Gartner predicts that by 2022, 70% of companies will experiment with immersive training, and 25% will deploy it in production. Are you one of those 25% quick thinkers?
You can also download a full-resolution version of this infographic in PDF format:
In this year’s Global Consumer Insights Survey PwC polled city dwellers on their purchasing behavior in two separate studies, one before and one after the coronavirus outbreak. The survey resulted in certain insights that demonstrate new buying habits to emerge. How technologies can help save customers after COVID-19?
The COVID-19 situation has deeply affected urban consumers’ views on spending.
Before the outbreak, consumer confidence was sky-high. Almost half (46%) of PwC’s survey respondents said they expected to spend more in the next 12 months. After the outbreak had begun, the percentage of those who said they were going to spend less in the next few months almost doubled. The number who said they were going to spend more dropped by more than 10 percentage points.
Even in locations where lockdowns have been partially lifted, urban consumers are making fewer shopping trips, consuming more at-home entertainment. For consumers to feel confident enough to return to physical interactions with retailers, the first thing they need is solid assurance that places of business have a plan to make their customer experience as safe as possible.
COVID-19 outbreak reinforced the already growing trend of online shopping. People explore different ways to access products and services.
The survey data demonstrates emerging behavior patterns and new consumer preferences. We’re facing the importance of developing new ways to reach out to customers after COVID-19, and not taking them on a merry-go-round of hectic ads and irrelevant content. That’s why transactions deserve better security, especially those related to banking apps and online shopping. Wire payments grow in number (53% of respondents used mobile phones to make payments, and 90% are going to keep it this way).
Biometrics facilitates onboarding, helping app users to become your clients. We launched a biometric onboarding module for a mobile wallet app in Oman, leveraging video analytics to help people benefit from financial services without visiting a branch office. The app is a mobile wallet, where you can add a card issued by any bank and perform all necessary financial transactions. It is available to the general public in official app stores. Bank receives information about the interests and preferences of users to make special offers. It helps to convert app users into bank clients.
Hackers are skillful in capturing security codes from SMS or PUSH notifications. Digital signature for smartphones can really save the day if your clients prefer paying online. The private key can’t be captured by any hacker because it’s generated in the user’s smartphone and safely encrypted. According to PayConfirm, they provide client-server software for transaction confirmation that suits any digital channel. It includes online/mobile banking, one-time passwords, and works online and offline (even in airplane mode). This solution can prevent phishing, social engineering, data switching, and SIM-module switching attacks, which gained momentum during COVID-19.
Video analytics can be of use in creating personalized offers targeted at a specific audience.
Previously, customized points of sale (POS) used to recognize customers at the entrance and generate specially-for-you offers. This technology evolved during COVID-19. Now consumers can place an order in a personal account or set a rule for a particular POS. With this feature, visitors can automatically get a preferred type of coffee entering a cafe or pick a packaged order without excessive human contact. Video analytics will even recognize a customer wearing a medical mask.
Amazon has been working on biometric identification for a long time to enable face-initiated payments. Visitors take products they need and leave the store. Cameras recognize the products and the shopper to automatically charge their bank card. Shopping takes less time and involves fewer encounters – even eliminating contacts with salesmen – meanwhile ensuring a safe customer experience.
In addition to facial recognition, a POS can be equipped with a temperature measuring tool and improve overall safety, retaining customers after COVID-19. One sick person at work can stop activities of an entire shopping mall or office and quarantine hundreds of people. We have developed a compact contactless solution for the timely detection of visitors with fever. It combines the thermal scanner functionality and face recognition accuracy. The scanner – a thin screen with a built-in camera – is installed at the entrance to scan visitors’ faces. It identifies them (successfully, if a visitor is in a customer’s database) and checks their temperature with up to 0.2-degree accuracy. If a person with high temperature enters a building, security personnel immediately gets notification.
The research and assessment of the pandemic impact on the world are still under way, revealing new interesting changes extending to every aspect of our everyday lives. The business faces a real challenge to respond to these changes as soon as possible by listening to consumers and meeting their new expectations of comfort, security, and service.
Contact our experts via experts@nntc.digital
“You have to think like an oil spill to trace one”. But we do it using a down-to-earth and physics-based approach instead for oil spill detection. Article by Pavel Tatarintsev, NNTC R&D Head.
