Sunday, November 12, 2017

Interesting News in Engineering, IoT, PLM, Industry 4.0, and Telecom - Vol 10

These 44 news stories caught my attention last week. These stories are across automotive, aerospace, Industry 4.0, 3D printing, software, telecom, semiconductor, medical devices, drones, IoT, and PLM.

Automotive

EV investments: Ford, China's Zotye Auto invest $756 million in electric vehicle JV. (Read here). Vespa’s first electric scooter is coming in 2018 with 62 miles of range. (Read here). Toyota cuts production costs to allow record research budget for EV. (Read here).

EV battery/ charging infrastructure investments: Samsung working on battery breakthrough for powering cars. Lithium-air promises twice the capacity of today's Li-ion tech. Samsung's new battery would theoretically let an electric vehicle go more than 700km. (Read here).

Autonomous driving: A big public debut for a self-driving bus in Las Vegas turned out to be trouble. An autonomous shuttle bus collided with a semi-truck just a few hours after Las Vegas city officials held a ceremony to celebrate its first day as part of a larger city-wide test. (Read here). Waymo makes history testing on public roads with no one at the wheel. (Read here). Tencent is reportedly testing its own autonomous driving system. (Read here).

Startup/ technology investments: Tesla acquires automated manufacturing machine supplier Perbix. (Read here). Renault has entered into a strategic development agreement with Chronocam SA, a developer of biologically-inspired vision sensors and computer vision solutions for automotive applications. (Read here).  EV startup Nio reportedly raises $1B from Tencent and others. (Read here).

Safety: Ford made a trucker hat that uses technology to save truckers’ lives. The new SafeCap tracks head movement to determine whether drivers are safely awake or about to snooze. (Read here).

Geographical expansion: Opel will enter more than 20 new markets by 2022, with Argentina, Saudi Arabia, and Taiwan among countries identified as potential export markets. Opel also is exploring whether to sell cars in China and Brazil. With Opel's entire lineup moving to PSA platforms, Opel has much more freedom to pursue sales in non-European markets. (Read here).

Connected cars:  Ola partners with Microsoft to build a connected vehicle platform for car manufacturers. (Read here). Denso announces it has developed a thin-film transistor enabling it to produce what it says is the world’s largest automotive head-up display, a human-machine interface with a nearly 24-in. (61-cm) projection. (Read here).

Shared mobility: Uber gives top riders a 24/7 ‘Premium Support’ hotline. (Read here).

OEM/ Tier 1s preparing for software-defined cars: Continental, Osram to join forces in auto lighting JV. (Read here). VW, Google cooperate on quantum computing. (Read here).

Service provider investments: Altran Technologies opens first U.S. passive-safety center in Michigan. (Read here).

Aerospace

Testing: Airbus knew of software vulnerability before A400M crash. (Read here). Software vulnerability can cause air crashes.

Technology Investments:  Boeing’s investment arm, Boeing Horizon X Ventures, has made its first investment in materials research, in the form of Gamma Alloys. (Read here).

Avionics: Honeywell’s suite of advanced cockpit technologies and industry-leading auxiliary power units has been selected by China’s Spring Airlines for its future fleet of Airbus A320neo aircraft. (Read here).

UI Issues: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion. (Read here). UI often doesn’t get same importance in aerospace and defense as in automotive and other consumer-oriented sectors. This incident should highlight the importance of UI in aerospace and defense sector also.

Flying Taxis: Uber has partnered with NASA to help it develop air traffic management systems for its flying taxi initiatives. (Read here).

Service Provider Contracts: NATS partners with Altran for the next-generation air traffic conflict detection tool. (Read here).

Space: Thales Alenia Space has signed a contract with the UK Space Agency to work on MicroCarb, a joint UK-French satellite mission which will measure sources and sinks of carbon, the principal greenhouse gas driving global warming. (Read here).

Software/ High-Tech

Technology updates: Airbnb develops an AI which converts the design into the source code. (Read here). IBM says it has created a prototype 50 qubit quantum computer. What does that mean? It would be a machine close to the threshold at which it could perform tasks beyond the reach of conventional supercomputers. (Read here).

Technology investments: Apple has acquired imaging sensor startup InVisage Technologies. (Read here).

Telecom/ Semiconductor

Business model: Intelsat and Coca-Cola are working together to bring satellite-enabled Wi-Fi services to remote communities across Africa. (Read here).

Graphics chips: Intel to develop its own graphics chips led by former AMD exec. (Read here). Intel and AMD team up against Nvidia to produce a new laptop chip. (Read here).

