If there’s one message that’s ringing true already on day one at the WebRTC Conference & Expo it’s that the potential of WebRTC goes way beyond the browser. Partnered with the Internet of Things (IoT), WebRTC has the ability to make endpoints smarter.
Take the Plantronics sensor-enabled headset. The company is not trying to get people to adopt a new form factor. On the contrary, most people in the enterprise and mobile professionals already use headsets for a lot of their communications. Plantronics is making the headset smarter by adding new capabilities – such as a gesture-based UI – and helping users connect to more things more seamlessly.
I caught up with Mike Holmlund, software product marketing manager at Plantronics, to discuss the company’s involvement with WebRTC, how the Internet of Things is changing communications as we know it and how wearable technology plays a role in the development of both WebRTC and IoT.
“Our goal is to make it easy for users to connect our devices to the different audio platforms they’re using,” Holmlund explained. The growth of IP telephony and unified communications over the last ten or so years is driving the need for people to connect to everything, and that’s what Plantronics tries to help them do.
He explains that the Internet of Things will soon shift to an “Internet of Your Things.” A trip on an airplane, for example, will involve logging into personal screens for each seat that gives access to all of our personal data – access is key, as we are on our way to being able to retrieve any data when we want it, no matter where we are.
Holmlund emphasizes that wearable technology is helping bridge the gap between being able to access the most relevant, important and actionable data. Plantronics is working with companies like Intel, AT&T, Lync and Cisco to experiment with integration and different use cases of WebRTC functionality and wearable technology.
Plantronics envisions a world that becomes more tailored over time – technology will provide very granular information that makes experiences more personalized and customizable. Its sensor-enabled headset, for example, can collect data that includes the direction and angle of someone’s head, proximity to their workstations, body temperature, location, speed and more to develop more useful apps. For example, there’s a free fall option with the Platronics headset app that can be especially beneficial for elder care; the device can detect when a user is falling, and can be set to alert EMS or a medical authority if not reset in a designated amount of time.
WebRTC, he explains, is the universal backbone for a lot of these services. It can optimize the voice and data usage to improve performance, battery life and more for devices. Last year, Plantronics unviled source code that integrates headset functionality for WebRTC environments, including call control and contextual data such as proximity and state information.
Plantronics will be discussing this topics more in depth in a session, “Moving Beyond the Browser: Opportunities, Impacts and Realities of WebRTC in an ‘Internet of Things’ World,” featuring Plantronics CTO and SVP of Technology Joe Burton, and its senior director of innovation, new ventures Cary Bran discuss WebRTC in a closing panel on Thursday.
Want to learn more about Plantronics? Visit the company at the WebRTC Conference & Expo, happening Nov. 19-21 in Santa Clara, Calif. Plantronics is a diamond sponsor of the event and will be exhibiting in booth #309.
Edited by
Cassandra Tucker
