A warehouse full of lettuce might not be the first place you would expect to find the next Industrial Revolution. But follow the LED lights and you’ll discover a glimpse of the future of agriculture — industrial-scale, indoor farming.
Advances in LED technology are helping to create an environment where vegetables can be produced at scale for maximum impact — with higher yields and shorter grow cycles, no matter what climate.
GE’s aviation business has a team of data scientists who spend their time sifting through gigabytes of aircraft data and seeking useful bits of information, sometimes even finding treasures they haven’t been looking for.
The machines are talking, and the conversation is getting bigger and more complex. That’s why last October, GE said it would open to developers its new software platform for the Industrial Internet, called Predix. Today, the Japanese telecom giant and the country’s third largest mobile carrier, SoftBank Telecom, said it would take a license to build Predix apps for shipping, manufacturing and other industries.
Tis the season when shoppers flock to online deal sites and use their price comparison software to hunt for the best bargains. They are not alone. Shipping companies could soon start using similar algorithms to cheaply and efficiently charge their electric trucks to get those same orders delivered.
Last year, the aviation engineers at General Electric found themselves with a jet engine bracket problem. At 4.48 pounds each, the brackets, little pieces of metal that support engine components, were weighing the plane down. Now, in the grand scheme of airplanes, a five-pound bracket seems pretty harmless, but it was a problem nonetheless, and one GE thought was solvable. “We thought, wouldn’t it be great if you could figure out way to make the bracket lighter?” recalls Steve Liguori, GE’s Executive Director of Global Innovation & New Models.
GE opened its Brazil Technology Center in Rio de Janeiro today. The $500 million research hub will focus on developing advanced technologies for offshore oil and gas exploration and production.
The center, GE’s first in Latin America, will employ 400 researchers by the end of the decade. They will work with Petrobras, Statoil, BG Group and other GE customers in the region on solving engineering challenges such as drilling 40,000-foot deep wells 100 miles off shore, and processing oil and gas 10,000 feet below the sea level, in an alien world dominated by darkness and crushing pressures.
One of the many characters in Melville’sMoby Dick is Bulkington, an intrepid sailor for whom “land seemed scorching to his feet” and who on a “shivering winter’s night” thrust the mighty ship Pequod’s “vindictive bows into the cold malicious waves,” as it set out on its fatal whale hunting expedition.
The intriguingly named Quant e-Sportlimousine has been making a splash in Europe, where it was just approved for road use. The electric vehicle can go from 0 to 62 miles per hour in a ridiculous 2.8 seconds, reach a projected top speed of 217 mph, and has a range of 370 miles for one charge, according to its manufacturer, Liechtenstein-based NanoFlowCell AG. Oh, and it’s powered by a saltwater-filled battery.
GE will sell its Appliances business to Sweden’s Electrolux in a strategic move that boosts the focus on the company’s core industrial units. The $3.3 billion, all-cash deal follows GE’s recent bid to acquire the power and grid businesses of the French industrial giant Alstom.
