Google LLC is scaling up on video conferencing with the announcement of the new Google Meet Series One hardware in collaboration with Lenovo Group Ltd.
The Google Meet Series One Room Kits (pictured) is tailored for organizations that have adopted the concept of creating more agile, dispersed teams in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. Those teams will need a secure way to connect and work effectively, and that’s what Google is doing with its latest hardware.
“As businesses consider a secure return to the workplace, many are preparing a combination of virtual and in-person work environments,” Google Meet Community Product Manager TJ Varghese wrote in a blog post. “This makes it more important than ever to incorporate video strategies that are both beneficial and inclusive. Series One is equipped for this and comes with the strongest Google AI built-in.
These high-end room kits are operated by the Google Meet Computing Device, which acts as a kind of hardware nerve center and uses most of the same infrastructure as Google’s cloud data centers. The Meet Computing system can be operated by Coral M.2 accelerator modules with Google Edge tensor units. This allows onboard artificial intelligence-based audio and video processing to achieve both high performance and confidentiality.
Hardware can be handled safely via the Google Admin console in G Suite, allowing remote system configuration, status checking, and minor problem resolution without having to move within the physical meeting room, Varghese said.
Meetings are handled through a 10-inch touchscreen controller that acts as a kind of virtual guide and offers a summary of the attendees, for example. However, the kits are also equipped with Google Assistant, which makes it easier to execute several activities, including beginning and completing sessions, using voice commands.
The kits come with a standard or extra-large true 4 K video capture smart camera and a Smart Audio Bar centered on eight beam-forming microphones, with the largest setup capable of transmitting up to 44 channels collectively. The cameras use AI to capture the conference participants automatically without any failure in image quality.
Audio consistency is also a big deal, and hardware integrates AI-based noise cancellation and speech enhancement technologies to block out unwanted noises while ensuring that people’s voices are crystal clear.
Plenty of add-ons are also available, including extra microphone pods and audio bars for room-filling stereo sound in larger rooms. The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the standard of collaboration requirements for companies. In recent months, several businesses have had meetings postponed or shortened due to AV equipment not operating properly or people not knowing how to use it.
There are several reasons why collaborative technology struggles, but one of the key perpetrators is the segregation between hardware and software, said Analyst Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. Google intends to fix this with specialized collaborations that certify the convergence between hardware and apps. New hardware should also have a better chance of succeeding in difficult, real-life teamwork scenarios.
New hardware should also have a better chance of succeeding in difficult, real-life teamwork scenarios. If all of this goes well, Series One room kits will decrease a lot of frustration for Google Meet users.
The release of the Google Meet Series One hardware comes a few months after Google announced it was making Meet open to all users for free. There are, however, certain drawbacks. Google enables a capacity of just 100 members and a time limit of 60 minutes per workshop, with audiences limited to 100,000.
