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Artificial Intelligence explained the easy way

New survey offers a unique insight into the future of AI in industrial enterprises

If we can manage to skillfully combine Simulation and artificial intelligence, we’ll become faster while remaining as reliable as ever

Lots of artificial intelligence (AI) We’re accompanying our Service Manager Aina through her workday. Even though we’re not usually aware of it, artificial intelligence is already helping us by making our lives more comfortable, safe, and sustainable.

Pole mounted transformers are a common sight in many countries.

Simulations supported by artificial intelligence can protect millions of pole mounted transformers from sudden, total failure.

Medicine is reaching a turning point: Experts believe that in just a few years, artificial intelligence will greatly help doctors make diagnostic decisions and plan treatments. In addition, patients are expected to benefit from increasingly personalized approaches and better care.

Rebecca Johnson is an expert in artificial intelligence, working in corporate research at Siemens. She tells us about how she views this technology of the future, and explains why a digital companion at a beer garden would, of course, speak Bavarian.

Assembly robots that build things on their own without having to be programmed for it. Self-optimizing manufacturing lines in factories. Trains or wind turbines that request maintenance work on the basis of operating data and artificial intelligence (AI), which can predict their behavior better than the engineers who developed and built them. Roland Busch, Siemens AG Chief Technology Officer, explains why there is no question that the ascendancy of AI will further change the world of work.

Brilliant minds are behind every new achievement in artificial intelligence (AI). Members of the scientific community include Volkmar Sterzing and Steffen Udluft, who focus on trends in the industrial use of new AI methods at Siemens Corporate Technology (CT) in Munich. They have achieved prominence in professional circles with practical applications of reinforcement learning for controlling combustion processes in gas turbines. Their current work focuses on new applications for genetic programming. Both researchers were distinguished in 2017 with the “Inventor of the Year” award from Siemens.

Custom-made cars and motorcycles at the push of a button. Californian startup Hackrod plans to revolutionize the production of mobility solutions with individual designs and 3D printing. Siemens provides the company with its Digital Innovation Platform, an integrated software package that smoothly implements the entire process from design and development to vehicle production.

Thanks to a 3D camera and artificial intelligence (AI), patients can be positioned optimally for a CT scan. The result: improved image quality and the right dose.

Rolf Heuer is confident that clever machines can help us – in research, industry and daily life. In an interview, the former director general of CERN and until April 2018 long-standing president of the German Physics Association (DPG) explains why we will still need intelligent people as well.

Enormous potential: Siemens is a participant in the “Collaborative Embedded Systems” research project, which is charting a future in which machines will react flexibly to their environment – and cooperate with it. It would be a milestone – in particular for industry and the energy supply sector.

At Siemens Corporate Technology in Princeton, New Jersey and Berkeley, California, scientists and researchers are working on the future of robotics and automation. Their tools are artificial intelligence and adaptive algorithms. Their goal is to enable robots and machines to learn from experience, and thus to dispense with extensive programming.

An AI Lab that recently opened in Munich serves as a coworking space for evaluating the feasibility of new ideas. Here, Siemens Corporate Technology is working closely with the Business Units and is attracting external idea generators.

When vehicles have technical problems that train personnel can’t handle themselves, it’s a job for the service staff at Siemens Mobility Services in Erlangen. They evaluate the error profile and advise the vehicle driver as quickly as possible. In the future, Industrial Knowledge Graphs – a joint project of Corporate Technology and Siemens Mobility – will support service experts in their work. What previously took hours will now be possible within a matter of minutes.

Since the 1950s, computer scientists have been working on programs which resemble human intelligence to such an extent that they can replace it in certain applications. This is known as Artificial Intelligence (AI) as well as cognitive computing. After considerable hype in the 1980s and the subsequent “winter of AI” in which the forecasts failed to come true, recent spectacular successes have convinced the research community that AI will not only lead to smart machines taking over tasks from human beings but will also give rise to brand new technologies.

Systems that become real workmates are known as digital companions. They are intelligent, and they support their colleagues and relieve them of arduous tasks, without manipulating or dominating them. Research findings from the fields of artificial intelligence, psychology, and neurobiology are being used in the development of these systems.

Artificial intelligence has reached the point where it may be set to trigger the next wave of technological disruption. But the deep learning techniques it often relies on are limited by their inability to provide context. Knowledge graphs – graphic representations of relationships – fill the gap. A world of new applications may be the result.

