2023 in review: April to June

April

BT powers a UK-first drone medical delivery trial. 2023 proved to be a very important year in developments for healthtech and logistics vehicles. This over-land Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) trial was a good example, following BT’s investment in aerospace company Altitude Angel.

The 32km drone route connects Midland hospitals, University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust sites in Coventry and Rugby. A total of 130 flights and more than 30 hours’ worth of flights were completed. Over 1,900km was flown, including 220km by drone in a single day — this is the equivalent of flying from London to North Africa.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge designed a low-cost energy efficient robotic hand that can grasp a range of objects using just the movement in its wrist and feeling in its ‘skin’. While the hand cannot independently move its fingers, it was still able to carry out a range of movements and predict whether it would drop the objects by using the information provided by tactile sensors.

The lab’s research team carried out more than 1200 tests. The robot was initially trained using small 3D-printed plastic balls.

Walkers partners autonomous and electric freight company Einride to deploy a new fleet of connected electric trucks between its manufacturing sites in Leicester and Coventry.

The starting point would be the Midlands’ ‘golden logistics triangle,’ which lies within four hours’ drive of 90% of the British population and contains a significant share of the country’s logistics and warehousing facilities. Over three years the 25 mile route is predicted to reduce the British food manufacturing giant’s carbon footprint by over 1,600 tonnes.

BT launches a virtual ward and monitoring programme to give the NHS and other healthcare providers tools to manage patient care, such as apps, AI monitoring and online patient consultation solutions.

Through one of BT’s new digital health partners, Feebris, for instance, it will help deliver virtual care solutions which use AI and allows clinicians and patients to capture reliable health information in real time and assess the risk of conditions worsening quickly.

Robotic nano-surgery kills GBM cancer cells in mice’s brains. Professors from the University of Toronto Robotics Institute and Canadian research hospital SickKids are trying to develop a new nano-surgical treatment for patients with glioblastoma (GBM) — the most common and aggressive form of brain cancer.

They tricked cancer cells into taking up carbon nanotubes, which they then shredded by spinning the tubes using magnetic force. The mechanical stimulations inside GBM cancer cells disrupted their internal structures causing the cells to fail. During test phase, the treatment in mice shrunk tumour size and extended the rodents’ median life spans from roughly 22 days to about 27 days.

May

AI to diagnose heart attacks. Researchers at the University of Edinburgh tested an AI algorithm named CoDe-ACS on 10,286 patients across six countries. It was able to rule out a heart attack in more than double the number of patients, with a 99.6% accuracy, in comparison to current testing methods.

CoDE-ACS could also help doctors identify patients whose abnormal troponin levels were due to a heart attack rather than another condition (troponin proteins are released in the blood when the heart muscle has been damaged), researchers claimed. Clinical trials are now underway in Scotland.

“Can I take your order?” asks Wendy’s new conversational AI in its drive-thru in Colombus, Ohio. The fast-food chain trials new generative AI offerings, such as Vertex AI, to have conversations with customers, understand made-to-order requests and generate responses to frequently asked questions.

The AI will be powered by Google’s foundational large language models (LLMs) that use data from its menu, business rules and logic for conversation guardrails, to integrate with restaurant hardware and the point-of-sale system.

Ericsson and Telia launch Baltics’ first private 5G network. A wireless network technology that delivers cellular connectivity for private use cases — which it claims will digitally transform the factory’s business operations and foster innovation.

Its 5G private network offers reliability, predictable latency, security and speed, enabling a variety of use cases such as asset condition monitoring and management, computer vision, digital twins and collaborative robotics. The network will also power newly-released features such as its 5G precise indoor positioning tool which offers precise indoor asset tracking. Other advantages onclude a reduced dependency on wires, to improve the agility of a production layout and design, and the enhanced mobility of other ‘impactful’ factory solutions such as automated guided vehicles.

UK’s first self-driving bus service launches in Scotland. The buses rotate a 14-mile bus route at up to 50mph from Ferrytoll Park & Ride in Fife to Edinburgh Park interchange every 30 minutes.

Five autonomous buses — modified from manufacturer Alexander Dennis’ standard Enviro200 single decker — are using Fusion Processing’s autonomous drive system, CAVStar, taking data from a range of sensors including cameras, LiDAR and radar together with AI processing to deliver efficiency throughout the journey.

The buses also receive information from traffic light systems to plan speeds from one green light to the next, reducing unnecessary braking and accelerating and reducing carbon emissions. The service will operate a regular timetable with capacity for around 10,000 passenger journeys per week. Two members of staff will be on board.

Immertia unveils holographic packaging using AI to turn product packaging into an interactive customer experience. The Hologram Concierge concept links a holographic assistant to packaging by scanning the product with a smartphone camera, activating a lifelike, three-dimensional holographic assistant that appears as though it has emerged from within the product itself.

It provides detailed information about the brand and the product. The surrounding environment is also transformed, with clickable virtual links and three-dimensional content appearing to float in mid-air.

June

HSBC explores quantum computing in banking partnering with Quantiniuum for a series of projects. The projects focus on cyber security, fraud detection and natural language processing.

In the first part of the collaboration, Quantiniuum will combine quantum computing-hardened cryptographic keys with post-quantum cryptographic algorithms to mitigate current and future cyber threats. In a second part, HSBC and Quantinuum will explore the potential benefits of quantum machine learning (QML) and quantum natural language processing (QNLP).

The partnership will also look at QNLP, which is a new form of language-based AI that uses an explainable model, rather than the “black box” methods of traditional classical large-language models.

Boots, BA and BBC MOVEit attacks attributed to Russian Clop cyber gang. The gang was able to penetrate through a vulnerability in Progress Software’s MOVEit file transfer product used by HR and Payroll software provider Zellis.

More than 100,000 staff have been informed that payroll data may have been taken. The ransomware gang have threatened to leak staff data including home addresses, national insurance numbers and bank details if the ransom isn’t paid — although employers are being urged not to pay out. Other known victims compromised via Zellis include the University of Rochester in the state of New York, and the provincial government of Nova Scotia in Canada.

US hit most by ransomware attacks, according to NordLocker’s recent ransomware report. Construction takes the tops spot, as well as tech, finance, business services and healthcare.

22% of attacks are aimed at small businesses with 10-50 employees, and even though less than 1% of US firms are publicly traded, they make up 8% of attacks. Adding to that, 5% of ransomware attacks in the US are public sector institutions. California, Texas, Florida, and New York are the top states hit by ransomware attacks.

Vodafone and Three UK £15bn merge to create the country’s biggest mobile operator. The new group combined will have around 27 million mobile customers and will be majority owned by Vodafone with a 51% stake.

The deal could face regulatory challenges, however, as the Competitions and Markets Authority may be concerned about reducing the number of first party operators from four down to three, something that has stymied consolidation in the UK market in the past.

The new business would be led by current Vodafone UK boss Ahmed Essam and result in annual savings worth £700 million by its fifth year.

AI could predict and automate people’s food orders by 2040, says UK’s Deliveroo. The delivery giant said that operators would be able to tailor meals to people’s individual mental, physical, social and environmental needs and goals.

AI could synchronise with someone’s Personal AI — a digital version of someone’s mind — to provide personalised meal recommendations based on their physiological and psychological state at any given time. Breathprints could also be used to provide insight into individual’s diet preferences and disease diagnosis. And an ASMR-style metaverse could allow people to virtually smell and taste the food before they order, helping consumers to reduce time deciding between a wide-selection of cuisines and dishes.