Daily Archives: April 11, 2020

An Amazon Fulfillment Center in Washington state. Workers have partnered with machines to move and ... [+] sort packages in warehouses for decades. COVID-19 has created urgency to adopt more automation, leading to safer, more satisfied workers and customers.

The COVID-19 pandemic has halted economic activity globally. Factories and warehouses are forced to shut down to protect their workers, while those that are essential struggle with preventing outbreaks. Could a more automated workforce have alleviated the economic damage COVID-19 has caused? The International Federation of Robotics (IFR) reported the cost of robots has decreased and continues to decrease enabling wide adoption. South Korea has seven robots per 100 workers and every third robot installed is in China. A 2019 report by Oxford Economics predicted 12.5 million manufacturing jobs will be automated in China by 2030. In the aftermath of the pandemic, it could be many more.

So what does this mean for workers? Before the crisis hit, fearful reaction and alarmist headline buzz immediately harkened to predictions of massive job loss, disproportionate allocation of prosperity and further political polarization. Now that we are in the midst of massive job loss, that hasnt been caused by automation, the question is now How can automation accelerate our recovery and protect us from future pandemics?

Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, estimates on the specific impact automation will have on jobs varied drastically: McKinsey projected up to 30% of jobs in the US will be automated by 2030, and automation and AI will lift productivity and economic growth, but millions of people worldwide may need to switch occupations or upgrade skills. The World Economic Forum (WEF) estimated the emerging professions resulting from automation could account for 6.1 million jobs globally between 2020 to 2022. We have yet to see how the global pandemic will impact jobs in the long term, but its safe to assume that we will see acceleration in automation where it keeps human workers, and consumers, safer.

Prior to the crisis, the WEF reported that automation will generate vast new opportunities for fulfilling peoples potential and aspirations. Now there is evidence that automation protects humans. Consider logistics automation: it protects warehousing and delivery workers from being exposed to pathogens. Robots continuously cleaning hospitals avoid imperiling health workers. Digital payments obviate exchanging money, cards, and signatures for those who work in retail.

Automation and jobs are not mutually exclusive. To mitigate uncertainty as we find our way out of this crisis, we must focus on humans achieving their full potential and aspirations. This means founders, investors, industry leaders and public policy-shapers must all emphasize workers and the customers they serve.

Focusing on Three Key Factors: Automation, Education and Prosperity of Human Workers

In 2017, I wrote a post-presidential election piece about how both candidates overlooked automation and education as powerful catalysts behind shaping future jobs. Instead, both Clinton and Trump talked about minimum wage, taxes, and trade agreements. It was a missed opportunity of epic proportions for both sides. Instead, they could have emphasized opportunity for better-paying, higher-quality jobs through a skilled workforce partnered with automation, and allayed the fears of those who are anxious about the future of work.

In this crucial election cycle, we need to select candidates who 1) have a plan for how technology can synergistically enable humans, and 2) emphasize the important role of continuous education.

Things have evolved in the last three years as the reality of automations arrival dawned for policymakers. The Trump administration has gone from Treasury Secretary Mnuchin admitting at a 2017 Axios Newshapers event that job automation is not even on our radar to an about-face with the formation of the National Council for the American Worker in 2018. The council's purpose is to detail a way forward through the Fourth Industrial Revolution. It amplifies the alarm that our countrys education and job training programs have prepared Americans for the economy of the past. The rapidly changing digital economy requires the United States to view education and training as encompassing more than a single period of time in a traditional classroom.

In a further evolution of the administration's policy, the March 2019 Economic Report of the President indicated that the impending threat of automation and its impact on jobs had become high priority and that astute policymaking will play an integral role in leveraging technology as an asset for the country, while mitigating potential disruptions.

In light of the pandemic, we can expect to see supply chains existing closer to home. To achieve the replacement of cheap labor found in foreign markets, automation will be a critical component in this trend.

