In a nondescript office building on the outskirts of Zaporizhzhia, Ukrainian soldiers have been honing what they believed will be a decisive weapon in their effort to repel the Russian invasion. Inside, the weapon glows from a dozen computer screens – a constantly updated portrayal of the evolving battlefield to the south. With one click on a menu, the map is populated with hordes of orange diamonds, showing Russian deployments. They reveal where tanks and artillery have been hidden, and intimate details of the units and the soldiers in them, gleaned from social media. Zooming in shows satellite imagery of the terrain in sharp detail.

We're starting today's 3D Printing News Briefs with a new system announcement, as Farsoon just introduced its FS200M 2 platform to the AMEA and North America AM market. Moving on, Senvol and Northrop Grumman presented together at RAPID about using machine learning to improve process parameter optimization. Finally, United Performance Metals announced a new Additive Manufacturing Solutions Center, and a new Innovation Centre for advanced materials & digitalization was established by TWI and Manchester Metropolitan University. Farsoon Technologies has introduced the latest addition to its medium-size metal LPBF line--the FS200M 2 platform, with a powerful dual 500-watt laser configuration and 425 x 230 x 300 mm build volume. The company says the versatile, compact printer offers maximized productivity and turn-over rates, and is well-suited for medium to high volume metal series production and prototyping.

Huawei has launched a South African-based Cloud and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Innovation Centre to drive innovation, knowledge transfer and economic growth through app development in the AI industry. The announcement was made by Ray Rui, president of Huawei Cloud Africa region, during the Huawei Cloud Summit Africa 2020, an online event to unpack the opportunities of cloud computing for African business under the theme "Building an Intelligent Africa". "AI will be critical to social evolution and industrial growth in future," said Rui. "We also believe that when you grow economic opportunities, everyone benefits. For this reason, we are opening the Huawei Cloud & AI Innovation Centre to application developers across all economic sectors." The new centre will be based at Huawei's South African headquarters in Woodmead, Johannesburg, but developers across Africa will be able to access the centre remotely. It will teach AI application best practice, link developers to markets, support AI supply chains, develop talent and support application innovation.

Across the world, investing in AI innovations is on a steep rise. Artificial intelligence (AI) is indeed opening up the newer phases of technological advancements. Last year, riding the AI wave, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), across the country, came up with several AI initiatives -- from rolling out courses to launching R&Ds centres and Center of Excellences in various parts of the country. Although we have just stepped in the year 2020, IITians have already started to make headlines with their newer innovations for the year. In fact, Google has recently decided to start six artificial intelligence-based research projects in India by providing funds and computational resources, where two of the prominent IITs have agreed to participate -- IIT Delhi and IIT Madras.

Hosted at Dubai Technology Entrepreneur Campus (Dtec), DSOA's wholly owned tech incubation centre, Intel Innovation Centre is set to become a hub for future technological development in the region that will feature Artificial Intelligence, AI, Blockchain, Video analytics and Autonomous Driving. D. Juma Al Matrooshi, Deputy CEO of DSOA, officially inaugurated the Innovation Centre along with Taha Khalifa, Client Computing Sales Director and EMEA Territory GCC Country lead at Intel Corporation, in the presence of Muammar Al Katheeri, Executive Vice President of Engineering and Smart City at DSOA, Steven Long, Vice President Sales and Marketing Group & GM of CCG Sales at Intel, and senior officials from the two entities as well as Intel's business partners. Al Katheeri said, "Four years ago, we launched with Intel the region's first Internet of Things (IoT) ignition lab that has already added significant value to tech start-ups and entrepreneurs in the UAE. Today we celebrate our partnership with Intel as we step forward together into a new milestone through the inauguration of the Intel Innovation Center that has found an ideal home at DSO. With its dynamic mix of business partners and boasting an environment that fosters the entrepreneurial spirit, DSO continues to push the boundaries of technological innovation."

I was at a meetup when Simon Knowles, CTO of Graphcore, was giving his talk on the latest development at Graphcore, and that is also where I met with Peter Bloomfield from Digital Catapult (@digicatapult). Peter was spreading the word about Machine Intelligence Garage which is an amazing opportunity created by a collaboration between the government and industry leaders like Google, Nvidia, AWS, etc. to help startups and small businesses access compute resources, which they would have otherwise never been able to get hold of. Sometime later, we decided to have a chat discussing the usual questions like what is Machine Intelligence Garage, what is the history, why, how, who, when, and at what stage is the program at and how do people get involved? As you would imagine, I found our conversation interesting and informative and hence decided to write about it and share it with the rest of us. Mani: Hey, Peter, great meeting you and learning about the initiative from Digital Catapult, can you please share with me the history about this initiative?

Autonomous Robotics, a subsidiary of listed company Thalassa, is to collaborate with Robert Gordon University to conduct research on swarm technology of autonomous underwater vehicles in the North Sea. The work is supported by the Oil & Gas Innovation Centre. The purpose of this research is to further enhance the capability of the'flying node' system and further reduce the cost and time for ocean bottom seismic surveys. The Swarm Technology research will be performed by Dr Wai-keung Fung and Mr Adham Sabra, who are with the Communications and Autonomous Systems Group within the School of Engineering, with results are expected within 12 months. Chairman Dave Grant said: "ARL are working with RGU to research and create a practical localisation system for the flying node system which will allow the flying nodes to operate in a swarm and move from their initial seabed position to a new seabed location.

A new report from the Washington-based Center for a New American Security raised the alert level of the US defence community over China's rise as an artificial intelligence (AI) superpower, one that could effectively destroy the American military by 2030. The meticulous report no doubt will send a chill through the halls of the Pentagon. Kania, as co-founder of the China Cyber and Intelligence Studies Institute, is well suited to write the investigative report using available Chinese-language open-source materials that reveal China's military thinking and progress on AI. Kania reported that China's military is pursuing advances in'impact and disruptive military applications of AI' and given it'high-level priority within China's national agenda for military-civil fusion'. The goal is to become the world's'premier innovation centre' in AI by 2030.

Teams from both organizations will soon move into what used to be a Stelco office building that's located in the downtown core. "We're re-inventing Hamilton through healthcare," said Dino Trevisani, president of IBM Canada, who is himself originally from Hamilton. "We're going to make this a centre of excellence in Canada and for the world." Trevisani spoke at a well-attended event, held at Hamilton Health Sciences, to publicize the announcement. Significantly, researchers at the new collaboration centre will be the first in Canada to make extensive use of IBM's Watson artificial intelligence software for healthcare.