https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8564-948X
Humanity has evolved from remote antiquity, when the first hominids began to build tools and dominated fire, to the present with remarkable development of communications, to the point that there are more cell phones than humans, as reported by the International Telecommunications Union. Industrial revolutions describe epochs where profound transformations take place with massive impact on the society. Different periods of industrial revolution have been classified viz. Industrial Revolution X.0, or just Industry X.0, where X takes on values from 1 to 5. We describe very briefly each of these periods in what follows:[Citation1]
Industrial Revolution 1.0: This began in the mid-18th century in Great Britain and ended around 1930’s. In this period, the main activity, agriculture, began to be transformed to industry. Changes in power production (steam machine, etc.) for improving industrial operations were one of the principal aspects that define the start of this period.
Industrial Revolution 2.0: This started when the previous industrial revolution reached its end about 1930’s. The main characteristics of this period were the change in the mode of production, which evolved to chain mass production and automation, mainly in the automobile industry. Oil and electricity were the important sources of energy and telephone, radio and aviation were introduced with great impact on the society.
Industrial Revolution 3.0: A large number of new technologies, derived from the expansion of sciences, started to be deployed in industry, including electronics, computers, Internet, mobile devices and biotechnology. Energy sources like nuclear and gas were introduced in many countries.
Industrial Revolution 4.0: This period is significant for the society and from the beginning of the present millennium an even larger expansion of scientific ideas and methods has rapidly been implemented. These include robots, drones, machine learning, 3D printing, nanotechnology, computing apps, big data, virtual reality and artificial intelligence, among many others.
Industrial Revolution 5.0: We can currently detect (at beginning of the 2020’s) the first steps of the next industrial revolution, which essentially consist of integrating, rather than excluding people who perform a given activity with the help of robotic systems and advanced computing.[Citation2,Citation3] Consequently, this new revolution is aimed at modifying the situation that prevailed in previous decades, in the sense that robots and many of the computer systems displaced people who performed essentially routine tasks (loading and unloading trucks, cleaning, positioning and adjustment of parts in production lines, etc.) In this sense, a new type of robots has been developed, the so-called: collaborative robots or cobots, which the Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in Germany [Citation4] defines as: “Complex machines which work hand in hand with human beings. In a shared work process, they support and highlight the human operator.”
It is not clear to what extent advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotics will influence drying technologies in the next couple of decades. Much academic research, development and advanced training of engineers and technologists will be needed to allow identification and application of these new technologies to the scale-up, design and optimal operation of critical drying systems. Enhancement in university education and research strategies will be required for drying technologies to show major improvement. Sun et al.[Citation5] and Martynenko and Misra [Citation6] have provided concise overviews about artificial intelligence and machine learning, respectively, that have reference to drying technologies. Much remains to be done before these digital advances will impact industrial drying.
Institute of Physics Rosario, CONICET-National University of Rosario, Rosario, Argentina
[email protected]
Marcelo Vega
National University of Rosario, Rosario, Argentina
[email protected]
Arun S. Mujumdar
McGill University, Quebec, Canada
[email protected]
References
- Horn, J.; Rosenband, L.; Smith, M. Reconceptualizing the Industrial Revolution, MIT Press: Cambridge MA and London, 2020.
- Nahavandi, S. Industry 5.0 – A Human-Centric Solution. Sustainability 2019, 11, 4371. DOI: 10.3390/su11164371.
- Sheridan, T. B. Human-Robot Interactions: Status and Challenges. Hum. Factors 2016, 58, 525–532. DOI: 10.1177/0018720816644364.
- Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Germany. Collaborative Robots. Safe Co-Operation between Human Beings and Robots. https://www.dguv.de/ifa/fachinfos/kollaborierende-roboter/index-2.jsp.
- Sun, Q.; Zhang, M.; Mujumdar, A. S. Recent Developments of Artificial Intelligence in Drying of Fresh Food: A Review. Crit. Rev. Food Sci. Nutr. 2019, 59, 2258–2275. DOI: 10.1080/10408398.2018.1446900.
- Martinenko, A.; Misra, N. N. Machine Learning in Drying. Drying Technol. 2020, 38, 596–609