March/April 2020

| 0 10 | March/April 2020 www.smartmachinesandfactories.com | NEWS | proud of all that CPI has achieved as an invaluable and reliable partner for small businesses, universities and large corporates, helping them to drive their innovations forward. It has been a privilege to create and lead such an exciting organisation that provides a tangible impact for businesses across the country. “I am delighted that our Board has appointed Frank Millar as my successor. This announcement comes after two years of rigorous succession planning and strengthening of CPI’s leadership team to ensure our continued success as a company. “Frank is a proven leader with a clear and inspiring vision for CPI, strong core values, a track record of delivery and the ability to bring people together. These qualities are fundamental as the company enters its next chapter, and there is nobody better to lead CPI into the future.” Frank Millar added: “It’s an honour to be appointed as CEO at such an exciting time for our business. CPI is a special company with a long history of providing valuable support to businesses in the UK and beyond, helping to translate their research and ideas into economically viable products and processes. We are an organisation led by a purpose – to make a positive, meaningful impact for UK businesses and our local and national economies. I will continue to live our values, develop our culture of innovation and champion our people to fulfil their passion to make a difference.” CPI was created in 2003 and is a founding member of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult; a network of world-leading technology and innovation centres designed to transform the UK’s capability for innovation in specific technology areas and markets in order to drive future economic growth. Musashi AI, which claims to be the world’s first robotics employment agency offering the services of customisable AI- robots for production floors, has reported a significant spike in enquiries from businesses around the world following the Coronavirus crisis.  With an estimated 80% of the global workforce potentially facing self-isolation in the coming weeks, an increasing number of businesses are seeking to protect their supply chains from potential operational deficits, which could damage the stability of production. International businesses have been turning to the MusashiAI agency as its robot employees bring a level of security to production continuity by allowing the essential jobs on production lines to continue while people are in isolation. This is key for maintaining undisrupted supply of essential products in these unprecedented times. The AI robots Musashi AI places in factories have the capacity to integrate seamlessly and within a exceptionally short period of time due to highly advanced deep-learning capabilities. Musashi AI robots can be trained in a matter of days, and sometimes even hours,  to perform automated tasks that would take weeks and months to train for with legacy systems. Using a very small sample size of inspected specimens, Musashi AI combined the methodology behind the golden sample era of computer vision with the neural networks established by practitioners of deep learning to teach their AI to identify what a faulty part looks like. The Musashi AI algorithms identifies defects faster and more accurately than ever before. With advanced optics, deeply integrated with edge computing, Musashi AI robots spot circa 99% of faulty parts in less than two seconds. This significant algorithmic development produces robotics that are engineered to continue efficient production operations, despite the global conditions that COVID-19 has created.   Ran Poliakine, Founder & Chairman of SixAI commented: “We have seen a large increase of inbound enquiries from businesses seeking support from our robotics to help them at this time. The current outbreak of coronavirus has had a devastating effect on families and businesses around the globe, and it saddens me to think of the pain it has caused to society as a whole. We believe that human jobs should be performed by humans. Our goal has always been simple – to undertake the rigorous and repetitive jobs by modernising workplaces with the deployment of advanced AI technology. It is more important than ever for companies to integrate AI into production lines – keeping workers safe. At the same time, those on the frontlines of responding to the virus will be supported by undisrupted vital industry operations and stable economies.” The agency is a joint venture between Israel’s SixAI and Japan’s Musashi Seimitsu. Through the collaboration of Israeli and Japanese engineers,  Musashi AI has created robots that are able to perform rigorous and repetitive jobs such as visual quality control inspections and forklifts operation with unparalleled accuracy and efficiency. These AI robots are being deployed in factories owned by Musashi Seimitsu (a Honda Motor Co affiliate company), a global leader in powertrain parts manufacturing with 35 plants around the world.  COVID-19 pandemic accelerates international interest in AI robotics