By Alix Paultre, contributing editor
We are well and fully on our way into the brave new world of advanced interconnected electronics systems in our homes, our factories, and our streets. There are a lot of labels for the various behemoth-like application spaces bashing their way into the mainstream, cloud-enabled and device-empowered. From the IoT to the smart grid to electric mobility to Industry 4.0, almost every facet of our lives is being redrawn by new solutions based on the new paradigm.
It’s easy to lump application spaces into neat bundles and put labels on them, but the underlying reality of the current industry environment is that everything is changing, and the role of the engineer is changing with it. Regardless of the application space addressed, today’s designs are more intelligent and more connected than ever before. Every facet of the electronic ecosystem is in flux, and the challenge of today’s electronic designer is to keep up.
Electric vehicles
Regardless of all the arm-waving, the role of the car in society, be it electric or fossil-fuel, is changing, as features like autonomous driving and intelligent traffic management will come no matter what the motive force used in the vehicles involved. The amount of electronics in a modern vehicle easily accounts for half of its value already, and even in a dinosaur car, that amount will continue to increase as more electronics are thrown into the engine to improve performance and economy.
The fact remains that an electric motor has only one moving part, and none of the top 10 vehicle repair causes in dinosaur cars even exist in an EV. With no fluids needed to cool the engine, no oil needed for motor lubrication, and no air intake, filtering, and management, once the range debate is finally put to bed, adoption will take off. Once fleet vehicles, rentals, company cars, and short-haul trucking move to EVs, the change will come relatively swiftly.
Smart grid
The big public moves in smart grid development have been related to recent disaster mitigation in Puerto Rico and Tesla’s big bet on energy storage in Australia, where Elon Musk promised the country that they would get their system for free if Tesla didn’t install it on time (they did). These relatively small projects were critical to the public opinion on alternative energy as well, and their unqualified success has opened the eyes of even the most stubborn Luddite.
The recent successes have underscored the fact that alternative energy and the advanced grid management technologies involved do work and are cost-effective. With this efficacy and profitability, business is moving green in an aggressive way because it is now cheaper to do so and increases productivity and reliability as well. Every new factory built now uses advanced power management technologies and methodologies that not only reduce operating cost but also address issues of pollution and waste.
The cloud and IoT
The big buzz at this year’s CES was the continued explosion of web-enabled electronics for use in the home, the car, and on your person. Many of the tier-one manufacturers boasted of how extensively their product lines were cloud-enabled and could be made part of a larger smart home system. Issues of personal privacy aside, personal assistants, both hard and soft, are taking over the home and office. This functionality is not only being implemented in the new products moving into the market like Alexa, but it is also being integrated into more traditional products like appliances.
The renaissance of flat television continues as the devices become both more functional and less obtrusive. Advances in flexible electronics now enable roll-up monitors that expose only as much of the screen as you need, going from a huge clock radio with only a few inches of screen exposed to a large display surface when needed, then disappearing into its case when not in use. On the other side of the coin, micro-LED tiles with pixels made up of individual LEDs in a tight-enough matrix to be used as an indoor TV can be bought in quantities to make any large, flat area a high-resolution display.
Industry 4.0
The revolution in manufacturing isn’t just in the area of power management, although that is a significant advance in itself; it is also in the smarter devices used and how they are integrated into a larger intelligent system. Smart sensors talking to smart robots managed by smart AI systems are rapidly becoming the norm in manufacturing, increasing productivity, safety, and profitability.
The pressure toward more integrated and intelligent manufacturing has been increasing to keep pace with the ability of the engineering community to achieve it. Even the most conservative risk-averse businesses are seeing the advantages of upgrading and replacing their legacy manufacturing processes, not only to save money but to address the increased capabilities of their competitors doing the same thing.
Looking forward
The beauty of all of this is that this is one of the greatest times to be an electronic design engineer. The confluence of technologies in today’s world provides a fantastic opportunity to create new things and address issues previously unaddressable because the technology didn’t exist.
Advertisement
Learn more about Electronic Products Magazine