Oil spills are a problem that affects the global community. Statistics show that the total volume of oil lost to the environment recorded in 2019 only was approximately 1,000 tons. According to ITOPF research, in the period 1970 to 2019, 50% of large spills occurred while the vessels were underway in open water; allisions, collisions, and groundings account for 58% of the causes of these spills. These same causes account for an even higher percentage of spills (99%) when the vessels were underway in inland or restricted waters. A number of the incidents, despite their large size, necessitated little or no response as the oil has spilled some distance offshore and did not impact coastlines.
Fortunately, the number of large spills (>700 tons) has decreased significantly over the last few decades. Innovative technologies made an important contribution to oil spill management and accelerated response procedures to prevent ecology impact. Today’s post is dedicated to polarization, an innovation that helps trace and clean up oil leaks. All science needs is a little magic, and Pyxis solution just happens to have some.
Taking light as a form of an electromagnetic wave, we can distinguish electric and magnetic fields there. Before polarization, we have unpolarized light emitted, for example, by the sun or a lamp.
Polarization means removing any electromagnetic waves from the beam, except for those being in a certain plane of polarization.
You don’t need smoke and mirrors to polarize a light wave. A polaroid filter will do. Moreover, you can see polarized light in your everyday life, when you wear glare-reducing sunglasses or use polaroid filters in cameras, for example. Actually, using these filters is the only way of taking a photo of any museum painting or exhibit protected by glass.
Various methods are used to detect oil spills.
An ordinary camera. Unfortunately, it is sensitive only to a single FPA pixel. This is the most inconvenient and least accurate method. It is difficult to see a spill in the rolling sea because of oil movement, sun glares, and transparency of other liquids.
A thermal imaging camera can show temperature difference between an oil spill and water. Thermal imagers are capable of detecting rather thick oil spills. However, they fail if both liquids have the same temperature. On a good day, you can respond with a speed of light – OK, under 15-20 minutes – otherwise, the temperatures will even out.
A polarization camera. The only camera that has an eye for any chemical compounds on the water surface. Polarized light varies depending on the surface material reflecting it, especially when it comes to oil and diesel leaks.
A polarization camera uses polarization-sensitive 2×2 super pixels to filter out all glares and identify the angle of polarization.
Light reflected from oil and water has different polarization angles. Gotcha! Now you see it. Special software can build both thermal and polarization images, as well as combined eTherm enhanced image.
The advantage of the solution is that it works day and night, in waves and calm water. It sees not only crude oil, but also refind oils.
Below you can see how these pictures look in real life. Thermal imaging combined with polarization shows the exact shape and location of an oil spill. It’s like playing hide-and-seek in the dark, but with a night-vision device.
Let’s talk about how we can use polarization to prevent oil spills.
Innovative technologies are like a magic wand we use to make all environmental disasters disappear. If you believe that this oil and diesel spill detection solution will make your business safer, reduce environmental risks, and improve the quality of life in your region, please feel free to contact our experts at info@nntc.digital.
Slicing through waves a jumbo ship is moving ahead full sail to the dock. People can’t take the eyes off of the ship waiting for the next captain’s move with bated breath. Is he a newbie? Did something go wrong? Are we looking at the reason for today’s overtime? Anyway, the overspeeding ship starts to turn clumsily ignoring port operator’s radio distorted screams and shouts, as inertia steers the ship and a big wave pounds on the mooring — kaboom! The ship kisses the concrete shore. The next thing you see is a loading metal crane gently hugging the ship.
All this could have been avoided, should a system similar to car parking sensors alerting the driver about obstacles – curb or garage walls – be installed on vessels to do the same job for the skipper. A video recorder would be useful for documenting all events as well, if scaled proportionally, of course, to the size of large ships and moorings. In fact, all ships have such equipment to video ships approaching the shore and mooring, but this is barely enough. What we really need here is the next level mooring assistant familiar with all marine peculiarities, since natural forces influence sea travel and mooring greatly, unlike ordinary parking.
The ship always hits the mooring. It is just possible that the mooring perfectly maintains and serves ten ships in a row, but can’t survive the eleventh and falls apart, thus triggering a series of unfortunate events and causing port to lose money.
