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feature
calls the elevator for you when you reach the lobby and
sends you through access control because it has identified
you through a fingerprint. Imagine using a smartphone
app to let the building know you’re a block away so it can
anticipate your arrival, or have your hotel recognize that
you’ve arrived and automatically issue you a room key. This
latest trend in smart buildings, integrating access control
with People Flow and other helpful features like remote
calling is termed ‘smart lobbies.’
“This is the ultimate area of innovation” says Wash.
“Once you get people into elevators, you can push
“Where smart
buildings are going
is understanding the
customers and putting
data control even more
in the users’ hands.”
information [relevant] to who that person is, because now
you know who they are. The information flow can be
tailored to who the person is and what their purpose is in
the building.”
This individualization could mean, for example, having
monitors that tell you which of your favorite dishes is
available in the cafeteria today or whether your train home
is running on time.
FRINGE BENEFITS
In the case of a hotel or retail building, smart lobbies
could be part of an overall brand experience, Wash notes.
Elevators could direct people to retail space, generating
more revenue for the tenant.
“Smart lobbies will be the merger of brand with the
flow of people in the lobby, merging mobile and wireless
technology to optimize, customize and individualize a user’s
experience,” he says. Thanks to Watson’s machine learning
capabilities, the possibilities for how that will happen are
unlimited.
“One of the reasons we went to the IBM IoT Watson
platform is that not only is it a platform for advanced
monitoring, but it’s a development platform for partners
who can very quickly spin up new services and applications
in smart lobbies. We’re working with certain partners to do
that,” Wash points out.
The Hilton hotel chain is a case in point. It has used IBM
Watson as the basis for a set of automated services. These
include a robot called Connie being piloted at the Hilton
McLean hotel in Virginia. Stationed at the reception desk,
Connie can greet guests, guide them around the hotel and
help visitors find restaurants and tourist attractions in the
area. Perhaps one day, the ‘bot may even make deliveries to
hotel rooms.
Connie is just one example of how the IQ (Intelligence
Quotient) of smart buildings is expanding to cover far more
than basic facilities management and allowing humans to
interface with buildings on levels never before seen.
“Smart buildings not only are being run better and have
greater uptime and greater transparency of how all the
assets are performing, but where smart buildings are going
is understanding the customers and how they’re using
the building, putting data control even more in the users’
hands and delivering the particular experience that end
user desires,” says Wash. /
Robot Connie, at
Hilton McLean
Hotel in Virginia,
greets guests and
acts as a guide to
the visitors.
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