Category Archives: Automation

NEW DELHI: Indian business landscape is likely to be influenced by trends like artificial intelligence, automation and digital currencies in the second half of this year, says a report.

The Sanctum Wealth Management's Mid-Year Investment Outlook report for 2017, which identified key trends that are likely to influence asset allocation decisions, noted that companies with disruptive leadership will thrive.

"The advent of artificial intelligence, sharing economies, automation and digital currencies are likely to disrupt the face of the Indian business landscape as we know it today," said Prateek Pant, Head of Products and Solutions, Sanctum Wealth Management, in a research note.

The report said key investments will be in innovation in the fields of energy, transportation and manufacturing, among others.

The report noted that currently solar energy represents roughly 1 per cent of energy production but by 2027, 57 per cent of India's total electricity capacity will come from non-fossil fuel sources.

Similar kind of disruption is also visible in the transportation sector. Electric cars accounted for 0.8 per cent of new car sales in 2016, and their sales figure are witnessing a steady rise.

"A shift to electricity and alternative sources of power looks set to positively impact the potential growth rate of the Indian economy," the report said.

It further noted that artificial intelligence (AI) and automation will emerge as the next leg for smart manufacturing.

"As we embark on the second half of the calendar year, with markets in a strong, euphoric uptrend, we seek to identify the key trends that will, in the months to come, provide crucial inputs into asset allocation as well as bottom-up portfolio construction decisions," said Shiv Gupta Founder and CEO at Sanctum Wealth Management.

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AI, automation to be next disruptions for Indian businesses: Report - Economic Times

DUBLIN, August 14, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

The "Indian Industrial Automation Market: Drivers, Restraints, Opportunities, Trends, and Forecasts to 2023" report has been added to Research and Markets' offering.

The Industrial Automation Market in India will witness a CAGR of 11.6% during the forecast period 2017-2023.

The Indian Industrial Automation Market is still evolving and its prospects are good due to increasing Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) and sustained growth of the manufacturing sector. The country is expected to strengthen its manufacturing sector from its current share of 16.57% of the GDP in FY2017 to 25%-30% of the GDP by FY2030.

Indian industries are improving their automation capabilities bringing it at par with global standards due to the pressing need for operational excellence, improved productivity, quality and to maintain six sigma standards in the production processes. This is further supplemented by macroeconomic factors such as the burgeoning middle-class population, rising disposable incomes, urbanization, and focused government initiatives, which are expected to have a positive impact on the growth of the manufacturing industry.

The report contains an in-depth analysis of vendor profiles which includes financial health, business units, key business priorities, SWOT, strategy, and views and competitive landscape. The vendors covered in this report are Siemens Ltd., Schneider Electric, ABB Ltd., Rockwell Automation, and Honeywell International Inc. The report also includes a list of companies offering innovative industrial automation products, namely GreyOrange, Arkrobot, and Gixtronix Technologies.

Market Dynamics

Drivers

Restraints

Opportunities

Key Topics Covered:

1 Industry Outlook

2 Report Outline

3 Market Snapshot

4 Market Outlook

5 Market Characteristics

6 Industrial Automation Types: Market Size and Analysis

7 Technology: Market Size and Analysis

8 Verticals: Market Size and Analysis

9 Vendors Profile

10 Companies to Watch for

11 Competitive Landscape

Companies Mentioned

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/4stld8/indian_industrial

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Indian Industrial Automation Market 2017-2023 - Rapid Adoption of Digital Technologies - Markets Insider

Despite many advocates for artificial intelligence and automation playing down the long-term risk to employment levels, Indian tech giant Infosys has revealed its early adoption of the technology has already dramatically reduced the numbers of people it is hiring.

In an exclusive interview with The Australian Financial Review, Infosyschief operating officer PravinRao said the deployment of artificial intelligence was instrumental in it cutting its annual hiring of new full-time staff by more than 10,000 in 2016-17.

Mr Rao said the company hired6000 full-time employeesin 2016-17, downfrom 17,000 the previous year and had averaged numbersbetween 15,000 and 20,000 in the years since the global financial crisis.

"Our industry's growth is down a bit too, hence the lower number, but we do think the big investments in artificial intelligence and machine learning we've made in the last two years means our number of new recruits willbe below 10,000 a year from now on, at least for the foreseeable future"Mr Raosaid.

