Do You Know About AIoT? The Practical Applications of Combining Artificial Intelligence with IoT

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a popular technology trend, which in recent years has been joined with another popular trend, Artificial Intelligence (AI) to form a brand new keyword: "AIoT". But what exactly is “AIoT”?

The traditional Internet of Things refers to the deployment of a large number of physical sensors in a specific space, which can collect and return environmental data at regular intervals, such as temperature, pressure and sound. After integrating Artificial Intelligence, this IoT system can now not only sense environmental data, but as long as it also includes video or surveillance cameras, it can use “computer vision” enabled by AI deep learning technology to “see” and “recognize” surrounding objects, such as people, vehicles, numbers and animals, evolving this Internet of Things into an intelligent Internet of Things.
 
The value of adopting AIoT technology not only lies in assisting to reduce labor costs but also in its ability to enable data analytics. When an organization builds a smart sensing system it begins to accumulate a large amount of data daily, and can use high performance servers equipped with data analysis software to transform this data into business insights and intelligence for decision making, allowing the organization to continuously learn and evolve. If IoT gives a computer system a sense of touch and direction, AI gives it vision and learning capabilities. 

If we see our favorite products as soon as we walk into a store, we will immediately pick them up. Likewise, if we pass by an electronic billboard that always advertises the products we want to buy, our wallets will grow thinner and thinner. We feel confused – is somebody reading our mind?

At the same time that smart retail technology is becoming part of our leisure time, an intelligent Internet of Things has also entered our workplace. A company can now install a network of environmental sensors within their office building, which continuously collect data such as indoor brightness, temperature and the number of personnel present. According to these parameters, the intelligent building can then adjust the brightness of internal lighting, air-conditioning temperature or even the flow direction of people. When the system recognizes that there is no-one in the office even though the lights are all turned on, it will automatically turn them off or reduce their brightness, avoiding an unnecessary waste of energy and saving a considerable amount of money on electricity bills every year.

In addition, a smart office building can feature an access control system enabled via facial recognition technology. A camera detects the facial features of a person and compares it to a database for matching – if it is within a certain error range, it will generate a matching result. Using the system, employees no longer need to physically clock on or off, but simply scan their faces as they walk by. Staff even don’t have to bother signing their name on an attendance list for compulsory meetings – their presence will be automatically recorded when they walk through the meeting room doorway. In this way, HR can easily gather attendance records to be used as reference data. Biometric recognition can also greatly improve the accuracy of identity verification and eliminate timesheet fraud such as “buddy punching".

To summarize, an intelligent office building will use a network of environmental sensors to monitor internal conditions at all times, and fully automate various functions such as temperature control, lighting control, and access control and security. This automation not only will reduce the operating costs of the building, but also create a more convenient and environmentally friendly workplace. 《Learn More: A Facial Recognition Solution Ideal for All Organizations, From Chain Stores to Multinational Corporations》

Deploying AIoT technology into your organization is not a simple task, but GIGABYTE can help – providing solutions for facial recognition and data analysis systems that can assist companies to easily achieve digital transformation with AIoT technologies.

A facial recognition system to control access in and out of a building has been wholly developed and manufactured by GIGABYTE, from the necessary server hardware and back-end control system to the front end interface, and even the facial recognition software algorithm, which recognize facial variations in the same person due to factors such as ageing. The system can then record and use these variations to improve the accuracy of the identification algorithm, greatly improving the company's security and safety.

Smart retail technology uses deep learning to identify the flow of people within a store and analyze customer behavior. GIGABYTE can also provide a solution in this field with our smart digital signage, which detect the facial features of a customer passing in front of the electronic display, immediately analyze basic information such as gender, age and mood, and then play appropriate product advertisements to create an interactive retail experience.

These developments have been enabled with Artificial Intelligence, requiring powerful computing capabilities that can be provided by the G481-HA1, a member of GIGABYTE’s GPU server series which has been developed as a “DNN Training Appliance”. The appliance can be used to create an on-premises self-built deep learning environment, and can automatically adjust training job parameters to improve the accuracy of the deep learning model, greatly improving computing efficiency and reducing training job time. This solution provides a better development environment for AI, allowing companies to more quickly focus on creating diverse AIoT appliances and bringing smart to life.

《Learn More: A Smart Mirror Solution That Makes Shopping More Efficient》