#437 Smart Buildings: Marek Kozlak & Michał Szopa on AI and Digital Twins in Construction

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Mehmet: Hello and welcome back to a new episode of the CTO Show with Mehmet. Today I'm very pleased, joining me, the team from Sim Lab, Marek and Michael. Uh, Marek and Michael, thank you very much for being with me here today. Just if each one of you can just, you know, tell us more about you, [00:01:00] your background, your journey, and then we can take it up from there.

Mehmet: Marek, maybe you want to start first.

Marek: Okay. Uh, hi. Hi everybody. Uh, my name is Marek. I'm the CTO and founder of SimLab. SimLab is a digital twin based technology. We are working mostly with, uh, scanning, um, data, which we are bringing the next life to those, to those data. And why this? Well, I built my house, I spent a lot of money, I lost a lot of money, and I needed to bring some toolkits so everybody else can avoid the same problems.

Marek: And, uh, what's my background? I'm actually PhD in engineering, uh, working in mechanical engineering. This is my field. But right now I'm much more on the programming side within the computer graphics.

Michal: Yeah,

Michal: my name is Michał and I'm product owner and the project manager in our company. And, uh, I'm in company something like four [00:02:00] years, uh, starting from now.

Michal: And my background was mainly in the building automation systems and the sales of the building automation systems. And Marek asked me to join the sim lab and, and, um, how's, uh, I'm here. That's why I'm here.

Mehmet: Yeah, cool. So, Mark, you mentioned something interesting and actually you, you took the question that I usually start with.

Mehmet: So I'm always, you know, uh, curious to know about the reason why people found a company. Of course, it's out of pain. It's out of, uh, you know, some challenges, but I want you to go a little bit, you know, deep in, you know, describing the reason that, uh, you know, Brought you to, to build the company, I mean, to start the company and you know, like what, what are like, uh, you know, the, the main, you know, moments that you said, okay, now we need to, to do something about it.

Mehmet: Like, uh, maybe existing solution doesn't fit and so on. So I would love you to, to explain more about, you know, the reason why, you know, [00:03:00] you started the Sim Lab.

Marek: Okay. Very shortly. I'm coming from the biomechanics building and, uh, and mechanical engineering. And, uh, the time comes in your life, especially here in Europe, that you are moving out from your parents house.

Marek: You're living with your roommates. You are starting to, you're growing up life. And then you're saying, Oh, I want to have a house. So that came for me and I decided to build my house like seven, eight, nine years ago. Michael probably is the same age as me. So he was building your house like. Three years ago, three, four years ago.

Marek: And then we have like a, another colleagues at the company, which are also in the core team, which also have some houses or apartments of the renovation. And, uh, we are all, which is our core team in the R and D of SimLab, mostly working with the computer graphics. It's like, it's, it's called, um, serious gaming, which is a simulator for oil and gas, for example, for aviation, [00:04:00] for arm, for military, we are working on the computer graphics in a simulation.

Marek: Which means like a cool stuff for the grown up boys, you know, we're playing some kind of the games, but for the serious money. And then we start moving towards, you know, building your own place of living. And we see the technology there, which is like 20 years old within the Autodesk solutions from Revit, within the CAD systems that are not changing for the last 15, 20 years.

Marek: And my kids right now are using a computer graphics on the cell phone, playing. Amazing games with the capabilities, which are way over what we can actually imagine. And, and we were expecting five years ago and, and then we are talking about that very expensive sector of the economy with the building about the building industry, which is 10 percent of the GDP of each of the developed country.

Marek: And then we are talking about the tech, which is 15, 20 years old. [00:05:00] And it's engineering data that does not give you any instant intuitive access to data. So we said that that's not how we want to live in. This is not how I would operate my house and my construction process of the building. And, uh, we all looking on this.

Marek: I find movie that people are going after more, after morning, I know brushing the teeth to the, um, interactive middle, which actually talks to you, makes you some kind of the visualization. It gives you data and just the movies. No, I don't accept it. We want to work. And live in such a system. That's why we said that let's do something about this and created a concept for Simon.

Mehmet: Great. Now, let's dive a little bit within the technology itself. So, uh, while preparing, and of course, you know, as, uh, you know, an engineer by trade and by, by education, you know, there are [00:06:00] some terms that attracts me. So, what I've seen, what you do, especially, you know, within the construction and building sector.

Mehmet: Um, you, you talk about the digital twin and digital twins, of course, it's a game changer technology, especially in the construction industry. So, um, like if, if we can talk a little bit more about, you know, um, how, how, you know, do you use this technology? And, you know, if, if you want to explain it to some, how.

