Photonics for a Better World

More than 20 billion Internet of Things (IoT) devices are expected to be deployed within the next few years; by 2025, this number may reach as much as 1 trillion connected devices. Driven by growth in cloud computing, mobile communications, networks of data-gathering actuators and sensors, and artificial intelligence with machine learning, this trend will change how we live our lives. Already we live among connected devices in our homes. Increasingly, we will also wear them, drive them, and monitor our health via the IoT. More businesses will build, ship, and design products and manage inventory with connected devices. In our cities, transportation, communications, and security infrastructure, and services such as water distribution and energy management will employ IoT applications. Farmers will find many uses, from insuring the health of livestock to increasing crop productivity. Several conferences scheduled for SPIE Defense + Commercial Sensing 2018 (15 through 19...

Unmanned autonomous systems (UAS) are testing the limits of people’s comfort with independent capabilities of technology — yet these technologies are also enabling more productive crops, faster and safer disaster relief, and other benefits across fields of healthcare, defense, transportation, agriculture, and security. While some among the nonscientific population might still be making up their minds about self-driving cars and other unmanned autonomous systems, industry, government, and academia are moving forward to look for more ways to improve and even save lives. In the field Among recent projects, Hands Free Hectare at Harper Adams University was developed to enable every part of the farming process to be done by robots, not humans: “Automated machines growing the first arable crop remotely, without operators in the driving seats or agronomists on the ground.” Simon Blackmore , professor and head of engineering at Harper Adams, described in an interview with SPI...