Technologies for Digitizing and Transforming Industry and Services

- High-Performance Digital Infrastructure for Digital Transformation

Efficient digital infrastructure is the basic prerequisite for the development and use of artificial intelligence (AI).

However, the use and spread of AI is driven by more than just its application in industry. We are increasingly relying on virtual assistants, recommendation systems, and future autonomous driving in our daily lives. AI is being used in quantum computing research to make high-performance computers more efficient.

If we now consider the application of AI in politics and especially in public administration, it can be said that in terms of the impact of the use of AI, all citizens will ultimately benefit from this digital transformation.

However, widespread use of this technology requires high-performance digital infrastructure networks. We are talking about data centres, internet exchanges, the expansion of fiber optic networks and the availability of 5G and future 6G networks across the country.

As we all know, especially the training and subsequent application of AI models, rely on massive computing and storage resources. For example, establishing proximity between infrastructure providers and companies is often crucial to ensure low latency even outside well-served urban centers.

Data centers play a key role in driving digital transformation. Not only are they urgently needed due to the increasing use of AI, augmented reality, quantum computing and more, but they also contribute to the efficient, autonomous and sustainable use of technology in business and society. 

In other words, the ecosystem of digital infrastructure is the backbone of digital transformation and all business models and value chains based on it.

- Materials Innovation in the New Digital Age

Material innovation is at the core of development, and its huge impact determines critical eras in human evolution. The arrival of the next digital era represents new prospects for a revolution in materials science.

Throughout history, advances in materials and materials technology have impacted humanity. Now, we may be on the verge of the next shift in this type of technology, enabling products and capabilities we never believed possible.

Industrial demands require materials that are lighter, tougher, thinner, denser, more flexible or harder, and resistant to heat and wear. At the same time, researchers are pushing the boundaries of what is possible in our imaginations, looking to improve and enhance existing materials while proposing entirely new ones that, although still years away from daily use, take us down entirely new technological paths. 

Digitalization is increasingly seen as key to improving productivity and is rapidly being adopted by the manufacturing industry, giving rise to what is now commonly referred to as the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0). 

Advanced digital technologies such as robotics, AI, high-performance computing, the Internet of Things (IoT), big data analytics and virtual and augmented reality enable companies to increase efficiency, reduce costs and become more agile in the market.

- Future Compute - Beyond Moore's Law and The Future of Microelectronics 

Nearly 60 years old and Moore's Law still stands strong for many in the computing world. But the surge of AI and machine learning have coincided with the breakdown of Moore’s Law, and for many thought-leaders what lies beyond is not entirely clear.  

The future of technology is uncertain as Moore’s Law comes to an end. However, while most experts agree that silicon transistors will stop shrinking around 2021, this doesn’t mean Moore’s law is dead in spirit - even though, technically, it might be. Chip makers have to find another way to increase power. 

For example, there are Germanium and other III-V technologies - and, at some point, carbon nanotubes - that provide new ways of increasing power. There is also gate-all-around transistor design, extreme-ultraviolet and self-directed assembly techniques, and so on. 

Progress in technologies such as photonics, micro- and nanoelectronics, smart systems and robotics is changing the way we design, produce, commercialize and generate value from products and related services. 

- Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) 

As digital computing and communication become faster, cheaper, and available in packages that are smaller and use less power, these capabilities are increasingly embedded in many objects and structures in the physical environment. 

Cyber-physical systems (CPS) are physical and engineered systems whose operations are monitored, coordinated, controlled, and integrated by computing and communication. 

CPS are usually composed of a set of networked agents, including sensors, actuators, control processing units, and communication devices. While some forms of CPS are already in use, the widespread growth of wireless embedded sensors and actuators is creating several new applications in areas such as medical devices, autonomous vehicles, and smart infrastructure, and is increasing the role that the information infrastructure plays in existing control systems such as in the process control industry or the power grid. 

Many CPS applications are safety-critical: their failure can cause irreparable harm to the physical system under control, and to the people who depend, use or operate it. In particular, critical cyber-physical infrastructures such as electric power generation, transmission and distribution grids, oil and natural gas systems, water and waste-water treatment plants, and transportation networks play a fundamental and large-scale role in our society. Their disruption can have a significant impact on individuals, and nations at large. Securing these CPS infrastructures is, therefore, vitally important. 

Similarly because many CPS systems collect sensor data non-intrusively, users of these systems are often unaware of their exposure. Therefore, in addition to security, CPS systems must be designed with privacy considerations. 

Advances in CPS will enable capability, adaptability, scalability, resiliency, safety, security, and usability that will far exceed the simple embedded systems of today. CPS technology will transform the way people interact with engineered systems - just as the Internet has transformed the way people interact with information. 

New smart CPS will drive innovation and competition in sectors such as agriculture, energy, transportation, building design and automation, healthcare, and manufacturing. Moreover, the integration of artificial intelligence with CPS creates new research opportunities with major societal implications. 

CPS has provided an outstanding foundation to build advanced industrial systems and applications by integrating innovative functionalities through Internet of Things (IoT) and Web of Things (WoB) to enable connection of the operations of the physical reality with computing and communication infrastructures. A wide range of industrial CPS-based applications have been developed and deployed in Industry 4.0. 