Mehmet: You know, someone who's not much familiar with the concept and what are the benefits of utilizing this technology. And, of course, I know like it's gonna be a loaded question. And like, because you mentioned data, and I believe you have to collect a lot of data. So is it like something that integrates with IOT devices, like, uh, What, how, how that workflow exactly works for, uh, for, for this technology

Marek: before we're gonna go to the product and, [00:07:00] and what's our vision for, for, uh, for the technology in the apartments or buildings or houses or homes or a apart or any kind of local stores or commercial buildings.

Marek: Let's talk about the buzzword, which here makes a lot of confusion. Sure. Digital twin, everybody's doing digital twin because now it's like a buzzword like AI or machine learning, digital twin one. is one of them. But in respect to the building industry and the building property industry, digital twin is mostly considered by the old type of the thinking, old generation of, you know, the, the engineers as cut data, which means like, uh, Reddit, which means like a 3d drawings of building, which is used for the construction of the actual property.

Marek: And that's something that we consider as two different branches of digital twin in the building industry. One, we should call it as designed. And this is [00:08:00] this engineering data, which actually shows you how the building will look like. In a project files of those different floors, different slabs, different, like a cross sections of the, of the building.

Marek: And that's this engineering as designed. And most of the people thinking about the building digital twin, Oh, I will get my engineering drawings in a 3d model. Well, that's half of the true because where we are focusing as the company is. In the second sector, second vertical record as built, which means that our digital twin is us on today.

Marek: So what we are using, we are taking a scanning technology, we're taking a 3D scanners, we're taking a photo geometry scanners, or even your cell phone. We're going to the building, we are capturing the data, and from that data, Which again, it can be a point cloud, which is a 3D model already, but it can be also a photographs, pictures, which create a [00:09:00] 3D geometry from photogrammetric technology, um, and, and, and, and, and softwares.

Marek: And we created your representation of the building, which is digital twin of as it is today. And, uh, that's also a 3D geometry, but very much visualizing what it looks and how the status of the buildings today. So all of that. The cracks on the wall, all of the, uh, spots that you can see all of the not perfect conditions might be visualized because it's pictures behind it.

Marek: It's pictures overlaid on top of the 3D models which gives you this full real

Marek: As built documentation, how it looks like. And then once you have it on your screen, we've have 3d model on your cell phone, computer, or whatever system. Now we are adding the magic. We are adding that IOT, as you said, so we can connect to any [00:10:00] sensors in the building and visualize it in that place in the building, then we're giving the asset information about.

Marek: everything which is in the building, which can be a manual for your copy machine, or it can be a spare part catalog for your HVAC system or for your fridge, which is broken. It can be a contact detail to the person that is doing the service for your hydraulics, uh, equipment or for your, um, any kind of this, the, the, the asset, which is in the store.

Marek: And we make this. 3d digital twin model alive for your daily purposes. And this is where Michael is stepping in because he's the product owner and the brain behind it showing basically all of the future things that we want. We already have in our system, but also we're going to be adding to the system.

Mehmet: That's great. Now, let me ask you about this. Um, And you, we were talking before we start the recording, you were here in Dubai and you're planning to come again. So [00:11:00] one of the things, because Dubai is famous for the real estate and you know, the construction and all, all of that, of course, all the Middle East is booming in this.

Mehmet: So one of the things that always come. Which is, you know, the maintenance off a building, right? So can I come to you today and tell you? Hey, like, I'm going to buy this apartment, for example, or this townhouse. And I want to see if there's something which I cannot see it with with my eyes. So using your technology, probably I can you.

Mehmet: Figured out that I would not I would might need a kind of a preventive maintenance or maybe You know, the the age of the wall is it's not good So I'm just you know coming up with some ideas. Is it something that also you can touch on?

Michal: Yeah, because we can we can add some sensors on top of that we can can make some predictive maintenance and checking how it's looks there some environmental [00:12:00] into the into the place In right now, the real time environment information about the from the sensors, but we have also some another, uh, solution that is called stages and the solution stages is is designed for the for the construction phase of the building that we can make the scan during the construction time and then another scan during the normal, uh, As today scan and we can compare both of them and we can see what's behind of the wall is, for example, if you want to drill a hole into the into the wall and we are wondering if there is some cable behind or something and I can drill or not or some pipe or something that we can always compare the two scans and we can see what's behind the pain or what's behind the wall is This is very good solution and after the stages phase, we can convert the last stage to the Simon and [00:13:00] use it as a daily basis operating system for your facility.

Michal: It's, it's also possible and it's adding the, then another value for the buyer that he can go back into the history where the. And where the building of the apartment was built, which, uh, kind of materials, how it looks like everything in every stage of the, of the construction phase.

Marek: Yeah. And you were saying for facility maintainers, there are systems like this.

Marek: There are some professional building management systems for the height scrapers in around the world. Also in Dubai. But the question is that how much the system costs, they are hand crafted solutions for individual building. Usually what we are saying is that we are getting a cheap scanning technology, which is available in your cell phone, getting to your apartment that you said, you're just having this small condominium in this high scraper.

