Intelligent logistics:
The digital product memory
will make the flow of goods faster and more reliable.
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.
HIRO:
The humanoid robot uses available knowledge
and applies it to new problems.
The automotive industry
has spent a lot of time work-
ing 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.
J
ust 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 com-
plex means of transport that “communi-
cates” 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 net-
works 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 minicom-
puter that can identify and analyse even
complex patterns intelligent? For
hundreds of years, philosophers have
attempted to understand the phenom-
enon of intelligence in general, while
scientists have focussed on human
intelligence. Compared with the complex-
ity 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 have possess
consciousness in order to be considered
intelligent. According to Searle, weak AI
involves the simulation of human intelli-
gence, which attempts to solve problems
and perform tasks. It mimics intelligent