However, Mr Rao said Infosyshad so far made nobody redundant because of automation, rather it had "relieved" 11,000 people last year frommanual, repetitive tasks in service linessuch as testing, application development, maintenanceand infrastructure management, and redeployed them to jobs requiring more creativity and imagination, such as user experience design.

Infosyslaunched its first artificial intelligence platform, Mana, last year and Mr Rao said it had already reduced the number of humans required at the company's support desks.

"A big proportion of the tickets are for routine stuff, where 99 per cent of the time it's the same solution, so that's been the low-hanging fruit in terms of automation," Mr Rao said.

The next-generation AI platform, Nia, was released in April amid claims it can assist with more complex business problems, such asforecasting revenues and what products need to be built, understanding customer behaviour, deeply understanding the content of contracts and legal documents, understanding compliance, and fraud.

Infosys was moving its people further up the value chain too, Mr Rao said. Since October 2014 it has trained 140,000 of its 200,000 staff in design thinking a problem-solving strategy at its corporate university in south-western India, and Mr Rao said a more sophisticated level of consulting had resulted.

"We had a large consumer goods client in the UK, four quarters in a row they could not close their books within five days," he said.

"In the past we might have looked at a downstream solution for why their month-end closing programs were failing, they might have ended up spending $30 million on a new package. Instead we were able to put a team on this and find it was data quality issues upstream that were the culprit, so we built a dashboard identifying these and enabling data inputsto be cleaned up in almost real time."

The dashboard has since been built in to a product,HawkEye, which Mr Rao said had clients around the world.

Even though Infosys was not hiring at the rate it once was, Mr Rao said such creativity would always ensure the world created enough jobs for most of its population.

"Things get automated and we move on to new things, it's been happening for all of human history," he said.

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Tech giant Infosys admits automation is dramatically reducing hiring needs - The Australian Financial Review

DALLAS, Aug. 14, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Production Resource Group LLC, (PRG), the world's leading provider of entertainment and event technology solutions, announced today that it has been issued three new United States patents in lighting and scenic automation. The patents are for a multiple focus point light (patent number 9702529), remote communications protocol (patent number 9706627) and a controller for a lighting device (design patent number D791718). PRG's innovations have resulted in 172 patents and 70 registered trademarks to-date by the US Patent and Trademark Office.

The Multiple Focus Point Light is a lamp unit with a relay lens that allows two different focus points providing for different optical altering elements to simultaneously be in focus. The elements can be taken in and out of focus to allow different effects.

The Remote Communications Protocol represents a method of exchanging motion control information between devices on a network such as an ethernet backbone.The protocol defines an ethernet packet structure that prevents segmentation and guarantees that related data arrives simultaneously. The send and receive formatting is scalable, yet simple to implement.The purpose is to make motion profile data accessible to lighting, video and other motion control systems.

For the Controller for a Lighting Device, PRG undertook the design with the operator in mind. The design of the controller is unique as PRG emulated the look and feel of a traditional follow spot so the operator's learning curve would be shortened. This controller is part of the award-winning GroundControl Followspot System for which PRG received the first patent of several pending applications earlier this year.

About Production Resource GroupPRG is the world's leading provider of entertainment and event technology solutions. PRG provides comprehensive and discreet services to an array of clients in the live music, TV/Film, Broadway, sports, gaming, corporate experiential and live events markets. Clients and partners depend on PRG's innovation, experience and depth of experience in audio, video, lighting, rigging, staging, and scenery and automation systems to bring their stories to life. With 44 offices acrossNorth America,South America,Europe,Middle East,Asia, andAustralia, PRG has capabilities to provide services worldwide. For more information, please visit http://www.prg.com

View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/prg-granted-new-patents-for-lighting-and-scenic-automation-300503485.html

SOURCE Production Resource Group LLC

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PRG Granted New Patents for Lighting and Scenic Automation - Markets Insider

Lawmakers will soon have an important decision to make that will have an outsize impact on our state for years to come: whether or not to approve a deal made by Gov. Walker that could send up to $3 billion in direct cash payments to Taiwanese-based Foxconn to build a manufacturing plant in southeast Wisconsin.

In my initial response to the news I urged my colleagues to proceed with caution. Not only is this an incredibly expensive offer (it could cost the average family in Wisconsin $1,200 and take 25 years or more before state taxpayers break even!) but it could set a precedent with how we approach future economic development at a time when more and more industries are moving to automation as a way to reduce labor costs.

