Accurate Tracking
This week I am talking to Mehdi Bentanfous, CEO of Kinexon (@kinexon) a company providing real-time intelligence and automation with precise localization and edge analytics and underlying technology used by the NFL for their successful COVID19 mitigation program that was featured in this published paper: Implementation and Evolution of Mitigation Measures, Testing, and Contact Tracing in the National Football League, August 9–November 21, 2020.
You can get a sense of the technology in this video from this video
Kinexon started life sports performance monitoring and analysis solution the tracked athletes and their movements during practice and games with technology that provided precise positional data in real-time. Importantly the technology answers questions that help improve performance but also contributed to decreases in injury rates and injury avoidance as well as improving fan enjoyment.
Unlike other real-time tracking systems that use various combinations of WiFi and Bluetooth/BLE which fail to achieve sufficient precision and stability, Kinexon relies on Ultra Wide Band (UWB) that uses close-range radio technology at extremely large frequency ranges with a bandwidth of at least 500 MHz, low power that does not interfere with other devices and an accuracy down to inches.
Safezone
With an unfolding COVID19 pandemic Kinexon realized the opportunity to expand their solution to provide tracking capabilities for sports teams and other industries for mitigation of disease impact. Their SafeTag sensor is attached to the individual and offers real-time feedback (visible and audible) when people are too close and the data also provides immediate insights for exposure management and contact tracing. Because of the design, they record contacts while maintaining privacy.
Listen in to hear the insights that have come from tracking systems installed in offices that have helped re-design workspaces, meeting design, and workflow. The technology has widespread potential beyond sports that includes healthcare, factories, film production, office spaces, financial institutions that will be a part of our return to a post-pandemic new normal that will help keep employees and customers safe but keep the business open
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Raw Transcript
Nick van Terheyden
today I’m delighted to be joined by Mehdi Ben Townsend’s who is the CEO of connects on Monday. Thanks for joining me today. Thanks for having me. So I’m very excited about this I came across the technology connects on has done an incredible job, I think it was reported in the CDC insights that came out relative to the NFL and some of the contact tracing and the incredible science. But before we dive into that, tell us a little bit about who you are and how you came to be in this role, you know, with connects on
Mehdi Bentanfous
Yeah, well, thanks a lot for your time today. And I’m really excited to be with you the the way where I am right now with with connection, it’s been a long way back to 2015, where I brought Kinect on to to the US back in the days we connect some was focusing on industrial solutions and the IoT or digitalization word, but also more more specifically on the on the sports side, implementing our technology to track as professional athletes during the practice on during the game. And this is really how we started here in the us back then, where we came to explore the market since we saw the US market as as a as a very important market when it comes to high tech technologies in different in different industries. And from there, we start building our our brand, where we were able to, to be very successful in the sports world with with most of the NBA teams using our technology, but technology by now, but also in other sports like NCAA basketball or American football. And me personally being in in an engineer and also having experience in in economies and basically with the in the investment world. It was pretty exciting to see how we can bring in a new technology to a new market like the the the North American market, and how it developed over time. And and here we are today with not only these products, but but also a product that we brought out last year during this pandemic. So when you first introduced this, tell us a little bit about the technology and why these teams were interested what was going on and what does it do. So yeah, so the underlying technology is really to get precise positional data in real time to track the movement of an athlete for example. So it the the industry of the sport is was lacking really reliable technologies to understand how athletes can move on on a court or on the pitch and this in a very precise way and in a reliable way. And this is the biggest differentiation we have with our connects and technology is that we were able to provide whatever wherever we implemented it either in American football and soccer, in basketball or any other sport we were able to provide reliable data for the coaches or also for the fans to understand better how the athlete moves and and also how the athlete is performing. And the fact that we were we’re providing not only his hardware but also a an analytics or smart analytics with our software that would make the difference. So the any of our clients are looking for the saltwater not looking only at the data, but what can I do with the data and, and if it’s really enhancing the fan engagement or in a lot of cases also understand the performance of the player and prevent him from injuries. This is the value add of connection to intelligence in general and that’s what made our success not only in the sports but also in the industrial world. When it comes to Standing processes, automate processes and increase the efficiency through to these data points that we provide.
