Assa Abloy started thinking about how to use Artificial Intelligence around three years ago and since then, products have already been developed that use basic machine learning. The company sees a future where autonomous doors can understand their own service needs.
And as the organisation harvests more data, the possibilities to use Artificial Intelligence are growing. “Artificial intelligence starts with the data,” says Kenneth Pernyer, concept innovation manager for artificial Intelligence in the pre-product innovation department of Assa Abloy’s Shared Technologies unit, “and we have a lot of data. We often in fact refer to our work as data driven innovation.”
Potential applications of AI that Assa Abloy is looking at includes smart doors. “We have a vision in which autonomous doors can understand their own service needs and fine-tune themselves using self-supervised learning,” he explains.
“And while on this journey we have found low-hanging fruit such as machine learning algorithms that tell us if a malfunction has occurred because a door has been hit by a vehicle.” Kenneth says. “This type of information would be great for something like an insurance claim.”
“We are also looking at pre-break-in attempts through the use of sensors on windows. We can now tell the difference between burglars using crowbars, children kicking balls against windows and the effect of a hail-storm. Recognising those patterns does not necessarily require advanced AI, but it does require decent machine learning algorithms.” He says.
Machine learning, which involves the automatic performance of tasks based on the interpretation of patterns of algorithms, is one of many subsets of AI.
“When it comes to machine learning you can use statistical methods that work fairly well with some data. But things like self-driving cars use variations of deep neural networks that require an enormous amount of data. The more data you have, the more layers your networks can have and so you get better performance.”
The development of the use of AI in Assa Abloy products is closely linked to its evolution into the world of digitalisation. Kenneth believes that the use of AI will be a gradual process with quantum leaps coming in a few years.
