Page 18 - trends in automation

1 Intelligent logistics: The digital product memory
will make the flow of goods faster and more reliable.
2 The visionary Steve Jobs (1955-2011) and Apple
ignited the smartphone boom five years ago with the
iPhone. Today’s smartphones work intelligently with house
automation technology, vehicles, machines and systems.
3 HIRO: The humanoid robot uses available knowledge
and applies it to new problems.
4 The automotive industry has spent a lot of time
working on solutions for the intelligent networking of
driver, vehicle and environment. The integration of a
smartphone and the Internet plays a key role in the BMW
i8 concept, for example.
Photo: KAWADA Industries and inc.
3
Just a few short years ago, a car
was a car and a mobile phone
was a device for making calls
while on the move. Today, a car is
a highly complex means of transport
that “communicates” with the driver
and makes driving safer and more
comfortable thanks to numerous
assistance systems. Today’s mobile
phone is “smart”. It can navigate, provide
information about restaurants and
shopping in the local area in just a
few seconds, and do all of this on the
basis of learned behaviour patterns from
its owner. So what does the future
hold? Experts are convinced that in
the not-too-distant future, coats will
be able to record the bodily functions
of the people wearing them and alert
the emergency services in the event of
a problem, which will be particularly
useful for elderly people, for example.
The same applies to refrigerators, which
will independently order milk and butter
when needed, or washing machines that
will only wash at times when electricity
is cheap. Industrial production is set
to form complex networks over what
is known as the “Internet of Things”, in
which the raw material will communicate
with the processing system and tell
the system what to do with it.
Things that think
Can objects really be intelligent?
For example, is an autonomous
industrial vision system with a built
in minicomputer that can identify
and analyse even complex patterns
intelligent? For hundreds of years,
philosophers have attempted to
understand the phenomenon of
intelligence in general, while scientists
have focussed on human intelligence.
Compared with the complexity and
capability of the human brain, no
machine can currently be described
as truly intelligent. However, compared
with a steam engine from the age of the
industrial revolution, a robot used in
automotive production that can replace
a huge number of manual tasks performed
certainly can be described as intelligent.
It can detect different workpieces,
make decisions with regard to their
processing and perform the necessary
work steps independently.
Weak AI versus strong AI
A more feasible approach to achieving
intelligence in objects lies in artificial
intelligence (AI), a concept which has
been around since the 1950s. John
R. Searle, Professor of Philosophy
at Berkeley University, was the first
person to make a distinction between
“weak AI” and “strong AI”. In doing
so, he freed machines from the as
yet unfulfilled expectation of having
to possess consciousness in order to
be considered intelligent. According to
Searle, weak AI involves the simulation
of human intelligence, which attempts
to solve problems and perform tasks.
It mimics intelligent behaviour