Funded and Protected 

While military-grade GNSS are immune 

to attack, civilian systems rely on weak 

encryption – or lack any kind at all. 

or huge delays during rush hours. 

The railcar dilemma is exacerbated 

by the fact that manufacturing of 

rolling stock in North America has 

been in decline for decades, and 

operators are increasingly dependent 

on countries like China and 

India to fulfil demand. 

Lack of Coherent Policy 

In a memorandum for the Institute 

for Policy Studies, a Washingtonbased 

think tank, research fellow 

Miriam Pemberton claims that the 

decline is due to the lack of a coherent 

industrial policy in the United 

States. For the past 80 years industrial 

production has focused on 

the needs of the armed forces, she 

maintains. “Military production is 

the realm of the arms industry and 

almost completely financed by the 

government. This means that weapons 

receive the lion’s share of money 

for research and development.” 

Part of the concern about Chinese 

manufacturers is the alleged 

Huawei threat, which has already 

caused the United States, Australia, 

and New Zealand to exclude the 

Chinese developer and chip manufacturer 

from bidding on the nextgen 

mobile phone standard 5G in 

those countries without offering 

any proof of wrongdoing. US spy 

agencies have also warned against 

using products from Huawei’s competitor 

ZTE and the use of the popular 

camera drones made by DJI (Da- 

Jiang Innovations), another Chinese 

company. 

Tim Cole 

source ©: United States Air Force / Airman 1st Class Mike Meares 

The Sky’s the Limit! 

Europe’s Galileo GNSS 

is just the beginning of 

an era of spectacular 

technology that will 

increase the functionality 

of location-based 

devices, especially in 

IoT applications. 

and offering Galileo-ready devices, 

such as smartphones and in-vehicle 

navigation systems, even though 

the system is only a little more than 

halfway deployed and will not be 

fully operational until late this year. 

What Next-Gen GNSS 

Means for Your Business 

Galileo undoubtedly offers an excellent 

opportunity to provide that 

added layer of GNSS support that 

GPS and Glonass provide. However, 

businesses will still need to embed 

specific software into their current 

IoT systems to benefit from the latest 

features. Galileo has been designed 

to provide something more 

than simple positioning: it will provide 

an extension to the Cospas- 

Sarsat search and rescue (SAR) beacon 

constellation, which requires 

additional decoding capabilities, 

and adds acknowledgement (ACK) 

signaling so those in distress know 

their message has been registered 

and help is on its way. 

There are five aspects of Galileo 

that businesses should take into 

43


ments but also to assist the driver 

with forecasting information. 

Along with the fusion of multiple 

sensors, GNSS combined with IoT 

will be a necessary part of this 

new technology. 

•Health and safety: From medical 

alerts to the tracking of patients, 

transplant organs, and valuable 

equipment, the combination of 

GNSS and IoT can not only save 

lives with critical real-time health 

information tagged to a location 

but also increase the efficiency of 

monitoring vital symptoms. 

•Clock and time synchronization: 

Applications related to clock and 

time synchronization are increasing 

rapidly. Telecom networks, 

electrical grids, and even the 

world of finance rely on accurate, 

coordinated time. The synchronization 

and transfer of Coordinated 

Universal Time (UTC) can easily be 

accomplished with accurate timing 

provided by a GNSS receiver 

and IoT. 

• Security: With the improvements 

in anti-jamming and anti-spoof- 

Galileo’s Brexit Blunder 

■ Britain Loses Out 

One of the many unintended (and unexpected) 

consequences of Britain’s attempt to leave the 

European Union became apparent long before the 

Brexit deadline. Initially, the UK was deeply involved 

in building the European Galileo GNSS system, with 

British firms winning a contract in 2010 to provide the 

backup monitoring center for the satellite navigation 

system, which was launched in 2016. 

However, once results of the Brexit referendum were 

in, the EU hastily canceled the contract 

and awarded it instead to Spain, which is building 

the new facility in San Martin de la Vague, near 

Madrid. The investment reportedly lost the UK €1.4bn 

and more than 100 jobs. In January 2018, an EU 

spokesperson said; “The committee [of the member 

states] voted in favor, by a large majority, of our Commission 

proposal to relocate the center to Spain.” The 

reason given was legal concerns over the security of 

Galileo through key components of the system being 

controlled by a non-EU country. 

source ©: European GNSS Agency (GSA) 

New Business Opportunities 

Europe Chips in 

source ©: Wikipedia 

The Third Way 

Reluctant to rely on 

America’s GPS or 

Russia’s Glonass, the 

EU has created Galileo 

as an alternative. 

It offers European 

players unique opportunities 

for innovation 

to emerge and 

chipset technologies 

to evolve. 

Businesses are jockeying for position in 

the race to supply the components for Galileo. 

With the declaration of 

its Initial Services, Galileo 

is moving from a 

global satellite navigation 

system in testing to a live, operational 

service. 

For the first time, European satellites 

are providing users with global 

positioning, navigation, and timing 

information. In the lead-up to Initial 

Services many forward-looking 

companies created Galileo-enabled 

receivers, chipsets, and modules – 

many of which are already available 

on the market. 

Today, more than 30 companies produce 

Galileo-ready chips and, in the 

smartphone market, there are more 

than 20 manufacturers that have 

already started to produce Galileoenabled 

models. These companies 

include key chipset manufacturers 

44

source ©: Meinberg Funkuhren GmbH & Co KG 

The Long March of GNSS 

■ China’s Baidu System 

China has reluctantly relied on the US GNSS system, 

known as GPS, for decades, but that dependency is 

rapidly eroding. In 2011, the People’s Republic began 

launching a series of satellites, initially to provide 

navigation services regionally. By the end of this 

year, the Baidu system is scheduled to have 35 satellites 

in operation and to provide full global coverage. 

Experts recommend that Western companies planning 

to do business in China consider adding Baidu 

capability to their systems and products in addition 

to GPS. In fact, Qualcomm, the giant chip manufacturer 

based in California, already offers Baidu-ready 

semiconductors for smartphones, as do Samsung, 

Huawei, and Xiaomi. The German car manufacturer 

Volkswagen was one of the first to announce it was 

joining Baidu’s Apollo platform alliance, which provides 

self-driving guidance for autonomous vehicles. 

Baidu itself is not only deploying Apollo in Asia but 

also in the San Francisco Bay Area and other regions 

of the United States. 

It is widely expected that China will mandate that 

airplanes flying over Chinese airspace must be 

equipped with Baidu-compatible navigation capability 

at some time in the near future. 

As yet, neither Airbus nor Boeing have publicly 

committed to adopting the Chinese system in their 

aircraft. 

ing protection for civilian users, 

the latest in GNSS technology will 

provide more robust and secure 

alarm notification. This additional 

line of defense will help ensure 

that devices and the systems connected 

to them won’t fall victim 

to hackers looking to misreport 

location. 

Galileo is just the beginning of an era 

of spectacular technology that will 

increase the functionality of location-based 

devices. Very soon, easy 

access to information on the position 

of people and services will become 

the standard for mainstream, 

as well as niche, use cases for IoT. 

As opportunities for innovation 

emerge and chipset technologies 

evolve, businesses will be able to 

leverage new ways to answer the 

fast-changing requirements of 

the marketplace. For this reason, 

IoT solutions should employ GNSS 

chipsets that already offer users the 

leading-edge technology necessary 

to take advantage of today’s sophisticated 

satellite systems and the flexibility 

to seize future opportunities. 

like U-blox, Broadcom, Mediatek, 

and Intel. 

STMicroelectronics, a leading European 

chipset manufacturer in the 

automotive sector, has also started 

releasing its Teseo Galileo-ready 

range for vehicle telematics and 

navigation systems. 

Most notably, Qualcomm, a market 

leader for smartphone chips, such 

as its Snapdragon, has already built 

Galileo into its devices, meaning 

that many smartphones are inherently 

Galileo-ready. 

In the consumer market, over 140 

smartphone models from manufacturers 

including Apple, Asus, Black- 

Berry, BQ, Google, Huawei, Xiaomi, 

LG, Samsung, and Sony have Galileo 

compatibility. As of March 2018, 

Galileo has been included in every 

new type-approved vehicle sold in 

Europe, thereby enabling the eCall 

emergency response system. 

source ©: STMicroelectronics / European GNSS Agency (GSA) / U-Blox 

Cashing In 

Leading European 

chipset manufacturers 

are already turning 

out Galileo-ready 

products for vehicle 

telemetrics and navigation 

systems. 

45

Smart Communications IoT Agencies 

IoT Agencies 

How to Jump-Start 

Projects 

Many companies face the challenge of realizing their IoT projects, and agencies 

can help. Their services range from the examination of the idea 

to developing the operational prototype. We explain how IoT agencies differ 

and what to look for in the selection and cooperation. 

n By Oliver Schonschek 

46

A 

Microsoft report, IoT Signals, 

stated in 2019 that 

the promise of IoT will be 

unlocked by addressing 

skills shortages, complexity, and 

security. Nearly 85 percent of companies 

surveyed are in the adoption 

phase, it adds, and 88 percent 

see IoT as critical to business success. 

Despite this, almost half say 

there are not enough available 

skilled workers and 38 percent of 

adopters cite the complexity and 

technical challenges of using IoT as 

a barrier to furthering adoption. 

As projects become more complex 

with the rise of artificial intelligence 

(AI), 5G, and edge capabilities, how 

can companies create a digital 

strategy to transform their business 

with IoT successfully? One answer 

can be to cooperate 

with one of the specialized 

agencies. 

Agencies offer a wide 

range of services in order to 

evaluate an IoT idea. They use 

methods such as rapid prototyping 

instead of hanging around in 

long discussions and internal presentations. 

Many digital technologies 

are part of their services, from 

3D printing to developing intelligent 

sensors and implementing AI. 

Fit for Purpose 

There are different kinds of agencies, 

with special strengths and 

focuses, so companies looking 

for someone to help jump-start a 

project should check what help is 

needed the most, depending on 

the phase their 

project has 

reached. 

Having such a diversity 

of IoT agencies 

in the market, 

as shown by these examples, 

it is important to find 

the right one. An agency should 

have real IoT experience, be the 

right size for the partnership, have 

the right spirit for the company, 

possess the competences missing 

in the target company, and be able 

to produce proven references in 

the relevant markets. 

The right fit will help to start and 

fulfill the IoT project in a comparatively 

short time, enabling the new 

idea to be brought to the right market 

more efficiently. 

IOX 

The Prototypers 

“We support customers in developing smart 

products and services: fast, hands-on, and with 

passion,” says Robert Jänisch, CEO of IOX, an 

innovation and development partner for IoT 

products, based in Düsseldorf, Germany. “Our 

motto ‘Make Things, Not Slides!’ underlines 

our approach: we’d rather get started developing 

an actual prototype instead of spending 

massive amounts of time in the concept phase 

of a project which, in the end, might not even 

be realized. Rapid prototyping has been an 

integral part of that process.” 

The company offers sensors, trackers, and 

platforms-as-a-service for enterprise or product 

applications. In the IOX Lab, it supports customers 

in the realization of their IoT projects 

and leads them from the idea to the operational 

prototype within 30 days, he claims. 

http://ioxlab.de/en/ 

source ©: IOX 

Rapid prototyping in particular 

offers the advantage that ideas 

can be implemented quickly 

and tested accordingly. This 

approach also allows companies 

to build minimum viable products 

as early as the planning phase, 

enabling them to identify and 

eliminate errors or weaknesses 

at an early stage before 

the products go into mass 

production. 

Robert Jänisch 

CEO, IOX 

47


We are very flexible, intuitive. 

Fresh and young blood is our 

strength, devoted to solving 

complex problems. Passion is our 

driver. We are a young agency 

and proud of what we have developed 

in the last three years. 

Ćuković Miloš 

DotLab 

photo ©: Dotlab 

DotLab 

The Solution Providers 

“We create state-of-the-art smart solutions for 

our customers,” explains Ćuković Miloš, COO of 

DotLab, in Subotica, Serbia. “DotLab provides 

IoT services for smart building projects (hotels, 

office buildings, residential homes) and in agriculture. 

We developed those two systems, but 

we will not stop there. Both systems are modular 

and can be expanded with various sensors, 

third-party systems, and modules.” 

DotLab does in-house development of both 

software and hardware, user interfaces, web 

services, graphics, and user-centered design 

solutions. “We have all we need in-house to 

develop great products and experiences. 

Everything we do is first tested in our gardens 

and offices extensively, then it goes to production 

with extendable maintenance support,” 

says Miloš. 

http://dotlab.dev 

Netnow 

The Milestoners 

“Our agency provides a wide array of services 

depending on each client’s needs toward their 

IoT project but, usually, all our projects start with 

the ideation phase and end with the industrial 

certification phase,” says Matthieu Boussemart, 

CEO and cofounder of Netnow in Paris, France. “If 

our client’s idea is very mature, we focus on the 

production part of the project. Either that or the 

idea isn’t mature and we begin with the concept 

and its associated specifications.” 

Netnow started business in February 2018 and 

has worked with several partners in various fields 

such as smart logistics, Health 2.0, and smart 

cities. Recently, Netnow signed with Tankyou, 

a start-up aiming at the disruption of the gas 

station market, using connected devices. The 

system links to their fuel trucks, which are always 

on the move, to direct them to individuals and 

companies that have run out of gas and need a 

refill. It also prevents theft through live-tracking 

of its fuel-carrying vans and tankers. 

http://netnow.eu 

photo ©: Netnow 

During our partnership, since we 

view our clients as partners, we 

work on three main milestones: 

the hardware production, the 

software development and the 

intelligent system. 

Matthieu Boussemart 

Netnow 

48

We work with entrepreneurs 

to solve the world’s biggest 

problems by leveraging the 

latest IoT developments. 

Szabolcs Erki 

Hard Code 

photo ©: Hard Code 

Hard Code 

The Designers 

“Hard Code is a design house in the IoT field,” says 

Szabolcs Erki, general manager of Hard Code, 

in Budapest, Hungary. “The Internet of Things is 

currently the top priority for most companies, 

but it’s a big challenge as it requires specific skills 

and methods. Hard Code provides engineering 

services so our customers can focus on their business 

processes.” 

Services provided are: strategic consulting to 

ensure customer success, identifying the product 

strategy, developing a product roadmap, costing, 

then rapid prototyping and product development 

like designing custom PCBs, developing 

firmware, ensuring cloud and app connectivity, 

and managing volume manufacturing to help 

launch unique products. 

http://hardcode.agency 

SAUCE 

The Software Developers 

“We specialize in the software associated with IoT 

projects,” explains Matt Gibson, COO and CFO at 

Sauce, in Hull, UK. “We take an idea from its initial 

concept to delivery. Whether the client requires 

its hardware to be based on mobile, tablet, 

or desktop, or if they require a cloud solution, 

middleware, API integration, we write the code. 

We work with some of the largest companies in 

the world and for some disruptive start-ups. We 

have worked across industries such as fintech, 

green energy, logistics, education, home energy, 

and many more. Our focus is to help these businesses 

apply digital to their industries,” he adds. 

http://www.wearesauce.io 

photo ©: SAUCE 

In three years we have grown 

from three cofounders into an 

award-winning IoT agency currently 

with a team of 30. 

Matt Gibson 

Sauce 

49


We are the IoT agency at 

Sigfox 0G, the network provider, 

and know all major projects in 

this area. Even though the specification 

is now an open standard, 

OEMs have to certify their products 

and they need a unique ID. 

Stéphane Pâris 

IoT Agency projects director for DACH, Sigfox 

photo ©: Sigfox 

Sigfox 

The Partner Managers 

“If you are struggling to find the partner you 

desire for Sigfox 0G, speak with the Sigfox IoT 

Agency,” explains Stéphane Pâris, IoT Agency 

projects director for DACH at Sigfox, in Grasbrunn, 

Germany. “We have the expertise and 

experience in handling IoT projects from business 

assessment up to industrialization and mass production. 

We can provide you with access to many 

new potential partners thanks to the breadth of 

the Sigfox partner ecosystem.” 

In IoT project management it is very difficult to 

identify the right partner for the project when 

there is no experience of working with any of the 

potential partners before. “This ‘leap in the dark’ 

is all the more likely on an Internet of Things project. 

Because IoT projects usually involve many 

new technologies and developments, they can 

often require a whole new partner network. We 

help customers to bring all partners together,” 

he adds. 

http://sigfox.com 

Next Big Thing 

The Company Builders 

“Next Big Thing (NBT) supports companies 

on their quest to explore business innovation 

options with IoT and blockchain. As a companybuilder, 

start-up studio, and think tank, NBT is 

a successful co-innovator and cofounder,” says 

Falco Schuett, director of marketing and partnerships 

at NBT, in Berlin, Germany. “Medium-sized 

companies and corporations alike work with NBT 

to validate revolutionary tech ideas. In combination, 

the corporate domain experts and NBT’s 

technical and implementation expertise create 

the foundation for accelerated development of 

joint ventures. This is a prerequisite for the realization 

of low-risk innovations in high-complexity 

technology. In their role as cofounder, the team 

at NBT continuously develops new business 

models, checks the market fit, and accelerates the 

best business ideas.” 

Falco Schuett also has some advice for companies 

starting an IoT project: “Most corporates face 

challenges like a lack of IoT expertise, a shortage 

photo ©: NBT 

of software-related labor in hardware, firmware, 

and software execution capabilities, or limited 

agility and flexibility. Determine whether your 

idea is best suited as a short-term project, a 

product, or potentially a completely new revenue 

stream.” 

http://nextbigthing.ag 

NBT acts at the nexus of a continually 

growing ecosystem of 

corporates, founders, technologists, 

entrepreneurs, investors, 

and politicians. 

Falco Schuett 

Director of marketing & partnerships, Next Big Thing 

50

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Smart Communications LoRaWAN 

LoRaWAN 

A Network 

for Everybody 

source ©: Senet 

The ecosystem of connectivity solutions is very competitive 

in these still-early days of IoT. Senet has rolled out their 

own LoRaWAN (Long Range Wide Area Network) solutions 

for the low-power, broad-network needs of IoT, providing 

coverage and connectivity readiness in over 80 countries 

and 225 cities across the U.S. We sat down with Senet’s 

president and CEO, Bruce Chatterley, to talk about 

where he sees LoRa as a connectivity option 

of preference, where growth will happen, and 

how he sees this new network infrastructure 

growing out. 

What types of vertical applications 

are you seeing the most demand 

for when rolling out your networks? 

We’ve been experiencing rapid 

growth and increasing demand 

across several vertical markets, driven 

in part by an approach to delivering 

network connectivity which 

has moved away from prospective 

“network rollouts” to a model of ondemand 

network expansion based 

on the unique geographical and application-specific 

connectivity needs 

of customers and partners. 

