In this exclusive article, the Head of NBC (Nordic Baltics Countries) Torbjörn Lundberg from SMC shares insights on the ever-evolving world of automation and its profound impact on various industries.
One of the big trends in recent years is smart speakers that can be controlled with your voice. There is speculation as to what these smart speakers may be able to do in the future. It's not really about smart speakers, but using the voice as an interface to control applications that today are controlled via a computer and a keyboard or a smart phone.
It has already started to affect us as private individuals, but it will also come to industry and affect our opportunities to streamline and automate our production processes. As private individuals, it can already be, for example, Amazon Echo that is controlled by talking to Alexa or Google Home with its Assistant. Here you can order music, ask questions about the weather or really about everything that is available online. You can control your lighting if you have for example Philips HUE and much, much more. However, if today's voice control has its limitations – what comes next?
Perhaps you will be able to use your smart speaker for Skype calls. Ordering food or the like will surely come, and a better integration with other smart home electronics gadgets is probably also to be expected.
A challenge with these smart speakers is if you e.g. should get a message, maybe a push notification, it's not there when Alexa says her word. Therefore, it is speculated that they will be supplemented with some kind of screen quite soon.
Why is voice control an important trend?
It is about being able to convert sound to text and using a natural language, which reduces work and makes various activities much faster. This means increased productivity and efficiency. Voice control enables multi-tasking, you have two hands free. Voice control could then perhaps give us back the time we currently spend writing e-mails.
In the future, smart speakers will not only respond to what is found on www. Client-specific information will also be able to be included in the information database of a smart speaker. For example. could a guest at a company ask straight out "what is the password to the guest network?". Then the assistant answers what it is or maybe even shares the password we e.g. airdrop or any similar service.
With a developed voice control, it is easy to send yourself an email with things you come up with, in the car on the way home from work or on the couch in front of the TV.
But voice control will be much more than sending emails, calendars and meetings. Today, apps are used in all professions and the way to interact with them can in many situations just as well be done with the help of voice control. It will increase the usage speed many times. Speaking is many times faster than writing. You write maybe 30 words per minute, many significantly fewer, but speak at least 100 words at the same time!
How will this affect the industry?
There are some conceivable industry-specific applications. For example, all audits, inspections, investigations, etc. that require documentation, will be significantly faster to implement with voice control.
There are already today logistics systems for picking products in a warehouse where the interface is voice control, "Pick-To-Voice". This results in more efficient picking and lower costs according to Prevas, which markets the system in the Nordics.
Chatbots already exist today. Today it answers pre-programmed questions, but in the future it will itself, through artificial intelligence, be able to figure out its own answers. Applications today are information services on airports.
Many companies today have large volumes of information in many systems and in the heads of a few experienced employees. With a modern database and smart software as well as voice control, all that information could be retrieved not only by employees of the company but also by its customers, quickly and correctly.
Translations is another area where voice control is appropriate, basically anything that can be done over a desktop can also be done with voice as an interface.
Voice control aside, artificial intelligence will play a huge role in industry. With an increasing number of sensors and self-learning machines, it will be relatively easy to streamline maintenance so that you only repair something when it is really needed. It will save loads of components, lots of time and a lot of money. It is also good for our resource management. The sensors will also be used to optimise the operation of the machine, again good for our resource management and of course it saves money.
Already today, however, there are some production solutions where a wireless connection is included. SMC Automation offers, for example, a valve platform for automation with compressed air, industrial pneumatics, where the signals from the PLC are transmitted wirelessly to distributed nodes with valves to direct the air to the right side of a piston in a cylinder and thereby create a movement. The protocols for communication with the PLC are the same as for traditional PLCs.
