24 Feb These Innovative Smart Devices and Technology Suit Business Travelers, Expats

Imagine if we lived in a world run  by driverless cars that navigate us through crowded streets, smart security systems that filter strangers from familiar faces (computer vision, anyone?), and AI-powered garbage disposal units that advise us we haven’t done our trash segregation properly. That may become the new normal if people embrace these innovations.

This whole machine-guided landscape sounds like a convenient technical magic wand that can make our lives better, especially for those who travel a lot. But how prepared is the living, breathing populace to live in it?  More important, how many of us actually embrace it, as compared to just accepting it?

This is a question that global mobility specialists have to ask because it is only a matter of time before smart, AI-powered devices shift from being options to industry standard. They will have to study how it can make the accommodations of their assignees and business travelers safer and more pleasant. They will have to check the financial advantages that smart systems can provide. Finally, they  might determine how open their assignees are to living and enjoying these utopian experiences.

Perhaps the  most accepted AI-powered devices now are the ubiquitous virtual assistants such as Amazon Echo or the iPhone Siri. Assignees and other professionals are becoming used to activating through voice commands a search-and-answer query for their research or directions to the nearest restaurant that reminds them of home. California Corporate Housing has installed units of Amazon Echo in several of its furnished apartments and can provide them to individual tenants or assignees upon request.

Digital wallets are another data-driven tool that customers are more than happy to use. According to a study on digital payment by Mastercard, 75 percent of those surveyed do their shopping online. E-commerce has become a way of life with users just asking stores to deduct the cost of the product bought from their credit card or online bank account. Unlike these cards, though, the digital wallet also can give the user an updated account of his purchase, accessibility to funds, and amount of savings or excess monies he can tap for shopping purposes.

The more enthusiastic users are asking for additional features, such as storage of loyalty points and additional credits they can use for public transportation like subways and trains.

Global mobility specialists will not have a difficult time integrating digital wallets into their payment structure and system, if it helps them coordinate better with their recruited talents.

The Iowa State University has named a solar-powered technology as a wearable that might capture the imagination and the patronage of the market in a few years’ time. Usability, convenience, and low cost make it equally appealing. Solar cells are woven in the fabric of the customized clothing. Once the rays of the sun activate these cells, the clothes, which are made of light material, lessen their density, making them much more comfortable for the user to wear. Their durability is also enhanced, saving the user time and money in keeping up financially with the usual wear-and-tear.  Solar tech clothing is being designed for shirts, shorts, pants, caps, and the kind of get-up used for outdoor physical activity.

More important to the user is that he can charge his devices from the power generating through his solar clothing. One MP player can get three more hours of music playtime.

Assignees wearing solar tech shirts may no longer have to worry about losing their cell phone signals or tablet battery power while they are scaling mountains or swimming in the beaches during the weekend. Powering up their devices and connecting to the home office is literally just a sun ray away.

This is just a tip of the smart devices coming our way. More complex ones are being invented such as smart medicine cabinets that can alert an assignee that his vitamin supplements have run out, or pill boxes that remind him when to take his medication via an app/ But the solar shirt, the digital wallet, and Amazon Echo can be a test run to show what the IoT world can offer, both to the global mobility specialist and his assignees.