Each New Year invites a host of achievements, inventions, and technological advancements. As we enter the early months of another year, industry experts share their opinions on what’s ahead for tech and engineering in 2018. Below you can read part two of our three-part series.
By Doron Cohadier, Vice President of Business Development, Foresight Automotive
Autonomous vehicles are being driven and tested around the globe in controlled settings and on public streets. However, the existence of these first self-driving vehicles does not suggest the reality which is that this nascent market is in the throes of intense competition among diverse technologies to achieve true, reliable vehicle autonomy. Some of today’s technologies may in fact become the standard of the future, but it is more likely that there will be an ongoing reshuffling of technology adoption. The litmus test for the “winners” in the autonomous technology race will most certainly be a technology’s proven proximity to perfection as a measure of safety and reliability.
One critical area of competition is for the “eyes” of the car, or the vision system, which is an area that will develop and evolve significantly in 2018. At present, there are a multitude of sensing options being explored from mono and stereo cameras, lidar and radar, to lasers and others, all of which are competing to satisfy the needs of the autonomous vehicle.
However, due to the criticality of autonomous driving and consumer sensitivity to “taking their hands off the wheel,” the vision technology challenge for autonomous vehicles is substantial. The leading solution will need to be exceptionally accurate with a true representation of the driver’s real-time environment by detecting a multitude of objects, such as other cars, children, small animals, and unexpected road debris. To simulate real world experiences, the self-driving vision system challenge is compounded by the need to accurately detect these real-world objects under all weather and lighting conditions: day or night, rain, hail, snow, fog, or glare. Simply put, a reliable, robust, tested 24/7 vision system that exceeds a traditional driver’s vision capability.
In 2018, the stereoscopic camera will rise in prominence as the choice for automotive vision systems. Stereoscopic camera accuracy exceeds a human driver’s ability to see 3-dimensional objects in real time, whether the objects are large or small, in-motion or static, or detected from short-or long-range distances. This exceptional accuracy and real-life sensing will drive the autonomous vehicle market closer to truly reliable vehicles.
By Paul Wiener, VP of Strategic Marketing at GaN Systems
Simply put, it’s getting more out of less. Everybody wants their “things” smaller and lighter without sacrificing capabilities or significantly increasing price. That’s the tech side. The engineering translation for this is increasing power density and efficiency, reducing weight, yet not increasing system cost. It’s all about managing power per area. The challenge is the same every year for technology and engineering—make whatever new device or system that’s on the rise—from AR/VR headsets, smart buildings, to autonomous cars more efficient and more powerful as the data explosion continues. This drives what’s ahead for tech and engineering in 2018 and beyond.
For the power electronics portion of this challenge, GaN power transistors will increase its footprint in power conversion designs. GaN is fast becoming the technology of choice for energy-reliant industries such as automotive electrification, data centers, renewable power, industrial motors, and consumer products. Analyst firm Yole Développement, as stated in an October 2017 report, anticipates the GaN power business to grow at an 84 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) between 2017 and 2022 to reach $ 450 million by the end of the period. While design engineers are familiar with GaN and its properties that enable smaller, lighter, and efficient power systems, there will be greater awareness beyond these communities to include global leaders in governments and industries (see: “Global Leaders Collaborate on GaN Technology”). People are paying attention because these products make a significant improvement in the amount of available power in a world where demand for power consumption is increasing.
By Roberto Saracco, Head of the Industrial Doctoral School of EIT Digital, Co-chair of the Symbiotic Autonomous Systems Initiative of IEEE-FDC
The IEEE FDC Symbiotic Autonomous Systems Initiative stems from the growing presence of autonomous systems in our daily life, from autonomous vacuum cleaners to drones, and from self-driving cars to robots on the manufacturing floor.
The evolution in this area will be both invisible and spectacular. There will be a smooth, nearly imperceptible evolution, much like the increase in autonomous capabilities in cars such as self-parking, lane cruising, and braking assistance. Suddenly, we’ll find ourselves in a world where many objects are self-aware and behave accordingly.
2018 will see significant progress in the creation of a management framework for autonomous systems—the recent agreement between Uber and NASA is a clear step in that direction. This is a development that may go unnoticed to most, but it will be the foundation for the fast, massive deployment of autonomous systems.
In Dubai, we expect the first flying taxi-drone will have a lot of “Wow!” factor, yet it won’t change the city’s traffic situation any more than the Wright brothers’ flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903 did. But of course, our world today is rooted in the historic events that took place on that beach in North Carolina. And isn’t it an interesting parallel between that beach and the sands surrounding Dubai, making the operation of a taxi-drone way safer than it would be in Los Angeles, where there would likely be intense interest in shuffling tens of thousands of people every day with drones?
Continuing on in the autonomous vehicle space in the Emirates, 2018 is likely to see more progress toward the construction of the first commercial Hyperloop transportation system. The technology largely exists today; it just needs to become affordable.
As drones move closer to becoming standard photographic equipment—already, wedding and sports photographers use drones to capture the action from above—2018 will bring us things like smart tripods. AI-equipped and capable of tracking objects (like you!), these technologies will be able to automatically create high-quality video clips
These are but a few examples of the growing pervasiveness of autonomous systems that we’ll see in 2018. The future awaits.
By John Teeple, Director of Advanced Technology, John Deere Intelligent Solutions Group
Artificial intelligence (AI) was one of the leading buzz words of 2017, and industries from transportation to manufacturing have recognized the true value that AI has in transforming our world. While there aren’t many cases where we have seen the technology truly in action, in 2018 we predict that we’ll start to see AI transition from an industry term to a reality amongst several industries, particularly in agriculture.
