1. Tell us about your current role and about Unbox Robotics? What projects are you working on?

I am running Unbox Robotics as a CEO. I co-founded the company last year to address problems in warehousing sites through AI, Robotics, and Supply Chain Process Design. Currently, we are working on 1st of its kind solution to sort packages/items using AI-enabled Robots. We are saving both the area and capital required to automate the parcel sorting process using our unique offering.

2. What are the innovations that we’re observing right now?

In various industries, companies are deploying AI-based systems to boost their productivity and process reliability. We are looking at the strong adoption of automation across sectors through physical as well as software bots.

3. How Industrial Internet of Things is beneficial to manufacturers and what are the drawbacks? Do you think it could be a spot for hackers and how cybersecurity is involved in this concept?

The IoT can improve the productivity and reliability of processes in the manufacturing and logistics industries. Cybersecurity is definitely a crucial part of implementing IoT driven solutions. If you fail to do that, the IoT enabled systems, businesses and even sometimes human lives will be at risk. Cybersecurity, if implemented well, can protect the business’s data, processes, and associated systems and people.

4. How robotics and automation are shaping the industries right now?

We are observing an increased adoption of robotics across different fields such as manufacturing, agriculture, retail, logistics, medical industry, etc. The industry is introducing robots to address areas such as human safety, labor shortage, rising labor costs, business continuity plans, etc. to name a few. It’s not only about cost-cutting, but also about making your business processes robust irrespective of any disruption like Covid-19, which we are going through at the moment. For e.g. some of our customers aren’t getting enough workers in their warehouses due to the Covid-19 situation, and even if they get people – they have to practice social distancing while working. This results in a drop in productivity. Here the robots can help such companies to maintain or boost productivity while observing social distancing.

5. What are the challenges in your industry face right now?

Amidst lockdowns, managing the supply chain, and maintaining or even increasing the company productivity are the priorities these days. We see in the long term, the Covid-19 situation is going to increase the demand for robotics and automation, hence we need to get ready for such a demand going forward.

6. How do you come up with ideas?

I think the ideas are driven by the problems we see in the industry or at customers’ end. The ideas come once we try to address the customer’s problems from their perspective. It doesn’t make sense to just build a cutting edge technology product if you aren’t solving customer’s problems.

7. Who are the inspiring people you follow on social media?

I generally follow industry leaders such as Sundar Pichai, Elon Musk, Satya Nadella, and Jeff Bezos who are making a huge impact on people’s lives through their organizations.

The post The Thriving of Artificial Intelligence appeared first on DiTech Media.

This week we talked with Alberto Zandi, a Spanish entrepreneur based in London that at his 24 years of age has co-founded MyIns, the first private social media platform. He will tell us about the digital startup and the challenges a company faces when it launches.

1. Can you tell me a bit about your background?

I started my corporate career working for Prisa Group, the prime media conglomerate in all Spanish speaking markets. Then I moved to the Financial Institutions industry, working in Santander UK, where I joined as a digital transformation analyst. After, I worked in Management Consulting for Business Integration Partners, a Deloitte spin-off. My experience included digital transformation projects in Middle East and Africa with the main Telecom leaders. As an entrepreneur, in 2018, I opened a hospitality venture in London, called Zuaya. After a year of hard work, Zuaya has been published in Forbes Magazine, The Evening Standard, BBC, as one of the best restaurants in the city. We are now following an ambitious roadmap of new openings. In 2019 I Co-Founded with my twin brother a digital start-up called MyIns. MyIns is a social media application that helps users segment their network and share pictures & videos with their segments only. It is still in its early stages, but we are very excited of its potential.

2. What is a digital Start-Up?

A digital Start-UP is a business that generates a product or service either by using digital tools as a selling channel, or the product itself is technology based, either software or hardware, in the form of a product or service. In our case, we delivery a digital service which is based on communication and sharing of information between groups of people.

