EMAIL INTERVIEW – Itamar Roth, Jon Couch, and Ken Sinclair

Itamar Roth, Chief Business Officer, PointGrab
Itamar Roth has more than 15 years of start-up experience in the fields of business development, marketing and product management, with an in-depth focus on embedded systems and imaging solutions.

Jon Couch, VP Connected Devices, Gooee
Jon is the Senior Vice President of Connected Devices and manages the design and engineering of connected interface modules, sensors and other hardware within the Gooee ecosystem. Based out of the UK, Jon works with the various Gooee teams based in Europe, Silicon Valley and the Taiwanese Science Park to engineer market leading connected devices that seamlessly integrate into the Gooee IoT stack.

Sinclair:  Tell me a bit about your two companies, and why you’re integrating your technologies?

Roth, Couch:  Gooee is the creator of the world's first 'Full-Stack' operating platform to connect lighting manufacturers to the Internet of Things (IoT), and PointGrab is a leading provider of an intelligent edge-analytics sensing solution. By connecting PointGrab's CogniPoint deep-learning based sensor into Gooee's ecosystem, and streaming the data to Gooee's cloud, the partnership aims to enhance the building automation industry through real-time intelligence and energy efficiency.

Sinclair:  Why is this partnership important to the automated building industry?

Roth, Couch:  Integrating PointGrab’s smart sensor platform into Gooee's IoT ecosystem will provide ground-breaking, real-time data for building intelligence. Our partnership aims to deliver a range of benefits, including energy savings, space management, optimized facility management capabilities, and enhanced safety and security.

Sinclair:  Does the adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) elevate the importance of lighting in buildings?

Roth, Couch:  Absolutely. In the era of the IoT, there is an opportunity to introduce a new approach to building automation that provides real-time intelligence and control. This innovation aims to yield truly smart buildings that deliver energy efficiency while also improving occupants' experience. The lighting system is an ideal infrastructure for IoT solutions, as it inherently includes widely spread connected end points (lighting fixtures) that essentially cover the entire building space.

Sinclair:  Can you explain the technology behind PointGrab’s CogniPoint sensing solution?

Roth:  To address the challenge of effectively providing rich data and meaningful insights about the building space, PointGrab has developed an image-based edge-analytics sensor that delivers actionable information about occupants’ presence, location, count and movement. The underlying processing technology is based on deep learning algorithms – an emerging state-of-the-art technology in data-driven machine learning systems. The scalability and flexibility of deep learning technology makes it a powerful solution for real-time systems such as a smart sensor in the challenging environment of commercial buildings. Moreover, the sophisticated fusion of deep learning and traditional computer vision algorithms enables CogniPoint to run on low power, low cost ARM processors.

[an error occurred while processing this directive]Sinclair:  And can you give us some background about Gooee’s ‘Full Stack’ operating platform?

Couch:  In order to help lighting manufacturers transform their businesses with the IoT, Gooee developed an enterprise IoT Ecosystem that covers the entire technology value chain, from devices and connectivity to platforms and applications. This enables lighting organisations to focus their attention on innovation, rather than face many of the challenges that can arise from building IoT solutions for the first time. Gooee provides a full suite of hardware and software components that lighting companies can not only integrate into their own products, but also connect them to the Gooee Cloud. Connecting to the Gooee Cloud gives lighting companies the ability to offer their customers competitive, cloud-based services – such as Lighting Control, Energy Management, LED Analytics and Beacon Management – across a multitude of vertical markets and through a scalable, service-oriented business model. Most importantly, Gooee is the world’s first 'full-stack' ecosystem that provides lighting manufacturers with a service-driven, scalable framework to deliver commercial, retail, hospitality and industrial applications to customers.

Sinclair:  Has the joint PointGrab and Gooee solution been deployed in any smart buildings yet?

Roth, Couch:  We just announced the partnership recently, and we are currently working on a number of pilot projects for our integrated solution. Watch this space for updates!