In the contactless era, new technologies make life more convenient and give rise to new applications and new forms of business. Contactless technology is not a single technology, but a comprehensive and intelligent technological means to achieve the goal of ensuring that services or interactions (such as transactions) are carried out normally, even with higher efficiency and lower cost.
There is no doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought many changes to our lives, and one of the most important changes is that "people are further apart from each other". According to quarantine requirements, the key to breaking the chain of transmission of the virus is to maintain sufficient social distancing and reduce or even avoid direct contact between people.
But after all, humans are social animals. With the development of society, there are more and more relationships and interactions between people. In order to keep the whole society functioning, there must be a way to bridge the distance of untouchability. "Contactless technology" was born.
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In fact, contactless technology is not a single technology, but rather a comprehensive set of intelligent technological means to achieve the goal of ensuring that services or interactions (such as transactions) are carried out properly, even with greater efficiency and lower cost.
From the above definition, it is not difficult to see that contactless technology is an automated (or intelligent) process by nature. To put it bluntly, make machines do things that people used to need to do, thereby reducing the density or frequency at which people gather. There have been many attempts at this technology before, such as unmanned shops that were popular a few years ago. At the time, however, the motivation for exploring this new type of unmanned, contactless application was mostly to reduce costs and improve efficiency; Today, due to the impact of the novel coronavirus epidemic, health prevention has become a new "rigid demand" superimposed on the original demand, providing new ideas and new business opportunities for the previous exploration, and becoming a promoter of the development of contactless technology.
Where will contactless technologies take root in the pandemic or post-pandemic era? Which enabling technologies will win new opportunities? Now, let's explore.
Logistics and distribution
Whether it's online shopping or food delivery, couriers have been an indispensable "medium" in business processes in the past, including pickup, sorting, shipping, verification and delivery (including collection)... It's all about their physical and intellectual labor. However, under the COVID-19 pandemic, the nature of the work of couriers determines that they are more likely to be infected and may also become the "vectors" of the virus. Therefore, the development of contactless logistics speed schemes and products such as self-service express cabinets, vending machines and automatic delivery vehicles has become a hot spot, and many previous concepts are becoming reality.
In order to replace the role of couriers in the past, these contactless logistics and distribution solutions themselves need to mimic the "human" function as much as possible. In the case of a "fixed" self-service Courier/vending machine, at least the following functional modules need to be included:
HMI man-machine interface: Users interact with information
Authentication: User authentication confirmation
Mobile payment: supports common payment methods
Communication interconnection: Interacting with the cloud through wired or wireless networks
If it is mobile delivery vehicles, drones and other equipment, should also consider the movement, navigation, obstacle avoidance needs, to ensure the safe and accurate delivery of goods. If you're in an open environment, the technology is more difficult.
Generally speaking, the prospect of not touching logistics and distribution can be expected. However, due to the relatively complex business process and application scenarios, the exploration of prototypes and business models is mainly focused in the short term, and there is still a long way to go before large-scale application. In this process, however, products and technologies such as high-performance application processors (such as those that support graphical HMI), wireless communication modules (including local and wide area connectivity), and environmental sensors will still have a significant pull role.
Smart shopping
Offline shopping is a scene with high human flow density and interaction frequency, among which the emphasis of non-contact technology is mainly focused on shopping guide and payment. Traditional shopping guides are completed by full-time staff and include comprehensive introduction of product information. Under contactless requirements, commodity information can be associated with an NFC electronic label attached to the commodity. Customers simply touch the tag with their NFC phone to get relevant information and complete the self-service shopping.
If you didn't think the NFC tag experience was good enough, an immersive shopping guide based on AR technology might be a light bulb off. Whether it is choosing clothes or beauty and makeup mirror, the AR "magic mirror" can simulate the effect of customers' real wear or makeup, and put forward suggestions for selection according to the actual situation of customers, not only to avoid direct contact with the shopping guide, but also to try more possibilities and have their own fun. Such a platform can not only deploy offline physical stores, but also evolve online applications, and because it can reshape the relationship between people, goods and areas in offline stores, it is quite disruptive, so it is seen as a new outlet.
UWB is an important candidate technology. UWB can be used as a highly personalized and recognizable electronic tag, as it can provide centimeter-level precision and secure distance measurement and positioning. The settlement payment terminal in the store can sense the approach of the UWB e-tag customer from a distance of one meter or more and then complete the payment without human intervention. The whole process does not require the customer to do, almost "take away". Based on this label, retail can also be derived from more personalized contactless services, there is huge scope for imagination.
Crowd management
In traffic, security, intelligent buildings, public places and other scenarios with heavy traffic, traffic analysis, identification, and control are required. Solutions developed for this purpose not only need to be contactless and reduce human input, but also need to be reliable and efficient, otherwise there will be crowds and health and safety risks.
Machine vision is also an effective solution in terms of traffic management, which is growing rapidly with improvements in hardware performance and software algorithms, especially the introduction of machine learning. Machine vision can not only support the face brushing authentication of a single object, but also quickly capture and recognize multiple face targets in a high-traffic environment. On this basis, combined with the remote non-contact IR temperature measurement technology, a complete set of epidemic flow management solutions can be formed.
In privacy-sensitive scenarios where the application of visual solutions may be limited, millimeter wave radar sensors are a good alternative technology. Although visual images are not available, millimeter-wave radar sensors can sense high-precision data and information such as direction, speed, distance and position of moving objects, and even capture subtle movements such as breathing and heartbeat, enabling smart devices to gain more acute and spatial "insight."
Human-computer interaction
Less human contact means more opportunities for people to interact with machines (intelligent products). Therefore, in all contactless solutions, natural and efficient human-computer interaction (HMI) is a priority.
At present, mainstream graphic HMI based on touch screen is still unavoidable, different users use the same HMI device, resulting in indirect contact. Therefore, face recognition and speech recognition two contactless HMI technologies have become the focus of attention. Data show that in 2020, shipments of facial recognition access control devices increased by more than 50% year on year and 14% compared with the growth rate in 2019. Some analysts say this is mainly due to the demand for non-contact sex caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
It is worth noting that in order to make non-contact human-computer interaction more smooth, multi-technology combination schemes are often used. For example, not long ago, NXP demonstrated an i.mRT 106F/S crossover MCU in a single MCU that achieves both face and voice recognition. Based on this solution, NXP describes a typical application scenario in building automation -- when you enter an elevator, the elevator quickly "recognizes" what floor you are on using facial recognition, and then asks you via voice interaction if you want to go to an office on a certain floor. You don't need to press the floor button, just command the elevator master to take you to the exact floor through voice answering... This seamless, contactless HMI can no doubt be quickly replicated in other areas.
In conclusion, the COVID-19 pandemic has lengthened the direct physical distance between people. By connecting with contactless technologies and solutions, we will find that human relationships will become closer in many scenarios, which is also a gift of technological progress. Although in the context of the epidemic, the arrival of this non-contact era is somewhat "forced", but from another point of view, AR, machine vision, voice interaction, UWB, NFC, RFID, millimeter wave radar sensors... All kinds of technology can spawn their own sense of existence in this era, which is also an unexpected joy.
