Companies are taking advantage of their new ability to track their workers

#News(General) [ via IoTGroup ]

Headings…
Feeling the heat
Creeping me out

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It did not skimp on technology, either, for the buildings were designed partly as a showcase for the firm’s new “Smart Infrastructure” division.
High-tech buildings are one of the most common uses of the sensors and distributed computing that make up the I o T .
GSMA Intelligence, a research firm, forecasts that industrial uses of the I o T will overtake consumer ones by 2023, with smart corporate buildings leading the way.
Some of the smarts in the Siemens building are there for the workers.
An app called Comfy, made by an American firm called Building Robotics that Siemens bought for an undisclosed sum last year, allows workers to adjust temperature and light levels in their offices with their phones.
The building is studded with hundreds of sensors made by another American company, called Enlighted, which Siemens also bought in 2018.
The sensors are integrated with the building’s light fixtures, which supply power, and come with a low-resolution infrared camera, a Bluetooth networking beacon and sensors to measure energy consumption, air temperature and light levels.
Such sensors have all sorts of uses, enthuses Christoph Leitgeb, the building’s designer.
That information can be converted into a heat map of the building, showing popular areas and less-travelled ones, helping managers make the best use of space.
Occupancy data can be fed to the heating systems, allowing energy savings when the building is sparsely populated.
For now, data gathered by sensors in the Siemens building are anonymous.
But more personal tracking is possible, says Mr Leitgeb, via the sensors’ Bluetooth beacons, which could track smartphones or building passes.
“Our goal is to have thousands of buildings like this,” says Peter Löffler, head of innovation at Siemens Smart Infrastructure.
Tracking need not be confined to buildings.
Aviva, a big British insurer, offers a smartphone app called Aviva Drive that uses GPS to track customers in their cars

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