Autonomous to Smart: Importance of Artificial Intelligence – InFocus Blog Dell EMC Services

On Saturday February 11, 2017, my daughter and her friend were driving from a basketball game in Chico back to our home in Palo Alto. Unfortunately, due to several days of heavier than normal rains, the Oroville Dam spillway broke and flooded many of the roads between Chico and Palo Alto. My daughter's smartphone mapping application wasn't aware of the sudden danger, and proceeded to send her into the heart of the flooding (see Figure 1). Fortunately, courtesy of some heads up "smart" driving, she was able to navigate the shallow flooding and avoid the more dangerous, deeper flooding (always helps to see cars stalled in the water before deciding to plow in). This incident highlights two significant challenges with respect to the application of artificial intelligence in the world of the Internet of Things (IoT), edge analytics and creating "smart" devices: The challenge for any autonomous device (car, truck, drone, washer, wind turbine, pace maker) is how to manage challenge #1 within the computational and storage limitations of #2.