Automation

Automation describes a wide range of technologies that reduce human intervention in processes, mainly by predetermining decision criteria, subprocess relationships, and related actions, as well as embodying those predeterminations in machines. Automation software and technologies are used in a wide array of industries, from finance to healthcare, utilities to defense, and practically everywhere in between. Automation can be used in all aspects of business functions, and organizations that wield it most effectively stand to gain a significant competitive advantage. Organizations use automation to increase productivity and profitability, improve customer service and satisfaction, reduce costs and operational errors, adhere to compliance standards, optimize operational efficiency and more. Automation is a key component of Digital Transformation, and is invaluable in helping businesses scale.

Industrial Automation

Industrial Automation includes a wide range of tools and technologies, such as robots, numerical control (NC) machine tools, programmable logic controllers (PLCs), computer numerical control (CNC) systems and industrial sensors. Automation systems can be integrated into existing production lines or stand-alone and can be used to collect data for preventative maintenance of the equipment.

Intelligent Automation

Intelligent Automation (IA), sometimes called cognitive automation, is the use of automation technologies - artificial intelligence (AI), business process management (BPM) and robotic process automation (RPA) - to streamline and scale decision-making across organizations. Intelligent automation simplifies processes, frees up resources and improves operational efficiencies through various applications. 

Autonomy System

Autonomy System refers to a system which can perform the programmed operations under defined conditions without human input or guidance. These systems derive their autonomy from data-led decision-making models that enable them to reliably adapt their behavior in response to dynamic environments during operation without any manual intervention.

Business Processes Automation

Business Processes Automation refers to the use of software to minimize and enhance human effort within a specific business process. Since each process is composed of a series of tasks and workflows, the primary goal of BPA is the automation of as many elements of the process as possible.  In the context of automation, it’s usually a repeatable transaction that involves a series of steps touching multiple IT systems. 

Robotic Process Automation

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a technology that mimics the way humans interact with software to perform high-volume, repeatable tasks. RPA technology creates software programs or bots that can log into applications, enter data, calculate and complete tasks, and copy data between applications or workflows as required. RPA automates repetitive business processes in industries, including banking, IT, human resources and healthcare. These business processes, when performed by a bot, are faster and more efficient.

Cyber-Physical System

Cyber-Physical System (CPS) is a system that integrates physical and computational components to monitor and control the physical processes seamlessly. These systems combine the sensing, actuation, computation, and communication capabilities, and leverage these to improve the physical systems’ overall performance, safety, and reliability. In other words, A cyber-physical system is a collection of computing devices communicating with one another and interacting with the physical world via sensors and actuators in a feedback loop.

Cognitive Computing

Cognitive Computing is the use of computerized models to simulate the human thought process in complex situations where the answers might be ambiguous and uncertain. The phrase is closely associated with IBM's cognitive computer system, Watson. Computers are faster than humans at processing and calculating, but they've yet to master some tasks, such as understanding natural language and recognizing objects in an image. Cognitive computing is an attempt to have computers mimic the way the human brain works.

Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI)

Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI) is the most common type of AI today. It focuses on specific tasks, such as image recognition or natural language processing. They are essentially prediction machines - albeit very good ones. In other words, they can predict, with a high degree of accuracy, the answer to a specific prompt because they’ve been trained on huge amounts of data. The machine intelligence that surrounds us today is a part of the same narrow AI. Examples include Google Assistant, Siri, Google Translate, and other natural language processing tools. Although these tools can interact with us and process and comprehend human language, they are termed as weak AI as they lack the fluidity or flexibility to think for themselves as humans do. 

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI)

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) is artificial intelligence capable of generating text, images, videos, or other data using generative models, often in response to prompts. Generative AI models learn the patterns and structure of their input training data and then generate new data that has similar characteristics.

Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)

Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) refers to the hypothetical intelligence of a machine that possesses the ability to understand or learn any intellectual task that a human being can. It is a type of artificial intelligence (AI) that aims to mimic the cognitive abilities of the human brain. Many researchers believe we are still decades, if not centuries, away from achieving AGI.

Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI)

Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) ASI surpasses human intelligence and can potentially solve problems that are currently beyond the capabilities of humans. For instance, an ASI system could potentially design highly efficient energy systems or develop new medical treatments. However, ASI is still largely theoretical and remains a topic of debate and speculation.