Automation

The report segments the market on the basis of geography into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific (Asia addition, the report segments the market based on types of robots such as articulated robots, cylindrical robots, SACRA robots, Cartesian robots and other types of robots. Furthermore, the report has also been segmented on the basis of industries served which includes automotive industry, electrical & electronics industry, chemical, rubber & plastics industry, machinery industry, metals industry, food & beverages Industry, precision & optics Industry and other types of industries served.

Moreover, the report segments the market based on functions, which includes soldering and welding function, materials handling function, assembling & disassembling function, painting and dispensing function, milling, cutting and recessing function and other types of functions. Get more details at: http:// WV. Treacherousness. Com/industrial-robotics. HTML Based on industries served, the market Is segmented Into automotive Industry, electrical & electronics, chemical, rubber & plastics, machinery, metals industry, food & beverages, precision & optics, etc.

Among these, automotive industry segment dominated the market in 2012 at $737 billion. However, the segment Is expected to witness low growth owing to slow down in the automotive industry. The food and beverages segment is expected to witness highest growth rate of 6. % over the forecast period owing to rising food and beverages industry. Moreover, the rising need and customized solutions to make the process faster especially in unexplored regions such as Brazil, Argentina, and South Africa is expected to drive the growth in food and beverages industry. In 2012. Salsa Pacific was the largest revenue generator that accounted for 49. 5% of the total market share. The dominance of Asia Pacific is attributed to growth in number of countries such as China, India, Japan, Taiwan and Australia among others investing heavily in research and development Infrastructure developments. Rapid growth in automation demands coupled with reduction of duties on refurbished goods has also fueled growth in the industrial robotics market. Similarly, North American Europe collectively accounted for over one-third of the market share. As these regions have been continually focusing on research and development and have been using industrial robotics for the same.

Computerized Examination is an application that establishes a connection between the university and the users specifically the teachers and students. This application covers only two features of course management system mainly the examination and course monitoring. Teachers use the application to prepare and deploy the examinations. The students, on the other hand, can take the test at their most convenient time and know their results instantly. Course Monitoring System is defined as an application for the administration, documentation, tracking, reporting and delivery of courses or training programs. This application covers the courses that the students take when they take an entrance test.

This system will help the teachers determine the number of students taking the course they want. The system can also monitor the student applicants’ courses, population and other pertinent information concerning their examinations. Details such as the total number of test takers, the total number of students applying for a particular course and also the number of students who passed and failed are included in the proposed system. The organization of the Guidance and Counseling Services of Filamer Christian College in June, 1973 was prompted by two administrative concerns: 1) arising conflicts in some of the academic units, and; 2) in order to prepare for accreditation in 1980.

The advent of the professionalization of the guidance and counseling known as “Guidance and Counseling Act of 2004” (RA 9258) strengthened the programs and services through upgrading the qualification and proficiency of the guidance workers. The Guidance and Counseling Center is trying to make unnecessary improvements and innovations every now and then to respond to the guidance needs of the university. Their vision is to have a professionalized guidance services for the development and enrichment of individual and group lives; Mission is to provide a proactive, functional guidance services for the development of holistic, well-functioning individuals, and; Goals is to provide stable, proactive function programs in the basic areas of Guidance Services. Guidance and Counseling offers the following services like: individual inventory services, testing service, individual and group counseling, information service, research and evaluation, placement and follow up, and orientation.

The Career Guidance and School Promotion activities bring the school closer to the elementary high school graduates of the province within reach. Seminar-workshops are conducted annually to help the graduating students learn the basics of jobs hunting and facilitate an understanding of career development. An information center is established and maintained for educational, social and occupational information to guide clients in decision making. Scholarships, job opening and job requirements are posted for public notice. Provide educational, social and occupational counseling to guide individual’s choice and decisions through homeroom guidance, classroom guidance, and guidance hours during departmental convocations.

To enhance program, the Guidance and Counseling Center organized the Peer Counseling Program which actively involves volunteer students trained for the work. Their system is capable to produce result but they need more in improving for the better and faster release for the entrance examination and for the monitoring of course. In five years, Filamer Christian University will have efficient and faster method of obtaining a computerized examinations and in monitoring the courses.

