FRANKFURT, Germany--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Companies around the world are increasing their use of industrial robots: Within five years, the global operational stock rose by about

65 percent to 2.4 million units (2013-2018). For the same period of time, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a positive impact on the job market: Employment in the automotive industry the largest adopter of robots increased by 22% from 824,400 to 1,005,000 jobs (2013-2018). These facts contradict the conclusions recently published by MITs news office on economist Daron Acemoglus research. Based on data between 1990 to 2007 he deduces an overall negative effect of robots on employment in blue-collar working communities in the US. Yet, recent experience in the US, Europe and Asia proves the opposite: robot adoption will likely be a critical determinant of productivity growth for the post-COVID-19 economy. These are results of the International Federation of Robotics.

The impact of automation on employment is not in any respect different from previous waves of technology-driven change, says Milton Guerry, President of the International Federation of Robotics. Productivity increases and competitive advantages of automation dont replace jobs they will automate tasks, augment jobs and create new ones.

OECD Research: Ten times more productive

Research by the OECD shows that companies that employ technology effectively are ten times more productive than those that do not. To equip the workforce with the soft skills and technical knowledge required in the post-COVID-19 economy, a tight collaboration between industry, government and educational institutions is needed. Governmental policy incentives should encourage corporate investment in training and support funding of education.

Renaissance of industrial production

Companies around the globe are reassessing their global supply chain business models in reaction to the lessons learned from coronavirus. This will likely accelerate the introduction of robots, leading to a renaissance of industrial production in some regions and bringing back jobs. After the crisis, IFR expects a considerable boost for robotics and automation, even if the industry cannot currently decouple itself from the economic downturn.

Please find full press release version here: https://ifr.org/ifr-press-releases/

VideoWatch FACTS about ROBOTS by IFR - worldwide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAs00nvecho

Robots + Jobs positioning paper: https://tinyurl.com/wxbd8b3

About IFR

The International Federation of Robotics: http://www.ifr.org

Originally posted here:

Post-COVID-19 Economy: Robots Create Jobs - IFR reports - Business Wire

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang invited 100,000 GTC 2020 attendees into his kitchen

I attend hundreds of events a year as an analyst and one way I rate them is by the number and industry impact of the announcements. I watched NVIDIAs GTC 2020 virtual keynote today, and I found the company scored high on both. Architecture is everything when you are a platform provider and NVIDIA rolled out its new architecture, Ampere, across most of its entire markets. The only exception was gaming but Im sure that will be rolled out at the next gaming show.

NVIDIA rolled out its announcements in nine video chapters and I thought it made sense to roll out my coverage of GTC 2020 aligned with most of those eight chapters. Ive included links to the most relevant parts.

Clara healthcare platform updated and Data-Center-Scale Accelerated Computing introduced

From his kitchen in 4K splendor, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang kicked off this section thanking front-line COVID-19 workers and citing numerous examples where GPU-accelerated computing was helping in the fight. The two that stood out to me were Oxford Nanopore Technologies and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and the Scripps Research Institute who respectively, sequenced the virus in seven hours and already screened a billion drug combinations in one day. Its important for all keynotes these days to start by talking about COVID-19 as I believe this matters a lot to the audience.

The company took the time to provide an update on Clara, NVIDIAs healthcare platform. It introduced Guardian to power smart hospitals, new AI models to advance COVID-19 research and improve detection and a new world record for analyzing the human genome in under 20 minutes. As I said here, supercomputing will only get more important as we look at todays and future pandemics.

Huang continued onto NVIDIAs architecture for the datacenter, coined as Data-Center-Scale Accelerated Computing. He went on to make the case that the datacenter is the new computing unit. This was a very provocative statement but it basically says that the future is all about converged solutions containing CPU, GPU, networking (DPU), and a comprehensive software stack. It was a good way for the company to reinforce why acquiring Mellanox made sense for NVIDIA and its customers.

Omniverse and tip of the hat to NVIDIA RTX, DLSS 2.0 and ray tracing

This segment was a bit of a victory lap for NVIDIA on ray tracing and upsampling using AI (DLSS), which, I believe it deserves. This led to the Omniverse announcement. I believe the company has led the industry in accelerated ray tracing and AI for both gaming and workstations. RTX was announced at SIGGRAPH 2018 and its safe to say ray tracing is now a mainstream feature.

Jensen showed some cool eye candy demos of how the Unreal engine was upsampling a 540P scene to 1080P.Then he showed how ray tracing and AI came together on Minecraft. I wrote about the Minecraft for RTX Beta(here).

Huang then moved into the announcement that Omniverse, a collaboration platform for graphics and simulation workflows, was now available to early access customers. Huang showed how different developers in AEC (architecture, engineering, construction) working on different tools (Rhino, Max, Revit, AR) could work on the same project, via the cloud.

To me, the biggest significance is seeing NVIDIA develop a cloud-based collaboration platform that micro-verticals like AEC can leverage

Apache Spark 3.0 acceleration for big data

Huang then dove into GPU acceleration for the biggest of data in HPC and scientific computing where NVIDIA already performs well. NVIDIAs software library already supports over 700 CUDA-accelerated applications and Spark 3.0 acceleration is a huge announcement.

Many data scientists use Apache Spark. Adobe is one of the first companies working with a preview release of Spark 3.0 running on Databricks and said it achieved a 7x performance improvement and 90 percent cost savings in an initial test.

In his classic phrase we have learned to appreciate, Huang said the more you buy, the more you save. I have not scoured through every inch of the cost analysis, but similar prior claims hes made have passed my scrutiny.

Huang ended this session saying Databricks and Google Cloud Dataproc will soon be offering Spark with GPU acceleration. I find this announcement fascinating given just how much revenue opportunity there is in ETL (extract, transform, load). This news coupled with NVIDIA RAPIDS support on Google Cloud AI, AWS Sagemaker means NVIDIA is moving upstream in data workflows.

Merlin recommendation application framework

Next, Huang jumped into Merlin, a new application framework for recommendation systems. Youve likely used thousands of recommendation systems before if youve used Amazon (Customers who bought this item also bought) or Netflix (suggested videos). He said, Merlin slashes the time needed to create a recommender system from a 1-terabyte dataset from a couple of days to just a few minutes.

