Why should we pool resources for innovation?

Operations and management of our buildings face major challenges. We are an industry that lags behind technologically. We are the industry that has been slowest to adopt IoT and new technologies – in fact, agriculture is ahead of us according to McKinsey 2016.

That is why, together with Martin McGloing, we launched a "crowdfunding" campaign to raise 800,000 kroner to buy Spot itself – the robot dog from Boston Dynamics.

After a slightly crazy idea that arose in the podcast Praktisk Proptech, we have invited both tech enthusiasts and landlords to a national, digital community effort to buy and test Spot, or Lassie as she has been renamed.

– Everyone in the construction industry has seen her in presentations and seminars, and she is a YouTube and TikTok star. Now we can actually order her, and most importantly, test her out!

The Russians sent Laika to the moon – we're bringing Lassie to Norway!!

If we manage to raise enough money, the moon landing will take place at Proptech Bergen's premises at Kokstad. There she will be programmed and trained to carry out the daily operational routines of the building. She will then be sent on tour to landlords around the country – and we need suggestions for buildings that can serve as demo buildings for everyone who wants to learn across the country!

What are we going to test?

Lassie is programmed via a tablet, much like a remote-controlled car. She can remember, see and feel.

She can therefore repeat tasks automatically – for example, checking emergency exits every morning at 08:00 or doing a night round of the building every hour during the night.

The idea is that Lassie will take care of heavy, tedious and risky tasks, such as going up to the roof to check gutters or measuring moisture in dark basements with poor ventilation. Operations staff can use their time on more important tasks. She is easy to programme and we have many goals.

– Instead of operations staff taking their pen and manually reading energy meters, Lassie can take a photo of the numbers, process it and send it to the cloud. Are adjustments needed? She can handle that too.

– Does the fire alarm go off? Send Lassie out – the sensors she will be equipped with can measure carbon monoxide, smoke and CO2, and she can take a photo of the area. If it's a false alarm, she reports back. If there's a fire, she can alert the fire service and the landlord by SMS.

– Not replacing people

– Won't she replace people if she becomes as capable as you think? is a question many ask us.

– The answer is that she takes over some of the work tasks and frees up capacity for operations staff. 90 percent of what they do today is routine tasks. Many buildings in reality have very few deviations, but the deviations still need to be checked. This is what Lassie can run around and do. Without the humans the robots don't function, so it's about the interplay between the two.

We must acknowledge that the ageing population is not just something that is going to affect the healthcare system. Just as we don't have enough nurses for our elderly, we are going to run short of operators and technicians to look after our buildings.

We need to find a new best friend for the caretaker – one that can assist with many of the manual tasks in the building that often involve seeing, hearing, feeling that everything is working as it should and is safe. These are tasks we will test and "train" Lassie to do.

Only imagination sets the limit?

With the ability to programme the robot in an advanced way, only imagination limits what jobs it can do. The robot has what is called an open SDK, meaning it is freely programmable and only imagination sets the limits.

If someone rings a doorbell, we can have Lassie go down to the entrance, open the door and say "welcome in, who would you like to meet today?"

Bottom of the class

The oil industry has already adopted the robot, while the construction and civil engineering sector, which is in last place for digitalisation and last place in use of IoT devices, has not yet done so. We hope Lassie can get the industry moving, and together we'll make this happen!

So far we have received around 300,000 kroner through the crowdfunding, an open platform for pooling money.

The Toma Group, Frydenbø Eiendom, Hourglas, Energy Control/Proptech Bergen, InfraCity, Airthings, HaTo Gruppen, AMTEK, Eiendomsmeglerfordeg.no, Angvik Utvikling, Angarde, Proptech Innovation and Kahrs Eiendom are among the contributors. In addition several private individuals have contributed.

What is so exciting about this way of thinking is that the platform Spot is built on was designed for sharing. It was therefore entirely natural to solve this by "crowdfunding" together and sharing together.

If we achieve this, no one can any longer say that the property industry can't collaborate and that everyone sits in their separate corner with their expertise. Lassie will help bring about all of this.

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