Catching problems during production enables intervention before materials are wasted—incurring direct and environmental costs. It also saves on the reputational damage and costs associated with returns/recalls after a defective product is shipped to customers.

The solution uses an AI model trained on images of products with abnormalities. These defects are simulated so images of actual products with issues pulled from a production line aren’t necessary.

Fujitsu tested its technology at its Nagano Plant, which manufactures electronic equipment, and noted a 25 percent reduction in the man-hours needed for inspecting printed circuit boards.

The AI is able to detect issues like frayed threads or defective wiring patterns – with “world-leading accuracy” – in products that are designed to vary individually; such as different colour carpets or electronics parts with different wiring shapes.

Fujitsu’s AI achieved an AUROC (Area Under the Receiver Operating Characteristics) score in excess of 98 percent when applied to products with variations to their normal appearance.

The Japanese tech giant aims to use its AI advancement for the company’s COLMINA (PDF) brand which aims to deliver digital transformation specifically for the manufacturing industry.

(Photo by Clayton Cardinalli on Unsplash)

Interested in hearing industry leaders discuss subjects like this? Attend the co-located 5G Expo, IoT Tech Expo, Blockchain Expo, AI & Big Data Expo, and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo World Series with upcoming events in Silicon Valley, London, and Amsterdam.

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The global engineering giant will test key features of Fetch.ai’s testnet until the end of this month and will deploy a node on the network. The strategic engineering project between Fetch.ai and Bosch is called the Economy of Things (EoT).

Dr Alexander Poddey, the leading researcher for digital socio-economy, cryptology, and artificial intelligence in the EoT project, said:

“Our collaboration with Fetch.ai spans from the aspects of governance and orchestration of DLT-based ecosystems, multi-agent technologies to collective learning.

They share our belief that these elements are crucial to realising the economic, social, and environmental benefits of IoT technologies.”

Fetch.ai’s testnet launched in October 2020 and the firm is now gearing up for its mainnet launch in March. The company has been ramping up announcements in advance of the mainnet launch and just last week announced a partnership with FESTO to launch a decentralised marketplace for manufacturing.

After the mainnet launch, Bosch intends to run nodes and applications on Fetch.ai’s blockchain network.

Jonathan Ward, CTO of Fetch.ai, commented:

“We have been working with Bosch for some time towards our shared vision of building open, fair, and transparent digital ecosystems. I’m delighted to be able to announce the first public step in bringing these technologies into the real world.

We’re looking forward to working further with Bosch to bring about the wide adoption of these ground-breaking innovations, which will hugely benefit consumers and businesses in many industries including automotive, manufacturing, and healthcare.” 

Fetch.ai is working on decentralised autonomous “agents” which perform real-world tasks. 

Bosch is attracted to Fetch.ai’s vision of collective learning technologies and believes it can be a key enabler in their plans for AI-enabled devices—allowing AI agents to be trained which operate within smart devices while preserving users’ privacy and control of their data.

Fetch.ai’s vision is bold but it has the team and partnerships to pull it off. The company’s roster features talent with experience from DeepMind, Siemens, Sony, and a number of esteemed academic institutions.

Bosch has long expressed a keen interest in distributed ledger technologies and established multiple industry partnerships.

The venture capital arm of Bosch, Robert Bosch Venture-Capital, invested in the IOTA Foundation. Bosch later patented an IOTA-based digital payments system and recently financially supported a hackathon for the DLT platform which uses a scalable DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph) data structure called the ‘Tangle’ in a bid to overcome some of the historic problems with early blockchains.

Fetch.ai and IOTA are in the same space but have different goals, it’s not a choice of one or the other. Companies like Bosch can take advantage of the exciting potential offered by both DLTs to gain a competitive edge.

(Photo by Adi Goldstein on Unsplash)

Interested in hearing industry leaders discuss subjects like this? Attend the co-located 5G Expo, IoT Tech Expo, Blockchain Expo, AI & Big Data Expo, and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo World Series with upcoming events in Silicon Valley, London, and Amsterdam.

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Fetch.ai is based in Cambridge, UK and has built an impressive team of talent with experience from DeepMind, Siemens, Sony, and a number of esteemed academic institutions. The company is working on decentralised autonomous “agents” which perform real-world tasks.

FESTO was founded in 1925 and currently produces and sells pneumatic and electrical control and drive technology. The company has continued to thrive over the years through consistent reinvention and likes to show off around once a year by developing bionic robots like its ‘flying fox’ which uses machine learning to optimise its flight behaviour with every manoeuvre:

The partnership with Fetch.ai is FESTO’s first foray into blockchain and shows how the company aims to remain at the cutting-edge of technological developments.

Fetch.ai will develop a decentralised manufacturing marketplace for FESTO to help transform the company’s existing control systems and make them more efficient.