Today's world is a network of interconnected, embedded computer systems with components ranging in size and complexity. Researchers and hackers have shown that networked embedded systems are vulnerable to remote attack. Technology for the construction of safe and secure cyber-physical systems is badly needed. 

- Flexible and Wearable Electronics 

Flexible and wearable electronics combines new and traditional materials with large area processes to fabricate lightweight, flexible, printed and multi-functional electronic products. 

Wearable electronics has emerged as a new form of electronics that combines sensors and wireless communication to allow monitoring of vital information autonomously. Unlike typical sensor networks, wearable electronics need to form conformal and intimate contact with objects to be monitored. Furthermore, they have to be comfortable to wear while providing accurate information.

Wearable electronics are smart electronic devices that can be connected to the Internet and be worn on the body as accessories. These devices are a key segment of loT devices, and they can exchange data through Internet with the user and other connected devices. Applications for wearable electronics range from health monitoring, disease detection, robotics, robotics surgery, implantable electronics, driverless cars, structural monitoring, virtual reality, augmented reality, etc.. 

Wearable devices offer benefits like optimized decision-making, ease of handling emergencies, cost cutting, enhanced quality of living, remote control access, healthy lifestyle, time management, commercial benefit, and better safety.  

Along with the explosion of interest in wearable electronics in recent years, numerous challenges nonetheless remain before wearable electronics become a truly commercializable technology. One major challenge is the highly interdisciplinary nature of the field, which mandates the convergence of many disciplines, notably from materials, devices, system integration, software and application verification. The impact is far beyond health care. It will improve everything from the environment to defense, the economy, and energy production.  

- Photonics -  An Enabling Technology 

Photonics is the technology of generating and harnessing light and other forms of radiant energy whose quantum unit is the photon. Photonics involves cutting-edge uses of lasers, optics, fiber-optics, and electro-optical devices in numerous and diverse fields of technology - alternate energy, manufacturing, health care, telecommunication, environmental monitoring, homeland security, aerospace, solid state lighting, and many others. 

Lasers and other light beams are the “preferred carriers” of energy and information for many applications. For example: Lasers are used for welding, drilling, and cutting of metals, fabrics, human tissue, and other materials; Coherent light beams (lasers) have a high bandwidth and can carry far more information than radio frequency and microwave signals; Fiber optics allow light to be “piped” through cables. 

Research in photonics ranges in scope from fundamentally new tools, such as small-footprint, high-throughput multiphoton microscopes, through exceptionally high-power semiconductor lasers, to components and systems for next-generation optical networks for both the Internet and data centers, and into consumer equipment like 3-D displays. New areas are constantly explored by research teams worldwide, as photonics becomes more pervasive in our lives. Communications, displays, medicine, manufacturing and imaging are just a few applications. 

- Unconventional Nanoelectronics 

Shrinking transistors have powered 50 years of advances in computing - but now other ways must be found to make computers more capable. Mobile apps, video games, spreadsheets, and accurate weather forecasts: that’s just a sampling of the life-changing things made possible by the reliable, exponential growth in the power of computer chips over the past five decades. The continual cramming of more silicon transistors onto chips has been the feedstock of exuberant innovation in computing. That could stymie future advances in electronics, unless new architectures and designs can allow progress in chip performance to continue. 

There are also worries about the rising cost of designing integrated circuits. Future generations of electronics will be based on new devices and circuit architectures, operating on physical principles that cannot be exploited by conventional transistors. Research scientists worldwide seek the next device that will propel computing beyond the limitations of current technology. 

The semiconductor industry is a major driver of the modern U.S. economy and has accounted for a large portion of the productivity gains that have characterized the global economy since the 1990s. Recent advances in this area have been fueled by what is known as Moore’s Law scaling, which has successfully predicted the exponential increase in the performance of computing devices for the last 40 years. 

This gain has been achieved due to ever-increasing miniaturization of semiconductor processing and memory devices (smaller and faster switches and transistors). Continuing to shrink the dimensions of electronic devices is important in order to further increase processor speed, reduce device switching energy, increase system functionality, and reduce manufacturing cost per bit. 

However, as the dimensions of critical elements of devices approach atomic size, quantum tunneling and other quantum effects degrade and ultimately prohibit the operations of conventional devices. Researchers are therefore pursuing more radical approaches to overcome these fundamental physics limitations.

Candidate approaches include different types of logic using cellular automata or quantum entanglement and superposition; 3D spatial architectures; and information-carrying variables other than electron charge, such as photon polarization, electron spin, and position and states of atoms and molecules. 

Approaches based on nanoscale science, engineering, and technology are most promising for realizing these radical changes and are expected to change the very nature of electronics and the essence of how electronic devices are manufactured.

 Rapidly reinforcing domestic R&D successes in these arenas could establish a U.S. domestic manufacturing base that will dominate 21st-century electronics commerce. 

The goal of this initiative is to accelerate the discovery and use of novel nanoscale fabrication processes and innovative concepts to produce revolutionary materials, devices, systems, and architectures to advance the field of nanoelectronics."  

- Electronic Smart Systems (ESS) 

- Security and Resilience for Collaborative Manufacturing Environments 

- Artificial Intelligence (AI), Robotics, and Application Areas