by Gary Mintchell | Sep 30, 2020 | Automation, Robots
I am happy to see energy and innovation devoted to the new mobile robot market space. Much of the work grows from Denmark. I’ve never visited (a deficiency I will assuredly correct), but my interaction with the country was through agriculture. Then first one then another robot company sprang up in place of cows.
This is a story of a company called ROEQ (roe-eck) working with another company called Mobile Industrial Robots (MiR) whom I have written about before here.
I attended a press conference recently wherein ROEQ described its launch of GuardCom. This application leverages robust sensor technology for instant communication between ROEQ’s top rollers – conveyors on top of mobile robots – and stationary conveyors. This new solution replaces cumbersome, Wi-Fi-dependent 3rd party setups that often cause delays and mismanagement in the transfer of goods from mobile robots onto conveyors and vice versa. ROEQ is now also releasing top rollers with adjustable height for Mobile Industrial Robots’ models, MiR250, MiR500 and MiR1000.
Wi-Fi instability is a common workplace challenge. In material handling applications with devices communicating through complicated setups passing data around between mobile robots, 3rd party receiving stations and conveyors, an intermittent Wi-Fi network is prone to cause costly errors and downtime.
The solution consists of two products: GuardCom installed on the stationary conveyor station, and GuardCom Connect installed on the autonomous mobile robot.
Multiple GuardCom Connects can work with the same GuardCom and vice versa. GuardCom is compatible with all stationary conveyor stations, replacing 3rd party wireless devices.
“With GuardCom we are delivering a safe, reliable, and cost-efficient solution to eliminate wait times, errors, and accidents at cargo transfer stations,” says Michael Ejstrup Hansen, Managing Director at ROEQ. “GuardCom is truly the missing link that enables a completely seamless material handling cycle, resulting in shorter system integration time with less hassle and engineering costs.”
Once the mobile robot has arrived at the conveyor, GuardCom signals to the stationary conveyor station that the robot is in place and ready to receive or deliver the packages. The same signal is simultaneously sent to the robot letting it know that the stationary conveyor is ready. Once the transfer task is completed, both units receive a signal that it is safe for the robot to leave.
The GuardCom is integrated into the stationary system via only a handful of cabled connections. The handshake process between the GuardCom and the mobile robot is completely wireless and based on proven and robust sensor technologies. To further prevent misplaced or dangling packages, GuardCom includes a physical guard installed on the conveyor station that goes up to prevent packages from rolling off and dropping to the floor when the autonomous mobile robot is not ready to receive. An alarm alerts the operator to come onsite to remedy the situation – or for the conveyor to roll backwards automatically.
Hartfiel Automation, a U.S. distributor of ROEQ products sees the GuardCom system as a shift in the way robots are deployed. “In the past, significant engineering development and 3rd party hardware was required to manage the logic of moving material from a stationary conveyor onto a mobile robot, which added substantial cost and time to deployments,” says Scott Albrecht, VP of Advanced Control Technologies at Hartfiel Automation. “With the ROEQ GuardCom system, these challenges are minimized or eliminated resulting in lower risk, lower cost, and faster deployment for these users.”
GuardCom is not the only new product now released by the Danish company, that also introduces the new ROEQ TR500 Auto and TR1000 Auto top roller modules with automatic lifting mechanisms, enabling MiR’s largest robots, the MiR500 and MiR1000 (with 1100 and 2200lbs payload respectively) to pick up and deliver goods at varying heights in the factories without human intervention, which allows them to automatically adjust in a height range of 19.7 – 31.5in (stroke is 9.8in) from floor to rollers.
“Very often, businesses are not able to maximize automation opportunities in existing facility layouts as the mobile robots need to pick up at one height and deliver in another,” says ROEQ’s Managing Director. “Our new top rollers with the lifting mechanism now make this possible – even for the heaviest of goods.”
