AI

Since July 2020, the 200 skips that collect Toulouse inhabitants’ waste from the 13 waste disposal centers managed by SUEZ have been equipped with embedded artificial intelligence. Under test since 2019, the ffly4u solution has been deployed with the objectives of reducing fuel consumption, optimizing skip flows and reducing costs by optimizing collection resources.

“Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a low-threshold option to acquaint an organization with digital transformation,” says Nikie van Duurling, Strategic Lead RPA at Deloitte Tax & Legal. “Instead of working with complex technology projects, here very simple tools are used to assist and improve existing processes.” 

The key theme of SAS Open D[N]A Café on March 4 was symbiotic robotics, the interaction between humans and robots. The host of this café, Arthur de Crook, interviewed Jaimy Siebel and Joost van de Loo of RoboValley, the thriving robotics community driven by TU Delft Robotics Institute. RoboValley aims to stimulate the development of intelligent robotics by furthering collaboration between industry, government and academia. Here are some takeaways.

A team of researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has developed a new early warning system for vehicles that uses artificial intelligence to learn from thousands of real traffic situations. A study of the system was carried out in cooperation with the BMW Group. The results show that, if used in today’s self-driving vehicles, it can warn seven seconds in advance against potentially critical situations that the cars cannot handle alone – with over 85% accuracy.

Ambi Robotics, formerly Ambidextrous Laboratories., introduces AmbiOS, an advanced robot operating system based on simulation-to-reality artificial intelligence (AI). AmbiOS rapidly trains robots before deployment to pick and pack items for fast and affordable integration. The technology powers the company’s two flagship products, AmbiSort and AmbiKit.

Logistics giant Deutsche Post DHL is using AI to prepare employees for the future workplace and increase internal placements. VP group learning, talent and platforms Meredith Taghi tells Siân Harrington why skills are its new currency, why career marketplace is the new talent management and what lessons she has learned from implementing an AI tool.

Researchers have found that out of the more than 300 COVID-19 machine learning models described in scientific papers in 2020, none of them is suitable for detecting or diagnosing COVID-19 from standard medical imaging, due to biases, methodological flaws, lack of reproducibility, and ‘Frankenstein datasets.’

Gartner identified the top 10 data and analytics (D&A) technology trends for 2021 that can help organisations respond to change, uncertainty and the opportunities they bring in the next year.

Intelligent waste management start-up Recycleye Ltd has worked with the Coventry-based Manufacturing Technology Centre to bring artificial intelligence and affordable robotics to bear on the waste management industry.

Smart speakers, such as Amazon Echo and Google Home, have proven adept at monitoring certain health care issues at home. For example, researchers at the University of Washington have shown that these devices can detect cardiac arrests or monitor babies breathing. But what about tracking something even smaller: the minute motion of individual heartbeats in a person sitting in front of a smart speaker?