With 2022 drawing to a close, the editorial staff here at Geo Week News recently released a list of the technological trends we are expecting to define the intersection of geospatial and the built world in 2023. One of the interesting things about these trends, and others that could have been included, is that while they provide plenty of value in isolation, when intertwined they can often maximize the return on investment. HNA Live is one company which exemplifies the cooperation of some of our trends, combining artificial intelligence (AI), 3D technology, and real-time digital twin insights during the operation phase of a space.
Still in their early stages as a company, HNA Live is starting to build up a partnership network to allow them to best meet their customers’ needs, and this week announced that, in partnership CLEA, an AI and Internet of Things (IoT) platform from SECO Mind USA, they are launching their cloud solution to optimize manufacturing facility productivity. With this platform, HNA Live is looking to get in on the ground floor of one of those trends mentioned above: Using real-time insights from digital twins to enhance optimize processes and workflows in large facilities, specifically in the manufacturing industry.
While not a new idea, this “industry 4.0” concept is still in its infancy with organizations just starting to realize the value that can be derived, and companies just starting to appear to make that happen. HNA Live is looking to position themselves as a leader in the space, and the implementation of IoT sensors and a powerful AI system should help make those first steps. HNA Live also creates 3D models of spaces, using lidar – the company also partners with Velodyne Lidar – and other data collection methodologies to make accurate models of a manufacturing space.
All of this data, both from the model as well as the IoT sensors placed around the space, provides a bevy of valuable information for managers of large facilities, and the AI allows the information to be quickly processed to provide valuable insights. Whether it’s monitoring people and machines on the floor to ensure operations are moving as smoothly as is expected, or catching potential maintenance issues as early as possible, or being alerted to potentially unsafe processes on the floor, the cloud-based platform can alert customers to any of these potential issues and more much more quickly and efficiently than more traditional monitoring methods. In all, this kind of platform encapsulates many of the future outlooks expressed by those in facility management circles for years now, combining the value of accurate, lidar-based 3D modeling, real-time IoT sensors, and powerful AI to provide real-time insights.
Much of this processing ability is powered by CLEA, as HNA Live announced this week. CLEA, a platform from SECO Mind, is designed specifically to leverage AI to derive value from IoT sensors. In addition to this kind of large-scale solution working in manufacturing facilities, the platform has also been used for smaller applications like vending machines, coffee machines in retail environments, and charging stations for electric vehicles.
On this latest step in building the HNA Live platform, CEO Cooper Mojsiejenko said in a press statement, “The digital transformations are notoriously difficult to scale up across networks of factories, the pressure to succeed is intense. With CLEA we can rapidly enable manufacturers to capture benefits across the entire manufacturing value chain.”
SECO Mind USA CEO Ajay Malik added, “CLEA enables connecting and cloud managing any hardware for smart control, monitoring, and actionable insights. HNA Live is enabling manufacturers to increase production capacity, reduce material losses, improve delivery lead times, and reduce their environmental impact. We are very excited to be part of their journey.”