ROEQ’s expanded product portfolio now also includes the TR125 Manual 250 and TR125 Auto 250 top rollers compatible with MiR’s most recent robot release, the MiR250. At MiR, Frederik Spangtoft Poulsen, Product Manager at MiR, is looking forward to seeing the new ROEQ products deployed with MiR robots in the field. “We welcome ROEQ’s products into our MiRGo universe, a platform already featuring a significant share of solutions from ROEQ.”
by Gary Mintchell | Sep 29, 2020 | Commentary, News
There exists inevitable dynamic tension between companies seeking international trade—something as old as human civilization—and the governments of nation-states charged with protecting its citizenry. Note that I am an American citizen on the one side of things, yet I have dealt in international business and was trained in international relations at the university, so I embody that tension. Not to mention that this blog has quite an international audience. One of many, many reasons I don’t do politics.
Despite continued centralization of government in the United States, it does remain a federation of states in many aspects. Alone among industrialized nations, the US lacks a coherent manufacturing strategy. As supply chain problems caused by the COVID-19 crisis (cited by the Manufacturing Institutes below) along with the increasingly hostile trade disputes with China show, the country’s manufacturing base has perhaps become too dependent upon international supply chains.
An organization currently forming composed of many of the US Manufacturing Institutes proposes a “Manufacturing Guard.” From its white paper we learn the background: The current COVID-19 crisis has challenged America’s ability to respond rapidly to a threat and exposed vulnerabilities that must be addressed to ensure America’s national and economic security, and public health, in the face of threats such as pandemics, war, and the rise of more technologically advanced adversaries. As we recover from the current crisis, and prepare for the possibility of the next, it is well past time to think about our security and competitiveness as linked to our manufacturing, supply chain, and workforce capabilities.
The 2018 National Defense Strategy calls for increased and sustained investment, innovation, and discipline from all aspects of America’s industrial base to guarantee the nation’s ability to compete in an increasingly complex security environment.
To restore domestic control, resilience, and flexibility, a multi- faceted national program must be developed to map the current, architect the new, and implement an optimized manufacturing base that affords the U.S. strategic control over critical supply chains. This undertaking will require a systems-level reimagining of manufacturing and talent development with a focus on optimizing what already exists in the U.S. domestic asset base and flexibly adding distributed capacity for basic feed stocks, intermediates, and finished products that are currently only manufactured overseas. The Manufacturing USA institutes, which are each tasked with establishing and growing ecosystems around specific technology areas, are uniquely positioned to answer the call and build a more resilient U.S. manufacturing base to better prepare for the next crisis. To address these needs, we propose the following:
I) Create a national Manufacturing Guard: We make the analogy to the National Guard’s readiness to defend our country to propose a national Manufacturing Guard. This group would be comprised of leading corporate experts in manufacturing and production, and they would train annually for agile and effective response during a crisis to mitigate scenarios that threaten supply chains and impede immediate availability and access to necessary products across the country.
II) Create a national, real-time Supply Chain Data Exchange: The Supply Chain Data Exchange infrastructure would enable a secure, end-to-end data backbone for real time visibility and the mitigation tools necessary to support the resilient production of critical products needed during Covid-19 and future supply chain disruptions.
III) Create the Technology Corps: The Technology Corps will ensure Americans can be rapidly educated on emerging advanced manufacturing technologies. The Technology Corps will establish a workforce pipeline to respond to national security needs and will be a pipeline into the national Manufacturing Guard, providing individuals who will have worked with industry leaders and understand the importance of keeping our manufacturing capabilities up to date and safe.
IV) Form a Resilient Manufacturing Task Force and a Resilient Manufacturing Advisory Council: A Resilient Manufacturing Task Force is required to convene and develop a plan to create the national Manufacturing Guard, the Supply Chain Data Exchange, and the Technology Corps. The Task Force will also be able to begin mapping critical gaps in the supply chains across sectors and identify opportunities to refine current, and design new, technologies for an optimized system design.
