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Plex Systems acquires factory data company Dattus

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Plex Systems, a provider of cloud enterprise resource planning and manufacturing execution systems software, has acquired Dattus, a supplier of industrial internet of things connectivity technologies.

Dattus solutions connect manufacturing equipment and sensors to the cloud, manage high-volume data streams, and analyze in-motion equipment data to optimize performance, reduce costs, and ensure uptime.

The acquisition is expected to accelerate Plex’s IIoT strategy, extending the Plex Manufacturing Cloud to new streams of machine data and the underlying intelligence. The acquisition was completed last month.  [Read more…] about Plex Systems acquires factory data company Dattus

Autodesk uses Lego method to develop modular assembly system for real factories

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Software maker Autodesk is using machine learning and lessons learned from Lego to develop robotic systems for modular assembly in the real world. 

Lego, as most people will know, is the company which makes small toy bricks and other objects which can be connected to each other in simple ways to create complex structures, such as toy houses, cars and so on.

Most adults will have played with Lego at some point in their lives, and the companies toys are still popular with today’s kids.

The Lego world has always interested other companies, some of which have copied the to create modular systems in many areas, including large-scale real building construction.  [Read more…] about Autodesk uses Lego method to develop modular assembly system for real factories

Apple releases new ‘fastest, most powerful’ MacBook Pro

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Apple has updated MacBook Pro with faster performance and new pro features, making it the most advanced Mac notebook ever.

Apple is, by some accounts, the world’s largest manufacturing company, certainly by such measures as market capitalization and perhaps revenues.

The company is continually launching new products and updating its existing ones, which often means changing of suppliers.  [Read more…] about Apple releases new ‘fastest, most powerful’ MacBook Pro

Mentor Veloce hardware emulation platform now available on Amazon Web Services

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Mentor, a Siemens business, says the company’s Veloce Strato platform is now a customer-validated cloud computing emulation platform directly accessible on-demand on Amazon Web Services.

The Veloce Strato platform offers data center options, such as hardware emulation on-premises, off-premises and on AWS. It’s a computing system often used by chip designers.

This new data center use model extends the availability of hardware emulation across a broad range of deployment scenarios to ensure that all semiconductor companies have access to hardware emulation for system-on-chip and system-of-systems verification.  [Read more…] about Mentor Veloce hardware emulation platform now available on Amazon Web Services

North American semiconductor manufacturing equipment industry posts $2.5 billion in billings

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North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor-making equipment posted $2.49 billion in billings worldwide in June 2018, according to industry association SEMI.

The $2.49 billion figure is calculated by SEMI on a “three-month average basis”, and is published in the Market Data Billings Report, published today by SEMI.

The billings figure is 8 percent lower than the final May 2018 level of $2.7 billion, and is 8.1 percent higher than the June 2017 billings level of $2.3 billion.  [Read more…] about North American semiconductor manufacturing equipment industry posts $2.5 billion in billings

Brain-computer interfaces: Devices to enable you to control robots with your thoughts

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OpenBCI has launched a new version of its brain-computer interface as well as new electrodes which connect to the device.

The device itself resembles a cycling helmet and measure brainwaves, or electroencephalogram data, to use the technical term.

The company also provides software and a biosensing board, all of which enable users to monitor the electrical activity of their brains.  [Read more…] about Brain-computer interfaces: Devices to enable you to control robots with your thoughts

You too can become a robot and live forever

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According to a futurologist, by 2050, humans will be able to integrate their brain or mind data into computers which can be encased in a humanoid robot and, thereby, live forever. 

Writing about “immortality” on his website, Dr ID Pearson talks about adding external computing capability to human brains.

This additional capability will keep increasing so that, “by around 2050, 99 per cent of your mind is running on external IT rather than in the meat-ware in your head”.  [Read more…] about You too can become a robot and live forever

Opinion: Do customers really want to talk to robots?

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By Anne de Kerckhove, CEO, Freespee

No matter which sector you are currently operating in, it’s more than likely that artificial intelligence will soon completely change the way you do business.

Consumer-facing organisations in the retail, energy, finance, insurance and automotive sectors are embracing automation – not just to keep up with competitors, but also to keep pace with increasing expectations.

However, with so much hype around AI in today’s media landscape, knowing the true value of what it can offer organisations – and how it can truly improve the customer experience – is increasingly difficult.  [Read more…] about Opinion: Do customers really want to talk to robots?

World’s fastest supercomputers: US takes the lead again in high-performance computing

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The US has again taken the lead in the global supercomputing sector because of a large investment by the Department of Energy, which made $260 million available to fund the development of the Summit supercomputer, located at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

According to the Top500.org, which measures these things, the Summit supercomputing system is capable of 122,300 teraflops a second.

A teraflop is a trillion floating point operations. A petaflop is 1,000 times a teraflop, or a quadrillion flops.  [Read more…] about World’s fastest supercomputers: US takes the lead again in high-performance computing

Artificial intelligence: The power and poise of deep learning

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There is so much talk about artificial intelligence that many people who aren’t even programmers understand some of the principles of the technology. 

At the very least, most people who have an interest in these subjects have very likely heard of two of the branches of AI, namely machine learning and deep learning.

But some people, like us, might not fully understand the difference between machine learning and deep learning.  [Read more…] about Artificial intelligence: The power and poise of deep learning