More hot beds for factories are bouncing up in Asean - in particular as Asian companies build up shorter, more local supply chains, a McKinsey Global Institute report has suggested.

The Combat Capabilities Development Command Army Research Laboratory (ARL) has contracted 3D Systems and the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences to create the world’s largest, fastest and most precise metal 3D printer. The work put into the next generation of metal 3D printing technology is said to contribute both to US national security and potentially 3D Systems’ existing printers, which could integrate the new technology.
 
'The Army is increasing readiness by strengthening its relationships and interoperability with business partners, like 3D Systems, who advance warfighter demands at the best value to the taxpayer,' said Dr. Joseph South, ARL's program manager for Science of Additive Manufacturing for Next Generation Munitions. 'Up until now, powder bed laser 3D printers have been too small, too slow, and too imprecise to produce major ground combat subsystems at scale. Our goal is to undertake this issue head-on with the support of allies and partners who aid the Army in executing security cooperation activities in support of common national interests, and who help enable new capabilities for critical national security supply chains.'
 
With a planned build envelope of 1000 x 1000 x 600mm, almost 5 times the volume of current large-scale metal printers of 500 x 500 x 500mm, the printer is said to have a role in the supply chains of long-range munitions, combat vehicles, helicopters and air and missile defence.
 
'Through this project, we're looking forward to delivering a working manufacturing system like no other,' said Chuck Hull, co-founder and chief technology officer, 3D Systems. 'From the early years of 3D Systems, our want to innovate has been fueled by our customers' drive to be leaders in their respective industries. The solutions we build have complemented many manufacturers' tasks to help maintain their competitive advantage. ARL has already noticed the power of AM to transform its operations. We look forward to collaborating with them to scale and expand these capabilities by delivering first-to-market processes, materials, and technologies.'
 



This article is originally posted on Tronserve.com

At the DARPA Electronics Resurgence Initiative Summit today in Detroit, Intel plans to uncover an 8-million-neuron neuromorphic system comprising 64 Loihi research chips—codenamed Pohoiki Beach. Loihi chips are made with an architecture that more closely matches the way the brain works than do chips designed to do deep learning or other forms of AI. For the set of problems that such “spiking neural networks” are particularly good at, Loihi is about 1,000 times as fast as a CPU and 10,000 times as energy efficient. The new 64-Loihi system represents the equivalent of 8-million neurons, but that’s just a step to a 768-chip, 100-million-neuron system that the company plans for the end of 2019.
 
Intel and its research partners are just beginning to test what huge neural systems like Pohoiki Beach can do, but so far the proof points to even greater performance and efficiency, says Mike Davies, director of neuromorphic research at Intel.
 
“We’re rapidly collecting results and data that there are definite benefits… typically in the domain of efficiency. Virtually every one that we benchmark…we find significant gains in this architecture,” he says.
 
Going from a single-Loihi to 64 of them is more of a software issue than a hardware one. “We made scalability into the Loihi chip from the beginning,” says Davies. “The chip has a hierarchical routing interface…which allows us to scale to up to 16,000 chips. So 64 is just the next step.”
 
Finding algorithms that run well on an 8-million-neuron system and optimizing those algorithms in software is a considerable effort, he says. Still, the payoff could be huge. Neural networks that are more brain-like, such as Loihi, could be exempt to some of the artificial intelligence’s—for lack of a better word—dumbness.
 
For example, today’s neural networks suffer from something called catastrophic forgetting. If you tried to teach a qualified neural network to recognize something new—a new road sign, say—by simply exposing the network to the new input, it would disrupt the network so badly that it would become bad at recognizing anything. To avoid this, you have to completely retrain the network from the ground up. (DARPA’s Lifelong Learning, or L2M, program is dedicated to solving this problem.)
 
(Here’s my favorite analogy: Say you coached a basketball team, and you raised the net by 30 centimeters while nobody was looking. The players would miss a bunch at first, but they’d figure things out quickly. If those players were like today’s neural networks, you’d have to pull them off the court and teach them the entire game over again—dribbling, passing, everything.)
 
