Mar 1, 2023

AIoT for Dummies

Abstract digital artwork featuring a fragmented human face composed of pixels and colorful 3D cubes against a dark background. Geometric shapes and lines surround the design, creating a futuristic, tech-inspired aesthetic.

While still in its nascent stages, the myriad uses of Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT) technology are vast and constantly evolving—even across industries that have traditionally relied upon manual processes with seemingly few data points to leverage. 

With a few simple tweaks, for example, existing coin-operated laundry facilities can be monitored by AI to improve efficiency, and downtime at manufacturing plants can be reimagined with just a few well-placed cameras and sensors.

The possibilities are truly endless. 

As ever more data becomes available for industries to interpret and identify improvements, the potential increases for this technology to likewise optimize business processes.

Despite these tremendous opportunities and proven impacts of AIoT technology, however, the term and concept is still somewhat of a buzzword.

To shed more light on its fundamentals, here’s a brief explainer regarding its uses, benefits, and transformative capabilities.

What Is AIoT?

To understand AIoT, let’s first explain IoT—and the connection between the two. 

The Internet of Things (IoT) encompasses every device, everywhere connected to the internet and transmitting data to a network. Commercial laundry machines, exercise equipment, HVAC systems, refrigerators, and lights are all encompassed within this—constantly sending signals about their operations via sensors, take-over boards, or laser measuring systems.

However collected, such information isn’t useful to businesses until interpreted.

This is where yet another key concept comes in.

Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT) pertains to the application and utilization of AI technology to attain these critical insights from voluminous, often labor-driven data sets. 

If they sound like broad definitions, that’s because they are. 

AIoT’s uses are incredibly all-encompassing and transformative when properly leveraged across a wide variety of industries.

The Transformative Potential of AIoT Across Industries  

AIoT helps industries streamline efficiencies, optimize processes, and harness unprecedented potential for growth and social good. 

For one, AI pipeline monitoring helps technicians maintain and plan infrastructure more accurately based on 3D pipe data. Close loop curing and augmented cutting capabilities are also welcome alternatives to relying on hard-to-hire, highly skilled CCTV cutting operators and manual analog curing processes, respectively. All of these help technicians mitigate poor-quality and high-failure costs for damaging laterals during cutting.

This is just one possible solution of the transformative impact AIoT can have in maximizing efficiencies and profitability across industries. 

In fact, global market intelligence provider the International Data Corporation (IDC) forecasts the worldwide AI software market will reach $596 billion in revenue by 2025, and anticipates $437 billion from the IoT market. Of the two billion frontline workers around the globe, 63% are excited about the new jobs technology creates, finds a 2022 Work Trend Index Special Report from Microsoft. 

With 30.9 billion IoT-connected devices projected globally by 2025—nearly double the 16.4 billion in 2022—organizations that capitalize on such underutilized data hold the keys to myriad advantages, helping them stand out and become leaders within their industries.

AIoT: Industry-Specific Use Cases 

The number of industries that can leverage AIoT technology verges on limitless.

Here are some contextual examples of how AIoT might be effectively applied: 

Commercial Laundry

While coin payments and analog machines are standard in laundromats, AIoT technology enables property managers to oversee machines remotely, and even accept digital payments.

Connected machines and vision AI monitoring technology can send notifications to customers’ smartphones when loads are completed, or opt to add more with just a few clicks.

These real-time visibility, diagnostic, and predictive services yield greater efficiencies and revenues in a sector that previously had very little data to leverage.

Pool Manufacturing

Pool measurement, quoting, ordering, and manufacturing are somewhat arduous processes—typically requiring two professionals up to five hours to manually measure pools, and months to receive the manufactured product. With minimal direct consumer relationships and the need to rely on dealers in many cases, they are also extremely error-prone.

Such a need for accuracy and efficiency is the perfect use case for AIoT.

Using a LiDAR-based scanning device with on-demand AI point cloud, it only takes about 10 minutes to generate digital measurements, create a quote, and place an order to manufacturing—with 99% accuracy.

