AI and Machine Learning
The concept of artificial intelligence (AI) has been around for decades and has considerably improved. The term AI was coined by John McCarthy in 1956 with a goal to develop machines that are intelligent and are useful in the real world scenario. But ever since IBM’s Deep Blue defeated the chess wizard, Garry Kasparov in 1997, AI has played a much more genuine and beneficial role in technology. A lot has changed from then to now. Technology is much more easily available and we see people skillfully applying different technologies, using toolkits and frameworks, to a wide variety of problems in the industry from design to quality control to manufacturing to customer service.
The thought process employed to arrive at certain deductions and conclusions have been kept in intangible form for centuries. A change in man’s resolve to somehow imprint those steps into the tangible world has led to the creations of tools. Subsequently, tools led to machines and machines paved the way for instruments to look into the microcosm and the macrocosm. And finally, the insights from these worlds led to the revolution witnessed by mankind over the last five decades – The Computing Revolution!
Now the GPS is smarter than human beings in spatial navigation. Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Echo are some household names of AI. However, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that we are merely in the first hour of the AI revolution. Also, AI alone will never emerge as an industry inclination as it is not a single type of technology. Artificial Intelligence paired with Machine Learning is predicted to be the most sought after technology trend in the near future.
Sasken has been successfully developing augmented reality and computer vision solutions for industrials and automotive segments. Sasken has also been making significant progress in cognitive machine learning framework integration and development of reference Solution for Voice-Enabled Security Commands, Voice Recognition, and Natural Language Processing.
Our world is fast changing with revolutionary technologies and disruptive ideas emerging in the whole new connected space. Amidst this mesh/network of connected devices, Internet of Things is changing our lives through many applications in many vertical markets.
IoT is the interface between the individuals and the connected environment that they are in. It can be thought of as a natural progression towards the individual with the individual becoming the center of things. From smart home to smart cars to wearable devices, many concepts have been born and are blooming under this idea. The Internet of Things (IoT) has catalyzed the tapping of existing data faster and in significant volumes. IoT is one of the key factors that have pushed the adoption of digital transformation.
Increasing adoption of IoT in the industrial set up presents manufacturers with tremendous business opportunities. Through a connected factory setup, manufacturers can effectively gather and apply insights to monetize these opportunities. Today, the IoT-driven Industry 4.0 solutions are helping businesses to improve productivity, reduce operating costs, and enhance worker safety. Reduced cost of ownership is one of the major benefits linked to IIoT. The introduction of IoT in the Industrial space heralded the advent of expanding connectivity, more digitalization, utilizing cloud infrastructure, and newer business models. The implementation of IoT and AI in the Industrial landscape is giving rise to technologies such as machine vision, machine learning, sensor automation, mesh networking with short range communication protocols, and wearable technology such as smart helmet.
Sasken is working with leaders in the IoT ecosystem to enable cognitive technologies that help define the world of tomorrow. Our range of innovative IoT solutions, for various industries, is developed with deep customer insights and offers customers quick development and deployment of their solutions at competitive costs and optimized asset utilization.
A decade ago, industry leaders pioneered security (eCall features, etc.) for the connected car. Since then, based on consumer demands, concierge services and user-experience started to drive how the next-gen of telematics and connected car would look like. Advances in autonomy are being driven to reduce accidents, driver/passenger safety, etc. This will then lend itself to user-experiences as newer business models evolve when more and more content gets into the vehicle (for e.g. retail/digital-shopping experiences merging with the connected car).
Finally, smart mobility will have a huge play here. In order to have a seamless experience inside/outside the car while interacting with mobile devices, V2X (vehicle-to-infrastructure) will pave the way for smarter ways to interact with infrastructure outside the car. Cellular V2X has the advantage of enabling more use-cases (vehicle-to-pedestrian, vehicle-to-device, etc.), longer range, higher message throughput, existing network infrastructure but it also has the disadvantage of being an evolving standard. In the next decade or so, V2X is expected to grow particularly for its use in the autonomous car where it can enable the car to make informed decisions.
Sasken serves over 100 customers, across the globe, to build their flagship products that include V2X, ADAS and infotainment solutions for the Connected and Autonomous car.
Cryptocurrency, the digital currency system that enables global monetary transactions between two parties without the need for a trusted third party financial institution, has gained tremendous momentum over the last few years. Under the hood, the technological innovation is blockchain technology that is seen as a revolutionary foundational technology having a tremendous potential across different verticals.
Blockchain is a decentralized and distributed ledger, where, blocks containing a set of transactions are chained together by cryptographic hash. Transactions originating from a node are validated by participating nodes and a set of transactions are added into a block by a ‘mining’ node. Any mining node with sufficient compute power that solves a cryptographic puzzle can generate and broadcast a new block containing the set of validated transactions.
The invention of blockchain by Satoshi Nakamoto utilized existing technologies and combined it in a novel method. While we have to wait and watch how the cryptocurrencies’ future will unfold, the underlying blockchain technology provides a foundation for innovation in different verticals and use-cases with far-reaching effects. It is likely to become disruptive with an enormous potential for next level of automation, integration and service availability across many different verticals bringing in speed, efficiency, and transparency.
Sasken is actively engaged in developing applications over blockchain and R&D on using blockchain in IoT security solutions.
Digital transformation in all walks of life will disrupt our ways of working and bring in new demands on connectivity or communication requirements in the future. Such transformations, in every industry and walk of life demands very efficient communication infrastructure in terms of high data rates and high quality service with low latency. Human and machine interactions will be more demanding in the all-digital world in the future. Towards that end, Fifth Generation (5G) communication systems promise Gigabit data rates, sub millisecond latency and consistent user experience. 5G systems are expected to provide very efficient connectivity in highly heterogeneous networks all over the world. Such networks will be spectrally more efficient than 4G services, support more users and achieve higher device connectivity and wider network coverage with low latency and longer battery lives.
An interesting use case of 5G can be found in autonomous or self-driving vehicle moving at a very high speed, with humans or machines inside it, interacting with other similar vehicles as well as the Internet and other networks. Smart cities, wireless sensor or IoT networks, 3D/4D video streaming and interactive services, augmented reality applications, high bandwidth cloud services are some areas which will demand such high communication services.
From ADSL to 5G, Sasken has been making significant contributions in the communication space. We are building solutions and investing heavily in 5G technologies that will enable use cases such as V2X connectivity, digitizing factory floor, and automated driving possible.