52 

Massively 

scaled connected 

device 

volume will 

come from ordinary 

business 

activities but 

yield revolutionary 

results. 

Bruce Chatterley 

CEO, Senet 

So where do you see the greatest 

opportunities for growth in IoT? 

Water metering and management 

applications are an area of explosive 

growth. Opportunity in this segment 

includes proposed network 

designs for over 60 cities across the 

United States, representing over 2 

million potential water meters. Other 

vertical segments where we are 

seeing notable demand include tank 

monitoring for residential and commercial 

propane, agriculture and retail 

applications, Smart City applications, 

including indoor and outdoor 

asset tracking, waste bin monitoring, 

pest control and smart parking, agriculture 

and environmental applicasource 

©: Senet 

tions, including soil monitoring, irrigation, 

precipitation water level and 

environmental monitoring for flood 

conditions, cold chain applications, 

for example in hospitals to monitor 

the storage temperature of medicines, 

as well as industrial and Smart 

Building applications like leak detection, 

steam trap monitoring, and 

backflow and valve monitoring for a 

variety of industrial applications. 

What are the key barriers to scale 

that you see? 

The only way to achieve the scale 

predicted for the Internet of Things 

is to have network and device management 

solutions available that 

can drive and support rapid growth. 

For example, the process of activating 

new IoT devices needs automation, 

or zero-touch deployment. You 

need to be able to automate registering 

the device to the network (by 

simply pressing a button), check that

it is transmitting data, and then leave 

it for ten years. 

What are some of the more interesting 

use cases you’re seeing 

right now? 

Massively scaled connected device 

volume will come from applications 

that instrument ordinary or mundane 

business activities but yield 

revolutionary results. Examples include 

things like tank monitoring, 

steam trap monitoring, and rodent 

control, which on their face may not 

seem “interesting,” but when automated 

with IoT technologies can 

deliver significant productivity enhancements, 

cost savings, and business 

benefits. 

We also believe IoT technology is 

driving global change, creating new 

opportunities for innovation, the environment, 

and society and enabling 

businesses and citizens to make the 

world a better place. We are seeing 

applications in agriculture, water 

conservation, air quality monitoring, 

traffic management, and public safety 

experiencing interesting growth 

opportunities. 

tions of its LoRa network. Since then, 

the increasing demand for a wide 

variety of Low Power Wide Area IoT 

applications has driven LoRa to become 

the de facto industry standard 

for LPWA IoT networks. 

Who will ultimately be the infrastructure 

providers? 

One of the most interesting aspects 

of the LoRaWAN protocol and open 

ecosystem of the LoRa Alliance is the 

advent of the non-traditional network 

operator. In the cellular world, 

operators require massive funds to 

bear the capital requirements to 

deploy the network and purchase 

the licensed spectrum on which to 

operate it. In the world of LoRaWAN, 

anyone can be a network operator 

by approaching any aspect of the 

technology stack and compete on 

their merits. 

Senet is a founding member of the 

LoRa Alliance. What was your motivation 

for creating the Alliance and 

being a part of it? 

We believe that open standards and 

broad ecosystem participation create 

a larger market opportunity than 

proprietary closed technologies 

and systems. The openness of both 

the LoRaWAN specification and the 

LoRa Alliance has nurtured an evergrowing 

ecosystem of technology 

and solution providers, which has 

brought a building momentum to 

IoT deployments around the globe. 

We see this ecosystem, the open 

Active deployments 

Senet-ready coming 

Soon LoRa Alliance 

Unspecified 

Version: 20190822v1 

JS map by am Charts 

Stretching Out 

Senet is the first firm 

to get FCC certification 

for LoRaWAN 

sensors and gateways 

and is finding 

growing traction for 

an array of applications. 

Its network 

now extends across 

North America, 

South America, and 

Australia while 

covering the majority 

of nations spread 

across Eurasia. 

Why LoRa over other technologies? 

Senet was founded in 2009 (then 

known as EnerTrac) and originally 

addressed a very specific IoT use 

case – automated monitoring of 

propane tanks in the residential 

environment. Our solution comprised 

a combination of network, 

sensors, and an application for fuel 

delivery companies. We realized 

that LoRa was the best technology 

to address our tank monitoring application 

requirements, supporting 

cost-effective wide-area coverage, 

low-cost hardware, long battery life 

for sensors and end devices, strong 

propagation characteristics, and secure 

communications. We grew that 

business dramatically over a number 

of years and that formed the 

foundation of our knowledge base. 

By 2014, the company had built out 

an expansive LoRaWAN network for 

its tank monitoring business and 

formed Senet to expand the applicaspecification, 

and the resulting competitive 

market as key drivers to the 

success of both the technology and 

our own go-to-market strategy. We 

continue to participate and collaborate 

with the LoRa Alliance, with strategic 

voices in the key committees 

and working groups. 

What type of LoRaWAN networks 

do you see being the most popular 

in the short and long terms – private, 

hybrid, or public? 

The IoT market is being driven by 

customers with unique geographical 

and application-specific connectivity 

needs. These varying requirements 

demand flexibility in how 

networks are deployed and managed. 

To support the broadest set 

of customers and IoT applications, 

Senet offers a suite of cloud-based 

network connectivity platforms and 

services to support both public and 

public/private hybrid networks. We 

believe truly private IoT networks 

can be more limiting than beneficial 

and strongly urge enterprises and 

organizations considering private 

networks to engage in discovery 

about the scale, security, and business 

advantages of public and public/private 

hybrid network models, 

especially as related to LoRaWAN 

technology. In both the short and 

long term, we believe demand for 

flexibility in IoT network architectures 

will result in the equal opportunity 

for growth across multiple 

deployment scenarios. 

source ©: Senet 

53

Smart Communications Urban Robots 

Urban Robots 

Street 

SmartS 

54

Technologists and business titans are all pushing the limits of 

technology in a breathtaking sprint to bring robots 

to our streets. Their vision for using robots in our cities 

seems to be limitless. We ask how far, and how fast, is this 

progressing, and to what ends? 

n By Gordon Feller 

Robots in cities are the stuff 

of science fiction or, at least, 

that’s how it used to be. 

Today in cities around the 

globe, robots are making their presence 

felt, even when they operate 

behind the scenes. 

Just for a moment, consider the 

Amazon or Flipkart delivery systems 

in India (Flipkart is the company 

now owned by Amazon’s archrival, 

Walmart). Their warehouses are 

filled with small, medium, and large 

robots, which is one major reason 

your timeframe – from click-andpurchase 

to delivery – is getting 

faster every day. Amazon is said to 

be the world’s largest user of such 

robots, and the company made this 

apparent in 2019 when it spent a 

princely sum to acquire Colorado 

(USA) start-up Canvas Technology, 

a firm that specializes in warehouse 

robotics. 

Down the Rabbit Hole 

Indian start-up Flipkart 

(below) has invested heavily 

in warehouse automation to 

compete with Amazon and 

domestic rival Snapdeal. 

The company, which was recently 

acquired by Walmart, 

has deployed a swarm of 

100-odd automated guided 

vehicles (AGVs) to pick products 

from a conveyor belt, 

scan them, and then drop 

them down a chute that’s 

assigned to a particular pin 

code. The robots work in 

a tight grid, using collision 

avoidance technology to 

ensure free movement. 

Bringing the technologies from 

Canvas into Amazon followed on 

from a long string of other Amazon 

moves that took the corporate giant 

much deeper into the world of 

robots. It all started, at least from 

the public’s viewpoint, with the announcement 

that Amazon was buying 

Kiva Systems for $775m in March 

2012. Kiva has been renamed Amazon 

Robotics and its mission has 

expanded from robots focused on 

finding, sorting, and moving smaller 

items or boxes in warehouses. In 

fact, earlier in 2019 Amazon entered 

into a seven-year agreement with 

Balyo, a French company that sells 

autonomous forklifts. 

This year is proving to be the year 

that indoor robots, previously confined 

to warehouses, are making a 

big move into the outdoors. In the 

non-military domain, drones are 

sending images to the cloud 

source ©: Inc42 

55


and to ground-based servers where 

machines powered by software sift 

through the data to reveal small 

details, tasks that would otherwise 

be like finding needles in haystacks. 

These software “robots” inside machines 

work hard, work fast, and 

work cheap, in ways that make it 

much more economical and accurate 

than using human labor to 

sort through photos to find answers 

to questions. Some of these questions 

are mundane and noncritical: 

“Where are the parking spaces all 

filled at this peak hour of the day 

and where can new parking spaces 

be established, whether temporary 

or permanent?” Other questions are 

more critical, often aimed at helping 

to safeguard the lives of people: 

“During this flood, where is the water 

rising so fast that we need to 

deploy a boat or helicopter to effect 

rescue?” 

Analysts at IDC report that, as of 

2019, the universe of urban solutions 

reached a vast scale, with such 

size and heft that it constituted a 

multi-trillion-dollar industry. The 

reasons are numerous but the primary 

one boils down to simple 

mathematics: more than half of all 

human beings on this planet are 

found inside cities. Many of the largest 

concentrations are located in 

the Global South (Asia, Africa, Latin 

America, and the Caribbean), and 

Flattops 

Amazon is considered the 

heaviest robot user in the 

world. It recently acquired 

Canvas Technology, whose 

autonomous warehouse 

carts use 3D images to 

navigate within tight environments. 

Lots of Problems 

Warehouse robots are 

increasingly moving 

out of doors to find 

solutions to questions 

such as “why are 

parking spaces always 

full at peak hours and 

where can we establish 

new ones?” 

these are growing fast. Demographers 

at the United Nations Human 

Settlements Programme (UN Habitat) 

report that the growth rates for 

these larger cities will not be slowing 

any time soon, and this also applies 

to medium-sized cities. 

Disrupted Pipelines 

Amid what sounds like bad news 

about cities, there’s also some good 

news: the urban solutions industry 

is wide open and aching for disruption. 

One example should suffice to 

make the point clearly: potable and 

non-potable urban water systems. 

Why bother with inspection robots 

in water pipes? A robot’s 

capacity to deliver live data in 

any pipeline makes it safer than 

manned inspections. Robots are 

ideal for wastewater applications, 

especially where health and safety 

regulations are keeping people out 

of pipelines. Capable robots are 

already available just for this purpose 

– and they’ve been specially 

designed for water, wastewater, 

power, and industrial applications. 

In turbid environments, or in wastewater 

conditions, the robot’s tracks 

can crawl over sand and solids with 

ease. 

Who’s developed robotic urban 

solutions? PureRobotics is a 

multi-sensor pipeline inspection 

source ©: lafi.github.io/LPN/ source ©: Amazon Robotics 

56

platform that helps utilities screen 

their network for problem areas 

and gain a better understanding 

on the condition of their assets. 

The robotic crawler is designed to 

easily transport sensors and tools 

vast distances through drained 

pipes or while submerged in water 

or wastewater. 

The PureRobotics standard system 

features high-density, digital 

closed-circuit television for live 

video streams. The robot can be 

equipped with a variety of tools, 

including an inertial measurement 

unit, 3D lidar scanning tools, or 

pull-condition assessment tools 

such as 2D laser technology that 

can precisely measure a pipeline’s 

size, shape, and level of corrosion. 

The latest generation produces detailed, 

real-time, internal-condition 

data in about half the time of the 

previous generation. This reduces 

inspection time and correspondingly 

reduces facility downtime. 

The system features a robotic 

crawler that can travel vast distances 

carrying an array of tools and 

sensors that provide detailed, realtime 

internal condition data about 

the integrity of pipelines. It integrates 

easily into a pipeline management 

strategy to help pipeline 

owners make more informed decisions. 

What differentiates this robot is 

its capacity to quickly travel vast 

distances through difficult pipe 

conditions (a huge benefit during 

time-critical shutdowns) and it is 

safer than manned inspections. The 

robot’s design also allows it to be 

adapted to inspect a broad variety 

of pipeline sizes and types. 

Where is this being done? The city 

of Saint John in New Brunswick, 

Canada, owns and operates more 

than 900 kilometers of water and 

wastewater piping for its residents 

and customers. It also pumps more 

than 78 million liters of raw water 

daily for industrial customers, which 

includes the Irving Pulp & Paper 

Mill, which produces high-quality 

kraft pulp used in a wide range of 

premium tissues and paper applications. 

The operation of the mill relies 

on water delivered via a raw-water 

transmission main for its processes, 

so managing its integrity is critical 

to maintaining continued operation 

and production. 

Sensitive to issues of sustainability 

and the environment, the city 

Taking the Waters 

Saint John in New Brunswick, 

Canada, pumps 

more than 78 million 

liters of raw water daily 

to households as well as 

huge industrial clients 

such as the Irving Pulp & 

Paper Mill, where water 

quality is crucial. Robot 

crawlers equipped with 

high-definition CCTV cameras 

deliver a live video 

stream from inside the 

pipe system to monitor 

conditions in the main. 

A Closer Look 

PureRobotics’ multisensor 

pipeline inspection 

platform features a 

robotic crawler that can 

travel vast distances carrying 

an array of tools and 

sensors that provide detailed, 

real-time internal 

condition data about the 

integrity of pipelines. 

chose to start proactively assessing 

the condition of the transmission 

main’s 1.5 m and 1.35 m diameter 

prestressed concrete cylinder pipe 

(PCCP) that delivers raw industrial 

water from Spruce Lake to the mill. 

Since 2012, critical infrastructure 

specialist Pure Technologies has 

been involved in the condition assessment 

of the main, whose ownership 

is shared by the city (7.3 km 

long / 4.5 m diameter) and Irving (1 

km / 0.6 m). The most recent condition 

assessment data was gathered 

successfully in the spring of 2017 

within the time constraints of a 

scheduled mill shutdown. 

Pure Technologies’ PureRobotics 

crawler is equipped with electromagnetic 

inspection technology 

and a high-definition CCTV camera 

that delivers and records a 

live video stream from inside the 

pipe. Inspection can be completed 

with manned, robotic, and freeswimming 

platforms. In this case, 

the robotic platform was selected 

because the profile of the line is 

such that it is difficult to empty. 

PureRobotics can travel a total of 

2.9 kilometers from a single point 

of access and the latest generation 

of robot is twice as fast as its predecessor, 

traveling at 25 meters per 

minute, a huge benefit during timecritical 

shutdowns. 

source ©: Pure Robotics / Xylem Inc. 

Driving the Revolution 

Things are moving fast in the selfdriving 

automotive world and all 

the old and familiar manufacturers 

– which includes companies like 

Ford (through Argo.ai), GM (through 

Cruise), Daimler, Volvo, and Toyota – 

are busy with designs for robotic 

57


Getting Around 

In Ann Arbor, Michigan, May Mobility 

is already successfully running robo 

shuttles, enabling the company to develop 

a slew of innovative city services. 

source ©: CleanTechnica 

source ©: May Mobility 

source ©: Ann Arbor Spark 

fleets that will navigate seamlessly 

around our streets to automate “last 

mile” delivery services. These giants 

are being joined by new names: 

Uber, Lyft, Nutonomy, Waymo, 

Baidu, and dozens of others. Altogether 

their autonomous vehicles 

have driven millions of miles in tests 

and are now close to wide adoption. 

Leading the pack is Waymo, a spinoff 

from Google under its parent 

company Alphabet. Waymo’s CEO 

John Krafcik recently announced 

the expansion of the company’s 

Waymo Driver technology to Class 

8 trucks, which include the gigantic 

semi vehicles. “We’re working 

closely with the ecosystem – shippers, 

truck makers, and tier-one 

suppliers – to ensure a successful 

deployment,” he said last September 

during his keynote remarks at 

58 

May Mobility 

offers a glimpse 

into the urban 

future. 

Paul Krutko 

Ann Arbor Spark 

Taking the Lead 

Google’s Waymo 

subsidiary is leading 

the pack by expanding 

its driverless 

technology from cars 

to Class 8 trucks and 

giant semi vehicles. 

the International Automobile Exhibition 

in Frankfurt, Germany. 

In Michigan (USA), Paul Krutko is 

president and CEO of Ann Arbor 

Spark, a public–private partnership 

that brings together many players, 

including start-ups, the University 

of Michigan, and older, established 

companies. He says he sees early indicators 

of a different urban future, 

one where new kinds of services are 

powered by data and robots. 

One of the successful robot-focused 

start-ups that Spark has nurtured in 

Ann Arbor is May Mobility, which is 

already providing proprietary autonomous 

vehicles that run shuttle 

services in a number of cities. In his 

role as the elected president on the 

board of the International Association 

of Science Parks, Krutko visits 

more than a dozen countries each 

year. He says his travels have given 

him a glimpse of an urban future 

which is powered by advanced 

math, science, and technology, and 

source ©: Waymo 

by the engineering that harnesses 

all of these insights to deliver new 

city services. 

All Play and No Work 

Increasingly, non-mobility functions 

are being moved into the 

realm of machine-to-machine, 

disconnecting humans from daily 

workloads. There are clearly some 

potential conflicts here, where the 

added material benefits are not 

always in sync with new socioeconomic 

gains. As these conflicts pile 

up, even some robo advocates are 

hesitating – as they should. As we 

move toward a world where robots 

are running our cities, how should 

we feel about this coming tsunami 

of innovative service robots? 

What does it mean for city-based 

workers? In July 2018, Nick Wingfield 

wrote an article for The New 

York Times entitled “As Amazon 

Pushes Forward with Robots, Work-

ers Find New Roles,” an especially 

optimistic assessment of the labor 

market’s ability to adapt to fastchanging 

technological innovations. 

The bottom line is that the future 

of employment may well mean 

a lot less paid work. 

What does it mean for ordinary 

city-based residents? The advantages 

of added convenience 

and comfort are plentiful. Consider 

the simple goods package, 

moved through the air by drones, 

decongesting streets currently 

clogged with ground-based delivery 

vehicles. Amazon has already 

invested large sums into perfecting 

their urban drone delivery service, 

with successful tests conducted in 

both the UK and US. Google’s sister 

company Wing Aviation has also 

launched a drone delivery service 

in partnership with Walgreens, the 

US-based retail giant. 

Flying drones are not the only new 

city residents. San Francisco residents 

have become accustomed to 

the city’s role as a testbed for startups 

and inventors of every stripe. 

One such venture-capital-financed 

enterprise, Postmates, said in August 

2019 that it expects to use the 

first-ever permit to test sidewalk 

delivery robots in the city. In the UK, 

Starship Technologies launched the 

first delivery robot system in October 

2018 for a modest monthly subscription 

of £7.99 (€8.97). 

The downside of all of this will undoubtedly 

be the loss of some of the 

source ©: The Truth About Cars source ©: Kevin Ma and Pakpong Chirarattananon/Harvard University 

civil liberties and everyday freedoms 

which we now take for granted. 

