Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1502623
36 SMT007 MAGAZINE I JULY 2023 Johnson: It seems like you're doing the fundamental research which will get used as the basis for application work. Some people will say that's not research, or that's applied research, but I don't really care. For me, this is what we need to be doing. is is what will move the industry forward, when as academics we start looking at those things and asking where the problems are. We need to work at this level on the front lines. at's what we must be doing. Johnson: It's interesting that you describe Industry 2.0 activities in an Industry 4.0 envi- ronment. In my opinion, the thing that's miss- ing from the robots is something innate for humans: heuristic thinking. You could just assume heuristic thinking would be present in Industry 2.0, but now? You can't assume that. Yes, absolutely. I look at Industry 4.0 and it's great. We are applying things like artificial intelligence, but they don't have those heu- ristics that we've developed over time. How do we address that? It almost complicates our job as engineers trying to specify these menial tasks at a much higher level—you know, pick- ing parts up is becoming commonplace. How do we make that better? How do we apply those heuristics to the automation? Matties: Hasn't industry already been down this path? In the automotive industry, every- thing is robotic. What are you doing differ- ently? Are you trying to develop a blueprint to hand to companies and say, "Here's how you start if you're starting from zero?" We just discussed finding those pinch points. I've seen this in industry. When I was work- ing at Whirlpool in the 1990s, we had similar instances. We automated everything because that's what we thought we had to do to remain competitive; we went all-in on automation. We found that some robotics and automa- tion didn't work, but the market still needed