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Ryan Loftus

Ryan Loftus is a freelance writer specializing in topics like technology, climate change, and the future of agriculture. He's interested in farming advancements and how they can help combat global warming.

Latest stories by Ryan

smart-hospitals

The hospital of the future: Could smart hospitals deliver better healthcare?

  • Digital transformation
  • min read
    • Population growth. Aging nations. A global pandemic. 2020 has been quite some year for the world's healthcare systems. How can they better handle this triple threat? Healthcare needs are getting more complex, and systems more stretched. To meet the demand for precision healthcare, hospitals need to evolve to become smarter and more efficient. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates healthcare will face a shortfall of more than 18 million healthcare professionals globally within the next decade. Is it sustainable to increase the workload of already stretched practitioners? Smart hospitals could make healthcare work more efficient and improve the quality of patient care. Smart hospitals and the rise of e-health Smart hospitals are part of the e-health phenomenon. A smart hospital improves patient care using optimized and automated processes, particularly the Internet of Things (IoT), to connect medical devices to AI and data analysis. Smart tech helps healthcare practitioners focus on providing high-quality care while reducing the barriers associated with using complex medical technology. Smart tech means smarter workflows One figurehead of the smart hospital movement is Humber River Valley Hospital, Canada. It's North America's first fully-digital hospital (think: online appointment scheduling, digital check-ins and your test results emailed.) It boasts robots and other tech to automate almost 80 percent of its back-office services like pharmacy, laundry and food delivery. This gives clinical staff more time to give back to patients. Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi (CCAD,) UAE, uses digital apps to support treatments. Pre-treatment, patients use apps to communicate with staff. During their stay, they use smart pads to access their info, daily plans and order food. At discharge, the app sends prescriptions to local pharmacies then sends them their bill. Neat. Can robots become care workers? Smart tech could help meet labor shortages: this means more android helpers. During the first COVID-19 outbreak, Wuhan Hospital, China, was staffed entirely by robots for several days. Produced by start-up CloudMinds Technology, they improved patient care and gave respite to over-stretched workers. Smart hospitals can automate and digitize traditional, labor-intensive processes. When healthcare is delivered quicker and more accurately, more people can be treated safer and quicker. Consider Johnson Control's Code Blue Activation system; When a patient reaches critical condition, it calls up an emergency care team in just 24 seconds. Could 3D printing replace donors? There's a relatively new tech in smart hospitals: 3D printing. Imagine the opportunities if surgical teams could print body parts, like prosthetic limbs or dental implants, on-demand. While the tech is in its infancy, there are promising advancements, though it's without the speed and capabilities needed for large-scale adoption. Engineers and medical researchers from the University of Minnesota recently created silicon-made scaffolding' that could benefit those with spinal cord injuries by restoring muscle control. Cells are printed onto the structure then implanted into the patient's spinal cord, with a bridge between cells. Can smart hospitals save lives? Given increased healthcare demands, hospitals may not have any choice but to change. Smart hospitals could improve the care we deliver and benefit our societies. But it will be a group effort. Professor Daniel Kelly, Cardiff University's School of Healthcare Sciences, thinks smart hospitals will be crucial for healthcare. But we have to understand how it will affect everyone, including those funding it. "As treatment for many diseases becomes more personalized, there's an urgent need for health systems to evolve. Smart hospitals are symbolic of a future standard of healthcare where we can remove the reliance on paper records and current digital systems' inefficiencies. Securing the smart hospital From sensitive patient information to medical records, it's easy to see why cybersecurity is a hot topic in healthcare. Hospital data and equipment are goldmines for hackers and criminal groups. Those goldmines become all the more accessible when introducing a connected system like a smart hospital. Firstly, traditional medical devices are outdated – they aren't secure by design. This means many wouldn't have been tested for vulnerabilities or built to connect with smart appliances or the internet. (A tough task to foresee the fourth industrial revolution, to be fair.) This gap can allow attackers to gain illegal access to systems and data. A survey by ENISA found the most critical threat to smart hospitals is malicious attacks – like malware blitzes and denial of service (DDoS) raids that take control of systems and devices, steal patient data (most likely to be sold on the dark web) and hold patient data hostage with ransomware. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, attacks on hospitals and health organizations have increased drastically, including this fatality triggered by ransomware in Germany. Human errors still pose one of the biggest threats to patients. Take drug pumps; smart hospitals, or more specifically their workers, deliver controlled doses of medications to patients. These systems prevent over or under-administration, but they have an over-ride button for emergencies. But what if the device isn't configured correctly? Someone could tamper with drug delivery, inadvertently or intentionally, which might have deadly consequences. These technological advancements are not just projects for the IT department: The smart hospital involves participation between technologists and healthcare practitioners. Ongoing collaboration is needed to protect it from cyberthreats to ensure smart systems can save more lives.
climate edge farm