Your Call to Action
We are offering two identical, online events to share these insights and strategies with the national manufacturing ecosystem. The first was September 29. You can still register for the second one as described below.
Webinar #2
- Thursday, October 1, 2020
- 2:00pm Eastern / 11:00am Pacific
- Duration: 30 minutes
- Speakers:
- Kelvin Lee, CEO, NIIMBL (moderator)
Register Online
by Gary Mintchell | Sep 28, 2020 | Business, Leadership, Personal Development, Workforce
Life is a series of paradoxes. We’re living in a time of many people either temporarily or permanently losing their jobs while other companies are struggling to find qualified people to hire.
When we dip into the labor pool, are we limiting our searches through something called Cognitive Bias?
I ran across this article at the World Economic Forum by Adwoa Bagalini, its Engagement, Diversity, and Inclusion Lead. He identifies three cognitive biases and shares some ideas for overcoming. Not to give away a punchline, but most of us should be students of W. Edwards Deming and/or Taiichi Ohno and should have learned about changing the process, not the individual.
From the paper.
We do know is that lasting, positive change is difficult to achieve without deliberate, sustained effort informed by reliable data that is free from bias. And it’s important not to underestimate the role cognitive bias can play in undermining these efforts – and to stay vigilant in spotting and mitigating it.
What is cognitive bias?
Human brains are hardwired to take shortcuts when processing information to make decisions, resulting in “systematic thinking errors”, or unconscious bias. When it comes to influencing our decisions and judgments around people, cognitive or unconscious bias is universally recognized to play a role in unequal outcomes for people of colour.
1. Moral licensing
This is when people derive such confidence from past moral behaviour that they are more likely to engage in immoral or unethical ways later. In a 2010 study, researchers argued that moral self-licensing occurs “because good deeds make people feel secure in their moral self-regard”, and future problematic behaviour does not evoke the same feelings of negative self-judgment that it otherwise would.
Moral licensing may help explain the limitations of corporate unconscious bias training in creating an anti-racist work environment, an effect which has already been observed when it comes to tackling gender inequality.
2. Affinity bias
This is our tendency to get along with others who are like us, and to evaluate them more positively than those who are different. Our personal beliefs, assumptions, preferences, and lack of understanding about people who are not like us may lead to repeatedly favouring ‘similar-to-me’ individuals.
Many hiring managers have a hard time articulating their organization’s specific culture, or explaining what exactly they mean when they say “culture fit”, leading to this being misused to engage employees that managers feel they will personally relate to.
3. Confirmation bias
This is the tendency to seek out, favour, and use information that confirms what you already believe. The other side of this is that people tend to ignore new information that goes against their preconceived notions, leading to poor decision-making.
Many people’s perceptions of others with different identities and with whom they have limited interaction, is strongly influenced by media depictions and longstanding cultural stereotypes.
For example, a 2017 study published in the American Psychological Association’s Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that people tended to perceive young Black men as taller, heavier, and more muscular than similarly sized white men, and hence more physically threatening.
How to overcome unconscious bias
1. Change systems, not individuals
The main reason unconscious bias training programmes fail to have the desired effect in creating lasting change, is that they are focused on changing individual behaviours while leaving largely untouched the systems that enabled those behaviours to thrive.
2. Slow down and act deliberately
Bias is most likely to affect decision-making when decisions are made quickly, according to Stanford University psychology professor Jennifer Eberhardt, who studies implicit bias in police departments.
3. Set concrete goals and work towards them
Data is essential to making real progress on diversity goals, and especially important when it comes to mitigating the effects of bias because it provides an objective measure of what has improved – or worsened – over time.
by Gary Mintchell | Sep 25, 2020 | Events, News, Open Source, Technology, Uncategorized
Looking for an opportunity to learn about the leading edge of Open Source community work? Check out the Open Networking & Edge Summit next week.