3. Can you tell me more about the funding of the company and what the problem is that you were addressing?

There are many ways to fund a start-up, these range from a network of friends and family, business angels, crowd funding, etc. They are all good sources of funding, but we feel that depending on maturity stage of the company, there are some fundings that are more appropriate than others.

Our funding followed the strategy of keeping as much equity as possible since there will be several funding rounds. As well as on-boarding not only investors, but partners that could add value to the business. We believe that in the initial rounds of investment the ideal investors need to be individuals that buy-in the idea, and share a common strategic goal rather than just economical. When the company grows, one can consider on-boarding investors that are more commercially oriented. Mainly because there are already results to show the potential of the idea.

4. What Does Success Look Like for the Company?

For us, the two main KPIs are the user experience satisfaction and the growth of the number of users. We hope to reach the 1M user target within a two-year timeframe.

5. What was the hardest part in the early stages of the company’s growth?

The most challenging part was the set-up of operations. We believe going from 0 to 1 is harder than from 1 to one hundred.

6. What are the company’s main objectives in 2020?

Our objective is to complete the full spectrum of functionalities, and do massive user testing with friends and family. We don’t want to be too loud about our platform until we feel it’s ready for the 21st-century users, which are very digital-savvy.

7. What do you read to keep up with news and innovation? Are there any podcasts, blogs or publications, covering digital startups, that you particularly like and that you want to suggest to our readers?

I try to read a wide variety of papers, and not all technology based. I believe that the best ideas are not the ones that come from looking at your industry, but also at other industries. Then conceptualise how technology can fill those gaps.

8. I have one final question: What would be your overall advice for people that would like to start a digital start-up? What should they look for? What should they avoid? And how can they start?

My advice is to be the best planner you can be. Once you have your idea, and are confident about its commercial and functional potential, plan in detail what you need to do at an individual level, and after as a company level. Plan what needs to be done to go from point A, to point B. A being where you are, and B where you want to be at. What are the activities that need to be done to reach that target? In what timing? What resources will I need? How can I get those resources? etc. One main thing I would avoid is quitting in the middle of the race if you find out that your idea is not as good, or implementable as initially planned. We believe is key to not only have a good assessed idea, but to be open to shape it according to new findings you will get from the market along the way. There is always room to improve, and that doesn’t mean you need to have the perfect idea from day 1.

The post Digital Start-up appeared first on DiTech Media.

The antibiotic, called halicin (named after the HAL 9000 computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey), is believed to be the first discovered with AI. While AI had been applied to parts of the antibiotic-discovery process, the researchers said this was the first time AI had helped to identify a completely new kind of antibiotic from scratch. Led by synthetic biologist Jim Collins at MIT, the paper is published in Cell.

New drugs are needed to fight growing bacterial resistance to antibiotics worldwide, resulting in infections that could kill 10 million people per year by 2050. New drug development has slowed over the past several decades. “People keep finding the same molecules over and over,” stated Collins. “We need novel chemistries with novel mechanisms of action.”

The team identified candidates and also validated promising molecules in animal tests, which Jacob Durrant,  a computational biologist at the University of Pittsburgh, called remarkable. He sees the approachable to be applied to drugs used to treat cancer or neurodegenerative diseases, he said.

Continue Reading: https://www.aitrends.com/healthcare/ai-is-being-used-to-discover-new-antibiotics-and-genes-linked-to-disease/

Original Source:  https://www.aitrends.com

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The Health Cluster shares our goal of supporting R&I that benefits people, patients and populations as well as institutional, social and economic stakeholders in the EU.

1. Staying healthy in a rapidly changing society

As individuals, most of us know we need to pursue healthy and active lives. But the societal context can influence our physical and mental health. Income, education levels, social and gender aspects also have an impact on health risks and how diseases can be prevented. That’s why health education and behaviour will be an important area of R&I.

