Emerging Technology In Industry

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xda-developers

Android and Windows Phone Development Community

Emerging Technology In Industry
3/9/2015 12:05:42 PM

There are many emerging technologies in the news at the moment from driverless cars to VR, but what you may not see is that many of these technologies are used everyday by people in a wide variety of industries. Many businesses even utilize technology not commonly available to the public through trials direct with the OEM, for others this technology is common place but needs to be adapted for widespread usage.

 

Agriculture

Utilizing either GPS or a combination of radio and lasers, many farms use driverless tractors that are able to function autonomously on their own or in tandem with other machinery. This example of precision farming isn’t just a result of farmers’ desires to put their feet up, this allows for a reduction of overlap in fields which in turn reduces fuel consumption. In 2013, one farm’s set up (see image on the right) allowed for a single man in a control center to control 16 separate vehicles in different locations from 25 miles away. Whilst the price is constantly falling, the machinery including the laser/radio set up currently costs $100,000 for a 200hp tractor which works out at $500/hp. Alternative cheaper systems can be fitted to standard tractors meaning that they can be driven with an operator inside if required who can program routes from a tablet or drive manually.
Since drones first became commercially available, farms have been using both fixed wing planes and quadcopters for numerous reasons including: crop health assessment, field mapping, flood damage surveillance and soil analysis. Numerous forms of cameras allow for specific tests to be done as required, while RGB sensors can be used for plant counting and visual inspections. Near-infrared sensors allow for erosion analysis and moisture management, whilst thermal cameras can be used for irrigation scheduling and maturity evaluation.  During December of 2013 and January of 2014, the agriculturally heavy area of the Somerset Levels, UK suffered significant flooding with 17,000 acres of land under water. Many farmers used drones at this point to assess the damage, which had the added side effect of allowing the public to see the damage caused, which helped with aid.

Offices

Earlier this year, up to 400 members of staff at Stockholm company Epicenter volunteered to be implanted with NFC/RFID chips. These chips using the mifare protocol allow these staff members to enter through security doors or pay for food and drinks on site by just placing their hand near a reader.  Hannes Sjöblad, founder of a Swedish association of biohackers, gave the following quotes regarding the move, “It’s a small, but indeed fast-growing, fraction which has chosen to try it out. There are also several other offices, companies, gyms and education institutions in Stockholm where people access the facilities with implanted RFID/NFC chips.” 

The chips have 888 bytes of storage, meaning they are capable of storing small amounts of information such as URLs and business card like information which can be read by an NFC enabled smartphone. They are just slightly larger than a grain of rice which is installed with a simple injection and can be removed easily if needed by a general practitioner. Previously, Verichip tried to bring implants to the marketplace for the storage of medical records but faced heavy opposition from protesters focused on religious, privacy and ethical grounds.
While not widely used yet, Skype translator is definitely worth an honorable mention here.  The tool, which is currently still a preview, allows for almost real-time audio translation between different languages. Currently only English and Spanish are supported for vocal translation, but as written translation over Skype works in over 40 languages, we can expect support for some of these languages to be added soon. This is going to be of huge benefit to businesses who frequently deal with partners in other countries. Video conferencing between different languages will not require employees fluent in multiple languages or a 3rd party translator which can become expensive quickly. The tool also offers a transcript of the conversation in both languages allowing for easier referral back to previous comments in your native language. 

Health Care & The Emergency Services

Google Glass, whilst no longer available to the public, has been adopted by some doctors around the world. Several features give them opportunities that would be much more complicated otherwise. The camera built-in to Glass allows for trainee surgeons to watch and learn live throughout surgery. DR Parekh, associate professor of orthopaedic surgery at Duke University, streamed himself performing surgery whilst in India and discovered that between 15,000 and 20,000 people were watching at the time. The display allows for doctors to view medical records such as CAT scans and XRays as well as important live data such as heart rate. Doctors have also used Glass to consult with experts in specific fields in the event of unexpected circumstances allowing for advice to be given and with specialized mats, demonstrate ideas by overlaying his own hands on to the display (See video below).

Dr. Oliver J. Muensterer published a peer-reviewed study of the applications of Glass in surgery, in which he stated that colleagues, staff, families and patients had an overwhelmingly positive response to Glass. Allowing for searches of medical terms and syndromes and hands free video/photo documentation are amongst the most useful features for doctors, whilst the poor battery life and data protection issues being the most important flaws.
Police in both Dubai and New York have used Glass, as a spokesperson for a Dubai police department stated that they had implemented facial recognition software to compare suspects to a database of wanted people, which then notified the officer. The New York police used the device for similar purposes through the app NameTag that cross references photographs of suspects with social media profiles, but also for the recording of video to be used as evidence.
3D printing is also becoming very common in this field, being used in health care to create prosthetic limbs for people. These are fairly cheap and simple to design. In 2013, a 17-year-old student from Colorado, Easton LaChappelle designed and constructed a functional prosthetic arm that cost him less than $250 to make. The prosthesis was impressive enough to warrant an invitation to the white house to meet and present his idea to US president Barrack Obama. LaChappelle now works for the Robonaut team at NASA.

The charity group E-Nable has 3000 volunteers printing prosthetics and has over 1000 recipients all around the world. This has grown from just 200 of each in just a year. These volunteers help the cause by creating and donating replacement limbs to those in need such as: a mother of multiple children who lost her limbs in a bus accident, someone who had their arms crushed in a factory and young children who have been mutilated by people to set examples to others during war.

Engineering

Many engineering businesses are starting to utilize VR headsets for training purposes. Companies such as Lincoln Electric produce full set ups, designed to emulate the real experience as closely as possible. Their product, the VRTEX, provides users with a VR welding mask and an imitation welding gun that works in tandem with the headset. These tools allow trainees to practice and record their trade as much as they would like without needing large amounts of material to work with. The recordings of their work can then be reviewed by instructors for feedback and advice. Energy provider EON works with companies to bring them VR training for a wide range of careers such as the oil, gas and nuclear industries. These allow for people to train for low probability, high consequence events such as loss of containment or emergency situations which are otherwise hard to simulate (think The Kobayashi Maru test) whilst not needing expensive simulations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Engineers working at Virgin Atlantic have been given Sony smartwatches and SmartEyeglasses (Developer Edition SED-E1), with the watches to be used as an activity log allowing managers to observe and alter engineers job allocations whilst returning feedback on how the engineers are working. The glasses are to be used to deliver technical assistance on the go by streaming live footage to technicians in a control room who can then reply with support as required. The aim of this trial is not only to make work easier for the engineers but to also increase efficiency. Phil Maher, Director of Operations for Virgin Atlantic gave the following statement about the partnership:

"We are proud of our recent innovation work to provide the best possible experience for our customer facing roles and we're pleased to now be exploring how new technology can contribute towards our essential operations procedures. It's a great way to empower our people by providing instant access to the information they need to be more effective in their roles."

Industry adoption of emerging technologies often increase efficiency and make roles easier and more effective. This is not only beneficial to the companies who use these technologies, but also to their consumers. As the products face heavy usage for a variety of applications, their feedback helps the OEMs make adjustments and fix issues before the vast majority of the public get their hands on the product resulting in a much better experience for all of us.

Do you use emerging technologies in your career? Leave us a comment below!

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