While Biden supports tax incentives, government grants and technical training programs, Sanders made automation a major point in his speech announcing his candidacy for president the second time; running on a mix of policies like raising the federal minimum wage and federal jobs guarantees. Whether its from a new administration or the existing one, we should expect to see massive economic recovery efforts going towards re-training.

The best plan has to be bi-partisan and human-centered. It is one that will need to be rapidly iterative like the technology advancements themselves. Notably, we shouldnt automate just for the sake of cool technology. I agree with MIT Economics Professor Daron Acemoglus definition of the right technology and so-so technology. The right technology creates opportunities for higher quality work versus a zero-sum game of destroying jobs. An example of the right technology has been how typesetters have moved up the value chain with graphic design. So-so technology completely displaces workers and doesnt offer the end-user a radically improved experience or service.

Venture investors must seek the right technology, which yields higher-wage, rewarding work and higher-quality, cheaper, more sustainable products and services. The key is to focus on how we can best adapt and who can lead public policy in that direction.

Most well-known automation technologies never replaced humans; instead they took over tedious, dangerous and onerous tasks. In 1885 William Burroughs, for instance, didnt wipe out accountants jobs with his calculating machine. The new inventions eliminated the long hours of tedious addition. He innovated the machine because he was tired of the long hours it took to do his job. The resulting machine and commercial entity based on this innovation is the DNA of Unisys, the multi-billion dollar IT company.

The most important lesson from the past and to avoid repeating as we recover from this crisis is that the most recent technical advances havent resulted in a shared prosperity. MIT reports that technology has led to more productivity over the last 40 years, but has failed to translate into shared prosperity for workers. From 1973 to 2016, labor productivity rose by 75%, but workers' compensation only rose by 12% and the stagnant earnings hit people of color particularly hard. We are at a unique point in history to course correct for more shared prosperity.

To be successful we all need to get comfortable with the notion that we will all be lifelong learners and will need to be open to ongoing skill sharpening or even entirely re-skilling as we progress. I have had to re-skill in the past and will likely need to again, as will you.

So our challenge when turning to the future of work is to champion the notion that ongoing learning will need to be at the heart of a job shift that distributes prosperity more evenly through society. Happily, this is where the two ends of the political spectrum currently agree.

In light of all these macro issues, founders have a big opportunity to advance automation at this time of crisis towards advancing human prosperity. And smart investors should seek to partner with those founders acting on this opportunity. Here are four lessons for those aspiring founders building great robotics startups:

Articulate a vision for a future where humans are empowered by machines

Great startups uncover a unique, non-consensus market opportunity, and invent a powerful tool that will endow them with a dominant position in that market. We seek founding teams that can articulate a vision to attract the dollars and talent to build the tools to execute on this opportunity. These people are the kernel of fantastic teams. Those teams will build upon those tools to build amazing companies.

Fantastic founders will articulate a hypothesis around how they can build a massive business that solves a big problem with the secret they have uncovered, or tool they plan to build. They will broadcast that hypothesis to attract the amazing talent. They will construct a plan for reducing that hypothesis into an exciting business. They will raise the capital required to build that business, and lead the people who will be held accountable towards devising and executing that plan.

Acquire a deep understanding of how your automation product is impacting the metrics your customers business, and how much they will pay for those improved metrics

Great founders gain a deep understanding of their customers current circumstances to benefit them with automation, rather than just push fancy robots. They build a team with deep relationships into the customer community. This creates almost-instant credibility for teams and the product, to attract other big customers, as well.

Hire talented teams that speak to customers in their own language, instilling confidence that their robot will deliver on their promises

Some of the best innovations come from outside the sector where they will be put to use. One example is Aeva, founded by an extraordinary team out of Apple, who discovered that sensors used to characterize electronics can help robots see in a way cameras, radar, and lidar could not.

The most effective startups speak the language while drawing tech from a completely different field. These high quality interactions bypass the many years it would have taken for these outsiders to build credibility in a new industry.