- Deep Dive demonstrations on 5G, Edge, IOT, O-RAN, AI, Cloud Native & CNFs covering most important enterprise, cloud and telecom use cases
- Expert live sessions on “Why Open Source for Edge?” answered – Over 75% say collaborative market creation and adoption acceleration are top factors for participating in open source
- Total value of software created by shared innovation model totals $7.3B (2000+ Devs over 6+ years), according to new COCOMO research, “Estimated Development Value of LFN Software”
- 5 tracks, 13 keynote presentations, 80+ sessions with thousands of peers attending to collaborate on business value of open networking & edge
The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling innovation through open source, has marked significant progress in the open networking and edge spaces. In advance of the Open Networking and Edge Summit happening September 28-30, Linux Foundation umbrella projects LF Edge and LF Networking demonstrate recent achievements highlighting trends that set the stage for next-generation technology. “We are thrilled to announce a number of milestones across our networking and edge projects, which will be on virtual display at ONES next week,” said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking, Edge and IOT, at the Linux Foundation. “Indicative of what’s coming next, our communities are laying the groundwork for markets like cloud native, 5G, and edge to explode in terms of open deployments.” Recent Acceleration within Networking & Edge includes:
- LFN is shepherding the culmination of Cloud Native and 5G (5G Cloud Native demo, OVP, which now includes Cloud Native requirements).
- The industry is becoming accustomed to a new way of compliance and verification out in the open (via OVP) – be it cloud native, 5G, Edge, or otherwise.
- SDN + NFV: OPNFV celebrates its sixth birthday as CNTT prepares to issue its Baraque release; meanwhile, OpenDaylight issues Aluminum, its 13th release.
“We are together in a tough period. Thanks to all developers and contributors of LFN and LF Edge to tirelessly propel various projects to be on the trac,” said Dr. Junlan Feng, chief scientist at China Mobile, general manager of AI and Intelligent Operation R&D Center, and LFN Board chair. “Cloud Native and 5G are also top priorities of China Mobile to strengthen the experience of our customers. For moving forward, we see there is a great opportunity to fuse together network automation and network intelligence through ONAP, Acumos, Edge, etc. EUAG under LFN is conducting a study to collect and analyze the common requirements of 5G and intelligent network in our industry. We as a community will continuously work together. Thanks to Linux Foundation for taking the lead.”
At the edge, unification has happened and projects (e.g., Akraino, EdgeX Foundry, and Fledge) have delivered deployable code. And the new LF Edge Vertical Solutions Group is working to enable easily-customized deployments based on market/vertical requirements. Opportunities exist for end users across verticals – e.g., enterprise, automotive, industrial – to participate in shaping the direction of how open source gets deployed at the edge.
Join the launch event, “Launching the LF Edge End User Community” on October 1, co-located with ONES. “Open source collaboration from edge to network is critical to achieve compatibility and complementarity. ONES is THE event for communities to come together – learning about the latest trends in projects and determining how to evolve technology across boundaries and borders, ” said Melissa Evers-Hood, governing board chair for LF Edge and vice president, Intel Architecture, Graphics and Software, Software Business Strategy.
Technology in action at Open Networking & Edge Summit
See innovation in action during the virtual ONES event, September 28-30 and immerse yourself in the latest open source innovations across networking and edge with community-driven demos in the LF Networking & LF Edge Pavilion. The demos will be open throughout the event but visit during booth hours to engage with the demo managers and ask questions. Key demonstrations include:
- OVP Automation DevOps: Agile Adoption in VNF/CNF based Network Service Industry: This demo will leverage ONAP SDC, ONAP VF-C, and OVP VTP projects to build DevOps for OPNFV Verification Program end-to-end VNF and Network service testing which helps to address agility, automation, and testing challenges.
- Self-Healing Using Streaming Analytics & Observability for Latency Sensitive Kubernetes Workloads: This demo showcases components necessary towards zero touch infrastructure automation using Kubernetes enhancements, streaming analytics, host telemetry, and a viable path to deployment.
