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Insight: Building the future-proofed robot

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By Kyle Fazzari, software engineer and roboticist at Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu operating system

There’s no such thing as an overnight success. Time and again, it’s the desire to tweak, modify and update which separates a great idea from real-world achievements.

With Apple as the first business to cross the $1 trillion threshold, there’s no better example of this than the iPhone. As a singular product it still doesn’t boast the best camera, the most storage, or fastest processor on the market. So where does the secret to longevity lie? And what can robotics learn from Apple’s flagship product?  [Read more…] about Insight: Building the future-proofed robot

Christie’s in New York to auction painting produced by artificial intelligence for around $10,000

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A painting produced by artificial intelligence will be auctioned by Christie’s in an auction tomorrow – Thursday, 25th October 2018 – in New York.

The portrait, called Edmond de Belamy (main picture), is believed to be the first piece of AI art to go under the hammer at a major auction house and is created by French art collective “Obvious”.

The AI system compares its own portraits against ones made by human artists and works on them until it is unable to tell the difference between the two.  [Read more…] about Christie’s in New York to auction painting produced by artificial intelligence for around $10,000

Bright Machines raises $180 million for ‘software-defined and totally automated manufacturing’

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Startup company Bright Machines has raised almost $180 million in Series A funding to expand its “software-defined manufacturing” and “totally automated manufacturing” offerings.

Bright Machines describes software-defined manufacturing as the application of artificial intelligence to the $7 trillion manufacturing industry.

The term “software-defined” is generally applied to computer networks, in the reasonably well-known phrase software-defined networks or networking.  [Read more…] about Bright Machines raises $180 million for ‘software-defined and totally automated manufacturing’

Veoneer introduces autonomous driving supercomputer 

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Veoneer, Inc., which claims to be the world’s largest pure-play company focused on Advanced Driving Assistance Systems (ADAS) and Automated Driving (AD), has developed the “Zeus” supercomputer.

It has been designed to meet the requirements for level 4 Autonomous Driving with Zenuity’s Autonomous Driving software stack, based on the NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Xavier running NVIDIA DRIVE OS.

The supercomputer Zeus is an ADAS/AD ECU, a “brain” that fuses data from cameras, radars and other sensors, interprets the situation and takes required action.

[Read more…] about Veoneer introduces autonomous driving supercomputer 

Škoda Auto extends data centre in the Czech Republic

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Škoda Auto is expanding the data centre at its headquarters in Mladá Boleslav into the largest privately owned computing and data storage centre in the Czech Republic.

Once the expansion is completed, the data centre will have a computing capacity of 15 petaFLOPS, which equates to 15 quadrillion computing operations per second.

Thus, it is capable of extremely challenging high-performance computing (HPC). To further improve energy efficiency, Škoda Auto will use heat generated by the computers’ cooling system to heat offices.

[Read more…] about Škoda Auto extends data centre in the Czech Republic

Sequent Microsystems launches new Raspberry Pi card for industrial automation

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Sequent Microsystems, a tech startup from Cupertino, California, has launched a Kickstarter campaign for a new industrial expansion card for the Raspberry Pi platform.

The company says the I/O card is “loaded with inputs, outputs, and relays, the card challenges the traditional industrial automation market in features and cost”.

According to the Kickstarter page, the card attempts to integrate as many Industrial Automation functions as possible into the small, credit card format of the Raspberry Pi.  [Read more…] about Sequent Microsystems launches new Raspberry Pi card for industrial automation

FactoryFour raises $5 million for manufacturing management software business

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Startup company FactoryFour has raised $5 million for its manufacturing management software business.

The company says the Series A round will help it provide more manufacturers with software to manage production the way they want to, with “full customizability”.

The round, led by August Capital with Refactor reinvesting after leading the seed round, will help add headcount, improve and broaden the product suite, and establish a West Coast foothold in Los Angeles, California.  [Read more…] about FactoryFour raises $5 million for manufacturing management software business

Volkswagen and Microsoft announce strategic digital partnership

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Entering into a strategic partnership, Volkswagen and Microsoft Corp. will collaborate to develop the ‘Volkswagen Automotive Cloud’, one of the largest dedicated automotive industry clouds for all future Volkswagen digital services and mobility offerings.

The Supervisory Board of Volkswagen AG approved the conclusion of an agreement to this effect between Volkswagen and Microsoft on September 28, 2018.

With Microsoft as its strategic partner, the company is taking a decisive step in its digital transformation into a mobility provider with a fully connected vehicle fleet and the digital ecosystem “Volkswagen We”.

[Read more…] about Volkswagen and Microsoft announce strategic digital partnership

Siemens completes acquisition of Mendex

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Siemens has closed the acquisition of Mendix, eight weeks after the transaction was announced as part of the company’s Vision 2020+ strategy.

As enterprises invest to digitalise their operations, demand for business applications is growing significantly faster than the capacity of IT organisations to deliver them.

This gap between business demand for smart applications and lack of adequate developer talent has created unprecedented demand for low-code, high productivity platforms.

[Read more…] about Siemens completes acquisition of Mendex

Synopsys launches embedded vision and AI development kit

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Synopsys has launched its DesignWare High-Performance Core Design Kit for EV6x Processors to help designers meet the performance, power, and area requirements of their systems-on-chips for embedded vision and artificial intelligence applications.

The DesignWare HPC Design Kit, a suite of high-speed and high-density memories and specialized logic libraries, allows SoC designers to optimize the EV6x processor’s vector DSPs and convolutional neural network engines for maximum speed, smallest area, lowest power, or an optimum balance of the three.

Depending on the requirements of the target application, designers using the HPC Design Kit for EV6x can optimize their implementation to achieve a 39 percent power reduction, a 10 percent reduction in area, or a 7 percent performance boost for their SoCs.  [Read more…] about Synopsys launches embedded vision and AI development kit

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