To the Edge and Beyond

Even in today’s digital era, connectivity remains an issue for many individuals. Studies have shown that most of the world has access to a 3G network (at minimum), yet 3.4 billion people choose not to connect to the internet. How are digital companies spurring the movement to connect those in the far-reaching corners of the world? On today’s episode of To the Edge and Beyond by Intel, Host Gabrielle Bejarano speaks with Geeks Without Frontiers CEO David Hartshorn and Intel Education Vertical Director Daniel Gutwein to talk specifics on the evolution of the N50 Project and how Intel has been working with a variety of other organizations to deliver connectivity and break down the barriers of digital literacy worldwide. 

Hartshorn explained how N50 started to identify the underlying issues barring individuals from connectivity. The first community that he listened to was a rural community in Zambia. Education access was their priority. “If the digital world has solutions that can enable that, then we’re all in,” he explained.

Hartshorn said they started trying to reach out to local digital education companies, and that’s when they found one called Mwabu. Intel and Geeks Without Frontiers began holding weekly meetings with Mwabu and about one dozen other companies to facilitate implementing digital literacy in the Zambian community. From there, it took off—the community was soon asking for a health provider; the N50 Project found a provider who is now providing services to local clinicians. Now, the partnership is working toward providing animal husbandry resources for the village.

“As long as this community has needs that they come to us with…we’re going to see if we can leverage network access and digital solutions to help them achieve those objectives as a community,” Hartshorn explained.

The N50 team has shown that they can be adaptive and agile in a constantly changing world. Gutwein discussed how the team ended up building portable communication centers for Ukrainian refugees at the start of the war. “We just got our team together—pulled in several companies from the N50 Project—and said, ‘Hey, here’s an idea. They need communications and they need power. Let’s put together some portable communication centers…’ in four weeks and two days, we actually went from a concept to design to procuring equipment to building and delivering 18-foot containers fully outfitted with 5G, capability for satellite backup, generated solar power via a charging wall on the outside…” 

As for the future of N50, Hartshorn said they are looking at the broader mission of amplifying community resilience through preparedness with digital connectivity. 

Hartshorn encourages companies interested in participating in the project to reach out and visit www.n50project.org or reach out to David at [email protected]. You can connect with Dan Gutwein on LinkedIn.

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Digital transformation is a goal for any organization. Getting there, however, is often a challenge and requires many pieces to fit together in a puzzle. Many digitization projects never make it to fruition, and that’s something Intel wants to change for its customers.

In this episode of To the Edge and Beyond, Host Tanya Pelletier, Multi-Industry Acceleration Director for Intel, discusses the company’s coalition-building initiatives with Multi-Acceleration Managers Janine Davison and Jodie Frew.

First, Frew defines coalition in terms of Intel. “It’s bringing partners together with unique skillsets to develop industry solutions. It’s the coordination of efforts to address business challenges, including hardware, software, aggregation, system integration, and sometimes the cloud.”

The idea of coalitions and their role in digital transformation is critical. Davison explains, “Digitization is difficult. What often happens is that many projects never go beyond the business case and are in pilot purgatory. The ecosystem makes it easier for end customers to go from the dream to reality.”

Flying solo on these projects often wastes time, effort, and investment. Coalition building is a clearer path toward developing a solution and scaling it. The Intel program involves four key principles: customer value, thought leadership and collaboration, increased market footprint, and effective ecosystem partnerships.

Frew adds that success in coalition building comes down to “understanding the industry challenge and putting in place to find a solution.”

This power of partnership also provides value to each individual stakeholder. Davison explained, “Coming into the coalition, everyone has their expertise, and synergies from the expertise emerge. From the bigger perspective, new doors of opportunity open for entering new markets and revenue streams.”

With partners working together, there is the concern of competition. However, Pelletier says, “It’s not an either-or and requires a new mindset to compete and collaborate.” She references examples like Apple and Samsung and Ford and GM working together.

The focus for Intel is on the ecosystem and the value it can bring. “From Intel’s perspective, it’s the evolution of the ecosystem of what we’ve been doing. It’s part of our DNA, and the success of our partners has always been paramount,” Davison states.

Frew agrees it’s a continuous journey, and at this stage, the industry of IoT needs an industry coalition for organizations to be able to implement and drive business solutions at scale.

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Learn more about coalition building by connecting with Tanya Pelletier, Janine Davison, and Jodie Frew on LinkedIn.

Find more information on these coalition partnerships by visiting the Intel® Solutions Marketplace.

