Category Archives: Automation

The creators behind the Raspberry Pi are pretty ingenious folks. After spending the past few years fine-tuning the Pi into a credit card-sized, single-board micro-computer that can run most operating systems and be used as a veritable Swiss Army knife of computing, its founders finally whipped out the Raspberry Pi Zero. For the uninitiated, the Zero is an even smaller, just as versatile micro-computer with the almost inconceivable price tag of $5.

So what can these crazy tiny, super cheap, but sneaky and powerful mini-computers do? You can start unlocking some of their potential with this Raspberry Pi Mastery Bundle, on sale right now for only $34 from TNW Deals.

With these eight courses, including 11 hours of instruction, youll find out many of the ways clever tinkerers have been utilizing the Pi in ridiculously cool ways. Youll also get the step-by-step guides to help create some of those projects for yourself.

After two courses walking you through the basics of the Pi and the Pi Zero (Automation with Raspberry Pi Zero; and Introduction to Raspberry Pi), your learning then turns to all the Pis incredible uses.

While you get training on how to mine Bitcoin for profit (Bitcoin Mining Using Raspberry Pi), the majority of this instruction comes back to using the Pis power to create real-world robotics and automation.

Youll learn about the mechanics of assembling hardware powered by the Pi (Hardware Projects Using Raspberry Pi), how to program and control a basic robot (Raspberry Pi Robotics), building your own robot arm (Build Your Own ArmBot Step By Step Using Raspberry Pi Zero), creating an automated home (Home Automation in 48 Hours Without Coding) or using sensors to gauge things like water temperature (Internet of Things Automation Using Raspberry Pi 2).

By the time youre done, youll have the know-how to whip up all kinds of cool tech to make your life easier not to mention a whole lot more fun. All this training would normally cost over $850, but you can get it now for over 90 percent off just $34 for a limited time.

Get this deal

Read next: Skype's controversial redesign is coming to desktops - here's how to try it

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Build and control your own robots, home automation and more with this Raspberry Pi training - TNW

Raising the minimum wage may be one of the biggest factors in creating more automated jobs.

A sharp minimum wage increase in the U.S. will most severely impact low-skilled workers, according to an analysis of U.S. Census Bureau Current Population Survey data from 1980 to 2015 by economists Grace Lordan from the London School of Economics and David Neumark from the University of California at Irvine. The findings imply that groups often ignored in the minimum wage literature are in fact quite vulnerable to employment changes and job loss because of automation following a minimum wage increase, the paper distributed by the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Mass. concluded.

The highest concentration of industrial robots occurs in the Midwest and Upper South of the U.S., according to data released this week by the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, D.C. More than half of the nations 233,305 industrial robots are burning welds, painting cars, assembling products, handling materials, or packaging things in 10 Midwestern and Southern states, led by Michigan (28,000 robots or 12% of total number), Ohio (20,400 or 8.7%), and Indiana (19,400 or 8.3%). The entire West accounts for just 13% of the nations industrial robots.

Increases in minimum wage give firms incentives to adopt new technologies that replace workers. Their increased payroll costs effectively cause them to make investments in new technologies that they hope will save them money. While these adoptions undoubtedly lead to some new jobs, there are workers who will be displaced that do not have the skills to do the new tasks. While roughly half are under the age of 24, minimum-wage workers represent 15% of the overall workforce, Neumark said. This vulnerability among minimum-wage workers is greater for older workers, he said. For a 50-year-old, the opportunities and likelihood of retraining are a lot harder.

The political debate between Democrats and Republicans over the impact of the minimum wage has been raging for decades. One side says it puts pressure on small (and large) businesses, while the other argues that raising the minimum wage helps lift people out of poverty. The national minimum wage has risen only 116% over the last three decades, from $3.35 an hour to $7.25. But some 19 states have minimum wages that are higher than the federal rate. (Since 1985, Wall Street bonuses soared 890%, seven times the rise in the federal minimum wage, according to recent data by the New York State Comptroller released in March.)

Dont miss: When Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg sound the same dire warning about jobs, its time to listen

Many of these automation-heavy states voted for President Donald Trump in Novembers election. We know that many of the voters who propelled Donald Trump to victory were in rural areas, says Mark Hamrick, Washington, D.C. bureau chief at personal finance website Bankrate.com. Generally, these are areas of the country, like my own hometown in Kansas, which have seen declining population precisely because of a lack of economic opportunity. By contrast, people are attracted to areas where jobs are available or even plentiful, which tends to reinforce the cycle.

Robots are expected to create 15 million new jobs in the U.S. over the next 10 years, equivalent to 10% of the workforce, Forrester Research found. The downside: Robotics will also kill 25 million jobs over the same period. And the better a job pays, the less likely it is to be replaced by automation: Theres an 83% chance that automation will replace a job that pays $20 per hour, a White House report released last year concluded. That falls to 31% for a job that pays between $30 and $40 per hour, and only a 4% chance for a job that pays $40 per hour or more.

U.S. wages have been flat. The average CEO of an S&P 500 company made 347 times more money than the average worker, according to separate data released in May by Executive Pay Watch, a report conducted by the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations. Last year, CEOs were paid 335 times the average worker who has seen his/her pay rise 3% per year. The average production and non-supervisory worker earned $37,600 annually in 2016. When adjusted for inflation, the average wage has remained stagnant for 50 years, the report concluded.

