Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Category: Internet of Things

Posts relating to the internet of things, IoT and M2M technologies

  • A year of competing beacons

    A year of competing beacons

    It’s early in 2015 but year shaping up as being one where beacon technologies start rolling out in meaningful numbers as Facebook joins the rush.

    Beacons are, as name suggests, small radio devices that signal their location to smartphones and wearable computers. If someone has the right software on their system, the beacon can alert them about anything from shopping offers to the presence of hazardous material.

    The biggest potential market for beacons currently is the retail sector along with stadiums and concert venues although the industrial aspects shouldn’t be underestimated. Along with sports stadiums some of the more enthusiastic early adopters have been mall owners and local shopping strips as they see the opportunity of delivering more value to customers.

    A question facing retailers and shopping centre owners is whether we’ll see competing networks of beacons being deployed as Facebook, PayPal, Apple and dozens of other companies rollout their own technologies. We may end up with a situation where businesses get sick of being nagged to install multiple devices for their shops or workplaces.

    There’s also the problem of crosstalk as the different beacons interfere with each other. In places like shopping malls multiple transmitters could prove confusing for even the smartest smartphone.

    Again we’re seeing how silos are developing across the Internet of Things sector as vendors release products tied up in their own proprietary standards.

    As the cost of beacons has come down – many are available for under a dollar – the ability of vendors to offer networks has increased dramatically, over this year we can expect all the big players to release their own systems in attempt to control a slice of the market.

    For beacons to really succeed in the marketplace it’s going to be necessary for vendors to agree on common standards. If we end up with a rag-tag collection of competing networks, then the promise of the technology will surely be lost.

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  • Daily links: The IoT goes to sea, building the innovation state and Boko Haram

    Daily links: The IoT goes to sea, building the innovation state and Boko Haram

    The scale of the carnage Boko Haram has inflicted on remote parts of Nigeria is becoming more apparent every day and satellite imagery shows just how much damage the insurgent group is doing to communities in its territories.

    Closer to home, Google’s Project ARA gets another outing, we look at how economies can deal with the jobless future, what a terrible aunt Ayn Rand was and how the IoT is going to sea.

    The IoT goes to sea

    At the CES show two weeks ago Ericsson launched their new maritime cloud service that promises to connect ocean going ships to the same services available on land

    Google unveils more about Project Ara

    Project Ara is Google’s attempt to reinvent the smartphone, the project came a little closer to completion with the company showing off some of its progress

    Creating the innovation state

    What do we do in a world where most people’s jobs have gone? Create an innovation state rather than a welfare state could be an answer suggests one economist.

    The extent of Boko Haram’s massacres

    Words fail to describe the horrors being visited on the people of Nigeria.

    Ayn Rand was a terrible Aunty

    What happened when one of Ayn Rand’s nieces asked aunty for a $25 loan?

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  • Links of the day: Connected cars and fast trains

    Links of the day: Connected cars and fast trains

    The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas kicks off today with thousands of product announcements at what is by far the biggest technology convention in the world. No doubt news from the show is going to dominate the tech media for the rest of the week.

    One of the biggest fields for tech vendors at CES will be Internet of Things with connected cars being in the spotlight with both BMW and General Motors leading the way.

    GM unveil their connected car of the future

    For some years GM have offered a connected car service with their OneStar system. At this year’s CES they’re showing how they intend to extend the service with more integrated social and navigation services.

    Driving the crashless car

    While we fixate on the driverless car of the future, the next few years are going to see the technologies be incrementally introduced into our motor vehicles. A good example of this is BMW’s Active Assist that CNET writer Wayne Cunningham claims he could not crash.

    The story points out Active Assist isn’t affordable in today’s cars but undoubtedly much of this technology will be standard in many automobiles by the end of the decade.

    California starts work on its high speed railway

    Cars aren’t the only thing in the news with California turning the first soil in its Los Angeles to San Francisco high speed railway.