Businesses leveraging this can bypass competitors by additionally creating direct relationships with consumers for renewal, up-sale, and cross-sale.

HVAC Services

In commercial and residential contexts, the HVAC industry offers minimal visibility into machine issues before technicians arrive on site. A largely reactive service, repairs are further constrained during peak season—worsened by the market’s lack of remote recovery options.

With full-spectrum sensor data, HVAC AIoT monitoring devices provide predictive maintenance and high-priority service alerts—facilitating more proactive service planning and work, for two to three times as many customers.

By predicting new unit sales and leads, commercial businesses can stay ahead of trends, and make informed decisions. 

Pest Control

The pest control industry is currently highly reliant on operator labor, which requires technicians to manually count the bugs on hundreds of thousands of fly lights for hours every few weeks. The industry is also facing regulation pressure to ban rodenticide, which has been shown to notably disrupt the food chain

With multimodal pest monitoring utilizing infrared, visual, motion, olfactory, and connected traps, AIoT technology provides early detection alerts, continuous monitoring, reliable connectivity, low false positives, and long battery life.

This full visibility helps enterprise customers predict intrusions and points for prevention, and assists the evolution of the pest control industry to 100% prevention and zero toxins.

Benefits of AIoT

By mapping relationships based on collected data, AIoT enables organizations to automate, optimize, and refine processes to completely transform operations—shining a light on efficiencies too often overlooked by manual processes.

These capabilities empower businesses to optimize operational efficiencies, improve service, drive revenue growth, fuel new product experiences, reduce capital expenditures, and create greater free cash flow. 

Let’s revisit some of these advantages within industry-specific use cases:

Mitigates Frontline Workforce Shortage

Advancements in AIoT help fill blue-collar staff deficits and augment the frontline workforce.

Example: For every 1.8 frontline job opening in the United States, there is one frontline worker willing to work. Further, Generation Z employees quit jobs every six months on average. These trends, among others, have yielded a deficit in the frontline workforce across industries—pressuring CEOs to maintain current topline revenue with half the staff. AIoT supplements these blue-collar deficits and augments the frontline workforce of two billion.

Productivity

Automation empowers organizations to reach desired outputs faster, and without the hurdles and errors associated with manual operations. 

Example: Autonomous HVAC anomaly detection, lifespan prediction, and new-install identifications enable service professionals to detect issues with heating, ventilation, and air conditioning proactively, rather than calling after it’s already broken. These capabilities help companies to work with two to three times as many customers and stay ahead of industry trends by predicting new unit sales and leads.

Efficiency

Leveraging data patterns to shine a light on where business operations could be improved revolutionizes efficiencies—empowering industries to function in the most optimized way. 

Example: While previously requiring two people to manually measure a pool, it takes one person only 10 minutes when utilizing a LiDAR-based autonomous scanner. Staff can also maintain direct digital relationships with end customers, rather than experience the former slow processing and delays.

Sustainability

Automated functioning streamlines once manual processes—only utilizing the energy needed while minimizing chemical and toxin output.

Example: Multimodal pest monitoring and early detection alerts predict pest intrusion and points of prevention, while helping enterprise customers migrate to a 100% preventative, zero-toxin pest control industry. 

Profitability

By saving time, energy, and resources, industries can ultimately save in their bottom lines.

For Example: Real-time visibility, diagnostic, and predictive services of AIoT in commercial laundromats enable property managers to oversee machines remotely and accept digital payments to maximize efficiencies and revenues. 

Challenges Facing AIoT

Knowing what data to measure can be a challenge for many companies, even if they have the technology and devices in place to do so—which, oftentimes, many do not. 

Even when companies have measured data, there still comes the challenge of leveraging this into actionable insights.

In other words, a key challenge is knowing how this well of untapped data can reimagine processes and unlock value.

The solution: Leading platforms such as BrightAI disrupt sectors with transformational insights that help them optimize essential business processes and become leaders within their industries.

BrightAI’s AIoT platform creates transformational value for traditional companies. 

