Developing IoT-Enabled Indoor Asset Tracking | IoT For All Podcast E114 | Inpixon’s Soumya Das

you are listening to the iot for all media network hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the iot for all podcast on the iot for all media network i'm your host ryan chicone one of the co-creators of iot for all now before we jump into this episode please don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform or join our newsletter at iotforall.com newsletter to catch all the newest episodes as soon as they come out before we get started if any of you out there are looking to enter the fast growing and profitable iot market but don't know where to start check out our sponsor leverages iot solutions development platform which provides everything you need to create turnkey iot products that you can white label and resell under your own brand to learn more go to iotchangeseverything.com that's iot changeseverything.com so without further ado please enjoy this episode of the iot fall podcast welcome to us the iot for all show thanks for being here today thanks ryan thanks for having me yeah it's great to have you i'm excited about this conversation i'd love to start off by having you introduce yourself to our audience maybe talk a little bit more about your background your experience um you know kind of how you got to where you are now and just anything you think would be relevant for our audience to understand sure thing my name is somia das friends call me das make life easier i'm the chief operating officer at inviction prior to this my career has been around security content management knowledge management mostly working in security i've been uh involved with physical security and digital security coming together uh in the world of iot where we talk about the people place and you know everything on the internet what we call these days digital twin you know trying to bring these two worlds together and how do we secure individuals presence and uh be able to authenticate that you are who you say you are or the things are authentic you know who they are they are um so this has been my knack uh or you know zill in the industry as you may say uh working with different companies and i came into in fiction because of this whole uh area does not have any emphasis on locational context so adding a locational context to overall iot um you know in all cases for people for places and and for things uh you know it puts it in a whole different light right giving you the location of context makes so much sense so i joined with another another ali our ceo um and it's been four years over four years now that we have been uh within in fiction uh fantastic how big is the company by the way um we have just about 200 people uh wow yes uh how you guys been doing through the whole pandemic and things like that it's been tough um yeah like everybody else uh we learned quickly how to uh go and you know lock down and work from home right right distributed team you know we have a global presence in india in germany um in canada and in us so we have been spread you know all along but uh i must say you know we took this chance um to grow and better ourselves um you know the team grew over i would say around 100 we went through an acquisition uh we acquired an rtls company uh nanotron okay uh during this time um so pandemic or no pandemic ryan you know oh yeah yeah no that's that's fantastic it's you know love the the size the company you know it seems like you guys are getting through the pandemic fine i mean in a good way i mean it's been tough for everybody but um you know it seems like you guys have kind of clear lane on how you're navigating through and i'd love to kind of expand a little bit more on kind of what as a company what you all do and kind of the role you all play in iot um i know you kind of alluded to it in your intro there but just kind of expanding on it for audience to get a better idea kind of of what you all provide to the industry right on very high level i'll say inpiction turns data into indoor intelligence and most of the data that i'm talking about is you know about people places in iot um okay and uh how we you know or what we do with that intelligence what our customer does with the intelligence is they create a smarter safer and secure indoors right by smarter i mean it's more intuitive more responsive um a better experience and economical right where you have all these different iot gadgets are used maybe digital signage maybe hvac you know what have you right make it more smarter right and safer it's more clean more organized more compliant more eco-friendly so in clean for example you can prioritize your sanitization you know knowing which areas in the heat map you can see are more used you can you know you can prioritize your staff to do the cleaning that way you can organize better because you have a map and you can view where where things are you can be compliant by making sure that you're having the distancing and and your you know staffing uh occupancy is in the proper way right so make it safe for insecure you know authenticated access auditable um being able to do prevent things from happening because we have a camera and rf integration coming together so the entire you know space you know indoors imagine it is becoming more smarter and digitized right all the sensors and gadgets that you already have been using or want to use in the future can be seen on our indoor map you know we can then enable you to get a position of devices and i gadgets you know if for example a tracking device is on an individual or a mobile uh phone is on an individual we are able to look at that rf frequency and place that individual right right you can say if it's a known device or an unknown device for security purposes so if you create geofencing around your premises then we are able to allow you to put rules around those um who's allowing that particular geo you know area versus who is not and send alerts um so overall you know the digitization and connecting with the internet of things like i say you know people place and things you know come together right right right so let me ask then if um take me through kind of a typical customer engagement if what is what stage of their iot kind of like or journey are they usually in when they reach out to you and how does this work as far as which pieces of an iot solution do you all handle are you doing all the way from hardware to the software side or are you able to integrate in with existing hardware and just basically interpreting and utilizing the data in your platform to be better utilized by the end user kind of where