Author: Connected World
A multi-part series exploring the displacement of human labor in warehouses and distribution centers. Part 2: The comparative ROI (return on investment) between humans and robots in warehouses and distribution centers. Like most things in life, there are degrees of complexity that apply in comparing things, people, and processes. The comparison of benefits derived from processes using human workers vs. robots is not straightforward: There’s an “in between” stage that must be considered. The principle factor, given the current “state of the art” in warehouse and distribution center processes, is that robots often augment multiple workers rather than directly replace…
Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming how researchers approach complex global challenges, especially in healthcare and biological sciences. As innovation accelerates, institutions are increasingly leveraging AI to drive discoveries that can improve human health and societal well-being. As one example, Virginia Tech has announced Debswapna Bhattacharya has received a five-year, $2.1 million award from the National Institutes of Health. This funding will support the development of advanced AI methods to map proteins and RNA structures in three dimensions—an effort that can accelerate disease understanding and treatment discovery. Where this gets especially innovative is the use of AI to analyze complex biological…
Fact of the Week: Research says physical AI in the millions Get ready. Physical AI (artificial intelligence) is coming—and in some cases it is already here. Physical AI refers to systems like robots, autonomous vehicles, and drones that can perceive, decide, and act within their environments. While still in early stages, this category is rapidly gaining momentum as advances in generative AI, sensors, and edge computing accelerate. Counterpoint Research suggests cumulative shipments for physical AI devices will look like this: Global Market: 145 million units between 2025–2035 Includes robots, autonomous vehicles, and drones Represents a major growth phase for embodied…
A multi-part series exploring the displacement of human labor in warehouses and distribution centers. Part One: The Negative Pressure of Increasing Operating Costs on Profit Margins in Distribution: A Guide to Retail, CPG (consumer packaged goods), and Food Distribution Industries Distribution businesses—companies that move products from suppliers to retailers or end buyers—consistently operate on thin profit margins. Whether in general retail distribution, CPG (consumer packaged goods), or food distribution, the economics are similar: high volume, modest markups, and significant operating costs. This article synthesizes benchmarks across these sectors, breaks down the key drivers behind margin compression, and highlights real-world examples…
Is privacy in the age of AI (artificial intelligence) a lost cause? One new research program aims to create greater privacy, aka privacy by design, where the AI platform never sees a face on an image, but the final edited image still looks natural. The research is being done at Purdue University, where a new patent-pending system leverages before and after photos uploaded to an AI editing platform. It allows users to mask sensitive regions of a photo, such as the face. The technology can then reintegrate the sensitive region back into the image. Here is how this can help:…
Advanced technologies in transportation are not new—ITS (intelligent transport systems) can be traced back to the 1960s and 1970s when more basic traffic management systems were first introduced. In the 1980s and 1990s, we began to see more large-scale ITS efforts, integrating GPS, data collection, and more. But, today, ITS is booming around the world. Berg Insight suggests the estimated market value for ITS deployed in public transport operations shakes out like this: Europe: €2.6 billion in 2025 €3.3 billion by 2030 A 5.3% growth rate North America €1.2 billion in 2025 €1.6 billion in 2030 A 5% growth rate…
The NYC Million Trees Initiative took 2,000 volunteers and more than 30,000 hours to count the street trees in New York City. New AI (artificial intelligence) technology can help do that in under an hour. At Purdue University, a digital forestry team has created a computational tool to obtain and analyze urban tree inventories on public and private lands. The AI-enhanced visual computing method combines AI with satellite data to monitor urban trees. To help their system better understand urban tree distribution, the researchers trained their foundational model at Purdue’s Rosen Center for Advanced Computing. The three-week training process involved…
#Factoftheweek 10 times amount of data By 2029, AI agents are projected to generate 10 times the amount of data from physical environments compared with all digital AI applications combined, according to Gartner. Why? As agentic AI systems interact with the physical world, they generate large amounts of data across logical, spatial, and multi-agent scenarios. This growing dataset provides a unique opportunity to learn underlying patterns and enable accurate predictions and simulations. This shift signals a major turning point in how AI systems learn about and model the world. These capabilities may accelerate progress in areas such as robotics, autonomous…
Alerts and realtime data from the night sky can tell us stories about what is happening in the universe. Scientists can then use this information to better understand the nature of dark matter, dark energy, and other unknown aspects of the universe. Earlier this year, astronomers’ computers around the world lit up with 800,000 notifications about new asteroids in our solar system, exploding stars, and other changes in the night sky. To help, a software system from the University of Washington can process 10 terabytes of images that are produced every night. The alert pipeline was developed by a team…
#Factoftheweek 12.3%. This is the anticipated growth for fleet-management systems in Southeast Asia, growing from 3.6 million units in 2024 to more than 6.4 million units by 2029, according to Berg Insight. Fleet management in Southeast Asia is surging. After a slow period following the pandemic, the current outlook is strong due to: Overall economic growth Strong, competitive market Growing awareness of fleet telematics The penetration rate in the total population of fleet vehicles used by businesses is at the same time estimated to increase from 17.5% in 2024 to 27.1% in 2029. In a broader sense, the trends seen…