The future of farming: The start-up digitizing agriculture in developing nations

  • Technology
  • min read
    • As part of Kaspersky's Bring on the Future series, we're meeting businesses around the world who are changing their industry, and society, for the better. Farming isn't easy – fact. It's even trickier for smallholder tea or coffee farms in developing nations. Why? Lack of affordable infrastructure and the intensifying effects of climate change to name a couple of factors. But things are changing. Since 2015, the good people of Climate Edge have been helping farmers in developing nations fight common problems – from lack of affordable farm insurance to jumping through hoops to join cooperatives – by digitizing their day to day. I spoke with James Alden, co-founder and CEO, to find out more. Ryan: Why did you start Climate Edge, and how did you come to found it? James: We started it from a social perspective – my business partner Paul and I were studying environmental technology at Imperial College. When it came to our dissertations, Peter Baker, now our business partner, was running a project on how to prepare smallholder coffee farmers for climate change. We liked the sound of it, so went to Honduras to get involved. Almost instantly, we realised that farmers were really up against it. Climate change was impacting their ability to grow crops massively and not much was being done to support them. As part of our dissertation, we were required to collect yield data manually every day. Which, as you can imagine, was tedious. We thought, "If this is hard for us, how hard is it for the farmers, and what knock-on effects will it have if they don't do it?" After doing some digging, we realised that by not having data from the farm readily available, it was impacting everything from the way farmers insure themselves to understanding climate change and selling their products. That was how we could help, by giving farmers the means to digitize their everyday work. Helping farmers digitize their everyday processes, got it. So who's behind Climate Edge? Myself, Paul Baranowski and Peter Baker. Both Paul and I are from an environmental tech background – with exposure to policy, business and management – whereas Peter is the academic. Since beginning in 2015 we've brought on a product designer, a developer and someone to specifically focus on partner relations. You're building quite the team, what's the big vision? To be honest, our vision has changed quite a bit since we first started. Originally, we set out to help farmers adapt to climate change conditions by giving them a simple, easy-to-use digital system to record key farming data, how that affects their farm, and how best to prepare against changing environmental conditions. Now, we want to open up the market so that farmers can get access to the services and the value they need, to address the problems they have, which go beyond preparing for climate change. For example, insurance. Without recorded data – which most smallholder farms don't have – insurers don't know the risk of each individual farmer. They end up estimating, which results in small farms being lumped onto policies that either don't fit them, or are too expensive altogether, so if a fire comes and wipes out their crop, they're finished. We also want to move away from helping farmers at a localized level, to helping their cooperatives. In developing nations, a handful of farms form 'cooperatives', which are groups of farms that club their exports together to sell on – the benefits of which are tenfold, from fair prices to guaranteed sales. However, cooperatives need to be certified by organisations like Rainforest Alliance and Fair Trade, otherwise traders won't buy from them. All well and good, but to be accredited, these small farms need to show a series of markers, from biodiversity measures, to pesticide use or even crop history, something that's increasingly difficult to do by hand, and can often be a barrier for these farms to join cooperatives. Climate Edge helps farmers store this data digitally, instead of on thousands of sheets of paper – or not at all! Must be a huge weight off their minds. So how does the technology work? In the first instance, we use Nexo – a weather station – to collect data from farms. The Nexo monitors everything from soil temperature to humidity and everything in between. Then our analytical software takes this data and logs it. By measuring air temperature, soil temperature, air humidity, precipitation and more, we can monitor the key conditions determining yield and quality. Our back-end system then takes this raw data, analyses it and provides farmers and their cooperatives, if they have one, with actionable, tailored information so they can implement the right solutions. Climate Edge gives smallholder farmers globally the information needed to adapt to a devastating changing climate. Our agricultural weather stations and blended satellite imaging identify how yield and quality of crops are being impacted by key climatic variables, at an affordable price for the market we are working in. Remarkable! So how does Climate Edge differ from similar technologies on the market? Right now, future forecasting in agriculture is huge. Future forecasting is the ability to know if the prices for different things are going to go up or down depending on yields. Our technology and operation differs because we use Climate Edge-affiliated farmers to collect very high quality data, then use that data to make conclusions from the surrounding farmland and other farmers. Climate Edge also has the power to affect the agricultural supply chain. For example, our climate data enables micro-insurers to make accurate pay-outs, our farm management data gives micro-financers the ability to identify reliable investments and the two combined provide the information needed to manage supply chains securely. Through this accessible approach we can provide the 500 million global farmers growing the world's most valuable crops the necessary information to grow stable and profitable businesses. That has the potential for a huge impact. How does it work when a farm signs up? What's the process? We currently work with farmer cooperatives who have a big data burden, but little in the way of automating any of their processes. The biggest burden for cooperatives is maintaining their certification standards (meaning that they can sell their crops under value-adding marks, such as Rainforest Alliance or Fairtrade). Without this certification it can be very difficult, if not impossible, for the cooperatives to sell the crops, which is why this is such an important issue. Climate Edge supports cooperatives through this process by providing an app which integrates into the current data collection and reporting process, making this far less time consuming and complicated.  