Loihi can run networks that might be immune to catastrophic forgetting, meaning it learns a bit more like a human. In fact, there’s proof through a research collaboration with Thomas Cleland’s group at Cornell University, that Loihi can achieve what’s called one-shot learning. That is, learning a new feature after being exposed to it only once. The Cornell group showed this by abstracting a model of the olfactory system so that it would run on Loihi. When exposed to a new virtual scent, the system not only didn't catastrophically forget everything else it had smelled, it learned to understand the new scent just from the single exposure.
 
Loihi might also be able to run feature-extraction algorithms that are immune to the kinds of adversarial attacks that befuddle today’s image identification systems. Traditional neural networks don’t really understand the features they’re extracting from an image in the way our brains do. “They can be fooled with simplistic attacks like changing specific pixels or adding a screen of noise that wouldn’t fool a human in any way,” Davies explains. But the sparse-coding algorithms Loihi can run work more like the human visual system and so wouldn’t fall for such shenanigans. (Disturbingly, humans are not entirely immune to such attacks.)
 
Analysts have also been using Loihi to improve real-time control for robotic systems. For example, last week at the Telluride Neuromorphic Cognition Engineering Workshop—an event Davies called “summer camp for neuromorphics nerds”—researchers were hard at work using a Loihi-based system to control a foosball table. “It strikes people as crazy,” he says. “But it’s a nice illustration of neuromorphic technology. It’s fast, requires quick response, quick planning, and anticipation. These are what neuromorphic chips are good at.”



This article is originally posted on Tronserve.com

Mitsubishi Electric Automation, Inc. has declared the launch of its new mobile showroom. The company has run a mobile showroom since 2012, but for 2019, it carried out an overhaul, including a new trailer and exhibit stations.
 
The 53-foot trailer supplies a large central area allowing visitors to comfortably explore the exhibit stations, which are interconnected via the CC-Link IE Field industrial network, letting guests view the status of every exhibit station from one location. The mobile showroom stations give innovative topics such as smart machines, robotic integration, predictive maintenance and engineering productivity, as well as accentuating solutions for challenges such as transitioning to current generation products and machine safety. The trailer also involves a handy meeting room to support further discussions in a welcoming environment.
 
The trailer travels throughout the United States and Canada, bringing Mitsubishi Electric solutions direct to customer locations, and appearing at events such as expos and trade fairs from Southern California to Newfoundland, Canada.
 
'Most people who are in the manufacturing industry find attending some of the larger tradeshows to be cost prohibitive,' said Sloan Zupan, director of corporate marketing at Mitsubishi Electric Automation, Inc. 'The mobile showroom allows everyone to see the broad portfolio of solutions which address manufacturing challenges and the latest innovations in industrial automation technology without the expense associated with participating traditional national tradeshows.'


This article is originally posted on Tronserve.com

Burlington, NJ - Cementex, the safety tool specialists, announces the availability of updated insulated torque wrenches featuring the company's industry-leading double-insulation technology. Made of top grade materials, calibrated according to ASME B107 standards (traceable to NIST), and manufactured according to ISO standards, Cementex double-insulated torque wrenches are designed to provide coverage in potentially hazardous electrical work environments. They are the first option for compliance with safeguarding both skilled workers and equipment.
 
Cementex insulated torque wrenches feature two separate layers of insulation for twice the protection. A yellow undercoat is coated by an orange overcoating to create a high-voltage barrier. The impact-resistant, flame-retardant insulation offers protection against flashover, shock, burns, and dropped tool shorts. It blocks harmful accidents and injury that can take place with standard tools.
 
Use of Cementex double-insulated torque wrenches guarantees that professionals will be free from risk to high-voltage exposure on the job. These calibrated torque wrenches are mainly designed in compliance with National Electrical Code 2017-110.14 (D) requirements for installation applications where a tightening torque is indicated as a numeric value on the equipment or in the installation instructions presented by equipment manufacturers. They can also be used to comply with NEC specifications for mounting electrical panels, as well as meeting NFPA 70E standards for tools required to protect workers in proximity to electrical equipment.
 
