TECHNOLOGY INSIGHT
Professor Steven van Belleghem, an expert in customer focus in the digital world, discusses the new smart technology The evolution of AI
T he evolution in drones is spectacular. A few years ago, drones were very expensive, difficult to operate and stupid. In my home, several of them were flown into my neighbour’s trees. This type of ‘old’ drone was heavily dependent on the skill of the pilot – which in my case was fairly limited. However, the drone industry has made huge strides forward during the past five years. In May 2015, a video was posted on the Kickstarter crowdfunding platform that immediately attracted thousands of views. The video announced the launch of a new drone – Lilly – which amazed the world. All you needed to do is throw Lilly into the air, after which it just followed you around during your sporting adventures. And when you had finished for the day, Lilly simply landed on your hand. And whether you were skiing downhill in the Alps or surfing the breakers off Hawaii, Lilly would film it all. It’s a great way to impress your friends – or give them a good laugh. Thousands of the new drones were ordered on the basis of the video alone, before the device was even in production. Sadly, none of these enthusiastic customers ever got to see their Lilly. In October 2016, I visited the company that planned to make them. It was cool to see their research and development unit, but you could feel the uncertainty. The designers felt that they weren’t making enough progress with the necessary improvements, and at the start of 2017, the company went bust. Drone Lilly was smart, but not smart enough. Lilly followed the owner, but if the owner ran under a tree Lilly smashed into
it. In today’s market, consumers want self- steering drones.
driving cars on its roads. In May 2017, South Korea did the same. At the end of 2016, Uber began operating with driverless cars on the streets of San Francisco and other American cities. From fiction to reality in just six years. Again, not bad. And who knows where we will be in another six years. This evolution from stupid to smart will continue in the years ahead. In fact, almost every aspect of our daily lives will become smart. Clothing will be fitted with RFID (radio-frequency identification) chips, which will not only help stores to better monitor and protect their stock but also help recognise their customers more easily. Household devices will have chips installed to optimise performance and consumption. Ordering coffee or picking it up from the local supermarket will be a thing of the past. Your coffee machine will order it for you and it will be delivered to your front door, probably by drone. Rubbish bins in city centres will also have a chip, so that they can be emptied before they get full. But first prize in the digitalisation stakes goes to Palo Alto, the most digital city in America, located in the heart of Silicon Valley. There, each individual tree has its own chip and its own data profile. If something happens to the tree, the city authorities know it immediately. What’s more, all this data is made available online. If we want, we can all check up on the status of the trees in Palo Alto. So, if even the trees in a small American town can get smart, just think what this kind of technology could do for your company or industry. n
Skydio is a startup trying to develop this kind of fully autonomous drone. In 2016, the chief technical officer of Skydio was Frank Deallaert, a Belgian professor with wide experience in the world of self-driving cars and artificial intelligence (AI). “But self-driving cars are so very 2015,” he says. Allowing drones to fly autonomously is much more complex than letting cars drive on their own. Even so, the Skydio drones don’t crash into anything: it’s almost as if they have eyes. The self-steering drone is a fact. In 2012, I crashed my dumb drone into a tree but five years later the drones ‘see’ the tree and avoid it. From stupid to smart in just five years. Not bad. Drones are just one example of how gadgets are getting more ‘intelligent’. When Google launched their public relations video for the first self-driving car back in 2011, many people thought that it was some kind of stunt. The majority of the population had no idea that technology had already advanced so far and so fast. Seven years later, in 2018, several countries are already preparing for the new era of the driverless car. At the start of 2017, Latvia approved a law that would allow self- ...evolution from stupid to smart will continue in the years ahead
| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward | November 2018 | Issue 45 46
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