Foxconn is at the forefront of this effort with its publicly stated goal of fully automating its manufacturing process to the greatest extent possible. Theyve already begun by laying off 60,000 workers in China who were earning $3.25 an hour and replacing them with robots.

This begs the question: If they are laying off workers to save $3.25 an hour, why are they willing to pay their workforce here in Wisconsin what appears to be five to seven times that amount?

Since Gov. Walkers initial announcement, Foxconn has already said their plan is to create 3,000 jobs rather than the 13,000 Walker claimed. They also said that manufacturing jobs would pay $13-$15 per hour, which is far less than the $53,000 initially promised.

So what to make of this deal? How does Foxconn plan to make the economics of this deal work for them if they are already replacing thousands of lesser-paid employees with robots? Is it realistic to think that any manufacturing jobs created at Foxconn will still be performed by humans 10, 15 or 25 years from now? It is likely that most of the promised jobs will be automated well before the 2043 break-even date.

According to Walkers plan, state taxpayers will pay to help Foxconn build its plant and local taxpayers will help pay for infrastructure improvements related to the plant. There is even $250 million in borrowing proposed to reconstruct I-94 between Milwaukee and Illinois despite the fact that the governor and Republicans cannot agree on a long-term fix for the billion-dollar deficit in the Transportation Fund.

This all amounts to potentially billions of state and local tax dollars being spent to help a foreign corporation build a plant in which the majority of jobs will likely be done by robots.

If that is the case, then its time we have a larger discussion about what constitutes a job for the purpose of providing economic development assistance and the impact that these new technologies will have on our workforce.

Recent reports suggest that 47 percent of all jobs in the U.S. could be lost to automation in the next 20 years. Those jobs range from manufacturing to retail to the legal and medical fields and beyond. According to a CBS report, even Wall Street is expected to replace nearly 230,000 jobs in the next eight years with machines.

Whether or not these new technologies lead to new jobs that provide better pay and benefits or to large-scale unemployment, one thing is certain: This change is coming rapidly and were not prepared to deal with its impact.

Regardless of where you stand on the Foxconn deal, their stated goal of full automation is not unique to the world we are now living in. It is time for the Legislature to take the issue of automation seriously and do what needs to be done to protect the best interests of taxpayers, our families and our workforce.

Democrat Dave Hansen, Green Bay, represents the 30th state Senate district.

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DAVE HANSEN: Foxconn deal vs. automation trend - La Crosse Tribune

According to a 2017 Randstad Employer Brand Research survey of US workers, 76% do not fear their job will be replaced by a machine.

But why is this when there's so much bad news surrounding automation?

Here are five reasons:

1. People are up for retraining as long as pay isn't cut.

Despite what you may guess, most folks don't mind learning a few new things and believe their employers will still need them in ways they couldn't contribute before. Only 6% of business leaders see automation majorly shifting talent needs.

2. Workers believe AI and automation will help them and the company.

A lot of workers feel overworked and believe that automation will make the jobs easier, leaving them more time to get more productive at the things the machines can't do. And that benefits the entire company.

SEE: Special report: How to automate the enterprise (TechRepublic)

3. Some have already seen the benefits.

Nearly half of those surveyed say automation has already positively affected their business.

4. The past is a good example of automation not stealing jobs.

Computers used to be people in a room computing numbers. Machines took away all this work, but somehow office workers didn't disappear. Instead businesses could afford to hire more human-oriented positions that they couldn't before. Things like product managers and customer service.

5. AIs need us.

Maybe someday AI will be able to mimic all the things a human brain can do, but that's quite far away. Humans are better at intuiting things and taking action from indirect experience. Steve Grobman, CTO at McAfee recently wrote about the importance of human-machine teaming in increasing security. That need will likely be true in most industries.

It's not all roses, I know. As with any shift in technology from the lever to the steam engine and on, some people will need some help making the transition. But if we take that into account, most folks don't need to fear automation, in fact it may end up making their jobs much better.

More about automation and jobs:

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Top 5: Reasons not to be scared by automation - TechRepublic

About HPE Automation

Serving all of Florida, the Caribbean, and Central & South America since 1980!

HPE Automation originally started in business as Hydraulic & Pneumatic Engineering in 1980. Our primary mission at that time was helping customers design advanced hydraulic systems for heavy duty equipment.

