Republican-Leaning Cities Are At Greater Risk Of Job Automation
​ By Jed Kolko for Five Thirty Eight: More and more work activities and even entire jobs are at risk of beingautomated by algorithms, computers and robots, raising concerns that more and more humans will be put out of work. The fear of automation is widespread — President Obama cited it as the No. 1 reason Americans feel anxious about the economy in his State of the Union address last month — but its effects are not equally distributed, creating challenges for workers and policymakers. An analysis of where jobs are most likely to face automation shows that areas that voted Republican in the last presidential election are more at risk, suggesting that automation could become a partisan issue.
So-called “routine” jobs — those that “can be accomplished by following explicit rules” — are most at risk of automation. These include both “manual” routine occupations, such as metalworkers and truck drivers, and “cognitive” routine occupations, such as cashiers and customer service reps.1 Whereas many routine jobs tend to be middle-wage, non-routine jobs include both higher-wage managerial and professional occupations and lower-wage service jobs. Cont'd...
The making of: BionicANTs
What do ants and Industry 4.0 have in common? What challenges faced the engineers when it came to developing these delicate technology platforms? Take a look behind the scenes and dive into the world of the Bionic Learning Network... ( cont'd )
Industrial IoT Market Nears $132 Billion in 2020: Technavio
Pedro Hernandez for Datamation:  The Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to have a major, efficiency- and productivity-enhancing impact on how manufacturers and other companies in industrial settings conduct businesses. A new forecast from market research firm Technavio paints a rosy picture for IT vendors that specialize in industrial IoT.
According to the analyst group, the market for industrial IoT software and services will reach nearly $132 in 2020. Between now and then, the market will expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7 percent.
In terms of demand, Technavio has identified the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region as the largest market for industrial IoT.
Last year, the industrial IoT market generated $38 billion in sales in the region, a number that will reach $54 billion in 2020. APAC countries are investing heavily, including South Korea, which plans to pour over $3.6 billion into the IoT by 2020. Â Cont'd...
Nobilia uses IoT to create smart factory
Kitchen maker Nobilia has rolled out IoT and automation systems in its German factories to enable real-time tracking of furniture as it progresses through the manufacturing process.
The company, which has distribution in Australia, is using Beckhoff automation technology that is powered by Intel processors.
A barcode that is attached to furniture is encoded with details including processing steps, components required to be added to complete it, and logistics information such as where the finished product is to be delivered.
“Each processing machine scans the barcode and retrieves the associated machining data from a central database. Data connecting the whole factory together makes it possible to produce 2700 kitchens daily,” Intel said in a blog post.
“Through real-time tracking enabled by Intel IoT technologies, Nobilia knows exactly where each part is in the production process at any time.
“If one of the manufacturing lines shuts down, parts are automatically rerouted to another line.”
Riddle of Cement's Structure is Finally Solved
From MIT News:
Concrete is the world’s most widely used construction material, so abundant that its production is one of the leading sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Yet answers to some fundamental questions about the microscopic structure and behavior of this ubiquitous material have remained elusive.
Concrete forms through the solidification of a mixture of water, gravel, sand, and cement powder. Is the resulting glue material (known as cement hydrate, CSH) a continuous solid, like metal or stone, or is it an aggregate of small particles...
... Roland Pellenq, a senior research scientist in MIT’s department of civil and environmental engineering, director of the MIT-CNRS lab 2 hosted by the MIT Energy Initiative, and a co-author of the new paper, says the work builds on previous research he conducted with others at the Concrete Sustainability Hub (CSHub) through a collaboration between MIT and the CNRS. “We did the first atomic-scale model” of the structure of concrete, he says, but questions still remained about the larger, mesoscale structure, on scales of a few hundred nanometers. The new work addresses some of those remaining uncertainties, he says. ( full article )
Industry 4.0: What businesses need to know
By Barclay Ballard for ITProPortal: In order for businesses to prepare for Industry 4.0, they first need to understand the technological driving forces behind it, including the Internet of Things. Although mainstream examples of IoT devices are relatively limited at the moment, in the future connected objects are expected to revolutionise a whole host of business sectors. In the same way that new manufacturing processes brought about huge upheaval during the Industrial Revolution, the Internet of Things is also predicted to bring wholesale changes to industry.
“The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) has been described as a crucial step in the Fourth Industrial Revolution or Industry 4.0,” explains Martyn Williams, managing director of industrial automation software expert, COPA-DATA UK. “Using IoT technology, organisations are developing smarter infrastructures and building connected networks across entire manufacturing processes.”
