New platform Hai for safer behavior

After 3 months of lockdown, strong regulations, and economic struggle, we’re carefully going back to our “normal” life. It’s a challenge to find the right balance between the well-being and health of the population, and a steady recovery after this critical period.

To provide an answer to this challenging situation, Verhaert developed a demonstrator of a digital platform that uses AI-based Computer Vision to extract essential metrics from any room or area. ‘Hai’ can bring COVID-related safety awareness to the public, allowing them to make informed decisions. It’s not a surveillance system, but a tool to empower people with relevant data about a specific space and to nudge them in a positive way towards a safer behavior.

Components of the AI system

The digital platform consists of 3 components:

1. Cameras to record a live feed of the people present in a particular area, the people entering and leaving the place.
2. An edge AI system to process the footage on-the-fly. The system extracts the number of people, how many of them wear face masks, and measures the physical distance between individuals.
3. Online dashboard to display this information in a friendly and educational way.

Let’s say you work at your desk and you want to get something from the cafeteria. On the dashboard, you can see whether or not you should wait a while until fewer people are present at that place.

Artificial Intelligence algorithms

Verhaert’s AILab trained the AI algorithms to calculate the number of people present in any space and detect how many of them are wearing face masks. What about the security and protection of private data? The cameras’ live feed never leaves the AI system. The edge AI device treats the information locally and only transfers processed and anonymous data to the dashboard. No human being sees, stores or transfers any images, safeguarding everyone’s identity and privacy.

Hai is about our health

The online platform is a tool to organize ourselves and our spaces, it doesn’t judge individuals. It allows us to access real-time information from anywhere to make informed consent whether or not to enter a room. Hai will display the total number of people in an area versus the maximum quantity allowed. Additionally, it creates a heat map of “close-encounters” (distance less than 1.5 meters) giving valuable information for cleaning, disinfecting, optimizing walking flows, and detecting bottlenecks.

Hai is about you

Hai will recognize in the near future your gestures, so if you wave hello to the camera or raise a thumb, Hai will respond interactively. The digital platform has been created to demonstrate how AI technology can help us in managing our presence and common spaces better during COVID. Ensuring we all stay safe, not only at home.

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The challenge

The advent of 5G and edge Artificial Intelligence platforms introduces the opportunity for distributed AI systems. Meaning, devices can be connected in a network of nodes, each generating their own local data from sensors or users and each with their own computational resources. The network allows to share the locally learned knowledge between all nodes in the network. 

In the first place, these nodes perform predictions based on machine learning models. In the case of iterative learning, nodes also generate data to learn from. The machine learning model learns from this data. The model both provides predictions in the edge whilst also improving performance by learning continuously. The main challenge is to share the learnings of the different edge nodes over the entire distributed system.

The current approach to distributed learning raises some critical issues in the application of distributed edge AI namely, data privacy, data security, data access rights and access to heterogeneous data. We dive deeper here to understand why and how federated learning can solve these issues.

Classical approach to distributed learning

The classical approach to iterative, distributed learning relies on data to learn from that is typically generated locally on sensors or by users (mobile phone input, health bands, etc.). In the last decade, the general approach was to have a centralized machine learning model in a server, that receives data which is sent integrally from the distributed nodes to the central server where the data is aggregated and fed to the machine learning model. The machine learning model learns from the data. In turn, the improved model is then sent to the nodes to use locally to perform predictions.

This architecture requires the owner of the edge device to send their data integrally to the main server. This means risk for privacy, giving up data ownership and security risks. Federated learning solve these issues.

Federated learning provides solution

Federated learning solves the issues of data ownership and privacy by making sure the data never leaves the distributed node devices, whilst ensuring that a central model is updated and shared to all nodes in the network.

Federated learning enables multiple nodes to build a common, robust machine learning model without sharing data. This is achieved in 4 general steps:

• Randomized central model sharing: The central model is shared to all edge nodes by storing local copies of the network.
• Local optimization: The local networks are updated by learning on the local data samples.
  
  • Security measure 1: The “learning” is encoded in neural network weights of the model. This step is hard to reverse, meaning it is hard to take these weights and decode them to get the original data.
  • Security measure 2: These learned model weights are then encrypted. To send to the central server.
• Local update sharing: All local updates are sent in an encrypted way to the central server.
• Secure model update: The central server receives the weight updates of all local models and aggregates them without undoing the encryption (based on Homomorphic Encryption encryptions) or decoding the weights to reconstruct original data (since this is very difficult). During the aggregation, the central model takes into account the amount of samples each local used for updating its model. More data means, higher impact on the global model.
• Restart at step 1 by sharing the updated network to all local devices.