Problem Statement

Traditional examination method ps thousands of years in our country, and frequent exams today brings a lot of problems as well.

1. The Guidance Office is using complicated forms.

2. The test checkers are having a hard time checking the papers and separating the courses that the students take. 3. The current manual system is inefficient.

Problem Objectives
General Objective
To analyze and develop an online entrance examination and course monitoring system for the Guidance office of Filamer Christian University.

Specific Objectives
1. To design the proposed system that features user friendly electronic tests and accessible online. 2. To design the proposed system that automatically checks test papers and monitors the specific courses chosen by student applicants. 3. To design the proposed system that can prevent the common errors experienced through manual test checking thus achieving accuracy in automatic test checking results.

Scope of the Project

The guidance counseling department is directly involved in the development and implementation of the proposed system since the department is directly in charge of giving examinations to student applicants in the institution. It includes the examinations, monitoring of courses in every department of the freshmen students in the university and scholarships that the Guidance and Counseling Office offers.

Computerized Examination and Course Monitoring System handles all the operations and generates reports as soon as the test is completed which saves the precious time of faculties spent on reviewing answer sheets. The proposed system includes course monitoring. It excludes the services of the Guidance Office like the Individual Inventory Services, Individual Group and Counseling, Information Service, Research and Evaluation, Placement and Follow Up and Orientation. The institution that will be directly involved and integrate the proposed system is in Filamer Christian University.

Significance of the Project

The University will benefit from it because the proposed system can be a featured innovation in relation with student services specifically in introducing online entrance examination and course monitoring.

The Guidance counseling department will benefit from it because the proposed system introduces an efficient alternative to manual examination. Faster turnout of the examination results will help the different colleges in the processing of the student applicants’ which will also yield in higher enrollment. The student applicants can instantly get their test results through computerized examination which will help them to conserve their time and effort in waiting for the results.

Definition of Terms

Terms here are conceptually and operationally defined for better understanding of the readers.

Is what is being taught in the Cape Peninsula University of Technology relevant in the testing industry?

The Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) is a tertiary institution of higher learning and technology. The institution’s main goal is towards education and innovation in the technology sector. CPUT’s mission is to become the best tertiary institution of technology in Africa. On the other side, “Testing is a systematic exploration of a component or system with the main aim of finding and reporting defects.” (Hambling B., 2016) Testing does not include the correction of defects; instead, errors and defects are passed on to the developer to correct. Testing ensures that changes and corrections are checked for their effect on other parts of a component or system. This literature review serves to answer the following question, ‘Is what is being taught in the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) relevant in the testing industry?

The Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) offers various undergraduate and post-graduate courses in the Engineering, and the Information and Communication Technology fields. The sole course in CPUT’s Engineering field which involves some form of testing is Computer Systems. Computer Systems is an engineering based course where computer systems are engineered, considering all necessary components that make up a computer system such as the hardware, firmware, operating system, software, utilities, and databases.

Testing in this course is not handled on its own but is integrated with some aspects of computer systems. As an example; when students in computer systems engineer software and software utilities, testing comes into play right before the computer system is about to be deployed. The testing activity in this field serves to make sure that the system behaves according when integrated with other computer system components and does not crash unexpectedly during operation.

In the Information and Communication Technology field; the Higher Certificate in Information and Communication Technology, the National Diploma, Bachelor’s Degree, Masters, and Honours in; Application/Software Development, Communication Networks, Multimedia, as well as Information Technology Management involve to the minimum some form of testing as well. Testing alongside its different kinds, as a course on its own is not offered CPUT. Testing is merely offered as a topic in each of the courses.

The Information and Communication Technology’s Application/Software Development course is mainly focused towards application development using industry recognized practices, programming languages and frameworks. The course has analysis attached to it where business requirements are scrutinized and captured. Software that best meets the examined business requirements is then selected from a list of pre-existing software or developed bearing in mind that each stage of this process has to be tested for correctness.

Design also form a part of software development where software is developed in a certain kind of way, considering certain design rules. After creation, the design is tested for precision but then this testing process is only implemented right before the end. Software development, which is the main focus of the course, consists of some form of testing as to ensure that the applications which are being developed by students meet their purpose.

