Over the past few years, smart manufacturing initiatives such as digital twins and the internet of things (IoT) has caused Industry 4.0 – the trend toward digital transformation in manufacturing and industrial sectors – to explode. However, robots and drones tasked with visually inspecting machines haven’t yet seen the same growth. That is set to change in a big way, Bill Ray, vice president and analyst, emerging technologies and trends at Gartner, told VentureBeat.
The robots, drones and cameras that inspect machines to perform predictive maintenance and relay analog information to operations staff can now function autonomously. Even better – the longer they’re at their jobs, the better they do.
AI and machine learning tools bestow “moving inspection systems” – that is, robots and drones – with the capability to read the analog output from industrial machines that haven’t been digitized. In this way, they act as a bridge between Industry 4.0 and the analog age it will replace.
“With cognitive intelligence,” Ray said, “robots and drones can make proactive decisions.” And, he added, this is still early days. “We expect it to be standard for Industry 4.0 in the next five years,” Ray said.
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