When Masaya Aso worked on autonomous driving technology at Bosch in Japan and Germany, he realized that "many tasks were still manual as over 85% of warehouses have almost no automation at all." To help address the problem, Aso co-founded LexxPluss, a now two-year-old, Japan-based startup that designs and develop autonomous mobile robots to transport loads and optimize workflows within warehouses and logistic sites. Aso, who is CEO of the outfit, co-founded it with robotics and autonomous vehicle veterans from Bosch, Amazon, Honda and more, and now the Japanese outfit is preparing to enter the U.S. with a fresh injection of about $10.7 million (1.45 billion JPY) of Series A funding that values the company at approximately $38.8 million (5.26 billion yen). Drone Fund led the latest financing along with SOSV's HAX, Incubate Fund, SBI investment and DBJ Capital. LexxPlus initially targeted the logistics and automotive manufacturing spaces because those spaces are actively deploying robots beyond their production lines.

Artificial intelligence technology is changing the future of many industries. Global companies spent over $328 billion on AI last year. This figure is expected to grow as more companies recognize the potential and decide to increase the resources they dedicate to machine learning and predictive analytics tools. The automotive industry is among those investing in AI the most. The industry is going to increase expenditures on AI technology for the foreseeable future.

For the JIT model to work, the quality and supply of raw materials, the production of goods, and the customer demand for them must remain in alignment. If any one of the links in the chain breaks, stalls, or falls out of sync, the impact on the supply chains that crisscross the world can be felt immediately. For companies, unable to deliver on orders in a timely fashion, they risk losing not only efficiency gains but also brand credibility, market share, and revenue. Now, companies are seeking new ways of managing their supply chains that offer greater flexibility and transparency. In the automotive sector, some companies including Nissan and JIT pioneer Toyota are increasing chip inventory levels, while others including Volkswagen and Tesla are trying to secure their own supplies of rare metals.

Sony has revealed plans to start an electric car company, making it the latest electronics manufacturer to target the automotive sector. The Japanese tech firm is "exploring a commercial launch" of electric vehicles, and will launch a new company, Sony Mobility Inc, in the spring, its chairman and president, Kenichiro Yoshida, told a news conference before the Consumer Electronics Show in the US. Yoshida on Wednesday presented a prototype sport utility vehicle, the Vision-S 02, which uses the same electric vehicle platform as the previously announced Vision-S 01, a coupe that began testing on public roads in Europe from December 2020. "With our imaging and sensing, cloud, 5G and entertainment technologies combined with our content mastery, we believe Sony is well positioned as a creative entertainment company to redefine mobility," he said. An increasing number of consumer electronics companies have looked into targeting the burgeoning electric car market.

China is shaping up to be the first real test of Big Tech's ambitions in the world of carmaking, with giants from Huawei Technologies Co. to Baidu Inc. plowing almost $19 billion into electric and self-driving vehicle ventures widely seen as the future of transport. While Apple Inc. has long had plans for its own car and Alphabet Inc. has Waymo, its autonomous driving unit, the size -- and speed -- of the move by China's tech titans puts them at the vanguard of that broader push. The lure is an industry that's becoming increasingly high tech as it pivots away from the combustion engine, with sensors and operating systems making cars more like computers, and the prospect of autonomy re-envisioning how people use will them. As the world's biggest market for new-energy cars, China is a key battlefield. Established automakers like Volkswagen AG and General Motors Co. are already slogging it out with local upstarts such as market darling Nio Inc. and Xpeng Inc.

In the coming years, there are few parts of daily life that artificial intelligence won't touch in one way or another, and the automotive sector is no exception. When it comes to vehicles, however, implementing AI will place enormous demands on data centre technology. Christian Ott, director of Solution Engineering at NetApp, explores how storage and compute can keep pace with the challenge. Usually, when you mention the idea of applying AI in the automotive sector to someone, their first thought is self-driving cars. In the current wave of research and development in autonomous vehicles (AVs), it's estimated that the leading thirty companies have invested $16 billion into building a car that can take itself from A to B, and, as we all know, that technology hasn't arrived just yet.

Over the years, cars have evolved from being a status symbol, a style statement to, quite literally, a data center on wheels. Commonly described as a'horseless carriage' during its early years, today cars have transformed the way people move, live, work and play. With cars becoming increasingly connected and autonomous, the automotive sector is at the cusp of a disruptive technology change. According to industry reports, India's automotive industry, including component manufacturing, accounts for 7 percent of the country's GDP, and is expected to reach $51.4 to $282.8 billion by 2026. Globally, the automotive sector is poised for its next cycle of evolution, with trailblazing developments in autonomous cars.

A lot has been written, said and discussed in the domain of Artificial Intelligence. From the Turing test conducted by Alan Turing in 1950 which offered an opportunity to understand whether machines can exhibit intelligent behavior to AutoML (Auto machine learning) by google which claims to reduce the dependency on humans to build AI models, the technology has come a long way. However, the question that still intrigues many is whether this new wave of digital intelligence is intelligent enough to create value. This is one of the biggest challenges C-level executives in the manufacturing industry face when they propagate the idea of investing in this technology. Preparing a business case and binding the investment to the RoI, in an asset-heavy industry, becomes a daunting task and many at times hinder the buy-in or progress of such programs across the manufacturing enterprise.

We have all seen the rapid rise of new technologies that are disrupting the way we live our everyday lives. From our mobile devices, e-commerce retailing, sharing economy companies and a plethora of automated functionalities – innovation has changed our lives beyond recognition. It is through this relentless drive of technological innovation that has revolutionised the automotive sector. Despite the ongoing controversies around diesel and petrol cars, and the gradual implementation of electric vehicles, one of the more sci-fi adaptations that will be arriving on our roads in the near future is autonomous vehicles. But when will this happen?

From parts suppliers to vehicle manufacturers, service providers to rental car companies, the automotive and related mobility industries stand to gain significantly from implementing machine learning at scale. We see the big automakers investing in proof-of-concept projects at various stages, while disruptors in the field of autonomous driving are trying to build entirely new businesses on a foundation of artificial intelligence and machine learning. There are huge opportunities for machine learning to improve both processes and products all along the automotive value chain. But where do you focus? And how can you make sure your investments in machine learning aren't just expensive, "one-and-done" applications?