New updates showcase a range of modified ratchet head profile styles that allow workers to access hard to reach areas quicker and easier without incident. The huge lever control makes changes easy, even while wearing insulated gloves. Available options now come with standard, low profile, clockwise only, and short drive models, as well as a secured head style. Three additional sizes have been added to the line, which now includes seven sizes.
 
With Cementex's torque wrenches, an audible 'click' or a few degrees of rotation offer a simple, fast indication of micrometer-accurate torque settings. The wrenches feature a low-friction torque control mechanism to produce accurate readings in either direction. The wrenches' spring-loaded or twist-locking collar keeps the scale on the desired reading and remains in a locked position, making accidental unlocking impossible. Dual-scale wrench models offer readings in inch-pounds and Newton meters or foot-pounds and Newton meters.



This article is originally posted on Tronserve.com

In its 9 July press release, the company detailed the process by which batteries lose performance and capacity as they age. The average life of a lithium-ion battery is between 8-10 years, with makers encouraging mileage of between 100,000 and 160,000 km. Stresses such as rapid charging, driving styles, and extreme ambient temperatures can make batteries age faster, however, which Bosch is aiming to counter.
 
“Bosch is connecting electric-vehicle batteries with the cloud. Its data-based services mean we can significantly improve batteries’ performance and extend their service life,” said Dr. Markus Heyn, member of the board of management of Robert Bosch GmbH.
 
Using smart, cloud-based software, Bosch said it can supplement vehicles’ built in battery management systems. Measuring battery-relevant data such as ambient temperature and charging habits, Bosch’s machine-learning algorithms assess data and take actions to prevent aging. The company said that its methods could reduce wear and tear on batteries by up to 20%.
 
An example of measures that can be taken was the prevention of 100% charging in especially hot and cold environments. The data accumulated was also said to help maintenance, notifying the driver if and when faults are discovered.



This article is originally posted on Tronserve.com

Vingroup JSC, Vietnam’s largest listed firm by market value, said on Monday it has started out work on a second smartphone factory with a capacity to produce 125 million units a year. The new factory in the capital, Hanoi, will immensely rise Vingroup’s present capacity of five million units at its facility in the northern city of Haiphong, the conglomerate said in a statement.

Nippon Telegraph and Telephone will certainly tap into its idle real estate assets nationwide in an endeavor to break its dependence on its mobile phone unit, NTT Docomo, which generates 60% of its profit.

Japanese mobile payment services are teaming with counterparts in South Korea and China as an approach to tempt local merchants who seek to tap revenue streams from an outburst in tourists from those countries.

Philippines’ Globe Telecom Inc on Thursday released Southeast Asia’s first 5G broadband service, with embattled Huawei Technologies Co Ltd providing the equipment, a win for the Chinese firm besides cybersecurity worries from Western nations.

Xometry, the premier on-demand manufacturing marketplace, today announced that Robert Bosch Venture Capital (RBVC) will join the company's recently announced Series D round. RBVC joins Greenspring Associates, Dell Technologies Capital, BMW i Ventures, Foundry Group, GE Ventures, Highland Capital Partners, Maryland Venture Fund and Almaz Capital as investors in the round. This added investment brings the total amount raised in the Series D to $55MM. Xometry has raised $118MM overall.
 
'We're thrilled to grow our partnership with a world class manufacturing brand like Bosch,' said Randy Altschuler, co-founder and CEO of Xometry. 'Global expansion is one of our key upcoming initiatives and we look forward to leveraging Bosch's deep manufacturing expertise as we launch in Europe.'
 
'Xometry's instant quoting engine helps drive efficiency by leveraging AI algorithms to automatically produce a price, lead time, and manufacturability feedback,' said Ingo Ramesohl, Managing Director for Robert Bosch Venture Capital.
 
Xometry's industry-leading Instant Quoting Engine supplies product designers the ability to simply upload a CAD file, get instantaneous quotes and then order a wide variety of custom manufactured parts. The orders are then sourced through Xometry's Partner Network of over 3,000 manufacturers. Xometry's manufacturing services include CNC Machining, 3D Printing, Sheet Metal Fabrication, and Injection Molding.
 