I will be watching this one very closely as I believe most real-time, or near real-time recommendation systems use CPUs today. The frameworks for recommenders are now more complex than ever and I believe, in need of acceleration.

Jarvis conversational AI application framework

All my readers have either used Alexa, Siri, Cortana or Assistant intelligent agents. But what about application developers who want to use something else in their applications? Enter NVIDIA Jarvis.

Jarvis is NVIDIAs application framework for multi-modal (speech and vision) and conversational AI applications. The company says it can recognize vision and sound so companies can create real-time translations, closed captioning of everyone speaking, transcriptions of video calls in real time or power a number of other applications such as smart speakers, call centers, interactions with robots and cars, and retail services.

I find this incredibly interesting as NVIDIA just got into the chatbot enabling business. The latest conversational applications use AI to be humanlike in intelligence and speech, it is impossible to run such systems in real time without GPUs. Jarvis opens the door for every enterprise to build and retrain such language-based applications for their use cases.

NVIDIA A100 datacenter GPU and DGX A100 integrated system

While the previous announcements were interesting, Huang put the biggest reveal in the middle of the program, the A100 datacenter GPU. This would be part six, for those counting at home. For the deepest dive on the A100, head on over to Moor Insights & Strategy AI analyst Karl Freunds post on the A100.

Huang kicked it off big by saying the A100 is in full production and shipping to customers worldwide. As Freund wrote, the company has early commitments from the industrys major players, including Google, AWS, Microsoft, Alibaba, Dell, Lenovo, HPE. While Freund did a great job in his article, I wanted to point out my main takeaways on the NVIDIA A100:

For those who pay close attention to this space, the most interesting takeaway is on training-inference using the same chip. While the industry has coalesced on NVIDIA GPUs for training, there are currently 100s of options here or coming for inference. I wonder how many VCs will be losing sleep tonight.

Its one thing to do a chip, another to create an entire system based on the chip. Huang also announced what we at the firm consider converged infrastructure, containing CPU, GPU, networking, memory, and storage. NVIDIA says the new platform, called DGX A100, is the first system to deliver 5 PetaFLOPS in a single node. I checked and its the only one I can find.

A single DGX A100 can contain eight A100s, six NVSwitches, nine Mellanox NICs, one dual core AMD Rome-based Epyc processor, and 15TB NVMe SSD. What a beast. And yes, it can likely play Crysis.

What a way to kick off an ecosystem.

EGX A100 edge computing with Ampere architecture and BMW factory robotics win

After that high point with A100 and DGX A100, Huang wasnt finished. Whats good for the datacenter is good for the edge, right?

Huang announced the NVIDIA EGX A100 for larger edge servers and the smaller EGX Jetson Xavier NX for what NVIDIA calls micro-edge servers. The two products enable developers to enable different performance and price points as well as different form factors.

The EGX A100 consists of an NVIDIA Ampere GPU and Mellanox ConnectX-6 DX SmartNIC and can support hundreds of cameras while the EGX Jetson Xavier NX supports a couple of cameras.

It was nice to see NVIDIA bring a major design win to the table, BMW, who committed to NVIDIAs robotics platform, called Isaac, to power many robots at its factories. Huang talked about numerous robots that split, pick, place, transport, and sort raw materials and work-in-progress assemblies.

Bigger picture, I see NVIDIA raising the bar by adding increasingly higher amounts of performance at different price points with a software platform that leverages all the designs. While there werent hard numbers on how many robots overall or revenue size, it sure is a positive feather in the NVIDIA cap. BMW is a very precise manufacturer and you can imagine how hard it would have been to win this business.

Automotive goes Ampere with Orin

If you have ever attended an NVIDIA CES event, you will know that NVIDIA is serious about the automotive market. CEO Jensen Huang once spoke 90 minutes at a CES keynote about the state of autonomous driving.

Just like what was good for the datacenter is good for the edge, what is good for the edge is good for automotive. With Orin, NVIDIA is bringing the Ampere architecture to automotive. Whats new here is NVIDIA offerings now span ADAS (10 TOPS/5W) to L2+ autopilot (200 TOPS/45W) to full L5 robotaxi (2,000 TOPS/800W).

Like the EGX family, the benefit of having a scaled architecture is that as an automaker or Tier 1, you can leverage design resources across hardware and software. In the past, OEMs and Tier 1s would have to qualify two separate platforms: one for ADAS and one for self-driving. Now they have only one platform to qualify.

Wrapping up

While GTC 2020 was virtual this year, it certainly didnt decrease the number of announcements or excitement. Too many events I attend now are devoid of product and service announcements and I think theyre real snoozers. Having attended nine GTCs, I can say this had the most announcements I can recall.

What I wanted to do was net out over 90 minutes of video from Jensen Huangs kitchen and eight press releases and talk about what it means for NVIDIA. With NVIDIAs chips based on the Ampere architecture and Mellanox networking, the company is bringing up to 20x AI performance in roughly the same power envelope. With the A100, it is very emphatically saying that you should be doing both training and inference on the same chip. Thats a really big deal because, while NVIDIA does have competitive inference solutions, there are at least 50 competing solutions out there already or coming.

The event also showcases Mellanoxs value add and integration into NVIDIAs grand plan, which Huang hit first, which he described as Data-Center-Scale Accelerated Computing. With Mellanox in the datacenter, nodes and GPUs connected by Mellanox becomes the datacenter. I think thats bold.

Overall, it was an impressive showing for NVIDIA. Now, Im looking forward to seeing how NVIDIA will integrate Ampere into its GeForce gaming solutions.

