From Autonomation to Autonomy
Since the introduction of ‘jidoka’ (自動化), industries have automated many processes through automation. But, they still do require human intervention to some extent and are programmed machines. Autonomy is the next step for the industry, and an important step in reaching that goal is better utilization of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robotics. Today, AI is usually considered a buzzword in many industries. It is reasonable to simply call is as a ‘buzzword’ to some extent, because at times it is applied in applications simply to boost the ‘marketability’ of things and it isn’t essential. But, tools like deep learning and machine learning when utilized fruitfully with appropriate data, have the power to drastically impact the performance, robustness, or even the general operation of any product in a positive manner. It is a challenging problem to explore, as full autonomy is hard to achieve, but there have been many advances in the past few years that are gradually building the rungs o...