This article is part of the 2023 Electronic Design Technology Forecast issue.
What you'll learn:
- Ripple effects of potential product recalls and economic woes.
- Implementation of advanced test systems.
- The rise of digital twins and AI across test and industrial ecosystems.
With R&D efficiency a priority in 2023, expect to see increased use of digital twins for system design and testing. This approach enables faster design cycles, more efficient co-design of hardware and software, a more robust product, and reduced costs while also delivering benefits in improved manufacturability and serviceability. In the coming year, anticipate a shift to connected platforms in which complete products are designed and tested via a digital twin.
Faster 5G rollouts are accelerating demand and expectations for adjacent advances in complex technologies like autonomous driving, new distributed Internet of Things (IoT) applications, and the rollout of metaverse capabilities. Products involving this level of complexity need to meet more compliance and connectivity standards, operate across a much wider range of often unknown conditions, and are expected to be backward compatible with other systems that aren’t yet in the market.
As a result, expectations are that product developers will be tempted to build—known as do-it-yourself, or DIY—rather than buy their digital twins. Those taking DIY shortcuts will be leading the spike in product recalls.
Product Recalls and Recession Fears
Product recall rates will rise between 2023 and 2026. The pent-up demand for new products capable of connecting to 5G capacity was already putting pressure on developers before the worldwide pandemic shutdowns. The follow-on supply chain issues, which made many parts scarce, caused rapid redesigns of products using substitute parts, with many not designed to the same specifications. As a result, it’s expected that there will be an increase in product failures as the wave of these products hits the market.
The concern over a recession in 2023 will drive more enterprises to shift data-intensive tasks to the cloud to reduce infrastructure and operational costs while also improving cybersecurity. Moving applications to the cloud also will help organizations deliver greater data-driven customer experiences.
Advanced Test and Encryption
For example, advanced simulation and test data-management capabilities such as real-time feature extraction and encryption will enable use of a secure cloud-based data mesh. That mesh will accelerate and deepen customer insights through new algorithms operating on a richer data set. In the year ahead, expect the cloud to be a surprising boon for companies as they navigate economic uncertainty.
Encryption advances will bolster cloud and network security. Organizations have historically been hesitant to adopt network- and cloud-based software and services due to security concerns. Expect these to be addressed in 2023 through robust encryption capabilities and greater access control of measurement parameters and data. This will give users unparalleled assurance of data integrity from probe to cloud—and back. As a result, we expect more cloud and network security investments to help enterprises protect the ever-expanding threat surface in the year ahead.
Automation will be the lifebelt in the expected downturn. In today’s uncertain climate, technology that reduces the need for human labor such as automation and robotics are in particularly high demand.
Expect heightened investment in tools that automate repetitive simulation and measurement tasks, ensure the validity of results by catching and fixing errors, and improve measurement quality by eliminating human induced variability. Through these and other automation capabilities, employees will be freed to act on the new insights gleaned and focus on other, more strategic initiatives.
Digital Twins and AI
Digital-twin advances have gone hand-in-hand with artificial-intelligence (AI) and machine-learning (ML) technology. The cost of exploding data volumes in this space will be driven down by application of AI/ML technology. Automation and AI/ML techniques will emerge to reduce costs associated with managing today’s increasing volumes of measurement data.
In addition, these technologies will diminish the need for manual analysis of data sets, extract critical metadata, and separate measurement errors from true device-under-test failures, which will speed insight and reduce wasted effort.
Meeting government mandates and societal imperatives for carbon reduction will continue to be a focus in 2023. AI/ML-enabled optimizations based on measurement and monitoring of industrial and commercial infrastructure, such as data networks, will drive the next level of energy-use management.
Digital twins and AI are transformative technologies promising to dramatically alter the world. While the technologies aren’t new, real-world use cases will emerge to show the transformative nature of these technologies.
Digital twins will take on the role of virtual caregivers/companions, allowing seniors to seek help and services when required and live in their homes autonomously longer. They will provide insights that enable humans to understand how decisions impact the world from a sustainability perspective. By modeling the planned change, they will be able to see how the entire ecosystem can be impacted and adjust as needed.
Read more articles in the 2023 Electronic Design Technology Forecast issue.