We provide this service for free to the farmers. Climate Edge benefits as the data collected through this process is often the same as the data needed for processes done by other businesses in the supply chain. For example, one service we have been delivering recently is conducting impact assessments for NGOs (non-governmental organizations). If an NGO does a project with a cooperative, how much impact did they achieve with the money they were given?  There has been a great push from funding donors to know more about the impact that has been achieved using their money, but for many NGOs this requires a huge amount more money to be spent paying for staff on the ground to visit farms and survey farmers. We can cut out that process as we are already on the ground collecting the data they need. It can't have been smooth sailing the whole way. What big challenges have you faced so far? Our biggest challenges are probably the same as most other start-ups; making sure that what we commit to building is correct, that we grow efficiently but also as quickly as possible, and making sure we don't run out of money. This is a delicate balance to achieve and it is often difficult to make sure you are spending enough time on validating product market fit versus fundraising.  Both are incredibly important, but when you only have a certain amount of hours in the day and a small team, you have to make decisions on what is most important at that moment in time. Smallholder farming is built on narrow profit margins and often low incomes. This means it is difficult to develop technologies which add sufficient value whilst still being affordable. As a result, there is little innovation in the market. We believe creating products which benefit a number of stakeholders, including farmers, is key to spreading the cost between users, and achieving a suitable price point for each.  I'm sure you've had your fair share of positive stories. What's been your biggest success? Our greatest success is that we have been able to start generating revenue very early on in our journey.  This is not common among many start-ups, who want to make sure everything is perfect before offering it to customers. But that's dangerous because building a client base and building trust takes time, and as we all know, time is money. We've been able to offer our service in broken-down chunks to initial clients and partners, which is extremely beneficial in two ways. Firstly, it brings in money which means we don't need to fundraise as much, saving us time and equity, and secondly, it means that we can move quicker by understanding exactly what it is our clients want and how we can give it to them. It's been quite the journey so far. What do you think the future opportunities are for smart farming, or specifically, big data use in farming? The opportunity in our market is enormous. Agriculture in developing nations hasn't seen any significant innovation since the green revolution, but the demand for the crops produced has risen dramatically. We won't be able to learn how we can make sure supply keeps up with demand without innovating significantly. Of course some of this will come from breeding new crops which can yield more, or can withstand more extreme conditions, but it will also involve making agriculture more investible, or understanding where the greatest supply chain risks are and how to mitigate them. Smallholder farming is currently a number of steps behind other global agricultural systems, particularly in the tropics. Many of the farmers we have worked with are incredibly isolated from high-tech products which improve efficiency, up-to-date agronomic models and finance management software – all of which are mainstays of European and US agriculture. The technology to provide data-driven farming is not the problem, which is a great position to be in. The challenge is in creating business models that allow these technologies to be fostered in the market. Once this has been achieved in a scalable way, I see data-driven farming practices completely changing the global agriculture market, as much more information (and therefore power) will be put in farmers' hands. Previously, you've said that Climate Edge can 'provide significant value to other sectors'. Which sectors could this have a positive effect on? Our goal is to become a big data broker for the developing agriculture sector. This data can have a lot of value for a lot of different people. This includes NGOs, insurance providers who need data on the risk profile of farmers or of an area, or banks who need data to understand the likelihood of a client defaulting on their loan.  It also helps input providers who need to understand market drivers and demand so that they can pre-emptively make products which meet that need, and investors who speculate on commodity markets want to make sure their investments are most likely to pay off. The value of data is being seen in many different industries and agriculture is no different.  We are making this happen in a place it hasn't been done before. Impressive! What does the future hold for Climate Edge? Scaling up. We are currently consolidating our efforts and increasing our scale in two key areas.  The first is East Africa, starting with Kenya.  The second is Latin America, starting with Colombia.  We are moving from a scattergun approach where we were trying to better understand the landscape of different sectors, to now expanding within the most promising. We have a number of very exciting partnerships and clients, like Unilever and Producers Direct, which are starting to scale to lead this expansion.
project vesta

