Daily Archives: April 7, 2017

Vehicular automation involves the use of mechatronics, artificial intelligence, and multi-agent system to assist a vehicle's operator. These features and the vehicles employing them may be labeled as intelligent or smart. A vehicle using automation for difficult tasks, especially navigation, may be referred to as semi-autonomous. A vehicle relying solely on automation is consequently referred to as robotic or autonomous. After the invention of the integrated circuit, the sophistication of automation technology increased. Manufacturers and researchers subsequently added a variety of automated functions to automobiles and other vehicles.

Ground vehicles employing automation and teleoperation include shipyard gantries, mining trucks, bomb-disposal robots, robotic insects, and driverless tractors.

There are a lot of autonomous and semi-autonomous ground vehicles being made for the purpose of transporting passengers. One such example is the free-ranging on grid (FROG) technology which consists of autonomous vehicles, a magnetic track and a supervisory system. The FROG system is deployed for industrial purposes in factory sites and has been in used since 1999 on the ParkShuttle,[2] a PRT-style public transport system in the city of Capelle aan den IJssel to connect the Rivium business park with the neighboring city of Rotterdam (where the route terminates at the Kralingse Zoom metro station). The system experienced a crash in 2005[3] that proved to be caused by a human error.[4]

Applications for automation in ground vehicles include the following:

Research is ongoing and prototypes of autonomous ground vehicles exist.

Extensive automation for cars focuses on either introducing robotic cars or modifying modern car designs to be semi-autonomous. Semi-autonomous designs could be implemented sooner as they rely less on technology that is still at the forefront of research. An example is the Dual mode monorail. Groups such as RUF (Denmark), BiWay (UK), ATN (New Zealand) and TriTrack (USA) are working on projects consisting of private cars that dock onto monorail tracks and are driven autonomously. As a method of automating cars without extensively modifying the cars as much as a robotic car, Automated highway systems (AHS) aims to construct lanes on highways that would be equipped with, for example, magnets to guide the vehicles. Automation vehicles have auto-brakes named as Auto Vehicles Braking System (AVBS). Highway computers would manage the traffic and direct the cars to avoid crashes.

The European Commission has established a smart car development program called the Intelligent Car Flagship Initiative.[5] The goals of that program include:

There are plenty of further uses for automation in relation to cars. These include:

The concept for autonomous vehicles has also been applied for commercial uses, like for autonomous or nearly autonomous trucks. As recorded in June 1995 in Popular Science Magazine, self-driving trucks were being developed for combat convoys, whereby only the lead truck would be driven by a human and the following trucks would rely on satellite, an inertial guidance system and ground-speed sensors.[8]Caterpillar Inc. made early developments in 2013 with the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University to improve efficiency and reduce cost at various mining and construction sites.[9] Companies such as Suncor Energy, a Canadian energy company, and Rio Tinto Group were among the first to replace human-operated trucks with driverless commercial trucks run by computers.[10] In April 2016, trucks from major manufacturers including Volvo and the Daimler Company completed a week of autonomous driving across Europe, organized by the Dutch, in an effort to get self-driving trucks on the road. With developments in self-driving trucks progressing, U.S. self-driving truck sales is forecasted to reach 60,000 by 2035 according to a report released by IHS Inc. Automotive in June 2016.[11]

An automated guided vehicle or automatic guided vehicle (AGV) is a mobile robot that follows markers or wires in the floor, or uses vision, magnets, or lasers for navigation. They are most often used in industrial applications to move materials around a manufacturing facility or warehouse. Application of the automatic guided vehicle has broadened during the late 20th century.

Aircraft has received much attention for automation, especially for navigation. A system capable of autonomously navigating a vehicle (especially aircraft) is known as autopilot.

Autonomous boats can provide security, do research, or perform hazardous or repetitive tasks (such as guiding a large ship into a harbor or transporting cargo).

Underwater vehicles have been a focus for automation for tasks such as pipeline inspection and underwater mapping. See Autonomous underwater vehicle.

An example of an automated train is the Docklands Light Railway in London.

