Showing posts with label robotics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label robotics. Show all posts

The Next Big Think Podcast: Why Industry 4.0 is About Industrial Automation

Our guest in today's podcast is Daniel Raj David.  He figured out as a student engineer in university that asset monitoring and maintenance, especially in legacy-led industries like oil and gas, was complicated. So, he and a bunch of friends devised a plan to make it simpler.

Daniel Raj David is the co-founder and CEO of startup Detect Technologies, a company that is part of TCS' COIN™ Accelerator program. Detect Technologies focuses on industrial AI and SaaS, and is reimagining global industrial productivity. In this episode of The Next Big Think!, we delve into Industry 4.0. Daniel demystifies legacy transformation in industries like oil and energy, construction, and manufacturing. The conversation also explores how technology’s primary role is to digitize, de-risk, and automate business. Listen in to know more about how AI, IoT, drones, and ML are freeing up human capital to think, ideate, and design, and why ‘the next big think’ is industrial automation.

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Kevin Benedict
Partner | Futurist at TCS
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Digital Intelligence

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Will You Trust a Robot?

Jeff Bezos and team launched 66.5 miles into suborbital space on a rocket ship with no pilot this week.  The rocket ship operated autonomously using sensors and artificial intelligence.  That takes trust. They had to believe in the science and that the AI system would get them safely there and back.  They had to have trust in the scientists, programmers, engineers, physicists and chemists.  They had to have trust in the math and physics.  They had to trust the coding and formulas used in the algorithms.  They had to trust in the data coming from the sensors.  Although there were likely many failures along the way, they trusted the process - the scientific method.

Speed and Transformational Leadership


It took Magellan’s crew three years sailing ships to circumnavigate the earth.  Today, at hypersonic speeds of 7,680 MPH, it takes just over three hours to circumnavigate the earth.  Data on the Internet, however, travels at 670 million mph, which means it only takes milliseconds to circumnavigate the earth.  In this age of digital businesses and digital interactions, companies must digitally transform to work effectively in a world where global business and information moves at these mind-blowing speeds.

It's not just IT systems that are impacted by the volume and speed of information.  The creators of business processes that were designed and developed in an analog area, simply never envisioned a business environment that would require these operational tempos.  Analog business processes were designed to have humans involved.  These dependencies were designed to slow down the process to ensure accuracy, compliance and accountability.  Today, however, operating at the slow speeds of an analog, human dependent business process, will doom your company.  Analog business processes must be quickly automated via robotic process automation using artificial intelligence and machine learning to effectively interact with impatient digital customers and B2B partners.

Being Faster than Real-Time is a Competitive Advantage

Competing in Future-Time
Businesses must continuously transform themselves to compete.  Why?  That is what their customers and competition are doing.  One of those areas of transformation involves competing in time.  Think about the impact of Amazon on shopping and delivery times!  All businesses operate in time, whether human, digital or future.  Businesses today must transform in order to successfully compete in all three of these time states simultaneously.

Let’s first discuss the definitions of these times:
  • Human time – time governed by our physical, biological and mental limitations as humans
  • Digital time – time governed by computing and networking speeds
  • Future time – time governed by predictive analytics and algorithms

Digital Expert Interviews: Intelligent Automation Expert Alex Veytsman

Intelligent Automation is one of the most exciting and fast growing areas in high tech today.  Everyday we read, watch and listen about more robots, artificial intelligence, sensors and other innovations.  In today's interview with Wipro's Intelligent Automation expert Alex Veytsman, we get to the bottom of the hype and ask the expert what companies are really doing with intelligent automation.  Enjoy!



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Kevin Benedict
Principal Analyst, Futurist, the Center for Digital Intelligence™
Website C4DIGI.com
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin's YouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Technologies
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Digital Technology and the Greater Good

Adam Smith wrote about the concept of rational self-interest, which posits we work together for the greater good when it benefits ourselves. Does this concept have relevance in the context of robots, automation and employment? I think it does.

I believe most of us would agree that replacing large numbers of humans with machines that result in wide scale unemployment and suffering is not in our rational self-interest. Having massive numbers of jobs terminated by the Terminator does not result in a safer, healthier civilization or vibrant economy; therefore, it is not in our best interest.

Just because something is possible, does not mean it is good. A powerful king that takes all the food, property and means of production away from his people resulting in their suffering, quickly becomes a target of their wrath, and on a quick path to poverty.