Lordan and Neumark did find that hikes in the minimum wage had a more positive effect on females in higher-wage jobs. This suggests that employment prospects for some workers in higher-wage occupations are boosted by minimum wage increases, consistent with a story in which some jobs are lost to automation, while others are created. Those that are created are for higher-wage workers among the lower-skilled workers, and perhaps given that result emerges for women among jobs less likely to involve manual or physically demanding labor.

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Raising the minimum wage spurs these companies to replace workers with automation - MarketWatch

For humans to survive the automation revolution, we need to double down on our humanity.

The argument goes like this: Artificial intelligence is getting better and better at automating things that humans do. Not just repetitive tasks like assembling parts in a factory, but complex tasks that have traditionally been the domain of humans. Pretty soon, these machine agents will take all the jobs. Humans need not apply.

Weve seen this movie play out beforeand after a gritty fight, we won. The advent of agriculture put hunters and gathers out of business. Then industrial farming put farmers out of business. But each time technology ate one type of jobs, new ones appeared to take their place. Human ingenuity did its thing, we adapted, and we survived to live (and work) another century.

But, say the naysayers, this time is different. Were not talking about dumb machines programmed to do very specific taskswere talking about AIs that learn and get better by watching us and parsing our data for patterns. Globally networked AIs that learn and cooperate with each other will be very powerful, according to author and futurist Yuval Harari. In order to replace most humans, he says, the AI wont have to do very spectacular things.

I do not buy into that version of the future, and here are some reasons why.

AI is smart, but it really isnt as smart as we think. Its true that AI is getting better at tackling complex problems, but its equally true that AI is still not very good at doing many of the things associated with human jobs.

Automation will take away the parts of our jobs we dont like and leave room for more meaningful work.AIs have gotten pretty good at a believable facsimile of humanity in tightly controlled situationslike scheduling meetings. But a general-purpose AI that truly understands you and can respond with creativity and empathy, like the android Ava from Ex Machina? Not so much. AI isnt very good at jobs that require creativity, empathy, critical thinking, leadership, artistic expression, and a whole host of other qualities we traditionally think of as human. Which is why, according to Michael Chui of the McKinsey Global Institute, entire jobs or industries wont often be automated away.

Rather, automation will release humans from the need to perform specific tasks. Those will mostly be non-creative and non-personal tasks that can be broken down into relatively predictable parts. These are chores you didnt want to do to begin with. A lot of people arent hired to schedule meetings, submit receipts for reimbursements, or book flights, anywayfor a lot of folks, theyre just a dreadful set of tasks that came along with your otherwise pretty exciting job.

As venture capitalist Marc Andreessen points out, theres a subtext to the-robots-are-taking-our-jobs argument that is rarely discussed: It presupposes that humans are not smart enough to think up new industries and jobs.

But when industrialization killed the agriculture jobs that employed almost three quarters of the population, people dreamed up new ways to keep fellow humans working. We crisscrossed the country with highways. We took to the skies in flying machines. We built computers. We birthed entire industries around entertainment, healthcare, and education.

I have more faith in humans, and I have yet to see any real evidence to support the pessimism. As Andreessen says, people 100 years ago would marvel at the jobs we do today. The optimist in me finds it difficult to imagine why it will be any different 100 years from now.

AI can seem dystopian because its easier to describe existing jobs disappearing than to imagine industries that never existed appearing, tweeted Box CEO Aaron Levie. Hes right. Theres just no compelling reason to bet against humans when the past 200 years of history shows that were pretty damn good at adapting to technological change.

Not only havent we reached our full potential, but AI can help us reach higher. The debate between artificial intelligence (machines replace us) vs intelligence augmentation (machines help us) has been raging for decades. One side wants to engineer humans out of the equation, while the other thinks the role of machines is to help people perform better.

AI will make us better at our jobs, and better at being human.But that debate misses the point. The two ideas arent mutually exclusive. Its true that AI can do certain things far better than humansIve staked my entrepreneurial future on that. But its also true that when AI starts doing those things, it will make us better at our jobs, and better at being human.

Take a job in sales, for example. Right now, a sales assistant likely spends a lot of time doing things that could be automated: prospecting for and qualifying leads, sending follow-up emails, updating Salesforce, building reports, etc. Once all thats taken over by intelligent machine agents, whats left for you as a salesperson? Its the emotional and creative stuff. Youll spend your day building relationships and serving your clients with creative solutions to their problems. By freeing you from the mundane tasks you used to have to do, often grudgingly, AI will let you focus on things that form the core of your job: the stuff that only you, a human, can do.

This is already happening. Lets stick with the sales example. My companys AI assistant, Amy, removes the tedious task of scheduling meetings from your plate. A sales-specific assistant like Tact automatically captures sales data, reducing administrative load, and then Troops.ai automates the process of organizing it in Salesforce. When it comes time to communicate with leads, Crystal builds personality profiles based on social-media use and suggests ways to personalize your messages. These AI assistants are helping salespeople today by augmenting their existing skills and allowing them to focus on the human side of the job.

One implication of all this is that for humans to succeed in the AI-powered future, we need to double down on our humanity. Technical skills will no doubt remain important in the future of work, but as AI allows us to automate repetitive tasks across many industries, these will in many cases take a back seat to soft skills. Communication, emotional intelligence, creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, and cognitive flexibility will become the most sought-after abilities. To prepare for that future, we need to emphasize developing higher-order thinking and emotional skills.