Thus appeared MOORiNET, a solution for vessel mooring and berthing designed to prevent any massive accidents involving ports or moored ships. MOORiNET system warns about undesirable ship movement and possible collisions to prevent ship or dock damage, oil hose or loading arms breaking, spread of hazardous and noxious substances. Remember those car parking sensors? MOORiNET is its big brother: a marine garage-scale mooring sensor keeping it safe from crazy skippers. How do you like that, Elon Musk?
MOORiNET monitors where and how the ship is going and helps it to dock safely. The sensors detect various weather conditions and transmit the data to the port operator who supervises mooring rules. Weather sensors measure wind, wave, and visibility. A meteorological station monitors the outside temperature, atmospheric pressure, and the sea surface height. When a ship approaches, laser rangefinders and surveillance cameras automatically start monitoring the bow and stern using machine vision. The ship is captured from 300 meters, and the closer the ship gets, the more accurate the data are. The berth has a system that measures the impact during the mooring.
Therefore, an operator enjoys full port visibility. The ship’s speed is monitored as well in real time and displayed at the operator’s dashboard. Each vessel is highlighted with a color representing speed safety level range. In the case of any violations, the operator proactively warns the ship to take the situation under control. Should an accident happen, all sensor data records will be available to help investigate, whether a huge wave caused an accident or if the ship was violating mooring rules and overspeeding.
There is a rule, and the rule says: Once the ship docks, the port is responsible for whatever happens to it then. Now, picture this: a moored ship is being loaded with oil. The vessel gets heavier with each new ton, and all this pressure goes down on the mooring… To keep the mooring from being depressed, load binders are used. These are automatically controlled metal devices to tighten chains holding the ship’s bow and stern fixed. Many ports shut them off, as they can loosen or tighten the ship too much. Usually, somebody controls load binders using nothing but natural intuition and experience. Sadly, either human errors caused accidents or the perfect storm occurred with all its wind, fog, sand in the face, the sun hurting the eyes, and heavy snowing in the northern countries. Chains break apart, the oil hose follows, and the hazardous chemical spills on the sea surface. Here is when oil spill detection solutions come in handy.
MOORiNET can be integrated with a load binders system. The algorithm uses video analytics and laser rangefinders to detect a slightest movement of the ship and automatically alert a person responsible, so that this person either loosens or tightens the chain. The same applies to the oil supply system.
There is a MOORiNET version designed specifically for harbor pilots. An Android app gives a pilot all necessary information such as the speed at the ship’s bow and stern and the weather. The app connects to the ship’s system via a connector and synchronizes data with the MOORiNET at the mooring, thus providing the port and the ship with consistent information for better safety.
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As the world is exiting the global pandemic crisis, technology providers have managed to demonstrate that the right solution is what it takes to work efficiently in a geo agnostic world. As much as a crisis-driven shift it has been, it accelerated most of the organizations to promptly adopt advantages of digitization.
The obvious success of remote working operations in many cases shows that this trend, as well as a few other technologies, can prevent potential virus outbreaks and build safer and smarter enterprises. For sure, it is expected to become a new normal in the post-pandemic world.
On April 29th our experts presented recent developments that help to minimize the current risks for the organization and its employees.
01:55 – 21:22 – IoT-based contact tracing for labor-intensive industries
21:37 – 36:00 – Access control solution with face recognition and thermal sensors
36:15 – 49:15 – Contactless field worker attendance with a mobile app
49:27 – 01:03:26 – Time control and data leak prevention for office employees
For questions and requests, please contact info@nntc.digital
Drones are modestly sized unmanned aerial vehicles making headline news and buzzing around. They are featured in spy action movies and video games playing the role of enemy technology or helping a protagonist to outplay enemies. Either way, this stunning fictional representation lures our minds into a trap of “the drone illusion”. To pierce this veil, let’s take a look from the engineering perspective.
Engineering considers aerodynamic efficiency of a drone design and numerous factors, including the laws of nature equally applying to everyone and everything.
We need a vehicle perfectly performing functional tasks, which, in our case, takes off at once, hovers steadily, and transports cargo over long distances. We need…a helicopter. During the last 50-60 years, the appearance of all helicopters remains virtually the same, in general, there are two main aerodynamic designs. Why so? Helicopter is the proven golden standard in fuel efficiency, agility, and effective load-carrying capability. Coaxial rotor helicopters, for instance, are the most fuel-efficient. (Coaxial rotors are a pair of helicopter rotors mounted one above the other, with the same axis, but rotating in opposite directions). Such a sophisticated machine design requires not one, not a dozen, but a huge task force that includes specialists highly qualified for the job.
