Since the early summer of 2019, SWARM has had an extended engineering team based in Romania. The team includes a UX designer, QA lead, and core engineering. While we couldn’t all be together for the Christmas season, the team did manage a dinner celebration and sent us a few photos of the party. This is one we could publish ;) Seriously, though, it has been great working with our new engineers, and has enabled us to make significant process on the core SWARM platform.

Here’s a brief video interview of SWARM CEO Anthony Howcroft at the TERRA conference, sharing the stage with Marcus Kennedy & Chamidu Karunathilake - thanks to Rocketspace and Rabobank for filming & providing this!

For the second year running, SWARM attended the MAST (Maritime Advanced Systems and Technology) open house and technology exhibition at the Port of Hueneme. Not only is the event a great way to examine innovation up close…

It was a pleasure to participate in the TERRA demo day, and see inspiring presentations from the corporates + startups that are working to transform the food industry. We were able to highlight the excellent results from our collaboration with GrainCorp in Australia, with both Marcus Kennedy and Chamidu Karunathilake present in San Francisco. GrainCorp also showcased an innovative…

The American Chamber of Commerce in Australia kindly included a short video about SWARM in a recent event held in Queensland, Australia for the AgriTech business community. It is great to see that news of our work in optimising grain blending, management, and logistics is spreading so far and wide.

The severe snow storms on the east coast didn’t prevent the Transportation Research Board’s Annual Conference taking place in January, and SWARM CEO Anthony Howcroft presented at a panel on Digital Transformation in Ports hosted by Asst. Professor Lawrence Henesey of the Swedish Blekinge Institute of Technology, along with Joseph Ruddy, Chief Innovation Officer at the US Virginia Port Authority.

We put together a brief video explaining how new technology will impact port eco-systems. Enjoy!

For 10,000 years the world has been fed by grains; mainly wheat, corn, and rice. Only a few decades ago world population growth trends were leading people to predict massive starvation, but the Green Revolution of the 1960’s resulted in crop yields rising from 1.4 tons to over 3.2 tons per acre today. Even so, with wheat consumption forecast in 2018/19 to be higher than production for the first time in a decade, changing weather patterns, and a technology revolution rolling through the world of agriculture, today’s grain organizations are in a heightened state of digital transformation. 

Irvine, California - September 25, 2018: SWARM Engineering has been selected by TERRA, the leading Food and Agriculture Accelerator, into its third cohort kicking off next week at the San Francisco tech campus of program founder RocketSpace. SWARM Engineering was chosen as one of the 16 most innovative startups from across the globe to work alongside industry giants including founding partner Rabobank, as well as AgroFresh, Beta San Miguel, Graincorp,Griffith Foods, Grupo Azuca de Mexico, Nestle,OSI and Tate & Lyle. SWARM Engineering will be focused on optimizing critical aspects of GrainCorp’s supply chain, as part of a broad program of innovation for the international agribusiness.

Anthony Howcroft, CEO of SWARM Engineering, presented at the IGNITE22 event organised by Braid Theory in San Pedro. Anthony discussed the way in which multi-problem optimisation can be used to tackle some of the efficiency issues found in typical port environments such as the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach.

The SWARM team were on-hand at the MAST conference in the Port of Hueneme to meet various participants in the port's eco-system and to learn more about their opportunities and challenges. Did you know that the Port of Hueneme has a speciality in 'cool' cargo, and leads the West coast in banana imports - receiving more than 600,000 tons per year from over 150 vessels? Or that it has a major ro-ro (roll-on roll-off) capability, handling more than 25,000 cars per month from companies such as BMW, Hyundai, Land Rover, and agricultural equipment from the likes of Caterpillar and John Deere?

In the first two parts of this article we looked at why machines are better than humans (at some things), and how swarms of machines will be the next disruptive force in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). Now it’s time to explore a real use case to back up these arguments. We’ll start with a simple example for newbies, and then add complexity – stick with us if you’re an expert…

Every day or so, a friend will send me a youtube link showing a swarm of robots doing something fun. They might be nudging a mobile phone into a user’s hands, completing a military mission, or creating a fancy light-effect behind Lady Gaga at Superbowl. These are entertaining projects, and are often the spearhead of smart academic research.

People are fond of listing things that computers & robots can’t do; like creating original artwork, composing a symphony, appreciating fine wine, or cooking a tasty and nourishing meal from a handful of ingredients. We’ll temporarily ignore the fact that many people can’t do those things either (and some machines can), and look at the equation from the other side.