Disclosure: Moor Insights & Strategy, like all research and analyst firms, provides or has provided paid research, analysis, advising, or consulting to many high-tech companies in the industry, includingAmazon.com, Advanced Micro Devices,Apstra,ARM Holdings, Aruba Networks, AWS, A-10 Strategies,Bitfusion,Cisco Systems, Dell, DellEMC, Dell Technologies, Diablo Technologies, Digital Optics,Dreamchain, Echelon, Ericsson, Foxconn, Frame, Fujitsu, Gen Z Consortium, Glue Networks, GlobalFoundries,Google,HPInc., Hewlett Packard Enterprise, HuaweiTechnologies,IBM, Intel, Interdigital, Jabil Circuit, Konica Minolta, Lattice Semiconductor, Lenovo, Linux Foundation, MACOM (Applied Micro),MapBox,Mavenir, Mesosphere,Microsoft,National Instruments, NetApp, NOKIA, Nortek,NVIDIA, ON Semiconductor, ONUG, OpenStack Foundation, Panasas,Peraso, Pixelworks, Plume Design,Portworx, Pure Storage,Qualcomm, Rackspace, Rambus,RayvoltE-Bikes, Red Hat, Samsung Electronics, Silver Peak, SONY,Springpath, Sprint, Stratus Technologies, Symantec, Synaptics, Syniverse,TensTorrent,TobiiTechnology, Twitter, Unity Technologies, Verizon Communications,Vidyo, Wave Computing,Wellsmith, Xilinx, Zebra, which may be cited in this article.

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NVIDIA Launches New Ampere Architecture, Infrastructure, Robotics And Automotive Technologies At GTC 2020 - Forbes

LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Technavio has been monitoring the industrial robotics market in Europe and it is poised to grow by USD 2.23 billion during 2020-2024, progressing at a CAGR of almost 11% during the forecast period. The report offers an up-to-date analysis regarding the current market scenario, latest trends and drivers, and the overall market environment.

Technavio suggests three forecast scenarios (optimistic, probable, and pessimistic) considering the impact of COVID-19. Please Request Free Sample Report on COVID-19 Impact

The market is concentrated, and the degree of concentration will accelerate during the forecast period. ABB Ltd., b+m surface systems GmbH, Comau Spa, DENSO Corp., FANUC Corp., KUKA AG, OMRON Corp., Staubli International AG, Teradyne Inc., and Yaskawa Electric Corp. are some of the major market participants. The rising industrial automation will offer immense growth opportunities. To make the most of the opportunities, market vendors should focus more on the growth prospects in the fast-growing segments, while maintaining their positions in the slow-growing segments.

Rising industrial automation has been instrumental in driving the growth of the market.

Industrial Robotics Market in Europe 2020-2024: Segmentation

Industrial Robotics Market in Europe is segmented as below:

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Industrial Robotics Market in Europe 2020-2024: Scope

Technavio presents a detailed picture of the market by the way of study, synthesis, and summation of data from multiple sources. Our industrial robotics market in Europe report covers the following areas:

This study identifies rising demand for collaborative robots across industries as one of the prime reasons driving the industrial robotics market growth in Europe during the next few years.

Industrial Robotics Market in Europe 2020-2024: Vendor Analysis

We provide a detailed analysis of vendors operating in the industrial robotics market in Europe, including some of the vendors such as ABB Ltd., b+m surface systems GmbH, Comau Spa, DENSO Corp., FANUC Corp., KUKA AG, OMRON Corp., Staubli International AG, Teradyne Inc., and Yaskawa Electric Corp. Backed with competitive intelligence and benchmarking, our research reports on the industrial robotics market in Europe are designed to provide entry support, customer profile and M&As as well as go-to-market strategy support.

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Industrial Robotics Market in Europe 2020-2024: Key Highlights

Table Of Contents:

Executive Summary

Market Landscape

Market Sizing

Five Forces Analysis

Market Segmentation by End-user

Customer landscape

Geographic Landscape

Drivers, Challenges, and Trends

Vendor Landscape

Vendor Analysis

Appendix

List of abbreviations

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Analysis on Impact of COVID-19- Industrial Robotics Market in Europe 2020-2024 | Rising Industrial Automation to Boost Growth | Technavio - Business...

The award-winning team is preparing for next years big competition at NASA, despite the cancellation of this years event.

Rachel Evans

The Express Building where the Robotics Team typically meets throughout the semester.

By Rachel Evans, Guest WriterMay 14, 2020

The University of Akrons Robotics Team was getting ready for the NASA Robotics Mining Competition at Kennedy Space Center scheduled for later in May, when their plans were brought to a halt by the global COVID-19 pandemic.On March 10, The University of Akron President Gary L. Miller announced that all in-person classes, as well as student organization meetings, would be canceled through the end of the Spring 2020 semester due to COVID-19.Since then, the Robotics Team has been working virtually, getting ready for next years competition.The biggest effect is that we cannot continue building the robot, Gina Lanese, Vice President of the Robotics team, said. The fall semester typically focuses on design, while at this point in the spring semester we are usually heavily focused on building and testing.The Robotics Team was founded in 2010, the same year as the first NASA Robotics Mining Competition, now called NASA RMC: Lunabotics.Their objective is to create the best robot for mining ice chunks on the moon, as well as fostering an interest in the STEM field through numerous outreach events with K-12 students throughout the semester.They have around 30 members and won second place in last years Robotics Mining Competition out of 50 teams. Earlier this year, they also represented the state of Ohio at the NASA Space Grant Consortium Anniversary event.The teams mission is to take the knowledge learned in the classroom and be able to apply it, team member Jason Colonna said. It is a great place to learn practical skills they dont teach in the classroom.While the competition at NASA has been cancelled due to COVID-19, the team continues to gear up for next years competition.Theyre learning about more ways to work both mechanically and with code, as well as carrying out official business such as officer elections and other preparations for next year.Its disappointing that we cant have meetings and work on our robot, but I understand that its necessary, team member Sarah Kuchcinski said.The team hopes to win next year, and to Beat Bama!, as their competition is last years NASAs competition winner, The University of Alabama. Alabama won Slide Presentation and Demonstrations, Systems Engineering Paper Award and The Joe Kosmo Award for Excellence.UAs team won second place in Slide Presentations & Demonstrations, as well as first place in Outreach Report. The Robotics Teams outreach program is something they take much pride in, hosting STEM and robotics events for various K-12 schools around the Akron area.Every month we always try to give back to the community by providing them with the confidence they need to pursue engineering, Kuchcinski said.This isnt the first time that the team has had to work around a cancellation, however.Last year, NASA had to cancel the competition due to the lengthy government shutdown that occurred, Lanese said. The shutdown put a pause on the construction of a building where the competition would have been held, as well as a pause on NASA employees projects. NASA cancelled the in-person competition, but still held a virtual one.When asked why the competition wasnt held virtually this year as well, Lanese said that she thinks that teams would still need to meet face to face, putting them at risk of COVID-19, so the event is closed this year, but is planning on hosting the event as scheduled next year.