Over the years we have selectively added additional lines: Intelligent Actuator, manufacturer of electric actuators and robots; Mitsubishi, one of the world leaders in robotics and motion control; and 80/20, manufacturer of aluminum extrusions used to build machine frames and guarding systems. HPE is proud to additionally represent a number of other fine companies that allow us to bring a complete automation solution to our customers.

It is our belief that having a thorough knowledge on a reasonable number of product lines serves our customers much better than having little knowledge on a long list of lines.

Thats what you get when you call HPE. Real people answer the phones, not machines, and we strive to answer your questions quickly. HPE Automation was founded on personal customer service. We know your time is valuable. Our knowledgeable staff can typically answer your technical questions without calling the factory.

Need part numbers or a pdf on a certain component? Our Inside Sales people are here for you. Have a customize project in mind? Our Outside Sales people will be happy to visit your facility to personally review your requirements. They will work with you during the entire project and not turn you over to other people after your order is placed.

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HPE Automation :: Automation Specialists

(Governing) -- There is widespread concern these days that robots and automation will soon be permeating much of the American workforce -- taking over factory floors, performing hospitality jobs, becoming ubiquitous in the casinos of Las Vegas. Even Silicon Valley worries about automations effects, although they likely wont be as severe there as elsewhere.

Some recent studies add to these fears, predicting sizable job displacement from numerous forms of automation and artificial intelligence in virtually all corners of the economy. But just as automation will alter industries differently, its effects will be much more intensive in some regional economies.

To estimate the potential effects of automation in those areas, Governing utilized definitions in a University of Oxford study assessing the automatability of individual occupations, then compared them with the Department of Labors most recent occupational employment estimates for the 100 largest U.S. metro areas. About 65 percent of Las Vegas area jobs were found to be susceptible to automation, the highest in any metro area. Much of that stems from the regions large armies of servers, food preparers, cashiers and other occupations thought to be highly automatable. El Paso, Texas, and Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Fla., similarly employ many of these workers, and registered the next-highest shares of potential automatability.

Professors Carl Frey and Michael Osborne, who conducted the Oxford study, assigned a probability to each occupation by evaluating the extent to which its work activities require creativity, social intelligence and perception, and manipulation. Retail sales accounted for the single largest number of possible job displacements as a result of automation in most regions. The New York metro area, for instance, employs more than 500,000 retail salespersons and cashiers. Predominantly low-wage food service jobs are susceptible to drastic change as well, both in the United States and overseas. Robots will start delivering Dominos pizza orders in Hamburg, Germany, this summer.

Regions with higher education levels should fare better. But the Brookings Institutions Mark Muro points out that theres more to it than that. Physical jobs that are more complex or personalized -- the kinds you wont find on assembly lines -- may actually be less vulnerable to automation than routine office jobs. Often, lower-skill but physical, personal or direct-caring occupations seem quite durable, Muro says.

Middle-class, white-collar jobs, on the other hand, can be significantly liable to automation. A forthcoming report from Brookings reviews hundreds of U.S. occupations, finding use and knowledge of digital skills doubled between 2002 and 2016 and led to a wide array of jobs being digitized, including those of office clerks, customer service representatives and accounting workers. The middle is where there will be some of the most disruption, Muro says.

Some well-paying jobs in demand today arent off-limits from automation, either. A McKinsey Global Institute study concluded that some of the jobs most at risk involve data collecting and processing. Around a quarter of the activities of attorneys and physicians were deemed to be potentially automatable.

Large regions with jobs least susceptible to computerization, using the Oxford studys definitions, are high-tech centers, such as San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, Calif., and Durham-Chapel Hill, N.C. Other metro areas with highly educated workforces such as Washington, D.C., and Boston similarly appear to have fewer jobs vulnerable to displacement. Regional economies relying heavily on education and health care may be less prone to automation because jobs requiring a high degree of human interaction are thought to be among the most resilient.

(Larger markers represent regions more susceptible to automation based on a University of Oxford study. View an interactive map here.)

Of course, widespread automation wont happen overnight. McKinsey projected that half the work activities across the economy today could be automated by 2055. An analysis by PricewaterhouseCoopers concluded that 38 percent of American jobs were at high risk of automation by the early 2030s. McKinsey studied prior cases of technological upheaval, finding that the time between initial commercial availability and peak adoption ranged between eight and 28 years.