Technology updates: A new patent filing from telecommunications provider Comcast suggests the firm is looking at how to store operational data on a blockchain. The blockchain database would hold private and identifying information for customers, and would only be accessible by certain entities. (Read here).

Medical Devices

Product innovation: A regular ultrasound machine costs over $100,000 but a new ultrasound on a chip device attached to a smartphone will be $2000 in 2018. It will be portable and will eventually make ultrasound as common as blood pressure cuffs in hospitals, clinics, and doctors offices and with first responders and field medics. Butterfly iQ is FDA 510(k) cleared for diagnostic imaging across 13 clinical applications which span the whole body. (Read here).

3D Printing

AR-based 3D printing: Apple secures patent for a 3D printing method that’s compatible with cameras and AR glasses. (Read here).

Materials: Rolls Royce to consider PyroGenesis additive manufacturing powders as NDA signed. (Read here).

Drones

Drones in Mining: Drones are now operating underground. Mining companies look to automation to help companies dig out more ore and save lives. (Read here).

Drones in O&G: A satellite imaging company, Orbital Insights, is challenging Saudi Arabia’s reports of declining oil inventory suggesting that OPEC’s leader may have well been lying to get prices higher. (Read here). What is possible by satellite imaging today can be verified by drones tomorrow.

IoT

Testbed: The Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC), announced the Digital Solar Plant testbed. The testbed is led by LTI and GE Digital and will deploy in multiple phases at an L&T Solar plant in Rajasthan, India. (Read here).

Business model: Neos launches IoT-powered home insurance UK-wide. (Read here).

Platforms: Telia Estonia has started trialing a self-service platform for its IoT customers, allowing them to manage SIM cards and mobile data traffic. (Read here).

PLM / Industry 4.0

Machine Vision and AI for Quality: The Domino’s Pizza group is implementing an artificial intelligence camera system from Dragontail Systems which will be deployed to check pizzas for quality before they are handed to customers. (Read here).

Contracts: Prysmian to launch its first Industry 4.0 pilot project with Dassault Systèmes. (Read here).

Others


Service provider M&A: AXISCADES announced the acquisition of Mistral, a Bengaluru-based embedded technology company. (Read here). SEGULA Technologies has announced its acquisition of EK Design, a German company specializing in the automotive and industrial / special vehicle sector. (Read here).

Sunday, November 5, 2017

Interesting News in Engineering, IoT, PLM, Industry 4.0, and Telecom - Vol 9

These 39 news stories caught my attention last week. These stories are across automotive, aerospace, Industry 4.0, 3D printing, software, telecom, semiconductor, medical devices, AI,  IoT, and PLM.

Automotive
EV investments: Ashok Leyland, an Indian truck manufacturer, is looking to pump $61.5 Mn-$77 Mn (INR 400 Cr-INR 500 Cr) into its electric vehicle business over the next three to five years. (Read here). Hong Kong Billionaire Li Ka-Shing agreed to buy shares in O Luxe Holdings Ltd. for the second time in a month, a deal that would make Hong Kong’s richest man the second-largest investor in the owner of an electric-car maker. (Read here). Indian government to procure another 20,000 electric cars for its fleet. (Read here).

EV charging infrastructure investments: BMW Group, Daimler, Ford Motor Company, and the Volkswagen Group will join up to create a high-power charging network for electric vehicles called “Ionity,” which will build and operate around 400 charging stations across Europe by 2020. (Read here). Indian government invites snap bid for electric vehicle chargers. (Read here).

Autonomous driving: Waymo is investing a lot of time and effort on building out the user experience of its self-driving vehicles, which includes both the external and internal user-facing features of its autonomous cars. (Read here). Delphi partners with leading Chinese map and location service supplier, AutoNav. This will enhance Delphi’s support to customers in the Chinese market on connected infotainment and navigation systems and will lay a foundation for Delphi to bring automated driving systems to the Chinese market. (Read here). Germany has developed a set of ethical guidelines for self-driving cars. (Read here).

Startup/ technology investments: Arbe Robotics raises $9M to build high-resolution radars for autonomous cars. (Read here). Continental is buying Israel’s Argus Cyber Security whose technology guards connected cars against hacking. (Read here). Toyota is exploring airless tires to help reduce the weight of battery-electric and fuel cell vehicles and boost performance. (Read here).
Vehicle recalls: Ford Recalls 1.1 Million 2015-2017 F-Series Pickups for Door Fix. (Read here). BMW recalls 1 million vehicles in North America. (Read here).