Businesses that replace human workers with machines and software, out of self-interest, will over time find it increasingly difficult to sell their products to their unemployed or underemployed consumers. At what point do businesses seek to expand employment opportunities out of a rational self-interest rather than decrease them through automation? Is it a realistic option for profit maximizing businesses to seek the greater good?

In the short-term, factories hope to benefit from automation faster than their competition in order to gain advantages, while there are still sufficient numbers of consumers employed elsewhere to provide a market for their goods. In the mid-term, entire industries will automate and terminate large numbers of jobs, but hope other, slower-to-automate industries will employ their consumer base. In the long-term, however, when digital transformation has swept through all industries, who is left to employ the consumers and provide them living wages, and who is left with capital to buy goods?

As jobs that require little training or education diminish in numbers, we have two choices, 1) Increase education levels to equip our population for the digital future, or 2) subsidize the unemployed and underemployed with a sufficient income to survive and maintain their dignity. If there are still not enough jobs for those that work hard to increase their level of education, then we are reduced to one choice.

There are plenty of problems left on this planet to be solved. Solving these problems could employ many. Today, however, not all of these problems have economic values assigned to them. Fresh water sources, clean air, forestation, peace, better health, better education, etc., all of these have the potential to generate enormous economic benefits, but they need society to place a value on them and reward innovations and employment in these areas.

A vibrant economy, and a safe and secure society depend on healthy employment numbers, adequate wages, property ownership and rights, hope, peace and purpose. Digital transformation must foster these goals, or risks accelerating a break down in our society and economy – two things that can dampen a New Year’s celebration.

Follow Kevin Benedict on Twitter @krbenedict, or read more of his articles on digital transformation strategies here:


  1. Video Report: 40 Months of Hyper-Digital Transformation
  2. Report: 40 Months of Hyper-Digital Transformation
  3. Virtual Moves to Real in with Sensors and Digital Transformation
  4. Technology Must Disappear in 2017
  5. Merging Humans with AI and Machine Learning Systems
  6. In Defense of the Human Experience in a Digital World
  7. Profits that Kill in the Age of Digital Transformation
  8. Competing in Future Time and Digital Transformation
  9. Digital Hope and Redemption in the Digital Age
  10. Digital Transformation and the Role of Faster
  11. Digital Transformation and the Law of Thermodynamics
  12. Jettison the Heavy Baggage and Digitally Transform
  13. Digital Transformation - The Dark Side
  14. Business is Not as Usual in Digital Transformation
  15. 15 Rules for Winning in Digital Transformation
  16. The End Goal of Digital Transformation
  17. Digital Transformation and the Ignorance Penalty
  18. Surviving the Three Ages of Digital Transformation
  19. The Advantages of an Advantage in Digital Transformation
  20. From Digital to Hyper-Transformation
  21. Believers, Non-Believers and Digital Transformation
  22. Forces Driving the Digital Transformation Era
  23. Digital Transformation Requires Agility and Energy Measurement
  24. A Doctrine for Digital Transformation is Required
  25. Digital Transformation and Its Role in Mobility and Competition
  26. Digital Transformation - A Revolution in Precision Through IoT, Analytics and Mobility
  27. Competing in Digital Transformation and Mobility
  28. Ambiguity and Digital Transformation
  29. Digital Transformation and Mobility - Macro-Forces and Timing
  30. Mobile and IoT Technologies are Inside the Curve of Human Time
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Kevin Benedict
Senior Analyst, Center for the Future of Work, Cognizant
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin's YouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Interview: Robots, Digital Transformation and Intelligent Process Automation

Robots bring to our minds images of dangerous humanoids, but business process robots look different and behave in very positive ways.  In this important conversation with three robot and automation experts, they reveal the presence of robots all around us, and their expanding roles in companies today.  Enjoy!

Read the report - The Robot and I: How New Digital Technologies Are Making Smart People and Businesses Smarter. ************************************************************************
Kevin Benedict
Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst
Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant
View my profile on LinkedIn
Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Robots and I - Intelligent Process Automation, Siri and More

Today I had the privilege of interviewing two robotics and process automation experts.  I learned there are many different kinds of robots including the humanoid types we see in movies, and robots made entirely out of software.  In this interview we discuss Rob Brown's recent white paper titled Robots and I, the different forms of robots, and then dig deep into how software robots are transforming many industries today with expert Matt Smith.  Enjoy!

Video Link: https://youtu.be/qOPFD3vshec


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Kevin Benedict
Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst
Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant
View my profile on LinkedIn
Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Robotics and Business Process Services - The Interview

Last week I learned much and will share some of it here today.  Although I have worked with Cognizant for over 2 years, I have not had many opportunities to actually meet large numbers of my colleagues.  I have been traveling the world speaking at conferences, teaching and writing.  That was solved last week, however, in Orlando where I was able to meet many colleagues that I had previously only communicated with over conference calls and video chats.