What does it mean for the growing 

gap between rich and poor? One 

scenario being discussed would 

have the masses of us, without great 

wealth, dependent upon the rich 

few who own and control the robots. 

Jobs would only be available 

to humans whenever and wherever 

the robots were not yet useful or efficient. 

The key word here is “yet.” 

In 2014, The Wall Street Journal newspaper’s 

online readers woke up to 

a scary video: “Harvard Unleashes 

Swarm of Robots.” As reported in 

more depth by IEEE Spectrum Magazine, 

it appears that a swarm of 

one thousand Harvard RoboBees 

(robotic bees) was just the starting 

point. NASA pushed forward, 

in 2018, with a swarm of MarsBees 

designed, ultimately, to explore 

the Martian landscape. Whether 

it’s flying robots, terrestrial robots, 

or swimming robots, their uses inside 

cities are numerous – utilizing 

The Bee’s Knees 

Harvard researchers 

have figured out a 

way for thousands of 

robots to coordinate 

their actions so that 

they can mimic 

biological processes. 

RoboBees will be 

able to cooperate, for 

instance to achieve 

environmental 

cleanup or respond 

quickly to disasters. 

Waymo is 

working 

closely with 

the ecosystem. 

John Krafcik 

Waymo 

the RoboBee’s distributed sensing, 

fault tolerance, and other abilities 

to move through and assess a sewer 

system, for example. 

Some scientists, and their investors, 

are now talking about robots taking 

over from real bee swarms that 

have been suffering from a specialized 

kind of global eco-devastation 

called colony collapse. By expertly 

mimicking their biological cousins, 

RoboBees are being developed 

that can infiltrate and influence a 

colony’s behavior in ways that their 

designers believe will aid humanity. 

For more than two centuries, science 

fiction authors and futurists 

have been preoccupied with just 

these kinds of possibilities. These 

“cultural imagineers” have helped 

us with earlier mega-transitions, so 

we ask them to step up this time 

with some answers to the question 

of what we might expect for humanity’s 

prospects inside cities over 

the coming years. Some futurists 

assume that this process, where robots 

run our cities, is simply inexorable. 

Their assessments have taken 

on new weight since artificial intelligence 

and machine learning advance 

to such a degree that robots 

are now building and programming 

more robots – and each new version 

has better and sharper skills 

than the last generation. 

The celebrated science-fiction 

writer William Gibson once said 

that “the future is already here – it’s 

just not evenly distributed.” The 

smarter observers will be looking 

around with sharp focus, examining 

the small indicators of big changes 

coming fast to their city. 

59

Smart Communications Li-Fi 

Li-Fi 

IoT at the 

Speed of Light 

The future demand for wireless communication networks within buildings 

and outside will further increase. The optical light communication 

called Light Fidelity (Li-Fi), using LED-based light sources as data transmitters, 

offers an alternative to existing technologies such as Wi-Fi and LTE. 

n By Gerhard Kafka 

60

Line 

Communication by light, in 

the form of beacons, has 

already been used since 

800 BC, reaching its climax 

in 280 BC with the legendary 

Alexandria lighthouse. Around 400 

BC Greeks used polished shields, 

so-called heliographs, to transmit 

signals during armed conflicts. Over 

2,000 years later, in 1880, Alexander 

Graham Bell and Charles Sumner 

Tainter developed the Photophone, 

a telephone that used light to transmit 

speech. In 2005, research into 

optical wireless communication 

(OWC) began at the University of 

Paris-Saclay and is reaching market 

readiness today. The annual growth 

of the Light Fidelity (Li-Fi) market is 

estimated to be 80 percent up to 

2023 and the sales volume, worth 

$0.5bn in 2016, could explode to 

$75bn in 2023. 

The term Li-Fi was coined by Professor 

Harald Haas, a German researcher 

at the universities of Bremen and 

Edinburgh, during a presentation at 

the 2011 TEDGlobal Talk conference 

and stands for visible light communication 

(VLC). Li-Fi can deliver 

speeds up to 200 times faster than 

Wi-Fi – theoretically more than 200 

Gbps. The advantages can be summarized 

as follows: 

•Faster than traditional network 

access 

•No electromagnetic interference 

• Very precise GPS capabilities 

• 

• Eco-friendly 

Improved indoor connectivity 

(medical, aeronautical, defense) 

•Increased security 

•No health risks 

Very economical (no license) 

• 

• Works well in places where radio 

frequencies are not permitted or 

may cause interference with other 

machines (schools, hospitals, aircraft, 

industrial plants) 

EU Consortium ELIoT 

In July 2019, the start of a three-year 

project called Enhancing Lighting 

for the Internet of Things (ELIoT) 

was announced. The aim of the 

project is the development of mass 

market IoT applications based on Li- 

Fi. As a project partner, Fraunhofer 

Fokus will ensure the integration 

of Li-Fi into 5G networks. ELIoT 

originates from the EU innovation 

program Horizon 2020 and receives 

€6m in funding from the public– 

private partnership Photonics21. 

In addition to Fraunhofer Fokus, its 

Heinrich Hertz Institute (HHI) plus 

of Sight 

Heliographs (from 

the Greek helios for 

“sun” and graphein 

for “write”) is a wireless 

telegraph that 

signals by flashes of 

sunlight reflected on 

a mirror. Invented in 

the early 19th century, 

they were still in 

use by the British and 

Australian armies as 

late as the 1960s. 

Li-Fi networks 

can deliver 

speeds 200 

times faster 

than Wi-Fi. 

Professor Harald Haas 

University of Bremen, who 

coined the term “Li-Fi” 

Signify (formerly Philips Lighting), 

Nokia, MaxLinear, Deutsche Telekom, 

KPN, Weidmüller, LightBee, 

the University of Oxford, and Eindhoven 

University of Technology are 

also participating in ELIoT. 

The main objectives of the project 

are to provide an open reference 

architecture for the support of the 

Internet of Things and to contribute 

to the standardization of applications 

based on communication by 

light. For this purpose, Li-Fi must 

meet the ever-increasing demands 

on existing communication networks 

in terms of data rates, stability, 

and latency. 

“With ELIoT, we have established a 

powerful consortium of companies 

and organizations from the European 

lighting and communications 

industries. ELIoT forms a closed 

value chain with partners representing 

the components, chipsets, 

systems, and applications sectors 

and research institutes, working together 

on the commercialization of 

Li-Fi for the future IoT,” says Volker 

Jungnickel, head of the Metro, Access, 

and In-house Systems Group 

at Fraunhofer HHI, who serves as 

project coordinator for ELIoT. 

Professor Jean-Paul Linnartz, co-initiator 

of ELIoT and also leader of Signify’s 

research in Li-Fi, confirms the 

61 

photo ©: Business Wire

Smart Communications LiFi 

photo ©: Eindhoven University of Technology 

potential of ELIoT: “Li-Fi can deliver 

high-speed communication, interference-free 

with high reliability. 

The available spectrum can be fully 

reused in every room. The lighting 

infrastructure is in an excellent position 

to provide wireless connectivity 

for the rapidly increasing number 

of wireless devices in every room.” 

Lighting systems 

could be able to 

provide wireless 

connectivity in 

every room. 

Professor 

Jean-Paul Linnartz 

Signify 

No Interference 

Internet by light can 

help avoid disturbing 

electromagnetic signals 

in airplanes and other 

sensitive areas. 

Li-Fi in Aircraft 

Li-Fi addresses a large variety of 

applications in the fields of live 

streaming, hospitals, workplaces, 

manufacturing facilities, schools, retail, 

and many more. If, for example, 

it is employed in aerospace, Li-Fi 

has the potential to transform both 

the overall passenger experience 

and enhance in-flight connectivity. 

Transmitting data through illumination 

is attracting the interest 

of a number of airline companies. 

Faster and less expensive than Wi- 

Fi, it could transform the whole 

passenger experience. At the June 

2019 International Paris Air Show 

in Le Bourget, Air France, Latécoère 

Group, and Ubisoft demonstrated 

Li-Fi technology in an in-flight video 

game tournament showcasing this 

technology. 

According to experts, the use of Li- 

Fi on board would save the equivalent 

of ten to 20 people in weight 

per aircraft. “Optical fibers are a 

thousand times lighter than copper,” 

said Serge Berenger, senior 

VP of innovation at Latécoère. “Li- 

Fi will allow airline companies to 

do away with data communication 

boxes beneath seats, each of which 

weigh a kilogram.” 

Li-Fi connection speeds are more 

than 200 times faster than those of 

Wi-Fi and could mean quicker bank 

transactions on board planes. “At 

the moment, airlines have to wait 

until a plane lands before in-flight 

transactions can be approved,” explains 

Micheline Perrufel, an engineer 

with mobile telecoms company 

Orange, “but, in the future, flight 

attendants will be able to approve 

in-flight payments immediately 

thanks to the installation of Li-Fi in 

the cabin.” 

As well as offering new applications 

for passengers, Li-Fi will also 

bring benefits for pilots because 

it is safer than Wi-Fi and does not 

pose any risk of electromagnetic 

interference. Airbus is considering 

the possibility of installing Li-Fi 

in its airplane cockpits with a view 

to connecting the pilot’s controls 

and equipment in a way that is simpler 

and safer. Li-Fi has the potential 

to give the future passenger experience 

a boost. 

Introducing Li-Fi to the cockpit reduces 

the number of cables and removes 

a great deal of deadweight. 

While Wi-Fi could solve this problem, 

it cannot be implemented 

without careful consideration of its 

vulnerability to external interfer- 

62 

photo ©: Airbus

ence and hacking. Li-Fi, on the other 

hand, is safer as it cannot be transmitted 

through hulls and windows 

like Wi-Fi and is therefore impossible 

to tap from outside. This would 

make it much easier to prevent data 

streams in the cockpit from being 

hacked from inside the passenger 

cabin than if Wi-Fi was used. 

Today, we are surfing wirelessly but 

tomorrow we may all share a brighter 

future using light. 

The Way to Go 

Transmitting data and voice 

through illumination systems 

offers potential benefits for both 

passengers and crew. 

Pilots 

Li-Fi-enabled lighting will facilitate 

secure, wireless connectivity at all 

times and locations without any 

electromagnetic interference with 

sensitive radio equipment. 

Passenger 

Cabin reading 

lights will transport 

data to passengers' 

laptops, smartphones 

and tablets. 

Cabin Crew 

The aircraft cabin general 

illumination system will 

provide connectivity to 

cabin crew members 

anywhere in the cabin. 

source ©: XAirbus 

Standardization 

■ Making a Market 

VLC (visible light communication) is well on its 

way to becoming a world standard. With the IEEE 

and ITU-T standards bodies. The first standard, IEEE 

802.15.7, was approved in November 2011 and 

the Li-Fi activities have been continued in the IEEE 

802.15.13 Multi-Gigabit/s Optical Wireless Communications 

Task Group. The standard is capable 

of delivering data rates up to 10 Gbps at distances 

up to 200 meters’ unrestricted line of sight. It is 

designed for point-to-point and point-to-multipoint 

communications in both non-coordinated and 

coordinated topologies. 

IEEE is also working on a corresponding change 

to the IEEE 802.11 (Wi-Fi) standard. The main 

objective is to amend the IEEE 802.11bb standard 

serving mass-market requirements for light communication 

relating to low-cost and low-energy 

consumption. 

The new ITU G.9991 standard is the first to enable 

very-high-speed VLC. “This market-making 

ITU standard is already considered a de facto 

standard,” says Marcos Martinez, system engineer 

at MaxLinear, and associate rapporteur for ITU’s 

“broadband in-premises networking” standardization. 

“We are seeing vendors of proprietary VLC 

solutions moving toward this ITU standard – it is 

already being implemented before final approval.” 

The standard details the system architecture, 

physical layer, and data-link layer specification 

for high-speed indoor VLC transceivers, the VLC 

access points within lightbulbs. “VLC is a valuable 

complement to Wi-Fi,” says Martinez. “VLC and 

Wi-Fi have different strengths and VLC’s strengths 

provide a strong complement where Wi-Fi faces 

challenges.” 

In addition, VLC, modulated with ITU’s Gigabit 

Home Networking (G.hn) technology, is set to be 

the next major innovation in realizing the full potential 

of both the smart home and the smart city, 

according to industry alliance group HomeGrid 

Forum. This approach continues to demonstrate 

the tremendous flexibility of G.hn technology to 

run over any medium as wireless joins the ranks of 

powerline, co-ax, twisted pair, and polymer optical 

fiber (POF) as a G.hn medium. 

“VLC has great potential for IoT and smart homes 

with high-density connectivity needs, especially 

where sensitive data is transmitted between 

connected devices in one room. The light spectrum 

provides low latency and avoids the usual 

interruption of radio-frequency spectrum during 

congestion time,” says Livia Rosu, marketing chair 

of HomeGrid Forum. 

Li-Fi Provides Highly 

Secure Communications 

because signals stay within 

a room and cannot leak out 

through the walls. 

63 

photo ©: Signify

Smart Lifestyle Hybrid Design 

64

Hybrid Design 

The Future of 

Fashion 

Designers and manufacturers of men’s and women’s apparel are exploring 

ways to predict trends faster and more accurately than ever before. 

They are helped by researchers who are looking for ways to utilize artificial intelligence. 

Smart Industry went to Cornell University in New York to talk to two bright young 

scholars who are teaching computers everything about garments, fabrics, colors, 

and patterns and how style is manufactured. 

n By Jürgen Kalwa * 

A 

few years ago, when 

Mengyun Shi entered 

the fashion industry and 

moved from China to take 

various posts in well-known arbiters 

of taste like Dolce & Gabbana and 

Giorgio Armani in Italy, he learnt a 

valuable lesson right away. While it 

was intriguing to give things a personal 

touch, he struggled mightily 

with some of the basics. It took him 

30 minutes, for instance, to flush out 

a decent sketch of one of his product 

ideas but in order to develop 

things worth manufacturing he had 

to come up with many versions and 

variations. 

He thought that technology, at least 

some time down the road, might 

be able to shorten the elaborate 

process of creating mass-market 

products with flair to successfully 

target fickle, trend-conscious consumers. 

In order to achieve such a 

lofty goal, he decided to leave Italy 

and the industry to enter the realm 

of American academia to make the 

right connections. 

*Jürgen Kalwa is a German journalist living and working in New York 

source ©: Linkedin 

He moved to Ithaca, a small town 

on the banks of Cayuga Lake in 

upstate New York and the home 

of Cornell, one of the lesser known 

of the prestigious Ivy League 

universities. In 2014, he began 

his master’s studies there and, in 

2016, entered a PhD program in 

the Department of Fiber Science 

and Apparel Design, a division of 

the university’s College of Human 

Ecology. 

AI can reduce 

the design 

process to just 

a few minutes. 

The value of 

design work will 

be diminished. 

Mengyun Shi 

Cornell University 

His ultimate goal sounds straightforward, 

even if it will take time to 

put all the puzzle pieces together. 

Mengyun wants to apply artificial 

intelligence to fashion forecasting 

and help the industry and its experts 

become more efficient. “It’s 

scary,” he admits. “The AI model can 

reduce the process of creating design 

sketches to just a few minutes 

and produce hundreds of sketches 

in a short time period. The value of 

design work will be diminished.” 

This mirrors what has happened 

everywhere when computers, with 

their enormous power to handle 

tons of data and trillions of permutations, 

start getting going. Even 

when they first need to learn all the 

difficult patterns of something as 

sensitive and personal as fashion 

items, something style-conscious 

people wear as their second skin in 

order to express personality, temperament, 

and status. 

“Success of this project will open a 

door to highly reliable trend forecasting 

and help the fashion indus- 

65

Smart Lifestyle Hybrid Design 

try respond to changes in consumers’ 

need and fashion taste quickly,” 

says Huiju Park, associate professor 

of fiber science and apparel design. 

Park is an advisor on the project together 

with computer science faculty 

members Serge Belongie and 

Kavita Bala. 

The project will in all likelihood 

open more than a door – it has the 

potential to bulldoze and flatten a 

whole mountain between the people 

with ideas and the hundreds of 

millions of fashion-conscious consumers. 

Right now it takes a year 

and a lot of capital, plus risk-taking 

acumen, to produce a fashion line 

to be runway-ready and set to be 

shipped in bulk to interested retail 

outlets. Applied AI could shorten 

that period considerably. 

Currently, the industry relies heavily 

on forecasting techniques to 

minimize risks. The overview of 

the people in charge has become 

more sophisticated over time and 

there is no need for fortune tellers 

or astrologists to predict the future. 

Although the methodology is rational, 

common forecasting can look 

like a mixture of alchemy, psychology, 

and a con man’s gambit. Often, 

it only succeeds because of massive 

marketing efforts powerful enough 

to convince middlemen, media, celebrities, 

retailers, and the general 

66 

AI can help the 

fashion insider, 

designers, and 

buyers, but it 

can also help 

customers. 

Menglin Jia 

Cornell University 

Intelligent Design 

Nestled in the picturesque 

Finger Lakes 

District in upstate 

New York, Cornell 

University’s Department 

of Fiber Science and Apparel 

Design, a division 

of the university’s College 

of Human Ecology, 

is leading research into 

the transformation of 

haute couture through 

Artificial Intelligence (AI). 

public to believe in what is coming 

down the pike. 

Any prognosis worth its money 

needs to anticipate many different 

things correctly, including colors, 

fabrics, textures, print patterns, 

graphics plus accessories and footwear. 

Since the arrival of social 

media, predictions are now often 

based on analyzing social media 

trends from sites such as Instagram 

or Pinterest. 

So much of this guessing game 

could eventually be reduced as 

soon as artificial intelligence gets to 

do its magic. Nobody expects computer 

programs to be able to push 

aside legendary versions of highcaliber 

designers like Coco Chanel, 

Christian Dior, or Yves St Laurent 

source ©: Linkedin 

source ©: Cornell University 

and their successors. Their work, socalled 

haute couture, is considered 

as valuable as fine art and it caters 

for a pretty-rich clientele, with expensive 

taste, who wouldn’t want to 

be caught shopping at H&M – but 

it’s here that artificial intelligence 

might well be right on the money in 

the ready-to-wear and mass-market 

segments of the industry where 

cost is king. 

“In our vision, AI can facilitate people’s 

work and help the fashion 

insider, designers, and buyers, but 

it can also help customers,” says 

Menglin Jia, research partner of 

her countryman Mengyun Shi. “We 

want to create something that helps 

all sides to make efficient and wellinformed 

decisions.” 

Jia was born in mainland China and 

studied in Hong Kong, where she 

joined German lingerie manufacturer 

Triumph in its headquarters 

for the Asian market. Among other 

things, she designed a line of bras 

and panties featuring monkey motifs 

that were sold at the beginning 

of the Chinese Year of the Monkey 

(2016). After that she applied to Cornell 

to study for her master’s degree 

and decided to add a doctorate to 

dig deeper by combining her interest 

in fashion and AI. Recently she 

added an internship in the Facebook 

AI department to her résumé. 