Maria Minaricova, Director of Business Development at Fetch.ai, said:

“We are delighted to be able to announce a collaboration with such an advanced technology company like FESTO.

With FESTO’s contribution, we will be able to demonstrate in real life the benefits of autonomous AI agents in manufacturing and supply chain.

We look forward to working further with FESTO to bring about the wide adoption of these ground-breaking manufacturing innovations.”

The marketplace will make use of Fetch.ai’s technology stack and its ‘Multi-Agent’ architecture. FESTO hopes the marketplace will help to avoid some of the challenges with existing centralised manufacturing process likes demand fluctuations and uneven utilisation of capacity.

Fetch.ai explained the advantages of switching to a decentralised solution:

“The advantages of an agent-based-approach within a decentralised manufacturing framework have the potential to lead to supply-chain optimisation based on real-time information, increasing the responsiveness of the enterprise to the market requirements, a higher degree of autonomy in manufacturing, and delivering personalised, tailored orders to customers.”

A report from TrendMicro last year found that 65 percent of manufacturing environments are using outdated systems even when more secure and efficient options are available.

“Industry 4.0 offers unparalleled opportunities to increase productivity, enhance process efficiencies, and realise on-demand manufacturing,” said Steve Quane, Executive Vice President, Network Defense and Hybrid Cloud Security for Trend Micro.

Interested in hearing industry leaders discuss subjects like this? Attend the co-located 5G Expo, IoT Tech Expo, Blockchain Expo, AI & Big Data Expo, and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo World Series with upcoming events in Silicon Valley, London, and Amsterdam.

The post Fetch.ai partners with FESTO on decentralised manufacturing marketplace appeared first on AI News.

Pepper will be attempting to explain topics such as AI and robotics to The Commons Education Select Committee.

“If we’ve got the march of the robots, we perhaps need the march of the robots to our select committee to give evidence,” Committee chair Robert Halfon told Tes.

“The fourth industrial revolution is possibly the most important challenge facing our nation over the next 10, 20, to 30 years.”

AI and robotics will drastically change our societies, and not always for the better. There will be serious challenges ahead.

It’s rare to hear of AI being discussed without the potential impact on jobs. Low-skilled workers, in particular, are most threatened by automation replacement.

The Select Committee will be looking to understand what impacts the fourth industrial revolution will have and how the negatives can be reduced. They’re hoping Pepper can help, though it all feels somewhat a gimmick.

“This is not about someone bringing an electronic toy robot and doing a demonstration,” said Mr Halfon. “It’s about showing the potential of robotics and artificial intelligence and the impact it has on skills.”

Pepper is equipped with four microphones, two HD cameras, and a touchscreen on its chest for displaying information when needed.

We caught up with Pepper at MWC earlier this year:

Fortunately, Pepper is experienced with public speaking after featuring on stages around the world. The robot could perhaps even offer advice to some leading tech company CEOs on coming across more human.

 Interested in hearing industry leaders discuss subjects like this? Attend the co-located AI & Big Data Expo events with upcoming shows in Silicon Valley, London, and Amsterdam to learn more. Co-located with the IoT Tech Expo, Blockchain Expo, and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo so you can explore the future of enterprise technology in one place.

(Image Credit: Pepper at Opening Ceremony of the 28th Tokyo International Film Festival by Dick Thomas Johnson under CC BY 2.0)

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The new startup, Landing.ai, chose this industry to begin with as “it is through manufacturing that human creativity goes beyond pixels on a display to become physical objects. By bringing AI to manufacturing, we will deliver a digital transformation to the physical world.”

Ng believes AI technology is well suited to addressing the challenges facing manufacturing — such as variable quality and yield, inflexible production line design, inability to manage capacity, and rising production costs.

Landing.ai is partnering with one of the world’s most well known manufacturers, Foxconn, on the project. Many in the tech sphere will know Foxconn as the chosen manufacturer of Apple for many of their products.

Together, the companies say they are developing AI technologies, talent, and systems that build on the core competencies of both companies.

Ng believes AI will “revitalise” manufacturing jobs in the US and globally. Rather than replace jobs, he believes the next wave of manufacturing jobs will pay higher but also require new skills — therefore large-scale training or retraining will be required.

Back in September, we reported on research from Capgemini showing that — despite popular opinion — AI is creating new jobs.

Are you looking forward to seeing what Landing.ai can achieve? Let us know in the comments.

 Interested in hearing industry leaders discuss subjects like this and sharing their use-cases? Attend the co-located AI & Big Data Expo events with upcoming shows in Silicon Valley, London and Amsterdam to learn more. Co-located with the  IoT Tech Expo, Blockchain Expo and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo so you can explore the future of enterprise technology in one place.

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