Marek: And then you can do the scan and capturing 3d capturing of that space in. Half [00:14:00] an hour, 45 minutes here. One of the best solution is Matterport. We just got an app on your cell phone. You create the 3d model and then on top of that, now you can start working with your family. You can start with your co workers if it's a small office, or you can start with your, uh, I don't know, a subcontractors, which are going to be doing some jobs on your side and then share that.

Marek: Tasks, but also a predictive maintenance, uh, records on top of the 3d model, which actually shows you that in that place in the building, you need to do some servicing or change some fluids or change some filters in the air consistence. And actually before even. Asking someone for the quotation or visiting your home, you can share the model digitally in a social, uh, platforms like, I don't know, maybe one that is, um, helping to connect, um, handyman's with, with, with your own, [00:15:00] uh, uh, with the facility owners, and then just make estimations, measure things, because again, it's a 3D measure what's the surface of the wall.

Marek: And then I know how much paint I need to do. You can see what behind the wall, where are the pipes? So if I want to do some drilling, but also you can make a task that that wall needs to be painted out with that kind of actual, uh, paint with. A label or even the pointing this in the store that needs to be done and someone can pick up a ticket like this in the social platforms and say, Oh, I can come.

Marek: I can do it. I don't have to go to the apartment. I'm prepared because I see how the apartment looks like. So I know what kind of equipment I need to take and how much time I need to spend doing that job.

Michal: And the very important thing is that for all this maintenance action, the person involved in this action have exact 3D location where it is located.

Michal: If, uh, right now the, the normal process is that somebody is calling, okay. Air [00:16:00] conditioning is not working in my office. Yeah. And the technician come, come to the office. In the office, it's 100 air conditioning unit and need to check one by one or, or some of them, which one have the problem. Yeah. Right now, if we have the digital twin, we can exactly point which one is, is with the problem and get the rights go straight away, uh, uh, to them, uh, to fix the problem.

Michal: for the, for the looking of the, of the, all of the rest,

Marek: but it's, it's a big building and you are in a skyscraper and there's a malfunction somewhere in the building or reported problem and you create a ticket for that problem. We can share the ticket with. Exact person in the building responsible for fixing this.

Marek: We can guide this person with augmented reality towards the place where the problem is to be done, and then even connected remotely with instructions, showing how to fix it in, in that, uh, place of the building with actual [00:17:00] problem. Once the problem is solved, it gets checked in the list of the history of all of the maintenance stays with the system, but you can.

Marek: Make also next item points on your, on your plan and plan the maintenance for some other similar components. So if I know that this HVAC system was broken on the floor, so probably something similar can happen on the next floor. So can already plan it. And that's also what we are trying to provide, like a smart access to the data and planning and maintenance.

Marek: To, um, uh, any property owner, which does not to have to be a very big skyscraper, but also an apartment that you're renting. Why? Because how much it costs to do this pretty digital twin of that apartment, maybe half an hour and. Um, 0 because you can do it with your cell phone. Just if you want to be within the latest technologies or just [00:18:00] follow up, uh, and the easy life and calling the experts and read everything to them.

Mehmet: Yeah. I'm relating to a lot of things which are common, you know, especially because the Michael mentioned is the air conditioning. And, you know, here in Dubai, of course, now the weather is good. So, um, but I mean, majority of the year that the temperature is hot and, you know, uh, we see people complaining and to your point, they don't know what the problem exactly is.

Mehmet: So this is why I was relating,

Marek: right? This is not funny because you know, in the facility management, uh, of any building, especially the big, um, structures, big commercial building, you know, how do you usually look like there's a ticket, aircon is not working. And then you're talking about, you are the hotel owner saying, okay, I have a hotel, which has got, for example, 10 floors on each of the floor.

Marek: I have like a 50 rooms. Where is it on which one? Right? So with a digital twin, you actually point exact location and the data [00:19:00] is having the not three dimensions is getting the fourth dimension. Which is also a time of service but it's where it is

Mehmet: Yeah, and I think with iot it becomes kind of a real time as well, right?

Marek: Exactly. Yeah

Mehmet: Yeah, so so that's relate now michael. You mentioned, you know a couple of minutes ago something interesting and um I've seen it all across, you know, of course, GCC Dubai, but I think it's a global problem, which are what I think they call them construction rework. So during, you know, the construction phase, someone did something wrong, and then they discovered only after, right?

Mehmet: So And it costs a lot of money. I know this and I heard it from a lot of people who I know, you know, working with developers and so on. So how, how your platform can help actually reduce the costly errors and, you know, making sure that you can [00:20:00] have a more streamlined, uh, collaboration, especially because you know it better than me guys, like you, you are the experts, but I mean, there are a lot of.