Help shape policy to promote continuous education programs

The WEF report says that collaboration between the public and private sectors can advance an entirely different agendaone in which peoples futures as well as global economic prospects are enhanced by mobilizing worldwide mass action on better education, jobs and skills.

Regulation plays a key role here, as do industry leaders. They can ensure their trade associations are paying attention to public policy so that it ensures automation is concurrent with re-training our workforce.

Prior to the economic crisis, we were beginning to see a collective realization that a companys workforce is its primary source of value creation. We saw shifts happening in how firms account for their human capital investments with an, an ISO certification for human capital and the Security Exchange Commissions Investor Advisory Committee recommending increasing reporting requirements for companies that are making workforce investments. A Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance report found that many firms are at nascent stages of voluntarily reporting their governance and management of human capital. Soon, we expect agreed-upon KPIs, one of which will be investment in education and re-training.

We rely on amazing talent led by fantastic founding teams to better position our workforce and our nation in the global economy. They are building companies in response to the opportunities this crisis presents. We expect that many once-in-generation companies to emerge, and we are actively seeking to partner with them.

Full coverage and live updates on the Coronavirus

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Expect More Jobs And More Automation In The Post-COVID-19 Economy - Forbes

The common thread we keep hearing is the need to self isolate, limit human contact, practice social distancing, and what that equates to is the growing importance of automation. How so? The more automation technology available to us, the less need for people to manually do things. Automation allows traditional steps required to be skipped, typically saving people time, and therefore money. But now, we need to look at automation through the lens of eliminating as many steps as possible that require human to human contact.

Couple this increased demand for automation with a need for sanitary conditions. Humans create messes. We leave germs behind in our wake, so even if you havent had physical contact with another human, you could have second degree contact by being in a place theyve been. We are all now well aware of just how long viruses can live in a variety of environments. The COVID-19 pandemic will inevitably have lasting effects on society and human behavior, inevitably creating needs and opportunities that may not have previously been viewed as a priority, but now are.

Cleaning automation, particularly in large commercial spaces, will now be a priority. People who inhabit these spaces, and who will be inhabiting them (once the time comes to reopen offices and non-essential businesses), will want to know these places are clean and safe. Whether as workers, patrons, managers, tenants, or owners, people will be much more inquisitive about how the spaces they occupy are cleaned, not just one time to disinfect, but on a regular basis going forward.

We now understand the preventative measures that should be taken to minimize risks for not only pandemic threats, but for any kind of viral contagion. Even a simple strain of the flu can immobilize large quantities of people if given the right conditions in which to spread. COVID-19 has been the catalyst to highlight the importance of proper cleaning protocols and ways to mitigate the spread of disease, including social distancing. In taking all of this into consideration, I think its safe to say the market for commercial cleaning automation is poised to grow exponentially in the coming years.

Given the tremendous square footage of commercial spaces, cleaning automation isnt a new concept. In fact, cleaning is the fifth largest industry in the world, according to Kass Dawson, the Head of Strategy and Marketing Communications at Softbank Robotics. Softbank Robotics has developed a robotic vacuum called Whiz, which uses lidar technology, computer vision, and proprietary algorithms to navigate and clean commercial spaces.

Brady Watkins, the Head of Commercial Automation for Softbank Robotics, explains that over 50 percent of commercial spaces are carpeted, which means a lot of time and manpower has traditionally been dedicated to vacuuming, or in some cases, spot cleaning is interspersed with regular vacuuming to save time. However, Watkins says that cutting corners means sacrificing air quality because carpeting acts as a filter for debris and dust, so when it is cleaned less frequently, that debris and dust simply collects and builds up. When people walk through the space or when furniture is moved, the debris, dust, and possible contaminants that have collected there are then stirred up, diminishing the air quality. If weve learned anything from this pandemic about building health, its the importance of air quality.