where do you fit in the spectrum of things on that side yeah that's a that's a great question so i'll go a little bit back in our history right so we have been growing through acquisition as we bring in all these pieces together you know we started with doing like known unknown devices doing security for the government then we brought in you know a mapping platform jive stream and then be able to place those devices on the map to enable our customers to have better visibility and then we you know went into acquiring um our tls company nanotron um uh to to bring in iot and all these uh gadgets or you know pieces of equipment that people use in the indoors so let's kind of unpack that rtls piece you know to get your point of iot right um so iot in our case you know we have got the full gamut right so when you go into a customer um we are not going in and saying okay you have to bring in a mapping vendor to create a map you know we'll just write blue dot or we're not saying hey we don't have a platform for us it's one platform indoor intelligence platform that binds all of these solution pieces together so the customer might be in a different maturity stage they might say i just want to create a asset tracking solution where i want asset tracker and uh help me with that right so we can say okay fine we have a module that you can create your own form factor or you can take one off the shelf right or the customer might come in a maturity curve where they will say i just want the chip from you you know i have my own system that i want to put this chip into so depending on what industry you're coming from and what your comfort level or maturity level is within that you know using the iot um we will be able to work with you but the beauty of this ryan is that if a customer comes in a very embryonic stages of getting into io we're able to hold them through entire maturity stage right from a module to form factor then to platform into mapping the whole thing right and that's our vision that we haven't want to create in different industries maybe in the commercial sector uh helping smart buildings or in the industrial sector you know helping manufacturing or mining where we in all these areas we have customers that's fantastic and what about from an industry perspective is there a certain industry that you all kind of play more in or or maybe stay away from um we are staying a little bit away from retail and uh and transportation right now you know so you know i mean i feel terrible i mean you know i want to get everything back to normal and you know our customers come back and and and when the retail you know starts with federation and everything but right now our focus is on more on smart buildings uh and creating enterprises in our safe uh area uh and also industry um customers who are doing in mining and agriculture manufacturing so so let me ask you this then if you could kind of bring this full circle for audience and talk a little bit more about specific use cases or kind of the application of your technology out in the real world what are some real problems people are coming to you looking to solve and how are you solving them with your with your solution offerings to the market oh absolutely yes um it's a great one so you know this pandemic resiliency right so our post pandemic or you know dealing with the pandemic the next-gen smart buildings um a lot of workplace transformation going on right a lot of creation of companies are coming in and saying how do i integrate safety and employee engagement and facility management into one solution to kind of bring my people back right so we are we're getting a lot of uh uh interest in that special utilization like uh navigation uh desk booking hard disk um you know engagement um a lot of interest in that area um in in you know more in asset tracking it's a lot of asset interest coming in that's a big one for sure huge yeah but asset tracking you know but the tracker is not only meant for asset or critical asset but you know people also carry those assets um and for visitor analytics i think um you know those are the uh high uh interest areas that we are getting um a lot of calls from and when you're working with these these customers is there a common roi that they have kind of coming to you saying hey this is how i'll be able to get past the pilot stage and scale here's what i'm looking for this to achieve you know is there a common roi that you're seeing or is it run kind of the spectrum of different um different types of roi that companies are looking to you to help them kind of get out of these solutions when they reach out and start discussing with you yeah see um from the roi standpoint you know the major investment for a company is on the infrastructure side right to put your customers in right so some of those companies are not ready to yet uh implement ultra white band sensors or you know bluetooth sensors and all that so so we start from scratch and say okay you know is it possible for you to work with your legal to allow us a sign on page so that your employees or visitors will be using the wi-fi and allow us to look into the wi-fi signals because we can then take the wi-fi signals and do positioning with it right um so it's it's about working with the customer to kind of figuring it out like we are not going into privacy you know or their data you know that's not what we are getting we're just getting the location information and it is pretty secure and it's a relationship between you know the host which is our our customer and their visitors or their employees and if they can make that uh then yes we are able to uh get solutions in a much lower um cost right higher roi because you don't need those expensive um sensor uh implementation but more and more i think uh as the price of iot goes down ryan i think you know people will stop being reliant only upon the devices and be more on uh tags and uh because because it it's more precise more precise right we can use a wideband and give you a 10 centimeter accuracy um the more the accuracy the better it is as you oh so you know so so from uh from an roi standpoint we always try to work uh with our customer to really understand their need and and what they're able to work within their infrastructure and their you know hr and and legal policies right so let me ask you this then if so what what have you noticed i guess in the obviously just across iot use cases and and industries that iot technologies are being implemented within there's a variety of different challenges that come up and that are also common across all industries but i'm sure as you as it relates to indoor tracking