Nick van Terheyden
So I clearly highly focused around athletics that precision element, I think you do something unique, certainly relative to some of the other technologies that people may be familiar with. In terms of getting that precision, can you tell us a little bit about how you do it, what’s going on behind the scenes? Yeah.
Mehdi Bentanfous
This is the the underlying technology that we’re talking about, which is the so called ultra wideband radio frequency technology. So if you look at other technologies out there that that, that are used for localization, like for instance, Bluetooth, or Wi Fi, or GPS, always the challenge was to have always reliable data, no interferences with other technologies, and really get a precise data that is not one or two feet with one or two feet accuracy, but we down to the inch
radio frequency, and specifically, the ultra wideband has proven to be the exactly the right one. This is something that we developed around eight years ago, if you look at the interest of the market right now, like apples and Samsung have this word, they even looking at this exact same type of technology, because they see the precision and the reliability of it. And we build our solutions around ultra wideband technology, which is very useful to get first of all, the precision of three to four inch, or an accuracy of three to four inch, at the same time using such so high bandwidth prevent us from being interfered with any other media technologies or machinery, wherever we are so. So the technology can be used in a manufacturing environment with a lot of machinery, it can be used in a stadium with 150,000 people using their phones, we never have any interference, we always have exact the reliability and the accuracy of the data.
Nick van Terheyden
Fantastic. So you know, down to three or four inches, that’s incredible. And I think I’m right in saying that it’s it’s localized. So it’s a device that people wear will feature that in the blog post. But is there anything else that sensing is that how does the sensing of that happen to the sensors around?
Mehdi Bentanfous
So we need, we have to differentiate what kind of solutions we’re talking about. So for instance, when it comes to the sports performance solution, or the industrial one, where we need a very high precision of the position of someone and how his moving or a product, how it’s moving within a production side. In that case, we are talking about determining the exact position. So tracking really tracking of the person or of of the product. In that case, the sensor is used as a tracking device. But also we put the so called anchors or satellites around the area we are tracking and that works exactly like a satellite like like GPS. The only difference is that we build our own satellites around the area we are we are looking at, in the case of safezone, or the case of the solution for the COVID-19 response. We don’t track the position of someone, we don’t need to know how someone is moving, we just need to know what context this person has made. And how close was this person to another one. So it’s a really different different methodology that we’re using here. And that helped us get rid of the whole satellite infrastructure that we usually need for our other applications. So in the case of safe zone, it’s really about detecting other sensors around that around that sensor, and really measuring just the distance to another sensor and that that topic, you will will see it’s really irrelevant, because at the end, we don’t want to track the position or the movement of someone. We just need to know how many concerts does this person have during a period of time?
Nick van Terheyden
Right. So thinking about this, you know, one of the reasons that I came to this was around COVID-19. And I think this was part of the sort of augmentation of the technology it was. I don’t want to say a natural progression, but obviously you watch the unfolding of the pandemic, realize that connect On had technology that could play a major part in tracking individuals and created safe sun, you started to describe it, but help everybody understand what does this constitute? If you installed or put safezone? In? What What would that look like for a company a location? I know we’ve done it in the NFL and some of these other places. But what does that look like?