One of the current limitations for vehicular automation is the electrical power required to run the processors.[12]

More here:

Vehicular automation - Wikipedia

Fears that automation will kill more jobs continues to grow. An estimated 5 million U.S. factory jobs have evaporated since 2000 and most of those (88%) were lost to increased productivity due to automation, according to a study by Ball State University.

But opinions about what, if anything, can be done to reverse the trend differ greatly.

Real estate billionaire Jeff Greene, who hosted his second Managing the Disruption conference on the topic of job destruction and what to do about it in Palm Beach, Fla., this week, has some ideas. Last year, he raised a ruckus by saying that robotics and artificial intelligence would kill not just blue-collar factory jobs but also many white-collar careers. Paralegals, journalists, airline pilots, even surgeons could be impacted, for example.

Greene continued the drumbeat last week in a Washington Post article , warning that automation will kill jobs much faster than Steven Mnuchin , President Donald Trump's Treasury secretary, expects. Last week Mnuchin said, controversially, that he didn't think major automation-related job losses would kick in for another 50 to 100 years.

In contrast, a recent report by consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that 38% of U.S. jobs have a "high risk" of being wiped out by automation by 2030.

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Greene's take is that automation isn't entirely bad if it can be perfected and deployed to lower the cost of living for the middle class so that they wouldn't need to earn as much money to get by. For example, using 3-D printers to build homes could cut the cost of housing to a more manageable level so that families wouldn't have to devote most of their income to mortgage payments, Greene told Fortune on Wednesday.

If machines could 3-D print homes using high-density resins, a structure that now costs $200,000 might cost $50,000, Greene said. That would take a big chunk of debt off the table for most families, he said.

Another huge drain on family budgets is energy. Part of that problem could be solved by using alternative energy. Families could save money if the U.S. used solar energy to power electric cars and heat homes. Of course that assumes that the cost of alternatives goes lower than the cost of oil.

The net impact, in his opinion, is that a couple would no longer have to work 80 to 90 hours a week to pay the bills. And if they can live on less money, the need for a two-income household is lessened, allowing one parent to stay home with any children. That, in turn, reduces the risk of children turning to drugs or getting pregnant.

Greene acknowledges that his ideas are "possibly Utopian" in that he's seeing the use of automation that poses risks to workers across the spectrum in the best possible light.

Many who worry about automation also tout universal basic income as a way to make up for lost jobs. In this scenario, all citizens who are too young for Social Security would receive a flat annual payment from the federal government. It's a trendy idea in Silicon Valley and other tech enclaves, where it's seen as a way to hedge against automation-induced job losses.

One small problem: It is unaffordable, according to former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, who spoke at this week's event. It would cost about $5 trillion annually, or about $4 trillion more than the country's annual income tax revenue, to pay each American adult $25,000 a year.

"It's almost impossible to make the arithmetic work," Summers said, according to The Palm Beach Post.

Others see hope in smaller, more tactical steps, like improving tech education for students and re-training current workers. Last week, General Electric contributed $50 million to the Boston Public Schools to improve science technology engineering and math (STEM) education to train students to help fill what the company sees as a gaping skills gap.

That's a step in the right direction, but retraining people on a much broader scale is needed to address skills gap nation-wide. There does not seem to be much desire in the Republican-controlled Congress to boost funding on education.

Others say technologies like augmented reality, which layers information onto the real world through connected eye glasses or goggles, could help. For example, field repair technicians could get diagrams and instructions, even video, projected into their goggles so that they can work faster and better without having to stop to consult manuals. That's technology that Upskill, a Herndon, Va.-based tech company, already provides to customers like GE ( ge ) and Boeing ( ba ) , which just invested in the company.

"This technology can augment the skills of less specialized workers and help expert workers work faster," Upskill executive chairman Dr. Magid Abraham told Fortune at a GE event last week.

But back to the conference: Greene says he was struck about how optimistic most of the speakers werethe roster also included former British Prime Minister David Cameron and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. "If I were optimistic, I wouldn't spend all this time and energy on this conference," he said.

The difference between the industrial revolution of the 19th century and the current situation, he said, is that back then machines replaced physical labor but also created many retail, bookkeeping, machine repair, and accounting jobs related to the goods produced. Now, however, the world is dealing not only with robots that do physical labor but with AI that does mental labor as well.