Mehmet: You know moving parts and there's a lot of different teams as well So you have the people who works on the concrete you have the people who works on the electrical wiring There are the people who works on the ac ducting. There are many things So how you can streamline the whole process during the construction phase?

Marek: What we suggest and what we propose to the market, to the sector, to the facility owners who are paying the money for the building and trust engineers, which are supposed to, and general constructors, uh, which supposed to work in their name is secure yourself, do the 3D scan. It does not cost much money.

Marek: You can do it even yourself if you have access to the scanning technology, or you can do it with your cell phone. But do the scan on the milestones. So if there is a [00:21:00] people doing the concrete, scan it before and scan it after. There is a people doing the HVAC systems, scan it before, scan it after. You don't have to be there each day, which of course will give you a lot of data.

Marek: That is like even too much sometimes, but be there in the milestone. So usually. When we are talking about like a family house, so that's maybe four or five times during the construction process. If we talk to a big skyscraper and the floor in the skyscraper, we're thinking about again, three to five times per the finishing process.

Marek: But that data is your insurance policy for the future. It gives you exact information and. Allows you to act very fast because you see everything is visual. So you don't have to be an engineer to understand how the 3D model looks in kind of the game that you can walk through. And this is what we strongly recommend.

Marek: Buy the insurance policy, do the 3D scanning when you are in the construction [00:22:00] phase, because that will save you a lot of problems and questions 5 10 years from now.

Mehmet: Right. Now, uh, let's go a little bit technical. And if we can like talk about, you know, um, how actually, you know, the integration happens. And, uh, I know like you have some also integrations with the automation platform.

Mehmet: So if, if, if one of you, I don't know who would be like, uh, be able to, to answer this. Is it like a single dashboard that we see and then all these signals would be coming? Uh, is there like any specific type of connection that will be required? Like, is it, uh, uh, you know, like how the communication happened?

Mehmet: Do I have to put like 4g in these IOT devices? So, so how this happens, uh, you know, in a real life scenario, I would say.

Michal: Okay. Maybe, maybe I'll answer. Uh, we right now have integration with, with couple of the [00:23:00] building automation standards. Uh, one of those is from the, from the cheapest one and the, and the some easiest to, to install is the, is the two of them, uh, is the Fibaro right now it's the nice company, the Italian company with the IOT sensors, um, connecting each other, uh, in the mesh, uh, network, uh, using the ZigBee and, and the Z Wave, uh, communication protocol with some hub.

Michal: And we are connecting to this hub and then we are exchanging the data. Between the hub and the sensors and our software, everything, everything is web based and everything is only communicated into the cloud. We don't adding any, any hardware devices into the, into the site. We are all our solution is, is running into the cloud.

Michal: The second one is Samsung or the right now the smart things. Uh, which is also compatible with our system. If you have the, some smart things, devices in your house, uh, the sensors or, or some on some [00:24:00] activators. We can also connect it, uh, using the, uh, smart things hub. And we have also two, uh, much more professional building automation standards.

Michal: One of those is the cex. Uh, the CEX is the global, uh, association with many, many, uh, manufacturers and many partners. Uh, the Kix Association is have, uh, more than 500 different manufacturers, very big brands like A BB, like Schneider Electric, like Jung, Gira, Hager, uh, is the to High , uh, top, uh, top three. Uh.

Michal: Producers into the world. Yeah, with the building automation systems and the last but not least. We have also Possibility with communicating with the netx automation server, which is multi protocol server That means if somebody have any of the building automation system using the backnet modbus mbus mqtt Http and some other [00:25:00] Protocols communicating protocols into the building.

Michal: We can also connect using the netex cloud and our cloud together. And we are everything automatically importing from this provider. That means that if somebody have the provider into their, um, their site or the building, we can very easily add the, uh, authorization, uh, credentials here. For example, the, the username, the password, and we are importing all the data from the.

Michal: from the provider. And the only thing that it needs to be done by the user is to put the sensors from the, from the list of the old sensors we imported into the 3D space location, uh, into the scan. And we can use it, our software, uh, using the 2D dashboard, where is everything, yeah. But our main goal is to use the, the 3D scan that we have the sensors into the walls, into the exact, uh, location where they are installed and control it.

Michal: Steer it, uh, check it, uh, [00:26:00] from, from this, uh, perspective. Well,

Marek: if I can just summarize what Michael said on a very much technical level with all of the protocols and so on, the thing is that you can get a 3d scan in minutes or hours of doing this yourself. And then using our software, you can connect to any building standard, which is there in the market.

Marek: We don't care what you have installed, what kind of protocols you're using. We have a method with our partners to grab all of this data and bring it to your 3D model to make it live.

Mehmet: Great. Now, out of curiosity, um, I, I would imagine that you'd have different, uh, interfaces to different personas, right? So.

