I've watched
my father build this business and I've watched everyone working in it
over the last 30 years,
and it's moved from a wonderful, exciting mechanical business
where products that have huge benefit with physics, into a new area
very much focused on software and cloud communication and mobile devices,
enabling products to do sophisticated things beyond mechanics.
Well, I actually think this is still very sci fi, you know.... in its looks
but not necessarily in the way it's controlled.
I mean, the cyclone is still an incredible physical phenomenon,
but the monitoring and the controls of our latest technologies
is just in a different world and different generation.
You know, things are moving extremely fast.
And what we're able to create is becoming limitless and great, great fun.
Ten years ago, there were probably about 50 pure software developers.
We're now at about 650 globally.
Software used to be around controlling low level devices,
but now it's absolutely critical in every single function we do.
So we really talk about embedded software,
which is all the software that goes on the product itself.
We've got app developers, we've got cloud developers,
and then we have these layers of software that lives on the product.
We renovated this airport and these hangars for top secret cutting edge
future projects and technologies that we're working on for Dyson,
which carve the way to 2030.
And we used to have a five year outlook,
but we're very focused on a 15 year outlook now.
And here is, you know, it's like Fort Knox
I'm allowing you in today because I'm watching you like a hawk.
We have a range of products here which are recognised Dyson products.
Six years ago
we had the idea of connecting a purifier,
and this enables the consumer to monitor the air quality of their home real time.
What's happened
is that the hundreds of thousands of people
that have these products has given us this incredible data.
With all of this data
we can start to map out what's going on around the world.
Stefan, how many connected purifiers
are there out there in the world?
So we have 4 million at the moment.
We have a live track of 4 million purifiers?
Yeah, it's quite useful because we can see these pollution events that happen right now.
We're probably the only one in the world to have that functionality
of alerting people around sandstorms, wildfires or anything like that.
Here we've had 200 million requests, messages in the last 24 hours
from our machines.
200 million. In the last 24 hours.
So that gives you an idea of the kind of scale we're operating in.
So 200 million interactions.
Yes, these are machines sending us information and data points.
With the Dyson Zone
we're very, very focused on people's health
and this is connected too
and it's critical that it's connected so the consumer can also see
how they're protecting themselves by wearing this device.
All we had to do when we launched our first vacuum cleaner
back in the early 1990s is turn the motor on. That's all we were doing.
And now it'll tell you how much battery life or run time you've got left.
It'll tell you the power mode it's in and what it's adjusted to
according to the floor type, and tell you when you need to wash your filter.
And it will also tell you exactly what dust particles you've picked up
and how many you've picked up as you're vacuuming.
When I move over that sugar,
you'll see that the particle is being counted on this screen here.
All of this has been enabled by a meridian of sensors embedded into the product.
This sensing allows us to get a greater performance
out of the product to create maximum efficiency
and take that control in a way out of the consumer's hands.
This is probably one of the best examples
of the huge advantages for the consumer and the huge advantage to us
that the consumer no longer
has to walk around their home vacuuming. The product will do it for them.
And we can improve the product and its performance after they've bought it.
So imagine a world where the product is fixed within 24 hours
or replaced before you even knew there was something wrong with it.
We want to take that anxiety away from consumers.
We're absolutely, completely disinterested in gimmick
or fruitless features.
Where the research and technology is taking us and the new ideas we have,
this is becoming more ripe, and there are far more benefits
for consumers and far more benefits to us, to the business.
But we need more engineers.
We have great plans, great ambitions, and our products
are getting more sophisticated. So it's an exciting future.