One of those colleagues from the Center for the Future of Work at Cognizant, Rob Brown, is an expert in business process services.  He shared with me the advances robotics are making in the area of business processes.  Not the kind of metal, walking and talking robots we see in movies, but robots that assist humans in their jobs every day.  In this interview Rob Brown explains it.  Enjoy!

Video Link: http://youtu.be/18Iy0eOe_pQ?list=UUGizQCw2Zbs3eTLwp7icoqw




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Kevin Benedict
Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst
Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant
View my profile on LinkedIn
Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies
***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

The Internet of My Things and How It Works

IoT MyThings
In this article, my ever brilliant friend and colleague, Ved Sen, shares what the IoT (Internet of Things) is really about and the processes, technologies, systems and strategies behind it.
***

So there’s been all this talk about the Internet of Things. What the heck is it? You may well be cautious. Especially since it’s currently perched at the peak of the Gartner Hype curve for 2014.

So I started thinking about this by listing all the ‘things’ I interact with. From my house & home to the trains I take and from the clothes I wear to the hotel room I might live in on my travel. Obviously you can get many levels in the hierarchy. The home is a complex construct, and comprises many sub-things. Example – rooms, walls, plumbing. Some of these, such as ‘heating’ may have further sub-components – radiators, boilers, etc.  The resultant picture looks something like this, at a very high level. Of course, this is hugely inadequate for detail, but you get the conceptual model.

Then I started thinking about an appropriately benign and traditionally less intelligent ‘thing’ – like a window. Everybody has windows at home and they affect our everyday lives.  They have states (open/ shut), based on the environment and conditions. For example we associate safety, air-conditioning and sunlight with windows being open or closed, and based on the weather, time of day, etc.  So I drew this table of the different emotions and feelings we derive, the specific benefits they deliver, the activity or state associated with this and the conditions under which these states need to be enabled.

IoT State and Benefits
At this point, I came to an important realisation. Products can be smart and controllable, they can even react to the environment, all without the help of the internet. For example, we have some Velux(TM) windows on the skylights. These windows come with a remote control, they can be opened and closed and they can also react to weather conditions and close if left open when it starts to rain. So they are actually smart, in some way, and possess the capability to communicate. They’re just not on the internet. The challenge of this model is that my ability to control these outcomes is limited to the pre-set automations and my being in close proximity – i.e. at home. (Disclaimer: I’m obviously referring to the specific models we have installed. Velux does not have any IOT proclamations on it’s website, but this is not to say that they don’t have or are planning to launch models that come with their own smartphone apps, which allow control of windows from anywhere.)

This excellent article by Michael Porter & James Heppelman posits that all products in future should have:
  1. Mechanical/ electrical components
  2. Software components
  3. Communication components 
These three collectively make products smarter and ultimately evolve to product systems (e.g. home security) and then to a ‘system of systems’ model (e.g. connected homes) – which spans an entire problem domain, according to the authors.

The kind of activities that we can perform on smart products evolves from monitoring, to control, optimisation and then to autonomy. Ultimately this leads, according to the authors, to improved competitive performance via operational efficiencies and strategic positioning choices. Often, forcing the question ‘What business are we in?’

So for example the Velux windows we have installed, have a rain sensor, which allows them to automatically close if it starts to rain, they don’t have a sun-sensor, which allows them to re-open when the sun comes out again. Of course, I may not want them to open just because the sun is out. So it needs my intervention. I can only do this from home, currently, which is a constraint. Putting the Velux windows to one side, for all my windows, I would also like to be reminded if ground floor windows are left open at night or when I’m away. If I had pollen allergies, I would probably like to be alerted if the pollen count is too high, or have the windows close. I would like to be able to open all multiple windows or close them, even if I’m not at home, based on weather conditions.

So you see, we have a need for state information (monitoring) as well as control. I might even have settings for ‘sunny day’ which applies a set of commands to all windows. This is the optimisation that the article above refers to. These control should extend to blinds (effectively these are a part of my window settings). This is where we consider windows as a product system, whereas currently, we tend to have completely different suppliers for these 2 products (windows and curtains/blinds). Any maker of smart windows must therefore consider blinds and curtains as a part of their product system.
Now, considering any smart and connected product, we could argue that they have sensors, which generate data, which are used by apps, which enable access and control of the product, and provide additional functions that ultimately deliver a benefit. The sensors are obviously on-board the device/ product. But the data generated could be anywhere, typically on a cloud, so that the apps and the access can take place through any connected control point (such as a mobile phone).
IoT Data Access Function Layers

This is where the internet of things really kicks in. In my previous example of the Velux window models which we have installed, the data, access, applications and controls all sit within a closed system involving the window and the remote control. You could argue therefore that a true IoT model requires a cloud based data and access model and an ability to use the data and control/ monitor the product from any device and application that is authorised.