    This troubled project has been years in the making and it’s not expected to be completed until the end of the next decade at a cost of over 60 billion dollars. An interesting aspect in the story is how communities in California’s Central Valley region are pinning their hopes of an economic resurgence from the project.

     

    Google takedown notices explode

    While cars and trains are being reinvented, the entertainment industry is still struggling with its disruption. Torrent freak reports Google is being overwhelmed with movie industry take downs notices.

    As the story suggests, this campaign is hurting Google’s relationship with the movie industry.

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  • Building safer roads and cars

    Building safer roads and cars

    Yesterday’s blog post considered how we might design a driverless car without the legacies of today’s vehicles.

    In the meantime we have to deal with our own human failings on the road and already tomorrow’s technologies are helping us drive better today.

    The day when driverless cars are the norm on our roads may be a generation, possibly further, away but many of the technologies that make autonomous vehicles possible are available today and are appearing in many new models.

    Last year the MIT Technology Review looked at BMW’s driverless car project and made the point that the technologies are still some years away from being adopted, the features being incorporated in today’s vehicles are already reducing accidents.

    Thanks to autonomous driving, the road ahead seems likely to have fewer traffic accidents and less congestion and pollution. Data published last year by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a U.S. nonprofit funded by the auto industry, suggests that partly autonomous features are already helping to reduce crashes. Its figures, collected from U.S. auto insurers, show that cars with forward collision warning systems, which either warn the driver about an impending crash or apply the brakes automatically, are involved in far fewer crashes than cars without them.

    This fits in with the vision described last year by Transport For New South Wales engineer John Wall who described how Australian roads can be made safer through the use of smarter cars, roadside sensors and machine to machine technology.

    As the MIT story illustrated, many of the technologies Wall discussed are being incorporated into modern cars with most of the features needed for largely autonomous driving being common by 2020.

    Comparing smart car technologies

    Like many of the things we take for granted in low end cars today most of the advanced features will be appearing in top of the line vehicles initially, we can also expect the trucking and logistic industries to be early adopters where there’s quantifiable workplace safety improvements or efficiency gains. Eventually many of these features will be standard in even the cheapest car.

    One thing is certain, while the driverless car is some way off we’re going to see the roads become safer as new technologies are incorporated into cars.

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  • At the mercy of machines

    At the mercy of machines

    Automation is the greatest change we’re going to see in business over the next decade as companies increasingly rely upon computers to make day to day decisions.

    Giving control to algorithms however comes with a set of risks which managers and business owners have to prepare for.

    Earlier this week the risks in relying on algorithms were shown when car service Uber’s management was slow to react to a situation where its formulas risked a PR disaster.

    Uber’s misstep in Sydney shows the weaknesses in the automated business model as its algorithm detected people clamouring for rides out of the city and applied ‘surge pricing’.

    Surge pricing is applied when Uber’s system sees high demand – typically around events like New Year’s Eve – although the company has previously been criticised for alleged profiteering during emergencies like Hurricane Sandy in New York.

    In the light of previous criticism, it’s surprising that Uber stumbled in Sydney during the hostage crisis. Shortly after criticism of the surge pricing arose on the internet, the company’s Sydney social media manager sent out a standard defence of surge pricing.

    That message was consistent with both Uber’s business model and how the algorithm that determines the company’s fares works; however it was a potential disaster for the business’ already battered reputation.

    An hour later the company’s management had realised their mistake and announced that rides out of Sydney’s Central Business District would be free.

    User’s mistake is a classic example of the dangers of relying solely on an algorithm to determine business decisions; while things will work fine during the normal course of business, there will always be edge cases that create perverse results.

    While machines are efficient; they lack context, judgement and compassion which exposes those who rely solely upon them to unforeseen risks.

    As the Internet of Things rolls out, systems will be deployed where responses will be based upon the rules of predetermined formulas.

    Businesses with overly strict rules and no provision for management intervention in extreme circumstances will find themselves, like Uber, at the mercy of their machines. Staking everything on those machines could turn out to be the riskiest strategy of all.

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