State of the art (SoTa)

Federated learning is at this point not widely used. One of the most prominent uses is the Gboard application in which google uses federated learning to improve the performance of your smartphone keyboard. It takes the data generated by all users on their local cell phone and improves the central spelling corrector without ever sending your data to the central server.

Federated learning has also been applied to Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV). UAV swarms must exploit machine learning in order to execute various tasks ranging from coordinated trajectory planning to cooperative target recognition. However, due to the lack of continuous connections between the UAV swarm and ground base stations, using centralized machine learning will be challenging, particularly when dealing with a large volume of data. In the referenced paper, a novel framework is proposed to implement distributed federated learning algorithms within a UAV swarm that consists of a leading UAV and several following UAVs.

The low adoption rate of federated learning is in stark contrast to the technology readiness. The big deep learning frameworks already support federated learning:

• TensorFlow federated: An extension to the TensorFlow deep learning framework to enable federated learning.
• Pysift: An extension to the pytorch deep learning framework
  to enable federated learning.

Future applications of federated learning

There are 4 ingredients to unleash the power of federated learning:

• A distributed network of nodes.
• The nodes are performing a local algorithm for prediction.
• The nodes can gather local data for learning.
• Data privacy, security and ownership are critical.

Any machine learning model used on personal devices like smartphones, cars, smart home applications or even smart appliances can make use of federated learning to improve the user experience of each individual user:

• In the coming decade, transportation will get more autonomous. The driving factor in this technology will be the data that is generated and gathered by car makers to develop their algorithms. Federated learning allows to learn from the cameras in your Tesla, without sharing your actual footage to the main model.
• Image a smart fridge that tracks your consumption and advises you in your grocery planning. The model might learn patterns in consumption that are general to human behaviour in general. These general learning can be shared with all smart fridge users safely without sharing your personal consumption data.
• Image a smartwatch that is used for workout tracking. The applications can detect your level of exertion by analyzing your movement and heart rate. The data you are generating locally could be used to improve the application for all users, by means of machine learning. Federated learning allows to share these learnings to all smart watches without ever having the data leave your device.
• Image a smart thermostat that can learn patterns that are common to all users to improve the overall experience, without ever sharing your personal data to a central point.

AI and big data systems will need to adapt in the future and wide acceptance and adoption will only happen when end users feel the AI and data systems is trustworthy and safe to handle that means having upmost respect for the consumer.

This requires organization to take ownership of the usage of end user data by having a strong data strategy and governance framework in place. Federated learning can bean important part and solve part of the promise we end users expect from these systems:

• Protecting the individual’s right to privacy
• Making the individual aware of how their data is being used
• Giving the individual greater control over their data
• Ensuring the individual’s data is stored securely

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One and a half meters apart

According to the World Health Organization, the transmission of Covid-19 primarily happens from person to person through small particles from the nose or mouth that float shortly in the air or fall on objects around the individual. People can catch the virus if they breathe these droplets or if they rub their eyes, nose, or mouth after touching contaminated surfaces. 

This way of propagation is the reason why our primary defense against the spread of coronavirus has been physical distancing meaning staying at home as much as possible and avoiding crowded or public places. Reducing the ways people come in close contact with each other is essential to ensure the overall health of the population. What will happen when we go back to our workspace and try to stay safe?

To avoid a relapse or future outbreak, companies have to guarantee the well being of their employees and customers by taking into consideration all the safety guidelines. We need to put in place mechanisms that will ensure that people are following physical distancing and wearing face masks on the streets, in shopping centers, warehouses, production lines, and train stations, among other places. We all want to do our best to respect these directives. Still, we live and work in chaotic environments surrounded by millions of exchanges a day that won’t be very easy to foresee. How can the people responsible for these safety measures make sure that all-time at all locations people are following and respecting these rules and regulations?

AI and physical distancing

A potential solution to the above is making use of AI-enabled tools. They’re capable of detecting people’s behavior and patterns by analyzing real-time video streams from cameras feed or geolocation data. Computer Vision (CV) is a field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that trains computers to interpret and recognize the visual world. By analyzing digital images and videos, it can quantify if people are wearing facemasks, calculate the exact distance between individuals, or even map hot zones in a room to see where a group of people tend to gather despite the physical distancing rules.

When selecting an AI solution, we need to take into consideration many parameters. How will I ensure a continuous and quality data-feed? Is my data being processed on an embedded edge device, on the cloud, or a local GPU? Are we developing our algorithms or using off-the-shelf solutions? There is a trade-off between speed, power consumption, and accuracy that, if not selected carefully, can affect the performance and cost and acceptance of your system.

