Why CRE Professionals Should Cheer Algorithm Advances

Generally, you’re not going to look at algorithms—the step-by-step instructions that developers use to direct programs in solving problems. But there are a couple of interesting new developments that might help you appreciate what happens behind the curtain.

An algorithmic redesign can boost performance or let a system do things it never could have before. XY Sense, which has technology for understand corporate CRE occupancy, announced its new patent-pending algorithm that improves how quickly and accurately its systems can scan a space.

The company claims the new algorithm allows it to detect human occupancy in a 1,022 square foot (95 square meter) space with greater than 98.5% accuracy.

“Developed by XY Sense’s in-house team of machine learning experts, version two of the XY Sense detection algorithm (XYDA2.0) utilizes new machine learning techniques to rapidly detect live human occupancy, avoid duplicate detections and more efficiently process raw detection data on XY Sense Area Sensors,” said the press release.

The company says that the new algorithm can reduce duplicate detections by 83% and false positive detections—mistaking a plant for a person as an example—by a third. It also gained 27% in true positive detections. In total, a 2 percentage point increase in accuracy.

“Two percent matters when you need to know if a desk or room is free in real-time,” the release quoted XY Sense CTO Luke Murray. “This new detection algorithm is a game-changing step in our mission towards ~100% sensor accuracy.”

Greater accuracy means improved efficiency in undertaking basic operational activities in an office.

But there’s a second example, and one that is astounding in a geeky and fundamental way. Google’s DeepMind announced a system called AlphaDev, which just discovered faster sorting algorithms.

Putting things into order by numbers, letters, or some other characteristic of information, probably seems boring. However, ordering data is one of the fundamental actions that happens an untold number of times every day in so much software that some of what you do every day is probably governed by it.

Databases, lists, menus, looking through complex spreadsheets, search engine result ranking, searching for a property that has the characteristics that you are looking for—all this and so much more depends on sorting. The standard algorithms that programmers regularly use were developed through tedious work over decades. Every slight improvement being a tremendous win. And now an AI program discovered “enhanced computer science algorithms – surpassing those honed by scientists and engineers over decades.”

Will it speed your day? If you tally all the things that a computer does constantly in your work and personal life, very possibly. It certainly will come in handy with any system you use at work.