Similarly, the Information and Communication Technology’s Communication Networks, Multimedia, as well as Information Technology Management encompass minimal testing, which is mostly right at the end of their respective processes. Communication Networks primarily concentrates on network creation, network tools, maintenance, as well as being able to discern and employ diverse networks. Multimedia predominantly centres its course on design and different aspects of design.

Testing in multimedia projects and assessments is the last task. It usually manifests when considering whether certain design rules and principles have been met when designing audio and video advertisements, business cards, billboards etc. In Information Technology Management, testing manifests where the processes employed to manage and to produce the desired information from raw data. Testing in this course tests that students produce efficient, reliable, and quality information.

As of current, the major focus in the testing industry is centred on automation testing. This is brought by several progressions in the test automation field. The test automation field makes use of agile testing methodologies which allow for improved mobile testing, big data testing, as well as cloud testing. Software development and testing companies embrace automation testing using agile testing methodologies because of this reason.

Another popular trend in the testing industry is mobile testing. It is perceived by experts that mobile testing will remain at the test automation trends because of the remarkable shift in the adoption of mobile devices and technology in business. Mobile application testing has an undeniable influence in the testing industry which consists of functional, performance, compatibility, usability, and security testing as the major the major areas. Open source frameworks, mobile development operations, and mobile application markets help fuel the expansion in the mobile testing landscape.

Predictive analytics and the testing of big data is another relevant trend in the testing sphere. This is a result of the mere fact that device, applications, and networks create a huge amount of unstructured, broken data which ultimately leads to faulty and costly decisions if quality management is compromised. Predictive analytics and the testing of big data focus on quality assurance and quality management which remains one of the main goals of testing. As a result, businesses aim to develop means to predict whether certain application behaviour will generate customer demand or not.

Testing web services and SOA architectures is another relevant career path in the automation testing industry. This is so as to improve the end-to-end performance (from one computer node to another) of web applications. At present applications are complex, and are usually integrated with other systems which carry out equally important functionality to its clients and users. These complex integrations are today’s necessities that connect communities correctly and deliver the right, timely response. This is why many companies invest in SOA and web services test automation.

The automation of an entire Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is another relevant and still growing practice in the testing industry. Traditionally, the SDLC would be carried out in a manual fashion. Test developers, designers, and all relevant role players in the SDLC would carry out specific operations which saw to the completion of the stages in SDLC besides the maintenance stage which is continuous. With the presence of automation testing however, automating the SDLC means that unit tests, system tests, and integration tests all become automated operations. The advantage of this practice is that operations in the SDLC are being completed quicker. In addition, the solution is cost effective because the amount of money spend in hiring a teams of manual testers is reduced to a single team (depending on the size and complexity of the project), which is responsible for writing test scripts that will carry out the automation.

To conclude, 10% of what is taught in CPUT is relevant in the testing industry. The other 90% are practises and methodologies that have not yet been introduced in CPUT’s different course curriculums. This is because, the gap between what is currently offered to students and what is in the testing industry are worlds apart. At most, what is offered at CPUT is not relevant in the testing industry because CPUT is not test based. CPUT does not focus on testing as a subject/.module. This is a devastating fact considering that testing is the most important aspect of engineering, design, and development. Testing determines whether what has been engineered, designed, and developed is successful or not.

References:

• B. Hambling 2016 Software Testing: An ISTQB-ISEB Foundation Guide
  http://oredev.org/2015/sessions/test-automation-trends-for-2016-and-beyondstaying-employable-in-changing-times
• http://www.joecolantonio.com/2015/01/13/test-automationtrends-for-2015/
• http://blogs.gartner.com/martin-kihn/i-predict-the-rise-of-predictive-analytics/
• https://dzone.com/articles/10-effective-ways-for-successful-apitesting

“What do you do?”

Humans have been asking this question since the beginning of time. For some, it’s a moment of pride and an opportunity to list their achievements, and for some, it’s a dreadful question that haunts their life. For the rest, it doesn’t matter for they look towards it just as a mean of getting a sustainable life; they do or not is a different story altogether. And soon it wouldn’t matter to you as well because you probably wouldn’t have one.