Some of the key changes predicted to emerge as the Internet of Things is adopted by industrial firms include the following: Cont'd...
UK 'risks losing out in Industry 4.0 race'
By PRW: A leading trade body has warned that a lack of government planning was threatening the UK’s position at the forefront of Industry 4.0, also known as the fourth industrial revolution.
A number of plastics companies in the UK and on the Continent have begun to develop products and processes that take into account developments in and around Industry 4.0 – also known as the ‘Internet of Things’.
However research conducted by manufacturers’ organisation the EEF found that while 91% of companies surveyed believed that internet access was as important to their business as electricity and water supplies more than half reckoned connectivity was inadequate for the future.
While the awareness of how important the internet was to a company’s operation was seen as a positive, the EEF highlighted that poor digital connectivity may prove to become a drag on future growth.
Many companies were already having to pay a premium to ensure they had high-speed access, the trade body said. Cont'd...
3D printing software, sensors, and carbon nanotubes among top Advanced Materials trends of 2016
By Kira for 3ders.org: The first month of 2016 is now behind us, and the year is shaping up to be particularly interesting in terms of 3D printing trends. In the advanced materials sector specifically, emerging technologies firmLux Research has predicted that the top three ‘undercover’ advanced materials trends of 2016 include improved 3D printing software and formats, Carbon nanotube products, and IoT devices embedded with sensing materials. Cont'd...
Boy, do Fanuc and Cisco have a deal for your factory
Fanuc and Cisco Systems are set to commercialize a technology this summer that promises glitch- and disruption-free factory operations. The Internet of Things-based system monitors machinery and spots signs of possible abnormalities so that parts can be replaced more smoothly and without affecting operations.
A one-minute suspension at a car factory generally costs around 2 million yen ($16,900). If, for example, a gear breaks and operations are halted for 60 minutes to replace it, the costs would be 120 million yen. Frequent line stoppages could also affect product quality.
The Fanuc-Cisco system uses sensors attached to each robot carrying or welding parts to monitor temperatures, vibration and other conditions. Data streams are sent via the Internet. A computer analyzes the data and decides which parts will likely need fixing and when. The system also places orders for replacements. The accuracy of the system's prediction and analysis functions will increase as data accumulates, representatives from the companies said. Cont'd...
Is Velo3D Plotting a 3-D Printed Robot Revolution?
Tekla S. Perry for IEEE Spectrum: Velo3D, based in Santa Clara, Calif., has $22.1 million in venture investment to do something in 3-D printing: That makes it fourth among 2015’s best-funded stealth-mode tech companies in the United States, according to CB Insights. This dollar number is about all the hard news that has come out of this startup, founded in 2014 by Benyamin Butler and Erel Milshtein. But job postings, talks at conferences, and other breadcrumbs left along Velo3D's development trail—has created a sketchy outline of this company’s plans.
Consider which 3-D printing technology is ready for disruption: metal. 3-D printing of plastics took off after 2009, when a key patent that covered the deposition technology expired; we now have desktop printers for 3-D plastic objects as cheap as $350. Printing of metal objects—done regularly in industry, particularly aerospace—uses a different, and, to date, far more expensive technology: selective laser sintering. This technology melts metal powders into solid shapes; it requires high temperatures, and far more complicated equipment than what’s found in the layering sort of printers used for plastic. The patent for this technology expired in early 2014—just before the formation of Velo3D. At the time, industry experts indicated that there wouldn’t be cheap metal printers coming anytime soon, but rather, would only come after “a significant breakthrough on the materials side,” OpenSLS’s Andreas Bastian told GigaOm in 2014. Could Velo3D’s founders have that breakthrough figured out? Cont'd...
U.S. official sees more cyber attacks on industrial control systems
Jim Finkle for Reuters: A U.S. government cyber security official warned that authorities have seen an increase in attacks that penetrate industrial control system networks over the past year, and said they are vulnerable because they are exposed to the Internet.
Industrial control systems are computers that control operations of industrial processes, from energy plants and steel mills to cookie factories and breweries.
“We see more and more that are gaining access to that control system layer," said Marty Edwards, who runs the Department of Homeland Security's Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team, or ICS-CERT.
ICS-CERT helps U.S. firms investigate suspected cyber attacks on industrial control systems as well as corporate networks.
Interest in critical infrastructure security has surged since late last month when Ukraine authorities blamed a power outage on a cyber attack from Russia, which would make it the first known power outage caused by a cyber attack. Cont'd...