For example, a smart shipping company was tackling a significant problem that most merchant ships encounter. They have limited detection abilities and a hard time recognizing at close range (even less at far distances) boats in between fog, mist, and waves, especially in high seas. The approach was to put a hybrid computer vision solution that combines stereo cameras, computational power, and GPU capabilities onboard with extensions to online components. Therefore, it doesn’t depend on any online service when it’s offline cruising international waters and can benefit from the cloud, while docked, to update the system with new data and learning algorithms.

This set-up can process images and videos to calculate the distance to the detected boat and estimate its speed. One of the main challenges of this approach was that traditional computer vision detection algorithms have limited capacity to process very high-resolution images without losing relevant information. By implementing a two-stage strategy, starting with pre-processing the data, we can use a Region-based Convolutional Neural Networks (R-CNN) to accurately identify ships and vessels in our high-resolution images providing a happy medium between accuracy and speed.

What about privacy?

An important topic creating concern around computer vision and artificial intelligence is privacy and safety violations. When talking about these, we should go beyond the idea of whether or not we can identify someone on camera footage. We need to treat the information gathered, processed, and analyzed as carefully as the individual’s face and personal records.

Privacy-affirming is an approach where the privacy control is no longer in the hands of humans. Computer vision systems would only provide genuinely needed information for a particular application. This way, no one would ever visually see any image footage, only processed outputs. Will our notions of privacy differ if that information is being collected, observed, and interpreted by humans or by machines? Is “privacy-affirming” the right one to use?

Tracking if people are respecting physical distancing can be the difference between a healthy recovery or a setback. But there is more to it than just this; the real value comes by improving as a society from the information provided. What else do you think we can do with this technology?

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On the other hand, various companies experience a defensive reflex to keep the spiraling losses under control, especially in high-impact industries like construction, tourism and entertainment. In these challenging times, executives are looking for cost-cutting options on the short and mid-term. And this is when it gets tricky for R&D and innovation managers.

It’s totally understandable that in times where demand is plummeting, and the future outlook uncertain, organizations refocus all their efforts on the essential business processes. Keep the train moving! However, the current operations and business processes couldn’t be executed if it weren’t for past investments in IR&D. So let’s consider some options for your team to deal with this catch 22.

1. Take the offense

Outperforming companies of today differentiate from their competition because they invested in new growth options during and after the financial crisis of 2008, instead of just cutting costs. According to recent reports of Bain & Company and Gartner, these investments outside the core business are considered as an important strategy to win.

2. Take the time to (re-)assess the innovation strategy

IR&D should be an accelerator of the competitive sustainability of a company, today, tomorrow and the future. If you’re considering cost-cutting your IR&D projects, it might be because they lack alignment with the corporate strategy or because there’s an imbalance between short/mid/long-term projects. There are a few quick checks that can help your team to make that assessment:

• How does the innovation mission support the company’s ambitions? Is the connection clear for – and endorsed by – other executives?
• Which actions are currently initiated to support this mission, and is the budget spending in line with the ambitions?
• Is there an explicit way of steering balance in the innovation portfolio? Are we betting on (too) little or (too) many horses?
• What KPIs are we tracking? And are these the right Innovation Metrics?

If you’re not able to give a clear indication for these type of strategic questions, it might be a good time to sit down and get things straight. The following framework might create an overview of what needs to be done. Take note that all elements are interlinked and should be managed accordingly.

3. Adopt a lean and agile way to assess opportunities

Let’s face it. Even after thorough market research, newly introduced products still have a high failure rate: up to 80-85% according to some. Even if competently executed, most new ideas will fail in the market (dixit Alberto Savoia, Google’s Innovation Agitator). This is called ‘the law of market failure’. To overcome this pitfall, it’s essential to set up a step-by-step learning process to de-risk your innovation opportunities. For many companies, this requires a firm mind shift and the use of disruptive, lean pretotyping experiments that go beyond the typical focus groups and surveys in B2C or time-consuming co-development pilots in B2B.

We notice companies are still struggling with keeping mediocre opportunities alive by focusing rather on limited aspects of market success (e.g. technical feasibility first, market adoption later), or by avoiding to pull the plug because of lack of progress. Dare to kill your ‘zombie projects’ and focus your limited resources elsewhere. A lean and agile approach is the way forward to make optimal use of your team’s limited time and resources and to adopt a proof-driven assessment of opportunities. Several tools can be accessed digitally and are pay-per-use, so what are you waiting for? Rapid cost-efficient experimentation will lead to more bad ideas being killed so you can focus your scarce time and resources on the winners.

4. Train and empower your IR&D team

Do you have the right tools in your shed to accelerate innovation and be ready for the coming years up to date with the latest insights, technologies and methods? Consider e-learning and coaching for ongoing initiatives to elevate the internal competences of your team involved in innovation. Online collaboration platforms enable a highly transparent and output-driven process and are highly valuable when combined with an expert coach that can pool the right tool at the right time. This topic is at the crossroads of HR (training and career planning), R&D (project-based) and operations (remote collaboration platform).