By enabling industries to transform their relationship with people and machines, enterprise customers create better products and customer experiences, and sustainably accelerate growth, profit, and value.

Our unique partnering model makes it possible for any company to adopt and fully leverage AIoT, overcoming the challenges of expertise, cost, and complexity.

BrightAI: Disrupting Industries by Unlocking Unimagined Potential

With so much collected data unutilized, there exists an unprecedented opportunity for businesses and industries to leverage AIoT to unlock unimagined potential and disrupt their industries.

Our BrightAI team has created billions of dollars in enterprise value for our customers by illuminating transformative insights that optimize business operations. We are the minds behind Amazon Alexa, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Samsung SmartThings platforms, among many other revolutionary concepts and technologies. 

Leveraging AIoT, our end-to-end turnkey customer solutions generate real-time insights that automate and improve business outcomes, differentiate products and services, optimize operations, and pioneer more sustainable alternatives. 

With proven results in months, not years, capitalizing on these transformative insights empowers your organization to optimize processes in unimagined ways, maximize efficiencies, and establish yourself as a forerunner of innovation within your industry.


To disrupt your industry and illuminate unimagined potential with AIoT, contact us today.

May 18, 2022

Seemingly Unsexy PE Holdings May Be Your Next Unicorns

pe hub logo on gradient background

This guest Op-Ed was originally published on PE Hub.

Unicorns are sexy. Laundromats? Not so much. But I see promise where others just see suds.

What if you were to turbocharge laundromats with high-tech makeovers? Suddenly, instead of struggling to generate modest income, laundromats could be awash in revenue, powering their owners and investors to unthinkably rewarding returns.

This isn’t just a theory. My partners and I are on a mission to imbue traditional companies and industries with “AIoT”—a hybrid of AI (artificial intelligence) and IoT (the Internet of Things). And in our first proof of concept, we’ve reinvigorated a 90-year-old national laundry-solutions giant. As we suspected, the spectacular results show how AIoT can unlock the potential in unassuming, solid performers like laundromats—as well as residential HVACs, pest-control and community infrastructure.

These are among the investment world’s hidden gems. Rather than desperately searching for the next elusive unicorn, we’re convinced that PE fund managers might instead have better luck finding billion-dollar returns in the “unsexy” holdings already sitting in their portfolios.

Take your competition to the cleaners

The spark for this idea was rooted in a costly disaster. Our family cabin was nearly destroyed by flooding when its pipes burstand we didn’t learn about it until months later. But what if that cabin had been a “smart home,” which could alert its owners to situations that require immediate attention before turning into catastrophes?

That led me to found my previous company, SmartThings, the vision of which was to make every home a smart home. Shortly after its founding, SmartThings became the largest IoT platform in the world, connecting to one billion devices across 88 countries {we eventually sold it to Samsung}.

In my new venture, I’m teaming up with partners who are responsible for some of the most iconic consumer successes in artificial intelligence—including Amazon’s Alexa and Prime Music. Our combined AI and IoT pedigrees led us to another epiphany: if we joined forces, could we make every business a smart business?

The answer to that question is a resounding yes. AIoT is, in fact, growing revenues in ways—and places—that even we never would have imagined just a few years ago. And for investors, through AIoT, it’s becoming possible to disrupt—even revolutionize—traditional industries, and create a winner-take-all market.

Our first proving ground, that 90-year-old laundry giant with over one million laundry machines in service in more than 4,500 laundromats, 6,700 hotels, and 127,000 multi-housing communities, is a case in point.

What we’ve discovered so far is that AIoT has put the once physical-only business on a path of almost doubling free cash flow out of the business—without requiring any new customers. That’s revenue that was solely derived from the latent value in the business that they (and most everyone else) didn’t even realize was there.

It’s like finding coins under the couch cushions. Except that, in this case, it’s gazillions of coins.

Billions in those bubbles

One reason for the increase in revenue is that customers use the service more now, because it’s a better experience. Patrons can use an app to see if there is an available machine before they make the trip. Or they can see in advance when their laundry is ready. Or they can even pay with their phones.