Geographical expansion: Aston Martin plans US spending boost to hedge Brexit effect. The U.S. accounted for 20% of Aston Martin's auto sales in 2016. (Read here).

Connected cars: Ford is partnering with Qualcomm, AT&T, and Nokia to test cellular modems that can connect vehicles to each other and roadside infrastructure to help navigate in bad weather or construction zones. The technology, known as cellular-V2X, is meant to connect vehicles with traffic lights, roadside beacons, and other vehicles to share real-time information about the driving conditions around them. It's supposed to improve safety and help speed the deployment of self-driving vehicles. (Read here).

Railways
Technology investments: China’s hybrid electric tram powered by hydrogen (H2) fuel cells has begun commercial operation. It is the first commercial H2-powered tram in the world and made by CRRC. It can be refilled with H2 in 15 minutes and can run for 40 kilometers at a maximum speed of 70 km per hour. (Read here).
Aerospace
Indian defense: Indian government clears mega project to acquire 111 helicopters worth $3.5 billion for Navy. (Read here).
MRO: Aviation MRO companies want 18% GST scrapped. (Read here). In 2016, Indian airlines spent $950 m on MRO, but only 10% business came to Indian MRO companies. MRO business has an exponential growth potential in India. Global civil aircraft fleet was about 19,000 at the beginning of 2016, and it will be double to 38000+ by 2034. The majority of growth in aircraft will come from Asia.
Testing: Airbus has wrapped up functional, and reliability testing for its A350-1000 and is expecting to achieve certification for the twinjet this month. (Read here).
Technology: Lockheed is making large long-range robotic submarine drone. (Read here).
Airlines consolidation: EasyJet purchases Air Berlin’s Tegel Operations for €40 million. (Read here).
Avionics: USAF awarded Rockwell Collins with a sustainment contract for the 59 aircraft in the KC-59 fleet. (Read here).

Industrial Equipment
M&A/ Consolidation: Schneider emerges as top bidder for L&T’s electrical unit. (Read here).

Software/ High-Tech
Outsourcing: IBM offloads Notes and Domino to India's HCL Technologies. 'Partnership' will see HCL run future development, starting with version 10 in 2018. (Read here).
Startup/ Technology investments: VMware acquires VeloCloud as it moves deeper into networking. (Read here). Amazon adds an AR shopping feature to its iOS app. (Read here).
Business model: Grab, the Uber rival in Southeast Asia, is now officially also a digital payments company. (Read here).

Telecom/ Semiconductor
Business model: Orange launches its own bank in France, aiming to win 2million users (25 percent of France's online banking market) by capitalizing on the rising use of smartphones. (Read here).
Legacy infrastructure: Indian Telecom major Airtel is likely to shut down 3G network faster than 2G network in next 3-4 years. There are still 50 per cent of phone being shipped out in India that are feature phones. (Read here). So 2G will continue for some more time but 3G will be replaced by 4G very soon.
M&A/ consolidation: Broadcom Ltd. is considering a bid of more than $100 billion for Qualcomm in what would be the biggest-ever takeover of a chipmaker. (Read here).
Automotive chips: Renesas to provide chips for Toyota's self-driving cars. (Read here).
5G: Docomo, Sony to trial real time HD video streaming to a moving vehicle via 5G. (Read here).

Medical Devices
AI & Business model innovation: For a dollar, an AI will examine your medical scan. Zebra-Med's tech helps radiologists find heart, liver, bone and other diseases. (Read here).

3D Printing
Medical devices 3D printing: Just-in-time 3-D implants set to transform tumor surgery. (Read here).
Automotive 3D printing: Porsche buys minority stakes in two 3D-printing companies. (Read here).

IoT
Contract: Bell and Howell has selected the ThingWorx industrial innovation platform to transform its service organization by enabling remote monitoring and service of its connected industrial mechatronic machines. (Read here).

PLM / Industry 4.0
Startup/ Technology invetsments: Rockwell Automation announced its investment in The Hive, a Silicon Valley innovation fund and co-creation studio, to gain access to an ecosystem of innovators and technology start-ups with a focus on applications of artificial intelligence (AI) to industrial automation. (Read here).

Others
Service provider M&A: QuEST has announced the acquisition of IT Six Global, a Romania based engineering services provider. (Read here).

Service provider M&A: Alten has acquired Premier Logic to strengthen its software produce engineering practice. (Read here).