The concept of edge to cloud is growing in importance within the retail landscape. Retailers are increasingly implementing edge-to-cloud solutions to positively impact their businesses.

n the latest episode of “Intel To the Edge and Beyond,” host David Dobson, Intel’s Global Industry Director for Retail and Hospitality, visited the subject with VMWare’s Ryan Wehner, Industry Director for Retail and Consumer Goods EMEA, and Charles Cockshoot, Edge Industry Solutions Architect. The conversation touched on measures retailers are taking to transition to edge to cloud, it’s benefits, as well as some of the challenges that exist.

But what exactly is ‘edge to cloud’ and why is it seeing more activity in retail?

Wehner defines edge as, “Where the customer data is processed … it's close to the source where we’re collecting data as possible. So an edge platform would allow a retailer to run these applications in the store that they couldn't do before.”

In a move to stay abreast of rapid industry shifts, retailers are now choosing to get ahead and make smarter decisions, as well as work towards more advanced technological solutions to stay on top of new trends. And most importantly, stand firm in their competition. “They want to leverage those stores to gain strategic advantage over their competitors,” says Wehner.

This means retailers are utilizing the software programs best suited to give them that advantage, while also allowing them to meet the needs of their customers and become more well-versed in their habits and activities. Additionally, it helps retailers potentially reduce spending costs with the assistance of AI.

Another impressive factor is one that facilitates the shopping experience. Cockshoot notes that shelf edge labels were once signs of information. But with the use of AI, these simple labels have improved knowledge of products for both the employee and customer. He cited how the label scan is capable of indicating if a product is in stock in the store or online.

“If you think the amount of cloud-to-edge processing that's going on there … the experience you can give a customer when they go in your store is one of delight. They know if it's there or if they just like it, or want to touch it, or prefer to buy it online,” said Cockshoot.

Not only that, it keeps the retailer in the know on product sales and returns, and what’s being demanded.

LinkedIns: David Dobson, Ryan Wehner and Charles Cockshoot!

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Consumer-facing industries such as retail and hospitality need help to get to their solutions faster. Accelerating solution-based development is a critical step to accomplishing this goal. Communicating with devices at the edge has proven a challenge for these sectors, as their primary concern is accessing that data, not necessarily the process that drives the result. Time and resources on this end aren’t necessarily where  retailers want to devote their budgets.

How can these industries overcome these challenges? That’s where the Intel and open-source communities like EdgeX can help. To the Edge and Beyond’s Gabrielle Bejarano spoke with Intel Product Engineer Sean Williams on how Intel utilizes open-source solutions to overcome the communication hurdles and get industries the data they need to solve pressing business problems. 

One such open source-based solution, Williams said, is a camera management inferencing solution, which provides device connectors. “These device connectors allow you to communicate, connect, and control IP cameras at the edge. Out of the box, if you have this example, you can just download the software, launch the software stack, and immediately you’re talking, and you’re connecting to other IP cameras or USB Cameras at the edge.”

The solution also helps retailer face problems like theft and inventory management using object detection.“If you’re in an environment where retailers want to know the inventory, if the inventory is low, you can do on-the-shelf observations,. “You can also capture when customers are using self-checkout to incorrectly register expensive items like a bottle of wine with inexpensive items like bananas” – Williams said.

Shaping these solutions doesn’t happen alone; collaboration makes the best technology offerings come to life. “We’re working primarily with the EdgeX community, and that’s the open-source platform that provides many of these plug & play connectors that I’ve talked about,” Williams said. “And that’s the power again, right, because the power is in the data. And the data comes from how you can talk to those devices at the edge. Using EdgeX, as the name offers, allows these connectors to be validated, tested, tried and true, and almost out of the box, you can say, hey, I want to talk to an RFID sensor; you get the RFID connector.” EdgeX provides the ability to connect to all these sensors across many industries. 

Learn more about open-source solutions for retail and hospitality industries by by connecting  with Sean Williams on LinkedIn or visiting EdgeX.

Check out the EdgeX Camera management sample application.

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In the final installment of Intel’s Fireside Chat, Jonathan Luse, General Manager for Industrial Solution Management at Intel, discusses how the pandemic expedited almost every industry to become more tech-savvy and data-centric.

To grasp the reality of the situation, Luse opens with some statistics on company confidence of success. Intel first interviewed about 500 top manufacturing companies around the world two years ago, and 40% indicated they weren’t ready for the big technological jump, fearing profit loss or business closure. However, in a more recent survey, that number has decreased to 18%, with the majority feeling confident in their adaptability.

