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Business News/ Companies / People/  Tata CTO’s 5 key technology trends with imminent market potential
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Tata CTO’s 5 key technology trends with imminent market potential

Tata CTO picks commercial drones, aggregator apps, genetic compilers, digital assistants and immersive entertainment as technology trends

Recently, technology leaders from several Tata Group companies visited leading American research universities, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard, Yale, Stanford and the University of Southern California. Photo: BloombergPremium
Recently, technology leaders from several Tata Group companies visited leading American research universities, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard, Yale, Stanford and the University of Southern California. Photo: Bloomberg

Mumbai: With the intention of keeping a tab on emerging technologies that are crucial to businesses, the Tata Group is laying emphasis on interaction of its executives with leaders of innovation.

Recently, technology leaders from several Tata Group companies visited leading American research universities, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard, Yale, Stanford and the University of Southern California.

“While we have ongoing research engagements and identify future collaboration areas, these interactions also help us identify key technology trends with imminent market potential," said Gopichand Katragadda, group chief technology officer (CTO), Tata Sons Ltd, in an article in the Tata Review, Tata Group’s in-house magazine. Katragadda is acting as an evangelist for innovation across Tata companies.

Tata Group executives also had significant interactions with Tel Aviv University and Ohio State University, among others, said Katragadda.

In the Tata Review article published in July, Katragadda talked about the importance of keeping tabs on emerging technologies and disruptive trends with market potential. He said it may be difficult, but is crucial for businesses.

Katragadda picked out five key technology trends with imminent market potential—commercial drones, aggregator apps, genetic compilers, digital assistants and immersive entertainment.

“It would be better to utilise these technologies to drive profitable growth," said Katragadda, who is responsible for technology at the Tata Group level and manages R&D operations.

Here’s what these five key trends mean.

Commercial drones

While regulations are still to catch up and enable the commercial potential of drones from agriculture to film making, the technology itself has gone beyond the inflection point. Today’s drones are a result of composite material structures, rare earth magnet motors and nanotechnology batteries. Drone parts can be 3D printed, controlled using tablets and have a battery life of 10 minutes to 30 minutes. In combination with cloud computing, artificial intelligence and chaos theory, these drones are opening up a myriad of applications.

Aggregator apps

A $50 billion valuation for an app? That is Uber. Connecting sellers and buyers directly for a fee of 20% could be a pretty lucrative business. The technology core to enable aggregation is the low-power Bluetooth-based beacon. Beacons use Bluetooth connections to transmit messages or prompts directly to a smartphone or tablet. Another technology being used by Uber is cloud messaging, a technology which also pushes messages and updates to your smartphones. Beacons and cloud messaging are set to revolutionise retail, transport and social businesses, and enable the first consumer examples of the Internet of Things.

Genetic design platforms

Designing an electromagnetic sensor, as an example, involves utilising finite element or analytical simulations of the sensor and varying the sensor parameters until the design specification is achieved. Imagine being able to do the same with the DNA of a plant and create a new plant that glows in the dark or is optimised to produce hydrogen fuel. This is exactly what is possible with genome compilers such as this. However, the challenge of designing a specific outcome in something living is not trivial. Also, biosafety tests and regulations are evolving in various regions to leverage the benefits of such technology, while maintaining the overall health of the environment.

Digital assistants

Microsoft has Cortana, Apple has Siri, and then there is Google Now. Even without an explicit digital personal assistant, your smartphone keeps track of your appointments, flight details, location, traffic, and advises you when to leave for the airport. The key is to let apps loose on your privacy and access all your data. The University of Michigan has launched an open source computing platform, Sirius, that has the potential to unleash the power of digital assistants. The combination of cloud, smartphones and wearables opens up applications from health to speed-dating to a know-it-all consultant.

Immersive design and entertainment

3D TV has not taken off, nor have the numerous heads-up virtual reality (VR) sets in the market. The most recent developments of VR headsets are from Samsung, Oculus Rift (acquired by Facebook for $2 billion) and Sony. The keyword here is “presence". Presence is a window into another world that heightens the emotions gamers experience as they play. With ultra-HD, wide-angle viewing, immersive audio and low-latency response movement, the promise of immersive gaming is big. Katragadda says he himself would bet bigger on augmented-reality social gaming which does not cut off the player completely from the real world. In addition to entertainment, immersive environments play a key role in design. At Stanford, as an example, an immersive environment is used to design the automotive driving experience and get feedback on the human-machine interface, which has become a differentiator.

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Published: 06 Aug 2015, 09:49 AM IST
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