Page 132 - Fortune-November 01, 2018

ar tifi c i al intelli gence + manuf ac turing

MELDING HUMANS POWERING KEEPING
CLEAN
AN EYE ON THE
ANDROBOTS ENERGY MORTALS

IF WIND ENERGY IS TO BE HUMANS ARE NOT GREAT
decisively cheaper than at knowing their own
fossil-fuel power, the pro- limits—they eat too
cess of transforming wind much, sleep too little, and
into electricity must get overestimate what can be
more efficient. Machine- achieved in a period of time.
learning technology devel- That may seem a matter of
oped at Siemens is helping. little consequence when it
Researchers realized that comes to, say, Thanksgiv-
huge wind turbines could ing dinner, but in certain
use data on weather and professions—like long-
component vibration to haul trucking and heavy-
fine-tune themselves equipment operation—such
continually, for example, fallibility can be dangerous
by adjusting the angles of and catastrophically costly.
rotor blades. But “you can- That’s why companies
not analytically calculate are increasingly using A.I.,
this,” says researcher guardian angel–like, to
Volkmar Sterzing. safeguard employees in
That’s the right kind high-risk jobs. Systems,
of problem for A.I. and trained on hundreds of
machine learning. Sensors hours of employee sensor
were already generating data, monitor conditions—
the needed parameters, but like an operator’s heart
“previously, these were used rate, body temperature, and
only for remote mainte- indicators of fatigue level or
ROBOTS HAVE BEEN ON THE ASSEMBLY LINE nance and service diagnos- nervousness—in real time
doing all kinds of manufacturing for decades. tics,” says Sterzing. “Now and signal when that indi-
Lately, a new feature is being added to the auto- they are also helping wind vidual needs to rest or take
mated work machines: humans. Dubbed “cobots,” turbines generate more a break, explains Mike Flan-
short for collaborative robots, the new setups electricity.” The technology nagan, an SVP at business
range from robotic helpers that can hand the cor- can even adjust turbines to software firm SAP. (SAP has
rect part to a human worker to an almost Ironman- the unpredictable airflows a Connected Worker Safety
product that does this.)
coming through the tur-
like robotic exoskeleton suit that a person wears bines in front of them. As for the rest of us? We
to gain added strength and A.I. software guidance. Deploying this A.I. broadly can expect to see this type
BMW has a cobot nicknamed Miss Charlotte that is now an opportunity for of technology soon in our
is helping assemble doors at its Spartanburg, SiemensGamesaRenew- own garages, where auto-
S.C., plant. Mercedes-Benz is turning to cobot able Energy, an independent makers are dreaming up
technology to help personalize each car that the company formed last year ways for our cars to keep
luxury-automaker assembles in some of its most by combining Siemens’s an eye on us. While the
expensive categories. Replacing larger automated wind operations with the tech is currently limited
wind power business of
to a coffee cup icon that
systems, humans with more nimble cobot helpers Spain’s Gamesa. —G.C. flashes on the dash in a few
can be quicker at choosing from among the huge models, Nils Lenke, head of
variety of parts needed to customize S-Class innovation management
sedans, for example. MIT professor Julie Shaw is for automotive at Nuance ORIGIN AL PHO T O, M A P: MIK E H ALL—GE T T Y IM AGES
working on software algorithms developed with Communications, an A.I.
machine learning that will teach cobots how and firm that works with most of
when to communicate by reading signals from 48% the major carmakers, says
the humans around them. Some researchers have fatigue-detecting voice and
even looked at connecting cobots to human brain- PERCENTAGE OF PEOPLE WHO facial recognition technol-
wave readouts. Mind-reading assistive robots? FOUND CHATBOTS PRETENDING ogy will soon be standard in
new vehicles. —Erika Fry
TO BE HUMAN “CREEPY,”
Now that’s collaboration. —A.P. ACCORDING TO MINDSHARE

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