In India, manual traffic management has become highly impractical due to rapid urbanization. Additionally, central monitoring systems are facing scalability issues as they process increasing amounts of data received from hundreds of traffic cameras. Deep learning experts at Siemens Corporate Technology are developing an intelligent traffic management solution to tackle these problems.

The age of intelligent machines is about to dawn. Siemens AG Chief Technology Officer and Member of the Managing Board Roland Busch explains how Siemens is using artificial intelligence to transform industry.

About a robot that can manufacture products without having to be programmed.

Coaty enables things like autonomous vehicles in logistics and machines to find each other, “date” each other and fulfill jobs together. Whoever is available, joins and collaborates.

Looking ahead to 2030: International experts forecast the role digital twins will play within the next ten years.

Virtual reality training courses are intuitive and their content is easy to recall. They’re even better when you can quickly create them yourself.

Stay at home, but still work in the lab and meet with co-workers

From the first “thing” in the 1980s to 27 billion devices today – the rapid rise of a technology that’s changing the world.

Health check for electric motors. A new development makes it easier to predict remaining useful life and troubleshoot faults.

Theo Papadopoulos spends more time in the virtual space than any other Siemens Corporate Technology employee.

The combination of CAD, VR, and ultra-fast optimization tools is gamifying product development.

Siemens is looking for solutions to make foodstuff production more efficient and more sustainable.

Researchers from Siemens Corporate Technology are equipping digital twins with detailed material properties.

Siemens research experts are developing an entirely new method for augmenting 3D CAD models with additional information. This will enable smart manufacturing with a consistent, integrated product creation chain.

Improved digital twins are enabling precise performance forecasts in transformer design.

Digital twin speeds up the commissioning process for a research project in collaboration with Volkswagen

In Formula One, there is no such thing as a finished product. A car is a continuously evolving prototype that experiences as many as 1,000 design changes every week, so improving engineering throughput can create a genuine advantage on the track. Four-time FIA Formula One Constructors’ World Champions Red Bull Racing relies on the PLM digital backbone provided by Siemens PLM to design new components, test them virtually, arrange their manufacture at the click of a mouse, and then install them in a car at destinations across the world.

The powder bed method of 3D printing makes it possible to create complex metal components that mechanical engineers could only dream of in the past. But after these components have been additively manufactured, there’s often a further challenge: How can the residual powder be removed from the component? Siemens researchers are working together with Solukon, a mechanical engineering company, to develop an algorithm for a cleaning cabin that will enable the powder to be completely removed automatically.

When coronary artery disease is suspected, the HeartFlow FFRCT Analysis (CT derived fractional flow reserve) combines deep learning, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and coronary CT angiography to help physicians make accurate diagnoses. Obtaining FFR values was previously only possible with catheter examinations but can now be calculated with FFRCT. Together with HeartFlow, the company that developed FFRCT, Siemens Healthineers is working in cooperation to further foster this technology.

A virtual sensor developed by Siemens researchers calculates the temperature of a motor's interior without the aid of a single sensor installed there. The resulting information makes it possible to prevent unnecessary downtimes – an improvement that could dramatically lower operating costs.

Siemens researchers are working on simulating the development of power electronic components entirely in the digital space. This will be a decisive breakthrough, because it will mean that hardware can be developed almost as quickly as software. It will also increase the efficiency of systems and devices containing power electronic components – a business-critical factor.

Many robots that operate milling machines in the metal industry are underutilized. A controller that offers greater movement accuracy could enable them to perform milling work on the side. However, this requires that the controller be able to compensate the forces that deflect the cutter from the set path in real time. Tests conducted with a robot at the Technical University of Munich are showing that Siemens is already close to a solution.

Why do companies continue to move ahead with the digitalization of their processes? The answer is because they want to improve their position in the global competitive field by flexibly adjusting production in line with new customer requirements, implementing a broader-based manufacturing program without increasing costs, and enhancing the quality of the products they manufacture. At the same time, many processes, especially those involved in production, are already highly automated or can hardly be performed by robots alone. The use of an intelligent and effective location system makes it possible to achieve a further competitive edge through digitization in this regard as well.

Product developers can now test the usability of their designs faster than ever.

Siemens researchers are combining bionics and 3D printing with a new software technology that automatically computes geometric solutions. As a result, they are on the verge of a revolution that could transform entire industrial sectors.

In order to save fuel, international regulations require ships to become significantly more efficient in the future. With the help of cutting-edge flow simulation software, Siemens is helping manufacturers of ship technology to significantly enhance efficiency.

A passion for digital twins

Industrial research requires simulation experts with a passion for digital twins. In the race to innovate, their enthusiasm makes the crucial difference.