While our formal education system catches up to the shifting definition of human intelligence, here are three basic ideas for improving your prospects in the future of work.

I see a bright future for humans. In fact, I believe there will be plenty of challenging work for humans because of AI, not in spite of it. I build AI agents for a living, but when it comes to creativity and innovation, Ill continue to bet on humans. Well come through with new ideas, new industries, and new ways to keep ourselves busy and productive, this time buttressed by AI helpers. Our imagination will carry us forward. It always does.

Learn how to write for Quartz Ideas. We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com.

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Automation may take our jobsbut it'll restore our humanity - Quartz

The global float switch market to grow at a CAGR of 3.48% during the period 2017-2021

Global Float Switch Market 2017-2021, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market. To calculate the market size, the report considers new installations, retrofit, replacement, aftermarket, and services market.

One trend in the market is increasing use of automated wireless pump control products. Vendors have introduced automated wireless pump control products to improve the efficiency of pump control. These products can be connected to float and mechanical switches. These devices help in remotely controlling the functions of the pumps, such as the flow of liquids and speed of the motor.

According to the report, one driver in the market is increasing need for process automation. Many end-user industries are upgrading their existing manufacturing facilities to improve the efficiency of the plants and reduce the operating costs. With the help of automation and robotic solutions, manufacturing facilities can improve the quality of their production, thereby improving the efficiency. With the help of IIoT, these manufacturing facilities can collect data, which can be used for analytics and strategic decision making. With the help of automation, the precision and quality of work can be maintained, which helps in improving the output of the products.

Further, the report states that one challenge in the market is premature failure of float switches. Certain models of float switches are not suitable for certain applications, which causes float switch failure. Failure may occur due to the temperature of the liquid, which could affect the functioning of the switches, corrosion of float switches of due to exposure of these switches to various viscous liquids, and improper installations. These factors can damage the float switches and raise the need for their replacement on a frequent basis. The lack of awareness during the selection of float switches is the major reason for the premature failure.

Key Vendors

Other Prominent Vendors

Key Topics Covered:

Part 01: Executive Summary

Part 02: Scope Of The Report

Part 03: Research Methodology

Part 04: Introduction

Part 05: Market Landscape

Part 06: Market Segmentation By Product Type

Part 07: Market Segmentation By End-User

Part 08: Geographical Segmentation

Part 09: Decision Framework

Part 10: Drivers And Challenges

Part 11: Market Trends

Part 12: Vendor Landscape

Part 13: Key Vendor Analysis

Part 14: Appendix

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/wrl8cx/global_float

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Global Float Switch Market 2017-2021 - Increasing Need for Process Automation is Driving the Market - PR Newswire (press release)

Wall Street Journal (subscription)

Ingram Micro to Invest $10 Million in Warehouse Automation Startup Wall Street Journal (subscription) HDS Global, the warehouse automation startup founded by entrepreneur Louis Borders, has lined up Ingram Micro Inc. as its first logistics customer. Ingram Micro, which has started stocking consumer goods and handling online orders for major retailers ... and more »

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Ingram Micro to Invest $10 Million in Warehouse Automation Startup - Wall Street Journal (subscription)

HELSINKI, August 15, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Today The Qt Company introduced the Qt for Automation offering, a new set of libraries and development tools for the building, services and industrial automation sectors. Built on Qt for Device Creation and Qt for Application Development, Qt for Automation is designed to enhance the performance and capabilities of edge devices for the Internet of Things (IoT). With Qt for Automation's modular, scalable and secure libraries and interoperability capabilities, organizations in the automation industry can reduce operating costs and improve the efficiency of business processes. Qt's technology is currently in use by millions of developers across the world and eight of the top 10 Fortune 500 companies.

With Gartner, Inc. forecasting earlier this year that 8.4 billion connected things will be in use worldwide in 2017 and 5.5 million new devices being connected every day, the IoT is one of the most opportunity-rich areas across today's global technology landscape. Furthermore, McKinsey & Company found that the potential value that could be unlocked with IoT applications in factory settings which represent a significant portion of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) could be as much as $3.7 trillion in 2025, which is approximately one-third of all potential economic value of the IoT estimated by McKinsey. Consequently, organizations in the automation industry are increasingly looking for ways to pursue the market opportunities created by both the IoT and the IIoT.

The modern architecture and extensibility of the modular, scalable and secure tools and QtKNX libraries within Qt for Automation guarantees rapid innovation and future warranties, independent of any changes to the hardware or operating systems. By leveraging these features and the device interoperability capabilities of Qt for Automation, organizations in the industrial and home automation sectors are able to significantly reduce operating costs and streamline mission-critical business processes.

"With the rise of IoT, we realized thatthe amount ofsensors and I/O we collected in our control systems was increasing exponentially, and we needed to aggregate the data and present it in a better way to becomemore efficient," said Rune Volden, R&D Manager, Ulstein Power & Control. "Qt provides a very good tool for programming control systems as well as graphical user interfaces, which saved us a significant amount of development time."