This start-up is turning the tide on climate change

  • Business
  • min read
    • As part of Kaspersky's Bring on the Future series, we meet businesses around the world who are changing their industry and society for the better. The seaside. For some, a place of rest, relaxation, and perhaps a hint of volleyball. But, to Eric Matzner, CEO of Project Vesta, beaches, and more importantly, olivine rocks, could hold the solution to our climate change battle. I spoke to Eric about Project Vesta's mission, the Paris Agreement, and how a little-known rock could pull trillions of tons of carbon from our atmosphere. Ryan Loftus: So what's the story behind Project Vesta, Eric? Eric Matzner: Project Vesta was born out of my climate angst, to be honest. It started when I was looking through various climate agreements, like the Paris Agreement. The secret, hidden in plain sight, is that even with these proposals and the suggested cuts, to keep global warming below 1.5C by the end of the century, we need to remove between 100m to a trillion tons of CO2. Large-scale carbon removal is imperative. I started thinking about different technologies that could do the job, but nearly all of the suggested techniques have challenges, such as limitations on ­scale, requiring a lot of energy or competing for land use. Then I came across a paper called Rolling Stones, which focused on a scalable way detailing how olivine rock can capture CO2 economically to mitigate global warming, while also combating ocean acidification. The basic idea was that olivine rock, placed on shell beaches, could help remove total human carbon emissions. Other research shows that olivine rock weathering could scale up easily, wasn't too energy-intensive and didn't compete for arable land. I searched far and wide to find the current status of the technique to see if there was a pilot project, emailing scientists and asking people in the industry but found that no one was doing it. So after researching it, I decided that if this were to become a reality, I would need to create the project. So, I started Project Vesta, formed a team, and launched on Earth Day 2019. It's ambitious! What's the big vision? At its peak, I hope Project Vesta can galvanize the world into removing large quantities of CO2, by providing irreversible, permanent storage of CO2 at an economically viable price, that doesn't compete for farmland or other resources. Exactly what the world needs right now. How does the process work? There are reserves of a rock called olivine, all over the world, for which there is almost no demand. Project Vesta wants to mine these rocks from quarries on the surface and then place them on high-energy beaches in tropical areas. This is part of Earth's natural carbonate-silicate cycle: rain mixes with CO2 to create carbonic acid, which falls on rocks, weathering them down and transporting water (filled with ions) into rivers, which eventually ends up in the ocean. Over time, usually millions of years, the carbonic acid becomes bicarbonate and then calcium carbonate, which corals and other marine animals use to build shells. When they die and fall to the seafloor, the shells turn into sediments and then form limestone, trapping CO2 for millions of years. By adding olivine directly to the ocean, we dramatically speed up the carbon removal process, by cutting out these steps in the middle. The bicarbonate molecule is alkaline, as opposed to the acidic CO2 dissolved in water, so we can help create this molecule, which raises the PH of the ocean, helping to de-acidify it. In turn, other parts of the rock are inert or not available to organisms, and are not predicted to have any adverse effects. The reason we use beaches is to make the process efficient; otherwise, we would use too much energy to grind the rocks down to very fine particles. This is how it works: reserves of olivine near coastal areas are located and then harvested; the rock is then lightly crushed to pebble-sized grains and placed onto beaches where the wave motion tumbles them and grinds them down. The process also removes a coating on the surface that would typically slow the reaction. That's some process. How will you do that? Right now, we're looking for states and cities with access and legal ownership over beaches to help provide a testbed for our pilot safety study. We need two bays nearby each other, one as control and one in which to put olivine rocks. Then we'll measure the results. Once we have our pilot project, we'll write a research paper summarising all of the existing literature on coastal