Insights

The world is about to experience significant progress in AI-enabled autonomous mobile systems. Could autonomous mobile robots navigating dynamic environments open up new automation opportunities for industry?

It’s human nature, right? The urge to share the latest news with our peers is ingrained in all of us. It’s certainly true across the inquisitive and ever competitive consumer packaged goods industry. How did company A achieve this? How did company B make that work? What exactly is company C up to? So, when we asked for insights from a bunch of very senior innovators from some of the world’s leading CPGs – or FMCGs if you prefer – almost all were partially motivated by our promise to share the findings of our research.

CES 2022 should be a fascinating event this year, and the team at Cambridge Consultants can’t wait to see what’s new in the consumer product space. As we know, COVID-19 has upended all our earlier forecasts and how we think about the world. In this blog, Ruth Thomson, SVP of our Global Consumer Business, shares her predictions on technology trends that will be showcased at this year’s show.

CC put forward a team to take part in the British Antarctic Survey’s Decarbonisation Hackathon. The aim was to find new solutions to completely decarbonise the Rothera research base in Antarctica, beyond those that British Antarctic Survey (BAS) had determined could account for the first 70% of their energy demand.

The rate of innovation and adoption of automation & autonomous systems in non-manufacturing segments is growing faster and investments are pouring in. AMR’s (Automated Mobile Robots) are working alongside people in warehouses and helping in improving productivity. But, is this enough?

Cambridge Consultants' Ram Naidu, Senior Vice President, AI, welcomes attendees to the Innovation Acceleration stage at The AI Summit Silicon Valley 2021, day one. 

They are already physically loading our online shopping baskets, vacuuming our homes and maintaining our lawns. But what will it take for automated and autonomous systems to proliferate across industry and society – on the roads, city streets, building sites, fields, factories, and schools?

It’s a common fallacy that the task of perfecting navigation for robots and autonomous vehicles is relatively straightforward.

The extraordinary potential of what we might term empathic technology promises rich human/machine relationships that are almost unimaginable. 

So, whatever happened to the revolution? Sally Epstein writes of her passion to see empathic machines that do truly understand us, humans.

This paper explains how ‘turning trash into cash’ provides opportunity for companies to gain first-mover advantage in several fields. With a clear, problem/solution approach, it outlines a method that be considered simply as a way to capture carbon – but is more likely to yield benefits in the creation of valuable bio-derived compounds.

Now don’t be alarmed, but I want to pose a potentially unnerving question: just how safe is artificial intelligence? Those of you of a sensitive disposition might already be recalling images of James Cameron’s self-aware Terminators hunting down humankind in a post-nuclear wasteland.