Thoughts turn to revolution in Davos
By Matthew Allen for SWI: Intelligent robots and drones, 3D printers, self-driving vehicles, data mountains, smart production lines, fintech and blockchain – the fourth industrial revolution is here. The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) annual Davos meeting will ponder the potential, limitations and societal impacts of “Industry 4.0”.
Will the transformation of the workplace create jobs or unemployment? Will it close the gap between industrialised and developing economies, rich and poor - or widen it? For Swiss firms, can the new technological revolution ease the pressures of the strong franc?
Speaking ahead of the annual meeting in Davos, WEF founder Klaus Schwab called on world leaders to revise policies to accommodate the coming changes. “We are not yet sufficiently prepared for this fourth industrial revolution that will come over us like a tsunami and will change whole systems,” he said.
“My fear is that if we are not prepared we will create a world where particularly the middle class is frozen out. That would lead to a new problem of social exclusion that we absolutely have to avoid.” Cont'd...
New Ultrasonic 3D Printing Process Can Create and Print High-Tech Composite Materials
Scott J Grunewald for 3DPrint.com: A team of engineers from the University of Bristol — comprising Thomas M. Llewellyn-Jones, Bruce W. Drinkwater and Richard S. Trask — have developed a new hybrid type of 3D printing that can both assemble and print with composite materials using a combination of desktop 3D printer technology, light-curable resins and ultrasonic waves. This new process can allow super strong and lightweight composites like the variety used to produce tennis rackets, golf clubs, professional bicycles or even airplane parts to be used with additive manufacturing technology. Needless to say these new material options will offer entire new industries the ability to incorporate 3D printing into their manufacturing workflow. And the best part is that for the most part the process was made using existing 3D printing technology.
Composite materials are made by combining micro-structures of glass or carbon fibers with a plastic material. The carefully arranged fibers lock together and give the new material its strength and durability, while the plastic ensures that the resulting material will be lightweight. Currently, composite materials are manufactured as thin sheets that are then layered and cut into the desired shape and thickness. The problem with using this as a 3D printing material is the small fibers in the composite materials. In order to produce the desired strength the fibers need to be aligned in a very precise structure, which is currently not possible to reproduce using a 3D printer. Cont'd.. .
Factory Automation Will Speed Forward with A.I., Says Bernstein
By Tiernan Ray for Barron's: Bernstein Research’s Alberto Moel, who follows tech-industrial companies such as Corning(GLW) and AU Optronics (AUO), this afternoon offered up a thinks piece on robotics andfactory automation, arguing that some of the costs of automation beyond the basic cost of the robot are about to get dramatically cheaper, thanks in large part to artificial intelligence akin to what Alphabet (GOOGL) and others are doing.
Moel notes that the basic components of factory robots are only falling by perhaps 6% per year, their cost reduction bounded by things such as casings and servomotors and reduction gears that don’t rapidly fall in cost.
But, writes Moel, the cost to install and adjust these machines on a factory floor is ten times their component cost and that stuff can be reduced more dramatically:
How much this integration costs varies widely. An often-cited rule of thumb is that a $50,000 robot will need $500,000 of integration costs before it is all said and done. Of course, these integration costs can be amortized over many robots, so perhaps a better estimate would be 3-5x the robot cost [...] But I do believe we are at an inflection pointthat will materially increase the capability of automation systems and substantially reduce programming, setup, and fixturing costs which are the largest cost element in most automation efforts. So instead of a measly 6% YoY cost reduction , we get 25-30% YoY declines, and automation Nirvana. Cont'd...
MesoGlue: Room Temperature Metallic Glue
From Hanchen Huang of Northeastern University:
MesoGlue is our revolutionary joining solution that lets you attach items together with a metal bond, at room temperature. This is like welding or soldering, but without the heat! The patented process gives you the strength and thermal/electrical conductance of a metal bond, with the ease of attachment of glue or tape. Surfaces are merely pressed together to form a very strong connection.
Our MesoGlue technology can be applied to nearly any flat surface. The surface can be rigid or flexible, and roll-to-roll processing is possible. We currently offer coating of two joining surfaces at our state of the art processing facility. Items of up to approximately 1 cubic foot can be accommodated.
MesoGlue Silver:
A pure silver bond offering the highest electrical and thermal conductivity. Formation of the bond requires moderate pressure.
MesoGlue Eutectic:
A bond made of primarily copper with other metals added to help the process. Formation of the bond requires only fingertip pressure.
(MesoGlue Homepage)
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