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BEONIC LIMITED (BEO) - Revolutionizing Operational Efficiency: CEO Billy Tucker on LiDAR Technology, Digital Twins, and AI-Driven Space Optimization in Airports and Retail

August 05, 2024 • Andrew Musgrave

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Ever wondered how some airports manage to maintain seamless passenger flow even during peak travel times? Join us as Billy Tucker, CEO of Beonic Limited, unveils the innovative techniques his company uses to transform physical spaces into highly efficient, data-driven environments. From leveraging LiDAR sensors to creating digital twins of retail and airport spaces, Billy shares how Beonic Limited helps businesses worldwide optimize their operations in real-time, enhancing customer experiences and boosting profitability.

Throughout this episode, you'll hear fascinating insights into how Beonic's cloud-based platform integrates historical and real-time data, weather forecasts, and AI-powered analytics to predict and manage space occupancy and staffing needs. With over 11,000 venues across 35 countries utilizing their technology, Beonic Limited is revolutionizing sectors like airports, retail, and education. Don't miss this captivating discussion on the cutting-edge technology that's redefining operational strategies and setting new standards for efficiency and customer satisfaction.

Andrew Musgrave:

Welcome to another episode of ASX Briefs, and today I'm delighted to welcome Billy Tucker, the CEO of Beonic Limited, a company that offers cutting edge cloud-based platform that transforms physical spaces into dynamic data-driven environments. Billy, thanks for joining me today and welcome to the podcast.

Billy Tucker:

It's a pleasure, Andrew. Thank you.

Andrew Musgrave:

Okay, can you start by giving us an overview of the company and the core components of your IO platform Connect, Insight and Engage?

Billy Tucker:

Absolutely. The way I would like the listeners to think about Beonic is that we are the leading provider of IoT services to airports and retail, and let me just bring that to life for you. So over 11,000 venues in 35 countries use our products and software, and the way we primarily assist businesses is we help airports to get people from curb to gate. Every decade or so, an airport passenger numbers will double, but their infrastructure grows very modestly, so they've got to squeeze more passengers through without dramatically compromising either the customer experience or the cost to serve. We do queue management, occupancy management, passenger flow and we just help them balance those two things. So balance the cost to serve with the customer experience keeps everyone happy. And then retail we help with footfall, free Wi-Fi and we help big retail figure out rents. We help them deal with conversion. So we help those two stakeholders with a lot of different business problems that they are otherwise very hard to solve.

Andrew Musgrave:

Okay, and what does Beonics technology bring to the table for businesses in sectors like retail, airports and education, that other traditional analytics tools do not?

Billy Tucker:

Well, there's almost nothing like it.

Billy Tucker:

I mean, if you think about the experience that we have, if you've managed a website, you'll know Google Analytics does a terrific job of telling you all about visitors, their behaviour, their performance, what they do, what they click, where they go, how long they are there and how often they come back.

Billy Tucker:

Well, we do exactly the same thing for a physical environment, and some folks say what we do is we create a digital twin of a physical environment. So we bring that physical space into the digital world. We bring people movement also in the digital world. We use sensors from LiDAR sensors, which is a very sophisticated spinning laser device, creates over 5 million dot points of information a minute, completely anonymous, tracks individuals as they move through a space, tracks them as they hang around, and we convert that into data that's incredibly valuable for the operator to figure out how many passengers do I have, how long are they standing around? Am I meeting my SLAs? Are those customers likely to be happy or unhappy, for instance, in a retail environment, are my rents too low? So those are all the things that we can help with, but it's really about creating that digital version of a physical environment.

Andrew Musgrave:

And just touching on the data analytics. So how has the adoption of your platform influenced the operational strategies of some of your clients?