Perhaps more importantly, automated vacuum cleaners allow people to focus on more important tasks. For cleaning crews, that time could be spent sanitizing high touch surfaces. Dawson refers to this as cobotics, or how robots and humans can work together to optimize performance. He says, Robots arent here to steal jobs. Robots are a part of augmenting the workforce of the future. Vacuuming can be a monotonous, repetitive task that requires little thought, so by using robots like Whiz to take care of the carpet, humans are able to accomplish more.

Other automated cleaning solutions include the use of UV lights. An article about clean tech automation recently reported a company that produces UV light-emitting robots has seen a huge increase in demand since the outbreak began in China and that some studies show significant decreases in the spread of infection in healthcare facilities that use UV lights to kill microbes. We recently published an article discussing Well building standards, and one of their air quality optimizations called for the use of UV lights to filter particulate matter from HVAC units. For non-carpeted floors, the Neo by Avidbots is being used in commercial spaces like airports. Again, these technologies dont replace humans, but they offer a clean foundation for humans to build upon manually.

Cleaning automation doesnt always require robots, either. Another company Microshare deploys sensors for all kinds of uses within healthcare facilities to help automate a number of things, one of which can be to alert the facility when more than just a routine cleaning might be needed. Push button sensors can be used in operating rooms as a way for staff to signal when a deep clean might be needed after a person with an infectious disease was treated in the space. Other sensors are able to read and transmit air temperature and water quality data, which can be used to determine predictive cleaning patterns as well as set optimal conditions for disease transmission reduction.

For a lot of people, the cleanliness of the buildings they frequent may not have been at the forefront of their mind, but now it is something we all think about. The external environment that surrounds our bodies has a profound impact on our internal health. Before COVID-19, health was often viewed as something largely individual, meaning if you do what youre supposed to care for your body, you have a much better chance at maintaining optimal health. While that assumption still holds truth, people have come to the startling realization that doing what youre supposed to now includes everyones participation in upholding external environmental health parameters. Maintaining optimal health means we all have to take the necessary steps away from one another. It also means the environments we share have to uphold a better standard of clean. Automated cleaning allows for both of those things to happen simultaneously, but the necessary protocols to implement it should begin now in order to minimize risk in spaces that are currently occupied and better prepare spaces that will soon begin to reopen.

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Cleaning Automation Becomes Post COVID-19 Priority - Propmodo

Get up in the morning, get a coffee brewing, grab a bite for breakfast, hit the sofa, and get straight to work. Does this sound familiar? Millions of people globally have been adapting to a "new normal" since the COVID-19 outbreak started to spread from mainland China after the new year.

Some have been getting used to telecommuting, others, including medical workers, are getting accustomed to working alongside new fleets of disinfecting robots, and many have taken movie and series binges to historic levels.

What impact is this surge in digital reliance and automation having now, and how will it shape our future? Here are 9 ways that accelerated city automation and digitalization, caused by COVID-19, will likely form the "new normal" for years to come.

Though the scale of the COVID-19 outbreak might be unprecedented in our modern times, the impact of historic outbreaks, dating as far back as the Middle Ages, shows us how the socio-economic aftermath of a pandemic can lead to innovations and widespread changes in infrastructures.

After the Black Death ravaged the world and reduced Europe's population by 30 percent during the 14th century, large gaps left in the workforce led to the technological as well as societal innovations that spurred on what came to be known as the Renaissance. Cholera epidemics in the 19th century, meanwhile, led to the building of new advanced sewer systems and the writing of zoning laws to prevent overcrowding. Many more examples can be found throughout history.

This effect is also seen in a smaller scale with countries like Singapore, Taiwan, and Vietnam, where the 2003 SARS outbreak led to changes in infrastructure and protocols, meaning that these countries have so far been relativelysuccessful at containing COVID-19 Taiwan and Singapore have both recorded 0 coronavirus deaths at the time of writing.