The biggest unknown at this point is whether automation will eliminate more jobs than it creates. Automation itself isnt new, and prior advances in technology and industrialization havent brought about higher overall unemployment over the long term. But a growing number of academics are concluding that automation this time around could, in fact, wield noticeably more harmful effects on the workforce. One highly cited paper by economists Daron Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo forecasts lower overall employment resulting from the introduction of more robots into the workplace.

Other researchers, notably ones at the Economic Policy Institute, argue that automation has not led and will not lead to higher joblessness. Experts appear to be divided almost evenly on this question: A 2014 Pew Research Center survey of experts found 48 percent agreeing that automation, robots and artificial intelligence will displace more jobs than they create by 2025.

While many unknowns remain, it wouldnt hurt for policymakers to start thinking about how to respond.

Some state workforce boards are looking at the issue. States already typically maintain labor market information divisions that project which occupations will be in demand in future years. Preparing farms and their workers for automation was the subject of a recent meeting of the California State Board of Food and Agriculture. While there arent yet many programs that specifically address automation, some states are engaged in activities that could help alleviate the impact of job losses. Apprenticeships are gaining a lot of attention and are expanding to health care, finance and other fields where they havent been common before. The model is being modified and theyre really trying to ramp it up, says Scott Sanders, executive director of the National Association of State Workforce Agencies.

For workers displaced by automation, community and technical colleges will play a crucial role in the pursuit of new careers. The federal government, however, has historically focused little on workforce training, spending much less than other wealthy nations do. We dont do training in America, we do education, says Anthony Carnevale, who directs the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. Our policy is: Go to college.

It was only a few short decades ago that computers began revolutionizing the American workplace. Regions and employers that were early adopters with skilled workforces are well ahead today, and its likely they will continue to be in the years to come.

This article was originally published by Governing.

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Is Automation Anxiety Overblown? - Government Technology

As automation advances, concerns are mounting over the security of human jobs. But should we worry and is there a way for investors to profit from the digital revolution?

The digital revolution that has transformed whole industries is still gathering pace. It has enabled the globalisation of capital, goods and services, as well as the fluid movement of people, helped businesses to pursue lower input costs and enhanced competitiveness.

Now, as automation continues to advance in leaps and bounds, some commentators are suggesting that the future of work itself is at risk from next generation technologies, including artificial intelligence.

A recent PWC survey suggested that in the next 15 years, 10 million jobs may be under threat from intelligent automation. In aggregate, 30% of jobs were put at risk, but in some sectors as many as half of jobs could disappear.

Clearly technology can foster new opportunities for work and drive the emergence of new skills; however, in reality there could be a large surfeit of excess labour caused by automation, as it is likely to first take hold in industries where there are high numbers of relatively low-skilled, repetitive jobs.

While some employees could learn the skills needed to take advantage of the new types of role created by automation, this will not be the case for all. Given the type of work that is at the forefront of seeing these developments, men are more likely to be affected 35% compared to 26% for women.

Sectors most and least at risk from intelligent automation

As companies begin to automate, some organisations have suggested there may be a need for a made by humans label or human production quotas mandated by law; others more prophetically link growing automation with a breakdown in social cohesion as societal norms built around long-term paid employment break down.

The retail sector is particularly vulnerable to these pressures. As costs from implementing the National Living Wage increase, companies are rapidly reducing their overall number of frontline staff through automation. British retail employs around 1.7 million people close to the National Minimum Wage; even modest increases are therefore likely to distress margins and profitability still further. Online retail has led to new areas of work in warehouses and delivery services all largely un-regulated through zero-hours contracts.

Sectors where skills are difficult to automate such as education and health may be more secure, while areas of work that have been staples of employment for over a hundred years, such as train drivers, may completely disappear.

Undoubtedly, business models will adapt and others will emerge which will seek to capitalise from developments in automation and artificial intelligence. In cases such as these, it is a question of balancing the demands of the modern workplace, which are becoming ever more advanced and smarter about how work is done, contrasted with the needs of society, where work is central not only to how we survive but also a source of pride, self-value and purpose in our day-to-day lives.

That is the line that we are walking as socially responsible investors recognising the opportunity to be found in companies that are poised at the cutting edge of automation while ensuring that, as society evolves around the implications of this, we are fully conscientious of a potential world without work and be an advocate for change only when it is to the benefit of wider society.