Xometry also recently launched Xometry Supplies, an online marketplace offering materials, tooling, and other supplies. Xometry Supplies makes it effective for the partners in the Xometry Partner Network to get what they need to make high quality parts. The site is developing quickly, adding 65,000 new tooling SKU's in June.



This article is originally posted on Tronserve.com

Samsung Electronics' aspiration to roll out its most high-tech processor chip early next year is at risk of being slowed by reason of Japan's tighter export controls on semiconductor materials crucial to South Korean industry, sources familiar with the matter told the Nikkei Asian Review.

Top Chinese telecom equipment maker Huawei Technologies experiences new scrutiny in latest reports that allege past and present links to the country's military. The company denies these allegations, which come as countries in Europe and elsewhere consider blocking its products from their next-generation 5G wireless networks for security reasons amid a pressure campaign by the U.S.

Hong Kong-located e-commerce hub Shopline has established a Kuala Lumpur office as a first move into the Malaysian market.

The most impressive Alibaba management shakeup because founder Jack Ma released he would step away next September 10 perceives high-profile CFO Maggie Wu take on a new role.

The human sense of contact is so naturally ingrained in our everyday lives that we often don’t discover its presence. Even so, touch is a crucial sensing ability that helps people to understand the world and connect with others. As the market for robots grows, and as robots become more ingrained into our environments, people will expect robots to participate in a wide variety of social touch interactions. At Oregon State University’s Collaborative Robotics and Intelligent Systems (CoRIS) Institute, I research how to equip everyday robots with better social-physical interaction skills—from playful high-fives to challenging physical therapy routines. 
 
Some commercial robots already acquire certain physical interaction skills. For sample, the videoconferencing feature of mobile tele-presence robots can keep far-away family members linked with one another. These robots can also roam distant spaces and bump into people, chairs, and other remote objects. And my Roomba occasionally tickles my toes before turning to vacuum a different area of the room. As a human being, I naturally render this (and other Roomba behaviors) as social, even if they were not intended as such. At the same time, for both of these systems, social perceptions of the robots’ physical interaction behaviors are not well comprehended, and these social touch-like interactions cannot be controlled in nuanced ways.
 
Before joining CoRIS early this year, I was a postdoc at the University of Southern California’s Interaction Lab, and prior to that, I accomplished my doctoral work at the GRASP Laboratory’s Haptics Group at the University of Pennsylvania. My dissertation focused on improving the general understanding of how robot control and planning strategies influence perceptions of social touch interactions. As part of that research, I conducted a study of human-robot hand-to-hand contact, paying attention on an interaction somewhere between a high five and a hand-clapping game. I decided to study this selected interaction because people often high five, and they will likely expect robots in everyday spaces to high five as well!
 
The implications of motion and planning on the social touch experience in these interactions is also important — think about a disappointingly wimpy (or triumphantly amazing) high five that you’ve experienced in the past. This great or terrible high-fiving experience could be fleeting, but it could also influence who you communicate with, who you’re friends with, and even how you perceive the character or personalities of those around you. This type of perception, opinion, and response could extend to personal robots, too!
 
An investigation like this needs a mixture of more traditional robotics research (e.g., understanding how to move and control a robot arm, developing models of the desired robot motion) along with techniques from design and psychology (e.g., performing interviews with research participants, using best practices from experimental methods in perception). Enabling robots with social touch abilities also comes with many challenges, and even skilled humans can have trouble anticipating what another person is about to do. Think about trying to make satisfying hand contact during a high five—you might know the classic adage “watch the elbow,” but if you’re like me, even this may not always work.
 
I carried out a research study involving eight assorted types of human-robot hand contact, with different combinations of the following: interactions with a facially reactive or non-reactive robot, a physically reactive or non-reactive planning strategy, and a lower or higher robot arm stiffness. My robotic system could become facially reactive by changing its facial expression in response to hand contact, or physically activated by updating its plan of where to move next after sensing hand contact. The stiffness of the robot could be modified by changing a variable that controlled how quickly the robot’s motors tried to pull its arm to the desired state. I knew from last research that fine differences in touch interactions can have a big impact on perceived robot character. For example, if a robot grips an object too tightly or for too long while handing an object to a person, it might be recognized as greedy, possessive, or perhaps even Sméagol-like. A robot that lets go too soon might appear careless or sloppy.
 