One important factor that distinguishes those who survived the pandemic and those who didn’t is the utilization of data. Although, Luse mentions that “usually less than 1% of it [data] is actually acted upon.” He advises listeners to narrow down the data by:

• Focusing on what company issues are greatest and need to be solved.
• Understanding that issue from a solution’s objective point of view.
• Utilizing analytics and inference to assess available data.

“Knowing what you want to go do — whether it’s quality control or production efficiency or predictive maintenance… it starts with a solution mindset,” Luse explains.

At Intel, where products like chips, vision processors, or accelerators commonly come to mind for many customers, the focus is always on a comprehensive solution, which involves finding the right tools and applications that help increase a customer’s confidence in automating a process. These factors will help companies adapt, train, and solve issues while maintaining flexibility when new needs arise. Ultimately, the aim is to take complex tools and make them easy to use.

The best way to achieve this goal is by the provider and customer learning together. Luse gives an example of  a automotive manufacturer looking to automate its in-line quality control process. Intel created a customized solution that took its spot-welding capabilities from 5,000 to five million per day. The result showed a significant reduction in rework because of defect detection.

“When you put defect detection in an application environment with a very specific challenge, companies like Intel can come and help solve those very technical problems and really have a great output for it,” Luse says.

To learn more about the future role of AI, connect with Ram Ramasamy and Jonathan Luse on LinkedIn.

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Muthuraman “RAM” Ramasamy returns with Ricky Watts for this fifth special fireside chat series for Intel and Frost & Sullivan, focusing on various areas of technology innovation. For this go-around, RAM chose a topic close to Ricky’s heart, data analytics, in the construct of open and secure communication standards.

As Ramasamy points out, “The world of energy and industrial is swimming in volumes of data, and they haven’t really captured this much volume of data before, and they also don’t know what to do with the amount of data that they have captured.” Tremendous technology solutions, capabilities, and resources are available to these industries, and now is the right time to define the communication standards process.

“The fourth industrial revolution is well underway; it’s accelerating,” Watts says. “The impacts of COVID, global supply chains, and geopolitical issues are changing manufacturing in the ways companies want to do things going forward.” One of those changes is to bring more capabilities to the manufacturing devices already in place, and the capability most desired is more in-depth data analytics. This data provides systems knowledge for new talent entering the workforce, generates efficiencies, and helps build future systems and manufacturing machines.

Making the operation between the digital and physical worlds of manufacturing as seamless as possible is one of Intel’s main goals when providing its solutions. Watts says if companies want to run a digital twin of their operations, they need powerful compute to gather that data and a lot more interconnectivity between all the systems within that environment to feed into the machine. “So, Intel is building an infrastructure and an ecosystem to enable that data abstraction reliably, securely, and safely.”

Watts mentions several partnerships utilizing Intel solutions that do innovative things with data. One company is fusing compute with robotics. “We had a robot with a camera that was using real-time data to analyze what was going on, in this case, a conveyor belt technology.” This process allows a factor worker to identify what was on that conveyor belt and take action in real-time using vision data. “So, here we can bring vision systems together with another exciting area, which is the rise in the use of robotics in manufacturing for all sorts of processes that robotics can do very well.”

Learn more about energy solutions by connecting with Muthuraman “RAM” Ramasamy and Ricky Watts on LinkedIn or visit:

Intel IoT

Frost & Sullivan

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To win the edge ecosystem game, it will take a village approach. Edge is no longer a linear value chain, going from step to step. An emerging circular value chain, with an open and extendable platform in its center and edge-optimized hardware, software, solutions, and system integration is gluing everything together. Frost & Sullivan’s Muthuraman “RAM” Ramasamy unpacks this technology innovation occurring in the edge marketplace with Intel’s Ricky Watts.

The edge ecosystem is a fluid compute environment consisting of many partners who build all the applications and services of the edge infrastructure. Watts notes:

“Data is coming off devices, machines, in the manufacturing environment, manufacturing execution systems, SCADA systems, fixed-function appliances; data exists everywhere and is being accessed in that compute environment. That takes connectivity.”

This fusion of OT and IT systems enables manufacturers to run and create outcomes. From here, creating data marketplaces fosters an environment where large-scale manufacturers can share information, applications, and algorithmsIntel plays a critical role in the glue of the edge ecosystem, converging OT and IT systems together. Watts sees many things happening in the edge ecosystem over the next several years.

“It’s really bringing those capabilities together, not just at the silicon layer, but within the software layer, and then working with a very strong ecosystem of partners in that space to enable those solutions for those end customers.”

Because operational systems, by their nature, possess challenges going through this type of transformation, Watts says focusing on actions that create bottom-line efficiencies is a good tip-off point to provide immediate value.