As for drones, they are compact, lightweight, and easy to assemble – you don’t need an engineer’s degree to make such a flying device for yourself. And let’s make it clear: all drones are aerial vehicles, but not every drone is created by professional engineers specializing in aerodynamics. The industry has a few companies engaged seriously with drone designing. Though there are many young talents bubbling with enthusiasm to write an excellent code and solve challenges and, of course, impatient to field-test it. Sometimes, a team intentionally sacrifices aerodynamic efficiency in favor of easier and faster development. However, even if they installed a software masterpiece on such a drone, its power would still be limited by design. Plenty of original ideas remain untranslated into reality without a professional engineer in a team.
Drones come in a great number of shapes and sizes, but the majority has two weaknesses:
When it comes to business tasks, people start talking about drones and fall into the trap of their own illusions about drones. It goes like this: “We want you to develop for us a drone that can…blah-blah-blah”. Is it really a good way to solve a business problem?
Let me tell you one story about agricultural business. Thirty or so years ago, small helicopters were actively used to spray the fields. Since then, their market share has been slashed, while drones’ share has increased. Back to the business task: transportation of chemicals to spray the fields. To be more or less effective, a drone has to be capable of spraying 15-20 liters per flight. Before drones, the market supplied radio-controlled helicopters carrying 15-30 liters of chemicals, thus significantly dropping the cost of treating one hectare, as compared to conventional methods. Today, an agricultural drone – a bulky and barely transportable vehicle worth of $25,000 to 30,000 USD – can carry some 15-16 liters of liquid. Just compare: a modern helicopter with the same load carrying capacity costs $10,000 USD, but it flies faster and more flexibly, and its battery works longer. Moreover, it is easy to transport – you can fold the rotors and put its body in a car trunk. This is the trap of “the drone illusion”: helicopter costs less and works better, but drones grow in demand.
“The drone illusion” hurts the industry. In fact, the existing drone design simply can’t get better, as technology evolves evenly for all aerial vehicles. Should the drone battery improve, the helicopter’s will improve too. Thus, the developers with more experienced in-house engineers will have a competitive edge.
How to avoid “the drone illusion” trap? Actually, it’s easy. Drones can effectively solve certain tasks. Take logics to a new level: don’t try to adapt drones. Start searching for the right flying vehicle and consult with an engineer. This will help you save money, avoid hassle, and expand the technological capacity. Discover the richness of technology of the 21st century.
by Pavel Tatarintsev, NNTC R&D Head
Everyone at work is entitled to be provided with an environment where risks of health and safety are professionally controlled. Employers carry primary responsibility for safe and accident-free working sites.
What are the key factors that have a direct impact on the number of accidents, people’s injuries, incurring unplanned costs and breaching projects’ timelines?
This list comprises but not limited to:
NNTC’s Digital Worker is an IoT and video analytics-based platform that addresses these critical factors providing all required insights and allows to build a fully efficient, accident free industrial or construction site as well as eliminates breaches of projects’ scopes and timelines.
Here is why:
Learn how Digital Worker helps prevent workplace accidents and safety violations.
A mess on a construction site is quite a common thing and can be tolerated to some extent if it is an organized mess. However, when this mess creeps into core processes, a construction site turns into a hurrah’s nest, and a developer faces risk of large penalties, downtime, and even death toll. In this blog, we’ll tell you how CROC, our strategic partner, implemented a face recognition system on a construction site.
One fine, sunny day, when the site was buzzing with activity and dozens of workers were moving around cheerful and positive, a former workman penetrated the site. He passed through a checkpoint, greeted a guard who knew him well (but did not know that he had been fired already), entered the territory, and went to his friends. Half an hour later, a fire was burning, with the workers drinking tea, resting, and enjoying their lives.
The problem was that they made the fire near two gas cylinders, one of which suddenly exploded. Neither warning nor alert. Just exploded, and that’s it! Fortunately, people were just shocked, not injured, but a police came to the site the same day and initiated an inspection, which revealed some unpleasant facts for a contractor:
That is why the contractor asked CROC for help.
Initially, the construction site was equipped with just run-of-the-mill employee recognition systems:
Therefore, it was the time to try video analytics.