Mehdi Bentanfous
Yeah, so it’s pretty simple. It’s really, it’s everything is around the safe tag or the sensor itself, which is usually comes into in a charging tray, the individual will take the sensor out, they place the sensor, either in a batch and the Leonard or, or on the wrist in a wristband. So it looks like an eye watch, sort of say, and, and this is basically it. So with a sensor that is recording, the basically all every contact it makes to other sensors. And after, let’s say 15 hours or 20 hours of recording, it’s placed into a charging tray. And this data is then uploaded into into the software. So the tooling to make it simple is really the sensor itself. And the contact reason we call it the exposure management software that we have. So there is no need from four satellites or anchors, there is no need for any infrastructure, it can be used in any environment. And, and doesn’t need Freescale it in a bigger way. That doesn’t need to be, let’s say a lot of implementation efforts. So this is the the system how it is how it is used. And really what what it what it covers are two things. The first one or let’s say the two features are the physical warning, basically the sensors tells me if I get too close to someone else, there is an audible and a flat red flashlight alarm and visible one on the on the on the tag itself. And there is an audible alarm, the audible alarm is when we are too close to someone else for a longer period of time. And these are the two criteria that that have been discussed out there. And also recommended by the CDC is reduce the number of critical contact, don’t get too close to someone, and especially do not stay too long next to someone. And these are the two criterias we use to identify these contexts. And so that’s the first one that’s the hardware that the safe tag, and then the contact ratio or the exposure management. As soon as we have this data uploaded, we’re able to instantly identify any critical contacts that has been made within a period of time. So these are the two functionalities that we saw are fundamental or important in order to when it comes to implementing a contact tracing technology.
Nick van Terheyden
So for those of you just joining, I’m Dr. Nick the incrementalist and today I’m talking to Mary Ben tantalus. He is the CEO of connects Eon. And we were just talking about the implementation of safe zone, the innovation that took the tag system that you had, but focus more on identifying contacts and contact related interactions, people pull the safe tag off the board, it’s allocated to an individual. And then it does a number of things that I think are really unique and important to explore. And I think you know, one of the big differentiators for me is the personally identifiable tracking and somebody I think this was one of the big push backs for installing applications on phones and you know, all of these things sort of invade privacy, which is a big challenge. Certainly in this country. There’s a lot of resistance and your solution whilst it tracks individuals, it’s obviously linked to an individual doesn’t locate them as such. It’s located in their interactions. So how does that process work? And what have you seen as a result of this sort of implementation? Have you seen some of the results as it’s been rolled down?
If we talk about quickly about the privacy, which is a really important aspect when it came to designing the solution, as we were aware of the importance of the privacy, not only in European countries but also here in the US. And and we saw a lot of let’s say at the beginning, it is a pushback Because most of the technology is out there when especially when it comes to phone apps, and there is a worry from or from from from the public that is tracking more than it should be tracked. And and the two asked me that you worked on by when we design the solution to, let’s say, to meet the requirements, or the privacy requirements of the one is, what do we track. And tracking is not the right word here, because we’re not tracking, we’re just recording context. As as we mentioned before, we’re not interested in the position or the movement of someone, we’re just focusing on the context. The second point that is an interesting here is also what do we what kind of information we we record in our systems means we don’t have any personal information about the individual individuals at the first place. But even more important, we, we have an anonymized system. So we limit the access of this information, to really the the designated responsible of the context with, let’s say, that in a production environment or a manufacturing environment, we have a medical department that is responsible for the contact tracing, which is sometimes also within partly with the HR representatives. And only these designated responsibles do have access to, to the information about which sensor is used by which person. So even within the system, we do Don’t you cannot allocate the sensor to a specific person. So it has to be really designated persons that are allowed to see this information. So we really limit the access to this information to only few people within an organization, which gives us the ability to do it the system everywhere without without giving too much information about the individuals themselves. So these are the two points that that were important in order to meet also the GDPR requirements, but also to make the people more feeling more safe, that we’re not sharing too many information about them.
Nick van Terheyden
Right. And then before the break, you mentioned, you know, there’s real time feedback. So this isn’t just a reporting system, this is actually a system that takes account of I’m assuming some level of programmability in terms of those contact points, distances, you know, what, what, what triggers those alerts, and then also takes that information to say, and importantly, I think one of the things that we saw as a result of the technology that you implemented, was the change in guidance from 15 minutes over the period of a day to 15 minutes cumulative. So you could have, you know, two minutes in seven minutes. And that essentially, was data that came, I think, from connects on.