The research is still in an early phase. 

Machines will need to learn many 

things they have not mastered yet. 

“The goal is to advance fine-grained 

recognition in computer vision,” 

says Jia. The software needs to understand: 

“That’s a blue-striped 

shirt. That’s a button-down. What 

kind of fabric that is, what kind of 

color that is,” she explained. The 

honest answer to the question of 

how close they are to accomplishing 

that: “We are not there yet.” 

But the two scholars are pushing 

hard to get there. One of the little 

steps needed happened in 2018, 

when Cornell announced a partnership 

with Bloomsbury Publishing. 

This came with the opportunity to 

draw on a large archive of images 

and metadata from the company’s

fashion photography archive. The 

two PhD candidates used this to 

build on something they call a 

“Fashionpedia,” a methodology to 

annotate images with a tree-like 

classification criterion using finegrained 

attributes in particular. 

One important element is to train 

and benchmark the next generation 

of computer-based models for 

the comprehensive understanding 

of fashion. This will be helped 

through the latest partnership with 

the American magazine publisher 

Hearst, which puts out flagship 

publications such as Harper’s Bazaar, 

Equipe, Elle, and Marie-Claire. 

Cornell is not the only place where 

people are reshaping the fashion 

design process. Amazon, the largest 

online retailer in the world, is developing 

machine-learning systems 

that, according to a recent report 

in the online edition of MIT Technology 

Review, could “provide an edge 

when it comes to spotting, reacting 

to, and perhaps even shaping the 

latest fashion trends.” The work is 

innovative because computers usually 

require extensive labeling in order 

to learn from visual information. 

The same dynamic seems to be 

taking hold outside academia. The 

fashion industry clearly has not 

stopped thinking about how to integrate 

forward-looking concepts. 

One product of ongoing innovation 

efforts is the “hybrid design 

algorithm,” which is used to help 

customers to build a wardrobe collection 

based on actual garments, 

using guidance provided by the algorithm’s 

analysis. 

Start-ups like the subscription service 

Stitch Fix, an online personal 

styling service founded in 2011, 

have come up with systems to mix 

and match wants and needs of its 

millions of customers. Users complete 

a style profile but are also assigned 

a personal stylist who will 

then send a box with a curated selection 

of clothes, accessories, and 

shoes – also referred to as a “fix” – 

that fit within a person’s taste and 

budget. Using each client’s constant 

additional feedback, the stylist, 

assisted by the algorithm, aims 

to develop a better understanding 

of the particular sensitivities of the 

customer in question. 

This is what companies like Trunk 

Club (owned by Nordstrom) or cosmetics 

specialist Birchbox (owned 

by Walgreens) are also trying to do. 

They have the potential to upscale 

the business of high-end American 

department stores in upmarket 

malls, such as Neiman Marcus or 

Nordstrom, or specialty retailers 

like J Crew, which are all feeling the 

pinch of losing business to e-commerce 

retailers. 

In Mountain View, California, the 

Google Brain team is working on 

finding ways to enable computers to 

analyze visuals and create data sets 

that can be applied to the style of 

clothing. Other teams are exploring 

ideas that could end up profiting the 

consumer. A group from the University 

of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 

has developed an algorithm for 

identifying fashion-focused socialnetwork 

accounts. According to MIT 

Technology Review, Tim Oates, a professor 

at the University of Maryland 

Hybrid Design 

For upmarket stores 

such as Nordstrom, 

which are feeling the 

pinch of losing business 

to e-commerce retailers, 

algorithms that help 

them better understand 

their customers could 

prove to be crucial. 

A jacket or a 

pair of pants 

that will adapt 

to your style. 

Tim Oates 

University of Maryland 

in Baltimore, is working on a system 

that makes the transfer of styles 

from one garment to another feasible. 

He envisions algorithms that 

have been trained “on your closet, 

and then you could say here’s a 

jacket or a pair of pants, and I’d like 

to adapt it to my style.” 

Thanks to computers and their artificial 

understanding of your interest 

in being part of the in-crowd, the 

future of fashion could simply mean 

that your individual fashion sense 

might finally prevail. 

source ©: Centre for Education and Youth 

67

Smart Lifestyle Wearables 

68

Wearables 

Smart buds 

When it comes to valuable real estate on the human body, the ear is the new wrist. 

n By Greg Langley 

A 

few years back, devices 

that sat on your wrist and 

were capable of collecting 

data, including audio and 

video, on your driving, eating, and 

exercising habits were seen as the 

next big thing. Then, after investing 

much time and resources, companies 

like Adidas, Nike, and Under 

Armour followed Intel and Microsoft 

in an exodus from a market 

that once seemed like the Promised 

Land. 

The problem was that “hardware 

is hard and software even harder” 

and this market proved more limited 

than previously imagined. While 

athletes welcomed fitness trackers 

because they could monitor their 

heart rate, movement, and training 

regime, the general public was not 

convinced. This dashed the hope 

of sectors such as insurance, for 

example, that envisaged a range 

of new products that could use 

the data to nudge customers into 

undertaking a change in lifestyle 

through the enticement of lower 

premiums. 

The launch of the Apple Watch in 

2015 gave wearables a fashionable 

fillip. CCS Insight, a market-research 

company, estimates that 85 million 

smartwatches were sold worldwide 

in 2019, increasing to 137 million in 

2022 when the market will be worth 

over $27bn. However, such growth 

would mask the sliding sales of fitness 

trackers, which are expected 

to drop from 43 million to 39 million 

over the same period. 

Today, the market for wearable devices 

extends beyond the wrist with 

source ©: GIANT Health 

the emergence of a new category, 

known as “hearables.” These “smart 

buds” are technically advanced 

devices that sit in the ear and augment 

human intelligence. 

source ©: Bragi 

Wearable tech 

will provide an 

alternative to 

the wrist, but 

it will do so by 

enhancing an 

existing experience. 

Nick Hunn 

CTO, WiFore 

A Touch and a Nod 

The Dash Pro, built 

by Bragi, a German 

start-up, is a combination 

of smart earphone 

and personal 

assistant. It can be 

controlled by touch or 

by head gesture. 

Hearables – the New 

Wearables 

Nick Hunn, wireless evangelist, 

product designer, and CTO at Wi- 

Fore, is credited with coining the 

word “hearables” in a blog back in 

2014. In it, he explains that infatuation 

with the wrist began when 

watch sales plummeted after 

younger generations began using 

mobile phones to tell the time. 

With ABI Research reporting at that 

time only 47 percent of people 

regularly used a watch, the wrist 

was seen as vacant real estate going 

begging. 

That appealed to a tech industry 

looking for the next high-volume 

consumer product and kicked off 

a frenzy that everything was going 

to be wearable. The problem was 

that concepts to replace traditional 

watches invariably involved devices 

that connected with smartphones. 

That, says Hunn, meant manufacturers 

were desperately pushing 

technology onto consumers instead 

of adapting from known behavior 

and preferences. 

“That seemed a strategy likely to 

fail as wearable technology is more, 

rather than less personal,” he explains. 

“Instead, I felt a new generation 

of technology would revolu- 

69

Smart Lifestyle Wearables 

tionize the way we listen to music, 

as well as provide an alternative 

to the wrist for vital signs and fitness 

sensors, but it would do so by 

enhancing an existing experience. 

That’s a powerful combination to 

create a successful market.” 

They were prescient observations. 

Wearables – which include fitness 

wristbands, heart-rate straps, and 

even Google Glass – are noveltybased 

products and require consumers 

to put something new on 

their body. After a few uses, many 

are left forgotten in closet draws. 

Earphones were already ubiquitous, 

so they had the potential to make 

a lasting impact in the wearable 

space. 

Smart, connected headphones 

already existed in 2014 but, soon, 

reductions in the power required 

by Bluetooth headsets meant that 

both voice and stereo music could 

be streamed to headphones or earbuds 

running on small batteries. 

Bragi, a start-up based in Munich, 

Germany, was arguably one of 

the first to cut the cord when it 

released The Dash in 2015. The 

Dash was certainly the first smart, 

Bluetooth stereo earbud pair, 

controlled by head gestures and 

touch, with a simple personal assistant 

capability. It also featured 2GB 

70 

Neck-on-Neck 

Race For the Ears 

Galaxy Buds are 

giving Apple’s 

AirPods a run for 

their money. Both are 

true in-ear, wireless 

headphones, but 

Samsung offers more 

features and greater 

customization at 

a cheaper price, 

testers say. 

All-new design in 

one new model 

will boost demand 

and attract 

new users. 

Ming-Chi Kuo 

TF International Securities 

Voices in Your Head 

They are also an exceptionally good 

place, physiologically, to measure 

many vital signs because, unlike the 

wrist, the ear doesn’t move about. 

This makes them more reliable for 

taking measurements. The Dash, for 

example, had an accelerometer and 

pulse oximeter sensors – and that 

was all, in addition to playing your 

favorite tunes. 

In his original blog, Hunn estimated 

that the hearables market would be 

worth over $5bn by 2018. In a report 

last year, MarketResearch estimated 

that it had already exploded to be 

worth $14bn in 2017. 

“That is almost entirely down to the 

success of the AirPod, which certainly 

has taken Apple by surprise,” 

Hunn says. “They felt it was a product 

they had to develop once they 

took the jack socket out of iPhones, 

but have been overwhelmed by the 

response.” 

Apple launched two new AirPod 

models at the end of 2019 with an 

all-new form factor. Ming-Chi Kuo, 

an analyst at TF International Securities, 

is “positive” on the demand 

for AirPods and Apple’s wireless 

headphones market share but he 

believes the “all-new design” of one 

of the new models could boost the 

replacement demand and attract 

new users. He estimates AirPod 

shipments will reach 52 million 

units in 2019 and 75 million to 85 

million units in 2020. 

By some projections, the hearables 

market could be worth as much as 

$23.24bn by 2023, but to do so the 

industry needs to overcome significant 

challenges. The first is price. 

While it is difficult to take a tenminute 

walk in a major city without 

seeing at least one person sportsource 

©: Digitmes 

of memory for uploaded music, 

while a heart-rate sensor and step 

counter provided feedback for athletes, 

removing the need for them 

to carry multiple devices. Apple 

AirPods, Galaxy Buds, and other 

competitors followed and Bragi 

was swamped in the market to the 

point that this year it announced it 

was pivoting out of the hardware 

business to concentrate on software 

for hearables. 

The Dash was a breakthrough because 

it offered convenience, lightweight 

comfort, and flexibility that 

competing Bluetooth earbuds and 

headphones couldn’t match. There 

was no “spaghetti” cord tangle between 

the buds and ears, so it provided 

a full range of motion that 

wired headsets couldn’t match. 

What makes the ears such valuable 

“property” is their location and 

function. Their position near the 

mouth makes them better at understanding 

utterances than smart 

speakers, like Alexa or Siri, found 

halfway across the room.

ing an AirPod or cheaper knockoff, 

hearables are not yet as ubiquitous 

as might be expected. 

One problem to their becoming 

mainstream is price point, says 

Kow Ping, executive director and 

cofounder of Hong Kong start-up 

Well Being Digital (WBD101), which 

supplies highly accurate sensing 

semiconductors to manufacturers 

of hearables. He believes the retail 

sales price will need to fall to below 

$100 for mass pickup. “If you have 

something super-duper accurate 

and good for them [consumers] but 

priced out of the reach of the majority, 

then it will not get traction,” he 

explains. 

Hunn explains that earlier developers 

overloaded the technology and 

had trouble getting product out. 

“It is expensive and challenging to 

condense all that technology down 

to two earbuds that include microphones. 

Many companies struggled 

to get the audio engineering right, 

rather than having a tinny sound,” 

he says. “Then they struggled to 

have a product with batteries that 

lasted more than an hour or two.” 

Apple’s success comes because they 

worked out what technology was 

essential, including an antenna at 

Billions 

$35 

$30 

$25 

$20 

$15 

$10 

$5 

$0 

Smart Watches 

the jaw level to transmit a signal and 

ensure the two ear buds are synchronized. 

They then wrapped it in a 

cool package – and ditched the rest. 

Product defects and pricing in the 

wider industry are identified as 

points holding hearables back, in 

addition to health and safety regulations 

that address such issues as 

hearing loss. The World Health Organization 

estimates that by 2050, 

over 900 million people worldwide 

will have disabling hearing loss. 

Retail prices 

need to fall 

below $100 for 

mass pickup 

and traction. 

Kow Ping 

Well Being Digital 

Budding Prospects 

From around $600 million 

in 2013, the market 

for smart wearable 

devices is expected to 

reach over $30 billion 

in 2020; almost half 

of that will come from 

new players in today’s 

consumer electronics 

markets. 

Global Revenue from Smart Wearables 

Hearing the Future 

In the United States, for example, by 

2020, there will be close to 45 million 

people suffering mild to moderate 

hearing loss with 20 million of them 

aged between 20 and 69, according 

to the Journal of the American Medical 

Association (JAMA). Traditional 

hearing aids have low penetration 

within this demographic. 

In the US in 2017, an Over-the- 

Counter (OTC) Hearing Aid Act was 

passed that instructed the Food 

and Drug Administration to create a 

class of OTC hearing aids for people 

with mild to moderate hearing loss. 

While such developments can have 

an impact on the hearables industry, 

it also indicates a potential convergence 

between hearables and 

traditional hearing aids that may 

give the industry an extra boost. 

Beyond that, a new set of Bluetooth 

specs will be available in about a 

year that will make voice control 

much easier and enable hearables 

to be much more flexible, such as in 

sharing music with friends. 

“I think the next generation of hearable 

products will be about incorporating 

more sensors and then drawing 

back data,” says Hunn. “In terms 

of the generation after that, well AI 

assistance is definitely coming and 

that will enable many new opportunities 

for revenues and players.” 

2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 

Augmented Reality Fashion Kids & Pets Medical Hearables Sports & Fitness 

71 

source ©: WiFore source ©: Linkedin

Smart Lifestyle BCI 

BCI 

Brainy Connections 

Computers can do many things a 

lot better than the human brain but 

there are still tasks we do easily that 

are impossible for computers to 

accomplish. What if the two systems 

could cooperate seamlessly? 

Smart Industry takes a look at 

some of the amazing developments 

in brain–computer interfaces. 

n By Rainer Claassen 

century and it can detect the status 

of the whole brain as well as activities 

in different regions of it. EEG enables 

scientists to find out which regions of 

the brain are active during different 

kinds of activities – resulting in maps 

with detailed information about the 

functions of different regions of the 

brain. 

Over time, the technology is becoming 

more accessible. In Cambridge, 

Massachusetts, for example, 

Neurable has developed an EEG that 

is relatively simple to use. It takes 

more than an hour to apply a standard 

“wet electrode” EEG to a human 

skull, using gels to optimize the 

electrode contact, but Neurable’s dry 

system is attached to a virtual reality 

headset and can be fitted within 

minutes. The company claims its DK1 

system is noninvasive, quick to set 

up, and easy to use. The headset uses 

six dry EEG sensors, which has more 

than 90 percent correlation with wet 

systems, and includes continuous impedance 

and signal quality monitoring. 

The company claims it is know-how 

in pattern recognition and machine 

learning that allows the DK1 to return 

stunning results from this rather 

Since the transmission in the 

human brain is done by electricity, 

it is possible to measure 

the related activities using 

technologies such as functional 

magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) 

– which requires very expensive and 

large machines. As there are no signs 

this technology will become more accessible 

in the near future, neuroscientists 

are exploring alternatives. 

One existing alternative is to apply 

sensors to the skull. This method, 

called electroencephalography (EEG), 

has been known since the late 19th 

Look, No Hands! 

Neurable’s DKI 

system uses six dry 

EEG sensors and can 

be fitted in minutes, 

allowing human 

users to move within 

VR worlds by thought 

control alone. 

source ©: Neurable 

72

simple system. In a demonstration at 

Augmented World Expo 2019 in Munich, 

Germany, Neurable showcased 

a person interacting with virtual 

items displayed through the VR headset 

by thought alone. He was even 

able to move within the VR setting 

without using handheld controllers. 

Neurable’s clients include architects 

and interior designers who find it 

especially interesting that the headset 

can receive direct feedback from 

the user’s brain. Without the need for 

written surveys, they can detect how 

each user feels about their virtual 

surroundings, which helps to create 

places in which people will feel good 

and do better work. 

Neurable’s software tools enable 

integration with Unity, C++, and C# 

development environments, and 

the company also offers data export 

capabilities and a web portal for 3D 

data visualization and post-session 

analysis. 

Another example of this technology 

entering the mass market is a meditation 

headset produced by Muse. 

The company claims that the device, 

available from about €170, can 

translate brainwaves into sounds. It 

aids meditation by giving audible 

feedback when rising brain activity 

is detected. This can help users to get 

into a state of deep relaxation as they 

learn how to control the sound. 

Let There Be Light 

Increases in the brain’s oxygen levels 

can also reveal neuron activity, 

a method that is currently being investigated 

at the Facebook Reality 

Labs (FRL). Near-infrared light can be 

used to measure blood oxygenation 

in the brain from outside in a noninvasive 

way. Neurons consume far 

more oxygen from the blood when 

they are active. Shifts in oxygen levels 

within the brain can be measured by 

a device that works in a similar way to 

a pulse oximeter – the clip-like sensor 

attached to a patient’s finger to 

measure blood oxygen levels. Nearinfrared 

light can pass through the 

skull and back, allowing blood oxygenation 

in the brain to be measured 

from outside of the body in a nonin- 

source ©: Quora 

source ©: Openwater 

vasive way – thus giving hints on current 

brain activity. At Facebook’s lab 

they are experimenting with a portable, 

wearable device made from 

consumer-grade parts with an eye on 

mass production. 

Facebook’s researchers have an ambitious 

goal: to convert thought into 

text and achieve a real-time decoding 

speed of 100 words per minute with 

a 1,000-word vocabulary and word 

error rate of less than 17 percent. To 

make progress by comparative results, 

the researchers are currently 

engaging with a lab at the University 

of California, San Francisco, that 

is using invasive technology – a small 

patch of tiny recording electrodes 

temporarily placed on the surface of 

seizure patients’ brains, to map back 

to the origins of their attacks in preparation 

for neurosurgery. 

First results are promising, and brain 

activity recorded while people spoke 

has been converted to text on a computer 

screen. A small set of spoken 

words and phrases was decoded in 

real time, a first in the field of brain– 

computer interface (BCI) research, 

and the ongoing work aims to translate 

much larger vocabularies with 

dramatically lower error rates. 

Window to the Brain 

Openwater’s new 

headset resembles a 

beany hat, but contains 

near-infrared light emitters 

that measure blood 

flow in the brain. Originally 

intended to help 

diagnose brain damage, 

it could one day enable 

thought reading. 