- Real-Time Sensor Fusion for Loss Detection: This demo shows how different sensor devices can use LF Edge’s EdgeX Foundry open-middleware framework to optimize retail operations and detect loss at checkout.
- Managing Industrial IoT Data Using LF Edge: LF Edge projects EVE and Fledge will show how they can securely manage, connect, aggregate, process, buffer and forward any sensor, machine or PLC’s data to existing OT systems and any cloud.
The event also features expert keynote speakers, 80+ sessions, and five separate tracks, including: Business Critical & Innovation; Carriers: Core/Edge/Access; Cloud Networking & Edge; Enterprise, Networking & Edge; and Sponsored Tutorials.Due to the current COVID-19 outbreak, ONES is being offered virtually for only $50 US. Register today and join the community September 28-30:
Support from Project Technical Steering Committee Chairs
Akraino
“Launched in 2018, and founding project of LF Edge umbrella, Akraino delivers an open source software stack that supports a high-availability cloud stack optimized for edge computing systems and applications. With three successful releases, the community of over 40+ companies engaged worldwide, more than 20 fully integrated edge blueprints, blueprints tested in 15 user labs and a community lab, and a growing list of user deployments across the globe, Akraino truly become the enabler of edge computing use cases across Telco, IoT, Cloud, and Enterprise use cases,” said Kandan Kathirvel, TSC-Chair, AT&T, and Tina Tsou, co-chair, Arm. “This ONES event will be an opportunity to learn more about the edge use cases and Akraino solutions to it.”
EdgeX Foundry
“EdgeX Foundry is in its 4th year of development as a Linux Foundation project.With 6 successful releases, a community of over 180 committers worldwide, more than 7 million container downloads, and a growing list of commercial companies adopting and using EdgeX (like Accenture, HP, ThunderSoft, Tibco, IOTech Systems, and Jiangxing Intelligence), we believe EdgeX has established itself as one of, if not the, premier open source edge solution frameworks,” said Jim White, TSC Chair, EdgeX Foundry and CTO of IOTech. “We are excited that ‘edge’ has been incorporated into the formerly Open Network Summit, and we are looking forward to our participation in the new “edge” tracks with our fellow LF Edge project members.”
Fledge
“Fledge is an open source framework and community for the industrial edge focused on applications for critical operations, condition-based monitoring, predictive maintenance, quality, situational awareness and safety. Fledge integrates IIoT, sensors, machines, processes and other industrial assets with existing ISQ95 systems and the cloud” said Mark Riddoch, Fledge TSC Chair. ” Fledge 1.8 is a mature, field-tested solution operating in power generation/transmission/distribution, water and wastewater processing, oil and gas, discrete manufacturing, pharma and professional auto racing. We invite manufacturers, equipment suppliers, system integrators, and partners to use Fledge and join our community as we grow THE open source application stack for industrial transformations.”
Open Horizon
“Being a young stage one project, Open Horizon is grateful for the opportunity to meet so many people active in the open source networking and edge computing areas. Despite not being able to meet face-to-face, the Linux Foundation’s LFN and LF Edge have provided us with a great format that allows us to have personal, in-depth discussions with anyone who is interested from the comfort of home, and without needing to shout over the crowds to be heard. We hope you’ll come visit us and enjoy our short demo,” said Joe Pearson, TSC chair, Open Horizon and Technology Strategist, and IBM Cloud.
OPNFV
“This event will be an opportunity to learn about the pivotal changes, new emphasis, and growth in the OPNFV community. OPNFV’s conformance testing and infrastructure projects, led by the contributions of Orange and many other industry leaders, will soon benefit from even more Telco participation as the CNTT task force members merge with OPNFV. Also, we have paid-forward our successes by taking-on many Linux Foundation Networking Interns in OPNFV this year. Join us and hear our stories,” said Al Morton, OPNFV TSC Chair.