Today, technologies such as machine learning, big data, sensors, machine-to-machine communications, and automation are integrated into each and every tractor. IIoT-connected equipment has enabled farmers to analyze their fields all the way down to the plant level. This has allowed farmers to improve productivity and make better decisions with fewer resources, increasing sustainability efforts and decreasing downtime.
We will continue to see things become more connected and more precise as AI becomes further integrated onto the farm. Take a look at computer vision technology, for example. While camera sensors aren’t new to the industry, the integration of this type of technology with AI expands its capabilities immensely. By combining computer vision and AI, we can develop smart machines that can detect, identify, and make decisions about every single plant on a field. Machinery can be taught to distinguish plants, crops, and weeds from one another, allowing farmers to improve crop-management practices as a result. In the end, we’ll see farmers increase crop yields with fewer resources and better supply food globally. This will also impact the types of engineering jobs in the industry. New skills will be required of engineers, and simultaneously companies will need to create new jobs in order to remain competitive.
In 2018, artificial intelligence will not only have a real place on the farm, but the farm will represent a leading example of the true potential of AI and we’ll see additional real world applications in more industries. As more industries adopt AI into its technologies, AI will become a key factor in pushing the boundaries of what we can do.
By Bill Steinike, Vice President of Business Development, Laird Connectivity
You can’t overstate how important wireless is going to be for product engineers in 2018. There will be more wireless-enabled projects in engineering pipelines, with more robust wireless requirements—all on more aggressive timelines than ever before.
- Faster! Smarter! More, More, More: The flood of wirelessly-enabled projects in engineering team’s pipelines is being driven by voracious end user demand for faster, smarter products—both in the consumer market and the enterprise/commercial market. The good news is that the major wireless standards are quickly evolving to meet those demands…but that means there is a lot for electronic engineers to get up to speed on regarding WiFi, Bluetooth, 5G, and more.
- WiFi Will Do a Lot More…with Less (Battery): One area that engineers will see a lot of momentum in is 802.11ax-enabled devices. That wireless specification will start appearing in 2018 because of 802.11ax’s ability to process far more data through uplink/downlink MU-MIMO streams, 1028 QAM, OFMDA, etc. The 802.11ax standard also delivers improved speeds at both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands as where “ac” only benefited the 5 GHz bands. Not only do these changes improve capacity, they also improve throughput in high density applications—which may be even more important. They also significantly improve power consumption with the Target Wake Time feature, which extends battery life by cycling through active and inactive phases in a way that uses far less energy.
- Bluetooth Goes Big—and Redefines What a Bluetooth Product Can Do: Another thing that will be big for product engineers in 2018 is the rollout of the new Bluetooth 5 standard, which brings with it three major improvements: longer range, increased advertising payload, and—perhaps most important—twice the speed. It’s “bigger” in just about every way, and that opens up a lot of new doors for engineers that stretch the boundaries of what a Bluetooth product can do. Companies will be moving quickly to bring Bluetooth 5-enabled devices to market to cash in on end user demand for those capabilities. Bluetooth meshing will also be an important issue for engineers to gain a quick understanding on because it will open up new product applications that were not possible before. Lastly, incorporating angle of arrival and received signal strength can take Bluetooth beacon technology a step further to much better location capabilities.
- It’s Time to Get Ready for 5G…Finally: Last and definitely not least is the one that will ultimately affect all of us: the impending 5G transition, which will provide significant increases in capacity for smartphones and the booming M2M market. Though we won’t in practice see 5G until the 2019/2020 timeframe, engineers will need to devote brain power to the 5G transition in 2018 in order to develop a strategy for how to be ready for 5G and take advantage of greater capacity and lower latency. After all the talk about 5G for years and years, 2018 will finally be when engineers roll of their sleeves and map out how 5G will impact their 12–18 month product development timelines.
By Giovanni Vigna, Co-founder and CTO, Lastline
- Giant Leap in Adoption of Security Oriented AI & ML: Enterprises face millions of cyberthreats every day, and it’s virtually impossible for even a large staff of human security analysts to process all of the data and manually evaluate each security incident or alert. AI and ML are particularly suited to solve these problems and a significant leap in their adoption in 2018 is expected.
- Cybercriminals Get More Sophisticated—Developing Multiple New Ways to Attack Their Victims: In 2018, expect to see a dramatic increase in sophistication among cybercriminals, even entry and mid-level hackers, as they leverage AI- and ML-powered hacking kits built from tools that criminals leaked or stole from state-sponsored intelligence agencies.
- Malware Invades Hardware at Increasing Rates: 2017 saw an increased amount of malware attacking the firmware and memory of hardware devices like disk controllers, fingerprint sensors, and computer cameras. As most malware detection products can’t identify malware on hardware, expect hackers to increasingly turn to this type of attack during 2018.
- The Cyberattack Surface Expands Exponentially: In 2017, Android surpassed Microsoft as the world’s most popular operating system, giving cybercriminals a good reason to expand their number of attack points. To countless Microsoft and Android platforms add the strong growth of iOS-based systems and billions of new internet-connected devices, and the resulting expanded attack surface is so extensive it’s hard to fathom.
- Security Automation Becomes a Primary Objective: With the escalating number of cyberattacks and limited resources to fight them, expect to see organizations start to automate as many cybersecurity functions as possible during 2018. ML, AI, and outsourcing will be used to do much of the heavy lifting, freeing human cyber teams to focus on things that can’t be fully automated.
- Cybersecurity Augments Prevention with Resiliency: In 2018, instead of focusing primarily on breach prevention, organizations will begin in earnest to invest in breach containment and rapid recovery to beef up resiliency. These tools will quickly detect breaches, isolate infected assets, and network segments, and rapidly restore damaged data and systems.