Artificial Intelligence And Autonomous Things: Meaning And Importance

An Insight into Autonomous Things

Autonomous things or artificial intelligence is also known as the Internet of Autonomous things. These are the devices that work on tasks autonomously without the aid of human interaction. The devices can work due to various AI algorithms and include drones, Autonomous Smart home devices, robots, vehicles and autonomous software.

Importance of Autonomous Things

According to Gartner, autonomous things will be the most important tech trend in the future years. The different reasons for this include-

1. Technology affecting the physical world has greater importance than the technology affecting the digital world.
2. AI hardware, software and the driver of autonomy is increasing in capability.
3. The cost of sensors like cameras is reducing.
4. In our mobile software, if we do not take the social networks into account, then the most valuable companies that use mobile software are WeChat and Uber. This is because these companies facilitate payments and transportation in the real world.

Due to the improvement in technology of autonomy or artificial intelligence, and the reduced costs of sensors, the smarter autonomous things are coming up which can automate a variety of tasks. This results in more experience in the field of autonomous things. More experience leads the businesses to take benefits from the autonomous things in future. 

Important Topics in Autonomous Things

There are four important topics in autonomous things. These are as follows-

1. Autonomous drones are used in a variety of applications. Drones help in the delivery vehicles and serve as data collectors from the environment. One example of delivery vehicles is Amazon’s delivery drones.
2. Another topic of immense importance in artificial intelligence includes robotics. Robotics involves autonomous mobile robots, personal robots, smart robots, delivery robots, and other robotic appliances.
3. Research shows that robotics growth will increase in supply chain networks. With the aid of this growth, the dangerous human tasks in warehouses will be performed by the robots. We can already see the presence of delivery robots in various sectors like manufacturing, assembly, and warehousing.
4. Hence drones, robotics and self-driving cars are important topics in autonomous things. But with the advancement in the Internet of Things, we may find the integration of artificial intelligence with the Internet of things. This will make a shift in autonomous things to the Internet of autonomous things in the future.

Autonomous Vehicles

Autonomous vehicles are one of the most important autonomous things in technology news due to economic potential. However, even after such attention, we cannot see the autonomous vehicles on the roads due to several regulatory and technical issues. The various technical components necessary for autonomous vehicles are as follows-

AI-based Computing Platform

AI is an important technology which helps in real-time decision making. But integrating a computing platform with AI will help to make analysis and decision faster.

1. Deployment of 5G vehicle to everything (V2X)

V2X will facilitate self-driving because all the important information will be transmitted to the vehicle in the form of structured data sets. Moreover, with the aid of the V2X enabled car, we can make sure that the cars communicate with other entities like the infrastructure, roadside pedestrians and cyclists. This connection is facilitated with the aid of cellular or WLAN-based signals.

2. Senior Fusion

Senior Fusion or computer vision uses the cameras and sensors to observe the objects around the vehicles. Senior Fusion helps to collect the information through various sensors and thus, facilitates the vehicle to understand the environment. Though these applications are becoming popular, they are not sturdy enough. Even fully self-driving vehicles like Tesla have significant issues dealing with the signal lights.

Also Read: Artificial Intelligence Impact On Business

3. High Definition Maps

High definition maps include the 3D Roads’ and boundaries. They allow connections and other semantic information about the environment, like the positioning of the traffic lights and Road signs. The type of automation may differ between different vehicles. It can either be fully automated or partially automated, with human assistance depending upon the technology.

Current uses of Autonomous Things

Transportation

Vehicle Platooning: With the aid of Peloton, we can build collaboration among vehicles. This is due to the collective intelligent behavior of decentralized systems and swarm intelligence. Platooning involves a group of self-driving drugs who move at similar speeds safely and efficiently. The reasoning behind platooning is that each truck communicates with other trucks to maintain the speed and braking accordingly.

Robo-taxis: Tesla can launch Robo-taxis to facilitate autonomous sharing networks. This launch can change the ownership of cars. Elon Musk, previously said in 2019, that Tesla will build more than 1,000,000 Robo-taxis next year.

Military

Little autonomous weapons (LAWs): The topic of lethal autonomous weapons is not in use and is being researched by the researchers. People have different opinions related to the ethics of using lethal autonomous weapons (LAWs) and drones in the military. Some are in support of the usage whereas some are against it. 

People in support of the LAWs give the verification that the judgement of machines is transparent and clear due to the lack of emotions like love, fear and anger. Moreover, autonomy can help to reduce crimes because drones give more accurate information, which helps to differentiate between enemy troops and civilians. But the people against the notion say that the lethal autonomous weapons (LAWs) will make wars easy to start.

Retail

Autonomous shops: Various autonomous shops like the Amazon Go, facilitate customers to purchase without cashiers or checkouts. The number of these shops is rising in the US. Two such startups are AiFi and Grabango. These autonomous shopping systems help to ease shopping with self-checkout systems.

Revolutionize the Sectors with Autonomy

Analytical things help to enrich the machines so that they can make decisions and complete the tasks autonomously. This process is conducted through various sensors, AI and analytical capabilities. The concept of autonomous things has emerged due to technological inventions. The technological developments help to bring computers into the physical environment. Thus, autonomy is gradually revolutionizing each sector. 

Be it the self-driving vehicles, cloud computing, the robots, IoT security or the drones, the technology can lead to full or partial automation of tasks in various industries. Other examples of autonomous things include security, retail, military, and transportation.

Also Read: Applications Of Artificial Intelligence