Mehmet: Um, how do you categorize them? Is it like the people who are in the house, the facility management company, like, uh, like who and how they would be getting different type of accesses or let's say interfaces to your [00:27:00] solution?

Michal: The interface is always the same. Because the interface is mainly visual and we are only, we are the visualization layer of some other systems, yeah?

Michal: And we are adding the, the layer which is 3D scan with very nice visualization. But always, somewhere in the background behind that is the normal system that have many of these graphs, many of very complicated things. And for us, uh, it's not, uh, there is no person. We can, we can very easily other than, uh, the many of the privileges for them, for the every, every user, yeah?

Michal: Because one user have, can have, uh, privileges to, editing, deleting and controlling everything. The second user can have only access to his room. Yeah, it's it's possible, but the liar and the visualization is the same for everybody. If there is the end user facility manager, [00:28:00] technical manager, they are using the same interface.

Michal: But maybe with some different type of data and restrictions, uh, to using the system.

Mehmet: Great. Great. It's clear for me. Um So the one one of the things also I think we we talked about but I think I I really You know wanted to re highlight it Um, so, you know that Uh, globally, everyone, you know, trying to cut emissions and going to green kind of, uh, buildings and all this stuff.

Mehmet: So do you have any use case of, you know, maybe reducing energy consumption, which is like, it will reflect on reducing carbon footprint and, and all this stuff.

Marek: Again, buzzwords. Everybody's talking about this, how we can help. Well, we can actually allow you to understand your building. Go there, see it, click the room, click the [00:29:00] wall, click the light, uh, uh, structure, click the ecosystem to see basically the data life or the historical data.

Marek: So that means is that bring the awareness to the owners of the building, facility managers, and everybody that is working with the building and don't know, don't see the consumption. We are able to visualize it. So imagine that you are walking through our office. And you are looking on the walls and you see, oh, there is a plug connected to the air con system.

Marek: There is a plug connected to Humi Fire. There is a plug connected to the fridge with our cold beer that we are holding in our office. And you know, oh, there is five cents running out. There is like a number of watts which are being consumed in that moment. And you can actually make awareness turning on visualization within our system around you and see.

Marek: Oh, I'm losing money here. I'm losing money there. This is the VAT consumptions per that device, which actually does not have to be turned on. So what we are helping up in that moment, maybe we [00:30:00] don't calculate the carbon emission, which are specialized companies and, and, and experts in that we are visualizing how much money.

Marek: It's slipping through your fingers in your building and bringing you awareness how much consumption each particular device is using because just looking on it in our 3D digital twin model and you basically see what's happening around you.

Mehmet: Great. If you know, I know, like, uh, it's a podcast, but I want to push people to go and, uh, watch it.

Mehmet: So, and I'm a big believer of saying, you know, seeing is believing, right? So is there anything like you can share with us now? So people, you know, if you're listening, If you're listening to us guys go switch to the youtube and you have to see so if you can share something with us guys,

Marek: and and that's very important, uh, everyone because What michael is showing right now and is trying to and is [00:31:00] launching that works on the web that means is that no installation nothing special just go to the website and and and actually log into your account where you have your apartments office buildings or Maybe if you're a city manager all of the structure that you maintain but The thing is that all of this is really visual.

Marek: So are you going to share

Mehmet: the screen? Sorry, are you going to share the screen, uh, Michael? Yes, I will. Okay, cool. So just to relate, uh, I need to do, yeah, hold on. Here you go.

Marek: Okay. So again, as you can see right now, it's very much visual. You just click the property you want to get in. Now we are actually launching our office that we are sitting in this moment.

Marek: That's very interesting. That works on the website. And yeah, there is some, as you can see already, some icons there, icons there. And we can bring always regular standard 2D panel. But what's The most important in our system, one we are so [00:32:00] innovative is that it actually visualize everything. So if you are right now, uh, interested with the temperature in our room, just click it on the wall where the sensor is being located.

Marek: You want to see what's the temperature in a different room, just go there and try it yourself. Yes, you can do it much more 2D dashboard, but to understand everything, that's much more obvious. And now we are in our room. So we see that the battery in our system is dead, which is funny, uh, but the temperature is like a 20 degrees where we are sitting.

Marek: And if you are playing with the light switch, just one click and the lights goes on and now please turn it on. And now there's on why? Because you are clicking exact lab, exact switch at exact machine. So if we, for example, Oh yeah, let's go to the. printer that we were talking about. So there is a, like a, I don't want to say commercial, but like an office printer in our office.

Marek: And, uh, as you can see, well, right now we're using 47 Watts of energy in just the standby out. So you can [00:33:00] always optimize that data. You can optimize that costs. And if you want to change it, for example, to the number of money you are spending, you can convert the Watts. To the local energy, uh, numbers. And you know, basically that that goes in number of, uh, I don't know our local currency or dollars or euros and, and, and so on, but all of this, all of this data here is life and, uh, yeah, maybe 0.

