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Top 5 disruptive trends in Automation

FOR THE COURSE

INDUSTRIAL AUTOMATION

TYPE OF ASSIGNMENT

BLOG

GUIDED BY: Prof. Dr. Medha Wyawahare

SUBMITTED BY

Abel Joseph (L-1,GR No. 161032)

Sujay Joshi (L-26, GR No.161036)

DATE OF SUBMISSION: 17/04/2020

DEPARTMENT OF E&TC ENGINEERING

BRACT’S
VISHWAKARMA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOGY,
666, UPPER INDIRA NAGAR, BIBWEWADI, PUNE -37
 Top 5 disruptive trends in Automation

“The automation and what we’re

Doing now will make future testing
Go that much more efficiently”
-Jeff Orr

When it comes to focusing on technology, we are constantly searching for what are called disruptive
innovations. These are the kind of trends that will create entire new markets and, in most cases, displace
others in the process. The kinds of trends which will boost the economy and help people understand
where the future lies. Only when the value of a technology surpasses the value of a competing market, it
officially becomes a disruptive trend. With rapid development in AI and robotics technology, automation
is at a tipping point. Automation is a field which is predicted to do very well in the future. This is the
reason as to why the world is moving into automation. Today, robots can perform a great deal of
functions without considerable human intervention. Automated technologies are not only executing
iterative tasks, but also enhancing workforce capabilities significantly. In fact, automated machines are
expected and are on course to replace almost half of the global workforce. Multiple industries, ranging
from manufacturing to banking, are adopting automation to drive productivity, safety, profitability, and
quality. Automation will bolster connectivity and reliability during a hyper-competitive ecosystem. The
future of automation thus looks promising where everything will be made accessible and easily available.
Given below are a few disruptive trends that could come up in Industrial Automation:
1) Machine learning & Artificial Intelligence

Machine learning and AI are rapidly going mainstream. The technology has already penetrated the
customer relationship management segments, and is a cornerstone of IoT, Big Data, and Industry 4.0. The
consistent changes in consumer behavior in terms of product quality and customization create major
difficulties for manufacturers that are trying to change the production system. This is where machine
learning benefits said manufacturers. Manufacturing units can make use of data analytics and machine
learning for their process improvements. These systems help in predicting yield rates at various levels of
the supply chain, subsequently reducing the cost of raw materials and protecting brand quality. In addition
to the present, AI provides real-time operational intelligence that supports product lifecycle management
which incorporates process integration, automation, monitoring, and diagnostics. Here are some of the
major areas in machine learning that will be coming up in the years to come

 Labeled data is currently a big barrier to the adoption of deep learning. There will be more
research in deep active learning and human-in-the-loop learning, where intelligent data collection
is a component of the machine-learning feedback circuit. Self-supervision has shown recent
promise for semi-supervised learning. We will see more development in these areas.
 Controllable generative models of images, videos, text, and other data sources will be a major
focus. Disentanglement of control inputs and extrapolation beyond the training data will be
challenging and this cannot be accomplished through just memorization. Uncertainty
quantification will be another important challenge. Current generative models like GANs don’t
provide good uncertainty estimates. Can we get both realistic data generation also as accurate
uncertainty estimates? This will be an important problem to tackle.
 Hybrid deep learning models where deep learning is combined with other frameworks such
as symbolic or causal reasoning are going to be investigated at scale. Incorporating domain
knowledge and constraints into deep learning are going to be explored more. This is needed when
there is limited data or when there are more challenging requirements for generalization. For
instance, in robotics, infusing existing knowledge from physics and control algorithms into AI
can help achieve safety and stability.
 Synthetic data/simulations will be an important source for training data in data-limited
applications like robotics and autonomous driving. Since simulations won’t be perfectly accurate,
algorithms are going to be needed for robust sim-to-real transfer and fine-tuning within the real
domain.
 In safety-critical applications such as autonomous systems guaranteeing reliability is a must. AI
testing will mature and can draw tools from software testing, but we’ll also need innovations.
Simulations provide an excellent platform for the failure testing of AI systems.
 AI will move more to the edge. This will require aggressive (and sophisticated) model
compression and real-time operation. Not all AI training is going to be done on the cloud because
it is today. Some learning will move to the sting, especially when data privacy maybe a concern
(federated learning). Machine learning in the wild, i.e. algorithms that quickly adapt to changes in
data distribution and other environmental conditions will need to be developed further.
2) Digital twins

Digital Twins are a formative technology for the Industrial Internet of things, where physical objects can
live and interact with other machines and people virtually. With reference to the Internet of things, they
are also referred as "Cyber objects", or "Digital Avatars".

