Trend of Increasing Controllability

This morning while bringing my daughter to the kindergarten, I had to stop at a traffic light. This traffic light was provisionally installed because of a construction zone. You probably know that feeling of frustration that comes up when you must wait at a red light although no other car is coming from the other road. Such lights are often using a fixed program. No matter what happens, every 3 minutes the direction changes. Obviously, this is not very efficient, and people have to wait unnecessarily.

More advanced systems react on the presence of cars and let them pass according to the information they capture via some simple sensors. Even more advanced systems are connected to traffic control centers were all the traffic lights in a certain area are controlled and coordinated to avoid traffic jams in highly frequented streets, tunnels or city centers. Computer systems and humans take decisions on the flow of vehicles and control each traffic light or even dynamic speed signs. They can react flexibly to any challenge but require a central instance.

A way easier system is a roundabout. The flow of cars is self-controlled without any additional intervention (and usually at lower costs).

So, what we observe in this and other systems is an increasing degree of controllability along the evolution of systems. We can observe this in many cases: car assistance systems, cyber security systems or the use of AI for many purposes.

There is a tendency to move from rigid and inflexible systems to more flexible or even self-controlled or even self-learning systems. In our cars we are more and more surrounded by assistance systems: ABS helps braking safely, a distance warner can prevent accidents, traffic sign recognition allows automatic adoption to the speed limit, just to mention a few. And, very likely, in a near future we will have self-driving cars who will automatically react to all common situations, navigate and learn from those were they couldn’t react. They have learned from human drivers what they have to know and continue learning from future situations. And with the help of omnipresent networks and computing power, these systems will be able to provide up to date algorithms for better driving instantly.

In other cases, the impact is less obvious. In oncology, there was originally a fixed regime to treat patients with chemotherapy. Patients had to undergo a rigid scheme of treatments were cell-killing drugs were injected into the blood circle. These drugs would kill tumor cells faster than body cells and exterminate the malign cells after several repetitions. There is now a new generation of drug, that enable the immune system of the patient to fight against the tumor cells itself. They unmask the cancer cells and let the body do the rest of the work. Although also in this approach there are side effects possible, we can see also here a step towards a self-controlled system.

Do you see other systems were flexible or self-controlled systems would make sense?

More information www.schaper-tech.com .