This is the time for out-of-the-box thinking and pool some departmental resources. After all, IR&D skills like dealing with uncertainty, processing diverse/fuzzy/contradicting insights or an entrepreneurial attitude are considered core assets today and even more tomorrow.

5. Make it practical

During uncertain times like these, you can get lost in online articles about V-, U- or L-shaped curves in business recovery, and according actions to undertake. If you were planning on initiating a trend-driven roadmap, or market landscaping exercise, the truth is that it might be too complicated or even a bit naïve to predict the mid-term impact of this crisis on society.

As IR&D, product or innovation manager, it might make more sense to focus on something practical and bootstrap selected projects. Impose your team as a challenge to find accelerated revenues by exploring new go-to-markets (e.g. direct-to-consumer) or by targeting other customer groups (e.g. less-demanding users for a first-gen release).

Indicate the win-win situation to your management how your budget shift will result in more tangible, short-term results and explore new grounds and tools as you go.

Every crisis and in particular this Corona crisis is hard and unseen. But we don’t have a choice and only can try to fight the virus and become even a better innovating company than before, right? Verhaert’s experts help you out with pragmatic guidance, a solid toolbox and proven track record for A-brands across the globe. Contact us to talk about your innovation challenge.

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Looking for solutions to innovate?

Leave us your email and get in contact with Pieter Deleye, Business Development Manager Services – Strategic Innovation, to help you with your innovation process.

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The current lockdown implies large-scale quarantines, travel restrictions and social distancing. People are discouraged to travel beyond their neighborhood and limited to shopping in the local supermarkets and pharmacies. As outdoor activities, restaurants, theatres and cinemas are closed, people need to find entertainment at home, which means a shift to online or digital activities.

Google search report:
Meanwhile, pre-Coronaoutbreak the amount of mobile searches for “grocery delivery” grew over 130% in the past two years. According to NPD, the number of U.S. consumers of 18 and older who shopped online for groceries, whether delivery or pickup, increased by about 51 million from the quarter ending November 2018 to the quarter ending February 2019. The “take out” search interest has increased by 285% since the start of March 2020. Online tools such as these help people navigate through this new normal with up-to-date and relevant information. In the short term, marketers will need to find ways to be helpful to people trying to meet their most basic needs.

Another result of the lockdown measures is a decrease in income for workers and revenues for business. This will or is causing a recession. As a steep decline in consumer and business spending is imminent, a recession will kick in. Recent studies, such as the one visualized below from McKinsey & Company, show an increased demand in essential items like groceries, household supplies and home entertainment, household supplies, and paper goods. Other significant finding is the unmistakable shift to online shopping. In all categories of consumer goods, the decline in sales is consistently larger for physical stores than it is for online stores. This shows an important switch from buyers to online stores.

Fast moving and food companies are advised to increase efforts in online sales and e-commerce. They are urged to find new revenue models and hence are looking how to adopt new digital business models accommodating digital sales, marketing and product use. The fast moving industry could benefit from home and on the counter appliances equipped with automatic refill delivery options through online systems and e-commerce. Another exemplary design is the SOMAT Smart Wash appliance, which allows a new consumer experience, higher convenience, combined with direct sales connection with the users. When initiating the product design, one posed the questions: ‘Does it still make sense to put a detergent in the dish washing machine for every load?’ , ‘How can we connect directly to consumers making retailers superfluous?’ The result: an automated detergent disposer for washing machines backed with an e-commerce re-ordering system.

The important thing is to not lose focus on the longer term and to keep the option of product innovation open. A review of recent papers has identified that starting up the economy after the corona crisis will not be as swift as the fast action lockdowns that some countries have directed. The start-up or recovery phase will be a stepwise approach with a gradual renormalization period, until the end of 2020. And even then it is almost inevitable that human habits and behavior will have adapted to a new normal.

Some inevitable changes include:

The need for self-installation tools or remote assisted installation

Eventually, consumers will need to order repair and installation services. This will create the need for self-installation tools supported by VR/AR, remote monitoring, condition based maintenance or maintenance free products.

The need for self-diagnosis smarter devices

People will buy products with built-in self-diagnosis, advanced remote diagnostic and predictive maintenance to avoid the repairer’s visit.

The need for touchless interfaces

In addition, people who cannot work from home, will prefer touchless interfaces for  professional appliances such as vending machines and coffee servers in public places. The need to integrate Voice conversational UI’s or gesture controlled human interfaces will help in realizing this future appliance need.

