The Transforma Insights Blog

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) are two of the most impactful and far-reaching technology developments of our time. Increasingly these two technologies are deployed together and the term ‘AIoT’ has come to the fore.

Harnessing waste heat for community heating is not a new concept. Exhaust heat networks that capture heat from factories, power plants, and wastewater treatment plants have existed in the past and the waste heat generated has previously been used to provide hot water and warm buildings. However, with the advent of disruptive digital technologies, data centres have started gaining more prominence and tech companies have realised that the heat they generate in their data centres can be utilised through district heating networks for multiple purposes like water heating and farming. This blog explores how data centres can supply waste heat for community heating. In doing so, it explains how tech companies (through their data centres) contribute to waste heat collection, the regulations that are impacting date centre site selection, the use of disruptive technologies like AI and IoT for heat management across data centres, and some of the obstacles that data centre operators face.

We at Transforma Insights recently published a report, Digital Transformation in the Retail Industry, which identified six domains of change in the retail industry that are being enabled by disruptive technologies, including Artificial Intelligence (AI), Hyperconnectivity (HC), and Data Sharing (DS). This blog defines the 'Augmented Shopping Experience' domain of change and explains how smart mirrors and AR-enabled mobile applications are enhancing customer experience.

Early March saw the annual pilgrimage to Barcelona for Mobile World Congress. For the author it was his twentieth visit to the event. It’s really the only not-to-be-missed conference in the calendar, such is its importance. The opportunity to spend four days (or more) locked in darkened meeting rooms discussing all things IoT connectivity offers an unrivalled opportunity to test hypotheses, triangulate views, and pick up gossip. As ever I want to offer my perspectives on what I thought were the key news and themes from the show.

In this blog, we describe the evolution of Wi-Fi HaLow and the protocols governing it, expanding upon how Wi-Fi HaLow is suitable for IoT devices, and providing a comparison between Wi-Fi HaLow and selected low power wide area (LPWA) technologies.

We recently published a report, Digital Transformation in the Automotive Industry, which identifies nine key domains of change in the automotive industry as a whole. Vehicle recycling is one such domain, and this blog reviews the steps being taken to promote and encourage vehicle recycling by governments and the automotive industry, and the digital technologies that enhance the outcomes of vehicle recycling.

The emergence of advanced AI applications is acting as a catalyst for the development of advanced and sophisticated AI chips. In this blog, we will provide a brief overview of the AI chipsets market (which has been discussed in detail in our ‘AI Chipsets: cloud AI drives scale, AIoT drives innovation’ report), with a focus on cloud chip IP and a brief introduction to a range of AI chipset vendors.

This blog explores why countries are adopting unmanned vehicles in their defence systems, the challenges these vehicles face in military settings, and the steps that governments have taken towards their deployment.

This blog delves into the markets for AI-enabled IoT integrated propositions, providing some illustrative examples of each of the major categories of providers of integrated solutions.

With the Super Bowl looming on Sunday, this blog post explores how the NFL and other sports make use of AI and other disruptive technologies to enhance performance, improve security and engage fans, amongst other things.