5G, AI and Quantum Computing
2020 Vision, as seen by Craig Jukes, Sales Director, Evoca UK
There’s a road map for Evoca as we enter a new decade and it’s all about meeting the expectations of the customer. The future is all about personalisation for the end-user. That can be anything from the way a machine looks and feels to the way a consumer pays. Their outlook now is ‘I want to pay the way I want to pay, not the way you want me to pay’ and that can be anything: debit, credit, watch – embedded chip – whatever the future may bring. It means that our machines will have to be smarter – more dynamic – to accommodate that trend.
The combination of 5G, AI and Quantum Computing will be a massive game-changer that can’t be overstated. In the future, everything will be based on an algorithm. The machine will know your drinking behaviour, what your favourite drinks are. Through your interaction with it, the machine will learn about you. It’ll recognise where you’re looking on the screen and respond accordingly.
A quantum computer is a new kind of device, based on the science of quantum physics, and just like the light bulb transformed society, quantum computers have the potential to impact upon so many aspects of our lives, including our security needs, our health care and the way we make everyday purchases. They can solve, in nano seconds, problems that formerly took an age to work out. This technology is what is bringing us driverless cars and planes that can fly themselves.
5G, AI and Quantum Computing is not the fantasy stuff of ‘Space 1999’, which I used to watch as a kid; this is technology that is available now. The Chinese and the Americans already have quantum computing. The implications of this are mind-boggling, which is why it has a ‘fear factor’ in the eyes of governments, banks, security organisations and the like. The things that we do now in order to keep us safe on the internet, including complicated passwords formed of all sorts of character numbers and symbols, will be useless in the face of the new technology.
In our world of vending, it will mean we can create new machines that interact with consumers on a far deeper level. The machine will recognise you as you approach it. It will recognise your buying behaviour to the extent that it’ll know what you want before you have the chance to choose. It’s all about algorithms of choice, about learning the habits of each and every individual that uses the machine.
Vending machine menus will be ‘dynamic’, in that they’ll adjust to the purchasing history of individual locations. For instance, if the drink of choice in any given place is a cappuccino with chocolate sprinkles, then that’s the drink that will be the most prominent on the menu and the machine will promote it as the ’drink of choice’. It will work in exactly the same way with snacks and other products that can be sold from a machine.
So, in a nutshell, the combination of 5G, AI and Quantum Computing will allow us to create machines that know what consumers want before they make their purchases.
I think that we at Evoca have available the best machines on the market, but our dedicated R&D department is already beginning to open up the possibilities that are incumbent in this New World.
In this New World, interaction between people in a retail environment will become a thing of the past. People will walk into a store and thanks to RFID and their Apple Pay account, (other methods are available!), they’ll be able to choose what they want and leave without talking to anybody, in the knowledge that payment has been made automatically.
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a technology designed to allow objects, animals and even human beings to be identified, located, and tracked using radio frequency signals. … The technology has developed over the years and is now used in a wide range of applications. For instance, in hospitals RFID is increasingly used to track inventory, to control access; to monitor the location of staff and patients; to track tools, track disposable consumables, track large/expensive equipment and even to keep on top of the laundry.
The downside of 5G, AI and Quantum Computing is of course that so many jobs that people are doing today will become redundant. We’re already experiencing this in supermarkets, where there’s no real need for a person to sit at a till, scan your items and facilitate payment.
The vending machines we make will change accordingly. The way we attract consumers will change, the way we serve consumers will change and the way we reward consumers will change.
Who knows where this will lead? In ten years time, a drone might be delivering coffee to your desk…
More information? The Evoca web site is HERE
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