Top technological shifts expected in 2021

Till the start of 2020, work was conventional, and the setting was traditional. Although digital transformation has already been a focus area for Indian enterprises, it has immensely accelerated during Covid-19. The resulting digital disruption has fundamentally altered the way businesses and human lives operated. Be it remote working or adoption of cloud-based solutions or wireless capabilities – the penetration of technology has been truly massive.

Whether it is social life or professional, digital solutions based on cutting-edge technology have seen accelerated adoption worldwide. As we step into 2021, we can foresee the major technological shifts that have already started making inroads and would continue to evolve. Here are five such changes that are here to stay in the post-Covid setting:

Homes and cities to become ‘Smarter’
As devices are becoming smarter day by day, traditional homes and cities are being transformed with smarter and secure connected technology. This year, there would be two billion IoT connected devices in India – a tenfold increase from 2019. In the post-Covid-era, IoT devices embedded with Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) would further become mainstream as they create a connected world of intelligent devices and appliances at home and in cities.

There will be an increased demand for smart home solutions such as keyless entry, smart lighting, gas leak detectors, smart security systems, and connected devices to accommodate for the new lifestyle for consumers. IoT would also be at the heart of building smart cities with implementation in areas like public transport, emergency response, recreational facilities and so on.

Ultra-wideband (UWB) technology would prove to be revolutionary to improve the handsfree access control in offices, hospitals and homes with its positioning capabilities and increased data security as compared to other RF (Radio Frequency) technologies. With its fine-ranging capabilities, UWB would enable new location-based services and device-to-decide IoT applications in consumer as well as industrial applications. Adding further dimensionality to devices through IoT would open up a plethora of possibilities as smart edge devices gain spatial awareness and anticipate human actions. This would help realize the dream of truly smart homes where doors lock and unlock in response to human presence, smart home automation systems follow the owner intuitively and misplaced items are tracked in an instant.

Shifting gears
Another sphere that has radically transformed throughout the last several months and continues to evolve is the automotive sector. In some parts of the world, autonomous driving has proven to be critical in the battle against the pandemic by transporting required medical supplies and food to healthcare workers and the public in affected areas and disinfecting hospitals & public surfaces to minimise the spread of coronavirus.

It is estimated that there will be 470 million connected vehicles on the road by 2025 (source) and the worldwide autonomous car market is expected to touch USD 60 billion by 2030 (source). Clearly, the auto industry is prepared to go into the high gear for adoption of autonomous vehicles and connected mobility to minimise our dependency on conventional cars and support in driverless transportation of goods and services. Tesla has entered the Indian automobile market recently and would be offering autopilot feature that can steer, accelerate and brake automatically within its lane. Going ahead, we can expect full self-driving capabilities from Tesla that will bring in additional autonomous features like navigating on autopilot, automatically retrieving the car, parallel and perpendicular parking and changing lanes automatically on a highway.

The use of Edge computing technology would also help in the evolution of autonomous vehicles as the ability to process huge amount of data, like from real-time video processing, would be required for real-time millisecond responses like changing lanes or braking to avoid any accident. ADAS technologies (Advanced Driver Assistance System) have started making inroads in the Indian auto industry with MG Motors’ Gloster being India’s first Level-1 ADAS compatible automobile. ADAS technologies would prove to be very useful in India given the heavy road traffic. Several auto companies are carrying out R&D for ADAS technologies like tire-pressure monitoring system, automatic emergency braking, drowsiness monitoring system, automatic parking assist, adaptive cruise control, blind spot detection and lane departure warning systems.

Contactless payments
Whether its business or social life, contactless solutions continue to be widely adopted. Since currency notes and coins possess a potential risk of carrying viruses, contactless payments such as e-wallets, UPI, cashless transactions or digital payments have emerged as smarter and safer ways for doing transactions. A Redseer report has revealed that digital payments in India will further grow about 2x and touch USD 60 Tn by 2022 (source). This trend is expected to continue even after the pandemic ends as more and more people will embrace contactless payments. On the global scale as well, the contactless payments market is expected to reach USD 26.3 billion by 2027 (source) as per a report by Coherent Market Insights.

Contactless payments have turned into a reality due to the ability to securely manage transactions through a smart chip that contains on-board crypto processors which activate during the transaction through low power RF signals. Ministry of Urban Development had released guidelines for National Common Mobility Card (NCMC) with a vision for a common card that will operate across all open loop payment infrastructure like public transport, retail outlets, parking areas, ATMs, restaurants etc. Based on these guidelines, 3 projects are already live across the country – Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Corporation, Kochi Metro Rail Limited and Ahmedabad Smart City. This transformation is expected to further evolve and develop the contactless payment scenario in India.

Traditional workplace a thing of the past
Since the onset of the pandemic, organisations have embraced technology at large to adapt to the new normal and the contactless lifestyle. Through an ecosystem of sensors and interconnected devices, workplaces would continue to move rapidly from traditional processes towards digitization.

This would help lower the impact of Covid-19 on businesses and to safeguard the employees from any possible infection. Security systems would also transform, replacing fingerprint scanners with facial recognition and retinal scanners along with use of smart wrist bands to maintain social distancing within office spaces.

With the advent of hybrid workforce, the need for technologies that promote better team collaboration, faster information sharing and real-time control flow would be required. Implementation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for automation of processes, big data analytics, cloud-computing and IoT would transform the traditional workplace forever.

Physical storage would become obsolete!
With the onset of lockdowns across India, organisations were forced to adopt remote working almost overnight. This resulted in a significant increase in the use of cloud-based solutions as compared to device-based solutions, thereby reducing the dependency of physical storage – like servers. With hybrid workforce being the new reality in the post-covid world, we can see tremendous growth in the adoption of cloud-based storage solutions that would help businesses in streamlining their processes, improving collaboration between teams and stay afloat.

Covid-19 has certainly transitioned from a chaos to a catalyst bring about phenomenal technological disruptions all over the world. We can already see the use of technologies in every industry as well as our day-to-day social life. In the post-Covid world, avoiding touch would be of paramount importance along with cutting down on human intervention wherever possible. Technologies would find better adoption as we aim to achieve more efficiency in everything we do. Overall, the key focus in terms of innovation would be on automation and reducing the dependency on human intervention. This new-found impetus towards technology would continue to reshape our lives in the times to come.