The world of No Touch

One of the buzzwords as a result of the Covid-19 crisis has been “No Touch”. Thanks to social distancing, we are supposed to stay away from each other during a pandemic and there are a host of tools that can make this happen. 

Internet of Things: IoT devices are small, unobtrusive and can be embedded in almost anything. They could be in your watch, TV, fridge or washing machine. They could be across roads and traffic signals. They could be in pumps and tractors in the rural areas. They could be in remote equipment where it is difficult for workers to reach.

They sit quietly and collect data and send it to wherever required 24X7 throughout the year. They require very little maintenance and most of us don’t even notice them. There are already more IoT devices than there are humans and there could be half a trillion by 2030, at least according to some estimates.

Drones: They already can be used for almost anything. Delivery. Surveillance. Surveying. Reaching populated areas during a pandemic or sparse areas at any time or disaster zones during things like fires and earthquakes. Aerial photography and videos. 3D mapping. Film shooting. Racing. Monitoring wildlife.

India used them to spray disinfectant as Covid sanitization measures and police even used them to check social distancing norms and curfew violations. Drones can be numerous, can be made in all shapes and sizes and just about used for anything. The only thing that is holding them back is legislation.

Driverless vehicles: If you remove the need for the driver, then you can remove the seat and in fact you can remove all the seats of the vehicle. The driverless vehicle is in fact the mobile room. And this mobile room can travel all over the country and be used for almost anything. Work room. Hotel room. Tourism room. Educational room.

One can’t even imagine what the driverless car of tomorrow will look like. You could use it to run errands, always keeping track of it and remote controlling it. Or you could even choose to live in it if it was a large trailer. With electric vehicles getting smarter and battery capacities going up, these could be used for long distance remote work too. Again, the only thing keeping this from happening is legislation.

Dark factories: An aspect of Industry 4.0 is lights out factories where you don’t even require workers and everything is automated. These factories won’t even know if there is a pandemic going on or if some disaster has taken place nearby. Factories ever since they came have been increasingly automated by the year requiring lesser and lesser workers with some requiring none. Hence the term “lights out” or “dark” as there will be no humans and no need to put the lights on.

Digital bots: While all of the above is the physical world, this is something in the virtual world. We already have millions of digital workers or bots who are doing automated tasks previously handled by humans. A virtual bot can answer basic queries, answer emails and clear cheques. Bots can collect and enter data. They can be made to do rule-based tasks, both simple and complex.

Robots: Actual robots can be receptionists in hotel or hospital or do the preliminary checking at the entrance of airports and train-bus stations. They can be used for assistance in offices and around in hospitals. VR powered robots are stacking store shelves in Japan. Police are experimenting with robotic dogs to break into homes in the US. They are getting better, more flexible and more sophisticated. Some are even getting better using Machine Learning. Robots can be used in war zones for heavy lifting or even companionship at home. Let’s see what kind of fillipp Covid gives to them.

Artificial Intelligence: The entire no touch ecosystem can be controlled using AI. As AI gets more sophisticated and as we use more and more of Machine Learning, Deep Learning and Natural Language Processing. The need for human action and intervention gets reduced with each passing year. It’s like a No Human rather than a No Touch technology.

Remote working: While Work From Home has been around for ages, it is only post-Covid that the remote working era has taken off. Now all the collaboration and bandwidth tools have been taken to the next level. We have enough devices to give flexibility to working at home the way you want. Finally the cloud has also become stable and is expanding at a rapid rate.