AI Articles and Analysis about Logistics

Supply chain management (SCM) is critical in almost every industry today - but it hasn't received as much focus from AI startups and vendor companies compared to healthcare, finance, and retail. Businesses are showing increased interest in AI applications, from its benefits to fully leveraging the vast amounts of data collected by industrial logistics, warehousing and transportation systems.

In early 2017, Amazon unveiled a new application of AI outside its online domain: Amazon Go, an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered grocery where there are no cashiers and checkout lines. Shoppers activate the store’s smartphone app upon entering the store, grab the items they need, and leave through the same “gates” they enter without pausing to pull out a credit card or cash. Their Amazon account is automatically charged for what they take.

Episode summary: In this week’s episode of AI in Industry we speak with Rodney Brooks, Founder and CTO of Rethink Robotics, a collaborative robot manufacturer founded in Boston in 2008. Rodney explores robotic safety regulations and he also paints a picture of what robots might be capable of in the next five years.

Agriculture plays a vital role in India’s economy. Over 58 percent of the rural households depend on agriculture as their principal means of livelihood, according to an IBEF report. Agricultural exports constitute 10 percent of the country’s exports and is the fourth-largest exported principal commodity category in India.

The precipitous drop in the price of drones and the intelligent guidance systems that power them has created a broad range of commercial applications (we covered industrial drone applications in a previous article). One use-case that has captured popular attention and large scale investment from a variety of retailers and start ups is autonomous delivery vehicles.

While self-driving trucks and self-driving cars make use of much of the same technology to power their AI systems, it would be a mistake to think the expected roll out date of both developments to would be identical. Their similarities can easily mask their significant differences.

Just as car companies are betting big that self-driving vehicles will change our roads, shipping companies are making a similar bet that automation will change how we move goods around the world. For autonomous ships, the open ocean may prove to be more fertile ground for the adoption of full automation than crowded city streets.

There’s a lot of buzz about artificial intelligence shaking up enterprise procurement over the next five years. Procurement leaders wonder what elements of their jobs will be augmented - or even fully automated - by the intelligent systems. Which roles are secure from full automation, and how will more “automate-able” jobs have to adapt in the years ahead?