Apr 04, 2018 - Regular readers of NZ Tech CEO Graeme Mueller’s weekly newsletter to members and supporters may have been surprised to see him question the Government’s Marketplace for Cloud service. In general, a vocal supporter of Government’s moves in ICT procurement, Mueller questioned why development of the Marketplace for Cloud Services, a “major tech project”, had been awarded to a company offshore.

Unlocking the value of digital manufacturing.  The recent Rockwell Automation TechED event in Auckland was well attended and revealed the latest technologies for high performance manufacturing and production. With a strong focus on New Zealand’s food & beverage, water/wastewater and OEM industries, the event brought together industry professionals including end users, system integrators, distributors, partners and machine builders.

EVolocity is a programme conducted with secondary schools that sees student teams design and build an electric vehicle. They meet regionally to race their vehicles and compete for places in the national final.

Biomimicry is the strategy of modeling designs and structures in technology after nature writes Isaac Maw for engineering.com  Building a two-armed assembly robot to have wrist, elbow and shoulder joints, like a human, is a good example of biomimicry.

Mar 21, 2018  -  New Zealanders will hear and learn all about the country’s most amazing world-leading innovation, projects and breakthroughs during Techweek in May, NZTech chief executive Graeme Muller says.

Worldwide, the value of the horticultural industry will increase with better pollination systems, robust quality control, better traceability systems, more cost-competitive practice and solutions for the difficulty of finding seasonal orchard crews.

The ethics of artificial intelligence will be critical to the success of AI going forward, a Microsoft leader and a keynote speaker at the AI Day event in Auckland next week says. Steve Guggenheimer, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s AI Business, says that given AI has the potential to reshape not just industries and governments, but society as a whole. “Working on the ethics of the use of AI, from the beginning, in key areas like transparency, accountability, privacy and bias will be crucial to the success of AI going forward. “There is a strong focus on the ethical implications…

Mar 19, 2018  -  Intelligent transport systems could earn $1.5 billion a year.  Intelligent transport systems could be a sunrise tech industry for New Zealand, earning up to $1.5 billion a year, a new industry report has found.

Sometimes, to move forward, you have to go back to the basics—sometimes way back. SpinLaunch, a startup spaceflight development company, raised $30 million to fund a catapult system—not a flaming ball to capture the castle catapult system, but rather technology to launch cargo into space more cost-effectively.

The announcement of the world’s first self-driving electric air taxi being piloted in Christchurch is just one of the examples of New Zealand becoming a living tech laboratory, NZTech chief executive Graeme Muller said today. The Zephyr Airworks aircraft, financed by Google co-founder Larry Page, is a great testimony to responding to a global challenge around traffic and congestion, Muller says. “New Zealand is a living laboratory and we see many other examples of Kiwi ingenuity being attractive to the global tech market, such as the Incredible Skies autonomous drone testing space in Northland where they are testing the delivery…

In Phoenix, Arizona, cars are self-navigating the streets. In many homes, people are speaking to digital assistants, with the machines responding. Smartphones and apps can now recognise faces in photos and translate from one language to another, to name a few other examples of artificial intelligence (AI). A leading New Zealand geo-AI company, Orbica, says AI is here and it’s bringing exciting new possibilities. But how quickly will they overhaul the way people live and change the way they do business? Much of the work that’s going into AI is behind-the-scenes with applications for organisations and robotics in the health…