The topic of the Industrial Internet was first proposed by GE in 2012. This topic and the Industry 4.0 proposed by Germany in 2013 can be said to have stirred the nerves of many companies. But these new ideas are not groundless. They are the strong technological accumulation of industrialized countries in the past few decades, as well as new strategies, new technological layouts and a new vision for the future after combining with the Internet. This article summarizes the nine core technologies of the Industrial Internet.

1. Supercomputing terminal

Supercomputing terminals are some new intelligent devices, such as cars and wearable devices, such as underwear with chips. The surging momentum of these products is becoming a new addition to the physical world we are familiar with. At the heart of these products is a powerful chip. Intel, the chip king in the traditional sense, is realizing that in the turbulent era of mobile internet, he is no longer available. For example, the ARM chip structure, with the emergence of companies represented by Apple, is replacing the traditional king status of Intel in the PC era.

The super-intelligent terminals that can be found everywhere are breaking through the imagination space given by the chips of Moore's Law. Moore's Law once predicted that every nearly two years, the computing power of the chip will double, and the price will be halved. This is a reverie proposed by Intel in 1965. Nearly fifty years have passed, and this Moore's Law has not yet seen its end. Even if Moore's Law hits a bottleneck at the nanometer level, new alternative technologies are emerging. And with the infinite expansion of the addressing capability of IPV6, we humans can expect that in the future, every smart terminal can have powerful computing power and addressing capability, so these two key technical elements in the Internet of Things era are already available.

In addition to the chip technology race, there is fierce competition in the industry for the entry standards for interactive interconnects. There are some industry giants forming industry alliances. For example, including Samsung, Nest and Google alliance. Nest was acquired by Google for $3.2 billion in 2014. This company can provide an energy feedback system, so there are a large number of household users in the United States, and this provides a convenient channel for Google to enter the household energy management system. Appearing in the market at the same time is Apple. In June 2014, Apple announced the Homekit framework.

2. Software-defined machines

After Apple released the iPhone, software-defined machines caught everyone's attention in the industry. Previously, traditional feature phones were defined by the manufacturer's feature settings. After Apple released the iPhone, its real function settings were set by users by downloading software, which brought great inspiration to a large number of industrial enterprises. Because of this, Nokia, which was once the king in the communications era, was quickly sacked. And Apple, which represents new industrial thinking and uses software-defined hardware to bring new functions and functional ideas, came from behind to win.

Software-defined hardware, mutual benefit goes out of communication and electronic products, and becomes the future and normality of the industry. The reason is very simple. In today's era of lower and lower thresholds and homogeneous competition for hardware products and mechanical equipment, it is software that can truly achieve a differentiated advantage. This is the future trend, and various embedded software and additional software functions will become more and more cheap, the development of software products will become more and more platform-based, and the upgrade and maintenance of software products will become more and more cloud-based. . This trend will help manufacturers to quickly launch products and upgrade products according to consumer needs, and consumers and industrial users will also take advantage of this advantage to obtain cheap services and fast products, as well as remote maintenance services .

3. Knowledge work automation

The concept was pioneered by McKinsey & Company in 2013. Knowledge work automation here refers to the automation of information processing, which covers a very wide range, including conventional Internet information interaction, pattern recognition, artificial intelligence, machine learning and other cutting-edge technologies. This new way of working based on information and knowledge, according to McKinsey estimates, will generate very large economic value in the future. By 2025, it is projected to generate nearly $6 trillion in new economic value added and create an output capacity equivalent to more than 100 million full-time employees.

In this area, special mention is made of artificial intelligence. Because artificial intelligence is now highly concerned by many research institutions and enterprises, it is believed that it is one of the key technologies that can truly change human beings in the future. For example, IBM is a very important player in artificial intelligence. Their most famous experiment, in 1997, produced a computer that beat a human chess grandmaster. The latest achievement is the intelligent computer, they are called intelligent computer. The computer helps legal services companies analyze texts for law firms; it includes analysis of medical reports for hospitals. A large number of human beings have been replaced, so the development of artificial intelligence presents a new test and challenge to the work of people in the future.

4. Cross-enterprise standard setting

Regarding the formulation of standards for the Industrial Internet, it should be said that it is now the focus of competition among major global industrial companies and even countries. These companies and countries, including Germany, are aware of its high importance. For example, in the past 40 years of the last century, the standard contribution rate accounted for 0.9% of the 3.3% annual GDP growth in Germany, second only to capital investment, and more important than domestic innovation and direct purchase of technology. Therefore, mastering the standard discourse power is a very crucial step for these countries and even enterprises to make their strategic layout in the future. In this regard, American companies are also at the forefront of the world.

In April 2014, the Industrial Internet Alliance, led by five companies, GE, AT&T, Cisco, IBM, and Intel, was established in Boston. The alliance has rapidly expanded to more than 100 member companies. American companies have a high degree of advantages in software and the Internet. They also hope to establish some new implementation standards under the open alliance cooperation structure of the new industrial alliance. I just said that GE's software platform wants to become a de facto industry standard. Of course, this field is a fierce competition and game, and both the national and enterprise levels are making active arrangements. Chinese enterprises must not stay out of it and must get involved. It is necessary to have enough influence and voice on this standard and technological trend.