What ‘Digital Twins’ basically allows for the creation of a virtual copy of a machine or system. This is
now becoming a precondition within the product development landscape. Also, digitalization of plants
and machinery guarantees efficient commissioning optimized machine design, smooth operations and
short changeover time. This process decreases the dependence on costly prototypes while speeding up the
time to market. Additionally, digital twins are now active on factory floors, analyzing production
efficiencies and prompting predictive maintenance. In the future, manufacturers are going to be conscious
of all the components installed in their products. Thereby, allowing them to supply a targeted response to
issues and to optimize processes

3) Advances in Industrial Cyber Security:

Cyber Security being a business issue should always be the biggest priority for any organization whether
small or big especially given the developments in technology and fast-paced information retrieval and
dissemination, an organization can’t turn a blind eye towards the risk of security breach.

There have been many cases where poor management of seemingly small security risks have cost various
threats to the community, government agencies, embezzlement of funds, and loss of jobs to many
employees.
 Risk Management and Security Awareness are both undergoing tremendous advancements taking into
consideration the past security breaches. In order to tackle them several Machine Learning Algorithms are
also being deployed and a huge amount of research is being done in order to analyse and cater the security
requirements and detect malware using Rule-Based Analysis which allows the users to leverage deep
inspection so that an attack on the network can be uncovered.

Machine Learning Algorithms used in Industrial Cyber Security:

a) Supervised Machine Learning Algorithms in order to distinguish between normal DNS
domains and the ones that have been generated by Domain Generation Algorithms

The main motive here is to distinguish between the probably normal domain the ones that have
been generated by the malware to communicate back to their command control servers. This
method can be implemented by deploying Recurrent Neural Networks owing to their
characteristics.

b) Unsupervised Machine Learning Algorithms

This method makes use if Self Organizing Maps (SOM) . As a neuron represents itself in a
multidimensional space and every neuron is closely connected to its neighbours. Every time a
training sample is presented to the SOM and based on distance between the training sample and
the neurons in that space, the closest neuron always wins.

c) Reinforcement Learning Algorithms

This method brings End User and the Threat Intelligence into the loop. However this approach
makes use of Anomaly Detection and as a result of which there are very high chances of getting
 False Positives when output is analyzed with respect to a confusion matrix. Because of this
human intervention can become an inevitable necessity at times.

4) Cloud Computing and Data Storage:

Cloud Computing is the practice of using a network of remote servers hosted on the Internet to store,
manage, and process data, rather than a local server or a personal computer.

The speed at which Automation is gaining ground in our lives, by 2020, the popularity of the “cloud”
will have grown significantly. There will be many drastic changes overtime & Experts also believe that
all the present “no-cloud” companies will definitely start using cloud services in their work. After all, at
the end of 2015, 88% of entrepreneurs transferred their companies to the cloud.
The future of cloud computing is a huge opportunity for a huge technological breakthrough for the
companies using this technology today. However, in the coming years, we will see that the cloud will
bring much more benefit to the world than what one could have anticipated. Therefore Owners of
companies should stay up to date on the latest developments in the world of cloud technologies in order to
be competitive and survive in the global market. Very soon, cloud technologies will allow working even
faster and more efficient than today.
Apart from this “Big Tech” companies like Amazon ,Google, Microsoft are also providing Online Cloud
services such as AWS, Colab and Azure to their Customers so that they can get their work done an
incredible computational power.

5) Industrial Robots:
In today’s world Industrial Robots are known as one of the most marvellous feats in the Engineering.
And their advent has made manufacturing processes involving repetitive and dangerous work incredibly
precise and accurate and can also be deployed to do all the work at places where human lives are at
risk.

Robots are being increasingly used in a variety of industries and applications. They come in a wide
variety of models with the reach distance, payload capacity and the number of axes of travel (up to 6) of
their jointed arm being the most common distinguishing characteristics.
Typical day-to-day applications of these Industrial robots include painting, welding, assembly, pick &
place, packaging & labelling, product inspection, and testing, all accomplished with high endurance,
speed, and precision, & better than any human could ever do depending on the other external inevitable
factors. They assist in material handling too.

Conclusion:

Disruptive Automation is a continuously evolving process which will keep on improving in terms of
features and utility in Industrial Automation.
Owing to its constantly evolving nature changes and updates will keep on happening in such areas instead
of sticking or adhering to a traditional approach and will bring more and more innovations.
Moreover the trends which are perceived as feats of Disruptive Innovation today will become a norm in
the future.