Top 5 Emerging Technologies in the next decade.

Technology witnessed rapid growth in 2017. From cloud-based computing to machine learning, throughout the year technologies with significant potential evolved, paving the path to the upcoming year. Power players in the field including Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple showed tremendous potential to bring consumer behavior based technologies to the households. Using Big Data, these companies have evolved to enhance user experience.

Some of the significant trends of 2017 including artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, augmented reality are moving from the niche space to more prominent usage in the industry.

As these trends become the stepping stones for 2018, the technological evolution has led to 5 major trends for 2018,

1. AI (Artificial Intelligence)

Artificial intelligence is an idea that has jumped out of the pages of a science fiction novel and is quickly becoming a reality

Artificial intelligence has so far been mainly the plaything of big tech companies like Amazon, Baidu, Google, and Microsoft, as well as some startups.
It is a scary but true thought that in the upcoming century humans are going to be unbelievably outmatched by Artificial Intelligence.Cloud-based AI is making the technology cheaper and easier to use.

last year in mid of 2017 Google deepmind beat the world's best chess players at their game, a particular reason that this is very important Is that researchers had predicted that this would take years to accomplish.

Microsoft launched its own Artificial Intelligence in the early stages of 2016. It was a online chat bot that learned from what it was told but tragically the people of the Internet struck again

Why It Matters

Right now the use of AI is dominated by a relatively few companies, but as a cloud-based service, it could be widely available to many more, giving the economy a boost.
Key Players: Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook

It is uncertain which of these companies will become the leader in offering AI cloud services.  But it is a huge business opportunity for the winners.
These products will be essential if the AI revolution is going to spread more broadly through different parts of the economy.
Currently AI is used mostly in the tech industry, where it has created efficiencies and produced new products and services. But many other businesses and industries have struggled to take advantage of the advances in artificial intelligence. Sectors such as medicine, manufacturing, and energy could also be transformed if they were able to implement the technology more fully, with a huge boost to economic productivity.

Future Scope of Artificial Intelligence

• Breakthrough in Science
• Cyber Security
• Face Recognition
• Data Analysis

2. Edge computing

Edge computing is the key factor in making IoT (Internet of Things) work. There has been an unprecedented rise in data generation which has led to an increase in demand for means of gathering, storing and utilizing all of that data in more compatible and centralized means.

Edge is a buzzword. Like “IoT” and “cloud” before it, edge means everything and nothing. But I’ve been watching some industry experts on YouTube, listening to some podcasts, and even, on occasion, reading articles on the topic. And I think I’ve come up with a useful definition and some possible applications for this buzzword technology.

WHAT IS EDGE COMPUTING?

In the beginning, there was One Big Computer. Then, in the Unix era, we learned how to connect to that computer using dumb (not a pejorative) terminals. Next we had personal computers, which was the first time regular people really owned the hardware that did the work.

Right now, in 2018, we’re firmly in the cloud computing era. Many of us still own personal computers, but we mostly use them to access centralized services like Dropbox, Gmail, Office 365, and Slack. Additionally, devices like Amazon Echo, Google Chromecast, and the Apple TV are powered by content and intelligence that’s in the cloud — as opposed to the DVD box set of Little House on the Prairie or CD-ROM you might’ve enjoyed in the personal computing era.

3. Prescriptive Analytics

Large organizations and companies started working on Big Data and created their way to be better at predictive analytics. This was helping medium and large businesses tremendously for improving customer experience, processes and many other things.

4. Green Vehicle Technologies

Self-driving cars quickly went from science fiction, to reality thanks to big pushes from Google, Uber, Tesla, and more. But after two fatalities, it might be time to pump the brakes. We'll discuss the uncertain road ahead.

And experts say we’re a few years, not decades, away from the reality of climbing into a self-driving car of our own and reaching our destination (entered into something like a dashboard touch screen or just said out loud) without ever touching a steering wheel.

Already, most of the major car companies have semiautonomous technologies in their vehicles, offering features such as lane assist, adaptive cruise control and the ability to parallel park. And major automakers and tech giants aren’t just researching and developing fully autonomous vehicles — a few are testing prototypes right now. Google’s vehicles, for instance, have been making driverless test runs for years on California roads. Last spring, the company began allowing members of the public to try out autonomous vehicle rides in Phoenix.

When it comes to Tesla’s electric vehicles, a significant chunk of the driverless future is already here. Its autopilot feature, once enabled, lets the vehicle automatically steer down the freeway, change lanes and adjust speed in response to traffic. Once you’ve arrived at your destination, the car can scan for a parking space and self-park on your command. You can also use your smartphone app to initiate a "summon" feature, which drives the car out of your garage and to a spot in front of your home where it idles until you get in.

So when can we expect highways full of autonomous vehicles? Nearly 10 million cars with self-driving features will be on the road by 2020, says BI Intelligence, a leading market research firm. Just a couple of years after 2020, the firm predicts, we’ll see fully autonomous vehicles that can drive on roads and handle a range of scenarios with little or no interaction from the driver.

Self-driving cars are already being tested on our streets – and Google would like to have robot taxis on the road by the end of the year. Two fatalities in the past month have raised questions about the future of automatic cars – companies say they’re still safer than human drivers. Is the technology moving too fast? Should computers be making life and death decisions? And we’ll look at the EPA’s decision to revoke Obama-era emissions standards that would have meant more than 50 miles a gallon by 2025.

This hour, On Point: The future of cars

 --Jennifer Glasse

This program aired on April 3, 2018.

5. Robotics 

Increasingly, robotics is becoming the part of daily life, from the manufacturing floor to the consumer sales floor. To meet the demand, robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are and will continue to evolve to create an emerging sector called enabled robotics.
This new generation of robotics will transform the way things get done over the next five years.

Automation is an opportunity for the automotive sector to become self sustainable. Automation, including artificial intelligence and robotics, will generate benefits for the sector by lifting productivity and improving operational efficiencies. As per the general view and assessment, only 2/3 of the occupation in the sector have 1/3 percent of specific jobs that can be automated (as most of the manufacturing areas are automated or run through robotics, PLC-based machines or logic controls).

In economies such as India where the wage rate is manageable due to a higher percentage of young population or availability of plenty of labour, automation may not make economic sense in all areas. Organisations, however, need to prepare their workforce to meet challenges brought up by automation.

Some of them will be: 

• Redundancy of skill
• Plugging gaps for digitization
• Reviewing talent strategy to meet automation and technology requirements
• Changes in training and capability building interventions
• Quick investments and adaption to automation and technological integration.
• Clustering of small and medium ancillaries or vendors in Automotive Sectors. 

Manufacturing Insights explained by  Dr. Jing Bing Zhang, research director, Worldwide Robotics and IDC Asia/Pacific

The advancement of robotics technology has entered into a new era of robotics with embedded and/or cloud-based artificial intelligence. In this new era of Robotics 3.0, intelligent robots are characterized by their ubiquitous sensing and connectivity, cyber-physical fusion, autonomous capabilities (such as cognition, decision making, and learning and adaptation), and more human- friendly multimode interaction. This development will have a profound impact on industrial robots and service robots (both commercial and consumer). Leading robotics technology vendors are already racing to develop and incorporate artificial intelligence capabilities into their product road map in order to stay ahead of the competition.