Sooner or 

later, we will 

be able to 

read your 

thoughts. 

Mary Lou Jepsen 

Openwater 

There is still a lot of progress needed 

within the algorithms and hardware 

before this will lead to Facebook’s 

aim of producing an affordable headset 

that will allow people to dictate 

with the force of thought alone. 

Facebook is not the only company exploring 

this technology. Silicon Valley 

hardware engineer Mary Lou Jepsen 

recently founded Openwater. The 

company plans to build a headset 

that resembles a beany hat to house 

the near-infrared light emitters for 

measuring blood flow. Openwater 

is actually focusing on diagnosing 

brain injuries or neurodegenerative 

diseases but Jepsen believes that the 

technology could be used to read 

thoughts – sooner or later. 

Jepsen’s assumption is supported by 

experiments performed by Professor 

Jack Gallant at the University of California, 

Berkeley, eight years ago. With 

the help of fMRI, he scanned the brain 

activity of people as they watched 

video clips. After analyzing the patterns 

that occurred during watching 

different footage, a computer was 

able to process the activity patterns 

in the brain to generate images that 

bore a stunning resemblance to the 

original videos. 

Come Inside 

Brain experts often compare noninvasive 

methods of investigating 

brain activities to listening to the 

noise of a crowd from outside a stadium. 

You may be able to determine 

when goals are scored and maybe 

deduce which team is winning from 

the loudness of the reactions – but 

you can hardly discern any other details 

of the game. 

To find out about these it is necessary 

to go inside the stadium – and to 

place many microphones in there in 

different places. In regard to the brain 

73

Smart Lifestyle BCI 

source ©: Synchron 

source ©: Neuropace 

this means getting sensors inside the 

skull. But measuring the activities of 

single neurons is quite difficult even 

when working with the larger cells 

of primitive animals in a laboratory 

– and extremely complicated when 

dealing with the brains of living humans. 

Very small sensors have to be 

placed very precisely and they need 

to stay in place in conditions that can 

be compared to a jungle by the sea: 

hot, humid, and salty. A tough environment 

for technology. 

These conditions don’t deter some 

organizations and Synchron, partnering 

with Australia’s University of 

Melbourne, is working on a stent-like 

device studded with electrodes. Inserted 

via a small incision in the neck, 

this “Stentrode” is guided through 

blood vessels that overlie the brain. 

Working from Within 

Once in the right location, it expands 

from the size of a matchstick to fit the 

vessel and tissue grows into its mesh, 

keeping it in place. The device is designed 

to record from multiple locations 

through the numerous sensors 

positioned along and around it. 

The company claims that human trials 

of the Stentrode are due to start 

this year. It does not get in direct 

contact with single neurons but can 

get more detailed information than 

systems that work from outside the 

brain. The signals it detects are transmitted 

wirelessly to an output device 

carried in the subject’s pocket. 

Implant specialist Neuropace is currently 

using a responsive neurostimulation 

(RNS) system on seizure 

patients. It consists of a neurostimulator 

that is implanted on the inner 

surface of the skull with tiny wires 

connecting it up to two seizure-onset 

areas. It monitors brainwaves, detecting 

signal patterns that are typical for 

Inside Out 

Synchron has 

developed so-called 

“Stentrodes” that are 

implanted in the blood 

vessels of the brain and 

can gather detailed 

information that can 

then be transmitted 

wirelessly to an output 

device. 

We are slowly 

beginning to 

understand 

what a thought 

really is. 

Edward Boyden 

MIT Department of 

Biological Engineering 

the onset of a stroke, and responds in 

real time by sending brief pulses that 

prevent the seizure from developing 

further. A data collector can wirelessly 

acquire data from the stimulator, 

which helps medics understand the 

causes of the seizures and improve 

health care. 

More sophisticated solutions could 

soon lead to the possibility of “inserting” 

thoughts into brains – by stimulating 

different regions of the brain, 

scientists have been able to activate 

certain images and thoughts. 

Optical Signals 

Researchers at the Massachusetts 

Institute of Technology (MIT) have 

developed a completely different approach 

to measuring electrical activity 

in the brain. They have embedded 

light-sensitive proteins into neuron 

membranes. The proteins emit a 

fluorescent signal that indicates how 

much voltage a particular cell is currently 

experiencing. 

This could allow scientists to study 

how neurons behave, millisecond by 

millisecond, as the brain performs 

specific functions. 

Edward Boyden, an associate professor 

of biological engineering and 

source ©: Pinterest 

brain and cognitive sciences at MIT 

explains: “If you put an electrode in 

the brain, it’s like trying to understand 

a phone conversation by hearing 

only one person talk. Now we can 

record the neural activity of many 

cells in a neural circuit and hear them 

as they talk to each other.” 

MIT is now trying to measure brain 

activity in mice as they perform various 

tasks. Boyden hopes that this will 

result in maps of neural circuits and 

to help understand how they manifest 

specific behaviors. “We will be 

able to watch a neural computation 

happen,” he says. “Over the next five 

years or so we’re going to try to solve 

some small brain circuits completely. 

Such results might mean a big step 

forward to understanding what a 

thought or a feeling really is.” 

Big Promises 

Since the topic leaves room for much 

futuristic fantasy and great opportunities, 

it is no surprise that Elon Musk 

is involved too. In July 2019, he outlined 

plans to connect human brains 

directly to computers through his 

company Neuralink. He described a 

campaign to create “symbiosis with 

artificial intelligence,” announcing a 

first prototype would be implanted 

in a human by the end of 2020. It involves 

microfibers that could record 

and stimulate the activities of up to 

1,000 neurons. 

As Musk is personally afraid that artificial 

intelligence may eventually consider 

humans to be no longer necessary, 

he hopes to enable people to 

“merge” with AI – and he expects that 

a high-bandwidth brain interface will 

lead to options to achieve this. 

The California-based entrepreneur is 

even on record saying that the infrastructure 

in Neuralink’s system could 

become so simple it wouldn’t need 

74

expensive neuroscientists to implant 

and maintain it – thus making the implantation 

of the interface relatively 

cheap. “I really think you will one day 

be able to repay the loan for such a 

procedure with superhuman intelligence. 

I think that’s a safe bet,” he 

argues. 

Some scientists are less optimistic, 

doubting that the great announcements 

will lead to real-life outcomes 

any time soon. To most BCI experts, 

neuroscience is a work in progress, 

with many different disciplines involved: 

materials science, neuroscience, 

machine learning, engineering, 

design, and many more. They don’t 

see any shortcuts to evading clinical 

trials and regulatory approval. 

Should We Do This? 

Although it looks like there is still a 

long way to go until these technologies 

will actually allow direct access 

to secret thoughts, possible consequences 

have to be considered early 

on. As people get more and more 

concerned about all the data some 

firms are collecting without asking, 

many worry that BCIs may one day 

lead to even greater exploitation of 

personal information. 

Many questions remain unanswered, 

for instance: Do we really want companies 

to know more about ourselves 

than we do? Who will be held 

responsible if a wrong thought leads 

to fatal consequences when mindcontrolling 

a machine? Will a random 

thought like “I turned my phone off. 

I must remember to turn it on” get 

truncated to “Turn it on” and the industrial 

machine obeys? 

The current state of developments in 

brain–computer interfaces is a long 

way behind science-fiction fantasy. 

Although the fourth part of the Matrix 

movie franchise is currently in the 

making and its hero Neo is set to reenter 

the computer-generated world 

cabled into his brain, in today’s world 

even a simple interface to the brain 

for direct input and output has yet to 

be developed. 

Indeed, many scientists remain 

doubtful that it will ever be possible 

to actually transmit complex 

How Do Brains Work? 

Neural Networks 

thoughts – let alone to upload human 

consciousness to a computer. 

So far, BCI technologies look as 

though they will have their strongest 

impact in medical use cases – but 

they are starting to seed into industry. 

Lots of companies are doing research 

in many different directions 

and many scientific breakthroughs 

in the past have been achieved by 

chance when many players became 

involved in a specific theme. This 

could well happen in this field, too. 

The path may still be full of obstacles, 

but the outlook for BCIs is starting 

to confound the doubters and look 

more than promising. 


Worlds Apart 

Scenes like those from 

the movie franchise 

Matrix are predicted to 

soon become reality. 

But some scientists 

remain unconvinced. 

source ©: Onlinezeitung24 

Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku said that 

the human brain is the most complex object 

in the known universe, and many scientists 

agree. Science has already found out a lot 

about the way it works – but is still far from 

actually understanding it. 

Weighing less than three pounds, the brain 

has some impressive figures. Contributing 

only two percent to the weight of an adult, it 

consumes about 20 percent of the energy a 

person needs. Almost a hundred billion neurons 

are working in it and each of these cells 

may be connected to up to 10,000 other cells. 

This adds up to as many as a thousand trillion 

synaptic connections through which signals 

are transferred. 

Each neuron has many tentacle-like projections: 

numerous dendrites and a single axon 

– a long, slender nerve fiber which transmits 

information to different neurons, muscles, and 

glands. The rather short dendrites, usually less 

than a millimeter, receive electric signals that 

are transmitted from neighboring neurons 

via their axons, which can be up to a meter in 

length. In addition to the trillions of connections 

within the brain, there are many more 

connecting to the sensory cells within the 

body. 

Although the way brains work is quite different 

from computers, some comparisons can 

be made. The memory capacity of a brain 

is estimated to be between one and 1,000 

terabytes, with a computing capability equal 

to a computer with a one trillion bit per 

second processor. Compare that to Hewlett 

Packard’s recently announced singlememory 

computing system of 160 terabytes 

– currently the world’s largest – and you see 

that computers still have a way to go before 

they can catch up. 

The same goes for raw computing power. 

The fastest supercomputer in the world, 

the Tianhe-2 in Guangzhou, China, has 

a maximum processing speed of 54.902 

petaFLOPS. A petaFLOP is a quadrillion (one 

thousand trillion) floating point calculations 

per second. That’s a huge amount of calculations, 

and yet that doesn’t even come close 

to the processing speed of the human brain. 

Although it is impossible to precisely calculate, 

it is postulated that the human brain 

operates at 1 exaFLOP, which is equivalent to 

a billion billion calculations per second. 


75

Smart Solutions Logistics 

Logistics 

Automating 

the Last 50 Feet 

source ©: Ford Motor Company 

The last mile of the logistics chain is a huge challenge but the closer you approach 

your destination, the more complex and expensive it gets. Not coincidentally, 

the “last 50 feet” is considered by experts to be the true bottleneck for 

e-commerce growth – and that’s where a large part of the future of retail is being 

decided. Start-ups and online retailers alike are working hard to close that final gap. 

n By Marcel Weiss 

Everybody’s doing it these 

days – namely buying stuff 

online. E-commerce has been 

growing for decades with no 

end in sight but the actual delivery 

of purchases is still handled by an 

infrastructure designed and built for 

the mail-order age. The final burden 

is born by the postal systems and 

delivery vans which have to tour 

76 

Cool Delivery 

Designed to safely get 

packages to customers 

using autonomous delivery 

devices, the Amazon 

Scout is about the size 

of a small cooler and 

rolls along sidewalks at 

a walking pace, carefully 

avoiding pedestrians and 

other obstacles. 

neighborhoods and laboriously deliver 

each package to the customers’ 

homes. 

This is the biggest bottleneck constricting 

e-commerce growth, the 

so-called “last mile,” which accounts 

for between 25 percent and 50 percent 

of the total shipping costs. The 

expense incurred means there is a 

huge market opportunity for innosource 

©: Amazon

source ©: Pop-Up City 

the REV-1 is larger than the Scout or 

Starship robots to make it easily visible 

to drivers but it’s still far smaller 

than a traditional delivery van and 

able to qualify under e-bike regulations 

in the US, the company says. 

Even bigger is the Robomart van, 

which is taking a slightly different 

route by offering a kind of mobile 

vending machine. The customer requests 

a visit and can choose from a 

range of goods carried by this minimart 

on wheels. 

Other start-ups bidding for ownership 

of the last mile include Hellovation 

– and a lot of companies are 

joining the sprint to win a share of 

the last mile. 

One obvious route is to develop autonomous 

robotic carts to deliver 

goods from the local fulfillment center. 

Amazon is testing its “Scout” robot, 

which looks like a six-wheeled 

cooler box. The prototype models 

are currently accompanied by human 

“minders,” a bit like the early days 

when cars were preceded by a man 

with a red flag, but Starship Technologies, 

an Estonian start-up run by 

two former founders of Skype and 

headquartered in California, is a step 

ahead. Starship’s carts are already 

making autonomous deliveries in selected, 

well-defined areas such as the 

campus of George Mason University, 

Virginia, and the UK town of Milton 

Keynes. The company has recently reported 

more than 100,000 successful 

commercial deliveries to date. 

Google and Starship are by no means 

alone. Refraction AI is working on 

a delivery robot called REV-1 which 

uses the side of roads, bike lanes, as 

well as sidewalks. For safety reasons, 

Side by Side 

To maximize flexibility 

and safety, 

Refraction’s REV-1 

is lightweight and 

low-power enough 

to qualify under e- 

bike regulations, but 

is fast and nimble 

enough to operate 

in traditional car 

lanes without 

impeding traffic. 

Store on Wheels 

California-based start-up 

Robomart has introduced 

a driverless vehicle that will 

sell you small groceries at 

your curbside. An array of 

cameras monitors what 

people take, then the bot 

calculates what to charge 

them, before puttering off to 

the next customer. 

World Robotics from Singapore, Eliport 

in Spain, and US firm Nuro. 

All of this doesn’t mean the longestablished 

logistics companies are 

standing still. FedEx, for example, 

is partnering with Walmart, Target, 

and Walgreens to launch a program 

based on its SameDay Bot. 

Clearing the Way 

The sidewalk or road versus local bylaws 

argument hints at the struggle 

that will dominate any progress in 

the last mile. Robots on crammed 

sidewalks or in busy bike lanes don’t 

sound like something the populace, 

and therefore regulators, will accept 

once this mode of delivery gains any 

significant traction. 

Looking upwards, drones could provide 

an answer but the same red 

tape problems are holding things 

back – and rightly so. Amazon’s 

Prime Air is the company’s development 

project based in the US, the 

UK, Austria, France, and Israel but, 

although the first test was in 2016, it 

still hasn’t taken off as a commercial 

proposition. Airspace use in densely 

source ©: Refraction AI 

Coming Down! 

Chinese online 

consumer electronics 

retailer JD.com is 

experimenting in 

Indonesia with a dronebased 

delivery system 

that can help service 

out-of-reach areas and 

generally expedite its 

dispatches. 

source ©: TechCrunch / Verizon Communications Inc. 

77

Smart Solutions Logistics 

Two Legs Good 

Ford is using 

robotics to explore 

a new frontier in the 

world of autonomy. 

Teaming up with 

Agility Robotics, 

the automaker has 

introduced Digit, a 

two-legged robot 

capable of lifting 

packages that weigh 

up to 40 pounds. 

source ©: The Spoon 

populated areas needs to be carefully 

regulated to avoid accidents and, 

at the moment, delivery drones can 

only be classed as unindemnified flying 

objects. 

This doesn’t mean drones are out of 

the picture altogether. The last mile 

can sometimes translate into 50 kilometers 

or more in countries with 

large rural areas. Jingdong (JD.com), 

China’s largest online retailer, has 

been pouring billions of yuan into 

its logistics infrastructure. As part 

of this, the company is working on 

drones in a big way. The JD robots 

will be capable of carrying loads 

weighing up to one ton to and from 

remote rural areas and villages. 

Sharing Resources 

JD.com plus the likes of Amazon and 

the UK-based online supermarket 

Ocado are also spearheading another 

important trend in e-commerce 

logistics. As these large online retailers 

build their state-of-the-art logistics 

infrastructures, they can offer to 

share these new resources, and their 

accumulated expertise, to others. 

Amazon uses logistics to make things 

better for its marketplace partners, 

and JD is increasingly offering 

cutting-edge logistics automation 

at more points across the logistics 

chain. The Ocado Group is offering 

turnkey solutions to grocery retailers 

and struck its first three-year US deal 

Welcome to the Hive 

British online supermarket 

Ocado has filled a 

warehouse in Andover, 

a small town in southern 

England, with what 

seems to be a huge 

chessboard, populated 

entirely by robots. The 

so-called hive-gridmachine 

can process 

3.5 million items or 

around 65,000 orders 

per week. 

in October 2018 to build 20 warehouses 

for the Kroger supermarket 

chain. These will use automation 

technology based on the decadeslong 

expertise of Ocado. 

Online retail has been pushing logistics 

to new heights for many years 

and the large, established online 

retailers have learnt how modern 

delivery processes should operate. 

Until now, retail has been the carrier’s 

customer but now it is stepping up to 

take control of the delivery channel. 

Successful automation of the last 

mile needs a more holistic approach 

than just robots on the sidewalk. For 

starters, as Mark Godwin, cofounder 

of Boxbot (yet another start-up developing 

delivery robots) recently 

told Wired magazine, the hardest 

part of the last mile itself is the last 

50 feet. Getting to a customer’s 

front door and delivering the package 

may involve opening a gate or 

moving around a flower bed, which 

is why autonomous delivery usually 

means the customer has to come to 

the sidewalk to pick up their package 

– or the robot is accompanied by a 

human to do that, he adds. 

For the time being, automation will 

augment delivery fulfilled by people 

in vans and the last few feet will have 

to be covered by a human. But the 

overall process can hugely benefit 

from the increased efficiency automation 

offers. To be really effective, 

the whole delivery operation must 

be rebuilt to eliminate these and other 

obstacles. Carmaker Ford is driving 

a project using bipedal, humanoid 

robots in autonomous delivery vans. 

It’s still in the early stages of development 

but if it goes ahead, the last 

few feet could be navigated without 

causing damage and stairs or other 

obstacles would not be a problem to 

prevent delivery to the door. 

Amazon is taking a different approach. 

The company accounts for 

about 40 percent of all e-commerce 

in the US, according to research firm 

Rakuten Intelligence, with its own logistics 

system handling around half 

of its deliveries. For the last 50 feet, 

Amazon has devised Key, a smart 

door-lock system that allows the delivery 

person to enter the customer’s 

house or garage, watched through 

a remote camera, when no one is 

home. It is a very secure system 

which only allows access for a specific 

delivery at a fixed time slot, but for 

some customers it is proving to be a 

step too far and a potential invasion 

of privacy. 

Somewhat less controversial are 

Amazon’s Locker and Hub initiatives. 

Locker is an extension of Amazon’s 

delivery to a store participating in 

its Counter delivery scheme, and the 

customer has to visit the store to collect 

their purchase. Counter has the 

disadvantage that it can only be accessed 

when the store is open. Locker 

is an improvement because it uses 

source ©: Ford Motor Company 

78

Anytime You Want 

Amazon Hub Lockers 

allow customers 

to pick up packages 

whenever it’s 

convenient for them. 

