Read My Some of My Thoughts in Italian
I’ve written a column for an Italian automation magazine for more than 10 years. Here is the latest one. From there, you can get an idea of what’s happening in Italy.
Complexity—the Enemy of Effectiveness
I recently wrote an article for my website about technology complexity within industrial technology. Engineering managers have stood at conferences pleading with the standards and technology developers to find ways to simplify interfaces and connectivity.
OPC Foundation keeps adding layers of companion specifications. ODVA members listened to engineers who need help implementing EtherNet/IP (or just ethernet networks) and proceeded to ignore the plea. Paul Miller, an analyst at Forrester reported from a survey where 90% of executives reported data problems from their digital transformation. 71% reported measurement related data problems.
Mattias Stenberg, head of the new software company spinning out from Hexagon called Octave, reported from another survey his group has performed that only one in five executives thought they were getting any value from digital transformation.
The Vice President of Product Development of the company where I worked in the 1970s (back in the day before layers of vice presidents) offered a job to me to leave manufacturing and become his data manager. He was prescient. 45 years later, companies are still trying to manage data. Solutions have become more complex, technology has advance exponentially, yet we still have problems gathering, refining, contextualizing, and using data.
These thoughts were generated from the Hexagon Live Global Conference I attended this week in Las Vegas. I have a lot of trouble wrapping my head around just who Hexagon is. Evidently, I’m not alone. But the company is making it easier by splitting off four groups into Octave.
The simplest definition, yet also most definitive, came from Ola Rollén Hexagon Chairman recounting the company’s 25-year history of growth. “Hexagon is the world’s most sophisticated measuring tape.” Indeed, several of my interviews delved into the world of accurately measuring the very large and the very small. This year’s slogan, “When it has to be done right.”
The new ATS800 laser tracker can easily capture complex shapes with up to micron precision. The company released Autonomous Metrology Suite, software developed on its cloud-based Nexus platform that is designed to transform quality control across manufacturing industries worldwide. By removing all coding from coordinate measuring machine (CMM) workflows, it helps manufacturers speed up critical R&D and manufacturing processes as experienced metrologists become harder to find.
Hexagon and several partners are solving what has been an intractable and troubling problem—data locked into paper-based formats such as pdf files. Several demonstrated the ability to read text and pdf documents that are unstructured data, use a form of AI to tag the data, and then extract to a useable database. This is truly a great advance. Several workforce solutions designed to give companies the ability to attract younger workers into technical positions were demonstrated on the show floor.
Stenberg talked of another problem executives cited—data silos that prevent people from using data to make good decisions. I have been writing about solutions designed to break through data silos for 25 years. I’m beginning to wonder if it is not a technology problem. Perhaps it’s a people problem.
Flexiv and NVIDIA Join Forces in Robotics Simulation
Everyone wants to be NVIDIA’s best friend. This friendship focuses on the world of robotics and simulation. In brief:
Flexiv launches the Flexiv-Isaac Bridge App, empowering developers to design, test, and deploy force-controlled robotics applications in hyper-realistic virtual environments.
The interesting thing is the force-controlled part. I remember an application I wrote about a few years ago where the developer of a robotic prosthetic arm had a design goal of being able to pick up a grape with squishing it. I watch these technologies closely anticipating even greater use cases that will help us all.
Flexiv announced release of the Flexiv-Isaac Bridge App, bringing high-fidelity force-control simulation to NVIDIA’s Isaac Sim. This partnership enables robotics developers and end-users to program, model, test, and deploy complex force-controlled, AI-empowered robotics applications in simulated environments that closely mimic contact-rich real-world conditions.
To highlight this new capability, Flexiv’s engineering team released a video in which a simulated Rizon 4 robot completed the classic Tower of Hanoi puzzle in Isaac Sim. The simulation exactly replicated the robot’s real-world movements and showcased its force-controlled “hole search” and compliant movement capabilities. This underscores Flexiv’s commitment to minimizing the sim-to-real gap to improve training, programming, and operational performance. Additionally, this demonstration emphasizes Flexiv’s drive to ensure seamless compatibility with one of the world’s most widely used virtual robotics platforms.
Isaac Sim enables developers to build hyper-realistic, detailed virtual environments, while Flexiv’s Elements programming system allows robotic applications to be effortlessly programmed and refined. With the Bridge App connecting these tools, customers are empowered to create applications, build digital twins of their facilities, design mission profiles, and run high-fidelity virtual tests before deploying robots in real-world scenarios. These simulations provide valuable insights into application performance, risk assessment, and operational efficiency.
By leveraging both Isaac Sim’s ability to generate real-world simulations and Flexiv Elements’ support for simulating real-world force-based actions, Flexiv aims to accelerate the application development cycle. With developers now able to refine robot movements and iteratively test applications from anywhere in the world, development costs can be significantly reduced, while remote support can ensure greater reliability in real-world deployments.