and and the data you can collect through an indoor application of iot technology there must be some unique challenges that you all have come across i mean obviously the environments are always different the from from the structure of the buildings to the layouts to obviously the use cases and so forth but but from your perspective what are the biggest challenges that you come across with indoor data applications of of of the solution and what have you seen um or what how do you approach kind of solving those those challenges for your customers yeah so one of the biggest challenges in the rf is very temperamental right like you said based on the building you know how much um iron bars are how many glass walls and things like that um so rf uh behavior is very different um but what we have done we have attenuated that with our software side right so we are able to get paths and highways um within uh a building as we do the mapping to make sure that the same with the gps work right so we kind of use the software kind of see the probabilistic and deterministic movement of the data and be able to track them and add some ai into it to kind of massage it to to give our customers a better understanding um so it's it's a constant work that's going on in creating i think you know in coming years will be even better than where we are we are much better we used to be before where you know um the wi-fi used to be 30 meter uh radius right um and now we have ultra wide band that is going into 10 centimeters and very soon you know it will be going in less than an inch um so so i think you know um the the precision will help this uh industry grow and the customer will uh embrace this technology more and more and the cost of iot going down will help um as well so with the hardware price going down implementation becoming easy and accuracy being the factor that will pay off the roi i think rest will be done with the ai and the machine learning you have on the platform side so you mentioned the kind of the accuracy piece which plays a lot into the tech uh connectivity technology that's being used and everything from rf to ultra wide band to wi-fi bluetooth cellular you name it is applicable in the indoor tracking um space and it obviously depends on the use case specifically but i'd love it if you could kind of break down at a high level trying to avoid getting technical just like if you're talking to a potential customer and they came to you and said hey i hear about all these different kinds of connectivity technologies you know they obviously cost the cost is different they all have their trade-offs and i'd love it if you could just kind of ex uh expand on the differences between the major connectivity technologies that are used with indoor tracking solutions and where you see kind of the the benefits and the trade-offs on the negative side that um you know that you think are important that you use to evaluate which technology to use in a given use case or solution right um so this is a really good question and we face this all the time right in the conversation um it's it's about um our customer coming to us and really explaining what they're trying to accomplish right um you know not all if you are coming in uh with a specific set of known requirements it will help us guide you better towards choosing the right kind of rf um and like you talked about the spectrum orion you know we talked about our you know wi-fi down to ultra wideband if you create concentric circles of you know of the radius that each of these are covered or the ranges of the precision that will be um the lower or the better the position the higher the price right okay that's how it goes so um sometimes you will come in and say i'm doing you know indoor navigation and a bluetooth beacon is good enough for my indoor navigation and then i can collect the analytics from that bluetooth um you know and be able to say how many people are in my premises or or and then you know use the analytics to do the predictive analytics and so on so forth so the ingestion of data you know is based on the kind of requirement the customer brings and that is you know not to say that the customer cannot grow on the maturity later but it doesn't necessarily have to be you know the best precision to this to the to start with right right right conversation happens in a couple of levels so one is what kind of industry you're coming from and what are you trying to achieve if you're coming from healthcare for example and you're trying to you know do a patient experience you know you you can do it wi-fi right you can you can use wi-fi and you can create an indoor mapping you can create a path a to b um you can do point of interest and give them a a blue dot on device right and they're able to go around and track themselves as they you know navigate around the hospital or the medical facility and they'll have a great experience right coming from the parking lot to the meeting their uh doctor that'll be great and and that will accomplish with the very least amount of expense but now when the healthcare customer comes back and says okay now you know that's working fine but i now need to track my medical instruments you know all at the floor uh and i need to know exactly where they are and uh you know do security do audit trails and all of these things that i want to do with my equipment then you need to be precise then you can't just say i'll put a wi-fi tag on that because you know 30 meter can be inside the room outside the room you really don't know exactly what that location is so but then you go in and say okay if this is something you know what the roi that you know saving patients lives you know not buying an extra you know uh ekg machine you know in all floors or what have you and you say okay you know it's okay to now go in and move into a more mature ultra wide band you know positioning so we will put ultra wide band uh sensors all around the building or the floors where they require and then use the tags to track and use our platform to ingest that data see so so over time based on the the industry and based on what our customers require we sit down and do a consultative sale yeah i think it's important for people to not be discouraged from the number of uh like connectivity options that are out there i think a lot of people get overwhelmed when they get into iot with so many different connectivity options so many different kinds of hardware um you know different cloud providers you know it's just there's so many components to an iot solution that i think people who are not in the space often get very overwhelmed and it's important for them