Tech
Honeywell and Google Cloud to Accelerate Autonomous Operations with AI Agents for the Industrial Sector
Google Cloud AI to enhance Honeywell’s product offerings
and help upskill the industrial workforce
New solutions will connect to enterprise-wide industrial data from Honeywell Forge,
a leading IoT platform for industrials
CHARLOTTE, N.C. and SUNNYVALE, Calif. /PRNewswire/ — Honeywell (NASDAQ: HON) and Google Cloud announced a unique collaboration connecting artificial intelligence (AI) agents with assets, people and processes to accelerate safer, autonomous operations for the industrial sector.
This partnership will bring together the multimodality and natural language capabilities of Gemini on Vertex AI – Google Cloud’s AI platform – and the massive data set on Honeywell Forge, a leading Internet of Things (IoT) platform for industrials. This will unleash easy-to-understand, enterprise-wide insights across a multitude of use cases. Honeywell’s customers across the industrial sector will benefit from opportunities to reduce maintenance costs, increase operational productivity and upskill employees. The first solutions built with Google Cloud AI will be available to Honeywell’s customers in 2025.
“The path to autonomy requires assets working harder, people working smarter and processes working more efficiently,” said Vimal Kapur, Chairman and CEO of Honeywell. “By combining Google Cloud’s AI technology with our deep domain expertise–including valuable data on our Honeywell Forge platform–customers will receive unparalleled, actionable insights bridging the physical and digital worlds to accelerate autonomous operations, a key driver of Honeywell’s growth.”
“Our partnership with Honeywell represents a significant step forward in bringing the transformative power of AI to industrial operations,” said Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud. “With Gemini on Vertex AI, combined with Honeywell’s industrial data and expertise, we’re creating new opportunities to optimize processes, empower workforces and drive meaningful business outcomes for industrial organizations worldwide.”
With the mass retirement of workers from the baby boomer generation, the industrial sector faces both labor and skills shortages, and AI can be part of the solution – as a revenue generator, not job eliminator. More than two-thirds (82%) of Industrial AI leaders believe their companies are early adopters of AI, but only 17% have fully launched their initial AI plans, according to Honeywell’s 2024 Industrial AI Insights report. This partnership will provide AI agents that augment the existing operations and workforce to help drive AI adoption and enable companies across the sector to benefit from expanding automation.
Honeywell and Google Cloud will co-innovate solutions around:
Purpose-Built, Industrial AI Agents
Built on Google Cloud’s Vertex AI Search and tailored to engineers’ specific needs, a new AI-powered agent will help automate tasks and reduce project design cycles, enabling users to focus on driving innovation and delivering exceptional customer experiences.
Additional agents will utilize Google’s large language models (LLMs) to help technicians to more quickly resolve maintenance issues (e.g., “How did a unit perform last night?” “How do I replace the input/output module?” or “Why is my system making this sound?”). By leveraging Gemini’s multimodality capabilities, users will be able to process various data types such as images, videos, text and sensor readings, which will help its engineers get the answers they need quickly – going beyond simple chat and predictions.
Enhanced Cybersecurity
Google Threat Intelligence – featuring frontline insight from Mandiant – will be integrated into current Honeywell cybersecurity products, including Global Analysis, Research and Defense (GARD) Threat Intelligence and Secure Media Exchange (SMX), to help enhance threat detection and protect global infrastructure for industrial customers.
On-the-Edge Device Advances
Looking ahead, Honeywell will explore using Google’s Gemini Nano model to enhance Honeywell edge AI devices’ intelligence multiple use cases across verticals, ranging from scanning performance to voice-based guided workflow, maintenance, operational and alarm assist without the need to connect to the internet and cloud. This is the beginning of a new wave of more intelligent devices and solutions, which will be the subject of future Honeywell announcements.
By leveraging AI to enable growth and productivity, the integration of Google Cloud technology also further supports Honeywell’s alignment of its portfolio to three compelling megatrends, including automation.
About Honeywell
Honeywell is an integrated operating company serving a broad range of industries and geographies around the world. Our business is aligned with three powerful megatrends – automation, the future of aviation and energy transition – underpinned by our Honeywell Accelerator operating system and Honeywell Forge IoT platform. As a trusted partner, we help organizations solve the world’s toughest, most complex challenges, providing actionable solutions and innovations through our Aerospace Technologies, Industrial Automation, Building Automation and Energy and Sustainability Solutions business segments that help make the world smarter and safer as well as more secure and sustainable. For more news and information on Honeywell, please visit www.honeywell.com/newsroom.
About Google Cloud
Google Cloud is the new way to the cloud, providing AI, infrastructure, developer, data, security, and collaboration tools built for today and tomorrow. Google Cloud offers a powerful, fully integrated, and optimized AI stack with its own planet-scale infrastructure, custom-built chips, generative AI models, and development platform, as well as AI-powered applications, to help organizations transform. Customers in more than 200 countries and territories turn to Google Cloud as their trusted technology partner.