Qt for Automation extends Qt's comprehensive portfolio of application development and device creation tools. The primary features of Qt for Automation include:

"Qt has been focused on the automation sector since our inception two decades ago, and our presence in the industry has expanded alongside the exponential growth of the global IoT market," said Lars Knoll, CTO, The Qt Company. "With the new Qt for Automation offering, we are bringing our automation capabilities together in an integrated and comprehensive set of software development tools and libraries that have been designed for edge devices in industrial and home automation. This enables our automation customers to quickly and easily gain tangible business benefits, including reduced costs and improved efficiencies across their entire organization, and further extends our leadership position in the automation industry."

Qt will share additional details about Qt for Automation during a webinar taking place at 4:00 p.m. CEST on Thursday, September 7th. You can register for the webinar here.

Additionally, to learn more about Qt for Automation, please read our blog post detailing the new offering.

Furthermore, you can learn more about The Qt Company and Qt for Automation at this year's Qt World Summit, the largest annual event dedicated to Qt developers, business leaders and product managers. The event will take place in Berlin, Germany from October 10-12 and will feature thought-provoking keynotes and demos, insightful breakouts, and industry highlights. For more information on the Qt World Summit 2017, please visit: http://www.qtworldsummit.com/

About The Qt Company

The Qt Company develops and delivers the Qt development framework under commercial and open source licenses. We enable a single software code across all operating systems, platforms and screen types, from desktops and embedded systems to wearables and mobile devices. Qt is used by approximately one million developers worldwide and is the leading independent technology behind millions of devices and applications. Qt is the platform of choice for in-vehicle systems, medical devices, industrial automation devices, and other business critical application manufacturers, and is used by leading global players in more than 70 industries. The Qt Company is owned by the Qt Group, which operates in China, Finland, Germany, Japan, Korea, Norway, Russia and USA with more than 200 employees worldwide. The Qt Group is headquartered in Espoo, Finland and is listed on Nasdaq Helsinki Stock Exchange. The company's net sales in year 2016 totaled 32,4 MEUR. To learn more visit http://qt.io

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Qt Introduces Qt for Automation to Help Organizations Reduce Operating Costs and Improve Business Process Efficiency - Markets Insider

I recently introduced my kids to the original Star Wars trilogy. As we watched together, there was one thing that bothered me over and over. That thing was a gangly, gold-plated klutz of a droid called C-3PO.

Threepio is kind of a terrible robot. The problem is his heavy, accident-prone body really only exists to carry his software around. He easily could have been a handheld device that you take out of your pocket when you need to negotiate with some Jawas and put away when you want to travel through space without the snide commentary.

That said, the relationship between C-3PO and his human partners provides a few hints about knowledge work automation. Hes always on in the background to enable communication and provide data-based insights, and he even simulates variable outcomes. Yet despite possessing more logic than the humans around him, he is there to serve as an adviser. He relies on their creativity and emotional intelligence to solve problems.

Teams and CIOs can learn a lot from this relationship as automation in the enterprise becomes more normalized. In an ideal system, automation doesnt replace human thought but augments it by providing better information and by offloading repetitive tasks to software. The goal is to supplement the human mind to bring out the best quality of work from your most talented employees.

Since we dont have Threepio units for the enterprise (at least, not yet), were seeing more subtle forms of automation in white-collar work, especially in routine cognitive tasks. Theres a great 2014 post on Scott McLeods education blog Dangerously Irrelevant that describes the decreasing value of routine cognitive work, and in it you can see that software has been reducing routine tasks as far back the 1970s. Now, AI and machine learning are expanding the variability of semi-routine tasks that computers are able to perform, allowing bots to handle more complex tasks in fields like customer service, logistics coordination, payment processing, and many, many more.

For workers, bringing value in an automation-heavy world depends on their ability to execute non-routine cognitive work. This is work that requires problem-solving skills, creativity, empathy, and persuasion. Writing, for example, is a skill computers have yet to master (despite some hilarious attempts).

For those knowledge workers in cognitive fields, theyll still see automation creeping into their workflows in ways that will help eliminate some of the least pleasant parts of their jobs. According to McKinsey Global Institute, 60 percent of occupations could see 30 percent of their tasks automated with technologies available today. That means even if youre a creative professional say, a designer youve probably already used automation to do repeatable work, like batch file renames or applying filters to a collection of images. Simple automations like these free workers from mundane tasks and give them hours back every week to focus on higher-value portions of their job.

The next wave of automation for knowledge workers is workflow automation, which at a high level means automated systems can help you move repeatable work through a variable workflow, while keeping your team informed about handoffs and status changes. This is invaluable because in collaborative work, the biggest roadblocks occur when two or more people are working on the same task, and one doesnt realize the others are awaiting their contributions. This has a huge impact on productivity.

This is why theres so much value that can be gained from automating communications about tasks and projects as they move through a pipeline. By automating the delivery of updates and other information between team members, you can reduce the amount of emails and meetings needed in an organization, while ensuring receipt of important data. If some of those updates are about sales opportunities, automation can help a business increase revenue. And, as is the case with the previous example of the designer, youve given people back time to focus on more valuable work.

The biggest myth about automation is that its coming for your job, and that business leaders are longing to replace humans with cheaper machine labor. In an informal poll we recently conducted with about 250 attendees of a webinar on automation, reducing cost was dead last among reasons businesses are investing in it. The top two responses were consistent approach and work quality, which suggests leaders are thinking more about how automation can help them scale their operations rather than downsize them.