weathering, including our results and findings, to demonstrate the viability of our process and take it to policymakers. What are the benefits of fighting climate change this way? This is a method of carbon removal that Earth uses to put 99.9 percent of its carbon into rock. We know the process works and can scale to the trillion-ton level that we need to have a chance to stop catastrophic global warming. By using undeveloped coastlines with otherwise unwanted resources, we can scale this project to global levels without disrupting food systems or other limited resources in a world with a growing population. This is a solution that's permanent, scalable and can be done with today's technology. We could reach an operational price of below ten dollars for each tonne of CO2 removed. And there are co-benefits too. Olivine is made up, in part, by magnesium and silica. The latter, when released through weathering, becomes shells for diatoms – microalgae found in oceans, comprising a hugely important part of the food chain – which is threatened by ocean acidification. Our project might be worthwhile just for the acidification effects. A recent study reported that Dungeness Crab's shells are dissolving much sooner than predicted due to pockets of ocean acidity, so that lends extra importance to our work. Another benefit of this method – if the world gets hotter and the oceans more acidic, our weathering process will speed up, making it future proof.  Two-pronged benefits then. How do you differ from other companies doing the same? I don't know of anyone else doing this, beyond the scientists we're working with across the world. But if there is, we'd love to collaborate. We're a non-profit on a mission to solve humanity's biggest challenge, and we're always looking for partners and friends in the industry. In terms of the security of your project, how do you keep your customer and technology data secure? For our donors, we use a tokenization system through Stripe, where we do not even possess credit card information. We don't have a vast amount of proprietary data, but we limit access strictly to the key decision-makers. We're an open-source non-profit, so as we generate scientific data, we'll publish that openly. Good practice. What significant challenges have you faced so far? Trying to bring together scientists who have been working on different elements of this concept for years, then uniting them across different time-zones, dialects, regions and fields! On the flip side, what big successes have you had? Well, to date, we've raised over $100,000 for our pilot project. We've had great feedback about how elegant our solution is. We're giving people hope because they see this could be a significant part of the solution to climate change. And we have key scientists in the field on board working on a paper about olivine weathering. Well said. What does the future hold for Project Vesta? We need to raise $1.5M to deploy our two pilot projects and monitor them for two years. So, we're fundraising, crowdfunding and selling our line of olivine jewelry to raise money. Right now, the money is helping fund our operations and spread awareness. Once we have two beaches for our pilot project, the funds raised from the jewelry will correlate to an amount of olivine we will place on a beach. Eventually, we'll make peridot gemstone rings – olivine is also known as peridot, the august birthstone, in its crystal form – which we hope will replace the role of diamonds in our society. We aspire to shift society's value from the past compression of carbon (which is how a diamond is formed) to the future removal of carbon (which is how the "profit" from the ring will be used). We hope the jewelry will connect people to their carbon removal, giving them something tangible and symbolic, as opposed to just a donation. Right now, we're selling a necklace called the Grain of Hope, which is a single grain of olivine suspended in a sand timer vial, a metaphor to demonstrate that olivine has the potential to stop time from running out on us to combat this most pressing of human issues. Soon you'll be able to subscribe to Project Vesta for $25 a year, which will place one ton of olivine rock onto a beach for you – almost removing your yearly CO2 emissions per year. Project Vesta wants to prove the viability of olivine weathering for CO2 removal. In turn, de-risking the process and making it an easy choice for policymakers, who can then, we hope, action it to help save our planet.
ai government

Could AI improve the way a government runs its nation?