Mehdi Bentanfous
Absolutely, yeah. So there are a few things that we do in real time. First of all, the real time aspect is important for the for the warning. So basically, I want to immediately if there is a contact and inform the person, or the individual that there was a contact. Now the data that we’re collecting, we can understand also better if some of few of our protocol or measures that are implemented, did work or not. But for example, if you know who you are, who is using the technology, and you know, where the persons are located, let’s say in a meeting room, so I know that these 10 or 20 individuals, they’re all working in that area. And I see that there is too many contacts happening throughout the day or in a certain period of time. What happens then is I can redesign the workspace so that I decrease these number of critical contacts. So the information that we provide helps actually testing our measures that we have in place as a response for COVID for COVID-19 and help many of our clients out there to redesign their these measures to redesign the workspace to decrease the number of contacts people have. 1111 Funny story was one of our clients had complaints from the employees about this alarm that is happening too much in a certain area of the of the facility, and their response was the problem is not that Technology, the problem is that we don’t have enough space in this area in order to be far away from each other. So that’s why we don’t switch off the technology. Let’s have a better plan on redesigning our workspace.
Nick van Terheyden
Yeah. So they didn’t like the fact that it was alerting to the fact that they have this problem. But I think, you know, absolutely important in that. So this is just truly fascinating. I think it opens up a whole world of possibility, and, you know, clearly done some incredible work with sports teams, and you know, those areas, but now, this is a an opportunity for other places. I mean, you’ve got other clients using this, where do you see this going in the, in the closing minutes of the show, tell us a little bit about the future. I mean, this is an exciting time, because this really pivots us to a pathway to allow some level of normality, irrespective of what happens with vaccines and all these other things, we’re gonna have to sort of take account of this, where do you see this going?
Mehdi Bentanfous
Absolutely. So sports, our focus was never only on sports, of course, through our contact that we have over the last few years, and, and also our name known in the market, we started with, implemented in sports, let’s say, for sports leagues for the return of sports, but honestly, we we we had more than 250 implementations outside of the sports business. And, and we see implementation and really completely different industries from the manufacturing and logistic industry from film productions like Netflix, who is using it in their, in their productions, to, let’s say, office spaces with many in the New York area of financial institution that are using Kinect son, so the fact that we can use the technology everywhere, it is really relevant to every type of, let’s say business or, or institutions where there is kind of a gathering. And I think that not only in the public area is such a technology irrelevant is where it can be used in schools, we have it used also in universities, for example, but also in the private sector, where all of our clients, their biggest worries is to keep their employees safe, and at the same time, keep their business open. And with a without a contact tracing, both ore and physical warning, both are not 100%. possible and, and to in order to react quickly to any outbreak or any infections out there. You need a reliable contact tracing, it’s, I think, mandatory or will be mandatory over the next years. But also in order to keep the employees safe, is have sort of a warning and help or support for the individuals. I think that’s really important too. So I see this technology in general, beyond this pandemic, and probably in the future, to be an important part in order to keep everyone safe and at the same time. Bring a little bit of normality back.
Nick van Terheyden
Yeah, I think the other thing that occurs to me is we talked about the meeting rooms and the insights that came from that much as you did with the sports world, the insights that start to come from that maybe beyond medical in terms of efficiencies, what are people actually doing, it turns the the movements around and interactions. I just think this is fantastic technology that sort of has arrived at a good time to deliver value to people that are desperate for solutions to help them get back. And I’m just I’m extraordinarily excited about it. So I’m very grateful to you. Unfortunately, as usual, we’ve run out of time, just remains for me to thank you for coming on the show sharing some of these experiences. And telling us a little bit about connects on and what you’re doing to help resolve the pandemic. So thanks for joining me. Thanks for having me. It was it was a pleasure to be with you today.