Marek: 03 cents an hour, but that sums up, you know, the building is right. Many stories. This is where we bring this, this, uh, information and you would not even maybe realize that this is what you're losing.

Michal: Yeah. And, uh, and, uh, all configuration and the using of the, uh, system is very easy. As you see here, we have all the icons into the 3D space.

Michal: Uh, changing the, the location is also very easy because we can, uh, [00:34:00] only add the one click and, and change the, the location. For example, I can put it. From there. Here it's the one click and, and we have it, uh, already done. Uh, but, uh, the IOT sensors and this layer is only one layer we have in our software because we have also the asset management system, as Mark said before.

Michal: Mm-hmm . That we can store all the information about the asset we have installed in our, in our space. Yeah. And, uh, when we are staying on the printer, I can show you. that we have the information about the printer like the name of the printer with the model, we have a possibility to add some description as a pre taste, some links, some photographs as well, with some QR codes, the videos.

Michal: Here we have a really funny situation because we have the video. For the tutorial for the new employees in our company and it's also time saving for us to to make them the Yeah, they explain explanation how the printer works they have here the movie and they can everybody [00:35:00] can see it how the the printer is is uh working And additionally some documents like the warranty cards manuals invoices everything into the one place And which is very important also that we can add the events for the maintenance for every asset we have.

Michal: Uh, like recurring events for this example that we have some maintenance, maintenance service, uh, some servicing, changing the toners and everything. And all these events we have also in one summary view. But we have the information for today. Unfortunately, it's not the event. But, uh, for example, for tomorrow we have the cleaning the aquarium.

Michal: But where is the aquarium? We have one click and we are going, uh, through the scan to the exact position where the aquarium is, is installed into the, into the space. Uh, what is also very important in our software is the ticketing system that we have the, uh, as I mentioned before that we have, for [00:36:00] example, some More than one air conditioning unit.

Michal: As you see here, we have one and the second and third and, and so on. And, uh, the one air conditioning unit is leaking. We can open the, uh, the window with the ticket made by somebody. We have the information that is made by me, but uh, with the status, we, who is the stakeholder, and also the location where it is located with all the information about the, about the problem.

Michal: And using the assets, we have also the all information. What is the type of, uh, what is the information? What is the, for example, spare parts catalog and all information before the technical guy came and, and, uh, to the, to fixing the problem and time saving. Yeah. And, and also, uh, from the, from the scan. The technical guy knows that, okay, here is the air conditioning you need.

Michal: Below the air conditioning there is some desks. And maybe it needs to be done another ticket for the [00:37:00] IT guy to remove the desk because I need to have the place to put the leather. And because it is the, uh, 3D scan, we have also measurements too, that we can very easily see that the air conditioning unit is on 2.

Michal: 8 meter high, and I need to take a ladder with me, I need to be better prepared, and also it's the time saving, cost saving, and even the carbon saving and the environmental, because of the, uh, not so much troubles between the, uh end credits For example, the, some warehouse of the sparing spare parts and the side where it needs to be fixed

Marek: as

Michal: well.

Marek: And guys, everything is so much visual. I don't have to be an engineer or have a technical knowledge in the computer. I did design or CAD engineering. It just works. It's like, I don't want to say in a game, but that's what actually is called, uh, serious gaming, which means a simulation digital [00:38:00] time as built data of actual apartments, as you can see, because it scanned with the photo geometry methods, which is using the, you know, the 3d, 3d, uh, panoramas or 360 panoramas on top of the real 3d geometry.

Marek: Okay. Then it's so much equivalent to how the building looks like with all of the even cracks on the wall or malfunctions that you can see, you know, like a dirty carpet or some other things that actually, uh, maybe in the beautiful 3d model from the. Consistent. You don't want to show so here is a status of the building as it was scanned on that particular date equipped with the IOT signals from all of the sensors control of the building automation systems in the real time as well within implementation of all of the assets from the construction process or for [00:39:00] the assets which are in the equipment in the room, like this printer, for example, with all of the manuals, warranty cards, spare parts, catalogs, invoices, or even, um, the predictive maintenance when the next.

Marek: Um, actions are needed to, to, to service the equipment.

Mehmet: Uh, you know, like when, when, of course, again, guys, if you are listening, I highly advise you to go ahead and open the YouTube so you can see what, uh, uh, Marek and Michael, they are talking about. So it reminded me. You know, like, uh, back in the days when, at least for my age, you know, when you open your palm and you imagine something in front of you and you see what's happening, it's like, you know, the crystal ball.

