Company News

Researchers in South Korea have developed extremely fast information processing technologies that can help usher in the next generation of the Internet. Researchers at the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) in South Korea have developed technology capable of sending packets of digital information at 25 Gb/s (giga-bit per second) – 10 times faster than currently available speeds. The technology, named TIC-TOC, is a critical component of the future Tactile Internet, in which information is sent and received at speeds on par with human perception. The technology operates at a speed fast enough to download a 3 GB movie within one second. Furthermore, the TIC-TOC system enables more urgent data to jump ahead of other information packets and be transferred in one milli-second (1/1000 of a second), the same speed at which the human sense of touch works. TIC-TOC stands for “Time Controlled Tactile Optical Access” and is designed to work on 5G networks. The researchers anticipate the TIC-TOC technology will help advance virtual reality and augmented reality in all sorts of sectors, from education and healthcare, to entertainment and public safety. For example, it could be possible to deploy and operate robots in dangerous or disaster areas with instant sight and feel communication between human controllers and machines. When the machine sees something, the humans sees it, and when the human remotely controls the robot’s hand or head, the motion will happen immediately. The same could be true for telesurgery, with a doctor remotely controlling a robot performing the surgery, but the doctor feels as if she were in the operating room because the response is instantaneous. “The Tactile Internet is expected to be the fourth industrial revolution,” said HwanSeok Chung, a project leader at ETRI. “We will see robots, cars and all other machines connected to the Internet […]

A Tasmanian engineering innovation in strawberry and other hydroponic food production is set to be adopted by major berry producers in the UK and Europe. Rod Marshall, Managing Director of Marshall Machinery in Launceston, has returned from meetings in the UK and Europe, in response to expressions of interest from international berry producers. At these meetings, Mr Marshall demonstrated and promoted the unique “COIR-RX” hydroponic substrate processing machine, which has been entirely researched, developed and manufactured by his company in Tasmania. Worldwide, crops such as strawberries, tomatoes and capsicums are planted within plastic substrate bags containing coir, rock-wool, or other materials, then disposed of at the end of each growing cycle. Until now, the process to separate the plastic from substrate and plant material, then package materials for recycling, has been a massive, mainly manual process for growers, or simply dumped into landfill. The COIR-RX processing machine replaces this manual process with a mobile platform that travels along the ends of strawberry rows to feed in the materials, separate them, then automatically capture, compress and wrap the plastic for recycling. The machine also ejects the organic material which becomes an effective mulch. A single COIR-RX machine can process up to 2000 one-metre long substrate bags per hour. This takes less than 5% of the time and half the cost of the current laborious process of removing, transporting, picking through materials, manually sorting and bagging. The system is also vastly more discriminating while sorting, ensuring a much purer separation result for both plants and plastic. Mr Marshall said, “After years of research and development, we now have a functional machine that is proving itself in actual field use.” “Marshall Machinery is now ready to respond to expressions of interest it has received from major berry producers in the UK, who have […]

Ask any business owner or board-level executive involved in manufacturing about the demands of growing a business, and they would probably readily agree that it’s tough. Apart from juggling various elements to keep the business on a growth trajectory, there are the endless administration tasks. Regularly producing reports, quotes, estimates, proposals, plans and invoices can be daunting, and may even negatively impact on productivity. However, the challenge no longer needs to be overwhelming thanks to technology. Speech recognition is now more accurate, more powerful, and more usable than ever before, and it can help facilitate the growth of a business. Adopting a desktop speech recognition solution – like Nuance Dragon Professional Individual for the PC – can improve a business’s everyday performance and productivity. Save time producing documents Dragon does the typing for you as you speak and, as we talk three times faster than we can type, the productivity implications are considerable. Dragon quickly and accurately turns your spoken words into text. It lets you put your voice to work to easily dictate and edit documents, proposals, reports and more. With Dragon you spend less time producing documents, and more time on activities that boost the bottom line. Plus, as Dragon works with all Microsoft Office applications, you can also create spreadsheets and presentations by simply using your voice. The solution also lets you speak to send emails, and as it’s compatible with popular web browsers, you can also deploy Dragon to search the web and use social media with unparalleled speed, ease and comfort. Dragon rewards the user by helping you gain precious time. Work that may have taken hours – typing a large document or clearing your inbox – can now be achieved faster and without the need to type, and the time saved can be allocated […]