The rise of Industry 4.0 has placed technological advancements firmly on the agenda for the local manufacturing sector. However, many would-be implementers of Industry 4.0 are still in the dark about what some of these concepts actually entail, and how they can be rolled-out, writes Dr Adrian Johnston, Open IIoT guest contributor and CTO at Xaminai.
This brings us to Artificial Intelligence – or ‘AI’ as it is commonly known. While the term AI is tossed around frequently in conversations surrounding Industry 4.0, as a person who has built this technology, I have realised that many people are still unable to answer the question: “What exactly is AI and what can it do?”.
AI can best be described as follows: Have you ever found yourself on a family road trip, picking out and counting different cars by colour, make and model? Or playing a game of “I spy” to pass the time? This type of object identification and decision making, even by young children, far surpasses the abilities of traditional computer programs.
Programs like Microsoft Excel or your web-browser, rely on many combinations of simple rules to process data and display information. In contrast, AI systems learn to solve problems in a similar manner to humans.
Those of you who have spent time with children would understand a little about what it takes to train AI. Many examples such as images or text is shown to the AI (or child in your case) and it is asked a question. If the answer was incorrect, it is told the correct answer and updated to be better next time.
In the workplace, AI can perform many simple and complex tasks that would traditionally have been performed by humans. It can be used to make machines move, drive, or fly by themselves (think self-driving cars or robotic arms), to optimise the energy consumption in a data centre or the logistics of a complex supply chain.
It is currently used to identify and grade fruit, seafood and even manufacturing defects. AI can also be used to write reports, generate images, and even create realistic computer voices, and in some cases, it can even be used to predict future outcomes.
AI is poised to impact every major industry. There has never been a better time than now to think about how your business can adopt an AI system to improve performance, save costs and increase productivity.
Open IIoT is an initiative of some of Australia's most prominent automation brands - SMC Corporation ANZ, Beckhoff Automation, Nord Drivesystems, Balluff, ZI-Argus and KUKA Robot Automation.
It was founded with the mission of delivering valuable, efficient and easy-to-understand information on Industry 4.0, IIoT and other related topics to end-users and the broader manufacturing industry.