  • Business
  • min read
    • PwC estimates that artificial intelligence could increase business productivity by up to 14 percent by 2030; this could prove to be very useful than the public sector. Or governments, to be precise. As our world and society begin to respond to increased threats, from climate change to crime sprees, governing organizations are constantly looking for ways in which to make the most of their often-stretched resources. Now, with the introduction of AI, there are more opportunities to streamline their operations with the help of machines. But how will it improve the way the public sector works? Let's take a look. Starting a digital conversation A *relatively* simple AI development that could make federal and local government customer and information centers more efficient. As our societies become more connected, the ability of local governments to reduce face-to-face interactions and phone calls by using digital chatbots could free workers up to do more focused work. Case in point: the US Citizenship and Immigration Services of Department of Home Land Security recently developed EMMA. Named after the poet Emma Lazarus, this chatbot handles requests on immigration services, green cards, passports and other departmental services. Available in both English and Spanish, it manages one million interactions a month. Other examples include TravelBot – an AI-powered Messenger chatbot launched by Transport for London in the UK. It helps users with travel information within the city, including bus arrival times and service updates. Even the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore is jumping on the trend. They're working with Microsoft to develop conversational interfaces (bots) for their Smart Nation initiative. Connecting the dots Digital connected devices – also known as the internet of things (IoT) – could have a considerable part to play in the future of government. The city of Jacksonville, US, piloted "intelligent streetlights."  These use cameras connected to the lights to track traffic and pedestrian movements and decide when to dim or brighten each lamp. Sensors in these lights can also give people a heads up as to where parking spots are. The cameras also helped police keep the streets clear and raise revenue by catching more parking violators per month. Darting through data Identifying patterns in large datasets is hard. Not least because it takes a long time, but because we're human, and there's a chance we might miss something. Machine learning (ML) is a fundamental aspect of AI: the ability for computers to learn, analyze and act on data at a rapid rate. And its use in the public sector has been proven by the Southern Nevada Health District (SNHD) in a recent pilot project. SNHD carries out inspections relating to food poisoning cases. In recent years, instead of random checks, they deployed a machine learning software to analyze data from Twitter. Specifically posts from people claiming to have food poisoning from a restaurant, and collated them into high-risk venues. During investigations, they found an average of nine failings out of ten against the average of six for random inspections. Research estimates that if every inspection were adaptive, it could result in 9,000 less food poisoning incidents each year in the US alone. Bringing in the admin bots You might immediately think of robots here, but it's far more than that. Robotic process automation (RPA) is more on the money. RPA involves using software, or bots, to automate tasks rapidly. Anything from processing application forms to filling out endless spreadsheets – RPA can do it all. It's best suited for repetitive, predictable and time-consuming tasks – all the work your staff probably hate doing. Automation means dramatically reducing the time spent on admin and freeing up more time for skilled work. How can governments keep cyber-secure? There are many ways in which AI could change the way our governments work, but we need to be careful. As the government and public sector begin to experiment with AI, there are several challenges towards successful, widespread adoption. Budget restraints and employee training and security – notably the need for active cybersecurity measures with AI programs and developments – could be stumbling blocks. Perhaps the most important of those is security, and as governments deal with masses of sensitive data daily, AI could enable new ways for hackers to infiltrate government systems. If AI supports publicly-funded services, like the military or healthcare, hackers who compromise these systems have a higher capacity to do considerable damage more quickly than before. AI uptake is one thing, but how will we protect our governments, and more importantly, our data, in the age of the machine?
industrial ai

