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Intelligent Infrastructure is Foundation of Industry 4.0

Jeffrey DeCoux
7 min readNov 10, 2021

Investment in a 21st-century Intelligent & Autonomous Infrastructure is among the highest priorities for stimulating economic expansion and job growth. Intelligent, autonomous, and electrified infrastructure is the equivalent of the atomic energy race of the 1940s. It will create highways and byways for the digital and autonomous world. Edge computing, NextG wireless, autonomous cars, delivery drones, autonomous shuttles, inspection drones, and trucks, air taxis, etc., all need to be part of, and to share, a common infrastructure. Local governments are struggling today with permitting disparate systems that need to be a single open and intelligent infrastructure. The integration process is ready for a jump start. The country that does this well first will likely capture the preponderance of the economic benefit.

Billions of dollars are being allocated to Public Infrastructure Network Nodes (PINN). PINNs will be the key to Industry 4.0 and resilient transportation infrastructure. National sovereignty and global productivity will go to the nation that deploys the Intelligent Infrastructure supporting Industry 4.0. Unleashing the largest productivity boom in world history.

“The nature of our networks is changing . . . from transport to orchestration.” Tom Wheeler, Visiting Fellow, Brookings Institution

“The nature of our networks is changing . . . from transport to orchestration.” Tom Wheeler, Visiting Fellow, Brookings Institution

Intelligent Infrastructure will Enable Vision Zero

The largest infrastructure buildout in history. The edge will drive $700 billion cumulative CAPEX by 2030, State of the Edge Connected World.

Edge infrastructure is vital to support critical systems for our developing intelligent and autonomous cities. NextG Wireless Networks, Edge Computing, Situational Awareness Radar, C-V2X, Environmental Sensors, Assured Position Navigation and Timing (E-GPS), Intelligent Transportation Systems, Phased Array Backhaul, Optical & Lidar Fusion, and High-Speed Ingest being a few.

Goldman Sachs — Edge Computing is a Necessity

Comments from Heather Bellini, Goldman Sachs.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise: Edge is the Next Frontier of Computing

Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Antonio Neri Wednesday told shareholders that HPE’s intelligent edge strategy represents the next “frontier” in the future of computing.

“Our strategy has been clear: which is to accelerate the intelligent edge opportunity,” said Neri. “We believe the edge is the next frontier. That is why we are so bullish about our Aruba portfolio with the connectivity, security and analytics.”

Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Antonio Neri

Infrastructure is Foundation of Transformations

  • Freight Trains — required Railways and Depots
  • Aviation — required Control Towers, Communications, Radars, GPS
  • Interstate Commerce — required Roads, Highways, Bridges
  • Transport Ships — required Ports and Containers
  • Overnight Delivery — required Nonstop Systems and Air Transport
  • Internet — required Network Access Points, Data Centers, and Fiber

Industry 4.0 Requires Integrated Intelligent Infrastructure

Power — Placement — Processing — Pipeline

  • Edge computing and NextG wireless networks are seen as two of the most vital components of the enablement of Industry 4.0 applications and solutions. Latency, data volume, and compute. This new computing layer will provide new levels of low-latency and high-performance data processing at the point of data creation. This requires new digital infrastructure on city sidewalks and the Autonomy Institue has worked with over 150 industry partners to develop a new standard called the Public Infrastructure Network Nodes (PINN).
  • PINNs are the bridge between the digital and the physical world at the point of data creation. The Public Infrastructure Network Node (PINN) initiative is the first unified open standard to support Broadband, NextG wireless, Edge Computing, Radar, Lidar, Enhanced GPS, and Intelligent Transportation Systems. PINNs are designed to deliver a multitude of advanced edge sensors and computing capabilities. This digital infrastructure will support decades worth of commercial impact and provide a platform that can easily be upgraded with new sensors, new radio access networks, and the continued evolution of computing resources. Data gravity now mandates that processing occurs at the digital edge and the PINN will power this next layer of computing.

