What’s Holding Full Autonomy Back?

Innovation What’s Holding Full Autonomy Back? Mark Schwartz Forbes Councils Member Forbes Technology Council COUNCIL POST Expertise from Forbes Councils members, operated under license. Opinions expressed are those of the author. | Membership (fee-based) Jul 19, 2022, 10:15am EDT | Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Mark Schwartz is the Chief Digital Officer at Trimble , responsible for transforming the company’s systems, processes and infrastructure.

getty If you hear the word “autonomy,” you likely think of self-driving cars or a forklift moving pallets throughout the night after everyone has gone home. What you probably don’t think of is excavators digging without an operator or tractors harvesting crops while the farmer is at their kid’s baseball game. Yet, all of these situations are indicative of what autonomy is, where it’s going and how rapidly developing automation processes are being used in today’s markets.

For industries like agriculture and construction where rising fuel prices, material shortages, a lack of skilled labor and burgeoning demand are causing massive workflow disruptions, autonomy is increasingly being used to offset these challenges, helping to improve productivity and efficiency, while also giving workers the ability to focus on larger, more strategic initiatives. Autonomy also has the benefit of making work safer, which is what Spot the robotic dog does on construction sites by providing site scans, surveying and progress monitoring of what’s been accomplished each day, helping to ensure that a project is running according to schedule. Spot often works at night, long after workers have left for the day, capturing data by walking through hazardous work zones and variable conditions—work that no human should do given the risks involved.

But while autonomy is hailed as a way to improve efficiency and safety, connect workflows and alleviate labor shortages, why isn’t it more widely adopted across both consumer and non-consumer industries alike? MORE FOR YOU Google Issues Warning For 2 Billion Chrome Users Forget The MacBook Pro, Apple Has Bigger Plans Google Discounts Pixel 6, Nest & Pixel Buds In Limited-Time Sale Event Much of it has to do with the lack of interoperability and reliable connectivity, which prevents different, mixed autonomous technologies from connecting and sharing data with one another. Because while a contractor may have an autonomous excavator, it can’t necessarily share data with an operator-controlled soil compactor, preventing a job from being completed 100% autonomously since the equipment can’t work in synchrony. For this reason, interoperability has become the holy grail for enabling mixed technologies to operate completely autonomously, which, if implemented at scale, could fundamentally change how we work, live and play.

What Is Interoperability, And Why Does It Matter? At a basic level, interoperability enables different technologies to work with one another through the sharing of data. Google Home is an internet of things (IoT) example of interoperability done right. Just as it works with Google Nest to keep families safe and comfortable, connected construction solutions can automate precision earthworks using direct connections between the teams of earth movers and surveyors.

In the industrial space, mining has been one of the first industries to start experimenting with autonomy , largely because it operates in a very controlled environment without a lot of interference from external factors like cars or people. What first started as remote control operations, where machines could be run by operators in a completely different state , has since moved to semi-autonomous operations, where trucks can help inexperienced operators become more proficient more quickly by helping them avoid mistakes, such as digging too deep. Mining will have achieved full autonomy when different pieces of equipment like dozers and drills work in tandem to mine an allotted amount of material, which is then hauled away by an autonomous truck that’s equipped to ensure that the weight is correct, the path is accurate and it can communicate with surrounding equipment to ensure there aren’t any hazards in the way.

What’s Preventing Interoperability? Since it’s clear that full autonomy needs interoperability in order to work, what’s preventing such a concept from being implemented? Some of it comes down to predictability. For example, autonomous vehicles are on track to drive a car safely without human interaction; however, when everything around the car doesn’t always behave in the same way, it’s incapable of predicting what’s going to happen next without being able to talk to everything around it. It’s challenging to create interoperability in an inherently unpredictable environment given the myriad of things that could unexpectedly happen.

Another issue is proprietary data. Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) typically want users to own their equipment and their equipment only; however, they’re increasingly trying to determine how to connect their equipment so that it works in tandem with other technologies, but the process has been slow and onerous thus far. The Path Forward The path forward must therefore come from technology-agnostic platforms that are willing to provide interoperability environments that enable differing technologies to work with one another without interference.

These companies must also work to provide autonomous solutions at the right time and pace for each customer given that each autonomy journey is unique. Just as the world wide web was created by a Swiss computer programmer who simply aimed to connect information on a single platform , other systems must be similarly connected by tech-agnostic platforms that do so for the sake of efficiency and productivity versus profitability and ownership, which will only continue to keep the existing barriers up. Those platforms that are capable of creating interoperability between technologies will ultimately be able to transform our world in unprecedented ways to the benefit of consumers and industries alike.

Whether they’re designed to link cars together so they can all drive together on a highway without crashing or they’re designed for uniting agriculture equipment to produce more efficient crop yields, the effects will be far-reaching, helping to improve efficiency and productivity, while also making the world safer and less susceptible to human error on risky, time-consuming work. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify? Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn .

Check out my website . Mark Schwartz Editorial Standards Print Reprints & Permissions.