These historical changes are leading experts to highlight key sectors including city automation, digitalization, and architecture where they believe COVID-19 will have a long-lasting impact.

Though it's difficult to put a positive spin on a pandemic, there might be some silver linings. As Peter Xing,associate director in technology and growth initiatives at KPMG, saidat Singularity Universitys recentCOVID-19 virtual summit, the outbreak provides "an opportunity forautomation to happen at the last mile.

That's to say that if restaurants today, as an example, are automating parts of the delivery process, our current situation will leadto more businesses testing the limits of automation in the service they provide. In China, for example, the use of automated delivery drones has already gone up since the outbreak began.

RELATED: COVID-19: 7 METHODS ASTRONAUTS USE TO COPE WITH LONG-TERM CONFINEMENT

In many cases, companies that had previously been on the verge of experimenting with automated methods for parts of their delivery chain or services will be forced to take that step to survive. If they invest in that technology and show it to work successfully, they will likely see no need to re-hire humans to fill those roles after the outbreak is controlled.

As already mentioned in this article, difficult moments in history provide opportunities for innovations to come to the fore.Broadly speaking, AI, robotics, and data analytics are playing a key role in fighting COVID-19. They are accelerating drug discovery, helping to evaluate the spread of the virus and, in many cases, allowing health professionals to carry out their work from a distance or with a safety that wasn't previously possible.

There are countless examples of the way these technologies have transformed the global reaction to the pandemic: demand for UV light-emitting robots that zap viruses and infections has gone up dramatically since the outbreak began; doctors are using AI to screen coronavirus patients; companies like Deepmind are publishing automated predictions of how COVID-19 will evolve.

All of this has led to a widespread reflection on the role city automation can play in our future and has renewed calls for a Universal Basic Income more on this in section 7.

We are currently in the midst of what can be viewed as the largest remote work experiment in history with remote work tools like Zoom, Slack, and Todoist seeing an unprecedented surge in demand.

Tools for remote work will continue to grow as will remote workers.The COVID-19 pandemic has already resulted in historic numbers of unemployment benefit claims in countries including the U.S and Spain. Much of this workforce will likely reconsider their future employment and look for jobs that are safer against future crises, and that are relatively stable in the face of accelerated city automation, including jobs that can easily be done from home.

Then there's the way we consume entertainment and art, and the impact it is having, and will have on these sectors. Large movie studios like Universal Studios and Disney have put several of their big releases on the fast lane for on-demand streaming. So many people are using streaming services that the European Union has actually asked Netflix to slightly reduce the quality of its streaming output so that the continent can put up with the surge.

As the Financial Times points out, several cinemas, which were already dealing with competition from early streaming releases, will see permanent closures due to the coronavirus. In general, any sector that was already struggling in the face of innovation and city automation will likely be hit hard by the coronavirus.

Despite the fact that people burning down cellphone masts amidst 5G coronavirus conspiracy theories is an example of the outbreak bringing out the worst in people, the pandemic will only provide further incentive for the rollout of 5G.

Weve been looking at redesigning public spaces so that they can also work as logistics and treatment areas in cities for epidemics like this, David Green, a principal at Perkins and Will, a design firm that has worked on health districts, tells FastCompany. Green is one of many urban design professionals that sees the pandemic effect as a reason to reevaluate how we design our cities.

As already mentioned, outbreaks of cholera inthe 19th century led to the building of new sewer systems globally. That is just one example of the way disease outbreaks have historically affected urban design.

City automation will likely be at the center of future innovations in the aftermath of COVID-19, as will the adaptability, or modularity, of cities Green mentions.

Singapore's Changi Airport recently shifted tocontactless screening for returning citizensso as to minimize waiting times and proximity of passengers. Such screening technology for outbreaks might be built into public spaces, while cheaper ventilation solutions and UV light technology might also be implemented to fight the effects of diseases.