2. Living and working in a health-promoting environment

The environment we live and work in is a major determinant of health, estimated to account for almost 20% of all deaths in Europe. Pollution, chemicals, noise, radiation, urbanisation, climate change, social injustice, changing work environments, and behaviour can have a profound influence on our health. But there is still a lot to learn to understand and address these risk factors.

Continue Reading: http://www.medtechviews.eu/article/horizon-europe-6-priorities-health-research-innovation

Original Source: http://www.medtechviews.eu

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Stratolaunch said it is pursuing development of a vehicle called Talon-A. That vehicle, powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine, will launch from the company’s aircraft and fly to speeds of Mach 5 to Mach 7 before gliding back to a runway landing. It will also be able to take off on its own from a runway under rocket power.

“The Stratolaunch Talon-A is a flexible, high-speed testbed built for offensive hypersonics, hypersonic defense and hypersonic R&D,” the company said in a fact sheet about the program. That document emphasizes the vehicle’s ability to provide “here-to-fore unobtainable measurement access to the hypersonic flight environment on a recurring basis.”

“Our hypersonic testbeds will serve as a catalyst in sparking a renaissance in hypersonic technologies for our government, the commercial sector and academia,” Jean Floyd, chief executive of Stratolaunch, said in a statement on the company’s updated website.

The company said it expects an initial operating capability for the Talon-A in 2022. By 2023, Stratolaunch plans to support multiple Talon-A missions on a single flight of its aircraft, with as many as three Talon-A vehicles carried by the plane at once. “This unique capability enables multiple hypersonic flight opportunities on a single day or the near-simultaneous launch of three Talon vehicles, which may support specific operational scenarios,” the company said.

Continue Reading: https://spacenews.com/stratolaunch-announces-hypersonic-vehicle-plans/

Original Source: https://spacenews.com

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Before we continue, check this diagram from Wikipedia:

Dangerous: on the right. Safe: on the left. Source: Wikipedia

It clearly shows the difference between the two types of radiation – ionizing and non-ionizing. The first one includes gamma-rays, UV rays from the sun and X-rays. They are dangerous to our health because they can penetrate the human body and break apart its atoms.

Every single communication frequency used until now, including the spectrum for mmWave that the 5G network will use the most, is in the non-ionizing part of the spectrum.

So, what is the problem then? The lack of consensus. The thing is that according to some reports and tests, the radio-frequency waves like the kind that emanates from cell phones are drastically raising the risk of cancer. One of these reports is made by the National Toxicology Program (NTP) and is based on their research in which a group of rats was exposed to RF (radio frequency) and they developed malignant tumors. Well, this is the part that all of the anti-5G groups are talking about.

Continue Reading: https://www.scalefocus.com/insights/business/5g-network-dangers-myth-or-reality?hilite=%275G%27%2C%27network%27

Original Source: https://www.scalefocus.com

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In recent years, a number of initiatives have been carried out to create housing with 3D technology offering considerable savings in terms of money, materials, human resources and time. However, from a habitability point of view, these experiments left a lot to be desired, since the possibilities of 3D printing barely enabled reduced living spaces to be created and with limited designs.

All of this changed when, last December, the US company Apis Cor built an office building in Dubai in just two weeks for the city council, the design of which has no structural limitations. Its appearance is not too different from rectangular-type conventional buildings either.

Continue Reading: https://www.smartcitylab.com/blog/digital-transformation/largest-3d-printed-building-in-the-world/

Original Source: https://www.smartcitylab.com

The post An administrative building in Dubai, the largest 3D printed structure in the world appeared first on DiTech Media.

Cyber security operations is a complex business. Each new device connected online is a target for cyber attackers to exploit, highlighting the need to find solutions to detect and defend against increasingly sophisticated attacks. This challenge is only going to become more difficult in the age of Internet of Things (IOT). The MOD collects a huge amount of network and cyber data, but the sheer volume and complexity of this data means we need increasingly automated methods to find system anomalies and flag them for action, allowing our highly skilled cyber analysts to zero in on the right things, at pace, to identify and address any issues.

