During a recent visit to my brother's house, my sister-in-law pointed out their new Amazon Echo Dot. "It's so cute," she said, before showing me her primary use case: "Alexa, tell me a joke!" The sound of Jimmy Fallon's voice suddenly filled the room with a corny joke that made my sister-in-law laugh as she went about her day. Later that afternoon, I was in the house alone. In the time-honored tradition of sibling pranks, I decided to ask Alexa a few precisely worded and detailed queries, asking it multiple times and in multiple ways.

Industrial computing device maker Adlink Technology expects its annual revenues grow steadily and top US$1 billion in 2025, with growth momentum mainly driven by the mounting penetration of edge computing technology in 5G and AI applications, according company chairman Jim Liu. Based on the revenue goal, Liu said, sales of traditional IPCs and AI-related modules, now contributing 90% of Adlink's revenue, will have to grow to US$600-650 million by 2025, while visualization applications should sharply surge to US$250 million from the current US$20 million, and shipments of robots, autonomous vehicles and related mobility solutions will expand to US$150 million. To achieve the goal, Liu stressed, Adlink will focus its efforts on developing edge computing devices featuring AI, visualization and autonomous mobility capabilities as main growth driver in the next few years. Liu said Adlink has cooperated with Nvidia to incorporate AI chips into its IPCs in line with the chip vendor's Edge AI initiative to materialize the AIoT concept. He continued its AI-based IPCs are able to integrate and analyze data collected from diverse sensors to help users make decisions and create more actual benefits.

The rapid adoption of autonomous machines or robots in today's industrial applications continues to rise. They are able to perform tedious, repetitive and complex tasks very smoothly with a high degree of autonomy. In a new World Robotics report from the International Federation of Robotics, over 2.4 million industrial robots are operating in factories worldwide. The evolution of new-age technologies has made integrated video analytics (IVA) possible that is now impacting a large number of applications across diverse environments, such as healthcare, transportation, buildings and factories. While the capabilities of video analytics are relentlessly growing, businesses are increasingly gaining the ability to assess images and videos, detect and recognize objects and people, and derive actionable insights from what they see.

The number of robots used in industrial applications continues to grow and their capabilities continue to evolve. The first stationary industrial robot, the Unimate, was installed in a factory by General Motors in 1961. According to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), the World Robotics report released on Jan. 20, shows that more than 2.4 million industrial robots are currently operating in factories around the world. And this number is expected to grow dramatically in the coming years. Following the rapid adoption of stationary robots, the next development was the deployment of mobile robots in the form of automatic guided vehicles (AGVs).

Right now sorting boxes onto the appropriate pallet as these goods move through a supply chain is a time-consuming, error-prone manual process. But it doesn't have to be. During the recent PACK Expo in Las Vegas, ADLINK demonstrated how a combination of readily-available technologies can streamline the palletization process. Broadly speaking, using sensing technology to derive new value from physical assets is the entire premise of the internet of things. But beyond sensors, achieving this new level of value from a digitized world requires localized data analysis on top of edge computing infrastructure.