Evolution not revolution: What to expect from AI in manufacturing

  • Business
  • min read
    • From assembly robots to automated warehouses – artificial intelligence (AI) and the manufacturing industry are a match made in heaven. And this just the beginning. According to a report by IDC, by 2021, 20 percent of leading manufacturers will rely on embedded intelligence (using AI, internet of things and blockchain applications) to automate processes and speed up execution times by up to 25 percent. How is AI improving the bottom line? Microsoft's recent research explains how that's benefitting firms: manufacturing businesses in the US using AI are performing 11.5 percent better than those that aren't. AI benefits industry. Why? Its possible applications are extensive. And the stats are enticing. According to McKinsey, 50 percent of companies that invest in AI over the next five to seven years will have the potential to double their cash flow; manufacturing is leading the way due to its heavy reliance on data. In a recent Forbes insight survey on AI, 44 percent of respondents from automotive and manufacturing think AI will be important to manufacturing in the next five years, while almost half (49 percent) said it was critical to success. From real-equipment maintenance to more streamlined design processes, let's take a look at some AI-led trends. The age of human-robot collaboration https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GdiN6KmGCc Poor maintenance can reduce a manufacturing plant's overall productive capacity by as much as 20 percent. No wonder then, that industrial robots with embedded AI are proving popular will manufacturers. KUKA, the Chinese-owned German manufacturing company, is one of the largest manufacturers of industrial robots in the world, and they're making slick new movements. KUKA claims their LBR iiwa "is the world's first series-produced sensitive robot," which "signals the beginning of a new era in industrial robotics, where humans and robots can work side by side in close co-operation." No threat of robots outmoding us then, they claim. And it's working. LBR iiwa units are used at the BMW Group Plant in Munich, Germany, where they're helping workers insert components into car bodies during construction. Next-generation software design It's a new way of looking at things: designers or engineers enter their ultimate design goal into generative design software, complete with cost constraints, preferred materials and methods. The software then takes the original idea and explores different solutions to make it a reality on the spot. The result: you get many design possibilities, a conclusion of whether they'll work or not, and a recommendation for the best solution. It could be used from everything from aircraft wing design to plastic molds for a phone case. Brian Matthews, Vice President of Platform Engineering at Autodesk, US, says it could achieve 50,000 days of engineering in one day. Connecting the dots with smart manufacturing Put simply, smart manufacturing is the use of industrial IoT devices – those connected through the internet, able to send and receive data – and AI. According to a report by TrendForce, smart manufacturing could be worth over $320bn in 2020. And some of the big players in the industry are already well ahead in this trend. Siemens launched Mindsphere in 2016, its smart cloud for industry, allowing manufacturers to monitor machinery. For example, its latest gas turbines, packed with over 500 sensors that monitor their condition from temperature to pressure, allowing for real-time updates when they need repairing. General Electric has a similar idea with their Brilliant Factories, which utilize AI tracking and processing in the manufacturing process to find issues as they emerge. These factories are powered by Predix, their industrial IoT platform; it uses sensors to automatically capture every step of the process and monitor each piece of equipment. And the results speak for themselves. 18 percent improved equipment effectiveness at a factory in Pune, India, and a 25 percent increase in on-time delivery rates at a jet engine factory in Muskegon, US. Predictive maintenance becoming part of the program Predictive maintenance. In short: manufacturing machines repairing themselves, without our help. One step towards the era of robots? Perhaps. A load off the factory manager's mind? Definitely. IoT sensors and advanced analytics make it so, and it's set to save businesses heaps of time and resources. It's already in action. A report by Deloitte explains how predictive maintenance is built into machines used for manufacturing titanium implants. Let's break it down: titanium is so strong that it requires tools with diamond tips to cut into it, but often these tips become dull from overuse. In comes predictive maintenance, which uses the sensors and monitors to assess the shape of the machinery. In turn, they can give a warning to engineers when the tips need to be changed. Eagle-eyed supercomputers Similarly, as impeccable as our eyes are, they miss things. We're only human. This is why startups like landing.ai have developed machine-vision tools to find microscopic defects in products like circuit boards. These tools use machine-learning algorithms trained on remarkably small volumes of sample images. They can detect not only minor defects but also send immediate alerts to manufacturers. Evolution, not revolution Automation and machine learning have been around in the manufacturing sector for decades, so these developments are an evolution, not a revolution, for the industry. If you've not thought about how AI could affect your business or even your competitors, now's the time to explore it. Greater industrial connectivity, more sensors, powerful analytics and robots (to name a few) bring distinct challenges. Aime Lachapelle, of Emerton Data, says that 85 percent of the companies they surveyed aim to implement AI into their production processes. However, less than 30 percent have an AI development plan. While many manufacturers have aspirations to implement AI into operations, thorough research and training are needed beforehand. It's time to optimize your cybersecurity These technologies have the power to change the manufacturing industry for the better. But with new technology comes new risks. Anton Shipulin comments:
5 technologies fighting climate change