Appliances with direct connection to e-commerce back-ends or apps

Auto-reordering or app’s signaling the need to re-order will be required to help people omitting to travel to stores or limit the number of store visits.

The need for virtual shops

People are reluctant to move to the shop and getting in contacted with touched products and other persons. Full 3D Virtual shops wil bring new shopping experiences for product promoting, advice. Some first examples already are identified like a 3D virtual store from Volkswagen.

Digital connected appliances can be newly developed and in some cases there will not be an alternative. However, subsystem extension, integrable electronic modules and external add-on devices will be solutions to upgrade the existing devices that are already installed. They will have lower development costs and connect those devices to apps or e-commerce back ends for automatic order processing.

Although times are hard, everyone contributes by staying home and helping those in need to limit contaminations. Health care workers are fighting COVID-19 at the front, but everyone can help. Engineers and innovators are now also being summoned to do their duty, ensuring new solutions will be made to protect our society, fight the Coronavirus and to reduce plummeted sales and revive economics.

We are committed to our customers and helping everyone during these hard time and continue to publish our insights on our blog in the coming weeks.

Stay safe and stay home, so we can fight the Coronavirus together.

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This storm will pass. But the choices we make now
could change our lives for years to come.

Y. Harari

Content

A unique window of opportunity to focus on adjacent innovations

29/05/2020

Painfully gradual, the lockdown measures are being lifted and in small steps consumption and businesses are starting up again in Europe. It is becoming increasingly clear that this pandemic crisis and the resulting measures have caused significant economic damages. Based on predictions, we can estimate that the crisis will last between 18 and 24 months.

At Verhaert, we know from best practices in innovation management that this creates the opportunity for new players to enter market spaces, by developing products from scratch focused on system level innovation. This creates a unique window of opportunity to focus on adjacent innovations, first generation innovations supporting your growth strategy. Due to the significant shift in user demand, we can assume that the relevance of incremental innovations will reduce. This offers space to shift the focus on accelerating digitization and servitization of the product range.

Using AI and big data will help understand changing customer behavior faster and better

25/05/2020

The Covid-19 pandemic is the first pandemic to shift people’s work and hobbies to at home options on a massive scale. This was largely possible due to access to online digital technologies. Because of to this behavioral change, businesses all over the world are facing challenges in terms of gathering accurate insights. They find it difficult to anticipate what’s next in order to stay viable and accommodate the rapid changing environment with adapted products and services. Qualitative field research approaches are long and expensive, and result in companies releasing new products late in the market. McKinsey’s report on digital technology adoption showed that only 13% of retail companies were using AI as part of their product development. 

Businesses need to accommodate new market research methods to understand the new normal trend much faster. Companies are forced to learn in real time how they can adapt to these changes by exploring the use of virtual showrooms, driverless delivery fleets and driverless steps. Connected research methods will generate data everywhere in the world, which will create new, and even more qualitative and updated data. Using AI and big data will help understand the new behavior faster and better.

The worst is behind us, how do we move forward?

14/05/2020

Finally, after a couple of months, we can see that the curve is eventually flattening. Governments are lifting the lockdown and companies are rushing to recover from the economic bump. It’s too early to predict the future of the economy and the full impact of Covid-19. Nevertheless, a recession seems inevitable. Despite the harmful effects of this situation, there are still silver linings in this story that can leverage our recovery and evolution as a society.

In times of crisis, the wise build bridges while the foolish build barriers.

Social distancing and lockdowns forced every company to look into the alternatives of on-site working. Every day millions of people are connecting to their Microsoft Team, Zoom, Google Meet, Webex, meetings keeping the wheels of the economy turning. Organizations have invested in their telecommunications infrastructure to ensure the continuity of their business and strengthen their online presence. Communications today are done digitally, and everyone is embracing and enjoying the change.

The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word ‘crisis.’ One brush stroke stands for danger and the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the risk — but recognize the opportunity.

In response to this pandemic, innovators are jumping to help. Beer makers are producing hand sanitizers, and 3D printing companies are saving lives by creating valves used in hospitals and ventilators. Artificial Intelligence is allowing the development of tools for spread modeling, symptoms, and people tracking. Farmers are increasingly using e-commerce to sell their goods directly to customers. Markets that seemed dommed are embracing digital technologies as a way to enhance their brand awareness and business.

When we look back on this crisis, we’ll see that innovation and support never stopped and that the companies that thrived diversified their business model and culture to adapt to the situation.

Will Covid-19 make supplies less dependent of global sourcing and lead to a decrease in globalization?