Currently, Amazon 

operates over 3,000 

such repositories. 

source ©: Amazon 

source ©: GBS German Bionic Systems GmbH 

smart cabinets in secure areas that 

are available anytime. 

Locker is a development of this and 

makes delivery to an apartment 

block easier. The Key system allows 

a delivery person to enter the building 

to access a rack of smart lockers, 

similar to the Locker system’s cabinets, 

in the foyer. This allows goods 

to be delivered to a secure place to 

await collection when the customer 

gets home. 

In both cases, the size of the lockers 

means that larger purchases cannot 

be handled and will still rely on the 

customer, or a friend, being available 

at the time of delivery. It also means 

that the current range of Scout robots 

cannot be used. The problem 

is not insurmountable and one day 

Scout robots’ future iterations may 

be able to enter apartment buildings 

using Amazon Key and dock to Amazon 

Hubs. But devising a fully automated 

delivery system could prove 

more expensive than the current 

van-and-man (or woman) systems. 

The Final Step 

Owning the logistics chain end-toend 

will allow Amazon to go deeper 

into automation and the company 

is increasing the number of small 

Prime fulfillment centers as close to 

city centers as possible to reduce the 

“last mile” as much as possible, so 

that this final step can be covered in 

as little time as possible. Automation 

also allows for centralized, detailed, 

algorithmically optimized synchronization 

of delivery processes as 

each part of the system becomes 

more flexible. Intelligent software 

platforms are becoming increasingly 

important and indispensable as delivery 

options. 

Facilitating the last-mile solutions 

means changes have to be made at 

the warehouse end of the business. 

A more efficient use of cubic meters 

at automated warehouses allows for 

smaller, sustainable warehouses to 

proliferate. Because of the increased 

number, each one can be more specialized 

and become a crucial part in 

the robotic delivery chain. 

Even today, fulfillment centers are 

being automated and augmented 

with technology at every level to 

increase efficiency and adaptability 

to enable the anticipated increased 

volume of deliveries. Where robots 

lack the intelligence required for a 

task, exoskeletons for employees are 

Humans with 

exoskeletons 

will do everything 

robots 

can’t handle 

themselves. 

Gerald Müller 

DB Schenker 

Mother’s 

Little Helper 

German robotics 

specialist Bionic 

demonstrated the 

first fully networked 

exoskeleton at Hanover 

Fair. Designed 

specially for the 

Industrial Internet of 

Things (IIoT), it boasts 

self-learning capabilities 

and artificial 

intelligence. 

now starting to help. Gerald Mueller, 

head of process and efficiency management 

at logistics firm DB Schenker, 

says that first tests at its logistics 

hub with German Bionic’s Cray X 

exoskeletons have been met with 

positive reactions from the employees 

and has proved to make manual 

work healthier and more efficient. 

This hints at larger augmentation 

coming to logistics as robots take 

on more jobs and humans with exoskeletons 

keep up the pace, doing 

everything the robots can’t handle 

themselves. 

The process of automating delivery 

is gathering momentum and we can 

expect more, but smaller, provisioning 

centers and greater differentiation 

in last-mile delivery methods 

as the new value-chain structure 

emerges. Online retail giants expect 

to play a crucial role in tomorrow’s 

logistics world because they feel 

they know best what’s missing today. 

As they build up their logistics businesses, 

by providing or commissioning 

the missing parts for a modern 

infrastructure, solving the last-mile 

challenges, and especially the last 50 

feet, will play a major part in fulfilling 

this aspiration. 

source ©: logistik aktuell / Schenker Deutschland AG 

79

Smart Solutions Home Threats 

Home Threats 

About Security 

and Things 

Do you know where your data sets go to? More specifically, do you know 

who knows? Strong authentication and identity management will play 

an increasingly crucial role as companies and organizations move 

toward the goal of a totally connected world. 

n By Bengt Sahlin * 

An increasing number of 

Things are being connected 

today and we are heading 

toward a world where 

everything that benefits from being 

connected will be connected. The Internet 

of Things (IoT) makes big promises 

in what new services and applications 

it can offer us. New use cases will 

happen over time when Things get 

connected and we realize all the benefits 

we can get out of them. 

At the same time, we also need to see 

technical advances in order to reach 

the full potential of IoT. Connecting 

Things means that we want them to 

communicate but, for this to happen, 

the Things need mechanisms to exchange 

data and they should understand 

each other – they should have 

some kind of common language. The 

technical term used is semantic interoperability. 

80 

Identity management 

is 

an important 

aspect of IoT. 

Bengt Sahlin 

Ericsson 

source ©: LinkedIn 

Semantic interoperability is getting 

increased attention today, and there 

are ongoing efforts to enable it. As 

an example, a workshop was recently 

arranged by the Internet Architecture 

Board (IAB) to discuss semantic 

interoperability in the harmonization 

of information and data models 

(https://tinyurl.com/yyghfqvb). 

Individual Things have very different 

natures and, hence, also have different 

characteristics, such as computational 

capabilities and power 

restrictions. All these different characteristics 

need to be taken into account 

when designing the mechanisms 

for building communication 

networks of the future. 

Basic Mechanisms 

Not surprisingly, many standardization 

organizations are working on 

improving the technology needed 

for IoT. For example, the Internet 

Engineering Task Force (IETF) has 

specified basic mechanisms for use 

on the Internet and it is working on 

improving these procedures and on 

specifying new ones to meet future 

communication demands. For IoT, 

*Bengt Sahlin is research lead for networking security at NomadicLab, Ericsson Research.

for example, the hypertext transfer 

protocol (HTTP) can be used for communication 

but, for Things with more 

restricted resources, another lightweight 

alternative has been specified, 

the constrained application protocol 

(CoAP). 

In the 3rd Generation Partnership 

Project (3GPP), there are radio technologies 

being developed and enhanced 

called Extended Coverage 

GSM (EC-GSM), Narrowband Internet 

of Things (NB-IoT), and Long-term 

Evolution Machine Type Communication 

(LTE-M). A couple of main characteristics 

of these new systems are 

improved, extended coverage and 

energy efficiency. 

To enable the full potential of IoT, it 

should go without saying that security 

and privacy also need to be 

handled well. Identity management 

is an important aspect of IoT. Every 

Thing needs an identity so that it can 

be recognized and ensure that communication 

is running between the 

correct devices. 

There are many good security systems 

available to protect the integrity 

and confidentiality of communications 

and to enforce and handle 

identity management. For the HTTP 

and CoAP protocols, Transport Layer 

Security (TLS) and Datagram TLS 

(DTLS) can be used to protect the 

communication. New protocols for 

application layer security, such as Object 

Security of CoAP (OSCoAP) and 

Ephemeral Diffie-Hellman Over COSE 

(EDHOC) are being developed, to 

support end-to-end security as well 

as the application of CoAP in new IoT 

settings. These protocols are based 

on the Concise Binary Object Representation 

(CBOR) encoded message 

syntax, which is expected to become 

an important standard for compact 

secure messages. 

There is also a need for access control, 

to make sure that the Things are only 

performing actions requested by authorized 

entities. For example, any 

given Thing in a house should only 

be accessed by devices or systems 

appointed by the homeowners, not 

the neighbors or any unsanctioned 

devices. 

A lightweight, open authorization 

framework suitable for IoT is being 

built as an offshoot from the widely 

deployed web framework OAuth 

2.0. Acknowledging the wide variety 

of IoT deployments, this framework 

allows the definition of profiles 

adapted to different communications 

standards, such as HTTP, CoAP, 

and Bluetooth, and security specifications, 

such as TLS, DTLS, and OSCoAP. 

3GPP has defined its own security 

mechanisms for protecting its radio 

communications. Technical details 

of these systems can be found under 

Technical Specifications 43.020, 

33.102, and 33.401, which can be 

found in the list maintained by 3GPP’s 

SA3 security working group. 

Automated Setup 

Another important aspect to consider 

is how to set up the security when 

a Thing is connected to a network. As 

many Things are expected to be connected, 

it is desirable that the setup 

should be automated as much as 

possible and, if human intervention is 

needed, ought to be as easy as possible. 

One example of automated setup is 

Ericsson NomadicLab’s work on digital 

signage. Printed advertising signs 

are giving way to electronic displays, 

wirelessly fed by cloud-based services. 

The display screens need to be 

correctly configured and authorized 

before the HTML5 advertising content 

can be shown. The Nomadic- 

Lab researchers are working on how 

Augmented 

Operations 

Ericsson’s DevOps 

framework for efficient 

deployment 

and operations 

of NFV-based 

services enables 

elastic router 

configuration 

to dynamically 

expand or reduce 

its capacity. 

making these connections can be 

deskilled through the use of mobilephone 

cameras and QR codes. In addition 

to providing communication 

system security, it is also important to 

secure the devices themselves. Many 

of the Things that are getting connected 

were not originally designed 

for IoT use and it is important to ensure 

that connecting any device will 

not increase the risk of malicious access. 

IoT manufacturers may also lack 

experience and expertise in the area 

of data communication. 

One of the early successes for consumer 

IoT implementation is the 

connected home concept, especially 

for lighting control. Even though 

these were engineered to connect 

to a smartphone app over Wi-Fi, 

there are numerous accounts by security 

experts of vulnerabilities being 

exploited. In 2014, David Bryan 

and Daniel Crowley, security researchers 

at Trustwave, documented 

how lights in a house in Oregon 

could be switched on and off by a 

stranger in San Francisco. Hacks like 

this have awakened the connected 

home suppliers to security issues 

but, even today, these still happen 

far too often. 

The security industry needs to continue 

helping the IoT community by 

raising awareness of the need for 

robust security and by providing the 

security frameworks that will be a 

cornerstone in the success of building 

an Internet of Things capable of 

safely connecting billions of devices. 

source ©: Ericsson 

81

Column Bernd Schöne 

Engineering Data 

IoT Is Not for Free 

Gathering 

data is one 

thing – making 

sense of it all is 

something else 

indeed! 

Bernd Schöne 

is a veteran 

German Internet 

journalist 

and an expert on 

data analysis. 

We want to build the best machines 

in the world, but for that 

we need data.” That’s what I heard 

over and over again at Bauma in Munich, 

the largest trade fair for the construction industry 

and, in fact, the largest trade fair in the world. It’s 

where companies like Caterpillar, Liebherr, or Komatsu 

show off their gigantic excavators and dozers, 

and the feeling was that the industry is under huge 

pressure. 

Heavy equipment like this makes lots of noise and 

guzzles dozens of gallons of diesel every minute. Yes, 

the machines are controlled by complicated electronics, 

but what about IoT? Every exhibitor had something 

to say on this subject, but few had anything to show. It 

seems almost as though the engineers have yet to hear 

about the Industrial Internet, which is curious. 

The reason for the apparent disregard, exhibitors told 

me, is lack of data. Not that these behemoths don’t 

generate tons of data, it’s the fact that nobody really 

knows who owns it all: the manufacturer, the customer, 

the contractor, or the rental company. “Each of them 

keeps their data under lock and key,” one frustrated developer 

told me. 

Which is too bad because data, as everyone knows, will 

be the crude oil of the 21st century. 

Of course, gathering data is one thing; making sense of 

it all is something else indeed! A car engine consists of 

more than a thousand parts, the whole car can run to 

10,000 parts or more, but an airplane has over a million 

of them. Every time it takes off, a plane generates more 

data than a supercomputer: each of the twin engines on 

a Boeing 787 produces 60 terabytes per hour. Analyzing 

such a tsunami of bits and bytes requires a deep understanding 

of what they represent – and that 

costs money. IoT does not come for free. 

Smart sensors are more expensive than dumb 

ones; maybe only a couple of cents but it all adds 

up. The increasing number of connected devices uses 

up electricity at an ever-growing rate: power demand 

from IT is growing faster than in any other industry already. 

The International Energy Agency estimates the 

Internet of Things will be consuming more than 1,000 

terawatt hours by 2025 and that 400 of those terawatts 

will be wasted. 

Being able to demonstrate sustainability is becoming 

a compelling sales argument for any product, but IoT 

must also show a profit if it is to succeed. Industries all 

over the world need to cut down on wear and tear and 

increase fuel efficiency if they want to stay in business. 

One of the best examples of this is how Formula One 

racing cars are developed; their manufacturers were 

among the first to bet heavily on data. Every mile one 

of these speedsters moves is minutely chronicled, the 

data is put through sophisticated simulators, and the 

results meticulously evaluated by trained technicians 

who are able to modify almost every characteristic of 

the car, often in real time. Engine performance and 

wear can be altered during the heat of a race via remote 

systems, ensuring that the racer makes it to the finish 

line with enough gas for a victory lap left in its tank. 

Careful data analysis in racing cars leads to incremental 

improvements; a few hundredths of a second here, a 

few there. In the end, data will play a large part in who 

takes home the prize and who gets left in the dust. 

That’s why it makes more business sense to have an 

analysis bottom line that reads: “Give the data to the 

engineers, not the bean counters.” 

82

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Smart Solutions Augmented Reality 

Augmented Reality 

Making a MES 

Augmented Reality (AR) is very much part of the digital revolution in manufacturing. 

By simply donning a hands-free headset, workers can add a virtual layer of contextual 

information on top of what they see before them along with detailed information 

about a machine or process. Today, AR is mainly used in maintenance but, once 

you realize that the application of AR is only limited by the imagination, 

that’s only the tip of the iceberg. 

n By Chris Parsons* 

Putting operational 

data 

into context 

and making it 

available across 

enterprise and 

automation 

systems is what 

MES does best. 

Chris Parsons 

Critical Manufacturing 

Augmented Reality (AR) is part 

of what is becoming known 

as the manufacturing execution 

system (MES), a whole 

new world of opportunities for increased 

plant efficiency and performance. 

With complete access to all 

the real-time data from the MES, AR 

can go much deeper into the shop 

floor. By providing an interactive window 

into all data contained within 

a modern MES, operators, workers, 

technicians, process engineers, 

and managers can see exactly what 

is happening, or what needs to be 

done, in real time and be intuitively 

guided through operations. They can 

access any information from the MES 

anytime and anywhere using smartphones, 

tablets or, for the ultimate in 

hands-free efficiency, AR glasses. 

A modern MES designed for futureready 

manufacturing, based on the 

Industry 4.0 (I4.0) model, can provide 

real-time, contextualized data from 

every part of the connected supply 

chain. Data about equipment, products, 

processes, and schedules can 

not only be retrieved but also analyzed 

to reveal key performance indicators 

(KPIs), such as overall equipment 

efficiency (OEE), in-process lots, 

yield, cycle time, mean time to repair 

(MTTR), and mean time between failures 

(MTBF). Product specifications, 

order details, customer details, quality 

metrics, and batch records can all 

be accessed instantly to help keep 

operations running smoothly and 

meet delivery schedules. 

The evolution of the Internet of 

Things and I4.0 manufacturing concepts 

have opened new possibilities 

in how real-time data can be used 

to control and optimize production 

better. Add AR into the mix and the 

workforce is instantly armed with 

every piece of information it needs. 

AR vastly improves worker guidance 

and productivity, helping to enhance 

quality and yield. It works to prevent 

errors in setup and maintenance processes 

as well as adding to efficiency. 

Furthermore, the real-time and drilldown 

information enhance process 

optimization. 

source ©: MedTech Intelligence / Innovative Publishing Co. LLC 

By bringing the shop floor to life with 

the wealth of information within the 

MES, operators can perform even the 

most complex tasks with confidence 

and efficiency. Detailed process 

steps, work instructions, schematics, 

materials, and tool selection can all 

be clearly displayed to ensure that 

tasks are completed correctly, the 

first time, every time – eliminating 

costly errors and documentation 

mistakes that hurt product quality. 

New workers can enjoy this immersive 

experience with clear guidance 

to help them learn tasks more quickly 

or even to guide them to where they 

need to be. 

Immediate Action 

AR is completely interactive. Operators 

can clearly see where any problem 

areas are, or might occur, and 

take immediate action from their current 

location. Indeed, the whole concept 

of AR with mobile interfaces reduces 

wasted movement and further 

enhances operator efficiency. 

To expand the benefit and reach of 

AR requires a modern, I4.0-ready 

MES, or “augmented MES.” As the 

speed and complexity of production 

has increased over the years, a modern 

MES needs to adapt to handle 

these needs. The system must offer 

a fully integrated digital twin of the 

shop floor to make AR a reality – in 

84 

*Chris Parsons is vice president of global marketing at augmented MES specialist Critical Manufacturing

many ways, the original MES solutions 

were the first form of digital 

twin. With IoT and smart technology, 

however, they must now take 

data from any smart device on the 

shop floor or even from a network of 

global facilities. Context must then 

be added to this data to present it 

back in a clear and intuitive form that 

meets the needs of an individual carrying 

out a particular operation. 

A Virtual View 

Putting operational data into context 

and making it available across enterprise 

and automation systems is what 

MES does best. By using RFID tags 

and scanners, the execution system 

can also be fully aware of where materials, 

products, tools, and even employees 

are at any point in time. With 

augmented MES, these locations can 

be shown in the virtual view of the 

plant. Add to this the capability of 

realistic 3D modelling and locationbased 

services that use dynamic positioning, 

rather than just static, and 

the whole plant comes to life in the 

virtual model. 

This gives the execution system 

complete visibility of all shop-floor 

activity. Now, add in AR technology 

via headset, tablet, or smartphone 

and native AR within the execution 

system takes plant monitoring, control, 

guidance, and optimization to 

whole new levels. Anything that is 

accessible via the MES can be incorporated 

into the AR display. By simply 

pointing a mobile device’s camera at 

products or equipment that bear an 

identifier, such as a barcode or quick 

response (QR) matrix, data is instantly 

correlated with the AR identifier and 

superimposed on the screen. This 

means the operator is instantly presented 

with information relevant to 

their task or role and does not have 

to switch between screens. The contextual 

detail enhances accuracy and 

efficiency of operations, and the display 

is completely configurable and 

can include tools, such as calendars, 

charts, or widgets, making the display 

as pertinent as possible for the 

person, task, or situation. 

With digital twin I4.0 concepts and 

Labor 

Data 

collection 

Product 

Tracking 

Scheduling 

Quality 

New Model Factory 

Combining new Industry 

4.0 technologies such 

as digital twins and 

augmented reality (AR) 

with up-to-date versions 

of proven software 

systems, particularly 

manufacturing execution 

systems (MES), creates 

ways to ensure 

these digital and virtual 

systems reflect and 

fully support a company’s 

physical and real 

operations. 