Hawaiʿi is getting serious about its plans to have a totally renewable energy system in place by 2045

Hawaii wants to switch completely to renewable energies. Siemens is now researching new technologies for the stability of the power grid.

New technology solution stabilizes frequency drops in power networks within milliseconds.

The Siemens startup SeaFloat has developed concepts for floating combined cycle power plants. The first one shall go into operation in spring 2021.

Chillers make hot summers more bearable. But they could also make energy systems more flexible throughout the year. And this is extremely important at a time when renewable energies are growing. Siemens experts in Berlin are looking at how they can optimize the cooling supply of Germany’s largest scientific center and trying to determine the hidden potential of chillers in combination with thermal energy storage systems.

LO3 Energy, a young New York company, is working with Siemens Digital Grid and Siemens’ startup financier next47, called the Brooklyn Microgrid project. There, neighbors are empowered to produce, consumer and purchase power within their community with a blockchain enabled transactive energy platform. LO3 is a pioneer in the movement toward a distributed energy supply system that draws on renewably-generated sources for a more resilient, customer-driven economy.

The EU’s AREUS research project (Automation and Robotics for European Sustainable Manufacturing) brought together 13 partners from industry and research facilities to test a future energy platform for automotive manufacturing facilities. The automotive industry’s goal in the project was to increase energy efficiency and ensure sustainability through the use of renewable energy sources in combination with modern energy storage units. A further objective was to optimize resource utilization for installation technologies and the electromagnetic compatibility of production equipment.

"It’s not a matter of promoting or condemning certain technologies. The goal is to reduce CO2 emissions"

I firmly believe that climate change is one of the biggest challenges facing mankind and this has once again been confirmed by the actual special report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Indeed, much has already been done in terms of reducing CO2 emissions and slowing down global warming, but many issues are still unresolved.

The Internet of Energy is on its way: Just like the networked systems and machinery in the industrial sector – known as the Internet of Things (IoT) – more and more elements in the energy industry are being equipped with new, digital functions. Siemens is pioneering this development: The Energy Management (EM) Division recently introduced the world's first digital transformer. From local grid transformers to high-performance power transformers, Siemens will deliver all future models equipped per default with intelligence and connectivity. This will optimize the operation of electricity grids, allowing utilization to be planned ahead and opening up new servicing and maintenance models, which in future will be implemented via apps and data transfer to the cloud.

Electric drives offer an alternative to the use of steam and gas turbines in the oil and gas industries. The electrification of mechanical drives lowers emissions and reduces environmental taxes. In this sense, electrification helps with the achievement of ambitious climate protection goals. Electric drives are also low-maintenance machines that have a long service life, which reduces operating costs.

The transition to a new energy mix is making the power grid more dynamic. Siemens coordinated a major research project designed to determine the extent to which existing control center technology can accommodate additional functions, and at which point entirely new structures and architectures will be needed.

What has the initiative achieved? It’s time to take stock.

How to protect systems against cyberattacks as much as possible.

About the searching for vulnerabilities in thousands of components.

Cyberattacks are on the rise worldwide. How can we meet this challenge?

Emmanuel Macron presented the outlines of his cybersecurity strategy.

Siemens teamed up with the Munich Security Conference and other governmental and business partners to present the Charter of Trust initiative in February 2018. One of the initiative’s key goals is to develop and implement rules for ensuring cybersecurity throughout the networked environment. The first major successes have already been achieved.

How to connect devices to the cloud secure and affordable.

How Siemens China helps customers protect themselves against hacker attacks.

Natalia Oropeza

An interview with Natalia Oropeza, Chief Cybersecurity Officer at Siemens.

Digitalization and Cybersecurity belong together - at Siemens for more than 30 years.

Cyber criminals are increasingly attacking industrial facilities and attempting to find gaps in their security walls. To counter them, experts are steadily upgrading defenses. Siemens has developed a defense strategy to help them.

Production processes are becoming increasingly interconnected with digital communications technologies, opening new gateways for criminals operating on the Internet. Siemens is developing sophisticated solutions to protect against cybercrime and is subjecting them to rigorous testing, in part using its own team of hackers.

How 1300 experts came together to achieve one goal: a safer digital world.

How a Siemens-Newsletter informs about security gaps and solutions.

An Interview about the importance of Cybersecurity.

More and more cities are becoming congested and suffering from poor air quality. Two mobility trends promise relief: e-mobility, combined with shared use of vehicles. A study conducted by Siemens explains how shared e-mobility can improve quality of life.

