7 New Cool Tools in positioning technology

Some of today's innovations will become the future normal. But how do we know which ones will endure?

Modern positioning technology is impressive, but there are still plenty of barriers to adopting these tools for many potential customers. Some of these barriers are technical – things like battery life, location accuracy, and responsiveness. Other barriers relate to processes and include complexity around designing, deploying, commissioning, and maintaining positioning technology solutions. 

To fill these gaps, companies are rapidly innovating New Cool Tools to improve hardware and software and remove barriers to adoption. 

Recently there’s been a major upswing in innovations to attempt to remove these barriers. I think much of the innovation (and general awareness) of IoT proximity systems has been driven by two unfortunate factors: the COVID-19 pandemic and the threat of violence in schools and workplaces. In this article, I am going to focus on the effects of COVID, which I experienced through the lens of my company’s hospital customers.

During the pandemic, many organizations tried to answer difficult questions for the first time, such as:

• Can we monitor and manage social distancing?

• Can we help our frontline workers by making their work easier and safer?

• Can we understand occupancy of our workplace and manage it in a way that could reduce transmission?

• Can we use technology to backfill for workers who left and cannot currently be replaced?

• Is there a way to validate quality along our supply chain for important vaccines and medications?

In an attempt to provide solutions quickly, many technology providers pivoted their offerings, updating software and messaging to address these timely questions. At the same time, many organizations seriously considered IoT sensor technology for the first time. Not many hospitals decided to deploy a solution during COVID, but by exploring their options, they gained awareness of the capabilities available. Many of them have continued to be interested, and some have become customers. 

While COVID generated a burst of awareness, it also laid bare some of the technical and process gaps that interfere with rapid, widespread deployment. And now, innovators are innovating in response to this exposure.

Part of my job is to understand the New Cool Tools that are being developed, assess their quality and commercial value, and choose and implement the best-in-class solutions for our customers. The New Cool Tools that have the best chance of becoming New Normal are those that address the biggest pain points: integrating with other systems, reducing maintenance, increasing security, enhancing accuracy, and reducing complexity at every project stage from design to decommission. 

Here are some of the New Cool Tools I am currently watching:

1. Battery-free tags

   • Problem:  When batteries in tags need to be manually replaced, the results include higher costs for parts and labor and an increased likelihood that system quality will degrade and the solution will be abandoned by the customer.

   • Promise: Tags that run on ambient energy can eliminate the need for batteries entirely, which reduces the cost of parts and labor and increases system reliability.

   • Geek out more: The battery-free IoT revolution is here

2. RFID tags

   • Problem: Tags that actively beacon out their location can be expensive, and require battery changes. (RFID tags have to be scanned, and are passive)

   • Promise: RFID tags are passive, and have to be scanned with a reader. However, they are very cheap, extremely durable, and can hold an increasing amount of data. They can be attached to nearly any item, even if it gets laundered or sterilized. As reader and tag technology gets better, RFID tags can be used in many circumstances where previously an active technology was needed.

   • Geek out: Skip Waiting in Line with Amazon’s Just Walk Out Technology

3. Communication protocols

   • Problem: Range limitations for communication between IoT devices results in systems that require more hardware, adding cost and complexity.

   • Promise: Longer-range, lower-power capabilities would massively reduce cost and complexity.

   • Geek out more: Another Record Breaking Transmission for LoRaWAN

4. Using fancy code instead fancy hardware

   • Problem: Traditionally, a high level of accuracy has required a high level of hardware density, adding cost, complexity, security vulnerability, and maintenance.

   • Promise: Using smart algorithms that leverage machine learning and AI,location data of a similar quality can be synthesized using far less data and hardware.

5. On-chip and edge computing

   • Problem: Data transmission to and from cloud data centers to perform compute tasks takes energy, adds cost, requires  time, and increases security risks.

   • Promise: If data can be processed into valuable data either on-chip or by an edge compute device, savings happen at multiple dimensions and system performance improves. 

   • Geek out more: Edge-Computing Architectures for Internet of Things Applications

6. Cross-industry location data interoperability

   • Problem: Lack of standards for proximity data leads to inefficiencies, errors and vendor lock-up.

   • Promise: Widespread adoption of data and communication standards would save time and frustration.

   • Geek out more: omlox is the world’s first positioning standard and has the promise of seamless integration of data from a wide range of technologies.

7. Artificial intelligence

   • Problem: IoT data volumes can be immense. There could be meaningful insight hidden in plain sight, but unless you build the right query, it could be hidden from you.

   • Promise: AI can recognize patterns and point them out proactively, revealing hidden insights and enabling faster decisions and earlier diagnoses of issues

   • Geek out more: Exploring the dynamic fusion of AI and the IoT

Most of the New Cool Tools being developed in each of these areas will fail, but the best and most consequential ones, with a dash of luck, will become our New Normals. I am optimistic about the future of positioning technology. I imagine that in the not-too-distant future we’ll be attaching tags to most things we own and having near-constant visibility of them. We’ll look back and smile, grateful for the advances of the past and the powerful technology at hand.

What New Cool Tools are you keep tabs on in your world? What kind of a difference do you think they’ll make? Leave your comments below!