Says Greene: "We can't compete with both physical machines and thinking machines."

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The Bright Side of Job-Killing Automation - Fortune

Every week there's a story in a tabloid newspaper that contains the phrase 'rise of the robots'. Journalists trot out shock headlines like 'robot job invasion' and 'robots will destroy our jobs' as if this is something society should, and can, prevent.

Does a perfect storm of cloud, AI, mobile, IoT, chatbots and machine learning being applied to business processes mean jobs are really at risk from automation? Or is this merely the latest chapter in a story about a skills shortage in an increasingly information-based society?

Robotics already dominate the shop floors of car plants and industrial facilities; this next wave of automation is about the office. "It differs from the previous purely mechanical and industrial wave in that it is powered by data and our ability to analyse with more powerful techniques," says Ian Hughes, Analyst, Internet of Things, 451 Research, who thinks that now the dangerous jobs have been given to robots, it's time to automate mundane tasks. "Whether its software or hardware, these are advanced tools best suited to assist us and let us move on to more interesting things."

So it's not really about unskilled labour at all. "A better starting point is to view AI as a way of dealing with predictable, non-personal work, where lots of data exists," says Matt Jones, Analytics Strategist at Tessella, explaining that this helps us understand its potential impact not only in manufacturing, but also on legal research, drilling for commodities, and even diagnosing diseases. "AI will affect different industries in very different ways," he observes.

Robots already rule manufacturing (Image Credit: Thyssenkrupp)

The reality of AIs impact is somewhat different to what we have been reading about in the papers," says Harrick Vin, VP and Chief Scientist at Tata Consultancy Service, whose Global Trends Study of 835 decision makers in 13 different industry sectors found that 84% view AI as essential. And thats particularly the case in Europe and North America, where the average spend has hit around $80 million (around 65 million, AU$105 million) per region over recent years.

"The opportunities and challenges this technology presents are still not yet fully understood, but what is clear is the impact is going to be big," says Vin. "From Apple investing in face recognition through Emotient, to Shell, the oil and gas giant, launching an online virtual assistant to respond to customer enquiries, there are already major investments and belief in AI."

However, this isn't just from IT departments. "Despite 68% of companies using AI for IT functions, by 2020, 70% believe AIs greatest impact will be in admin, back office, sales, marketing and finance."

Some jobs could disappear almost completely. "Jobs in call centres, routine machine operation and stock taking are probably not long for this world," says Jones. "Industries like manufacturing will indeed be heavily affected at the lower skilled end."

However, he thinks that industries already accustomed to automation will actually be better prepared for the effects of AI. "Perhaps a bigger shock will come to industries that rely heavily on manually collecting, processing and interpreting data, tasks that have long relied on highly paid, highly skilled people," he says, which means the end of report writing jobs in legal, accountancy, finance, insurance and management consultancy industries.

Does that means horrendous job losses in white collar businesses? Not necessarily this is about eliminating the lower value work that clients hate paying for, so staff can concentrate on higher value tasks. "Whether this means companies deliver more value for less, or employ fewer people, will depend on how they approach this new world," says Jones.

Folks arent likely to be clamouring for robot judges

Not only will jobs that rely solely on human interaction not change, but there will doubtless be a renaissance if automation is pushed too far.

"Highly emotive experiences training, counselling, medical advice, restaurant service will probably never be delivered predominantly by AI, even if they become technically possible," says Jones. "Equally, situations requiring human judgement or empathy, from managing a team, to deciding a court case, to operating a bulldozer, will need humans for the foreseeable future."

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AI and automation will take jobs but how and where? - TechRadar

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is preparing his country to deal with the challenges new technologies place on the workforce.

The rise of artificial intelligence technologies has made it easier for companies like Google ( goog ) to automatically identify cats in photos. But as cutting-edge AI technologies amplify automation, people are increasingly worried that powerful software will replace the need for human workers .

Earlier this week, Trudeau addressed the subject of automation and labor on the question-and-answer website Quora and explained some of his ideas to help Canadian citizens keep their jobs in light of rapid technological advances.