ONAP
“Our ONAP Community is actively working on the certification of our 7th Major Release (Guilin) scheduled for the end of this year. This release continues to increase the support for 5G in areas of network slicing and O-RAN integration, ETSI (e.g. SOL007) and 3GPP standards, as well as our E2E CNF Orchestration chain,” said Catherine Lefevre, AVP-Network Cloud and SDN Platform Integration, AT&T, and chair of the ONAP Technical Steering Committee. “The ONES Summit is a great event where enterprises who have embraced ONAP can showcase their latest innovations. Also, do not miss our demo corners, which will illustrate areas such as: Onboarding 5G CNFs with ONAP, Policy-based RAN Management using O-RAN’s Open-Source Non-RealTime-RIC, ONAP Policy Framework Integration with Bell Canada’s Control Loop Use-cases, and much more. We also invite you to our special panel, ‘ONAP & Cloud Native – the Best of the Two Worlds’, where we will present an overview of our ONAP Cloud Native journey.”
State of the Edge (SOTE)
“As edge computing goes mainstream it will bring forth a wave of technologies that require cooperation across the entire ecosystem to deliver value to end customers,” said Matt Trifiro, CMO of Vapor IO and co-chair of The Linux Foundation’s State of the Edge project. “The Open Networking and Edge Summit creates opportunities for technologists and end users to collaborate around open source for edge and networking that will revolutionize the cloud, robotics, artificial intelligence, healthcare, manufacturing, data centers, mobile devices, smart cities, and autonomous vehicles.”
by Gary Mintchell | Sep 24, 2020 | Personal Development
Press releases are the lifeblood of journalist enterprise. These let editors and writer know when something new happens or a new product is launched at a company we are interested. For me, these were more important when I worked at magazines. Even now they help when I hear about something and I want the company’s words describing what they are up to.
We quickly learn which are the companies and the PR people we can trust and listen to and which send either off-target things or fill their prose with fluff. A friend once ran a “PR Hall of Shame” with the worst examples of press releases. I told him he was a bit off the mark. Usually the culprit is not the professional PR person. Look instead to the marketing manager or the business owner for the culprit who packs as much vague and meaningless jargon as possible into the prose.
With that background and context, I introduce an article from one of my favorite sites—Big Think. A philosopher’s guide to detecting nonsense and getting around it by Scotty Hendricks.
- A professor in Sweden has a bold on idea on what BS, pseudoscience, and pseudophilosophy actually are.
- He suggests they are defined by a lack of “epistemic conscientiousness” rather than merely being false.
- He offers suggestions on how to avoid producing nonsense and how to identify it on sight.
There is a lot of BS going around these days. Fake cures for disease are being passed off by unscrupulous hacks, the idea that the world is flat has a shocking amount of sincere support online, and plenty of people like to suggest there isn’t a scientific consensus on climate change. It can be hard to keep track of it all.
Even worse, it can be difficult to easily define all of it in a way that lets people know what they’re encountering is nonsense right away. Luckily for us, Dr. Victor Moberger recently published an essay in Theoria on what counts as bullsh*t, how it interacts with pseudoscience and pseudophilosophy, and what to do about it.
The essay “Bullshit, Pseudoscience and Pseudophilosophy” considers much of the nonsense we encounter and offers a definition that allows us to move forward in dealing with it.
Dr. Moberger argues that what makes something bullshit is a “lack of epistemic conscientiousness,” meaning that the person arguing for it takes no care to assure the truth of their statements. This typically manifests in systemic errors in reasoning and the frequent use of logical fallacies such as ad hominem, red herring, false dilemma, and cherry picking, among others.
This makes bullsh*t different from lying, which involves caring what the truth is and purposely moving away from it, or mere indifference to truth, as it is quite possible for people pushing nonsense to care about their nonsense being true. It also makes it different from making the occasional mistake with reasoning, occasional errors differ from a systemic reliance on them.
I think this professor is generous, but also he has put his finger on the correct pulse. What do you think?