Of course, everybody looking at the Internet of things should bear in mind Bruce Sterling’s SPIME model (derived from space + time). According to Sterling, the SPIME object has 6 facets:
  1. identification
  2. location
  3. data mining
  4. computer aided design & construction
  5. prototyping
  6. lifecycle management
Using these, we can track the history of any object from concept to grave.

Stepping back a bit, the Internet of Things seems like a catch-all neologism to encapsulate a number of related concepts. It involves:
  • smart and connected products
  • multiple types of open and closed networks
  • robotics
  • cloud based access
  • decision analytics
  • functions ranging from monitoring, control and optimisation
It can also involve single products or groups of products. Many smart products today are autonomously capable of performing advanced functions which have nothing to do with the internet of anything. The Roomba vacuum cleaner is a great example of an exceptional product that doesn’t really need to connect to the Internet.

Most individual products also tend to ignore or be indifferent to the network effect, which kicks in when we consider multiple elements in the same network. For example, my windows may be rain-sensitive, but I might have other devices, products and appliances at home which may be influenced by the occurrence of rain. Does each product need to have it’s own rain sensor? In my IOT wish list, my smart windows can communicate to other appliances at home. So for example, the washing machine can run an extra spin cycle when it rains, so clothes dry in the same time, and conversely when it’s sunny, it can reduce the spin cycle to conserve energy. For this to happen, I need a network standard for my connected home network that multiple devices can connect to (i.e. my window can ‘talk’ to my washing machine). A problem that the DLNA among many others, has been seeking to solve for years.

The true value of the IoT thus seems to become clearer when we step into the details and away from buzzwords. Much like anything else really!  And the winners as always will be those businesses which are able to truly focus on:
  • design thinking
  • benefits
  • elegance of use
  • great experiences
  • excellent engineering
Companies who will be bold enough to rethink their business models and honestly answer the question ‘what business are we in?’ – allowing them to move from selling a product to delivering a composite service which may include a physical product. It might even mean changing the commercial model where the product is only ‘leased’ to the consumer who actually buys the service rather than acquires an asset.

Meanwhile I will dream about smart, connected windows which can deliver safety, sunshine, comfort to my home. As far as consumers are concerned, the I in IoT should really stand for ‘invisible technology’.

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Kevin Benedict
Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst
Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant
View my profile on LinkedIn
Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies
***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Enterprise Mobility the Next Wave - Six Super Trends

Mobile Innovations
Today, only 32% of 602 SAP customers surveyed by insiderRESEARCH (download full report here) have an enterprise wide mobile strategy in place.  That means there is still a lot of work and thinking to be done here, but today we are going to take a break from today's environment and look at tomorrows'.

For the past few months I have been pondering the next wave of technology innovations that will have major impacts on most IT environments.  As a result, here are the "SUPER" trends that I would recommend IT organizations start watching and studying.  These are also the technologies that I would like to hear SAP discuss at Sapphire this year.

  1. Enterprise Mobility, Part 2 - Customized, Context Aware, Pervasive and Predictive Content
  2. Geospatial and situational awareness about everything - 4 dimensional field services
  3. M2M (machine to machine, the Internet of Things) integrated into everything - Example Health Monitoring
  4. Augmented and Assisted Reality on mobile devices - Examples Navigation and Google Glasses
  5. Real-time and data-driven decision making - Think Big Data, Location Based Services and Real-Time Business Analytics
  6. Robotics and Artificial Intelligence

In addition to these six super trends, there needs to be taught new ways of thinking in a real-time, data-driven world.  Just like the military teaches soldiers land navigation, it will be equally important for the commercial sector to be taught how to navigate real-time data effectively.  In a world that provides massive volumes of raw data that will absolutely overwhelm a manager, there needs to be training on how to navigate directly to the important data that impacts the missions.

If we want to boil down these six super trends to their essence, it is real time communications between  sensors, machines, people, big data and analytics.

Do you agree, or are there other super trends that I have missed?


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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Alumnus
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility analyst, consultant and blogger. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

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