Logitech looks for sweet spot in office collaboration

In response to companies’ need for visibility into space usage as more workers return to the office, tech provider Logitech has launched Spot, a modern-day sensor that combines occupancy and environmental data to strengthen workplace insights and automation.

The latest addition to its Space Management portfolio of desk and room booking solutions, Logitech Spot is a multipurpose tool designed to help IT leaders and workplace/facilities managers ensure real estate and room designs meet employee needs and allow HR managers to ensure employees are productive and engaged at the office.

Spot is designed to be used in various spaces, including phone booths, pods, lounges and flexible areas, to understand space utilisation and environmental conditions. The sensor is also able to provide insights for non-video rooms and no-tech rooms. It collects insights into space utilisation, air quality and energy efficiency so that businesses can make informed decisions regarding room health and working conditions, office energy consumption and real estate planning. It also investigates how environmental factors affect employees and offers automation to make space booking more efficient.

Spot’s key feature is the combination of environmental and occupancy data. A modern-day sensor provides a health score that measures the air quality of a given space, while an energy score is designed to help firms identify improvement areas for energy usage and provide a better understanding of how rooms are occupied and used for collaboration.

With the two sets of environmental data, Logitech said IT departments can access environmental insights for individual rooms or across various spaces to identify actionable insights for healthier conditions, such as temperature, humidity, particulate matter, CO₂ levels, air flow and air quality. Metrics on energy efficiency conditions, such as overheating, overcooling or over-ventilating, help companies take action to reduce the energy consumption of their offices.

As regards how it can enable workplace automation, Spot’s radar-based occupancy sensor detects whether spaces are occupied, enabling rooms to be automatically booked or released without the need for individuals to manually change the room status.

Logitech Spot integrates with Tap Scheduler and Logitech View to make finding available spaces simple and intuitive, and the sensor can use the artificial intelligence (AI) viewfinder on Rally Bar to access room occupancy data to inform space planning decisions. The use of radar and LoRaWAN gives access to occupancy and insights using very little power, according to the manufacturer.

Additional features include radar-based occupancy detection to offer precise occupancy data, enabling automated and accurate room booking, and the system is compatible with Microsoft Places, Zoom Workplace Reservation and Logitech Room Booking. In addition, Logitech Spot’s data can be integrated with workplace platforms such as Appspace, Metrikus and Samsung SmartThings Pro, and will be available through sync application programming interfaces.

At the same time as launching Spot, Logitech has announced Rally Board 65, an all-in-one portable video conference solution that combines intelligent audio and video with a 65in touchscreen display. Rally Board 65 can roll on a cart into satellite offices to offer a suite of AI-powered features with occupancy and environmental detection. The video conferencing solution works in Android, PC or bring-your-own-device mode, whether teams use Microsoft Teams, Zoom or Google Meet.

Explaining the launch, Logitech said businesses want to provide modern video conferencing tools for their hybrid workforces, but IT teams are grappling with increasing workloads as their tech environments become more complicated.

“Hybrid workers expect all spaces to be video-enabled and adaptable enough to collaborate on a moment’s notice, whether in an open space, traditional room, collaborative room or learning space,” commented Prakash Arunkundrum, chief operating officer and general manager of Logitech for Business. “So we asked ourselves: how can we create a smart, supremely sophisticated conferencing system, while drastically simplifying setup.”