Cognitive functions, Autonomy, and Integration

Everywhere we look, we see more higher-level, almost cognitive functions being incorporated into low-level products. Cameras are internalizing much of the craft of photography. GPS systems are comparing notes with their peers to provide up to the minute routing choices. Cars tune themselves on the fly, adjusting carburetion and suspension in real time to respond to driving style. Systems are becoming autonomous, competition is moving from commodity functions to service, and markets are starting to turn around interactions and integration.

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal (see link below) described FotoNation and the software that it provides for many brands of digital cameras. I knew about anti-red-eye electronics. I thought it was a neat trick for the camera to automatically focus on faces in the foreground rather than the between them in the center of the view. I was amused at the camera that would alert the picture taker that someone blinked. The camera that delayed the shutter until everyone was smiling was pretty neat.

The ability of a camera to recognize particular faces in the crowd, and make sure that they, if no one else are in focus was different from the rest. Simply take several pictures of your family and friends, and notify the camera. Thereafter if six mothers, standing in the same place each snap a picture at the third grade play, the six cameras will make different decisions and each mother will find her own little Billy in perfect focus.

We now have consumer electronics with complex learning behavior that it applies to its canned pattern recognition tricks. This is customization far beyond the last generation of, say, a car remembering driver preferences for mirror, steering wheel, and seat.

Consumer systems now cover for the amateurish efforts of their operators to produce first class results. Harried amateur photographers get assistance to achieve professional results. Drivers can get performance out of their cars that previously would have required long practice. Trip planning now acquired the knowledge of a local and an instant awareness of traffic conditions.

Building systems face the same issues and are moving in the same direction. Not only are they often operated by amateurs, but the may be maintained by the insufficiently trained—following their installation by the low bidder. Traditionally, systems have been oversized and over-built, to cover these predictable problems. This leaves a lot of energy and operating dollars on the table. The best systems will move instead to make their systems resilient, as are the camera and the car, and self operating.

This will change the tasks asked of control systems, and how they are integrated. Self tuning systems do not need to share low-level details with those far away. Low level protocols will be confined inside autonomous systems, and only higher-level services exposed. These interfaces will be the basis for next generation integration.

Systems will use these newer interfaces to negotiate service provisioning with each other. Although each system should work alone, they should be able to discover resources that each other makes available. Imagine systems advertising their waste heat as a resource, and then the heat source broadcasting when it needs to shut down. These interfaces will be developed as agents; they know their missions, they defend their missions, they act independently.

Integration will come to assume autonomy, for the new interactions will rely on each system doing what it says, and meeting its contracts. Contract-based integration will increase the value of cognitive performance, as they become the only competitive edge in a world of commodity electronics and unpredictable installations.

And systems that expect to be told what to do, rather than simply meeting their contracts? Well, as now, no one will want to do business with such agents.

Knowing ones place in the fabric

As we move from control-based interactions to agent-based interactions between systems, the best systems will use surrounding networks to develop a situational awareness that will set it above its competitors. We won’t be aware of these activities; they will occur without us even noticing. This situation awareness will fall into two categories: awareness of peers and awareness of surroundings. Surprisingly, this awareness will be part of competition on function at the same price-points as systems without awareness.

This morning, Amazon began selling the second, re-tooled version of the Dash Express. The Dash Express is an in-car GPS that does roughly what other in-car GPSs do, and at a similar price. What’s different about the Dash Express is that it is continually attached to the internet. Some out of the box thinking leverages the capability to provide new services.

The obvious stuff is that the Dash Express can keep its traditional GPS functions up-to-date. Was a street renamed or a road completed this week? Changes to Dash maps are automatically downloaded. That new restaurant that you just read a review of? Dash can find it on the internet and guide you there

You can also use the internet yourself as you drive along. You can browse using the Dash Express, and then use Dash to guide you there. Please, just pull off before you do this in traffic. . Looking up places of interest on your home computer? You can send them to your Dash. Dash Express is aware of the changes in its environment and keeps itself up-to-date.

But this is not why I am writing about the Dash Express.

Each Dash Express also transmits information to the internet. It can check the current or recent road speed on each alternate route and choose the one for you accordingly.The more Dashes are on the road in your town, the better this information is. For the first time, we are seeing network effects in GPS performance.

(Network effect refers to markets in which the value of each item increases the more that are on the market. The classical example is the Fax. The first Fax was not worth much until the second fax was plugged in. Once most office had a Fax, you almost could not afford to not have one.)

It is interesting to speculate if we will see emergent behaviors in city traffic in town where there is a sufficient density of installed Dashes. What effects will a stadium parking lot of tailgaters with their engines on have on Dash calculations? Will traffic start to pulse as Dash advices crowds to not take that onramp? Will people watch for installed Dashes as they watch for radar detectors now. Taking a free ride on the technology?

Soon agents in each house will be able to receive “prices to devices”. If I am right, they will aggregate device information through a house agent. Will house agents negotiate with other houses to aggregate larger blocks of demand to sell? Will they ready our Google Calendars and be extra aggressive when we are away from home?

It’s hard to know. But situation awareness leveraging network effects at the same price point does raise a lot of possibilities.

Performance and Service

John Greenwell has commented on this site on how the new standards are raising the bar on building systems from “can you perform?” to “how well can you perform?” The comments led me to hunt down his own BLOG, “IP Convergence” (see link on side) about the new challenges as systems become services.

John writes from the field, i.e., from the perspective of one who has spent years integrating control systems in buildings. In his writing you can taste the distaste for the low standard that we all accept in buildings as well as a longing for something he can be more proud of. His blog deals with many of the same issues as mine, but coming from the contractor side, his perspective is quite different.

A couple years back, he began wrestling with what an enterprise-aware standards-based system might look like. We have had some conversations, and it looks interesting. I am happy to find his blog at last.