Each turnstile is equipped with two cameras: one aimed at incoming people, and the other, at outgoing.
There is a small cooled server room on site, having a rack with two servers and a switch. The first server receives video stream from cameras and identifies frames containing faces and being of the best quality. The second server receives these “clear” frames with faces and runs a recognition algorithm to find a match in a database.
If a frame contains only one face and this person is authorized to pass through, then the turnstile opens. Otherwise, a guard is alerted.
No Internet connection is needed for the system, just a copper cabling on site. However, if connected, the system allows for continuous monitoring, email reports, and remote second line support for operators.
The system runs perfectly in typical situations:
In addition, every evening, executives get a report on how many people were scheduled for work and how many arrived actually. It is very important since contractor’s favorite trick is to schedule 50 workers, provide only 30, and then report on 50.
Moreover, this information — like 600 people scheduled, only 450 arrived — shows if a project is running out of time already. And you see it right now, but not a week or month later.
Morning queues have almost disappeared. Instead, it takes one hour for two turnstiles to let 700 people in, even including guard intervention cases. The customer enjoys reports on the actual number of people arrived at the construction site, which was a sad news for some of the contractors. Neither a $7,600 penalty nor work suspension for 14 – 90 days is pending now, with the system itself costing less than this penalty.
NNTC actively partners with CROC and implements face recognition solutions in GCC countries. If you are interested in this technology, feel free to contact our consultants.
Sorry, fireworks, it’s been a pleasure looking at you, but you are out. We are looking for something else to take our breath away. Dancing drones is a new trendy thing, giving people a thrill of fresh experience – same sparkling lights, but smart. But how does it work? Let’s take a peep behind the scenes and watch show creators at work.
If there is a swarm of 300 or 1,000 drones, imperfections in their position against one another and the ground are scarcely noticeable – this vigorous whirling formation of pieces of light, each separated by a few meters from the rest, is too big, and any error or desync is almost invisible. Even if a couple of drones just fall down, it’s no bother. Though it’s not the case for hotels and parks preferring drone show of 20 to 90 flying dancers. There is no margin for error and drones are expected to move in perfect harmony. So, how to prepare a drone show? You can’t just make these vehicles pirouette in the air with perfect timing, can you?
Step one. Drones
For a start, you need to set your fleet ready for the show, i.e. make sure every drone is unbroken, properly configured, and nothing is missing after transporting. We at NNTC prefer to operate ready-to-use DJI drones or assemble them ourselves.
Step two. Staging the show
It all starts with 3D modeling.
Motion graphics created in Blender, for example, is converted from animation trajectories to a format readable by the autopilot. Before going to the field, we perform thorough testing involving simulators. We put virtual instances of drones into necessary coordinates and operate them as real appliances using our software. This way we can evaluate their flight in real-time, as well as visualize the outcome in a 3D scene.
Here, have a look:
Step three. Harmony
To ensure precise movements and perfect timing, you will need a special software, for example, Drone Dance Controller produced by our vendor UgCS. The programming team worked hard on the autopilot that navigates the ballet of drones along random trajectories with accurate GPS time synchronization. The trajectories can be drawn using either a 3D computer graphics software or scripts. Now, when everything is set, all an operator needs to do is press ‘Start’ and watch the show closely.
Step four. Test
We can finally test everything in practice and see what drones can actually do. We deploy our infrastructure (ground control station and communications), arrange drones, and check if all of them are OK after transportation and can be connected to our station. The software will then automatically determine a route for each particular drone. Finally, we set a start time, and off we go!
Step five. The show
Now you’re ready. During the flight, both the operator and other people in charge need to monitor the fleet condition and, if necessary, decide to perform the emergency landing of a drone, which is out. Remember, you should mind certain restrictions before starting the show. No ‘whatever the weather’: rain or wind speed of over 5 m/s is likely to ruin the accuracy of drone’s position in the air. To communicate with drones, we need radio frequencies being rather free from other signals. Spectators need to be at a certain distance from the show venue for their own safety.
Watch how the drone show must go on:
We bring the most ambitious fantasies, ideas and dreams to life with drone and laser shows. Visit this page for more information, if you are looking for how to order a drone show, or if you want to talk to an expert and learn how the drone show will work for your occasion and venue.
