Professor Nof reached two significant milestones in 2024. He developed a new patent for intelligent failure system prevention that can protect supply chains and energy networks. He also released a book on agricultural robotics systems that can improve farm output and address global issues such as food insecurity. 

Preventing Cascading Failures

Professor Nof’s latest patent introduces a revolutionary approach to failure prevention in large, interconnected systems such as supply chains and energy networks. Natural disasters or equipment malfunctions often cause cascading failures within these systems. These disruptions can affect manufacturing, service operations, or electricity supply to communities. Traditional contingency plans often fail to address these collaborative environments.

This patent provides intelligent, adaptive, and self-learning sequencers that predict how seemingly isolated failures may be interconnected. These sequencers learn from past failures and an understanding of the topology of failure networks to improve their effectiveness over time. The sequencers use this information to generate optimal failure prevention and repair sequences, receiving real-time updates to respond effectively to emerging failures.

“The patent transforms the static and reactive approach to failure repair to a real-time adaptive method,” said Nof. This tool can protect supply chains, energy grids, and other complex vital systems. And what sets it apart is its ability to evolve and improve as it encounters new failures and digests additional data. It’s a patented combination of systems engineering, network science, and the latest AI-powered algorithms.”

New Book Can Aid Food Insecurity and other Large Scale Problems

In addition to his patent, Professor Nof co-authored the book “Cyber-Collaborative Algorithms and Protocols: Optimizing Agricultural Robotics,” alongside Dr. Puwadol Dusadeerungsikul. Dr. Dusadeerungsikul is an assistant professor at Chulalongkorn University, the oldest university in Thailand. The book explores how AI-based algorithms and Cyber-Collaborative Protocols (CCP) are revolutionizing the agricultural industry. 

Professor of Industrial Engineering Shimon Y. Nof.

Agricultural robotics face unique challenges due to the unstructured nature of farms, the challenges of working outdoors in unpredictable weather, pest issues, and other complications.  CCP offers a set of guidelines to overcome these challenges to enable robots and other technologies to work together collaboratively. It offers a novel way of building cyber-physical systems with more collaboration, efficiency, and resilience compared to traditional methods.. 

Within the book the authors detail the advantage of CCP and how it can improve issues such as food insecurity and resource usage by improving efficiency and increasing productivity. It gives agricultural operators control over their complex and dynamic environments, by organizing different technology tools to function as a cohesive team. The AI algorithms will enable agricultural robots to make decisions based on on-the-ground dynamic information. 

“CCP is groundbreaking because it integrates different types of robots, sensors, and human operators together into a unified system,” said Nof. “If robots in one field detect a plant disease or identify wasteful overwatering, it can alert workers and other robots to address the problem. With AI it intelligently coordinates this work to prevent duplication or interference, which helps farmers guide resources to the most efficient and pressing issue.”

Writer: Aran Richardson