Density, Sovereignty, and Security Matters

“No one has repealed the laws of physics. The higher you go in frequency, the more oxygen eats at the signal to reduce the distance it can travel. As a result, the higher the frequency, the smaller the cell radius, the more cells required to cover an area, the more infrastructure required to support the cells, and the greater the cost of the network.” Tom Wheeler, Visiting Fellow, Brookings Institution

Public Infrastructure Network Nodes

  • Public Infrastructure Network Nodes (PINN) are the equivalent to the 19” rack within a data center.
  • PINNs support high-performance computing, advanced sensors, resilient high bandwidth wireless communications, and other critical services at the sidewalk.
  • PINNs will be a cornerstone infrastructure for a myriad of applications being deployed within cities and rural communities.
  • PINNs are supercritical nano data centers, even more, critical than the computers that run our traffic lights and commercial aviation systems.
  • PINNs will support extremely high-end compute to support the RF and sensor fusion processing at the node itself.
  • The PINN eliminates the major cost of backhaul over fiber and societal issues like privacy and data sovereignty.
  • The PINNs provide a critical complement to what has already been developed within the autonomous vehicle industry and secure the vital “Non-Cooperative” data stream to advance autonomy forward.
  • The intelligent platforms will be designed to make maximum safe use of the PINNs to minimize platform cost. Whether the platforms are wheeled, walking, or flying, they will use the same infrastructure.
  • The PINNs will extend standards for the open-access software that have been developed. With a target infrastructure design, these components will be stitched together into an open system supporting a growing list of intelligent applications.
  • Dynamic Infrastructure Upgrades. As our infrastructure becomes more digital, it requires more maintenance and upgrading than the non-electronic infrastructure. The Public Infrastructure Network Nodes were designed with this in mind and also include open interfaces permitting hardware and software upgrades without requiring infrastructure replacement.

We will be deploying 10s of thousands of PINNs across cities, highways, communities, industrial campuses, ports, intermodal facilities, etc. A National Buildout of Integrated Intelligent Infrastructure would reach 1.5+ million locations over the next decade. This Intelligent Infrastructure will drive Jobs & Economic Growth for the next 100 years.

There are over 100 industry partners supporting the PINN as a platform. It has become a new asset class within cities, states, and soon federal. Though it is agnostic to any specific technology, it is highly designed around the digital devices that have to be densified within cities.

To flourish, a networked information economy rich in social production practices requires a core common infrastructure, a set of resources necessary for information production and exchange that are open for all to use. This requires physical, logical, and content resources from which to make new statements, encode them for communication, and then render and receive them. Yochai Benkler

Intelligent and Autonomous Cities will Flourish

Korok Ray, Professor and Director of the Mays Innovation Research Center, and Brent Skorup, Research Fellow at Mercatus Center at George Mason, have written a great paper on the “Dumb Infrastructure” that will support the Intelligent & Autonomous Systems. Smart City, Dumb Infrastructure White Paper

Gartner, Exploring the Edge Report

McKinsey — Edge Computing — New Demand, New Markets

Intelligent Infrastructure is being Deployed

Early examples of Intelligent Infrastructure that pioneered to the development of the Public Infrastructure Network Nodes(PINN).

PINN Public-Private Partnerships

Billions of dollars are supporting the Public-Private Partnerships (P3) programs to support the rapid deployment of Intelligent Infrastructure. The Autonomy Institute has aligned the government, academia, and industry partners together to support the foundational Intelligent and Autonomous Infrastructure. We are supporting the foundation and easements for what is considered “dumb infrastructure”, but the societal impact is super intelligent.

Autonomy Institute — leading Intelligent, and Autonomous Infrastructure & Systems. Path to Commerce for Industry 4.0 and Autonomous Systems

Do you want to support Intelligent and Autonomous Infrastructure? Request more Information.

What is the Autonomy Institute

A Sematech for Autonomy and AI at the edge. Autonomy Institute(501c3) is accelerating the “Path to Commerce” for intelligent and autonomous systems. This includes Digital Infrastructure, Autonomy, and AI at the edge. It is a government, industry, academia and public alliance to create the policies, markets, jobs, and community benefits of autonomy, starting with the Intelligent and Autonomous Infrastructure that is the equivalent of the Eisenhower Interstate Highways.

Though Sematech didn’t’ need infrastructure, the Autonomy Institute does. There is a tsunami of technology coming to cities and it needs leadership to assure it meets community needs. That’s where the Public-Private Partnership (P3) comes in to deploy Public Infrastructure Network Nodes (PINN). The PINN will be as critical to a city as roads, power, telecommunications, and water infrastructure.

#hpe #edge #5G #autonomy #gnss #pinn #apnt #resilientgrid #smartcity #roboticedge #infrastructure #autonomyinstitute

Autonomy
Infrastructure
Industry 4 0
Pinn
Edge Computing

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Jeffrey DeCoux

Written by Jeffrey DeCoux

2 Followers

Chairman — Autonomy Institute — leading Intelligent, and Autonomous Infrastructure & Systems. Path to Commerce for Industry 4.0 and Autonomous Systems

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