ITNewZ

 With an expected compounded annual growth rate of 15 percent in the next 10 years, the Indian IT and ITES sector could touch $285-billion by 2020 from $71.6 billion in 2009.

According to a report by KPMG and Asia Oceanic Computing Industry Organisation, which represents 15,000 companies in Asia and Australian continents, India would continue to lead in global sourcing activity, reports Business Line. 


The 'Asia-Oceania Vision 2020: Enabling IT leadership through collaboration' report concentrated on the opportunities and challenges for the 20-major countries in the two continents to tap the global opportunities. The report predicts that the region will become the largest supplier of IT and IT-enabled services by 2020, with 74.5 percent of the global demand expected to be sourced from the region.

The report also said that the climate change would gain prominence as an important 'industry' by 2020. Spending on efficient technologies, renewable energy, recycling and waste management would grow significantly within the region and globally. Kumar Parakala, Global Head of Sourcing Advisory and Chief Operating Officer (KPMG India), said applications in healthcare, education, governance and infrastructure would drive the growth both within the region and across the globe.

With hiring seems to be back in full swing, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), plans to hire 30,000 employees in the financial year 2010-2011. The company is currently seeing an 8-10 percent growth in revenue from domestic operations and is eyeing a double-digit growth in the next two years.

TCS CEO and MD N Chandrasekaran said that the company will hike salaries of its employees in the coming fiscal, but did not give details. TCS, has not hiked wages in the current fiscal, but employees have received 150 percent VA payouts in two consecutive quarters - Q2 and Q3 of FY'10. 


"We are on a path to hire 1,000 people. We have already hired 300," he said, replying to a query on hiring plans for the current fiscal. In Q3 of FY-10, TCS had made 7,692 net additions, compared with a net addition of 320 in the previous quarter.

Asked about the extent to which India would be affected by the U.S. move to slash tax-breaks to outsourcers, Chandrasekaran said the matter is not an immediate concern. Also Chandrasekaran said, "China is a tough market for IT firms and the company was seeing business opportunity in Europe." Chandrasekaran said the company had signed a few large deals as well as a number of smaller ones. "The financial services sector will drive growth. We expect good growth from retail, pharma and utilities," he said.

 A student from University of Arizona has made a hexapod robot which can even dance. Matt Bunting who developed this unique robot had put up a video on YouTube which caught Intel's attention. Intel has now ordered two of them to promote its Atom processors at trade shows and engineering meetings, reports CNET.

The robot uses Intel's 1.60GHz Atom Z530 and US15W chipset. It runs on the Ubuntu open-source operating system. Bunting built the as-yet unnamed robot from spare parts as a final project for a UA class on cognitive robotics. A camera mounted on the front of the six-legged creature (each leg has three degrees of freedom) takes successive images, which are used to help Hex determine if it is moving forward, sideways, or backward or tilting. By analyzing the visual feedback, the 14x17x8-inch robot adaptively "learns" how to most effectively achieve its forward-moving goal. 


"One of the things I wanted to explore was the idea of reinforcement learning. What I wanted to do was not preprogram any of those walking algorithms, I wanted it to figure out how to walk straight forward on its own," Bunting said. "It has the ability to figure it out itself."

Bunting's professor Tony Lewis says the bot's learning algorithm can be applied to tasks other than walking. If a leg breaks or a motor gets damaged, for example, it can relearn how to walk. The robot even has foot contact sensors that can be used for terrain adaptation.

"I see that this device might be doing scientific work like autonomous navigation, mapping of different environments, moving over rough terrain and doing exploration, possibly planetary exploration," Lewis said. "I think Matt's robot has a lot of possibilities. It's really not so far-fetched that a robot like this could go to Mars."

Intel has already showcased this robot in Society of Women Engineers conference in Phoenix and plans to feature it at March events including Embedded World in Nuremberg, Germany, and Sigcse 2010 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.