Can tech help fight climate change? Five innovations making a difference today

  • Technology
  • min read
    • As we say goodbye to the last decade, we usher in a new and crucial one for our planet. According to research, Earth has warmed around 1c since the industrial revolution, which is wreaking havoc on the planet we call home. This is just the start, according to this fun, but terrifying sliding scale. Since the 2016 Paris Agreement – which aims to keep global temperature increases under 2c – climate change has become a critical conversation for all nations and industries. But, as the research of agricultural economist Ester Boserup shows, humankind has the potential to adapt using technology to overcome its problems. These five technologies are designed to help us combat the number one issue we face as a species: global warming. Vacuuming gas from the atmosphere https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63S0t4k_Glw Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere have risen 48 percent since the start of the industrial revolution. We need to start reducing it, with the help of direct air capture (DAC) technology. But what is it? Giant vacuum cleaners remove CO2 from the atmosphere, sequestering it underground and, in some cases, supplying it back to specific industries, like fertilizer for farmers or bubbles for drinks companies to carbonate their products. One of the companies already using Direct Air Capture tech is Climeworks. They're removing and sequestering thousands of tons of carbon from the atmosphere every year. The CO2 fighting resilient crop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDVDa5Xuffs Arborea has developed the world's first BioSolar Leaf – which puts a whole new spin on natural photosynthesis. Using unique, photovoltaic-like panels, coined 'bionic leaves,' BioSolar Leaf uses sunlight to grow microscopic plants which can grow in high concentrations within arid and infertile ground. These tiny plants, in turn, produce healthy food ingredients while generating oxygen and sequestering high amounts of CO2. Bees glorious bees https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6HLWS86-Y8&feature=emb_title Bees. You'd be hard pushed to find someone who doesn't appreciate them. But you'd have an equally tricky time sitting down for a coffee with one (the bee, not the person). They are vital to a healthy environment, but unfortunately, their numbers are declining globally. It's time to save these winged wanderers. The World Bee Project and Oracle have teamed up to do just that. Their Hive Network uses cloud technology, artificial intelligence (AI) and smart sensors to collect information about honey bee decline to protect them better. The Hive Network allows researchers to 'listen' in on honey bee enclosures, analyzing data like wing movement, temperature and honey yield. By monitoring bee colonies at this level, conservationists and beekeepers can detect patterns and predict bee behaviors, giving them vital information to keep our (real-world) honeypots alive. Lab-grown cuisine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Iv0857U3UE Not a new technology by any stretch, but a new way of looking at a traditional industry. Meat has a much higher energy footprint than any other food type. It takes 75 times more energy to produce than corn and an area seven times the size of the European Union (EU) to produce enough food for the region's cattle and livestock to eat. In an attempt to curb our carnivorous habits and save our planet from total annihilation, start-ups like Impossible Foods are rearing fake meat – in labs. They've discovered that both animals and plants share a common protein – heme. In plants, this is leghemoglobin, whereas in animals, like cows, this would be hemoglobin. By taking heme from leghemoglobin and growing it in a lab, the product can be colored, shaped and even cooked like a piece of meat because they share the same properties. But there's more. Solar Foods are now turning water into different foods by taking bacteria from soil and multiplying it using hydrogen extracted from water – the result (in this case): flour. Although the flour isn't licensed for sale currently, it's been used to make an edible pancake. Not a bad start. Eventually, the flour will be used to replace fillers in thousands of food products. It can be modified to mimic milk and eggs, and can even be manipulated to create lab-grown fish with all those healthy omega-3 acids. The power of energy storage https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmrwdTGZxGk&feature=emb_title Many countries around the world have committed to a 100 percent carbon-free future, but how exactly will it happen? With renewables, in the first instance. But we also need to manage better the energy we produce to power the right tech to help us, like electric cars. The stage is set for interconnectors. These power lines not only move energy across long distances between regional power grids but also store excess energy for later use using lithium-ion batteries – those used in mobile phones and electric cars. The use of these interconnectors is expected to grow tenfold by 2024. They help to store energy for longer to transport it to places where there's less produced – a win-win. Right now, current storage tech can handle four hours of storage. But, technology firms aim to improve that drastically like Energy Vault, a Swiss start-up. They use windy days and automated cranes to stack bricks, recapturing the kinetic energy generated when the bricks fall back to the ground. Watch the video to see it in action. Smart cities are the next port of call The World Health Organization (WHO) has said that climate change could increase deaths by air pollution by hundreds of thousands between 2030 and 2050. One of the big problems: congested cities. Now with advances in artificial intelligence, internet of things (IoT) and smart sensors, smart cities are being designed to help keep earth-defiling emissions down and citizens' lungs healthy. Hamburg is a case in point. A prominent port city in Germany, it's bustling with shipping containers, cruise ships and other sea vessels – but struggling to manage increasing air and noise pollution. Air pollution is due to ships burning marine fuels for on-board equipment while they're docked in the harbor. After Hamburg Port Authority teamed up with Siemens and adopted the Siharbour technology (a mobile-operated generator), Hamburg's ports can now hook incoming ships onto the mainland power supply, stopping them from burning unnecessary fuel and keeping emissions down. What happens next? The teams behind these innovations (and countless others) are working around the clock for a better chance of saving our planet. Which ones do you think will help make a difference? And what innovations could your business develop now that could help protect our world?
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