The world’s first digital interlocking eliminates the need for thousands of tons of cable and enhances the efficiency of rail transportation.

What will tomorrow’s cities look like? Probably like Singapore. Siemens has teamed up with this city-state’s government to develop smart city concepts that could become models for the rest of the world.

Siemens has developed intelligent software that relies on artificial neural networks to accurately predict the degree of air pollution in large cities several days in advance. The software can give cities and their residents the information needed to minimize pollution peaks before they are likely to happen, thus improving the quality of life.

In India, manual traffic management has become highly impractical due to rapid urbanization. Additionally, central monitoring systems are facing scalability issues as they process increasing amounts of data received from hundreds of traffic cameras. Deep learning experts at Siemens Corporate Technology are developing an intelligent traffic management solution to tackle these problems.

In the decades ahead, most vehicles will roll along streets and highways autonomously. But older vehicles might do so as well – as a cooperative project by Siemens and the UK’s Cranfield University demonstrates. The project team is sending an autonomously driving 1965 Ford Mustang into competition at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. At the same time, Siemens will be exhibiting in a Future Lab in order to show visitors where autonomous driving will take us in the future.

Increasing traffic volume is creating problems in cities around the world, congestion, poor air quality and less productive economies. Connected autonomous vehicles with electric drives could offer a solution – if cities create the right conditions for their use and ensure they form complement strategies to increase walking and cycling and public transportation.

Switzerland’s mountain railways are famous. They climb thousands of meters through magnificent landscapes. What these traditional railways don’t reveal at first glance is that they are equipped with state-of-the-art Siemens technology, which ensures reliable operation even under extremely adverse weather conditions. The technical solutions used in the railways are as varied as the trains themselves.

When all machines, devices and sensors speak the same language, a new era begins for the Internet of Things (IoT). An international conference at Siemens Corporate Technology marked the beginning of this era: With the "Thing Description" presented there, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has created a standard that works across different application areas. This makes complex IoT solutions much easier and faster to implement.

EIT food: A network of more than 50 universities, research institutes, and companies, including Siemens, has been commissioned by the EU to use new technologies to help make food production more sustainable and more resource-conserving. A total of €400 million shall be available for reaching these ambitious goals.

On November 1, Siemens’ global venture firm Next47 kicked off Next47 Accelerator, a partnership with leading enterprise accelerator Alchemist. The partnership’s goal is to select the best business ideas from Siemens teams to participate in an intensive 12-week program. Eva Riesenhuber, Partner and CFO of Next47, and Ravi Belani, CEO of Alchemist, explain what the partnership will mean for Siemens, its employees and its customers.

Next47, Siemens’ global venture arm, is partnering with promising startups. An example is a company developing technology designed to cut the costs and energy requirements of the processors in autonomous vehicles by a factor of 1000. A look at Next47’s current portfolio illustrates how the firm is investing in innovations and partnering with leading entrepreneurs to understand the megatrends shaping the digital economy.

Last year, Next47 partnered with global startup accelerator Techstars to foster entrepreneurship within Siemens. Two teams of Siemens employees, EcoG and RealSynth, temporarily left their jobs in Germany to participate in the 2017 Detroit Mobility and New York IoT programs. This year, Next47 is again partnering with Techstars and is excited to introduce DeepHow, the team chosen for the Detroit program.

Working closely with researchers is the key to a portfolio that is distinguished not only by sheer size but by high quality. Beat Weibel, Head of the Siemens Corporate Intellectual Property department at Corporate Technology, explains how the patent strategy is helping to improve the value of Siemens’ intellectual property while protecting it more effectively.

Huge amounts of plastic waste float in the oceans, where they threaten marine habitats. Researchers from Siemens Corporate Technology are working on solutions for the collection and use of this waste. The challenge is to turn their concepts into a promising business model.

The proven communications standard Ethernet has been optimized through the addition of quality-of-service mechanisms. Various new IEEE standards will enable Ethernet to reliably transmit several protocols (including real-time-capable ones) in parallel within predefined maximum time limits. Industrial users and car manufacturer are already getting ready to employ it.

Just like Google, Apple, or SAP – companies like Siemens have literally thousands of software engineers working on programs to make the devices, systems, and machines operate efficiently. In doing so, these programmers not only spend their time writing Siemens software but also participate in the development of open source software. As part of a global collective of creative programmers, they contribute to the development of powerful new programs as well as future standards and standard processes. To date, however, there is still no system for cataloging these software components in a clear and intelligible way. But now Siemens Corporate Technology is about to change that.

