Siemens AG is a German multinational conglomerate company headquartered in Munich and the largest industrial manufacturing company in Europe with branch offices abroad. The principal divisions of the company are Industry, Energy, Healthcare (Siemens Healthineers), and Infrastructure & Cities. It is a producer of energy-efficient and resource-saving technologies, and a supplier of systems for power generation and transmission as well as medical diagnosis.
INTERNET OF THINGS
Siemens offers Internet of Things (IoT) solutions across a multitude of industries, including infrastructure, manufacturing, energy, transportation, and healthcare. It also provides MindSphere, a cloud-based, open IoT operating system that connects products, plants, systems, and machines to harness the wealth of data generated by the IoT with advanced analytics.
The company is active in the area of smart cities, with its digital city solutions dedicated to ‘harnessing the potential of IoT to improve city life’. Smart city solutions developed within Siemens’s MindSphere Application Centers have been implemented in cities such as Hong Kong, Singapore, and Dubai.
Additionally, Siemens taps into the potential of IoT to offer solutions such as reporting and analytics to aerospace and defence industries.
5G
Siemens is investigating the terrain for industrial 5G and actively supporting the development and technological implementation of the new standard to improve sustainable communication. It is concluding partnerships with other companies for the deployment of 5G technologies. For instance, in November 2019, Siemens and Qualcomm Technologies partnered to set up a private, standalone 5G network for industrial applications in a test centre in Nuremberg, Germany.
In Germany, Siemens announced in December 2019 that it was applying for a private spectrum licence in the 3.7.–3.8GHz band, planning to use it to manage its own LTE and 5G networks across several of its factories.
Siemens is part of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) working to ensure the industry’s requirements would be met by the upcoming 5G standard. Since 2018, Siemens has been a member of the 5G Alliance for Connected Industries and Automation (5G-ACIA) which works to ensure the best possible applicability of 5G technology for connected industries, in particular the manufacturing and process industries.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Siemens’s scientists and developers believe that people should monitor machines instead of competing with them in performing monotonous manual labour. To this aim, they work towards using AI to further increase the efficiency of robotic and automation systems.
Siemens’s Future of Automation aims to provide insights into future automation products and the role of AI in its Totally Integrated Automation (TIA) portfolio. In December 2018, Siemens launched a module using AI featuring a chip with AI capabilities.
The company offers several AI solutions for the industry, in areas such as predictive maintenance, engineering, and quality testing. Cloud solutions like MindSphere and intelligent applications also enable the use of AI in industry. AI in the Shop Floor: Envisioning the Future of Intelligent Automation is a paper that explores how industrial automation can unlock the potential of AI and how the industry should respond.
Healthcare is yet another area of work for Siemens. Siemens Healthineers launched two AI-powered application assistants for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI): AI-Rad Companion Prostate MR for Biopsy Support and AI-Pathway Companion Brain MR for Morphometry Analysis. It also published two white papers in this area: Assisted Multi-Organ Image Interpretation in the Age of AI and Medical Imaging in the Age of AI.
In November 2013, Siemens, Carnegie Mellon University, and HRL Laboratories LLC were awarded a US$2.2 million contract for the Knowledge Representation in Neural Systems programme of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency (the research arm of the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence) to work on a military research project to unlock secrets in the nature of knowledge in an effort to improve tools and training available to intelligence analysts.
Siemens’s position on the use of AI in the development of lethal autonomous weapons systems was revealed by PAX in its Don’t be Evil report. The company declared for PAX that it ‘is not active in this business area [lethal autonomous weapons systems; LAWS]. Where we see a potential risk that components or technology or financing may be allocated for a military purpose, Siemens performs a heightened due diligence. […] All our activities are guided by our Business Conduct Guidelines that make sure that we follow high ethical standards and implement them in our everyday business.’
INTERNET OF THINGS
- Works to advance research and development in IoT and smart city solutions.
5G
- Works on the development of 5G industrial solutions.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
- Works to leverage the potential of AI across industries.