Still, for millions of workers, a day of reckoning may come where they need to uplevel their skills away from the routine. For these individuals, focusing on strategy, creativity, and people skills will help strengthen their careers and position them to bring lasting value, even after many of their daily tasks have been augmented by machines. In McLeods post, he discusses how the education system must also adapt to emphasize non-routine thought so that future generations are equipped with relevant skills in a world where machines execute routine work, and I agree.

Automation is a massive shift in work, and for many workers, it will be a shift they slowly notice alleviating some of the most repeatable parts of their job. And while were still far from the droids of Star Wars, as our work is increasingly augmented by machine intelligence, well be able to unlock more value than we ever thought possible.

Andrew Filev is the CEO of Wrike, thework management platform.

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Star Wars and C-3PO perpetuated myths about workplace automation - VentureBeat

For Akash Gupta, a journey which started with building humanoids has shaped into one of the largest automation companies of the world today. Our candidate for this weeks Techie Tuesdays, Akash is the Co-founder and CTO of GreyOrange, an automation startup that provides warehousing solutions.

What does it take to be the CTO of one of the largest hardware and automation startupsin India and the world at the age of 27? The secret, according to Akash Gupta, the Co-founder and CTO of GreyOrange, lies in having strong fundamentals, the ability to quickly learn and unlearn new technologies and learning from the mistakes/failures even more quickly.

A BITS Pilani graduate in Mechanical Engineering, Akashs interest in building robots (humanoids) was strong that he built one in his college days. Unlike most students who tend to get emotionally attached to college life, our Techie Tuesdays candidate of the week, Akash, was was happy to finish his degree in three years and be out of the college.

YourStory caught up with Akash recently at his Gurgaon office to retrace his journey.

Akash was born in Auraiya district of Uttar Pradesh, situated 400 km from Delhi. His father worked in railways and was posted at Dibiyapur railway station. He studied there till class IV. When his family moved to Kanpur he joined the Puranchandra Vaidyaniketan school there.

Akash started coding in class VI with GW-BASIC and learnt C the next year from his sisters book Let Us C. Subsequently, he developed an interest in 3D animation and learnt 3ds Max and Maya. This kept him busy in class IX and X. Akash believes that his interest in 3D animation plateaued partly because of limited exposure to algorithm at the time.

Incidentally, this geeky student was the 100m champion in school. However, the IIT JEE preparation in class XI and XII weaned him away from track and field activities forever.

Akash joined the Mechanical Engineering department at BITS Pilani in 2008. One of the predominant thoughts in his mind then was that he had solved enough problems on paper, and now wanted to do things in real life. He says,

I could draw a DC or an AC motor on paper very well, but looking at the motor of the ceiling fan, I couldnt tell which one of those it was.

Related read Meet Kiran Bhatthe man who engineered Hulk and Tarkin to win 2017 sci-tech Oscar

In his first year, Akash saw a demo of the AcYut humanoid project. To join the team, he gave the AcYut test where he was asked to make a 3D emblem of BITS Pilani on Inventor software. Being good at 3D animation, Akash made the cut easily and started working with the team AcYut in his very first month in college. He wanted to learn as much as possible.At AcYut, Akash started by designing the mechanical parts and then manufacturing them.

As a team member, he had full access to the CNC (Computer Numerical Control) Lab for manufacturing. He learnt to write G Code (input for CNC machines) and to run CNC machines. In the first year, the team made three versions of the complete mechanical structure of AcYut. Akash says,

I was so much into it that I couldnt see anything else and fortunately BITS (Pilani) gives you that flexibility.

In October 2008, Akash went to Japan to participate in a robotic competition. This was his first exposure to an international technology-based competition which helped him understand the global benchmarks for such competitions. Team AcYut was then planning to participate in the Robo Games next year (2009) for which they started building two robots. Akash picked up micro-controller programming and took his understanding of robotics further.

In AcYut-II, the team used bust motors (motors serially connected to each other using RS-485). There were two series of 16 motors each and hence, writing fool-proof protocols was not easy for them. Akash says,

In humanoids, the most complicated thing is stability. We underestimate how easily we walk (and balance). Walking is very difficult to simulate. With a lot of enthusiasm, we chose six DOF (degree of freedom) leg and then we spent good two months solving the inverse kinematics for them.

Even after figuring out the right inverse kinematics model, it took the team another six months to put it in codes and ensure that those signals go to the motors at the right time and they behave as intended. Team AcYut used ATmega1280 for controlling the complete bot and 3mm sheets of 6061 aluminium to manufacture the brackets (chassis structure on which you mount motors etc) of AcYut.

Since the workshop occupied the day time, Akash (and team AcYut) got to work only at night.

Eventually, the team won the bronze model at the Robo Games in San Francisco..The main competition at the Robo Games was humanoid Kung-Fu where the robot which can knock down the other robot three times wins.

At the end of his first year, Akash and Samay Kohli (Co-founder GreyOrange and team member AcYut) got an internship at University of Louisiana where they worked at the CajunBot Lab on an autonomous vehicle project for some time. At the university, they met Thomas Chance, CEO, C&C Technologies, which built equipment for underwater surveying. This was their first exposure to industrial robotics. The duo worked at C&C Technologies in the areas of mechanical design, electronics and microprocessors.