An example of this from our holdings is Blue Prism, a UK-based pioneer of automation software which enables process-driven work tasks to be conducted robotically. Blue Prism is perfectly positioned to benefit from the continuing shift towards automation in the workplace and its recent H1 results show how the company is achieving this momentum.

Despite the companys founding concept of the creation of a digital workforce, Blue Prism does not seek fully to replace humans in the value chain instead it enables the employees it works for to work more effectively and accurately by deploying automation alongside. It inspires a positive development of workplace, being, as a recent ISG Research Report described it, the future of work and not the end of it.

Alphabet, the parent company for tech giant Google, is also shaping the new world of automation. It is the most prominent global player in artificial intelligence to date, having completed several key acquisitions in the space since 2013 and is successfully developing one of the most comprehensive machine-learning systems (Google Brain) in existence.

This future of work is also a matter for governments and how they prepare and adapt to the possibilities brought by automation. But it is also hugely important that businesses and investors recognise the extent to which there is a corporate responsibility towards managing a changing world of work in a responsible way. At EdenTree, it is no small concern for us and our clients, and we continue to engage with companies over changes to work practises while actively recognising the opportunities it brings too.

Ultimately, automation may be as significant a disrupter as the shift was from agricultural to industrial and from rural to urban in the 19th century. Considering and addressing these issues at the earliest opportunity will be of vital importance to us all.

Neville White is head of SRI policy and research at EdenTree Investment Management

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BLOG: Is automation an opportunity or a threat? - Your Money

DAVENPORT -- By 2040, at least a fifth of the traffic on Interstate 80 in Iowa will be highly automated, a new Iowa Department of Transportation study says, and planners need to take into account the coming changes when preparing for the future.

The study, which is part of a larger DOT analysis aimed at positioning rural parts of I-80 for the future, says the higher levels of automation would mean increased capacity and fewer accidents.

"These technologies have the potential to really improve safety," said Brad Hofer, assistant director of the DOT's Office of Location and Environment, which was in charge of the study.

Automated vehicle technologies are under rapid development. And although driverless cars are far into the future, some experts say, the idea that a significant share of traffic along Iowa's main east-west highway would be highly automated in less than 25 years is striking.

"In the beginning, I think we were all taken aback by it," Hofer said. However, after discussions with industry sources and others, he thinks the prediction is "in the ballpark."

The DOT study, which was released last month, acknowledges that predicting the adoption of automated vehicle technologies is highly uncertain.

In fact, the DOT's prediction was that, by 2040, somewhere between 20 percent and 85 percent of traffic will be highly or fully automated.

That's a wide range. Even at the low end of use, however, safety gains would be significant, the study said.

"Even at 25% AV adoption, a nearly 20% crash reduction is anticipated," the study said.

At 85 percent, the study predicted, there would be a 50 percent reduction in fatalities and major injuries.

By 2060, the study said, 65 percent to 100 percent of traffic is expected to be highly automated.

There are varying levels of automation. The Society of Automotive Engineers defines six levels, with zero being not automated at all and 5 being fully automated. The DOT's predictions refer to the two highest levels, Hofer said.

There are significant differences between levels 4 and 5, said Dan McGehee, director of the National Advanced Driving Simulator at the University of Iowa.

"It doesn't mean you're going to have robots driving I-80," he said.

He said, however, that at level 4, specific functions have a high level of automation.

McGehee thinks driverless cars are far into the future.

"I don't see that happening for decades," he said.

Iowa has been aggressive in planning for the future. The state is currently in a partnership to create high definition maps of hundreds of miles of roads in the Iowa City/Cedar Rapids area to ready itself for higher levels of automation.

The I-80 study, which was launched a year ago, is aimed at informing policymakers on how to proceed with an increasingly busy rural I-80, particularly in eastern Iowa.

Much of the study is pointing to a six-lane I-80 in the future. Already, in eastern Iowa, traffic is approaching capacity, Hofer said.

The addition of automated technology helps with that problem, he said, but it likely would not stop the need for six lanes in the eastern part of the state.

Greater use of automated technologies could affect the timing and shape of expansion in some parts of the state.

"Adoption of AV buys us some significant capacity," Hofer said.

Several other considerations are going into the I-80 study. Already, the DOT has issued technical reports on the status of bridges spanning the interstate, the option of lane restrictions and investing in state highways that parallel Interstate 80. A final report is due by next year.

Link:

DOT: Higher levels of automation in I-80's future | Political News ... - Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier