The pathway from automation to autonomy

Simulation is only as good as its approximation to the real world… its ‘equivalence’ in technical terms.

We’ve been looking at how using intelligent simulation with a modular framework can deliver results faster to drive autonomous system development forward.

The need to apply efficiencies to overcome a lack of labour and skills has been constant since the first industrial revolution. But it’s more urgent now than ever. Thankfully, a broad breadth of automation technology is ready to propel change and boost your bottom line.

Our whitepaper explores examples from industries at varying stages of the automation to autonomy journey. We highlight the business benefits to be gained – and reveal the technologies that are crucial to achieving your desired outcome.

The journey to autonomy via differing levels of automation can also be tracked by the movement from data to insight. At the data stage, a system collects and logs information about its performance but does not have the ability to act on it.

At the second stage – data plus process – a system will collect data and process it into real-time actionable information. It provides a level of understanding from analytics that an operator can act upon.

At the third stage – data and process plus action – a system can act completely autonomously, augmenting human endeavour to enhance efficiency and bring business benefits.

Our collective experience of this journey – enhanced by 60 years of breakthrough innovation across more than a dozen industries – is ready to get you to where you want to be, with reduced development risk, time and cost.

Intelligent automation is rich in promise, especially when it comes to transforming efficiency. To that end, we identify and deploy the most pertinent technologies in smart connectivity and mechatronics. But beyond that, our ambition is to redefine the art of the possible by creating and developing solutions that are more than the sum of their parts – because they are tailored for you from first principles.

The world is about to experience significant progress in AI-enabled autonomous mobile systems. It will open opportunities for such systems to be used in a diverse range of markets. From consumer and hospitality through to construction, hospitals and care homes, nothing will be the same again.

With mobile robots set to transcend simple material handling and transport uses into much more challenging environments, we decided to invest time to confront key remaining challenges. High on that list is navigation.

Autonomy isn’t about replacing humans; it’s about making the move from insight to process and action – to augment your business and take it to the next level. Often that means creating world firsts by achieving levels of performance unmatched by competitors. 

We’ve helped to nail game-changing autonomy with the world’s most dense communications network, enabling swarms of robots to collaborate. And we’ve pushed back the boundaries of low-power performance in smart connected wearables to bring intelligent automation to the masses.

Autonomy is more than software and sensors. It’s physics and maths, electronics and user design, digital signal processing and embedded AI. We’ll bring these skills together with our world-class facilities to deliver differentiation that you alone will own. 

Now, more than ever, companies need to think about innovative ways to survive and prosper. Those investing in synthetic data and simulated environments gain access to data that is prohibitively expensive to generate through real-world creation, may be dangerous to access or simply not even exist, and they will be rewarded with drastically cheaper, faster and less risky route to market.

In this whitepaper, we explore the compelling benefits of employing simulated environments. Drawing on our experience across a range of industry sectors, and exploring pertinent case studies of simulation in action, the report highlights the advantages of an agile new approach to innovation.