“I think we’re going to see a lot of focus around the AI piece and how we get AI validated at intelligent and accessible bio in that environment, and then we’ll start to see the movement into the operational domains as we go forward.”

Critical to the success of edge solutions is scalability, and Watts admits that is the challenge manufacturers face in their environments today.

“At a single use case, you can quickly see a way of doing something to improve an outcome. How do you then scale that across a large environment, a large manufacturer? Some of those are things we are doing, which is how to scale these activities.”

Intel and its partner ecosystem aim to create solutions to build up and scale an entire environment. Intel is currently working with several large manufacturers on retooling their environments at scale.

Learn more about energy solutions by connecting with Muthuraman “RAM” Ramasamy and Ricky Watts on LinkedIn or visit:

Intel IoT

Frost & Sullivan

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A human-centered education approach puts neurodiversity and people’s ability to learn differently at the forefront. Our current system is results driven. Human-centered learning evolves learning milestones naturally. “It’s not that the conventional approach is wrong. It’s that the world has changed. And we need education to do something really different. It’s not clear that we can tinker with the factory model enough to have it do what we need,” said Hansen. Technology is intertwined with our current education system. “Technology has always played a role in the education system,” said Rodriguez.

Technology, after all, is a tool. “Technology is an extension of human ingenuity. What humans can do – tech accelerates that,” said Rodriguez. Integrating technology into human-centered learning means getting creative about how, where, and when technology is used. Schools have started to implement learning-focused apps that personalize the journey for students. This approach is limiting. “They’re trying to personalize within a system that is still very standardized and regimented in what kids need to do, what order they need to do it, how quickly they need to do it,” said Hansen.

“A human-centered approach really says that the purpose of education is to help each individual maximize and realize their potential,” said Hansen. It shapes around each individual. It considers the science of how and when deep learning happens. Human-centered learning honors the nuance, diversity, and complexity of human capability. While those qualities sit at the center, the tools and tech allow a person to shape their interests and passions into what the world needs. “Technology is there to meet the needs, the community, and the students where they’re at,” said Rodriguez.

In the future of education, technology could be used to expose students to new and challenging environments. Virtual reality could introduce students to possible shadowing experiences that wouldn’t otherwise be possible. The technology could capture and credit learning experiences outside the traditional classroom setting.

To learn more about the human-centered learning approach connect with Eric Rodriguez and Ulcca Joshi Hansen on LinkedIn.

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With so many innovations in AI and machine vision digitally transforming the manufacturing landscape, Intel’s Stephanie Grisafi and Sahar Ehsani joined To the Edge and Beyond to provide insights into exciting trends and opportunities at the forefront of this transformation.

Many manufacturers are familiar with the classic machine vision model with algorithms designed for specific products. Any updates or changes to the product require remodeling and “re-teaching” the algorithm to adapt to a new system. Ehsani says, “But when [it comes] to AI and machine vision, and you connect these new technologies with each other, integration of these two brings a solution that is adjustable and selectable for different types and patterns of the product. AI becomes a self-learning tool in that device, so that you can give [AI] the first model, and it will start learning and optimizing itself for a different condition.”

Grisafi says that continuous learning is a crucial advantage of utilizing AI with machine vision in manufacturing, “As you add new data points, you’re further training that algorithm to deliver increased accuracy and performance. It will lead to faster decisions happening on the factory floor.” AI and machine vision can help make a factory setting safer through detection protocols such as determining if workers are wearing the proper safety equipment. Grisafi notes, “There’re a lot of great applications and benefits to applying a machine vision solution in the factory.”

The consistency of machine vision eliminates human errors by putting “eyes”. (its camera capabilities) in areas of machines that humans simply cannot monitor. Ehsani explains, “Machine vision removes human dependency. We have different sets of experts on the shop floor, but they have different skills. They have a different type of vision. Machine vision can bring into view things that the human eye cannot see, but the machine can see consistently. We can leverage those expert [human] resources [who] are familiar with the process in the control layer rather than right at the floor and spending their time on those repetitive tasks.”

The pandemic shone a stark light on the reality that there is not nearly enough automation in current supply chains to aid the growing demands. This is an area AI and machine vision can play a significant role. Ehsani says, “AI and machine vision brings automation to the supply chain, and they increase efficiency and bring greater accuracy to the factory. Having technologies enabled by machine vision solutions like asset tracking and inventory management – what goes into the warehouse and what comes out – these are the problems that machine vision could solve.”

Learn more about AI and machine vision solutions by connecting with Stephanie Grisafi and Sahar Ehsani on LinkedIn or by visiting https://www.intel.com/industrial.

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