to look at that not as something to overwhelm them but something that actually allows them to create a very accurate solution to what is specific to them and working the company like you all is a very good first step that companies that are looking to kind of venture down this path can take because you have the expertise across the board and they just have to put their trust in you to pick the right technologies to understand the right technology explain to them why these technologies are the technologies you're using to match up with their roi match up with their use case and the the number of choices out there is probably only growing at least for the time being and that's a that's a good opportunity for companies to take advantage of those uh that extensive list of different technologies that can be applied to their particular use case and not think that it's a one-size-fits-all type thing and it you know may not meet their their needs uh accurately precisely yes you have said it well um only thing i'll add to that is that you know having a partner like us to help our customers build and because and that's the vision like i mentioned to you in the beginning right that we have brought in you know uh best of breed companies that we have acquired these technologies right mapping positioning analytics um rtls all of this because of this reason because that you know this will enable us to sit with our customer and choose the right technology and be able to configure the system that they they then can implement and grow with right i totally agree with you now let me ask um what have you seen kind of or i guess what are you looking forward to seeing kind of going forward on from a technology perspective um becoming available that will help specifically with indoor tracking solutions is there any technology it's on the horizon or anything that you're kind of keeping an eye out for to see how things develop to better um provide solutions to this type of market um well when you say you know keeping an eye that means it's not yet on our truck right so i just want to make sure that our customers and our listeners understand that if i'm saying something you know it is not something yet feasible right but we're working on it one of the things that we are looking at is a digital fingerprinting right being able to look at an environment in a given space and digitally fingerprint that space so um then the need of these sensors goes down considerably and you can usher in uh positioning you know much quicker and faster right because that many sensors anymore you can take say for example wi-fi data and fingerprint um a particular environment and any changes in the environment then gives you the data that helps you in doing some positioning right into you know more ways for us to uh to be able to you know position um and give you better accuracy uh and uh and not surmount the the huge scale of um putting sensors in in a given space makes sense that's great so the last question i want to ask you before we wrap up here is just in from a general trends sense as it relates to the indoor tracking space and the safety in different industries like retail and the workplace in general are there any specific trends that you're seeing or anything that's worth noting to our audience that they should be kind of thinking about i think you know safety has got a different meaning after the pandemic right sure um when we are talking about uh social distancing or we're trying to figure out the the occupancy you know limits have changed um so getting better understanding of the indoors i think there should be a really big take on indoor mapping right yeah so that you are able to visualize the space better you're able to communicate back and forth with the visitors and employees in order to direct them into the right direction you know at times right um right but also you know on an ongoing um sort of post-pandemic world and i hope everything is coming back to normal but still we will have some of these procedures that will be in place right and helping that digitize indoors like we're talking about earlier the safer in a smarter and safer indoor will enable our customers to provide that for our our you know for our users or there right that's fantastic um i appreciate your time here today this has been great i think um you know indoor tracking is a very very popular uh space to from an iot perspective like asset tracking is huge um we're seeing it across tons of different industries and as it gets in when you move from outdoor to indoor there are a lot of different challenges that people just don't think about and as you talk more about the indoor mapping and those types of um technologies kind of working to be developed i think you know you're hitting on some of the major pain points that companies kind of maybe avoid going down this path initially because they haven't been able to find the right solution but working with with a company like you all i think is very very important to kind of seek out and uh and kind of just at least at least you know touch base to find out what's possible and do a better job of understanding kind of the the potential for iot solutions in the industry in which you know an individual works and because these technologies provide so much value but oftentimes can be discouraging because of how complex they may seem um so if anybody out there is listening and kind of wants to learn more about your company wants to touch base you know to kind of expand on this conversation as this is probably relevant to a lot of different individuals in different industries what's the best way they can do that in piction.com e i x o n dot com uh come to our website you know we have got a lot of information and uh more importantly you can click and contact us and we love to engage with you fantastic well it's been it's been a great pleasure to have you on the show i appreciate you taking the time to talk to me today and would love to have you back at some point in the future talk further absolutely thanks ryan thanks for this opportunity absolutely alright everyone thanks again for joining us this week on the iot for all podcast i hope you enjoyed this episode and if you did please leave us a rating or review and be sure to subscribe to our podcast on whichever platform you're listening to us on also if you have a guest you'd like to see on the show please drop us a note at ryan iotfrall.com and we'll do everything we

can to get them as a featured guest other than that thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time

2021-05-10 15:24

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