Marco van der Hoeven

Recently Armand Angeli, Président du groupe CSP/RPA/AI de la DFCG and Président du groupe International de la DFCG, initiated an international CFO round table discussing all aspects of automation. The round table addresses shared challenges for CFO’s, and the need for reliable information on automation, based on the experience of peers.

A major US airport authority that owns and operates several airports will be deploying the ROSA180 (Responsive Observation Security Agent) by Robotic Assistance Devices (RAD), a subsidiary of Artificial Intelligence Technology Solutions. The name of the client is not disclosed by RAD.

By 2025, cyber attackers will have weaponised operational technology (OT) environments to successfully harm or kill humans, according to Gartner.  Attacks on OT – hardware and software that monitors or controls equipment, assets and processes – have become more common. They have also evolved from immediate process disruption such as shutting down a plant, to compromising the integrity of industrial environments with intent to create physical harm. Other recent events like the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack have highlighted the need to have properly segmented networks for IT and OT.

Surpassing the biological limitations of the brain and using one’s mind to interact with and control external electronic devices may sound like the distant cyborg future, but it could come sooner than we think. Researchers warn of the potential social, ethical, and legal consequences of technologies interacting heavily with human brains. 

Democratization of IT and citizen developers are a hot topic, especially in RPA and low code. Although the trend is not new, we now see a rapid take up, in a ‘perfect combination of people, process and technology’. This leads to a situation which in the end is beneficially for both the business and IT.

The British Army has used Artificial Intelligence (AI) for the first time during Exercise Spring Storm, as part of Operation Cabrit in Estonia. Soldiers from the 20th Armoured Infantry Brigade used an AI engine which provides information on the surrounding environment and terrain.

Sarcos Robotics announced it has successfully demonstrated its SenSuit controller garment. As part of the next-generation technologies designed for enhanced teleoperation of the Guardian XT highly dexterous mobile robotic system, this leveraged Sarcos’ proprietary motion caption controller to enable enhanced teleoperation of the robot’s dexterous arms. Capable of lifting and manipulating up to 200 lb. (90 kg), the Guardian XT robot is aimed at accomplishing precision tasks and performing work in unstructured environments.

The European Robotic Arm (ERA) is set for launch from the Russian launch base Baikonur on a Proton rocket to the International Space Station on 15 July at 19:18 CEST. The latest robot to service the Space Station has a length of over 11 m, and the ability to anchor itself to the Station in multiple locations, moving backwards and forwards with a large range of motion. ERA is 100% made-in-Europe. A consortium of European companies led by Airbus Defence and Space Netherlands designed and assembled it for ESA.

Unmanned Valley and KPN have jointly created an environment for developing new drone applications in the Netherlands. The collaboration between the field lab for sensor-based technologies – located just north of The Hague in the Netherlands – and the leading provider of telecommunications and IT services in the Netherlands, allows companies to easily test innovations and demonstrate applications that use the commercially available KPN networks.

Researchers at the Cockrell School of Engineering have, for the first time, applied a machine learning algorithm to measure the surface roughness of different types of land with a high level of detail. The team used a type of satellite imagery that is more dependable and easier to capture than typical optical photographs but also more challenging to analyze. And they are working to integrate this data into storm surge models to give a clearer picture of what will happen during major weather events.