Brave new year

By Alix Paultre, contributing editor

We enter 2018 with a lot of interesting mileage behind us. In many ways and places today, one can apply the famous opening from Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities”: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Of all areas, the electronics design, manufacturing, and distribution industries are undergoing disruptive change at every level. They represent a microcosm of, and many of the reasons for change to, modern society.

Every major area of change in society has a significant electronic component, and that share of body and mind taken up in hardware and software will not be going down anytime soon. At every level, and in every place, there are aspects of the new “e-conomy.”

On the road
It’s obvious that even without the electrification of cars, major changes were in store for society from the impact of autonomous driving and the coming smart city alone. Much of modern western society is based upon vehicle ownership and the ability to drive anywhere at a whim. If you change the relationship between car and driver, you change a fundamental aspect of society.

Even in the area of power and noise, a high-efficiency supercharged direct-injection compression-fired internal-combustion engine (ICE) doesn’t sound anything like a large-bore powerhouse, so if you have to put a kazoo on your car to like the way it sounds, why bother? A next-generation high-efficiency self-driving ICE would be almost as deleterious to pseudo-manhood as an electric vehicle would.

Combine (semi-)autonomous cars with a smart traffic grid and you might as well be in a tram, which is why car-sharing and other fleet-vehicle applications will be the big winners here. Not to mention, if you can order a car that can deliver itself, what does that do to taxis?

In the grid
Smart conveyances and intelligent municipalities lead directly to both the cloud and the smart grid, as the car will continue to be a factor being that it is at the juncture of all of our currently developing technologies. In the case of the smart grid, that connection is due to the infrastructure requirements for convenient and rapid charging systems.

This intelligent power infrastructure will also integrate fossil, solar, wind, and other alternative energies into a reliable, stable, and cost-effective energy delivery system. We are already well along the way, and the changeover is proving to be as interesting and challenging as promised.

There was also disruption when film went niche, but because it happened so fast and there was no installed national infrastructure to rebuild, society got over it so quickly that many were surprised. That will not be the case with the development and deployment of the smart grid.

Just as the smart grid will be a significant enabler for electric vehicles, it will also change how people look at power. The ability to both audit energy use at the device level, coupled with the ability to replace some or all of the household (or building, or facility, or microgrid) energy budget with self-generated power, turns the current supply model on its side. Some openly question the ability of energy providers to make a profit in the future unless they change their business model.

The cloud and IoT
The cloud and the Internet of Things (IoT) are linked, as the former is the enabling infrastructure for the latter, and the latter gives the former a reason for being. You don’t need wireless connectivity if everything is sitting on a desk. Wireless connectivity and the devices that take advantage of it are creating new  markets constantly while expanding and giving new life to old.

The issue of powering all the myriad devices, from wearables to remote vehicles, is as important to the IoT as the “things’” ability to communicate with one another. Although the focus is on energy storage, there is as much, if not more, to be gained in more effective power systems; more efficient sensors, displays, and other subsystems; and cleaner and more elegant device integration by design engineers.

There are also alternative-energy plays in IoT, but they are currently limited mostly to larger systems such as tethered equipment able to run from a fixed asset like a solar panel array. Energy harvesting at the personal level is being pursued but has not yet been achieved in a cost-effective manner. But this is such a promising space, as the reward for the first mainstream personal energy harvester will be huge.

Looking forward
The year 2018 will continue, and probably accelerate, the manic pace of growth and change that we must confront. Every technology sector will unveil major advances that will impact every application space — some expected, some not. Each of these changes will impact the other, just as they rely on one another for progress. Industry 4.0 would not exist without advances in the cloud and IoT via automation technology, process monitoring, power management, and the software to see, understand, and control them all.

The tipping point for electric vehicles will come closer as even naysayers switch from “never” to “eventually, but really, really far off” in their assessments. Most serious assessments say that it will come in the next three to seven years, but that depends on a lot of factors, not the least of which would be the development of any other disruptive core energy storage technology.

The IoT is already pretty much here, and at this point, it is more about sorting itself into application bins like industrial and medical. There will also be new application spaces created as developers and users take the new device capabilities available and apply them to both old and new problems in different ways. Some will be unorthodox but successful, like putting cameras into phones, and some will be so funny and useless (or dangerous) that they will develop collectible value.

The key is to take 2018 head-on and enjoy every day to the fullest. Use the ever-growing cornucopia of resources now available to the design engineer to maximize your ability to create. Use the online communities that exist to better your craft and stay in touch with your peers. Last but not least, use us; we have been serving the industry for well over half a century, and we don’t plan on stopping anytime soon.