Contactless technology gains traction in Japan amid Covid-19 woes
Companies are speeding up the development of products that recognise faces and hand signals
In a pandemic where people are fearful of touching surfaces, some Japanese companies are speeding up the development of products that will help consumers avoid using their fingers.
Already called the “touchless economy”, examples include multinational NEC’s security panels that can recognise people even if they wear masks.
Lift manufacturer Fujitec wants passengers to select floors using only hand signals, while sensor maker Optex plans a similar concept for opening doors.
Toshiba Tec, a subsidiary of Toshiba, wants to banish smudged restaurant menus and replace them with gesture-sensing, projected menus.
The global sensor industry has surged in growth due to the smartphone boom and is one that analysts say will experience a second wave as we enter the Internet of Things era.
NEC’s security panels work by comparing the exposed part of a person’s face against an original image, with the software looking for similarities. Artificial intelligence and deep learning are part of NEC’s face-recognition technology, which is still being perfected.
Fujitec has an optional feature that allows people in lifts to position their hands near infrared sensors to select floors, rather than touching buttons on panels.
It planned to sell the technology to medical facilities or pharmaceutical factories where hygiene conditions are strictly controlled, but the pandemic has expanded the company’s range of potential customers.
Toshiba Tec has developed technology for restaurants that projects menu options on table tops and utilises sensors to allow diners to choose their meals. Originally designed to free up table space by getting rid of paper menus or tablets, they also eliminate the need to touch surfaces.
However, Alan Casey, a partner at consultancy Prophet, who has over 20 years of experience working in Japan, believes the “introspective” nature of the country often means that certain products become hugely successful there but fail to replicate this globally.
“This is often due to differing standards or alignment with Japanese preferences,” said Mr Casey, who is now based in Hong Kong.
“While Japan often has an early adoption of technology, Japanese companies don’t sustain global leadership or achieve the full scale of [their] potential,” he said.
Docomo’s i-mode, a mobile internet service launched in 1999; JR East’s contactless Suica smart card; Sony’s Mini-Disc format, and even Toto toilets are all examples of technology that was before their time but failed to gain traction worldwide, he said.
Touchless sensors detect and measure light, heat, motion and pressure. Most people have an everyday encounter with them through their smartphones, which contain CMOS sensors that convert light into digital images for photography.
Sony has been a huge beneficiary of this, controlling more than half of the global market for CMOS sensors.
Manuel Tagliavini, principal analyst of micro electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) and sensors at Omdia, a research company focused on the tech sector, said the sensors industry is spread globally, with established suppliers in the US and Europe. He, however, said “aggressive”
competition is growing in the Asia Pacific region.
Mr Tagliavini cites Sony, South Korea’s Samsung, China’s Omnivision, US company ON Semiconductor and Europe’s AMS and STMicroelectronics as examples of major players in the market.
The revenue generated by MEMS and sensors was almost $29 billion (Dh106.5bn) in 2018 and expected to grow at a rate of about 5 to 7 per cent last year. He said he has recently seen an acceleration in the use of sensors.
The sensor business is projected to grow, fuelled by the Internet of Things, as well as greater use in smartphones and wearables and the development of “smart cars”.
Richard Dixon, senior analyst at IHS Markit, a data and information services company, said sensors are not new to the automotive industry.
“But it’s true [that] their importance grows,” he said.
The automotive sensor market was worth about $6bn last year, Mr Dixon said. The number of these devices is forecast to grow as vehicles become electric and move slowly towards a level of autonomy, he added.
There are well over 30 different types of sensors measuring speed and distance, among other things, he said. For the consumer, this means vehicles could become more comfortable, greener and safer.
In terms of the Internet of Things, one of the first consumer products was LG’s internet-connected refrigerator that was released in 2000. It could sense shelf content and keep an eye on expiration dates, and included an MP3 player, but retailed at $20,000.
Over the years, sensors have become cheaper and internet-connected devices have become more affordable.
With the promise of vastly increased internet speeds, 5G could herald the Internet of Things economy.
“The increased bandwidth, but even more, the reduced latency of [5G] will accelerate the proliferation of connected devices worldwide,” said Mr Tagliavini, citing assisted and self-driving cars as major beneficiaries as reduced latency allows for real-time sensing, computation and reaction.
Sony this month announced the development of its first image sensor with an integrated AI processor that can perform tasks such as reading the size of crowds, scanning bar codes and monitoring how drowsy a driver is behind the wheel.
The AI processor is stacked on an image-sensor, allowing it to process data without sending it to the cloud.
With sensors as the foot soldiers gauging the environment, 5G the carrier and AI being the brain to process data gathered, the Internet of Things might be the next big thing, although privacy and surveillance concerns will shadow its development.
However, the development of the “touchless economy” is spreading worldwide.
“Covid-19 is causing this direction,” Mr Tagliavini said.
“Voice assistants, touchless, image recognition, they are accelerating now. It’s already started worldwide, not just in Japan.”
The sensor business is set to grow, fuelled by the Internet of Things and greater use in smartphones