SOURCE Honeywell
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Tech
Professional gaming is brutal on the body – inside the growing field of treating esports injuries
Professional gaming can cause serious physical and mental strain, including wrist injuries, back pain, vision problems and sleep disturbances. As esports grows, specialists are developing new prevention and rehabilitation strategies to protect players.
Erica D. Henn, Temple University
Chinese esports player Jian “Uzi” Zi-hao was more than a star “League of Legends” player: He was so talented that his team structured its entire strategy around his abilities, funneling resources to him and another teammate, Shi “Ming” Sen-Ming, so the duo could lead the team to victory. Over the course of his career, he earned more than US$500,000 in tournament prize money.
And yet in 2020, Jian announced his retirement, his storied career cut short by chronic wrist and arm injuries.
He was 25 years old.
Video games have a reputation for keeping people glued to the couch. But for those who compete against the best players in the world, gaming can be surprisingly physically and mentally taxing.
The strain of ‘climbing the ladder’
The best esports players often have grinding schedules. They’re expected to regularly practice, participate in scrimmages and compete in official matches. Even at the recreational level, esports players cite the mental toll: playing for hours a day, every day, to hone their skills so they can “climb the ladder.”
A 2021 study of Portuguese esports players found that 37% experienced anxiety and depression, and 45% experienced sleep disturbances. The most common physical injuries in esports generally fall under eye problems and musculoskeletal issues.
Prolonged screen time leads to many types of vision problems in gamers, from the more common eye fatigue to a decreased ability to focus. Furthermore, the light emitted from screens appears to contribute to sleep disturbances by disrupting the release of melatonin, the hormone that helps regulate your sleep-wake cycle.
Many esport players – professional or otherwise – also battle hand and wrist pain, with repetitive button-smashing causing injuries such as carpal tunnel syndrome, tendonitis and “gamer’s thumb,” which arises from overuse or irritation of the tendons around the thumb and wrist. Many of the overuse injuries seen among video game players are also familiar to assembly-line workers, whose jobs can involve similarly repetitive movements.
Then there are the back injuries. Players can remain seated for three or more hours without a break, and this prolonged sitting can take a toll on the lower back and spine.
The sedentary nature of esports has also led to a lesser-known – sometimes fatal – injury called deep vein thrombosis: a blood clot, often in the leg, that can become life-threatening if it travels to the lungs. In 2011, British gamer Chris Staniforth – who would play for as long as 12 hours at a time – died of the condition.
Preventative measures
As more esports injury research has been published, more treatment and prevention strategies have emerged.
Top esports teams now have physical therapists, performance psychologists, athletic trainers and even massage therapists on staff to optimize the performance and recovery of their players.
Teams often incorporate group exercise activities to both build rapport among players and reduce the risk of injuries. During competition, proper positioning of the spine and limbs has become an essential injury prevention strategy. For example, selecting a chair that encourages an upright posture can reduce pain and injury risk, especially when gamers couple ergonomics with an exercise program that centers on functional strength, mobility and stretching of the upper limbs.
Looking to the stage
When esports began gaining mainstream popularity in the 1990s and early 2000s, its proponents were eager to draw comparisons to traditional sports and athletic competition. The parallels helped establish esports’ legitimacy and gave non-gamers a familiar framework for understanding the competition.
As esports became a big business and a lucrative career path, players and teams hired a web of support staff – trainers, coaches and therapists – that mirrored the structure of professional sports. In this vein, a lot of esports injury research has pulled from the training methods of traditional sports.
However, as a scholar of exercise science, I think injury treatment and prevention strategies could be further improved by seeing esports competitors as more like musicians and dancers than football players and basketball players.
Performance optimization and injury research on professional performing artists has existed for centuries, and I think it represents a valuable, untapped resource. That’s because the physical and mental stresses experienced during musical performance have a lot in common with esports competition: long stretches of sitting; small, dexterous hand movements; and performing without the real-time input of a coach.
For example, biomechanics research has found similar patterns of forearm muscle fatigue among esports players and piano players. However, no studies to date have directly compared the two groups.
And what if the interest in joint hypermobility or hand size among performing artists were translated to esport populations? Could popular piano warm-up exercises be effective for esports athletes who use keyboards?
Even research on sports like car racing might offer valuable insights. As with gamers, many people overlook how physically demanding car racing can be – and yes, that includes sitting for extended periods of time.
Prevention and rehabilitation techniques continue to improve. Even Jian, the player who retired in 2020, returned to play for a few splits, or partial seasons, in 2022 and 2023.
In July 2023, “League of Legends” star Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok was relegated to the bench due to cubital tunnel syndrome, an injury that emerges from arm and hand overuse.
Through a treatment plan that included changing his gaming posture and intensive physical therapy, Lee was able to return to play just a month later. He went on to win three consecutive world championships, with his support team helping prevent recurrence of injury throughout each season.
Thanks to his rehabilitation, Lee’s fans will be able to follow his hunt for his fourth “League of Legends” World Championship, which kicks off in October 2026 in the United States.
Sienna Cinti assisted with the research and writing of this article.