One of the major projects Akash worked on was the SONAR stabilising system which solved the problem of mapping the ocean bed accurately and get rid of the inconsistency caused by the waves. This included fair amounts of mechanics and electronics. Since Akash and Samay had time on their hands, they went on to build a kind of Disney ride (by joining two trailers) in a haunted house owned by Thomas. Akash says,

One could sit on a trolly and go through the rooms which were themed differently like earthquake room, laser room. More than 200 microcontrollers were working in sync with 5 computers and 1,000 air pistons (for doing a lot of actuations) to make it all happen. The entire setup cost almost $250,000.

In his second year, Akash spent a lot of time on electronics, designing and manufacturing PCBs end to end. The AcYut team won the gold and silver medal at the Robo Games. They built an exoskeleton suit wherein if a person wears this suit and moves his/her hands, then the robot will copy/replicate it. They went to the Ideen Expo in Germany with this project. Akash visited the BMW manufacturing plant there which helped him understand the importance of factors like reliability in the automation industry.

Akash recalls meetingWolfgang Hoeltgen during the visit. He is one of the earliest angels and a strategic mentor to the founding team at GreyOrange.

In January 2011, Akash and Samay were invited to take part in a humanoid hand (robotics) workshop at IIT Bombay. Soon, other colleges too invited them and thats when they started thinking about starting a company. Also, since the work had started, Akash was very keen to come out of college as soon as possible. At the time he was juggling between AcYut, GreyOrange and his studies (curriculum). He used to be in Delhi from Saturday to Monday (running GreyOrange) and back in Pilani from Tuesday to Friday (to attend the labs, as a part of the curriculum were on Tuesdays and Fridays).

Akash and Samay started making kits for the workshops which gave them an experience of doing things at scale. By now, they were done with the Robo Games and started targeting the Robo Cup. While the Robo Games had remote controlled robots, the Robo Cup had completely autonomous (robot) 2*2 soccer.

While preparing, Akash got into image processing, cognitive understanding,vision systems andstarted solving the localisation problems. He understood the complexities of gyroscope, magnetometer, accelerometer.

Akash finished his college degree in three years somehow and took the final-year internship at GreyOrange. In June-July 2011, he shifted to Samays house in Delhi marking the formal start of GreyOrange.

Also read From UP to the US: The journey of Abhinav Asthana and his affair with APIs

Even though Akash and Samay were making good money through workshops, they were clear that they were not going to do it for long. Soon, they started building white labeled products for other companies. These included:

This gave Akash an exposure to different standards of coding and manufacturing. He used Qt language (application development framework based on C++) for the software. He says,

I started understanding the importance of getting the right abstraction (very well structured in programmes) from the real world. For example, while programming for a pump, youve to make sure that all the different attributes of that pump are kept in your data structure in order to perform different actions on it. This becomes even more important when were building longer-term products.

After building 3-4 white label products, Akash realised that he (and Samay) were playing with way too many technologies and products. Hence, they decided to choose an industry and build products only for that. While researching to finalie the industry, they wrote down some rules to help them choose the right industry:

They finally zeroed in on three industries:

They chose option #1 and built a prototype. They proposed the idea of maintenance of tanks to a company. They even gave them the design. Unfortunately, the company floated the tender with their requirements sharing the design submitted by GreyOrange and somebody else bought the tender. Akash recalls, Being a startup we were left with nothing. We even filed a complaint but couldnt give more time to it and had to let it go.

They then moved to supply chain. Akash visited a lot of warehouses, enough to convince him that a lot needed to be done there. He started looking at goods to person systems and found that it could be made much more efficient using Grey Pranges solution of using an elegant hardware and a complex software. The first thought was to build a bot.

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According to Akash, building a butler system is almost like bringing four large products together to make a complete system. It will have bots, pick-put stations, MSUs (mobile storage units) and a software that runs robots and business logic of inventory management. Akash and Samay spent the first few days understanding the entire problem and figuring out what the solution will be like. Akash says,

Our thought process was slightly different than what Kiva Systems (now Amazon Robotics) was doing. Kiva had a lot of Swan robotics which refers to distributed intelligence. Only the main server didnt have the onus of being intelligent. Bots were intelligentas well. We wanted to have a simple hardware and table up all the complexity on the server side.

This gave Grey Orange a flexibility which is desirable in the warehouses. Keeping the product software centric helped it and the hardware acted as more of generic agents.

Akash and Samay knew that its going to take them more than two years to build a butler system. And they also understood that survival of a startup for two years without revenues is very difficult. This thought coupled with an opportunity to build a sortation system for warehouses, made the duo explore it after visiting Flipkarts first ever warehouse. Akash says,

We decided to build a sortation system on the side while working on the butler system. It was a hard decision to take as we were a team of only ten people and bulter system itself was hard enough problem to solve. Technically its not advisable to do such a thing.

For two years, the team kept switching between sortation system and butler systems as working in parallel wasnt possible.

Lifting (500 kg weight) was one of the most challenging problems to be solved in order to build a butler system. The team at GreyOrange used a complex dual scissor lift mechanism to lift and built multiple prototypes. Akash says, In the hardware world, its better to build as many prototypes as possible and fail rather than getting stuck with building a perfect prototype.

Akash drew the architecture of the robot (butler) with safety system, navigation system and communication system. On server side, the team chose Erlang as the language for the main system. It was a hard decision as there were very few programmers who knew the language. Akash says,

At that point we had a dream to run 1,000 robots in a single warehouse. We couldnt find any other language or stack which allowed so many agents running in a soft real-time system.

