Cisco + NVIDIA Use AI & Machine Learning to Create Amazing Experiences for Working From Anywhere
We are proud to say we have partnered with NVIDIA for some time now. The NVIDIA processor powers Cisco’s Webex Panorama Series, Room Series, Room Kit Series, Webex Boards, and the DeskPro. The chipset enables the intelligence of the Webex Assistant, face recognition, noise suppression, and best view to frame meeting participants. These features continue to be vital in adjusting to working remotely.
For those of us who are used to working in an office where we meet with colleagues face to face and gather our teams in the same physical space to collaborate to get work done, working remotely can be an adjustment.
But Cisco and NVIDIA branded technologies can ease the adjustment and make remote work more comfortable and more productive.
Great Video and Audio are Essential for Engagement When Working From Home
Just last week, Jason Hansen, Head of Growth & Strategic Communication for Webex Rooms at Cisco, published Workplace Turn On Video-Its No Longer Optional, describing how video conferencing is the next best way to emulate face-to-face communication when working remotely. Video allows us to make eye contact and pick up on non-verbal cues like facial expressions and body language. Participants can see how their comments are received. Leaders can assess if and when the discussion is losing the attention span of attendees.
In a second article, Workplace Experiences: How Remote Work is Transforming the Workplace Sandeep Mehra points out that by 2024, Gartner estimates that only 25% of enterprise meetings will take place in person.
We hear anecdotally from leaders of organizations that video usage is helping with employee morale and mental health as people continue to feel isolated in remote work.
Using A/V applications at home may not feel immediately intuitive or natural for some remote workers. Still, Cisco Webex video devices are rich with AI/ML designed for the exact purpose to make connecting with teams for work or social check-ins a much better and intuitive experience, with proper audio and video for maximum engagement. This intelligence is powered by NVIDIA’s Jetson chip, which alleviates a lot of the discomfort and helps employees embrace working from home as the new norm.
Socially Close and Physical Distancing with Webex
Staying at home doesn’t mean you have to miss out on workplace perks like fitness and to socialize with co-workers. Our Cisco Webex team in Norway has started to conduct daily yoga via a video conference, which organically resulted from their total comfort with video and audio for one on one, or group collaboration, and brings social unity even while being responsible digital citizens.
Our UK-based team, uses Webex for a tea-time check-in to remain connected. Also, our Cisco Webex team in Norway has started to conduct daily yoga via a video conference.
AI and ML Technology Working in the Background to Make Your Meeting Experience Comfortable
A video might also feel uncomfortable for remote employees who don’t want to expose the background of their homes to their colleagues. With the new Cisco Webex Desk Pro, you can easily blur the existing background of your home office, or pick a fun or better environment to hide the mess or chaos behind you to focus on what you are trying to do.
Another discomfort of working from home can be unpredictable background noises. With machine learning through the NVIDIA chipset, our devices can discern voice from other background noises like a dog barking, ambulance siren, or the pesky loud typist.
And just because you are working from home, you don’t have to be tethered to your chair. With our auto-sensing camera, you can step away from your chair, pace around as you ideate, and let the AI technology in your Webex device focus the camera on you with our facial detection capabilities. It crops the video and auto frames you while you experience a natural way of collaborating as you would in person, possibly even better than in person.
With facial recognition, you can also see name tags of participants in your meetings to give you more context for a more personal meeting experience.
All this incredible machine learning and AI is happening right on the device, which increases the computational speed while reducing bandwidth and latency of traversing to the cloud for the cognitive functionality.
With Cisco Collaboration and the NVIDIA chipset, we control the end-to-end experience for maximum comfort as you conduct meetings from one home to another as we optimize the entire journey from device to network to data center cloud application to the other endpoint.
In-Home Collaboration
To recap, the best in-home collaboration experience is enabled with the following:
- Superior video and audio
- Background blurring or changing on video
- Intelligent detection of voice to tone down other background noise
- Automatic Video framing
- Name tags of meeting participants
Whether you join from Webex Teams or Meetings, you enjoy the same experience and comfort. This is enabled on nearly the entire portfolio of Webex Rooms devices with the embedded NVIDIA Jetson chip, which includes Webex Board, Room Panorama, Desk Pro, Room, and Room Kit Series.
In Closing
Webex is the #1 business platform for video collaboration in the world, but it is not just video conferencing. It is more integrated. It is more secure. It is more reliable. And even more importantly, it is easy-to-use, which means that governments, universities, enterprises, and people like you and I can get online, be on video, and collaborate remotely faster and reliably. The better experience led to more employee engagement, and simplified, intuitive experiences lead to more comfort and adoption, all of which makes working from home less stressful and more productive. So, while we are all weathering today’s storm, we prepare ourselves for a real workplace transformation where our workforce, workstyles, and workspace differences take a back seat to human-centric collaborative experiences that gives more purpose to our contributions.
Learn how collaboration devices can support your workplace transformation
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Workplace Experiences: #TurnOnVideo – It’s No Longer Optional
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