Read more from the original source:

UA's Robotics Team Works Virtually Through COVID-19 Pandemic - The Buchtelite

A detailed study on the Global Robotics Education Market is used for the understanding the strategies, which is used by the manufacturers for increased in changes for the growth of the market in the estimated forecast period. Market research is one of the methods for the determination and estimation of the growth of the Global keyword Market in the estimated forecast period.

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Key vendors/manufacturers in the market:

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The Global Robotics Education Market report supplies business outlining, requirements, contact information and product image of important manufacturers of Global Robotics Education Market. This analysis report similarly reduces the present, past and in future Robotics Education business strategies, company extent, development, share and estimate analysis having a place with the predicted circumstances. Moreover, the possible results and the exposure to the enhancement of Global Robotics Education Market widely covered in this report. In conclusion, the Robotics Education report, demonstrate business enhancement projects, the Global Robotics Education Market deals network, retailers, consumers, suppliers, research findings, reference section, data sources and moreover.

Global Market By Type:

By Type, Robotics Education market has been segmented intoInstructional ProgramsPhysical Platforms& TrainingEducational Resources & Pedagogical Philosophy

Global Market By Application:

By Application, Robotics Education has been segmented into:UniversityHigh SchoolKindergartenOther

Market research report for every market is based upon several key factors, such as demand and supply of the product, market trends, revenue growth patterns as well as market shares. Report on the Global Robotics Education Market has been prepared after conducting a comprehensive research through a systematized methodology. These skills are useful for scrutinizing the market on the terms of outlined research guidelines. Mainly, research report covers all the information about the target audience, manufactures, vendors, research papers, products and many more. Moreover, their research papers cover the information and data about an industry in every aspect that consists of information related to the products, services, countries, market size, current trends, business research details and much more. In conclusion, research report gives an overview about all the important information needed to understand about a market. In addition, it is also beneficial and used for the estimation of the several aspects of the market which are likely to have an impact on the growth and the forecast of the market in the estimated forecast period.

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Global Robotics Education Market Report Forecast By Investment Statistics,Industry Outlook, Trends and Opportunities 2025 - Cole of Duty

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Our expert columnists offer opinion and analysis on important issues facing modern businesses and managers.

Before COVID-19, most people had some degree of apprehension about robots and artificial intelligence. Though their beliefs may have been initially shaped by dystopian depictions of the technology in science fiction, their discomfort was reinforced by legitimate concerns. Some of AIs business applications were indeed leading to the loss of jobs, the reinforcement of biases, and infringements on data privacy.

Those worries appear to have been set aside since the onset of the pandemic as AI-infused technologies have been employed to mitigate the spread of the virus. Weve seen an acceleration of the use of robotics to do the jobs of humans who have been ordered to stay at home or who have been redeployed within the workplace. Labor-replacing robots, for example, are taking over floor cleaning in grocery stores and sorting at recycling centers. AI is also fostering an increased reliance on chatbots for customer service at companies such as PayPal and on machine-driven content monitoring on platforms such as YouTube. Robotic telepresence platforms are providing students in Japan with an in-person college graduation experience. Robots are even serving as noisy fans in otherwise empty stadiums during baseball games in Taiwan. In terms of data, AI is already showing potential in early attempts to monitor infection rates and contact tracing.

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No doubt, more of us are overlooking our former uneasiness about robots and AI when the technologys perceived value outweighs its anticipated downsides. But there are dangers to this newfound embrace of AI and robots. With robots replacing more and more job functions in order to allow humans to coexist as we grasp for some semblance of normalcy, its important to consider whats next. What will happen when humans want their former jobs back? And what will we do if tracking for safetys sake becomes too invasive or seems too creepy yet is already an entrenched practice?

After a vaccine for COVID-19 is developed (we hope) and the pandemic retreats, its hard to imagine life returning to how it was at the start of 2020. Our experiences in the coming months will make it quite easy to normalize automation as a part of our daily lives. Companies that have adopted robots during the crisis might think that a significant percentage of their human employees are not needed anymore. Consumers who will have spent more time than ever interacting with robots might become accustomed to that type of interaction. When you get used to having food delivered by a robot, you eventually might not even notice the disappearance of a job that was once held by a human. In fact, some people might want to maintain social distancing even when it is not strictly needed anymore.

We, as a society, have so far not questioned what types of functions these robots will replace because during this pandemic, the technology is serving an important role. If these machines help preserve our health and well-being, then our trust in them will increase.

As the time we spend with people outside of our closest personal and work-related social networks diminishes, our bonds to our local communities might start to weaken. With that, our concerns about the consequences of robots and AI may decrease. In addition to losing sight of the scale of job loss empowered by the use of robots and AI, we may hastily overlook the forms of bias embedded within AI and the invasiveness of the technology that will be used to track the coronaviruss spread.

There are many critical considerations we have to make before we become more reliant on AI and robots during the pandemic.

First, as societys adoption and comfort level increases, organizations need to be mindful that the opportunities for bias that we know exist in AI are still a concern. For example, the potential of AI algorithms to assist with health care decision-making is vast in part because they can be trained on large data sets. AI may be called upon to help handle cases where a triage decision needs to be made in an intensive care unit such as who gets access to a ventilator which can have life and death ramifications. Given that heart disease is often misdiagnosed in women and black patients are frequently undertreated for pain, we know that many forms of bias underlie data sets and can interfere with data quality and how data is analyzed. These problems predate the advent of AI, but they could become more widely encoded into the fabric of the health care system if they are not corrected before AI becomes widespread.

Second, privacy concerns with respect to data collection and data accuracy are a growing problem, and organizations need to pay special attention to this issue. Vast data collection may be necessary for curtailing the spread of disease: Companies around the world are proposing phone-based apps that track individuals contact with those diagnosed with or recovering from the virus. Google and Apple, for instance, are partnering on an opt-in app for individuals to self-disclose their COVID-19 diagnosis. One might make a compelling argument that this is justified until the pandemic ends. Yet, once the precedent for this type of surveillance is established, how do you remove that power from governments, companies, and others? Are sunset clauses going to be built into organizations data collection and use plans?