Billy Tucker:

Well, if we think about what would normally have required either a lot of historical information and forecasting to figure out, for instance, in an American airport, what does Thanksgiving weekend? What does it look like historically and what is it likely to look like? How many staff do I need? How many gates should be open? We take that historical information, we provide them with predictions and then we supplement those predictions with real-time information on customers dwell so we can see that the occupancy level is higher than expected. I'll give you some examples. We combine weather information, flight information and we're able to predict how full a given space is likely to be and how well staffed it should be in order to improve the customer experience.

Billy Tucker:

So we are able to allow the operators of very large and busy spaces to more effectively manage and primarily it's about a good customer experience but an improved cost to serve, which means we improve the bottom line of those businesses. They don't over-service the customers, because these operators will tell you in airports that the big queues are bad, but no queues are much, much worse, because it means you're overspending to service the customer.

Andrew Musgrave:

And can you now delve into the technological innovations behind your platform, particularly the use of AI in your Insight module?

Billy Tucker:

Of course. So we take that sensor data and now imagine I've just mentioned LiDAR, which is a spinning 360 degree laser device produces over 5 million dot points of information a minute. Those are just simply dots, and by no stretch does it create a 3D image straight out of the device. The device data output goes into an AI perception layer and that perception layer needs to turn those dots into people or suitcases, carts, cars.

Billy Tucker:

At Newark Airport in the US, we measure the throughput of Ubers as they come to curbside and our AI is required to identify a car, how long it's been around, as it disappears, often in the distance that the people have exited the car, people have entered the car, suitcases are left at the side of the road, et cetera, et cetera. So the innovation using AI is to take that anonymous dot-based information and turn it into a human with movement, with linger time, et cetera. And so that's where a lot of the sophistication comes from. We also do the same thing with camera outputs, top-down or horizontal camera feeds. We convert what is otherwise just basically pixels and we turn it into humans and cars and luggage, etc.

Andrew Musgrave:

And implementing comprehensive data solutions can be challenging. So what are some of the hurdles that Beonic has faced and how have you overcome them?

Billy Tucker:

Well, you know, not least is the hosted environment. So I've just described the processing of an enormous amount of information. Your gigabytes or terabytes of information are processed by us and, as such, the hosted environment is an incredibly complicated beast. So we spend well over a million dollars in the US a year with Amazon, for instance, and the requirements on those data feeds is particularly onerous. But not only that the process and power required to take that information and turn it into something useful in real time and present it back to the operator in a 3D dashboard across multiple devices. That's where a lot of the magic happens, and I've got to tell you those are the features of our product that our customers love.

Andrew Musgrave:

Okay and looking ahead, first of all, are there any new features or advancements that your customers can expect, and also what are some of the key milestones you're looking to achieve in the next 12 months?

Billy Tucker:

Sure. So look, we're constantly evolving the product. We have a fantastic product team and our tech and dev team is spread around the world. We've got a technology innovation center in Lisbon, in Portugal. We've got an innovation center for hardware in Belfast, in Ireland, and, look, we're constantly evolving the product. We are evolving and deploying our own AI and machine learning to improve the analytics and also to minimize the amount of data that's required to flow around the world, which is obviously an expensive business.

Billy Tucker:

We're taking our product and turning it into a kiosk product which will allow the operator to have a permanent visibility in a physical environment of, for instance, expected queue time, wait time. So think about that as a Disneyland type experience, where the amount of time that you're likely to spend in a queue is presented to the customer to be more open and set their expectation accurately, and we'll do that, again in real time. Similarly, we're working with big retailers South Africa and North America where we help customers through information on large screens in real time to figure out which queue they should go join. We're working with IKEA in North America on solving exactly that problem. So those are the sort of innovations and there're almost too many to mention. We're constantly evolving the products and we're doing that across hotels, big retail, retail property and airports.

Andrew Musgrave:

Well, Billy, thanks for your time today. It's been great to chat and get an update on where the company is at, and we look forward to further updates from Beonic in the upcoming months.

Billy Tucker:

Thanks for making the time, Andrew. I appreciate it.

Andrew Musgrave:

That concludes this episode of ASX Briefs. Don't forget to subscribe and we look forward to catching you on our next episode.