Manufacturing 

& Digital Twin 

Full model of 

Process, plant 

Process 

modern MES technology, AR can now 

become ubiquitous, but that does 

not mean that every application will 

make good business sense – but it 

does mean that information can flow 

freely and readily to workers when 

and where they need it. The use of this 

technology will also accelerate moves 

to I4.0 production models and the 

huge gains in efficiency and quality 

this offers. 

As for the future, our acceptance of 

mobile technology combined with 

the increased efficiency AR offers to 

manufacturing operations may well 

mean that AR becomes the only way 

to interact with shop-floor systems. 

Add in speech recognition and bots 

and we may find standard, fixed, user 

interfaces for equipment may well 

cease to exist altogether. 

Documentation 

Dispatching 

Maintenance 

Resources 

Performance 

source ©: Critical Manufacturing 

85

Smart Solutions Protectionism & IT 

Protectionism & IT 

The Monsters are Back 

Since mid-2019, IT has been facing one of the greatest challenges of its history. 

Perceived threats from rogue states taint the products from their companies. 

The result is the return of protectionism, which could mean a long delay 

in delivering 5G networks – and major problems for IoT. 

n By Bernd Schoene 

Information technology has had 

a remarkable run over the past 

40 years. No other transformation 

has changed our blue 

planet so radically; none has created 

such wealth in terms of stock 

market valuation. On the other 

hand, no sector is more reliant on 

globalization, where IT suppliers are 

linked together through an intricate 

network of dependencies. Giant 

corporations exchange knowledge 

and patents across the globe, all 

governed – at least until now – by 

the laws of the market and of supply 

and demand. 

Just how sensitive this system has 

been is demonstrated time and 

again. The Kobe earthquake of 1995 

led to a worldwide shortage of cast 

Foreign adversaries 

are 

exploiting 

vulnerabilities 

in information 

and communications 

technology. 

U.S. Government 

Executive order, May 2019 

resin, a crucial element in semiconductor 

manufacturing, because the 

world market leader’s factory was 

destroyed. When Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull 

volcano erupted in 2010, 

thousands of flights were canceled, 

among them shipments of computer 

chips to automakers in Europe 

who were forced to shut down car 

and truck production for days on 

end. In 2011, flooding in Thailand cut 

computer manufacturers off from 

their biggest supplier of hard disk 

drives. 

Flood levels tend to fall after a couple 

of days and volcanoes don’t spew 

smoke and ash forever. The effects 

of political decision-making, however, 

can be much longer lasting. The 

monsters of protectionism, which 

many thought banished for good, are 

back and IT is feeling the tension. 

In May 2019, the US administration 

declared a national emergency in 

order to subject the Chinese telecommunications 

company Huawei 

to strict export controls. The official 

explanation is that hardware made 

in China puts the US at risk of espionage. 

The executive order states that 

“foreign adversaries are increasingly 

creating and exploiting vulnerabilities 

in information and communications 

technology and services,” and 

the “unrestricted acquisition or use” 

of hardware made by foreign adversaries 

makes those vulnerabilities 

worse. 

Any US company that continues to 

do business with the Chinese now 

86

faces stinging fines and their top executives 

could, at least theoretically, 

go to jail. Google was one of the first 

companies to comply, canceling billions 

of dollars’ worth of contracts 

with Huawei and, in the process, 

demonstrating just how globally interdependent 

the tech industry has 

become. 

Huawei is one of only a handful of 

suppliers for 5G technology in the 

world but, not only that, the company 

is also a leading manufacturer of 

smartphones using Google’s Android 

operating system. Due to the ban, 

the Chinese will not be able to supply 

their customers around the world 

with updated software versions and 

new-model phones will no longer be 

equipped with Google apps such as 

Maps or Gmail. Access to the Google 

Play Store will also be denied. 

Only One of Nine 

Software is only part of the problem. 

Huawei’s 5G network hardware is 

crucially dependent on US technology 

from companies such as Qualcomm, 

Xilinx, Intel, and Broadcomm 

– all of which have confirmed they 

will no longer deal with Huawei. The 

problem is that Huawei is one of only 

nine companies globally that sell 

5G radio hardware and 5G systems 

for carriers. The others are Altiostar, 

Cisco Systems, Datang Telecom, Ericsson, 

Nokia, Qualcomm, Samsung, 

and ZTE. Datang and ZTE are also 

Chinese companies but have not 

been banned under the software 

controls. 

Operators like Deutsche Telekom, 

Vodafone, and Telefónica rely heavily 

on Huawei systems for their new 5G 

networks, some of which are already 

running or are planned to go online 

over the next year or two. The decision 

by US policy makers could throw 

a monkey wrench into the worldwide 

launch of 5G services to millions of 

customers in scores of countries. The 

US is also applying pressure on its allies 

to cancel all orders with Huawei. 

Australia and New Zealand have already 

announced their compliance 

but, so far, Great Britain and Germany 

have refused. 

In Germany, Deutsche Telekom has 

continued to roll out systems using 

microcontrollers and circuitry based 

on Huawei technology, as has Infineon 

(formerly Siemens), arguing that 

these components are not manufactured 

in the United States and do not 

fall under US jurisdiction. Infineon is 

especially proud of its Trusted Platform 

Module (TPM) products, which 

it sells in large numbers to Huawei as 

well as to US players like VeriSign. 

Huawei also has an ongoing partnership 

with ARM, a British semiconductor 

maker, which operates factories in 

the US. That means it will be unable 

to sell technology developed by its 

subsidiaries to Huawei. Already, US 

banks have started circulating lists of 

companies and individuals who are 

forbidden to trade with the Chinese. 

As a result, bank accounts have been 

frozen and executives face arrest if 

they enter the United States. 

Huawei has said it will defend itself 

through a variety of measures. The 

company has already announced its 

HarmonyOS smartphone platform will 

replace Android in domestic and foreign 

markets. The company’s billionaire 

founder Ren Zhengfei has also set 

out a three to five-year plan to build an 

“invincible iron army” that will protect 

it from ongoing US sanctions while 

defending its lead in next-generation 

wireless. The consumer business, Ren 

wrote in a blog post, faces a “painful 

long march” – a reference to the Communist 

Party’s historic cross-country 

trek during the civil war. 

Huawei hasn’t been clear about how 

US administration curbs would impact 

its 190,000 employees worldwide, 

but the company has begun to 

lay off US-based staff, the Wall Street 

Journal reported. 

So far, China seems unwilling to back 

down. The hawkish new commerce 

minister Zhong Shan told the South 

China Morning Post that China must 

uphold “the spirit of struggle” in defending 

national interests. For the 

global IT industry, this martial chestbeating 

signals troubled times ahead. 

Companies and managers will need 

to devise a new set of rules governing 

the world IT markets and their 

A Step Back 

decisions about where and how to 

do business. Suppliers and programmers 

will need to consider who to accept 

as customers – and who not to. 

If China masters the obstacles put in 

its way by the US sanctions, the nation 

could emerge as a new IT superpower. 

In the meantime, 5G operators 

will need to find solutions fast or 

face potentially debilitating losses as 

deadlines for the introduction of 5G 

are missed. Whatever happens: the 

global IT markets will never be the 

same again. 

■ Economic History 

The monsters of protectionism are rearing their ugly heads 

once more. Nothing new there: 300 years ago, European rulers 

struggled to achieve dominance over their neighbors by introducing 

and enforcing strict tariffs and closing their borders. Under the 

term “mercantilism,” a popular economic philosophy in the 17th 

and 18th centuries, governments sought to ensure that exports 

exceeded imports and to accumulate wealth in the form of bullion, 

mostly gold and silver. 

In the 20th century, communist regimes in the Soviet Union and 

the Eastern Bloc opted for central control of the economy through 

its politburo. Investment, production, and the allocation of capital 

goods took place according to economy-wide production plans. 

In the end, kings, queens, and communists were all thwarted. The 

People’s Republic of China only managed a turnaround by introducing 

so-called special economic zones (SEZs) with free-marketoriented 

economic policies and flexible governmental measures, 

creating an economic management system that is more attractive 

for foreign and domestic firms to do business. As a result, China 

went from third-world country to one that ranks as the second 

largest in the world, by nominal GDP and the largest in the world 

by purchasing power parity, in less than 30 years. Markets, not 

Mao, were the key to China’s success. 

87

Column Marco Giegerich 

Avnet Connected Ecosystem 

Cooking up 

Next-Level IoT 

What keeps decision makers 

awake at night? Easy: missing 

the next big wave and 

winding up in some backwater. 

Again and again, big players, market leaders in 

their field, struggle and go under virtually overnight. 

All it takes is one missed stroke, one opportunity lost. 

Why is it more difficult than ever to define a roadmap of 

products and services that will enable them to achieve 

sustainable results and healthy growth? 

The biggest challenge is finding the right recipe. If technologies 

were foodstuffs, the question would be what to 

cook and how to cook it so that your guests will want to 

come back to the table time and time again. You might 

ask members of your family for a good entrée; how did 

mom make that favorite dessert for you years ago? Or 

you might even seek the help of professional chefs to 

find recipes or search through cooking websites. 

Just repeating the same old recipe won’t make regulars 

out of the occasional drop-in guest. Sometimes, 

you may have to ask them to try something new. Other 

times, your kitchen staff may complain about the new 

spices and sauces you are asking them to use when you 

try to create a completely new taste experience. 

The easiest way is to start with proven recipes when entering 

into new fields of business. Thanks to AI and having 

everything connected to everything else, with data 

available everywhere, the possibilities seem limitless. 

On the other hand, security requirements are growing. 

Just take the new EU Cybersecurity Act. 

Think of Avnet Silica as a big kitchen where artisanal 

turnkey solutions are prepared for its customers by 

Setting up 

a proof of 

concept for IoT 

can be easy. 

Marco Giegerich 

is director for vertical 

markets and third-party 

management EMEA at 

Avnet-Silica. 

combining different technologies, hardware, 

and software, including “special 

sauce” artificial intelligence algorithms. At 

our series of AI Discovery Days events, for instance, 

Avnet developers showcased more than 

20 state-of-the-art system solutions, giving decision 

makers an insight into future trends, available technologies, 

and real AI/machine learning (ML) implementations 

to address their specific needs. For attendees, this was 

the perfect environment to discuss new, thought-leading 

ideas in fields like semiconductors, embedded software, 

cloud computing, and AI. 

It seems setting up a proof of concept can be easy, allowing 

customers to start field-testing and fine-tuning 

their solutions; the aim being to move to “proof of value” 

with the least possible investment in time and resources. 

The Avnet Connected Ecosystem for IoT is growing rapidly. 

Through the recent acquisition of Witekio, we have 

been able to add even more expertise not only in embedded 

software but also in cloud computing and security. 

Softweb, which has also become part of the Avnet 

family, has made the IoTConnect platform available to 

our customers, along with AI in the cloud, data science, 

and digital development services. Through our strategic 

alliance with security specialist Trusted Objects, we have 

been able to extend our capabilities to support and design 

secure IoT products. 

All this means that it is easier than ever to take a proven 

solution to the next level of innovation, while at the 

same time reducing complexity and cutting costs. In 

turn, that means no more sleepless nights for those in 

charge of making the right business decisions. 

88

For all who aim high. 

AVNET SILICA´S LINECARD BRINGS YOU NEW PERSPECTIVES. 

As European semiconductor specialist we are dedicated to innovation, acting as the smart connection between 

customers and suppliers. We simplify complexity by providing creative solutions, technology and logistics support. Avnet 

Silica is a long-time partner of leading semiconductor manufacturers and innovative solution providers to guide today’s 

ideas into tomorrow’s technology. With a team of more than 200 application engineers and technical specialists, we 

support projects all the way from idea to product, from product to market, and every step in between. 

Avnet Silica will guide the way so you can reach further. 

Contact our local team for more information or visit avnet-silica.com.

Smart Lifestyle Smart Companies 


Companies 

source ©: ROKiT Williams Racing Content Pool 

Acronis AG 

Data is Driving Motorsports 

Racing drivers and their teams obviously 

have no time to lose. That goes 

for laps and laptops: A typical Formula 

One race car can generate up 

to three terabytes of data over the 

course of a racing weekend – data 

that needs to be stored and sent back 

home to the team of developers who 

will use them to shave fractions of 

seconds off the car’s fastest round. 

When Serguei Beloussov, a serial entrepreneur 

and globetrotter, founded 

a company he called Acronis back 

in 2003, race cars were far from his 

mind. Data, on the other hand, were 

something he cared for passionately. 

Born in the USSR, where “being in 

business was considered a crime 

punishable by jail,” he studied phys- 

By Tim Cole* 

ics and electronics before completing 

his PhD in computer science and 

moving to Singapore. “Your data are 

your life,” he sums up, so protecting 

them is, in his eyes, a fundamental 

human right. At Acronis, he focused 

on developing on-premises and 

cloud software for cyber protection, 

including backup, disaster recovery, 

and secure file sync and share as well 

as data access. Its solution, Acronis 

Cyber Cloud, enables service providers 

to deliver cyber protection to 

their customers. 

But a backup is only as good as the 

time it takes to restore a compromised 

system. And nowhere is speed 

more essential than in racing. “Motorsports 

is driven by data,” Beloussov 

believes. Besides, there is glamour 

attached to anything and anyone 

involved in the world of racing. So, in 

2016, Acronis signed its first deal with 

Torro Rosso, one of two teams owned 

by Dietrich Mateschitz, who gave the 

world the Red Bull energy drink. 

Since then, Acronis has become the 

leading cyber protection company 

for motorsport teams across Formula 

One, including Williams Racing and 

Racing Point, as well as the NIO333, 

Venturi, DS Techeetah Formula E 

teams, Prema Racing in F2, Roush 

Fenway Racing, in NASCAR, Australian 

Supercars, and recently has 

branched out into English Premier 

League soccer, with giants like Manchester 

City, Arsenal, and Liverpool 

relying on Acronis systems. 

Data is truly at the heart of modernday 

motorsports. Long before the 

starting flag is waved designers and 

engineers will have spent endless 

hours analyzing data collected in 

previous races and practice rounds, 

turning those details into a plan of 

action for improving the car. Teams 

are known to announce different 

upgrades prior to racing weekends 

– some changes are visible while others 

are hidden under the car shell. But 

until the car goes around the track 

and brings results, these changes 

remain theoretical, based purely on 

(and driven by) data. 

Much of this is legacy data. “We had 

three safes full of tapes holding hundreds 

of terabytes of data,” Graeme 

Hackland, CIO at Williams Martini 

Racing said in a recent interview with 

motorsport.tech. As the data piled 

up, backups began taking longer and 

longer to complete, he recalled. It got 

to the point where the team could 

no longer handle the amount of data 

90 

*Tim Cole is editor-in-chief of Smart Industry

that needed to be protected at the 

Williams’ factory. New backup jobs 

would fail to start because the previous 

backups were still running. The 

backup window had grown too long. 

Data recovery also presented a challenge, 

said Hackland. Thanks to Acronis, 

he maintained, Williams was 

able to reduce its backup window 

from days to minutes, accessing and 

restoring any file, from any point of 

time, literally at racing speed. 

Even more importantly, the old backup 

system was unable to protect the 

team’s cloud workloads. “We needed 

a data protection partner to help us 

be more aggressive with our cloud 

and make sure we always have a 

spare copy of all our data,” Hackland 

said. Not least because of compliance 

issues: each team’s data must 

be protected from cyberattacks and 

archived in accordance with the regulations 

of FIA, the governing body of 

formula racing. The FIA may request 

historical data at any time in the future 

to verify the team’s actions, and 

the team needs to hand over the data 

within a specified time limit. 

Beloussov now holds Singaporean 

citizenship, the country where Acronis 

was originally founded in 2003. 

Most of his 1,500 people are scattered 

around the world, many of them working 

from home, and the Swiss headquarters 

has only 25 present there 

on a daily basis with others working 

remotely. The number is scheduled to 

grow considerably, though, following 

the establishment of the Schaffhausen 

Institute of Technology (SIT), an 

international research-led institution 

engaging in basic research in the fields 

of artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, 

and digital health, supported 

by Acronis. “Students, academics, 

and industry need a new model of 

education for the challenges in today’s 

hyper-connected, data-driven world. 

SIT bridges the gap between education, 

research and applications for industry,” 

he says. 

The race, it seems, isn’t just to the 

swiftest, but also to the smartest. 

Acronis Foundation 

15 Years, 15 Schools 

As a student, Serguei Beloussov 

earned some extra cash giving lessons 

in physics, so teaching has always 

been part of his DNA. That is how he 

explains why, to celebrate the 15th 

anniversary of Acronis, he decided to 

establish a foundation with the goal 

of building 15 schools for children 

in underserved communities in developing 

countries from Tanzania to 

Guatemala. 

The latest, the Dong Na Kham School 

in Southern Laos, was opened in late 

2019, bringing the number to eight. 

Two more in Nepal and Nicaragua are 

scheduled to open this year. 

Besides building schools, the Acronis 

Cyber Foundation has put together 

an “IT Skills Programme” aimed at increasing 

the employability of former 

felons by providing them with the job 

skills they need to rebuild their lives. 

Your data are 

your life! 

Serguei Beloussov 

Founder and CEO, 

Acronis AG 

In addition, the foundation publishes 

educational books for children, for instance 

Acronis and the Quantum Computer, 

a children’s guide to the nature 

and behavior of matter and energy 

on the atomic and subatomic level – 

something most grown-ups still fail to 

grasp. 

source ©: Francesco Breck Brembati 

91

Smart Lifestyle Smart Products 


Products 

Lenovo 

New Bedroom Companion 

The latest addition to Lenovo’s smart living 

product line is the Lenovo Smart Clock with the 

Google Assistant. The clock is designed to help 

its owners to unwind in the evening, kickstart 

their day, control their smart home, and listen 

to music with multi-room audio grouping. 