11/05/2020

One implication of the Covid-19 crisis was the rapidly closing borders worldwide, which inevitably resulted in delivery problems. Companies are became vulnerable because they could not and still cannot get the parts they need to continue production. Global just-in-time supply chains came to a hard stop and will remain under pressure until Covid-19 is defeated worldwide. This begs the question: “Should companies change their supply chain?”. Continuity of supply has become just as valuable, and sometimes even more valuable than production cost and speed to market. Supply chains built on just-in-time inventory and distributed component sourcing have to be reconsidered. Companies will need to start redesigning their supply chain, re-engineering old products so they do not rely on one specific supplier, and modifying product designs to accommodate for a resilient supply chain of several potential, mainly local, suppliers.

How will this global crisis influence new product and service development?

04/05/2020

Only a number of weeks into the Covid-19 era, and we can already see companies seizing new opportunities. With remarkable speed, start-ups and other companies are introducing electronics to safeguard social distancing for their workers and apps to trace contacts and so on (more info).

However, many more have started to investigate how this global crisis will affect our habits and behavior, influencing their new products and services. Safety and wellbeing were already trends and behavioral drivers in smart buildings and cities. The post-pandemic world will add new constraints and features to product and services design.

• Will purified air become a differentiator in public transport, retail shops, restaurants and office buildings? There already is an increased demand for such devices in hospitals and ‘critical’ spaces like control rooms. As there already was a growing awareness for (indoor) air quality, accelerated and widened adoption is certainly possible.
• Will handles, doorknobs and other touched surfaces all have to become antimicrobial to stand a chance in the market? Will user interfaces become touchless?
• Will the soap dispenser on the sink order its own refills via IoT, as the online shopping adoption boost will enable the breakthrough of FMCG subscription models?

These possibilities are not new, but can rapidly accelerate due to today’s crisis. At Verhaert,  we recently developed an IoT device to enable a dishwashing subscription model. We monitored air quality and VOC propagation in a production environment and are working on wearables that monitor and detect health issues and behavior. We expect more of this to come. Our designers, developers and engineers can support you in envisioning and developing your future smart products.

How can we avoid ‘big brother’ when using technology to get out of the lockdown?

30/04/2020

How will technologies interfere with our lives in the future. China has showed the world that strict lockdown can only be enforced and made successful with controlling technologies. On top of that, China demonstrated that lifting the restrictions and avoiding a new outbreak is much easier and more controllable when using technologies such as fever measuring cameras at entrances or drones, smartphones, watches and dedicated small devices that use RF technology to measure distances.

These devices can come in handy to help us cope with the new normal, such as alert when desired ranges are exceeded. They seem to be acceptable tools, but what with personal data? And what about solutions that measure fever before badging in? Or drones measuring fever and interpersonal distance, or even identify you through facial scanning and recognition? Some of our basic rights might be in danger. The freedom upon which our European communities, cultures and laws are build, is being challenged.

Software and data integrity, privacy and security technologies are needed to ensure these rights. These technologies are not commonly available and cannot yet proof a trustworthy application. Here trustworthy AI rules can play an important role, however EU guidelines will not be enough to ensure qualified implementations, so we might need certification processes. The currently used AI approaches for distributed learning raises some critical issues in this kind of application. Verhaert’s AI lab is investigating how trustworthy AI and federated learning can solve these issues for particular cases.

The impact of the Corona crisis on medical products & services

24/04/2020

The corona crisis forces us to rethink the way we look and use medical products and services. Telemedicine, robotic devices, camera technology and new patient monitoring devices are needed, responding to the changing methods of patient investigation and monitoring.  Brands need to be flexible, and existing protocols and habits need to be changed. This will require that your customers adapt to your proposed new behavior, which is often unknown behavior.

Knowing that 68% of the medical inventions do not take off due to customer rejection, special attention needs to be paid on how to avoid these rejections.

We see that the root cause of many of these market failures is found in insufficient behavioral research. The analysis of how a user behaves towards a product is essential. Contextual inquiries and observations will help you to understand all external factors that might influence human interfaces. During these insightful activities you have to search for hidden needs. Needs of which the users themselves didn’t know they had them. This is how we believe a product becomes meaningful.

A true fit-to-market medical device eliminates unintended use, use-related hazards and rejection

Our perspective ‘Behavioral design beyond Human Factor Engineering’ discusses such customer behavior research in detail.

The struggle between reducing R&D budgets and long-term growth

21/04/2020

During Corona-times, optimists would say that ‘every crisis is a birth’, and for some aspects this is truly the case. Organizations discover that employees can actually work from home and so colleagues adopt a new sense of work-life balance.

On the other hand, various companies experience a defensive reflex to keep the spiraling losses under control, especially in high-impact industries like construction, tourism and entertainment. In these challenging times, executives are looking for cost-cutting options on the short and mid-term.