The secondary uses of the vast troves of tracking data will undoubtedly entice organizations to hold on to them, especially given the financial profits that could be made off the data. Take the case of the app from Google and Apple. What happens when members of the public demand to get their data back or EU data protection and privacy rules require the disposal of the data when it is no longer needed? Cases of abuse from covert data collection and sharing are already well documented. Organizations involved in data collection and analysis and their oversight need to address these issues now versus later, when individuals will be less forgiving if their data is appropriated for other uses or used in ethically dubious ways.

It certainly is tempting to cast aside certain norms, regulations, and other protections, such as those around data privacy, in an emergency, when that may be what is needed in the short term to protect people and save lives. Yet we must not fail to prepare for what comes after this global emergency. This includes developing retraining strategies to help those whose jobs have been disrupted by the pandemic already well over 30 million people in the U.S. alone as they try to return to the workforce, given that some of those jobs are highly susceptible to replacement by automation. We need to rethink the harmful biases that might have cropped up in the AI applications weve adopted biases they will have learned from our adaptive behaviors and will have modeled through their interactions with us. And although we are living in an unprecedented situation, we proactively need to address planning and protections in relation to the adoption of robots and AI. Otherwise, a crisis of another form may be looming.

Ayanna Howard (@robotsmarts) is the Linda J. and Mark C. Smith Professor and Chair of the School of Interactive Computing in the College of Computing at Georgia Tech. She also serves as director of the Human-Automation Systems (HumAnS) Lab in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Jason Borenstein is the director of graduate research ethics programs and associate director of the Center for Ethics and Technology within the School of Public Policy and Office of Graduate Studies at Georgia Tech.

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AI, Robots, and Ethics in the Age of COVID-19 - MIT Sloan

The numbers speak for themselves. We definitely need more women in STEM fields. According to the United Nations, women constitute merely 14 percent of the total 280,000 scientists, engineers, and technologists in research development institutions in India.

Its 2020 and still, there is an under-representation of women in STEM. Its therefore, heartening to hear of young people in India trying to make a mark in this field.

One such youngster who is taking her love for robotics and hoping to turn it into a profitable business enterprise is Lavanya Iyer, a 14-year-old student of Dhirubhai Ambani International School, Mumbai.

As a robotics enthusiast, Lavanya regularly participates in global competitions on robotics and also mentors young students in the field.

The idea of a business, however, came from one of her sessions at the Young Entrepreneurs Academy (YEA!)

The young entrepreneur clearly remembers her second session at YEA!, where they discussed at length about the problems around them and brainstormed on how to find solutions.

Thats when I thought about my aunt, who had to undergo a surgery when she was young, and had to take the long road to recovery through physiotherapy. It was a painful memory and made me realise that there must be a large segment of patients who face similar issues. It was then that I thought of a way to make this process easier for both patients and physiotherapists, and the idea of Kynaid was born.

Kynaid, as the name suggests, is a robotic tool that aids in the kinetic movement of fingers, hand, and arm. It assists in the speedy recovery of patients and provides efficient physiotherapy management.

Lavanya emphasises that the product, which evolved with inputs from doctors, physiotherapists, and patients, is simple, easy to use, and inexpensive.

She says, the prototype is ready, and she is in the process of filing for a patent.

Initially, Lavanya plans to introduce Kynaid to physiotherapists to garner their support and then reach out to consumers, as it will help them in their job and help patients to do the exercises at home.

She plans a business model comprising customer segments - patients and physiotherapists.

Kynaid will offer a basic and fully functional model, and also a range of models with additional features. While the basic model could be priced at around Rs 10,000 to make it affordable, the ones with additional features could go up to Rs 25,000.

Lavanya attributes moving forward with her idea to her mentorship and training sessions at YEA!

YEA has helped me get in touch with various industry leaders who have helped me with improving upon various aspects of my business. I won the second prize at the investor panel and got the opportunity to attend the YEA! Global competition in the US. I also attended two YEA! trade shows and through all these avenues, I received brilliant feedback on my product and guidance on ways to improve it and make it more patient-friendly. All this exposure through YEA! really boosted my self-confidence and the feedback helped me tweak my business plan, she says.

Lavanya also got the opportunity to pitch at a healthtech conference organised by IIM-Ahmedabad, where the judges were so impressed by her product that they announced an impromptu seed funding for her venture.

She is also looking to raise seed funding from private investors to scale up the business to its real potential.

I am hoping to extend Kynaid into other physiotherapy practices such as acupressure. This is just the beginning. I do hope I can continue using my creative skills in designing technological innovations in the field of healthcare. Nothing will give me more happy than to break stereotypes for women in STEM by making an impact in this space through my healthtech innovations, says Lavanya.

How has the coronavirus outbreak disrupted your life? And how are you dealing with it? Write to us or send us a video with subject line 'Coronavirus Disruption' to editorial@yourstory.com

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This 14-year-old has developed a robotic tool prototype that aids in kinetic movements of fingers, hands, arms - YourStory

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Robotics in Nursing Market (Covid-19 Updated) Ongoing Trends and Recent Developments by 2020 With Top Vendors: Fortis Memorial Research Institute,...

TOKYO: As factory shutdowns darken the outlook for the industrial robots market, one of its biggest players sees little reason for despair.

Hiroshi Ogasawara, the president of Yaskawa Electric, argues that in a post-coronavirus world in which workers have to keep their distance from each other, the trend towards automation will only accelerate.

Coming from the head of Japans second-biggest maker of factory robots, the projection is clearly self-serving. And in the short term it may also prove misplaced.

Research group Omdia expects the US$16.5 billion global industrial automation equipment market to shrink 11 per cent this year as companies hoard cash and axe capital spending to survive the global recession.

But over the longer term, automation is certain to have an enhanced role given companies will remain under pressure to protect the health of their staff as the global economy eventually recovers.