Mehmet: So like, for me, it's like the crystal ball of seeing what's inside the building without being in the building. So. Uh, it's it's a fascinating technology. I can see this, uh, and just to remind the audience also as [00:40:00] well. So Marek and Michael, you mentioned that in order to me to have the scanning it take I need just a mobile phone Maybe just to to to do this and then Take

Marek: your cell phone, go to the Matterport app.

Marek: Doesn't matter if it's an Apple or the Android. And then download the app and you can start scanning your own apartment in the How

Mehmet: long Yeah, this is what I was asking. How long it needs to render and generate this digital twin to them? So the technology

Marek: works like this. You download the app, which is of course the mandatory step.

Marek: And then after setting up the account and so on, you need to do the scan, the scanning with just a cell phone, it of the apartment, which is like a 100 square meters will take you up to half an hour. But what it does, it creates a 360 panorama pictures, which is guiding you in kind of the wizard. Uh, how to do it and where to do the next steps, next steps, next steps.

Marek: And then once you do the scanning, you need to process the data [00:41:00] to actually calculate a 3D model from that just 360 panorama pictures. And that process takes a couple of hours. So the same day you start your scanning, you will get a 3D model on the web available through. Um, and a 3d browser, actually not 3d browser.

Mehmet: Yeah. That's, that's super cool. You don't need to install anything, you know, like back in the days we used to install flash and all this kind of.

Marek: That works in the web right about now. And if you want to speed up the process and you want to do it much more perfect, just use a 360 action camera, because what we are actually doing here in the Matterport application is that you're creating the camera, um, Rotating yourself 360 degrees.

Marek: If you will have an action camera, 360 action camera that you can buy each electronics store, then it just snap, snap, snap, and you speed up the process 10 times.

Mehmet: Of course, indeed. Now, a question to add here. [00:42:00] I know it's a buzzword. You're talking a lot about buzzwords today, uh, Marek. What's any, any, any integration with AI?

Mehmet: I'm not talking about the generative AI because I don't see any, you know, I'm not sure. Maybe, I don't know. Like, uh, any AI machine learning use cases? Yeah. Okay. You've got that

Marek: here because, uh, that's our Don't want to say top secret mission that we are on right now, but we are already working on an AI and the machine learning.

Marek: So imagine a process like this. You do this camp, you process it. You have a 3d model on your cell phone under your account without the Simon software, Simon license, which is free of charge for like, that's another story so you can start using this today, it's free of charge. I already said, but the thing is that you have your 3d model already done.

Marek: And then imagine like this. Uh, we run AI in the background and we identify, this is the TV, this is a fridge, this is the air conditioning unit, this is a sofa. Would you like to add your manuals [00:43:00] to the air conditioning system or would you like to let me know when did you buy it or where's the next service?

Marek: Of the air con unit. Once you will put it because in the fight it's asking you for the data, then it knows that, uh, you know, 12 months from now or where is the next service. And you can imagine where is the warranty for the fridge ending. So you can consider buying a new equipment or knowing that probably somewhere that that time I can have a maintenance issue or I would need to spend some money for.

Marek: ordering someone, I don't know, to repaint my walls because the last painting was done in that moment. And besides that, I already know what's the space size, so I can estimate how many buckets of the paint I need to buy in which color.

Mehmet: And I believe because, again, we're talking about a lot of data, so the use cases that you can generate of this data is, is, is massive.

Mehmet: Of course, you don't need to share any secrets with us, but I'm just imagining because, you know, Uh, getting all this data from [00:44:00] all the sensors from, you know, even as you said, like from from the photos they take, and I mean, the model would trigger some some, you know, also maybe some actions like, Hey, something is going wrong here.

Mehmet: You need to, I don't know, like it's kind of automation more than AI, I would believe also as well, right?

Marek: Yeah, and that works for the big buildings, commercial buildings, like for your own apartment as well. So, uh, I'm trying with my colleagues here to bring the technology towards everyone. That's why it's visual.

Marek: It's no engineering. We can do it on a 2D dashboards already so far, but that's Technology that you don't want to use our technology is to be a friendly, useful, and, uh, available on a, and actually accessible on a daily basis. And this is what's our mission. Bring everything about your 3d apartment, real, true digital twin to the life.

Marek: You [00:45:00] want to buy a new sofa from Ikea? Sure. You have your model already go to the Ikea. Measure the apartment like Michael show or just download the model and place it in your, uh, living room. And then, you know, if there's enough space, there's a conflict with some other furnitures that's already possible with our software today, and you can start using free of charge since tomorrow.

Marek: So we are mostly welcome everybody just to try how the digital twin can help you out in your business or the commercial building, but also for your own apartments.

Mehmet: Great. I'm sure like, uh, and the hope like, uh, a lot of people will, will, will get, uh, excited as I get excited, honestly, about this and show interest.

Mehmet: So just out of curiosity, uh, what's the business model? Like, uh, is it like a subscription? Like how it works?