5. System Security of Industrial Internet

This topic is extremely important, but in today's wave after wave of heat waves, it seems that everyone has not regarded it as a major event to see and analyze. In fact, a series of security incidents continue to occur. The most famous incident in these years should be the sensational 2011 Iranian government accusing the United States and Israel of trojan software, which cut into Iran's nuclear facilities through Siemens' nuclear power control system SCADA. These software are used to design attack management software. This Trojan virus is called digitally manufactured missiles by the Iranian government. These things may not be as serious as they say, but these things have given us very important security tips.

After the gradual rise of the Industrial Internet, to really gain popularity among enterprises, including across enterprises, security issues must be resolved. Imagine that if this problem is not solved, not only these devices and infrastructures that are of great importance, but even in fields such as smart homes and smart cars, there will be huge security risks and privacy risks.

6. Robots are changing industrial processes

Today, Japan is the country with the most robots, with 332 robots per 10,000 people in Japan.

This is the statistic in 2012, when the usage in Germany was 273, Germany is the country with the highest usage in Europe, while our country had only ten units at that time. Of course, the use and development of robots in China in the past two years should be very fast, and related companies are introducing and manufacturing robots. Companies like Foxconn have announced that they will turn off the lights in 2014. This is very critical in coastal areas where labor costs remain high, because labor wages in China's coastal areas are rising at a rate of more than 15% every year, and the price of robots has dropped significantly every year, so industrial robots have become popular.

But robots are facing a dilemma in China, that is, a large number of high-end robots are still dominated by several major global brands. Mainly in the hands of Japanese and European companies. Some core technologies and software are not in the Internet, but in basic reducers, controllers, and numerical control systems. These fields are traditional industrial and intelligent hardware and embedded software. In the field of reducers, China needs to import. In this round of competition, foreign companies have adopted new strategies, and high-priced key components have been imposed on Chinese companies, resulting in high production costs for Chinese companies.

7. Distributed production and 3D printing

Why is 3D printing important? Because he brings about the integration of the industrial Internet, the changes to the future industrial production methods will be subversive.

First of all, it will carry out a high degree of integration of online design and offline production. The maker movement sparked by 3D printing is changing the way production was done in the past, where everyone can buy a 3D printer online, put their ideas into practice, and achieve distributed production. Make everyone's creative ideas possible.

The second trend is the lightweight of entrepreneurial production, because the Internet entrepreneurship brought by 3D printing will lower the threshold for starting a business, and the long tail effect can be manifested, and segmented businesses can always find their own living space.

A third important trend in 3D printing is the diversification of production subcontracting. With the help of 3D printing, various small companies are produced faster and faster than large companies. Although this type of manufacturing will not immediately disrupt the existence of large companies, it can create more markets. Among large-scale manufacturing, traditional manufacturing still occupies the traditional advantage. However, the production of small batches of personalization may be impacted or even replaced by the future technology represented by 3D printing.

3D materials are still the key bottleneck for the widespread promotion and application of 3D printing. Because 3D printing materials have many obstacles in terms of strength and stiffness mechanical properties, including roughness, moisture resistance, thermal stability, etc. of printed products, especially these material properties will further affect heat treatment, surface physical and chemical treatment, precision Subsequent processes such as processing, polishing, and coating directly affect production costs and efficiency.

8. The fusion of human consciousness and machines

Can human beings ultimately use their thoughts to directly control machines, or even other creatures or even humans? This idea has been around for many years, and it seems that there have been some major breakthroughs in this area recently. In 2010, several scientists tried to connect testers in India and France. When the words were converted into QR codes using the brainwave system, and the brainwave output from the Indians was transmitted to France, they could be re-identified, Converted, and the test subject finally understood the word in France.

The technology, known as brain-computer interface, has been around for more than three decades. In the era of the Industrial Internet, brain-computer interface technology has provided us with a huge space for imagination. Humans can not only interact with machines, but also control them. More importantly, in turn, machines may also read human minds, thereby interacting and integrating with humans at a deep level. At the Tencent WE conference that ended in 2014, a Japanese company launched a brainwave cat ear product. This product is very simple to play. When people are emotionally up and down, the cat ears will stand up and the mood will be low. At some point, the cat ears will come down.

9. Virtual world

Regarding this concept, in the German Industry 4.0 system, it is called a digital physical system. This new manufacturing method actually allows us to see a picture of the future. That is, in the future, in addition to the physical world, the corresponding digital systems integrating many more comprehensive information, or virtual systems, will have a high degree of interaction and mutual correlation with the physical world. The production, use and monitoring of aero-engines carried out by GE is to collect, simulate and process a large amount of data.

In the future, outside the physical world we live in, there will be a virtual system that integrates more information, and this virtual system will be able to help us predict and help us maintain the current physical world, and their prediction accuracy may be high depends on the accuracy of our predictions based on reality. Because they have more information, and because they have the information of the whole history, they will help us to carry out more effective and new intelligent design and manufacture. Therefore, the machine production machine that the Germans talk about is not a virtual topic in the future, it will really become a reality.