In its continued commitment to community-driven innovation, Flexiv has made its Tower of Hanoi codebase freely available on GitHub. This initiative encourages developers, academics, and customers to build upon Flexiv’s work, fostering a collaborative ecosystem that promotes creativity and customization.
By combining force-controlled robotics and effortless programming with NVIDIA’s cutting-edge simulation tools, Flexiv is revolutionizing development workflows. This leads the way toward safer, smarter, and more adaptable robotic systems that transform both application development and human-robot interaction.
Honeywell AI for Security
Speaking of Honeywell from yesterday’s post, here is another release, this one from their User Group meeting that are, of course, announcing AI use cases. They bring in another buzz word from the automation market—autonomy.
Announcements include:
AI-enabled cybersecurity solutions—Honeywell Cyber Proactive Defense and Honeywell OT Security Operations Center.
Expansion of the Honeywell Digital Prime platform to encompass an enterprise-wide set of solutions that effectively test and modify engineering projects before implementation.
Some details:
- Honeywell Cyber Proactive Defense, which is designed to enhance cybersecurity for industrial environments by proactively identifying and mitigating potential cyber threats before they manifest into attacks. By utilizing AI and behavioral-based analytics, the solution helps detect anomalies in OT cyber behavior by establishing a comprehensive baseline of system operations and then provides actionable insights designed to strengthen OT cyber defenses. The software also features deception technology, which uses decoys within the network to help divert attackers from valuable assets.
- Honeywell OT Security Operations Center, a vendor-agnostic and agentless service designed to provide industrials with advanced capabilities tailored to OT environments to monitor for early signs of a cyberattack. The offering integrates on-site incident management services, providing a 24/7/365 holistic view of the cyber threat landscape for users.
- Honeywell Digital Prime Ecosystem, which now features three core Honeywell offerings – Solution Enhancement Support Program (SESP), Enabled Services and Assurance 360 – in one platform. Through consolidation, users can now leverage deep domain knowledge to optimize control systems and improve maintenance and operational effectiveness across an entire organization. It will also offer near real-time performance insights that can help users achieve desired outcomes more quickly, while requiring less reliance on the technical expertise of an experienced workforce.
Honeywell Cyber Proactive Defense and OT Security Operations Center are now available globally. The expanded version of the Honeywell Digital Prime ecosystem will be available to customers in Q4 2025.
Honeywell’s 2025 Cybersecurity Threat Report
Cybersecurity companies have specialized in reports over the past few years. Some are merely surveys. Journalists and marketing people love surveys. I had a graduate level class on those things including statistical analysis. I’m not so sanguine. On the other hand, some reports are based on these companies looking into their scrubbed data looking for trends. To develop this report, Honeywell researchers analyzed more than 250 billion logs, 79 million files and 4,600 incident events that were blocked across the company’s global install base.
This one holds forth some interest.
In a growing wave of sophisticated cyber threats against the industrial sector, ransomware attacks jumped by 46% from Q4 2024 to Q1 2025, according to Honeywell’s 2025 Cybersecurity Threat Report. The research also found that both malware and ransomware increased significantly in this period and included a 3,000% spike in the use of one trojan designed to steal credentials from industrial operators.
We should not be surprised given all the international turmoil and state actors at this time. When the Russia/Ukraine conflict is settled, we’ll likely see more criminal activity.
Here’s the obligatory quote in every press release.
“Industrial operations across critical sectors like energy and manufacturing must avoid unplanned downtime as much as possible – which is precisely why they are such attractive ransomware targets,” said Paul Smith, director of Honeywell Operational Technology (OT) Cybersecurity Engineering, who authored the report. “These attackers are evolving fast, leveraging ransomware-as-a-service kits to compromise the industrial operations that keep our economy moving.”
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in the United States defines incidents as substantial if they enable unauthorized access leading to significant operational downtime or impairments. Industry reports show that unplanned downtime, caused by cybersecurity attacks and other issues like equipment failure, cost Fortune 500 companies approximately $1.5 trillion annually representing 11% of their revenue.
Survey finding:
- Ransomware still on the rise: 2,472 potential ransomware attacks were documented in the first quarter of 2025, which represent 40% of the annual total from 2024.
- Trojans exploiting industrial access: A dangerous trojan targeting OT systems – W32.Worm.Ramnit – accounted for 37% of files blocked by Honeywell’s Secure Media Exchange (SMX). This finding points to a 3,000% spike in the trojan compared to the previous quarter.
- USB based threats persist: 1,826 unique USB threats were detected via SMX in Q1 2025, with 124 never-before-seen threats – indicating a persistent risk via external media and USB devices. This built on a 33% increase in USB malware detections in 2023, following a 700% year-over-year surge in 2022.
The report expanded its analysis to include threats delivered through additional plug-in hardware – known as Human Interface Device (HID) – including mice, charging cords for mobile devices, laptops and other peripherals often used when updating or patching software for on-premise systems.
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