Smart offices

Say hello to your robot receptionist and your telepresence stand-in.

Welcome to work. A robotic receptionist greets you warmly. You open the door using an encrypted key accessed via a smartphone app. Once inside, your movement activates sensors that trigger the lights to illuminate only the areas you need. The air conditioning turns on automatically, and sensor-activated security cameras swivel toward you. At your desk, you summon your voice-controlled virtual assistant to manage your calendar, set a reminder and order some stationery. After a while, you get a notification – your desk has noticed you have been sitting too long. You adjust it to a standing position, then use an app to select a free room for the afternoon meeting. Next week, you are working remotely, so a telepresence robot will stand in for you.

All of these technologies are already used in workplaces from London to Seattle to Bengaluru. More than 20 billion connected devices will be in use by 2020, with 7.5 billion of them in businesses. Software companies including Cisco and Intel provide integrated solutions for smart buildings to manage the terabytes of data they create. That all means that that the office of the future won’t look much like it does today – and sometime in the not too distant future it will be seamlessly automated, personalised and centrally controlled.

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Image credit: Piero Zagami and Michela Nicchiotti.