A job or whatever it is that you do for a living is placed so high on ‘how to judge you chart’ that it determines your status in society. For instance, who would you choose as your President – a real estate (obnoxious) businessman with no experience in politics or a lawyer turned politician with two decades of an unprecedented sort of experience? I leave that for the Americans to decide, but what we need to pay attention to here, something that affects the whole world is our very beloved job industry, which is on the verge of crumbling down like a sand castle. And this is what our fourth industrial revolution will look like.

Are robots taking over our jobs?

Indubitably. 

And if getting a job wasn’t hard already, lo and behold, it gets harder.

According to a new World Bank research, automation threatens 69 per cent of the jobs in India, while 77 per cent in China in the coming 25 years and this number is high enough to fundamentally disrupt the pattern of traditional economic path in developing countries. In layman terms, this means that automation, which includes the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence, will eventually take over more than half of our jobs, and our job-centric society will have to find a way to cope with and through that.

Now, the world has already gone over a couple of industrial revolutions to realize that machines are in fact better at some tasks than humans. This was probably first realized around 200 years ago by the Luddites in Britain who then protested by smashing machines that made their weaving skills obsolete. Although every industrial revolution claims to bring more jobs than it destroys, experts have considerable evidence to believe that it decouples productivity and employment growth.

See for yourself, the evidence is present everywhere. From collecting tolls, monitoring health, flying a plane, transmitting messages to literally giving us directions, machines have been taught, or rather they have learnt how to accommodate between humans.

Manual jobs started disappearing years ago. Self-driving cars are nightmares to the driver community, Baxter robot threatens warehouse and labouring jobs while Hadrian X is a bricklaying expert. The high status cognitive jobs won’t escape this time either. ROSS, a legal version of IBM’s Watson was hailed as the first artificially intelligent lawyer; Google’s AlphaGo beat the world champion Lee Sedol in a 3,000-year-old Chinese board game with trillions of possible moves. AI has even outperformed humans in human surgeons in stitching up a pig.

Feeling incompetent, anyone?

So are we moving towards a workless future?

Kinda.

And all’s not good with that.

World Bank president Jim Kim argues, “As we continue to encourage more investment in infrastructure to promote growth, we also have to think about the kinds of infrastructure that countries will need in the economy of the future. We all know that technology has and will continue to fundamentally reshape the world. But the traditional economic path from increasing the productivity of agriculture to light manufacturing and then to full-scale industrialization may not be possible for all developing countries.”

History tells us that deranged by the chaos of colonization by Britain, India and China missed the first industrial revolution. Where China got all frenzied to catch up, India is still struggling. Countries like the UK and US drove these revolutions which made their economy grow, whereas those that could do nothing but look are now making pacts with the former to become like them.

And as the clouds of another industrial revolution approach us, the question remains if India is ready as a lot is at stake this time. Companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft are leading the research on artificial intelligence with not even one Indian IT company close enough. In the last industrial revolution Britain and Europe were able to export the job losses created by machinery to colonies such as India, and while they grew, India went through abject poverty. This time, when the disruption in economises is predicted to be as never before, will India be able to bear all those jobs loses with a balanced economy and sufficient economy growth? Will it be able to replace the old with the new? If yes, what is that new?

Where does this leave India?

A major disruption is expected to happen in US where 47% of US job are vulnerable to automation. Even if enough new jobs are created, they will be in countries driving the revolution. It goes without saying that India will take years, if not decades, to par with the US. 

Ravi Venkatesan, chairman of Bank of Baroda raised some difficult questions talking about this issue in an article. He says that assuming every 5 jobs are created for every 10 jobs lost, current trends suggest two of these will be in the US, two in China and perhaps one in Europe. He then asks, “If this is true, do countries like India once again become colonies? Not of countries perhaps but of companies such as Google, Pfizer or Monsanto? Do we simply become markets for innovations developed elsewhere? Will the vast majority of our people then live on subsistence-wage service jobs? Is India doomed to remain a low-middle-income country?”  

The only solution here is innovation. India has to grow stronger as not just a technology commercializer but also a technology creator. If India really tries, this could be the biggest opportunity for us, if not, we’re in big trouble.

Alas, who would have thought that it would come down from robots killing us to them taking over our jobs? What’s funny is that the possibility of the latter happening looks much scarier.