Air onboard airplanes is actually well-filtered to prevent the easy circulation of viruses,Luke Leung, director of sustainable engineering at SOM explains toFastCompany. However, as Leung also says,we can do it in our public transportation system, but its not done. Cleaner, well-filtered air might become more of a priority in the future of public transportation following the coronavirus pandemic.

Public transport, another sector that is being increasingly automated, might also be part of a renewed focus on widespread city automation. Today, we are already seeing increasingly long trips be automated, and AI systems showing great promise for preventing enormous accumulated delay times. Systems for railways and metros, for example, are already being used to optimize efficiencyso that trains are utilized properly during peak hours.

A similar approach to public transportation automation might be able to help with adequately distributing trains and buses amidst the reduced necessity for public transportation during an outbreak.

In 2016, a World Economic Forum report predicted the loss of7.1 million jobs between 2015 and 2020. This would largely be due to"artificial intelligence, robotics, nanotechnology, and other socio-economic factors that will replace the need for human workers."

What do we do when the robots and AI systems powering these mass job losses are owned by a select few companies worldwide?The benefits of automation arent being passed on to the average citizen, Peter Xing said in his Singularity University virtual summit. "Theyre going to the shareholders of the companies creating the automation."

Even before COVID-19's patient zero was infected, there were calls for policies like Universal basic income (UBI), whereby everyone in a country's population receives a basic monthly salary that allows them to survive regardless of whether they are working or not.

Spain, in fact, hasannounced plans for a permanent basic income to help vulnerable families in the aftermath of COVID-19. While this isn't universal basic income, as several big publications have wrongly written this week, it is undeniably a big step towards something resembling UBI in the country.

The driving force for calls for UBI has always been the belief that city automation will eventually replace an unsustainable amount of jobs. If it were implemented now, it would also be helping large amounts of people left unemployed by the outbreak.

AsYuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens, Homo Deus and 21 Lessons for the 21st Centurywrote in an article for theFinancial Times, "many short-term emergency measures will become a fixture of life. That is the nature of emergencies. They fast-forward historical processes."

As a darker, dystopian portrayal of the way things could turn after the coronavirus, Harari claims that temporary surveillance measures could be legitimized by the outbreak, leading to unprecedented surveillance of populations after COVID-19 with the pretext of preventing future pandemics.

As Harari writes, "today, for the first time in human history, technology makes it possible to monitor everyone all the time." China has already started monitoring people's smartphones, making use of facial recognition cameras, obliging people to report their body temperature and medical condition, and has tracked widespread individual cases via big data.

The distinction Harari makes with this new type of surveillance is that it's "under-the-skin" meaning that it would allow governments unprecedented insight into the way information changes our physiology something that could lead to something akin to a Cambridge Analytica 2.0.

Though Yuval Noah Harari cautions against authoritarian impulses being rejuvenated by the coronavirus (see point 8), he also envisions a future where this pandemic might renew trust in global collaboration and slow the recent trend towards right-wing nationalism.

"First and foremost, in order to defeat the virus, we need to share information globally. Thats the big advantage of humans over viruses," Harari writes. "A coronavirus in China and a coronavirus in the US cannot swap tips about how to infect humans. But China can teach the US many valuable lessons about coronavirus and how to deal with it."

In order to beat the COVID-19 pandemic, "we needa spirit of global co-operation and trust," he explains. This is already being seen globally, with partisanship being set aside in favor of pulling together,showings of solidarityspread globally and the scientific community demonstrating quick innovation through global collaboration. Much of this is thanks to city automation, which allows easy sharing of information.

Universal basic income, redesigned cities, and renewed globalization are just a few more examples of policies, innovations, and ideas that are coming to the forefront of public attention amidst these uncertain times a time that could herald unforeseen, widespread changes that will be felt for years to come.