It’s totally understandable that in times where demand is plummeting, organizations refocus all their efforts on the essential business processes. However, the current operations and business processes could not be executed if it weren’t for past investments in R&D. Let’s consider 5 ways for your innovation and R&D team to deal with the Corona crisis.

Our perspective ‘5 ways for your IR&D team to deal with the Corona crisis’ discusses this topic more in dept.

Re-evaluated innovation trends in agri- and horticulture due to Covid-19 outbreak

15/04/2020

The Corona-virus has been quite impactful on the Agricultural industry to say the least. Estimations on damages exceed €135 million in horticulture and €200 million for potato farmers, and let’s not even mention the sugar market.

The losses can largely be derived from the forced lockdowns, but will leave persisting influences (good and bad) within the different segments. With global lockdowns, the ‘out-of-door’ market (restaurants, canteens, events) has been closed or cancelled causing worries, but also inciting creativity on what to do next and which measures to take to support the value chain. Due to the current travel restrictions, farmers will have think twice on either automating part of the harvest or waiting for travel restrictions to be lifted for seasonal workers. Either way products might get spoiled, causing supply chain problems later on.

These challenges can be drivers for innovation if the quarantine persists. Some examples:

• Shifting business models and procedures: The so-called ‘buurderijen’, or online local farmers markets, are working non-stop because buying local is hot.
• Autonomous harvesting robots for strawberries, oranges, peppers, asparaguses and cucumbers already exist and can be sourced quickly to alleviate labor shortages. Opportunities in tomato harvesting should be considered too.
• Remote monitoring of crops through hyperspectral sensors and additional cameras (fixed, aerial or satellite) will significantly reduce the inspection time and number of interactions between inspector and plant information on irrigation, nutrition, …
• Augmentation of current systems a lot of data is gathered already, but can be further leveraged to optimize working hours, inspection (of quality, fytotoxicity, fungi, bacteria) through machine learning and potentially big data techniques.

With the situation evolving from day to day, multiple parallel routes should be taken and investing in innovation and new technologies will remain valuable.

Remote & predictive maintenance for offshore industry challenges

09/04/2020

When times are hard, change is easy right? Yet Covid-19 is testing us all, by causing so much to change in days. People have to think twice about the change in the future inspired by doing more with less. Many industries had to start thinking differently, too, to make sure they stay afloat. 

The offshore industry is one of those industries that had to find solutions in a short amount of time to maintain our present and future energy supplies, while finding a work-life balance and providing healthy working conditions. Hats off for those on-site working double shifts now due to travel restrictions and an obligation to stay. Usual shifts of 3 weeks have been extended by long double shifts of 6 weeks, which also means more time away from their relatives.

Sometimes they have to keep everything going with less crew members, creating innovative ideas to find new future solutions. Machine monitoring and digitization are just a few examples of how to achieve remote assistance. Machine maintenance is becoming more predictable, allowing more reliable remote surveillance and controlling.  Remote and predictive maintenance might offer solutions to further reduce the number of remote visits and avoid social distancing problems. Therefore they are speeding up the shift to digitization, where AI and tools like SVM are ideal to train predictive analysis on normal versus abnormal machine behavior.

Take away and grocery delivery tools soar during Covid-19 lockdown

06/04/2020

The current lock down implies large-scale quarantines, travel restrictions, and social distancing. People are discouraged to travel beyond their neighborhood and limited to shopping in the local supermarkets and pharmacies. As outdoor activities, restaurants, theaters and cinemas are closed, people start ordering online. An increase in online grocery shopping, fridges, bread maker, clippers have been identified.

A google search report showed the following results: Pre-outbreak mobile searches for “grocery delivery” grew over 130% in the past two years. And according to NPD, the number of U.S. consumers who shopped online for groceries,  increased by about 51 million between November 2018 and February 2019. “Take away” search interest has increased 285% since the beginning of March. Being there to help people navigate this new normal with up-to-date and relevant information, can make all the difference. 

In the short term, innovators will need to find ways to help deliver adapted solutions to meet this new demand.

Find out more on this topic in the perspective ‘The impact of the Covid-19 lockdown and its aftermath‘.

Corona pushes all of us to use digital tools

03/04/2020

At Verhaert we believe innovation should be user centered, technology enabled and business focused. In that sense companies that expect to go back to business as usual after Covid-19, make a tremendous mistake and will be blown away by competition. The reason for that is simple. Your customers and end-users are no longer the same. In just a couple of weeks’ time, we all changed our behaviors and habits, a huge switch that would take years under normal circumstances.