Even Toyota, which has stressed the risk of skills becoming lost with rapid automation, concedes that the shift to robotics in factories is likely to quicken because of the pandemic.

SAFETY OF FACTORY EMPLOYEES

In Japan, where companies still communicate via fax machines and documents are signed using carved hanko seals, much of the focus during the pandemic has been on expanding teleworking to meet a government target of reducing face-to-face interactions by 80 per cent.

However, the struggle for manufacturers has been to safeguard the safety of factory employees including engineers and maintenance staff who do not have the option of working from home.

The conglomerate Toshiba, for example, managed to only shift 40 per cent of its 76,000 employees in Japan (a total that includes those in manufacturing operations) to teleworking as the nation appeared to be heading for a rise in infections last month.

At that point those staff who could not work from home were starting to voice their frustration and anxiety, according to Takamasa Mihara, the general manager of Toshibas human resources division.

To double that tally, Toshiba brought forward the paid leave it had set aside for the now postponed Tokyo Summer Olympics. The move allowed the company to shut its domestic factories from April 20 through early May in an extended Golden Week holiday.

With operations now resumed, Toshiba may adopt a four-day week for workers at its plants, alongside existing safety measures such as face masks, social distancing and the adjustment of work shifts and lunch hours to avoid gatherings of people.

Daikin, one of the worlds biggest makers of air conditioners, has asked employees to come to factories wearing their work clothes to avoid contact in locker rooms.

But despite this raft of measures there is no revolutionary safety measure or technology that can eliminate the risk of infection for factory workers.

That is true for Elon Musk, who has restarted production at Teslas electric vehicle plant in California in defiance of local county orders.

The long list of safety guidelines in the US carmakers 38-page return to work playbook include rigorous cleaning, hand sanitisers, reduced shuttles running to and from the factory and temperature checks.

BETTING ON AUTOMATION

The fact that factories cannot completely shield their workers is why Japanese manufacturers from Yaskawa to Omron, which produce more than half of the worlds supply of industrial robots, are placing their bets that companies will turn to automation.

Tadashi Yanai, founder and chief executive of Fast Retailing, has confirmed he would push ahead with an effort to replace almost all of its workers with robots at its warehouses a shift the Uniqlo operator had already begun to address an acute labour shortage.

Others may opt for collaborative robots, or co-bots, which can work side-by-side with humans in proximity and are suitable for helping to keep a safe distance between workers.

Either way, the paradox is that deploying more robots to safeguard human health creates another major anxiety: Unemployment.

According to a survey of 5,000 people in the UK, US, Germany, Japan and Sweden, conducted by Kekst CNC, more than a third of Japanese workers are already expecting to lose their jobs because of the economic destruction wrought by the virus.

Automation also accelerated in the years following the 2008 global financial crisis. But if the main driver then was to cut costs, Kota Ezawa, analyst at Citigroup, says new norms could emerge from the coronavirus crisis that place a bigger emphasis on employee well-being.

For such a structural shift to occur though, companies will first need to survive this crisis and arm themselves with fresh capital to make technology investments.

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Commentary: COVID-19 will usher in the industrial robots - CNA

Robots are taking over the world. OK, not really. Not yet. But they are becoming increasingly prevalent in almost every industry, from healthcare and manufacturing to defense and education.

At robotics companies across America, the co-mingling of engineering and science is producing some truly innovative products things that do what humans have typically done, only better. Whether its welding, teaching, assembling cars or performing surgery, these inventions are changing the way we live and work.

The following 26companies are contributing to the robotics revolution.

Industry: Industrial, Logistics

Location: Boulder, Colorado

What it does: CANVAS makes an autonomous robotic cart for use on factory floors and in manufacturing plants. Equipped with stereo cameras that have a full 3D view from floor to ceiling, sensors that serve as virtual bumpers and bright LED lights that alert people to its presence, it collects and sends real-time data about route times, bottlenecks and other factors that affect workplace safety and efficiency.

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Industry: Logistics, Computer Vision

Location: Boston, Massachusetts

What it does: From the Piaggio Group that brought you the Vespa scooter comes Piaggio Fast Forward; a robotics company dedicated to creating lightweight mobility solutions for people and goods. The companys flagship robot, gita, is a mobile carrier that follows people around and carries up to 45 pounds. Gita can be used to carry everything from heavy books between classes to groceries.

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Industry: Education, Gaming

Location: Boulder, Colorado

What it does: Sphero invented a now world-famous app-enabled robotic ball, which is used in classrooms all over the world to teach through play. In addition to the original ball, other products include the Sphero 2.0 and the Sphero Mini as well as app-enabled racing robots named Ollie and Darkside. The companys Sphero Edu app is a hub for programming its robots and more.

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Industry: Healthcare

Location: Austin, Texas

What it does: Diligents AI-enabled robots are designed to work with people in everyday environments. The companys autonomous Moxi robot can be left alone to perform time-consuming logistical tasks in hospitals like setting up patient rooms and restocking supply rooms. Capable of navigating hospital hallways and other tight spaces, Moxi is even imbued with social intelligence thats conveyed through its head movements and LED eyes.

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Industry:Machine Learning, Industrial

Location: Boulder, Colorado

What it does: PickNiks wide array of services include motion planning, advanced inverse kinematics, real-time control, collision avoidance, custom ros integration, 2D navigation, virtual reality, robot modeling, workspace analysis machine learning and more.

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Industry: Healthcare, Education

Location: San Jose, California

What itdoes: Equipped with a speaker, camera and video screen, Anybots robots serve as remote avatars that are controlled through a browser-based interface and connect to the Web over Wi-Fi. Say youre in Chicago and you want to also be in Taiwan. Your robot which has a built-in guidance system, live video streaming capabilities and is steered with the arrow keys on your computers keyboard can act as a stand-in.

Industry: Military, Software

Location: Waltham, Massachusetts

What it does: Boston Dynamics makes a host of different robots that have human- and animal-like dexterity. A few examples: Theres SpotMini, a nimble robot that handles objects, climbs stairs, and will operate in offices, homes and outdoors; Atlas, a dynamic humanoid that uses balance and whole-body skills to achieve two-handed mobile manipulation; and WildCat, a speedy quadruped that uses a galloping gait much like a dog or horse and leans into turns in order to maintain traction and balance.