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9 Ways Accelerated City Automation Will Create a 'New Normal' After the Pandemic - Interesting Engineering

Michael Bowne, executive director, PI North America

Over the coming year, we here at Profibus/Profinet North America will be highlighting 10 facets of digitalization that, together, give the complete view of a state-of-the-art Profinet networkin other words: The Big Picture.

These 10 facets are:

I/O Communication. Sending and receiving inputs and outputs is the fundamental function of any industrial network. But its actually about more than just inputs and outputs. Its about diagnostics, topologies, and the ecosystem of products that can be connected to the network. Because, at the end of the day, the famous quote by John Gage, formerly of Sun Microsystems, still rings true: The network is the computer.

Edge Computing. Much has been said in this space about edge computing. Some approaches include utilizing non-traditional data inputs (e.g., from the cloud) locally to make real-time decisions. Other approaches employ advanced analytics (locally on time-critical data) where cloud latency is an issue. Others still see edge computing as simply an extension of the processing already handled by the programmable logic controller (today. Either way, were pushing ourselves further along the path of digitalization.

Time Sensitive Networking (TSN). The beauty of time-sensitive networking (TSN) is that, if we do everything right, end-users should be blissfully unaware that their Ethernet network is now deterministic-by-design. The same Profinet protocol, engineering, features, and services will simply reside on a new and improved Ethernet. The important part is TSN will ensure robustness even as information technology and operational technology converge, and multiple protocols share the same wire.

C2C Communication. Other protocols can also benefit from TSNs determinism, namely: OPC UA. With its publish/subscribe addition and vendor agnosticism, best-in-class machines can be connected controller-to-controller (C2C) with real-time communication. Deterministic machine-to-machine (M2M) communication is a challenge that becomes much easier to solve with OPC UA. Thats why Profibus/Profinet International (PI) has selected OPC UA as its protocol of choice for C2C communication.

C2C Safety. Functional safety between controllers at the machine level is another significant challenge in industrial automation. For this, PI has provided its ProfiSafe technology to the OPC Foundation. Safety over OPC UA enables new use-cases, such as autonomous mobile robots, and is being integrated as a core specification.

Vertical Communication. By mapping Profinet data to OPC UA objects via a companion specification, we can help meet Industry 4.0 requirements. These include the use of administration shells facilitated by OPC UA information models. For the moment, our companion specification covers diagnostics and asset managementtwo pieces of data that are not time critical but can be valuable to multiple systems across a factory.

Data Semantics. Adding semantics to data turns it into valuable information. Application profiles allow us to do that. They standardize the structure, parameters, format, and units associated with data coming from a family of devices. So, if OPC UA provides the how, then companion specifications and application profiles provide the what.

Security. Over the coming year, PI will begin to look at expanding upon the security in Profinet. This might mean the signing of General Station Description (GSD) files or supporting particular types of read-only modes. Eventually the integrity and authenticity of configuration data could be secured. It may even make sense to investigate securing the confidentiality of I/O data itself.

Advanced Physical Layer (APL). Work is progressing quickly on Ethernet APL. This two-wire, intrinsically safe version of Ethernet brings its richness and beauty down to instruments in process automation. With Ethernet APL, Profinet can go all the way down to the field level without the need for a translation to/from Profibus PA while using existing cabling.

5G. 5G is a hot topic right now but, for industry, it only makes sense if it performs better than Wi-Fi/Bluetooth at a price point that is acceptable. To drive prices down, the focus now is on the ability for end-users to build their own private 5G networks. If so, the bandwidth and latencies being advertised by 5G proponents are impressive.

These ten topics make up our big picture. As you can see, digitalization is not just one thing. Its a gem with many facets. But its important to realize its not futuristicits future-proof. Installing a Profinet network today is all about openness and flexibility.

While things may not move as quickly in the industrial automation market as in other markets, you still want to ensure the automation network you install can grow with the times. Thats why it makes sense to plan ahead and install an infrastructure built for tomorrow on experience learned from the past. Go digital. Go Profinet.

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The Big Picture Network - Automation World