Not only is it better for the company and their investors, and the end users, but it’s also a win for the employees and management. Now the dispatchers who are assigning drivers to visit the company’s 200,000 laundry rooms can be more efficient in their assignments – no more trips to a remote location to pick up just a few quarters. And managers can better allocate machines to more frequented locations. Or collect data on consumer usage (example: is one locale underutilized on Tuesday nights?) and respond accordingly with new and innovative ideas.

At the end of the day, this laundry solutions provider is an essential consumer-services platform reaching 50 million consumers with something they need, every single week. But now suddenly, with AIoT, we’ve catalyzed profits at an enterprise-value level—more than a billion dollars in incremental value in the course of just one year.

AIoT can unlock this potential in vertical after vertical—that’s the power of this platform. And it goes to show for PE managers that hidden gems are everywhere … if you know where to look.

May 10, 2022

What is AIoT?

Artificial Intelligence of Things. A person with closed eyes and raised hands, surrounded by digital icons representing a brain, gear, and wireless signal. The image has a gradient overlay of red and purple hues.

For many people, AIoT is a completely new concept. Most companies haven’t started using AIoT—yet.

But, companies who have used AIoT report they’ve unearthed new ways to improve customer service, increase profitability, and reduce operating costs. That’s why we wanted to take a moment to explain exactly what AIoT is and how it can help you successfully streamline business operations and scale growth.

Before you can understand how AI and IoT work together, it’s important to understand how AI and IoT function alone.

So, what is IoT?

IoT, or Internet of Things, is a system of interrelated sensors, devices, or objects that transfer data over a network without human-to-human or human-to-computer interactions. Using multimodal sensors and cameras, IoT collects ground-truth data for machines, spaces, and people.

We call these sensors “better-than-human” because humans have limits on what they can sense. Humans can’t always be in-person at a site, and when they are, they may still miss seeing, hearing, or smelling something.

But there are no limitations to what our sensors can pick up.

And what about AI?

AI, or Artificial Intelligence, is technology that “thinks.”

From movie recommendations to self-driving cars, artificial Intelligence collects data to build smart machines that perform human-like tasks. AI models recognize, analyze, and predict activity based on the information they collect. The better information AI is fed, the more it can do.

IoT feeds AI ground-truth data—data that is much more accurate than human sensing. AIoT then analyzes this data to unlock a whole new level of understanding about what is really happening in a physical space. From there, it can prompt automated reactions and provide prioritized, intelligent alerts.

How can AIoT help non-tech, physical businesses?

Many complex physical businesses and labor-intensive companies have customers, offices, and plants spread out over multiple places. AIoT is able to show them what’s going on at these remote locations. With up-to-the-minute info on what’s happening, businesses can make informed decisions and set-up profitable protocols.

AIoT can sense when a part will wear out, so machines can actually be fixed before they even break. AIoT helps eliminate unnecessary service calls since it can see when you need a technician and what tools they’ll need to fix a problem. And since AIoT has no margin of human error, it takes more accurate measurements than human workers.

AIoT can be retrofitted for existing equipment too so you can work with what you already have—you don’t need to replace fleets of machines.

This helps companies strategize ways to provide better service, become more profitable, and grow their businesses. It allows businesses to be more proactive than reactive, since it helps redeploy human workers where they’re most needed and can do the most good.

What about privacy?

BrightAI is innovating AIoT to collect data in a very private way. Our technology is built to ensure privacy.

From the first recordings, our sensors have privacy in mind. When we take camera images, the edge immediately obscures people’s faces. We trained our AI on blurred out images of people, so we are able to track movement in a location without intruding on people’s privacy at all.

Where can I learn more about using AIoT in my business?

Right now, BrightAI is still creating custom AIoT platforms for our clients. With each custom dashboard we build, we create lego blocks that will allow us to bring AIoT to all industries. Soon, we’ll have turnkey industry solutions that can be set up quickly and easily across multiple types of businesses.