Andrei Ronzhin, Director of the St. Petersburg Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Sciences (Engineering), Professor of the Russian Academy of Sciences, took part in the 2023 Global Smart Industry Conference, held in Chelyabinsk.
The scientist’s report on "Digital and Robotic Solutions on the Intellectualization of Technological Processes", presented at South Ural State University, sparked great interest. The speaker shared on the current aspects of the Center’s activities and the achievements being implemented. Andrei Ronzhin began his speech with the exciting prospect of human-machine interaction.
"The results discussed at this conference are obtained thanks to industry requests and are fully implemented in practice. Issues of human-machine interaction are as relevant today as they were a hundred years ago. The human factor problem contributes to the development of robotics and industrial automation systems through the use of collaborative robots. In China, for example, it is planned to build a plant for the production of anthropomorphic robots by 2030. In the near future, we expect that humanoid robots will walk among us and we will have to interact with them. But we remain people, we remain in demand and strive to ensure that our ideas come to life."
Andrei Ronzhin spoke about the numerous areas of work being carried out at the Center. One of the talking points was interoperability − sharing of data, knowledge, software and hardware, equipment, etc. And here a number of problems arise. The first one was raised about 10 years ago. Everyone was worried that data might be stolen. Now there is another problem on the agenda: how to store redundant data and how to delete it. There is already so much data that soon people will have to pay money for its disposal.
This is especially true for personal data. Illegitimate actions with it are subject to criminal liability; it cannot be distributed; any actions with it are permissible only after the corresponding application has been signed by the data carrier. Therefore, today we are talking about the value of sharing not data, but knowledge. Knowledge that is obtained by processing a colossal amount of labelled data. Manual expert marking takes a large amount of time and human resources. Only domain experts can properly segment and annotate data at the appropriate levels.
As for the programs used to store and process data, there is no point in reinventing the wheel. There are serious companies, academic organizations, universities that are involved in these industries and develop software and hardware. Now we are talking about saving time, not money, in order to solve a puzzle from existing software and hardware resources and create competitive systems.
Interdisciplinary research is very relevant. The St. Petersburg Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences headed by Andrei Ronzhin, in the process of its reorganization, united scientific departments conducting research in computer science, agriculture and ecology. In the first year, there was terminological confusion; specialists did not understand each other and argued. They had to agree on terms. Today the Center actively operates as a single window. At the same time, the problems of digitalization, automation, and robotization are being solved in two directions: agriculture and use of natural resources.
The Center is largely focused on working with customers of artificial intelligence technologies. It is very difficult to bring anything to the level of commercialization, especially for academic organizations. It is necessary that scientific products are not only very good, but are also cost-effective and in demand.
Customers may be confused by the high costs of implementing artificial intelligence technologies. It is easier, for example, to build a new smart home than to build in various types of cyber-physical systems, lay cables in an existing house in order to equip it and use various types of Internet of Things systems, robotic lines, and connect them to existing power facilities.
When working with customers, you also have to deal with the conservatism of personnel who do not want to retrain on new technologies and are afraid of being fired as a result of the introduction of automation systems.
In his report, Andrei Ronzhin spoke about a number of other implemented projects and also expressed his readiness to cooperate with South Ural State University.