The Smart Clock supports voice and touch 

controls on a four-inch, in-plane switching 

(IPS) screen to perform tasks that are regularly 

carried out before and after sleep. It’s small 

enough to be placed on nightstands and has 

been designed to fit in with bedroom decors – 

with a full fabric soft-touch cover. The Google 

Assistant element displays calendar events 

and allows sleep routines to be set up such 

as dimming the lights. And, with just a single 

command, it will play some relaxing music or a 

guided meditation session. Waking-up routines 

can also be defined, like setting lights to progressively 

brighten while the alarm gradually 

increases in volume, starting 30 minutes before 

the scheduled wake time. The smart clock sells 

for $79.99 

lenovo.com 

Triggo 

A Versatile Smart Vehicle for Modern Cities 

In narrow roads, scooters are often the fastest means of moving – but driving on a main 

street, they become obstacles due to their low maximum speed. This new vehicle from Poland 

called Triggo combines the best of both worlds: the fully electric two-seater is comfortable 

and stable like a car and at the same time agile and easy to park like a bike. The variable 

chassis geometry with adjustable front wheels allows users to switch the Triggo’s width 

between 86 and 148 cm – and while in maneuvering mode the maximum speed is limited 

to 25 km/h, in cruise mode the electric vehicle can go up to 90 km/h. A drive-by-wire digital 

control system makes Triggo the first Polish “autonomy-ready” vehicle – it is designed to 

adapt quickly to different automatic driving systems. Thanks to a Battery Rapid Change 

System (BRC), instead of waiting for a recharge, you can simply change to a freshly loaded 

battery pack, which weighs 130 kg. The weight of the whole car (including the pack) is 530 

kg and its two 10 kW engines allow a driving range of 100 km. 

www.triggo.pl 

92

Mudita 

A Minimalistic 

Mobile Phone 

There are many people 

looking for ways to 

reduce their onlinetime 

– “digital detox” 

has become a buzzword 

lately. The new mobile 

phone Mudita Pure 

may be the most stylish 

solution for anybody 

who really wants to 

change their habits: the 

premium feature phone 

was designed with 

inspiration from Japanese 

and Scandinavian 

design traditions – the 

simple and comfortable 

form brings to mind the 

shape of a stone. An E Ink 

display with a resolution of 600×480 and PPI of 270 and support of 16-grayscale 

and a customized front light make reading more natural and less straining for the 

eyes. Uniform screen lighting makes the screen with its paper-like feel visible both 

in direct sunlight and in the dark. A slider on the side allows users to easily change 

between three customizable modes. A custom antenna was designed to massively 

reduce SAR (specific absorption rate), without compromising on the signal 

strength. The phone itself can (in addition to phone calls) play music and audiobooks, 

send and receive text messages, and be used as a meditation timer. But 

you can not add any additional apps. The GSM module covers Europe, North and 

South America, Australia, Africa, and Asia and all currently used generations (2G, 

3G, and LTE standards) at the same time. And if you still feel the need to go online 

now and then, the Pure can be used as a data modem for a computer and can be 

connected via USB-C. The phone can be preordered on Indiegogo for $295. 

www.mudita.com 

PowerWatch 

A Smartwatch Powered 

by Body Heat 

Normal smartwatches will run out of power eventually – but not 

this one, claims its maker Matrix Industries, a leading developer 

of high-efficiency thermoelectric components. The PowerWatch 

2 uses the wearer’s body temperature to keep running. It is 

equipped with GPS positioning, heart-rate monitoring, gesture 

recognition, and a color LCD display. The watch is controlled by 

four buttons located around the bezel whose functions can be 

customized through a dedicated app. 

PowerWatch 2 is billed as being rugged enough to sustain intense 

activity and survive its fair share of drops. It’s also water-resistant 

so you can take laps in the pool or shower with it on, though 

Matrix doesn’t recommend any kind of deep diving beyond 200 

meters. The watch is available in three versions – standard, premium, 

and de luxe – with prices ranging from $499 to $699. 

powerwatch.com 

Eggtronic 

The Smallest Universal Laptop Charger 

The manufacturer claims this stylish universal charger to be the smallest all-in-one 

power source in the world. Eggtronic’s pocket-sized Sirius Universal Charger uses 

power conversion GaN technology to allow compatibility with many different 

devices, including laptops, smartphones, tablets, Bluetooth, and many more. The 

intelligent power charger responds to USB-C devices with the advanced USB PD 

(Power Delivery) output that ensures universal compatibility by automatic smart 

detection of different voltages (from 5V to 20V) and current (from 0.1A to 3.25A). 

While conventional laptop power adapters are bulky and heavy, this universal 

laptop charger has been engineered to minimum size and weight – folding plugs 

make it even more compact and easy to carry in a pocket or a purse. The device is 

available for $99. 

www.eggtronic.com 

93


SwitchBot 

Make Curtains Smart in Less Than a Minute 

Remember the first time you went to the movies? You were most probably astonished 

by the curtains that opened up automatically before the show began. Now you can get 

the same magic into your home, and have the curtains opened and closed by this small 

wireless device. It takes only about 30 seconds to install the SwitchBot Curtain. It can be 

mounted to the rod or the rail of a curtain. Users can then control and schedule their 

curtains to open and close with an app on their phone or by voice control – the system 

supports Google/Alexa/Siri and IFTTT with the SwitchBot Hub. A built-in light sensor allows 

the curtains to open automatically when the sun rises. A wide variety of track and rod types 

with different diameters are supported. The app allows users to set schedules for their curtains 

to open or close – adding safety when homeowners are on holiday. The rechargeable 

battery lasts up to eight months, depending on the usage. SwitchBot is currently available 

at Kickstarter for $69 – delivery is expected in April 2020. 

www.switch-bot.com 

STMicroelectronics 

LSM6DSOX 

The LSM6DSOX is a system-in-package featuring a 3D digital accelerometer and a 3D 

digital gyroscope boosting performance at 0.55 mA in high-performance mode and 

enabling always-on low-power features for an optimal motion experience for the consumer. 

The LSM6DSOX supports main OS requirements, offering real, virtual, and batch 

sensors with 9 kbytes for dynamic data batching. ST’s family of MEMS sensor modules 

leverages the robust and mature manufacturing processes already used for the 

production of micromachined accelerometers and gyroscopes. The various sensing 

elements are manufactured using specialized micromachining processes, while the IC 

interfaces are developed using CMOS technology that allows the design of a dedicated 

circuit which is trimmed to better match the characteristics of the sensing element. 

The LSM6DSOX has a full-scale acceleration range of ±2/±4/±8/±16 g and an angular 

rate range of ±125/±250/±500/±1,000/±2,000 dps. The LSM6DSOX fully supports EIS 

and OIS applications as the module 

includes a dedicated configurable 

signal processing path for OIS and 

auxiliary SPI, configurable for both 

the gyroscope and accelerometer. 

High robustness to mechanical shock 

makes the LSM6DSOX the preferred 

choice of many system designers for 

the creation and manufacturing of 

reliable products. The LSM6DSOX is 

available in a plastic land grid array 

(LGA) package. 

www.st.com 

Cybershoes 

These Shoes Are Made for 

Walking in Virtual Reality 

Interacting with your virtual surroundings can be tricky. German 

start-up Cybershoes claims it has created a “high-end 

locomotion solution for home use that makes you feel like 

you’re in an arcade.” It consists of a pair of high-tech sandals 

which are strapped on a player’s feet while they use the VR 

system seated on a swiveling stool. The manufacturer says 

that Cybershoes are compatible with any VR game and most 

brands of headsets, such as SteamVR, HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, 

or Windows Mixed Reality. Movement is controlled with the 

feet while seated. The range of applications goes beyond 

gaming since Cybershoes can be used in training scenarios, 

such as industrial production processes or rehab programs 

for the elderly. 

cybershoes.io 

94

Canoo 

World’s First 

Subscription-Only Car 

Why buy a car when you can get one on subscription instead? Los Angelesbased 

company Canoo has unveiled its first electric vehicle (EV), which boasts 

an unconventional design with a much roomier interior than most existing automobile 

designs. The developers claim that transportation is becoming increasingly electric, shared, and 

autonomous, and believe it’s time to rethink what a car should look like. As a result, all unused space 

inside the vehicle has been utilized. By eliminating compartmentalization, the Canoo is like an urban loft 

on wheels – having the interior space of a large SUV, with room for up to seven people, but housed within 

the exterior footprint of a compact car. Underneath the plastic body panels is a steel framework that was 

designed for ease of construction in addition to crash safety. Mounted on this structure is what the manufacturer 

calls a “skateboard” floor which houses the motors, brakes, suspension, and battery pack. This proprietary 

architecture houses the batteries and electric drivetrain. All future vehicles of the company will share the same 

skateboard construction so that different cabins, or “top hats,” can be married to create different vehicles. 

The Canoo lacks a mechanical steering column, the driving yoke being entirely steer-by-wire, which allows 

the developers a great deal of freedom in determining the overall interior layout. Canoo was founded in 

December 2017 by an experienced group of auto industry veterans from companies like BMW, Icon 

Aircraft, and Uber. Their idea was to build a safe and affordable EV that could be sold in a way 

that embraced convenience and a growing sharing economy. The company plans to offer a 

no-hassle and commitment-free EV subscription for a “monthly, affordable price” and 

with no fixed end date. The subscription may include services such as registration, 

maintenance, insurance management, and power charging – all 

done from an app. Launch of the first product is scheduled 

for 2021. 

canoo.com 

Bosch 

A Leap in e-Mobility 

Every car that rolls off the production line contains 

more than 50 semiconductors, and things like electric 

energy consumption and heat generation are adding 

up. Bosch, one of the world’s leading manufacturers 

of semiconductors, is working on reducing this 

and has announced a new generation of microchips 

made from silicon carbide (SiC) that promises to 

bring better electrical conductivity, enabling higher 

switching frequencies and dissipating much less heat 

than standard silicon chips. Silicon carbide contains 

additional carbon atoms and the chemical bond it 

creates ensures 50 percent lower energy loss, increasing 

the distance traveled by up to six percent per 

battery charge. Alternatively, car manufacturers can 

use smaller batteries without loss of range. Since the 

battery is the biggest cost factor in an electric car, the 

new-generation operating system SiC chips could potentially 

reduce a vehicle’s overall price. bosch.com 

Layer/Panasonic 

Technology for the Balance of Being 

Panasonic has teamed up with British design agency Layer to present a series of intelligent 

products, entitled Balance of Being. The collection showcases six concept ideas that combine 

emerging technology with experience design and explores how people can have more meaningful 

engagement with products that take care of them. Within the range is a smart cooking 

and food-maturing appliance, called Lift, that uses advanced heat and pressure technology and 

sensors to quickly “lift” food to its most optimal nutritional state. Another product, Tone, is a 

fashion-led device that is hung around a person’s neck to improve the complexion and health of 

their skin and décolletage using steam and LED light treatments. Related to Tone is Grow, which 

provides LED light treatment for hair and hair follicles to promote healthy growth. Panasonic 

and Layer have approached the collection with a focus on changing behaviors and exploring 

new materials such as glazed ceramic, refined timber, and constructed textiles, in a pale 

tonal palette, allowing these tech products to feel natural in the home. Takehiro Ikeda, creative 

director at Panasonic Design, said, “Balance aims to close this gap between technology and our 

lifestyles, focusing more on human interaction, comfort, enhancing our lifestyles, and providing 

truly meaningful experiences with technology, allowing us to bond with one another instead 

of our devices.” The companies did not make any announcements on when the products will 

actually appear on the market. 

layerdesign.com and panasonic.com 

95


Boston Dynamics 

Man’s New Best Friend – the Robo-Dog 

Boston Dynamics, a specialist in life-like robots, has announced a robo-dog. 

SpotMini, which is scheduled to be available in early 2020, is a 66-pound 

canine robot that can operate for about 90 minutes on a single battery charge. 

The nimble robot can climb stairs and traverse rough terrain. It uses stereo 

cameras to avoid obstacles and people as it moves through a home or dynamic 

work site. However, SpotMini is not destined to become your next cuddly pet 

as it is primarily trained to autonomously accomplish industrial sensing and remote 

operation needs and is built to be a rugged and customizable platform. 

A price has not yet been announced. 

www.bostondynamics.com 

Ecobee 

Talking About Heat 

Ecobee, a Canadian manufacturer of 

smart-home gadgets, has introduced 

the Ecobee4 SmartThermostat, with 

Amazon Alexa voice control, which 

it says can reduce energy consumption, 

save money, and enhance the 

way people experience comfort and 

convenience. Ecobee’s control device 

comes with a vivid color display and 

enhanced touchscreen sensitivity. 

Inside is a quad-core processor which 

enables advanced machine learning 

and AI for natural language processing 

and speech detection. It supports 

2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi connections 

and battery life has been extended 

to around five years. Also included 

within the product is a high-intensity 

speaker which allows users to listen 

Walmart 

Delivery to Your Fridge 

What if you’re not home when the delivery 

van pulls up? In the US, Walmart has 

introduced a way to solve the problem 

called InHome. It allows foodstuffs to 

be delivered directly to your fridge. The 

store installs its smart Level Lock to an 

existing deadbolt, allowing delivery 

to podcasts, playlists, or news directly 

from their SmartThermostat or via 

a Bluetooth speaker. The Ecobee 

SmartThermostat is compatible with 

Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, Pandora, 

TuneIn, and now offers Spotify 

through Spotify Connect. 

ecobee.com 

staff to enter the kitchen or access a garage 

fridge. The smart lock only allows 

the delivery person to open the house 

or garage door once during the delivery 

window allotted to a specific order. 

When the door has been relocked, they 

can’t open it again until the next delivery. 

Each InHome courier is required to 

wear a bodycam that records a video of 

each delivery and live-streams it to the 

customer’s phone. If the camera isn’t 

recording, the door won’t open. The 

service was initially launched last fall for 

more than a million customers across 

three cities: Kansas City, Missouri; Pittsburgh, 

Pennsylvania; and Vero Beach, 

Florida. inhome.walmart.com 

Skydio 

A Drone Smarter Than the Rest 

Manufacturer Skydio wants to produce drones that are 

useful because they are smart. The US-based company has 

introduced the Skydio 2 line which combines artificial intelligence 

with a 4K camera that can shoot up to 60 frames 

per second. It has a wireless range of 3.5 kilometers and 23 

minutes of flight time – and is small enough to be carried 

in a small backpack. The drone uses artificial intelligence 

for control, opening up its use to new audiences. The 

Skydio Autonomy Engine can make observations simultaneously 

in every direction thanks to six 4K cameras, and 

it can make intelligent decisions to fly smoothly around 

obstacles while capturing videos and photos. The mobile 

app is designed to look more like a camera app than a 

cockpit, allowing the company to claim that a person who 

can use a camera on their phone can also fly Skydio 2. An 

optional controller delivers a flying experience by combining 

the precision of joysticks with 360-degree, high-speed, 

trustworthy obstacle avoidance that enables users to fly 

the drone through narrow gaps – forwards, backwards, 

or sideways – or skim a surface. The Skydio Beacon allows 

the drone to track objects or people through augmenting 

visual tracking via GPS. The company has announced a 

starting price of $999. 

skydio.com 

96

… 

… 

… 

… 

? 

Large board meeting. 

Important handout. 

Giant printer fail. 

Deal is off. The end. 

Prevent IoT dramas. Go for Microsoft Azure Sphere – Go for Maximum IoT Security. 

Now available at Avnet Silica. All info at msembedded.biz/azuresphere

Column Gerd Leonhard 

Megashifts 

Many of the world’s greatest innovations 

were born decades, sometimes 

centuries, before they 

eventually swept through society. 

They often occurred in a relatively 

sequential manner, each following and 

building on the previous ones. In contrast, 

megashifts may also grow slowly but 

many were born simultaneously and they 

have now started sweeping through society 

at a much faster pace. 

A paradigm change is to thinking and philosophy 

what a megashift is to society – a huge evolutionary 

step. One that may seem gradual at first but 

then has a very sudden impact. 

These megashifts are: 

Digitization: everything that can be converted will 

become digital. Digitization means much lower costs 

for consumers but can also push providers into a mad 

scramble for new business models because distribution 

or access has become easier and is no longer an issue. 

Mobilization: Everything is becoming mobile and 

could soon become wearable or “hearable.” Computing 

is becoming invisible, omnipresent – and utterly indispensable. 

Screenification: Everything that used to be physical (or 

printed) is now available on screens; what used to be 

interpersonal (such as conversations in foreign languages) 

can be done via a screen using free translation apps 

such as SayHi, Google Translate, or Waverly Labs’ Pilot. 

Disintermediation: Middlemen are suffering because 

technology increasingly makes it feasible to go direct. 

Examples include record labels (musicians now launch 

their careers via YouTube), and consumer banking, 

where millennials increasingly use mobile platforms 

and apps to make payments and organize their finances. 

Datafication: Much of what used to happen face to face 

is now being turned into data, for example electronic 

medical record updates instead of talking to the doctor, 

or the grocery delivery service that tracks all its products. 

Intelligization or cognification (as Kevin Kelly, the 

founding executive editor of Wired, terms it): Everything 

that used to be dumb is now becoming connected and 

intelligent, such as gas pipelines, farms, cars, shipping 

containers, and traffic lights. This flood of data will create 

a vastly different way of reading, seeing, and directing 

the world. 

Automation: The result of smart machines will be widespread 

technological unemployment. Everything that 

The most 

important 

megashift of 

all might 

be rehumanization. 

Gerd Leonhard 

is the founder of 

The Futures Agency (TFA) 

and author 

of the bestseller 

Technology vs Humanity. 

He is based in Zurich. 

can be automated will be. I believe this is a 

huge opportunity but we are currently illprepared 

for it. 

Virtualization: We no longer rely only 

on physical things in a room but on an 

instance in the cloud, for example software-defined 

networking instead of local 

routers, and virtual friends such as Hello 

Barbie. 

Augmentation: Humans can increasingly 

use technology to augment themselves. 

Examples include smartwatches, augmented 

and virtual reality, intelligent digital assistants, and 

(sooner or later) brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) and 

implants. 

Anticipation: Artificial intelligence (AI) and intelligence 

augmentation (IA) software can now anticipate and predict 

our behavior, changing the way maps, email, and 

online collaboration work. 

Robotization: Robots are entering our daily lives and 

homes. Even many white-collar jobs will soon be done 

by robots. 

These megashifts present immediate and complex challenges 

and differ in nature to the forces that have swept 

through society and business in the past. Any organization 

looking to understand exponential thinking and 

to achieve future-readiness must have a clear picture 

of what these shifts mean and what opportunities or 

threats may arise from them. 

Regardless of societal challenges, the rapid digitization, 

automation, and virtualization of our world is probably 

inevitable. In practice, the rate may sometimes be constrained 

by fundamental laws of physics, such as the 

hitherto unmet energy needs of supercomputers or the 

minimum viable size of a computer chip – often cited as 

the reason why Moore’s Law will not prevail forever. This 

assumption of the continued and pervasive penetration 

of technology points toward a future where what cannot 

be either digitized, automated, or both could become 

extremely valuable. These “androrithms” capture 

essential human qualities such as emotions, compassion, 

ethics, happiness, and creativity. 

While algorithms, software, and AI will increasingly “eat 

the world,” as venture capitalist Marc Andreessen likes 

to say, we must place the same value on androrithms 

– those things which make us uniquely human. So, the 

most important megashift of all might soon be rehumanization. 

This might very well turn out to be the real 

driving force to benefit people and society. 

98

High tech e-car. 

Low tech charger. 

Giant repair bill. 

The end. 

Prevent IoT dramas. Go for Microsoft Azure Sphere – Go for Maximum IoT Security. 

Now available at Avnet Silica. All info at msembedded.biz/azuresphere

Smart Industry 1/2020

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