Industry: Aerospace, Energy, Hardware

Location: Seattle, Washington

What it does: Sarcos builds three different kinds of robots that perform vastly different functions. Used to explore storage tanks, vehicles and other things while transmitting data, the Guardian S robot is operable from long distances, can tackle tough terrain like stairs and also snakes through pipes. The The Guardian GT is made for such disparate tasks as heavy lifting and welding. It also has first-responder, logistics and humanitarian applications. The Guardian XO is a powered, untethered, industrial exoskeleton suit that improves human strength and endurance without restricting the operators freedom of movement.

Industry: Industrial, Healthcare

Location: Newton, Massachusetts

What it does: Barrett makes articulated arms and hands what it calls advanced robotic manipulators for a variety of applications. The WAM Arm mimics human-like grace and dexterity. The companys BH8-series BarrettHand can grasp an array of different objects. And Burt is designed for upper-extremity rehabilitation training and robotics research.

Industry:Automotive, Marine tech

Location: Quincy, Massachusetts

What it does: A division of General Dynamics, Bluefin makes Unmanned and Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (UUV / AUV) for clients in the defense, commercial and scientific sectors. Offerings include more than 70 different sensors on 100+ vehicles.

Industry: Agriculture, Defense, Artificial Intelligence

Location: Austin, Texas

What it does: Applied Aeronautics makes Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Its main product, the electric fixed-wing Albatross, is used in a variety of sectors ranging from agriculture and research to disaster management and defense.

Industry: Pets

Location: Chicago, Illinois

What it does: Petronics makes an automated cat toy called Mousr. With its interchangeable tails, the robot mouse can be made to seem different every time your cat chases it around. And its entirely controllable via your Android or iOS smartphone app.

Industry:Cleantech

Location: Denver, Colorado

What it does: AMP (Autonomous Manipulation and Perception) makes a robotic system it calls Cortex, which can be used in a variety of environments (mixed waste, construction/demolition, etc.) and is programmed via Neuron artificial intelligence to quickly and efficiently pluck recyclable materials off a conveyor belt. Ideal end goals are higher throughput, increased commodity revenue, better bale quality, and a fixed labor rate over time.

Industry: Industrial

Location: Longmont, Colorado

What it does: Newly available, Left Hands commercial-grade robots are designed for outdoor tasks, particularly snow removal via use of the companys self-driving SnowBot Pro. Remotely controlled online, it uses GPS, accelerometer and gyroscope technologies to navigate on a pre-programmed path. SnowBot is also equipped with sensors for obstacle avoidance and records real-time data about its current status and environment.

Industry: Education

Location: Boulder, Colorado

What it does: Modular makes snap-together Cubelets blocks and the MOSS robot construction system to spur computational thinking and help make kids better problem solvers in interconnected environments through play-based learning. According to the company, Students can design and redesign robot constructions with ease, using the robot blocks to model real-world behaviors.

Industry: Public Safety, Software

Location: Austin, Texas

What it does: DroneSense makes drones for public safety applications, particularly those involving firefighters and police, that can be deployed as first responders to survey fire or crime scenes and provide important data before humans arrive in order to expand situational awareness.

Industry:Robotics

Location: Pasadena, California

What it does: Embodied makes technologically advanced companion robots that exhibit human-like care and compassion to enhance individual wellness and quality of life.

Industry: Academia, Defense, Aerospace

Location: Brooklyn, NewYork

What it does: HoneyBeeRobotics' technology has been used in multiple NASA space missions (Mars visits included) since1983. Its also a big player in the defense, mining and oil and gas industries, making intelligent excavation systems and autonomous drills and sampling systems, among other innovations. On the medical front, the companys products include a neurosurgery robot and a robotic endoscopic laser scalpel.

Industry: Industrial, Agriculture, Healthcare

Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts

What it does: Energids Actin SDK software enables advanced real-time motion control for industrial and consumer robotics applications in industries where getting to market quickly is paramount.

Industry: Agriculture

Location: Billerica, Massachusetts

What it does: According to Harvest, its HV-100 model was the worlds first fully autonomous robot that works alongside people in unmodified industrial environments. Today, more than 30 of them serve major agricultural players across the U.S. to help increase productivity, efficiency and plant quality. Harvests robots lesson the load when it comes to manual labor so their human counterparts can focus on other facets of the growing process.

Industry: Healthcare

Location: Sunnyvale, California

What it does: Intuitives robots are used for minimally invasive surgery. Equipped with advanced vision technologies, energy systems, stapling and instruments, the continually upgraded da Vinci platform has been used for millions of surgeries since the late 1990s. The newer Ion is used for minimally invasive peripheral lung biopsies.

Industry: Robotics

Location: Bedford, Massachusetts

What it does: Founded in 1990, iRobot makes a variety of smart vacuuming, floor-scrubbing and mopping devices, including the Roomba, Braava, Mira and Create. Its also involved in providing STEM education for kids.

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Industry: Healthcare

Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts

What it does: Myomos powered brace MyoPro is designed to assist those whove experienced paralysis or weakening in their hands and arms due to a variety of conditions. The device reads nerve signals from the skins surface, then activates small motors that facilitate natural arm and hand movements.

The rest is here:

26 Robotics Companies You Should Know | Built In

Is robotics part of AI? Is AI part of robotics? What is the difference between the two terms? We answer this fundamental question.

Robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) serve very different purposes. However, people often get them mixed up.

A lot of people wonder if robotics is a subset of artificial intelligence. Others wonder if they are the same thing.

Since the first version of this article, which we published back in 2017, the question has gotten even more confusing. The rise in the use of the word "robot" in recent years to mean any sort of automation has cast even more doubt on how robotics and AI fit together (more on this at the end of the article).

It's time to put things straight once and for all.

The first thing to clarify is that robotics and artificial intelligence are not the same things at all. In fact, the two fields are almost entirely separate.

A Venn diagram of the two fields would look like this:

As you can see, there is one area small where the two fields overlap: Artificially Intelligent Robots. It is within this overlap that people sometimes confuse the two concepts.

To understand how these three terms relate to each other, let's look at each of them individually.