What would have been the percentage and demography of our population that used web conference tools before Corona? Now, Covid-19 pushes all of us to use these tools, from youngsters to elder people. In just a few weeks, customers barriers and reservations to use such tools have dropped tremendously. Imagine the potential for all your sales processes around consultative solutions.

How many people had their first online purchase experience over the last weeks? How many people have been forced to leave the time of using physical money finally behind them? How many fanatic book readers have taken the step towards digital books over the last days? Which digital tools you have started using recently in your attempt to manage your business remotely?

People that have started to use those digital tools and services over the last weeks, will continue to use them in future. Covid-19 forced us to change our behavior and adopt new solutions. Once people change their behavior they don’t go back. We should make sure we adapt our products and services towards this new reality, and even take advantage of it to optimize our business model.

Corona causes not only a humanitarian crisis, but also important societal challenges

02/04/2020

In a thought provoking Financial Time article ‘The world after coronavirus’, Yuval Noah Harari warns that today’s choices will have an impact on the post-Corona world. Will we choose for global cooperation or more protectionism?

Harari states it bluntly: “This storm will pass. But the choices we make now could change our lives for years to come. One method is for the government to monitor people with facial recognition and drones, and punish those who break the rules.” Are we aware that the powerful technologies tracking the spread of SARS-COV-2, can enable far reaching surveillance that could be kept in place permanently by totalitarian regimes and malevolent entities? Harari shows the danger in corporations and governments that start harvesting our biometric data. They could get to know us far better and predict our feelings, but also manipulate them and sell us anything.

Nevertheless, the industry will need to adapt to the world after Covid-19. They will need to build and offer solutions considering the new behavior and context, and how it will affect customer’s habits and behavior, and hence design new improved products. Some examples:

• Will smart homes and wearables powered by AI become our health guardians? Will they continuously monitor our health, or will we choose ethical AI systems respecting our privacy?
• Will the increased focus on washing hands stick and change how we use and buy soap and similar products? Will my smart watch notify me that I haven’t washed my hands? Will companies monitor customers through facial recognition software in the surveillance systems?
• Will vending machines, coffee dispensers and other user interfaces become touchless? Current explorations in voice and gesture control might have to be implemented now. Facial recognition, as already implemented in China, could make its big breakthrough in Europe, facilitating electronic payments and customer loyalty programs and further preventing cash transactions and pin code entries.

The post Blog – Helping industries cope with Covid-19 and its aftermath appeared first on Verhaert Masters in Innovation.

The post Blog – Helping industries cope with Covid-19 and its aftermath appeared first on Verhaert Masters in Innovation.

For the last couple of weeks the entire world has been gripped by the Coronavirus. The pandemic has drastically impacted all of us, this disease has caused the largest humanitarian crisis after WWII and, unfortunately, a  large numbers of lives couldn’t be saved.

Many companies are now feeling the impact of this humanitarian and economic crisis. They are faced with a new economic recession and feel the need to adapt to reinvent their business to survive as demands plunge. There is a lot of pressure on CEOs and executives to make the right decisions in short time spans. Meanwhile, they have to make sure that these decisions will benefit not only the safety of the workforce, but also the sustainability of the company.

We all realize that the current state of lockdown is not going to last for several days, it’s going to be in place for weeks, most likely for months to come. Now, many questions are starting to rise: How can we deal with this lockdown and adapt our services in the best way possible on the short term? How can we adapt to the long term consequences of Covid-19?

Currently, companies are suffering harder than ever and need to find new revenue streams, and optimize their product portfolio as their demand plummets. Additionally, they find it difficult to understand how to reach end users. The shift to homework has led to a shift, and even need of new sales channels to accommodate their product and services to the changing customer and market needs. Products become irrelevant and new business models emerge to transform them to the new situation.

Rapid pretotyping and market research assist in finding answers to the new normal in the COVID-19 pandemic. Online and virtual user experience in sales, product marketing or use of the product might limit the decline in order intake.

We are committed to our customers and want to help everyone during this difficult time. The coming weeks we will be publishing insights for several sectors and technologies that are relevant in his transformation. Follow our blog to identify possibilities for your company.

In addition, we can provide guidance and advise in funding and innovation subsidy to successfully complete your application process. At the moment, there are several available funding opportunities for companies that can solve COVID-19 challenges, such as  Space in Response to COVID-19 Outbreak, AI-ROBOTICS vs COVID-19, Give-a-breath and GALILEO projects.

Follow our blog to find more insights on how industries can cope with the Coronavirus lockdown and its aftermath.

For more information, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Stay safe and stay home, so we can fight the Coronavirus together.

The post Adapt your business to cope with Covid-19 lockdown appeared first on Verhaert Masters in Innovation.

The post Adapt your business to cope with Covid-19 lockdown appeared first on Verhaert Masters in Innovation.