Google/Microsoft/Amazon layout! Smart home has a "new" concept to fry?

Author: Ada

IoT Think Tank Original

Guide

In recent years, giants such as Google, Microsoft, Intel, and Amazon have often talked about "environmental computing", and people have begun to look forward to what "new ideas" this "old guy" can bring.

Taking stock of the global smart home market in recent years, consumers have begun to pursue more lightweight, integrated and intelligent services; the industry side is sparing no effort to promote whole-house intelligence and conquer users with scenario-based experiences. However, pain points such as brand barriers, serious product homogenization, and insufficient interconnection are very stubborn and difficult to cure.

At present, although the smart home industry as a whole is still in a period of growth, the industrial upgrading with the whole house intelligence as the end has always been tepid. Therefore, more and more enterprises have also begun to look for a new way out of smart homes, in order to break the existing deadlock, and promote smart homes and whole house intelligence into a more specific intelligent stage.

"Environmental Computing" is back in the making

A few days ago, Dave Limp, senior vice president of amazon devices and services, and Dave Lee of the Financial Times launched an in-depth dialogue on the hot topic in the field of smart homes, which mentioned a "new" concept that is "familiar and unfamiliar" - environmental computing.

The reason why it is called a "new" concept that is "familiar and unfamiliar" is because as early as 2019, Google, Microsoft, and Intel have successively announced various layouts based on environmental computing, but the understanding and certification of this concept in the market is not clear, no consensus has been formed, and few products have achieved large-scale applications.

At Google Manufacturing 2019, Rick Osterloh, then Google's senior vice president of devices and services, unveiled Google's new mission and vision: "Let your devices and services work with AI, come and help you whenever you need it, and automatically stealth when you don't need it." Subsequently, he also blogged about Google's concept of "environmental computing" – in your day, devices disappear into the background, and artificial intelligence and software will work together to help you.

Subsequently, Wei Qing, chief technology officer of Microsoft China Co., Ltd., also said in an interview with China Electronic News that the real environmental computing is to make you not feel any device, any computing, it perceives information and interacts with information through the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and body features, and perhaps at a higher stage, the presentation of information is not through the device but through light. Of course, its development is not achieved overnight, but it is constantly iterative.

At the same time, Song Jiqiang, president of Intel Research China, also said, "Environmental computing is Intel's medium- and long-term research plan, that is, a research plan for 3 to 5 years. At present, the team in the United States has been doing it for a while, and has now begun to conduct field experiments, the main feature is to use a variety of sensors deployed in the environment to perceive human activities and interaction with objects, and then to understand semantics, and then interact with participants through projection methods that integrate with the environment. ”

Although there is no unified caliber between the three, they invariably reveal several of the same key information - they do not feel the interaction between the environment and computing, and the integration with the environment.

Image source: Wisdom stuff

When the time comes to 2022, Amazon also proposed its own "definition" of environmental computing, and brought it more specifically to the smart home field, Dave Limp introduced, environmental computing is another way for people to interact with technology, whether it is the elderly or young people, do not need to read instructions, instructional videos, etc. to learn how to use this technology, as long as you stand next to it can interact with it. It also has the characteristic that it disappears when it is not in use.

At the same time, Dave Limp also made it clear that environmental computing is not a simple voice control. In recent years, Amazon has been softening the interaction between users and its voice virtual assistant Alexa. He said that Amazon will carry out hundreds of millions of smart home operations every month, but more than 1/4 of them are echo before the user's instructions are issued, the user does not do anything, needless to say "turn on the lights" or "open the door", "set the thermostat", etc., these instructions will be automatically triggered.

In summary, the environmental computing proposed by Amazon for the smart home field is to enable the intelligent terminal to actively predict user needs and complete the corresponding operation through data analysis and calculation, thereby reducing human-computer interaction, reducing the sense of existence of smart devices, and improving the user experience. In other words, environmental computing can provide a truly "silent" intelligent service, which is not only the same as the propositions of Google, Intel, and Microsoft, but also closely related to the "active intelligence" and "non-sense service" frequently mentioned in the field of whole-house intelligence.

"Environmental Computing" Opens Up a New Way out for Smart Homes?

Admittedly, the so-called insensitive intelligent services or active intelligence are no longer a new concept. With the increasingly powerful categories and performance of sensors, as well as the continuous upgrading of AI and big data technologies, environmental perception and action perception have become clearer and more accurate, coupled with the increasing frequency of use of intelligent scenes, command-free active services have become a reality, and with the accumulation of user data has become more accurate.

So, what new value can environmental computing bring to smart homes once again?

In this regard, the Internet of Things think tank also interviewed domestic smart home enterprises, among them, the cleaning robot leader Stone Technology engineers said that environmental computing is a composite concept, the integration of AI, Internet of Things, semantic understanding, big data, multi-modal interaction and other technologies, for smart home, the application of environmental computing will mainly enrich the multimodal interaction experience, through the linkage of various perception devices, better understand the needs of different environments, different users, reduce users through manual control, Voice control and other ways to control the frequency of the device, and the sensorless interactive experience is an important direction for environmental computing to land in the toC field.

At the same time, he also said that AI, Internet of Things, semantic understanding, big data, multi-modal interaction, etc. are all branches of environmental computing, and Stone Technology has a layout among them, and has realized the relevant functions in the product.

It is not difficult to find that more and more enterprises have begun to pay attention to environmental computing, but their respective definitions of the concept still have different understandings, which may introduce "a certain function will be part of environmental computing in the future" when promoting and promoting, but few people say that "environmental computing has been realized", which also shows from the side that the industrial application of "environmental computing" still needs medium- and long-term planning and research. As Wei Qing, chief technology officer of Microsoft China Co., Ltd., said, environmental computing is not achieved overnight, but iteratively.

From another point of view, iteration is also a process of constantly clearing obstacles, obviously, a large part of the reason why environmental computing still hovers on the periphery of the user experience is also because of the different challenges at the technical and scene application levels in front of it.

In this regard, Song Jiqiang, president of Intel Research China, believes: "The challenge of environmental computing is that one is to form an understanding of user personalization from multimodal perception. The second is how to combine interactive content with immersive technology forms. ”

In response to Song Jiqiang's proposal to "from multimodal perception to forming an understanding of user personalization", Wei Qing believes that the difficulty is modeling. He said: "When we use sensors to collect a lot of data, how do we model this data to form our perception of things, and the key challenge is that our modeling capabilities are still weak, not efficient enough, not comprehensive enough, or single-point." And graph calculation is an important breakthrough direction to crack this difficult point. "The proposed graph calculation is to model the data in a graphical manner, which can obtain results that were difficult to obtain in the past with a flat perspective.

From the perspective of the two big men, what needs to be overcome in the landing of environmental computing is to understand the needs and immersive interaction. First of all, the data form brought by multimodal perception is more complex, how to use different elements such as sound, position, posture, image and so on to piece together an accurate and three-dimensional personalized user portrait is crucial; secondly, when the smart home understands the needs of users, how to provide them with a smoother and more immersive experience is the ultimate goal.

Write at the end

When giants such as Google, Microsoft, Intel, and Amazon often talk about "environmental computing", people also begin to look forward to what "new ideas" this "old guy" can bring. Especially in the field of smart home, with the increasing maturity of environmental computing branches such as AI perception, multi-modal interaction, and active intelligence, I believe that the landing of environmental computing will naturally come to fruition.

Resources:

1. Is "ambient computing" that Google, Intel, and Microsoft are all talking about gimmicks or new outlets? , China Electronic News

2. "After making the most failed mobile phone, the most successful smart speaker, Amazon reveals the next hardware ambition", wisdom things