In the future, the petrochemical industry will be able to measure and control the composition of gas streams in real time thanks to a new measurement technology. It will allow production plants to be controlled more closely, to set their product quality more accurately, and to increase their output. At the same time costs and the environmental impact of waste materials disposed will be reduced. To make this become reality, an international consortium cooperated to develop a laser spectrometer that analyzes gas mixtures.

A Siemens Corporate Technology research department specializing in intelligent power electronics is develop-ing software-defined inverters. The new components are designed to enhance the performance of electronic systems and, more importantly, make such systems more flexible. Potential application areas range from robotics and electric vehicles to home energy storage systems.

By Katrin Lange

The rapid growth of industrial 3D printing is fundamentally based on the comprehensive digitization of all of its process steps and by the close collaboration of a wide range of companies. Siemens is now taking this technology to the next level. It is integrating all of its process steps in a digital platform that makes collaboration easier than ever.

3D printing is one of today’s most successful production technologies. Within the framework of an EU project, Siemens has developed a solution that makes it possible to use a high-speed printing process known as laser metal deposition more effectively than was previously possible. This solution is opening the door to an expanding range of 3D printing applications.

Maintaining and repairing trains needs to be done as quickly as possible so that the vehicles can be brought back into service without delay. In the future Siemens Mobility will speed up the procurement of spare parts – by using 3D printers that can quickly manufacture the parts in its maintenance depots worldwide. That cuts the fabrication time by up to 95 percent. This and further advantages of this new way of working can already be seen at the new Rail Service Center in Dortmund, Germany.

Materials Solutions in Worcester, UK, has been part of Siemens since 2016. It’s a young company that specializes in the additive manufacturing of gas turbine, airplane turbine and motor sport components made of high-performance materials.

The 1923 Ruston B2 that had been parked for decades at the plant site of the gas turbine manufacturer in Lincoln was basically a wreck. The vintage vehicle was missing important parts, which made it impossible to restore. These parts, however, have now been reproduced by Siemens’ Materials Solutions subsidiary using 3D printing technology. The project that led to these reproductions demonstrates the possibilities offered by additive manufacturing of spare parts and components.

Additive manufacturing makes it possible to create completely new kinds of components with customized attributes. But companies that want to take full advantage of this new production method need to revamp their thinking. That’s why Siemens has opened its AM Design Lab in Berlin.

A new Siemens NX software module for product development and manufacture simulates additive manufacturing processes. This allows product developers to optimize the manufacturing process virtually and print a component with no errors, no localized overheating, and no warpage. The idea and the algorithms come from experts at Siemens Corporate Technology. Siemens Digital Factory is now making the beta version of the module available to selected customers and Siemens colleagues for testing.

Thanks to Siemens, additive manufacturing is already being used in many areas, ranging from burner tips for gas turbines and armrests for streetcars to terminal boxes for the high-speed trains operated by the Deutsche Bahn railroad company. Now it’s the aviation industry’s turn. Together with aircraft parts manufacturer Strata Siemens printed the first components for Etihad passenger planes.

Mirko Meboldt, a professor of product development and engineering design at ETH Zurich, is an internationally recognized expert on additive manufacturing. In this article he describes the opportunities this evolving technology is bringing to industry.

Technologies of the Web of Things (WoT) are intended to make the IoT convenient in a way similar to application development on the web

Meet, Connect, Dance. Networking Entrepreneurs.

Networking Entrepreneurs. Since 2016, the #iDea. Company has been promoting new ways of working together at Siemens.

CNC machine tools and robots used to inhabit different worlds. Their control systems couldn’t talk to each other. Now, Siemens’ Run MyRobot bridges the gap by integrating robots into the Sinumerik CNC controls for machine tools.

In Chengdu, in the heart of China’s southwest, Siemens operates one of the country’s most advanced factories. Indeed, in 2018, the World Economic Forum recognized “Siemens Electronic Works Chengdu” (SEWC) as one of the “most advanced factories” in the world. An example of the “Industrie 4.0” concept, this factory demonstrates how to drive innovation with digitalization, and how to share experience and best practice with more than 10,000 industry partners every year.

A user-friendly app could be used on the smartphone in future to check if machines and systems are working optimally. Siemens' researchers are combining Augmented Reality (AR) with the Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT) in a decentralized network. What's special is the display: the current operating status – all ok or alarm – is expressed with Emojis. The prototype called SIEMoji was developed by Siemens Corporate Technology together with the Technical University of Munich.

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