Trudeau concedes that the job market is changing but instead of resisting in vain, Canada is going to fund research in the areas that are directly causing the change, like artificial intelligence.

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The prime minister didnt point to any examples of government AI funding, but Canada has recently invested in several big AI policy projects. In March, Canada said it would spend $125 million on a new initiative designed to attract and retain top academic talent in Canada and boost the number of graduate students and researchers studying AI.

Canada is currently a hotbed of AI research , with some of the worlds leading experts in the AI technique of deep learning residing in the country and researching at various universities like the University of Montreal and the McGill University. Several big tech companies like Microsoft ( msft ) and Google have also recently invested in AI research projects in Canada involving the countrys top academics.

For Canadas unemployed, Trudeau said the government is proposing a plan that would allow citizens to pursue self-funded training while still receiving unemployment benefits. This unemployment plan would cost $132.4 million over four years, beginning next year, and $37.9 million per year thereafter, he wrote.

For unemployed workers receiving [Employment Insurance], this will mean that they can return to school to get the training they need to find a new jobwithout fear of losing the EI benefits they need to support themselves and their families, Trudeau wrote.

As for Canadas current workforce, Trudeau said that the country is expanding access to grants and access to interest-free student loans for adults, although he did not say how much it would cost.

This initiative, Trudeau said, will help make it cheaper for adults with children to go back to school on a part-time basis to keep their job skills up to date. He also said that Canada is going to invest in an initiative that would help students find jobs after they finish their education.

Trudeaus comments about how Canada is preparing for automation technologies contrast with recent statements made by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Steve Mnuchin. Mnuchin told news outlet Axios in March that he does not believe artificial intelligence would significantly impact jobs for around 50 to 100 years.

Besides increased government spending on education, several analysts also recommend that companies spend money on employee training projects as well for their own workers.

For example, a recent Accenture report on technological trends in the workplace recommends that business leaders instill a life-long" culture among their employees, reawarding those who seek outside training to increase their skills.

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Justin Trudeau Has a Plan to Save Jobs From Automation - Fortune

The topic seems to strike fear in the hearts of employees in every industry: artificially intelligent, robots, automated systems and the threat of them taking over the world. But not every industry is dreading their presence.

With the annual tax season in full swing, accountants couldnt be happier with the thought of automation. Accounting and tax preparation is by its very nature, repetitive work. Once the differing figures are taken into account, the procedures are pretty much standard.

A global independent survey of 700 accountants by Sage, a cloud accounting provider, revealedthat systems automation is welcomed and considered a strategic asset to their business. The companys full 2017 Practice of Now Report is available here.

According to the report, a whopping 96 percent of those surveyed are positive about the role that automation will play in their day-to-day process.

The ability to get rid of a frustration, number-crunching, while freeing up time to focus on client acquisition is a great thing. Automated accounting systems allow firmsto increase their scope of services, providing their clients with a broader range of financial services.

The combination of a highly accurate automated system and a human-driven service is something every accounting office is eager to implement. Ultimately this type of hybrid system means growth and more meaningful client relationships.

89 percent of U.S. accountants view automating data entry and reporting as a way to create more value add service for clients. The Practice Of Now Sage (LON:SGE)

Automated document processing and especially document transfer may carry an inherent risk although this practice is already in place. The automation and digitization of documents is by far more secure than their manual counterparts.

AI driven automation eliminates human error while increasing speed beyond the capabilities of a human accountant. Its safe to say that automation provides a measurable increase in security and efficiency for accountants: factors that will increase the bottom line during tax seasons.

A looming deadline, coupled with not enough hours in the day is a hectic recipe. By freeing up an accountants workload, artificial intelligence has the potential to take the pain out of tax season.

The unbillable hours of shuffling papers and manual work increases during tax season and detracts from the bottom line of the accounting business. By drastically cutting the amount of time required to process returns, accountants are able to take on more clients and in turn, increase their profitability.

What automation promises is less time calculating figures and filling in spreadsheets and more time providing insight and consultancy based services.