Michal: Uh, our business model is, is mainly subscription. We have a software as a service. Uh, that means that we have, uh, two different price lists. Uh, one is for the [00:46:00] individual user, the, the apartment, the, the private homes, and it's, um, monthly based, uh, payment, uh, using the credit card.

Michal: It's starting from zero because we have also the free plan for everybody. If you have limited to 10 IOT devices and 100 megabytes into the cloud space, uh, but for the, for the more, uh, for the bigger customers, we have also the enterprise, um, business, uh, plan that is for the commercial user and it's. It's always, uh, uh, the prices on the quote, uh, depends how big is the object, how many users, how many assets, how many data we can store, but we have no limitations about it.

Michal: We have the project that we have 16, 20, 20 buildings in some different places, uh, together into the one account. It's, it's not the

Marek: problem. We are talking about the, uh, an object like a airport terminal. That's hundreds of thousands of the end points, which we need to connect. And the end point for us is like a lamp on and off for that particular [00:47:00] frame on the lab.

Marek: So it's can be used for the massive projects where localization brings you a lot or for individual users, which can use it for. free of charge, or maybe we call it like a Netflix type of the fee, which goes like a nine bucks a month if you want to do it on the much more professional level, but for your just private residential apartment.

Mehmet: Uh, and of course you get also the alerting system built in as well, I believe, right? Yes. Yeah. You know,

Marek: please remember that all of your IOT and smart home system that you have from that or that or that producer works as it was, we just help you to understand it much better. And visualize it and connected the IOT data with asset information as well behind it.

Michal: Yeah, but the, but the others is also very interesting thing because in our software is the other that is coming up the pop up and you, if in one click, you are also automatically going through the, through the 3D space where it's [00:48:00] exactly located. And it's also time saving in the critical situation that somebody is only have the information.

Michal: Okay. That's the sensor with number one, two, three, five, six, zero. Uh, he's adding the alarm and somebody is need to open the papers and looking. Okay. Where is the sensor right now? It's one click and we're going directly straight in one second to the place where the, where the sensor is, is, is making the alarm.

Michal: Great.

Mehmet: Super, super exciting. Um, you know, you know, it's a very, very informative, you know, I would say, uh, discussion and, uh, you know, demonstration. Thank you, Michael, for, for, you know, walking us through this. Um, this is the question I ask always as, as we close. So where people can get in touch if they want to get more information?

Marek: Well, go to our website. Uh, try si-on.com [00:49:00] and there's everything in your fingertips. So a lot of movies, a lot of training materials, how to do it yourself there. If you want to ask us to help you out with your own installation of the Jet Twin, you can always call us, but si dash dashon do com, which is simon uh.com is.

Marek: A place that you should go and just find us there

Mehmet: great Um, you know any final thing you want to maybe something I didn't highlight you want to share before we close Yeah,

Marek: guys, the message is like this This technology is something innovative and the innovation means 3d there because a system to control your house Everybody heard about the smart home out of music automations that cost a lot of money That's really thousands of thousands of dollars euros per building to make it work Now we made this technology much better for each apartment, each house, both for the residential and the commercial buildings.

Marek: And the thing is that it's the off the shelf [00:50:00] solution. So you can start working with this tomorrow. No longer weeks of installations. You just go to the website, download the software, connect it in the four simple steps, and it takes you a couple of hours. To run your full own private

Mehmet: That's great. And uh for the audience, I will make the life easy so you will find the link in the show notes or if Of course as I was pointing you to go and watch the youtube to see the demo that michael did for us So you will see that in the description Gentlemen, really?

Mehmet: I enjoyed the discussion. I enjoyed the demo As I was telling you, a technical guy by background. So anything which, you know, uh, shows, uh, very important, plus valuable, plus, you know, breakthrough technologies as a demo, I get excited about it. So thank you for sharing this. And thank you also for sharing the story behind SimLab also as well.

Mehmet: And yeah, I wish if the audience, you know, they Hit the website through our podcast to [00:51:00] just tell, um, you know, the gentlemen here with us today, Marek and Michael that they came through the CTO show with Mehmet. So, uh, they know like, you know, how, how do you get out there and reach out to them? So as I said, again, I put the links, feel free to get in touch with them.

Mehmet: And again, thank you very much for your valuable time. I know like how busy it can get. So thank you for jumping in today and sharing, you know, the story and the technology with us. Both of you, and this is for the audience. If you just, you know, discover this podcast by luck. Thank you for passing by. I hope you enjoyed it.

Mehmet: If you did, so please give us a thumb up, share it with your friends and colleagues. And if you are one of the people who keep coming again and again, and who. Put us in the top 45 Business podcasts in dubai ranking at the 14th place. Thank you very much for doing so I really appreciate it Keep your support coming and as I say always stay tuned for a new episode very soon.