The Defence Digital Innovation Team initiated an Alpha project in early 2019 to test the hypothesis that Machine Learning and Data Science can assist in making cyber security operations quicker and more effective. Building on the initial validation of the hypothesis, and working with the Service Delivery & Operations Defensive Cyber Operations Delivery Team, this progressed into a Beta phase to prove the methods against a representative MOD data set. This successfully accelerated progress in this exciting area and has led to the transition of an initial capability into Live Service.

Opportunity 

MOD cyber vulnerability analysts and security teams need tools and advanced methods to support their analytical process to identify events of security interest, either device or person generated, in increasingly complex and dense network data. Surfacing events for specialist review through automated tools allows human operators to focus their efforts and use their time much more effectively.  

There are many highly sophisticated cyber security products on the market which deliver new capability. The challenge to Defence is not only the cost of purchasing and licencing these products across the size of our enterprise, but also the complexity of integrating products across different suppliers that comprise an end-to-end service. Moreover, these products may be considered ‘black box’ solutions. This means that the MOD may not learn anything about how to solve the problems of the future, or how to refine the output of a jigsaw puzzle of commercial tools to improve outcomes.

Developing this capability in-house, rather than simply buying third party tools, means that we avoid the cost and complexity of implementing new tools; whilst also optimising the technical data required to input to them. We also learn how to solve future challenges as our enterprise becomes more complex and threats continue to evolve.

Continue Reading: https://defencedigital.blog.gov.uk/2020/03/17/machine-learning-for-cyber-defence/  

Original Source: https://defencedigital.blog.gov.uk

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Most of today’s farmers make decisions such as how much fertiliser to apply based on a combination of rough measurements, experience and recommendations. Once a course of action is decided, it is implemented but the results are normally not seen until harvest time.

In contrast, a digital agriculture system gathers data more frequently and accurately, often combined with external sources (such as weather information). The resulting combined data is analysed and interpreted so the farmer can make more informed and appropriate decisions. These decisions can then be quickly implemented with greater accuracy through robotics and advanced machinery, and farmers can get real-time feedback on the impact their actions.

Continue reading: http://breakthrough.unglobalcompact.org/disruptive-technologies/digital-agriculture/
Original source: http://breakthrough.unglobalcompact.org/

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According to Jiang Tao, VP of Intelligent Computing BU, “Huawei is committed to investing in the AI computing industry in Europe, enabling enterprises and individual developers to leverage the Ascend AI series products for technological and business innovation. Over the next 5 years, Huawei plans to invest 100 million euros in the AI Ecosystem Program in Europe, helping industry organizations, 200,000 developers, 500 ISV partners, and 50 universities and research institutes to boost innovation.” The 4 initiatives of the program are as follows:

First, Huawei will work with partners to shape the AI industry in Europe. Specifically, Huawei will collaborate with key organizations in three important areas:

• Improve regulations and standards on AI ethics and security together with the European AI Alliance and European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI)
• Work with the Big Data Value Association (BDVA) to promote the AI Public-Private Partnership (PPP) across the EU, helping boost AI research and vertical industry development
• Nurture the AI university ecosystem in Europe through academic platforms, like the Falling Walls Foundation

Second, Huawei will develop joint solutions with ISV partners. The OpenLabs in Munich and Paris are AI capability centers that support ISV partners in hardware, development and porting, and joint marketing.

Third, based on the Ascend Developer Community, Huawei will organize offline technological salons and developer contests, and provide technological support to enable developers.

Fourth, Huawei will provide partners with AI courses and teaching materials, and establish joint labs in Europe. 3 AI courses designed for universities will cover basic AI theory, Ascend and mainstream framework development, and Ascend software architecture and development guides. 4 teaching materials on Ascend development will be released in 2020. In addition, Huawei will establish joint labs with partner universities and research institutes for algorithm model development and basic applications.

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