AI Articles and Analysis in Heavy industry

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.

According to this report from Deloitte, the global 3D printing industry is expected to reach $5.2 billion in 2020 and the largest opportunities for corporations in near future will be in home improvement and the life sciences sectors. Yet, today there are still several hurdles in the additive manufacturing process that need to be overcome for widespread adoption in the industry.

In a white paper about the digitalization of the chemistry and advanced materials sector published by the World Economic Forum and Accenture, total global chemical sales in 2014 amounted to $3.5 trillion and is expected to rise to $6.9 trillion by 2030.

Food processing is one of the major manufacturing sectors in the United States. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, 16 percent of the value of shipments from all U.S. manufacturing plants comes from food processing plants. These plants employ around 1.5 million workers in this country.

Our cities, streets, homes, and businesses are built for beings that walk on two legs (biped). From stairs to the shape of hallways to the placement of kitchen cabinets, all have been designed for bipeds. The fact that a society of two-legged creatures designed everything around them for bipeds is so obvious most people don’t even think about it, but it becomes a serious issue when talking about the future of robotics.

Major companies including GE, Siemens, Intel, Funac, Kuka, Bosch, NVIDIA and Microsoft are all making significant investments in machine learning-powered approaches to improve all aspects of manufacturing. The technology is being used to bring down labor costs, reduce product defects, shorten unplanned downtimes, improve transition times, and increase production speed.

It would be great if instead of having our car break down - could have them fixed as soon as the underlying problem began. It would be great if instead of having to diagnose a malfunctioning piece of mechanical equipment - would could have the right "fix" presented to us immediately. As it turns out, artificial intelligence may be working its way to accomplish both of those goals in the not-so-distant future.

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.