Initially, the team used Hub motors where the motor and suspension was on wheels but later on scrapped it as it created a lot of problems. After three revisions, they got the design and production of the gear box right. Akash adds, Lack of prototyping ecosystem in India created further problems and delays. We resorted to doing things in-house as we couldnt be dependent on outside shops.

Finally, in November, Grey Orange launched its first prototype. Now, the challenge was to make them manufacturable (so that robots arent handcrafted). That took another 8-9 months. In the meanwhile, the team received an order for building sortation system. They decide to build a completely modular sortation system, so that even when one of the arms stops functioning, the rest can still work. An overall control system was designed for this. Akash says, Because PLCs (programmable logic controllers) had a lot of limitations, we built our own control systems. The sortation system was relatively less complex on the server side and fairly complex on the embedded side.

The first butler system was installed in Hong Kong. It had a small ten bot system, 200 MSUs, 2 pick-put stations, auto charging.

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Usually, sortation systems are built to sort boxes. Akash too thought so and used IR (infra red) sensors. But when he received the sample packs from Flipkart, he realised they are poly packs (and not boxes). The IR sensors behaved very differently for these poly packs. Akash adds, This was the first ever sorter built for e-commerce company in India. And outside India, everyone used a box. So, this problem was left virgin.

Akash and his team fixed the problems of motor heating, slipping of belt, incorrect counting of the package, before installing the system at Flipkart warehouse. Moving the sorter from Gurgaon to Bangalore was very challenging. It was only now that the team started thinking about transporting the machine. It was a 40-45-ft-long machine which had to be dis-assembled and transported. It was a humongous task which taught that designing to make it work isnt enough. One has to design while making sure that the system is assembled, dis-assembled, supported, moved comfortably.

From the current capacity of supporting 1,500 to 2,000 butlers (bots), GreyOrange wants to build systems which can support infinite number of bots. The team has converted its monolithic architecture to micro services based architecture to achieve scale.

For GreyOrange, if servers go down, its not just the website which will go down, but also hundreds of robots with 500 kg weight on each will crash with each other. Hence, Akash and his team has to be even more careful while writing algorithms and ensure that any path reserved by a bot isnt taken by anyone else and that the orders are optimised in the best possible ways. According to Akash, right choices of architecture, stacks, thinking it through, being flexible and ensuring that the team focuses in-depth into modules has helped the company.

Some of the key challenges which Akash and his team are solving at GreyOrange are as follows:

In the last few months, rapid expansion to multiple geographies has brought in some operational problems like translating documentation, communication, screens, APIs, databases in five languages. To solve this, the team has built a clear framework and web interface for translators who get notifications sprint by sprint of new strings that are coming.

Akash believes that the hardware ecosystem in India has definitely evolved in this decade but the change is minimal. He says, People have become more supportive of working for prototypes of startups because somewhere they have seen startups becoming big.

Four years ago, when Akash went to a company which produced suspensions for automobiles, he was turned down immediately because of the low production volume requirement (relative to what the company produced for automobiles) and a lack of understanding of startups. But a year ago, when he spoke to them again, they agreed.

In the early days of GreyOrange, Akash used to hire people who were ready to learn and had a good understanding of basic sciences physics and mathematics. Lately, he has changed his approach and now he looks for the following kinds of people:

Also read How a small-town commerce graduate became CTO of a multibillion-dollar company

Akash is a big fan of flexibility and believes that the way supply chain is growing, the only way to build an efficient supply chain is by making it extremely flexible. He says,

In next three to five years, were looking at warehouses running with mobile platforms with changeable accessories. We really want to get to the point where you dont have any fixed infrastructure thats running in the warehouse. These mobile platforms can attach themselves with different accessories and can work as lifting units, or conveyers or robotic arms or static platform.

In order to get there, therere certain technology platforms that need to be built which will enable that. Akash and his team is already working on it at the moment (along with architecturing the entire solution). Once thats done, itll take another year or two to integrate with the system. The team is also working towards introducing the concept of unibots (similar to human beings) in the next five to seven years.

Akash wants to run one of the largest warehouses with 10,000 robots very soon. He is also keen to build GreyOrange as a company where he would still want to work ten years hence. Hes making sure that the company retains the culture of innovation and building new products. He adds, GreyOranges products are disruptive. For example, while other companies in the world offering linear sorters have a lead/installation time of at least three-four months, we do it in as less as four weeks.

He wants to stick to producing simple elegant hardware with extremely complex software which disrupts the industry.

Akash believes in being sincere to oneself and ones work. For the first three-four years of the company, he was always the first to reach office and last to leave. He felt it as a responsibility that till any employee was in the office, he should be there with him/her to support, to help.He says,

The biggest fear that you have as an entrepreneur is that if you fail, then you shouldnt have this in your heart that you didnt give your best.

You can connect with him on Linkedin or Twitter.

Read more from the original source:

How 27-year-old Akash Gupta built the largest automation startup of India - YourStory.com

States that raise their minimum wages may put low-skill workers at risk of having their jobs automated, according to a new academic paper published Monday.

The study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research finds that higher minimum wages are likely to lower employment in manufacturing jobs that can be performed by robots, and hit older, black, and female workers particularly hard.