In the instance cases of robot grip, it’s clear that understanding people’s perceptions of robot characteristics and personality can help roboticists choose the right robot design based on the proposed operating environment of the robot. I likewise wanted to learn how the facial expressions, physical reactions, and stiffness of a hand-clapping robot would influence human ideas of robot pleasantness, energeticness, dominance, and safety. Understanding this relationship can help roboticists to equip robots with personalities appropriate for the task at hand. For example, a robot assisting people in a grocery store may need to be designed with a high level of pleasantness and only moderate energy, while a maximally effective robot for comedy roast battles may need high degrees of energy and dominance above all else.
 
After many a late night at the GRASP Lab clapping hands with a big red robot, I was ready to carry out the study. Twenty participants visited the lab to clap hands with our Baxter Research Robot and help me begin to understand how characteristics of this humanoid robot’s social touch inspired its pleasantness, energeticness, dominance, and apparent safety. Baxter interacted with participants using a custom 3D-printed hand that was inlaid with silicone inserts.



This article is originally posted on Tronserve.com

Children with autism spectrum disorder can have a confusing time expressing their emotions and can be extremely sensitive to sound, sight, and touch. That sometimes restricts their participation in everyday activities, leaving them socially isolated. Occupational therapists can help them cope better, but the time they’re able to invest is limited and the sessions tend to be expensive.
 
Roboticist Ayanna Howard, an IEEE senior member, has been using interactive androids to guide children with autism on ways to socially and emotionally engage with others—as a supplement to therapy. Howard is chair of the School of Interactive Computing and director of the Human-Automation Systems Lab at Georgia Tech. She served found Zyrobotics, a Georgia Tech VentureLab startup that is working on AI and robotics technologies to engage children with special needs. Last year Forbes named Howard, Zyrobotics’ chief technology officer, one of the Top 50 U.S. Women in Tech.
 
In a current study, Howard and other researchers explored how robots might help children navigate sensory experiences. The experiment involved 18 participants between the ages of 4 and 12; five had autism, and the rest were meeting typical developmental milestones. Two humanoid robots were developed to express boredom, excitement, nervousness, and 17 other emotional states. As children explored stations set up for hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, and touching, the robots modeled what the socially acceptable responses should be.
 
“If a child’s expression is one of happiness or joy, the robot will have a corresponding reply of encouragement,” Howard says. “If there are aspects of frustration or sadness, the robot will supply input to try again.” The study proposed that many children with autism exhibit stronger levels of engagement when the robots interact with them at such sensory stations.
 
It is one of many robotics projects Howard has tackled. She has created robots for researching glaciers, and she is working on assistive robots for the home, as well as an exoskeleton that can help children who have motor disabilities.
 
 Howard spoke about her work during the Ethics in AI: Impacts of (Anti?) Social Robotics panel session held in May at the IEEE Vision, Innovation, and Challenges Summit in San Diego. You can watch the session on IEEE.tv.
 
In this interview with The Institute, Howard talks about how she got engaged with assistive technologies, the need for a more diverse workforce, and ways IEEE has benefited her career.
 
FOCUS ON ACCESSIBILITY
Howard was inspired to work on technology that can improve accessibility in 2008 while teaching high school students at a summer camp devoted to science, technology, engineering, and math.
 
“A young lady with a visual impairment attended camp. The robot development tools being used at the camcampp weren’t accessible to her,” Howard says. “As an engineer, I want to fix hassles when I see them, so we ended up designing tools to enable access to programming tools that could be used in STEM education.
 
“That was my starting motivation, and this theme of accessibility has widened to become a main focus of my research. One of the things about this world of accessibility is that when you start communicating with kids and parents, you learn another world out there of assistive technologies and how robotics can be used for good in education as well as therapy.”
 