In an industry moving towards automation, 99 percent of U.S. accountants surveyed voiced confidence about the future of accountancy and your role in it, while 58 percent see their role becoming more strategic and allow them to provide more financial advice to customers. The Practice Of Now Sage

Its no longer enough for accountants to just do taxes. CPAs are continuously held to a higher level of expectations and clients are demanding a greater level of service.

Intelligent automated accountingsystems provide firmswith a technology-driven component that allows them to keep pace with the market and stay relevant. Its for these very reasons that accountants are welcoming AI with open arms.

Accounting Photo via Shutterstock

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96 Percent of Accountants Feel Positively About Automation, Study ... - Small Business Trends

The 24th of March was a disaster, politically speaking, for the President of the United States, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and, more importantly, for huge cohorts of future and present American workers.

Florida officially lost 5,000 jobs in February; from the District of Columbia came more bad news new President Trumps second huge political loss occurred when the House of Representatives didnt vote on Trumpcare. It did not have enough support by Paul Ryan-led Republican congressmen.

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The Right Side:Automation and job losses - Porterville Recorder

From driving your car to investing your pension, automation is becoming the status quo across industries. Last year, TechCrunch exclaimed that we were on the precipice of an automation revolution. Many economists term this transition the fourth industrial revolution, or industry 4.0, where automation and robotics perform professional tasks with more precision and efficiency. Skeptics fear machines ability to perform high-risk operations, like landing an aircraft. But when it comes to investing, robots are responsible for trillions of dollars. According to Business Insider, robo-advisors are expected to manage $8 trillion globally by 2020.

Robotic process automation or RPA is leading the frontier in FinTech innovations. A publication by Ernst & Young explains RPA can significantly enhance capabilities of finance in providing analysis and insights. For instance, it can substantially increase scope of data available to the organization. Cognitive RPA can extract and combine data from various sources. It can also provide initial analysis and conclusions. Automated investing strategies curve the risks of volatile markets in ways humans cannot. It didn't take industry leaders long to roll out their own automated services.Forbes reported that JP Morgan has devoted $600 million to the emerging FinTech solution.

On the surface, automated robo-advisors may seem identical, but a closer look reveals the unique fingerprints of each program. Wealthfronts robo advisor asks clients their preferred risk, then constructs a portfolio to fit those parameters. The underlying operations are created by finance professionals and while multiple companies offer similar robo advisors, they are each unique to their creators. Automated processes are most useful when there are clear parameters of input and output that are relevant to each other. In order to mitigate risk, automated investing processes must analyze pertinent dimensions of a market. Take the art market for instance.

Traditionally, investors use art advisors and instinct to speculate prices and determine opportunities. While this strategy can be successful, it operates on a narrow view of the market. Even the most experienced advisors are unable to detect the most growth opportunity, which is why many remain undiscovered. Further, art assets have a tendency to materialize in extreme competition. In his book The $12 Million Stuffed Shark, Don Thompson examines the auction that set records for a work by Damien Hirst. Thompson points to battling egos on the auction floor for the works high price.

The Physical Impossibility of Death In The Mind of Someone Livingby Damien Hirst (1991)

Applying robotic automation processes to the art market curbs the risk of pursuing unsupported acquisitions. At Arthena, computers execute analyses on nearly 40,000 data points from the art market to effectively assess an art works price and value. This process goes further to identify opportunities in the market that traditional techniques ignore. Applying our analysis to last years art market indicates that Arthena could have deployed up to $500M in capital, given our investment parameters (price, asset value) and our requirements for expected asset growth, volatility and liquidity.

Art world experts set the parameters for optimal investments and examine auction costs to complement the quantitative analytics. All an investor has to do is choose a fund. Automation in the art market introduces opportunities and maximizes value by determining real-time peaks and lows in the market.

RPA in art investing is yet another example of the power of automation. According to The National Direction of Corporate Directions, it is not uncommon for todays powerful RPA technology to reduce the number of humans needed on a data-intensive process from 50 people to five. For the the FinTech industry, automation allows innovative managers to focus their resources on crafting new products that expose unique asset classes. To learn how Arthena managers are doing just that in the art market, visit our How It Works page.

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Finally, Automation in the Art Market - Huffington Post