14th Aug 2020
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It's been a while since our last newsletter as we've been busy working on our custom intelligence gathering solution, Bloodhound, which we look forward to launching in the near future. There's so much content and data out in the world and it can be hard to sift through the noise to get to the truly important and relevant information. Bloodhound helps us do that and the content in this newsletter is one of the outcomes from our platform.
Our aim is to bring you information and opinions that you may otherwise not have come across or thought about. In this edition we have collated some interesting content covering the topics of disruption, disruptive technology, climate change and the future in a post-pandemic world.
Industry 4.0 was first introduced in 2011 in Hannover. A recent study by SAP shows that most firms are focused on automation, AI and IOT.
We'll let you judge this one on your own. Blue Jeans and Bloody Tears
This is an area that is controversial. We've all been on those websites where the chatbots appear and we can't get rid of them and it ruins the customer experience. This is a case of making sure that you're delivering what your customers actually want. Ask them. There's no point implementing a new technology and thinking you're being disruptive just because it's the latest technology. Disruption is not just about being on the bleeding edge.
We recommend taking the 10 minutes to listen to this fascinating podcast. Digital Twins have multiple applications from manufacturing through to, in this case, being used to speed up the testing of drugs.
Follow @arabnews Hydrogen has long been touted as a clean alternative to fossil fuels. Now, as major economies prepare green investments to kickstart growth, advocates spy a golden chance to drag the niche energy into the mainstream of a post-pandemic world. Green hydrogen was pushed to the fore last week when Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency, said the technology was ready for the big time and urged governments to channel investments into the fuel. Some countries, including the Netherlands, Australia and Portugal, have already begun investing in the technology. Now investors, politicians and businesses are pushing the EU and others to use its post-crisis recovery plan to support hydrogen in areas like trucking and heavy industry. The promise of hydrogen as a fuel to help power vehicles
MBUX infotainment tech is its voice-activated virtual assistant. The company's artificial intelligence software allows a driver to search for destinations, control vehicle functions and more. And as MBUX evolves, Mercedes says improving this natural-language relationship between car and driver is particularly important. The goal is to "make the system even more natural," Nils Schanz, head of user interaction for Mercedes-Benz research and development, told members of the media during a Friday conference call. That means creating a system that's both more proactive and empathic, taking into account things like tone of voice or which person is talking in the car, serving "the right response and the right tone," Schanz said. This means MBUX might soon offer the option to remove its wake-up word -- the "Hey, Mercedes" command that activates the AI tech. But Schanz knows this isn't a solution everyone will want. "Some [drivers] prefer to have a proactiveness and some don't at all," Schanz s
Keeping with the AI theme, we see that latest improvement by Mercedes in their in-car technology with further enhancements to the NLP (natural language processing) capabilities, in particular around voice.
A car that can identify the tone of our voice and respond accordingly certainly has its potentials. Whether this type of technology is suited to motor vehicles or not remains to be seen.
This article clearly shows that it's not just in current times that we are seeing disruptive innovation and to that end we must make sure that we learn lessons from those who have trodden this path before us. True, the technology may be different, but the approach still applies.
The example of the De Havilland Mosquito in this article shows exactly that.
At APTIM-Solutions we are strong supports of efficiency and effectiveness and this is one area where technology really can assist. It's important, however, not to forget 2 key things:
- keep it simple. There's no need for a complicated AI/ML/technology solution when a simpler solution will do.
- the human touch is important. While Teams meetings and conference calls are going to be the new way of working (and the reduction in lost time, wasted energy through travel etc. is welcome) it's still important to realise that our best work is done in a team and sometimes just being together in the same room outweighs doing things virtually.
This paper by a cohort of UK, US, Danish and Chinese scientists identifies the impact of the climate change challenge.
Our current annual averages are between 11 and 15 degrees while within the next 50 years, according to the paper, about one third of the population could be in a location where the average annual temperature is 29 degrees.
Also mentioned in the paper is a disagreement with the method of calculation by the European Commission on their ESG metrics; to which they are still waiting on a response.
A quote from CSIR is that “In ten years' time, most of us will have at least one form of battery and rooftop solar photovoltaic [system], which we will at times be consuming and at other times selling [electricity from].
The rapid movement in this arena, and since this conference in March the more mainstream push towards embracing green energy in a post-covid-19 recovery further embeds the need for the embracing of a disruptive approach across all areas.
Increasing mass migration, including forced and non-forced displacement, is one of the primary forces that we monitor on a continual basis due to its importance in the disruptive future.
41.3 million internally displaced people is a staggering number, especially given that 75% are in only 10 countries. InterAction (alliance of international NGOs) have created a roadmap to start resolving this crisis.