DIVERSITY OF THOUGHT
The Institute asked Howard why it’s crucial to have a more diverse STEM workforce and what could be done to enhance the number of women and others from underrepresented groups.
 
“The makeup of the current engineering workforce isn’t necessarily representative of the world, which is made up of different races, cultures, ages, disabilities, and socio-economic backgrounds,” Howard says. “We’re creating goods used by people around the globe, so we have to ensure they’re being manufactured for a diverse population. As IEEE members, we also need to indulge with people who aren’t engineers, and we don’t do that enough.”
 
Educational institutions are doing a better job of increasing diversity in areas such as gender, she says, adding that more work is necessary because the enrollment numbers still aren’t representative of the population and the gains don’t necessarily carry through after graduation.
 
 “There has been an increase in the number of underrepresented minorities and females going into engineering and computer science,” she says, “but data has shown that their numbers are not sustained in the workforce.”
 
ROLE MODEL
Because there are more underrepresented groups on today’s college campuses that can form a community, the lack of engineering role models—although a care on campuses—is more overwhelming for preuniversity students, Howard says.
 
 “Depending on where you go to school, you may not know what an engineer does or even consider engineering as an choice,” she says, “so there’s still a big disconnect there.”
 
Howard has been active for many years in math- and science-mentoring programs for at-risk high school girls. She tells them to find what they’re passionate about and combine it with math and science to create something. She also advises them not to let individuals tell them that they can’t.
 
Howard’s father is an engineer. She says he never encouraged or discouraged her to become one, but when she broke something, he would show her how to fix it and talk her through the process. Along the way, he taught her a logical way of thinking she says all engineers have.
 
“When I would try to explain something, he would quiz me and tell me to ‘think more logically,’” she says.
 
Howard attained a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Brown University, in Providence, R.I., then she received both a master’s and doctorate degree in electrical engineering from the University of Southern California. Before joining the faculty of Georgia Tech in 2005, she worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology for more than a decade as a senior robotics researcher and deputy manager in the Office of the Chief Scientist.
 
ACTIVE VOLUNTEER
Howard’s father was also an IEEE member, but that’s not why she joined the company. She says she signed up when she was a student because, “that was something that you just did. Plus, my student membership fee was sponsored.”
 
She kept the registration as a grad student because of the discounted rates members receive on conferences.
 
Those conferences have had an impact on her career. “They allow you to understand what the state of the art is,” she says. “Back then you obtained a printed conference proceeding and reading through it was brutal, but by attending it in person, you got a 15-minute snippet about the research.”
 
Howard is an active volunteer with the IEEE Robotics and Automation and the IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics societies, holding many positions and serving on several committees.
 
“I value IEEE for its community,” she says. “One of the nice things about IEEE is that it’s international.”



This article is originally posted on Tronserve.com

Using it’s Titomic Kinetic Fusion strategy, Titomic said it would be able to develop parts at a starting cost of AU$12,275 per part. The plan can metallurgically fuse dissimilar metals, beyond the capabilities of standard manufacturing. Upon successful completion of the trial, Titomic will negotiate a contract to supply OEM production of high-wear resistant parts to FLSmidth.
 
Jeff Lang, Managing Director of Titomic, said: “Titomic is pleased to partner with FLSmidth, the global leader in sustainable productivity to the mining industry to deliver TKF additive manufactured parts with real economical value to mining operations. The mining industries' equipment breakdowns are timely and expensive setbacks for operations and Titomic is well placed, as the global leader in industrial scale metal additive manufacturing, to partner with FLSmidth to provide next generation technologies for improved commercial gains of their customers.”
 
The parts manufactured using Titomic’s process are said to result in improved wear resistance for mining equipment, which will in turn reduce inventory and maintenance downtime. In its 8 July press release, the company said that lost production time in mining costs $3,000 per hour, with the total cost averaging $180,000 per incident.



This article is originally posted on Tronserve.com

India’s Tata Communications has publicized the launch of an IoT marketplace intended at improving and augmenting India’s growing IoT ecosystem.