The paper, which has not yet gone through the peer review process, was written by Grace Lordan of the London School of Economics and David Neumark of the University of California at Irvine, one of the pre-eminent academic analysts of the minimum wage.

It is sure to once again reignite the long-running debate over the effects of higher minimum wages. Many Democrats have called for raising the federal minimum wage from its current rate of $7.25 an hour to $15 in order to increase workers' pay. Democratic-run states and cities have implemented wage floors above the federal level.

The benefits of higher minimum wages, however, would be undercut if workers lose jobs.

The paper warns that increases in the minimum wage "will give incentives for firms to adopt new technologies that replace workers earlier."

Using Census data to compare states with differing minimum wages and a dataset of jobs vulnerable to automation developed by MIT economist David Autor, the study published Monday finds that some workers "are in fact quite vulnerable to job loss because of automation following a minimum wage increase."

The study starts the clock at 1980, but the authors find some evidence that job losses stemming from automation spurred by higher minimum wages might be getting worse in more recent years, possibly because automation is getting better or because the minimum wage hikes are getting bigger. They speculate that in the years ahead, jobs like driving taxis or tending cash registers could be lost to automation.

The debate over the minimum wage picked up this summer in response to a study that found that Seattle's experiment with a $13 minimum wage hurt that city's workers. Groups supportive of higher minimum wages have criticized the research that found that negative result.

Read more:

New study finds minimum wage hikes lead to job automation - Washington Examiner

Jonathan Wilkins explores how advanced technology can be used to create sustainable solutions and tackle world poverty

The United Nations has reported that almost half of the worlds population lives on less than $2 a day.

On top of this, another billion people are considered living on less and are under the poverty line.

Sustainable development, that is, development that helps solve the problems of today without compromising the needs of future generations, is an important part of decreasing the number of people living in poverty and it is no small task.

Science and technology go hand-in-hand in solving the worlds problems and robotics and automation are the latest innovations set to tackle one of our biggest issues poverty.

The number of people developing advanced technologies, such as robotics and artificial intelligence, to provide creative solutions to real world challenges is on the rise.

Technological development relies on creative initiatives from companies, entrepreneurs and educational institutes, to tackle crises.

To solve these global issues, technologists also need to work with the people affected by them to understand the issues at hand.

With a clear understanding of influencing factors, new technologies can be developed to tackle the problems head on.

The development of this new technology can draw on a number of innovative fields, such as big data, the internet of things (IoT), synthetic biology, 3D printing, quantum computing and drones to name a few. But it is robotics and automation which are making waves.

Developing community robots

In the developed world, robotics and automation are predominantly used in large scale applications, commonly in industrial settings performing tasks such as product assembly or welding.

Personal robots are much less common, as many have limited functionality or are expensive. In more remote and less developed locations, low numbers of personal robots that provide a valuable service could be particularly useful in improving health or agriculture for a community.

In this environment, the robot could act not as a personal robot, but as a community robot performing specific, important functions on a small scale to benefit a group. This type of robot could increase quality of life for local people, and help develop more sustainable, healthy and safe communities.

Potential functions include increasing accessibility to healthcare, performing agricultural work, checking the quality of water or solving design challenges.

Why a robot?

The reasons a robot could benefit a community are similar to the reasons they benefit industrial environments so greatly robots are precise, strong and accurate. These characteristics can be put to use in different ways to suit a particular community's needs.

Once these have been identified, an engineer can develop a robot with the appropriate characteristics.

For example, if it is particularly necessary that the community reduces waste, one solution could be the development of a robot to increase recycling by sensing the contents of different plastics using spectroscopy.

Alternatively, if there is a lack of clean water, a robot could be designed to monitor contamination. In agriculture, communities could use robots to assess soil condition, check the health of plants and animals and cultivate or harvest crops.

These are just a few ways that robots could be deployed to increase the quality of life for those living in developing countries.

One company that is working with local partners to develop robotics for health and environmental applications is We Robotics.

The company co-creates local innovation labs, known as Flying Labs, to help partners identify if robotics solutions may help to overcome the communitys problems.

If a solution is viable, We Robotics works with technology partners to deploy technology for local applications, including transportation and data collection. Technological development using knowledge of the landscape and environment is essential as a part of this process.

Designing the community robot

Robots comprise of several components to enable them to perform their specific functions, including sensors to recognise the environment, motors for actuation and systems for intelligent control.

New designs can take advantage of existing components - by combining these with knowledge of the specific application at hand, engineers can develop new solutions to problems.

If there are limitations to overcome, the designer must take this into account. For example,

in some environments, energy may be a problem.

To tackle this, a designer can combine a wind-up motor or biogas engine with an automated technology for sustainable use without access to electricity.

Robotic components can also be used in isolation or in combination with a human operator as a hybrid system.

For example, using a sensor combined with a human for improved detection or a robot gripper that relies on humans senses.

In developing these robots, education is as important as collaboration. Creative local engineers that are familiar with the environment, culture and challenges can work with either academia or industry to develop the required technology. If this continues, new applications are sure to emerge that benefit communities and provide a useful function.

Robotics can contribute to challenges in developing countries, but robots need adapting to suit niche purposes.

Once developed, these could be applied to help tackle the global poverty crisis, one community at a time.

Jonathan Wilkins, is marketing director at obsolete equipment supplier, EU Automation.

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Automation for sustainable development - Engineer Live