Erica D. Henn, Assistant Professor of Kinesiology and Exercise Science, Temple University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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News
Joby Aviation and Toyota kick off manufacturing alliance to scale electric air taxi production
Joby Aviation and Toyota launch a joint venture to improve productivity, quality, and cost as they prepare to scale electric air taxi production.
Joby Aviation and Toyota Motor Corporation have launched the initial phase of a strategic manufacturing alliance aimed at accelerating commercial production of electric air taxis—an early step the companies say is designed to make “air mobility for all” a practical, everyday reality.
Announced June 30, 2026, the partnership formalizes a new joint venture that will combine Joby’s electric aviation development with Toyota’s production systems and operational expertise. The near-term focus: building the groundwork for commercial production while pushing improvements in productivity, quality, and cost—key factors as the industry moves from prototypes to scaled manufacturing.
What the joint venture is designed to do
According to the companies, the alliance will initially concentrate on:
- Establishing the foundation for commercial production capability
- Advancing manufacturing excellence with an emphasis on productivity, quality, and cost
- Supporting expansion of Joby’s production capacity as it works toward aircraft certification and prepares for anticipated demand
The announcement positions Toyota’s manufacturing playbook—known globally for lean production and continuous improvement—as a lever to help Joby move from development into repeatable, high-quality output at scale.
Why it matters: eVTOLs need scale, not just flight tests
Electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft have become one of the most closely watched bets in next-generation transportation, but the path to viable air taxi services depends on more than successful test flights. Certification timelines, supply chain readiness, and the ability to produce aircraft consistently (and affordably) are often what separates promising technology from commercial reality.
By forming a joint venture focused on manufacturing readiness, Joby and Toyota are signaling that the next competitive frontier is industrialization—how quickly and reliably eVTOL aircraft can be built to meet safety standards and market demand.
Related Links for Further reading
- Joby Aviation (official): https://www.jobyaviation.com
- Joby Investor Relations / News (official updates & filings): https://ir.jobyaviation.com
- Toyota Newsroom (official): https://www.toyotanewsroom.com
- Toyota Global (corporate overview): https://global.toyota/en
- FAA Advanced Air Mobility / Air Taxis (context): https://www.faa.gov/air-taxis
What executives are saying
Joby founder and CEO JoeBen Bevirt emphasized the long-running relationship between the companies, calling the joint venture a reflection of shared confidence in the opportunity ahead.
“Toyota has been by Joby’s side for nearly a decade, providing invaluable guidance and support as we built the foundation for manufacturing our aircraft,” Bevirt said. “Together, we share a vision of making aerial mobility an everyday reality.”
Toyota Motor Corporation Chairman Akio Toyoda framed air mobility as an extension of the company’s broader mission.
“Since our founding, we’ve been guided by the philosophy of providing mobility for all,” Toyoda said, adding that Toyota views air mobility as “a natural extension of that philosophy—from the ground into the sky.”
About the companies
Joby Aviation (NYSE: JOBY) is a California-based transportation company developing an all-electric eVTOL air taxi. The company intends to operate its own air taxi service in cities worldwide and sell aircraft to other operators and partners.
Toyota (NYSE: TM) has operated in North America for nearly 70 years and says it is focused on sustainable, next-generation mobility through Toyota and Lexus brands. Toyota reports nearly 64,000 employees in North America, 14 manufacturing plants, and more than 1,800 dealerships. The company also noted that its North Carolina plant began assembling automotive batteries for electrified vehicles in 2025.
What to watch for next
For readers tracking the air taxi sector, the next milestones will likely center on:
- Details on how the joint venture will be structured operationally
- Updates on Joby’s certification progress and production ramp timelines
- Signs of how manufacturing improvements translate into cost reductions and throughput
- Additional agreements or expanded collaboration as the alliance progresses
While the companies highlighted expected benefits, they also noted the usual forward-looking risks—such as regulatory certification timelines, market conditions, and the ability to finalize additional agreements.
Source: Toyota Motor North America / PRNewswire (June 30, 2026)
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Consumer Corner
The Evolution of Retail Technology: Connecting Consumers to Valuable Product Information
The Evolution of Retail Technology: Connecting Consumers to Valuable Product Information
(Feature Impact) For more than 50 years, traditional universal product codes (UPCs), better known as barcodes, have automated checkout, powered retail and kept the world’s products moving one scan at a time.
Watch this video to learn more
Now it’s time for the next chapter. Brands and retailers are transitioning to QR codes powered by GS1 to enhance everyday shopping experiences, unlock more information and empower customers to make informed purchase decisions with a simple smartphone scan – while still going “beep” at the register.
For decades, UPC barcodes simply provided the price of an item, but today’s shoppers are looking for more information. This retail-labeling transformation will include advanced QR codes that unlock information about ingredients, allergens, freshness, product origin, sustainability details, recipes and more. Retailers have set a 2027 target to accept these QR codes at checkout, which can help them better operate and serve their customers in numerous ways, such as preventing recalled products from being sold.
They can also help reduce food waste, save consumers money and help people make smarter purchases by encouraging shoppers to have a richer experience with the products they’re putting in their carts.
Visit gs1us.org/smarter to discover more about the future of shopping and checkout.
SOURCE:
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