Robotics is a branch of technology that deals with physical robots. Robots are programmable machines that are usually able to carry out a series of actions autonomously, or semi-autonomously.

In my opinion, there are three important factors which constitute a robot:

I say that robots are "usually" autonomous because some robots aren't. Telerobots, for example, are entirely controlled by a human operator but telerobotics is still classed as a branch of robotics. This is one example where the definition of robotics is not very clear.

It is surprisingly difficult to get experts to agree on exactly what constitutes a "robot." Some people say that a robot must be able to "think" and make decisions. However, there is no standard definition of "robot thinking." Requiring a robot to "think" suggests that it has some level of artificial intelligence but the many non-intelligent robots that exist show that thinking cannot be a requirement for a robot.

However you choose to define a robot, robotics involves designing, building and programming physical robots which are able to interact with the physical world. Only a small part of robotics involves artificial intelligence.

A simple collaborative robot (cobot) is a perfect example of a non-intelligent robot.

For example, you can easily program a cobot to pick up an object and place it elsewhere. The cobot will then continue to pick and place objects in exactly the same way until you turn it off. This is an autonomous function because the robot does not require any human input after it has been programmed. The task does not require any intelligence because the cobot will never change what it is doing.

Most industrial robots are non-intelligent.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a branch of computer science. It involves developing computer programs to complete tasks that would otherwise require human intelligence. AI algorithms can tackle learning, perception, problem-solving, language-understanding and/or logical reasoning.

AI is used in many ways within the modern world. For example, AI algorithms are used in Google searches, Amazon's recommendation engine, and GPS route finders. Most AI programs are not used to control robots.

Even when AI is used to control robots, the AI algorithms are only part of the larger robotic system, which also includes sensors, actuators, and non-AI programming.

Often but not always AI involves some level of machine learning, where an algorithm is "trained" to respond to a particular input in a certain way by using known inputs and outputs. We discuss machine learning in our article Robot Vision vs Computer Vision: What's the Difference?

The key aspect that differentiates AI from more conventional programming is the word "intelligence." Non-AI programs simply carry out a defined sequence of instructions. AI programs mimic some level of human intelligence.

One of the most common examples of pure AI can be found in games. The classic example of this is chess, where the AI Deep Blue beat world champion, Gary Kasparov, in 1997.

A more recent example is AlphaGo, an AI which beat Lee Sedol the world champion Go player, in 2016. There were no robotic elements to AlphaGo. The playing pieces were moved by a human who watched the robot's moves on a screen.

Artificially intelligent robots are the bridge between robotics and AI. These are robots that are controlled by AI programs.

Most robots are not artificially intelligent. Up until quite recently, all industrial robots could only be programmed to carry out a repetitive series of movements which, as we have discussed, do not require artificial intelligence. However, non-intelligent robots are quite limited in their functionality.

AI algorithms are necessary when you want to allow the robot to perform more complex tasks.

A warehousing robot might use a path-finding algorithm to navigate around the warehouse. A drone might use autonomous navigation to return home when it is about to run out of battery. A self-driving car might use a combination of AI algorithms to detect and avoid potential hazards on the road. These are all examples of artificially intelligent robots.

You could extend the capabilities of a collaborative robot by using AI.

Imagine you wanted to add a camera to your cobot. Robot vision comes under the category of "perception" and usually requires AI algorithms.

Say that you wanted the cobot to detect the object it was picking up and place it in a different location depending on the type of object. This would involve training a specialized vision program to recognize the different types of objects. One way to do this is by using an AI algorithm called Template Matching, which we discuss in our article How Template Matching Works in Robot Vision.

In general, most artificially intelligent robots only use AI in one particular aspect of their operation. In our example, AI is only used in object detection. The robot's movements are not really controlled by AI (though the output of the object detector does influence its movements).

As you can see, robotics and artificial intelligence are really two separate things.

Robotics involves building robots physical whereas AI involves programming intelligence.

However, there is one area where everything has got rather confusing since I first wrote this article: software robots.

The term "software robot" refers to a type of computer program which autonomously operates to complete a virtual task. Examples include:

Software bots are not physical robots they only exist within a computer. Therefore, they are not real robots.

Some advanced software robots may even include AI algorithms. However, software robots are not part of robotics.

Hopefully, this has clarified everything for you. But, if you have any questions at all please ask them in the comments.

Do you have any fundamental robotics questions you would like answered? Tell us in the comments below or join the discussion on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook or the DoF professional robotics community.

Continued here:

What's the Difference Between Robotics and Artificial ...

DULUTH, Minn. -- For eight weeks, the Duluth Denfeld Robotics team worked towards a goal that had never been reached by their program.

Successful use of "vision processing" had never been accomplished by the Hunters, but they had every intention of changing that.

They eventually completed their robot named Luma, standing over three and a half feet tall, capable of gathering launching foam balls.

With the element of visual processing, Luma was able to locate a strip of tape on an elevated surface, and automatically adjust its aim.

"Vision processing has been a part of FIRST for a long time, they always put reflective tape onto the field to be able to lock on," said senior Nick Miller.

"We're definitely not the first to do it, but this is the first year that our team has been able to utilize it effectively."

The team fund-raised their own money to construct Luma, in some cases reaching out to local businesses for support.

Their success landed them the "Engineering Inspiration Award" at the Lake Superior Regionals, advancing them to the FIRST Championships in Detroit, Michigan.

"Kind of an interesting system I thought, we had a conveyor system running from the front to the back where we had a turret up on the top, and we would sit behind one of the game elements, and we would auto-lock onto the target, and be able to shoot across the field fairly accurately into that goal," said senior Brandon Jahn.

Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic cancelled the event before they even had a chance to compete.

Although the team of more than 20 members was disappointed, Miller said that he'll carry his high school robotics experience with him as he moves onward in his career.

"I've been in sports my whole life and I've never felt that great at it, and when I was at robotics, I really felt like that was my area. Just being able to do that, and knowing that I'm doing something that I'm good at was really cool."

Both Miller and Jahn plan to pursue Computer Science after high school.

Continued here:

Denfeld Robotics run halted ahead of FIRST Championships - KBJR 6

Emerging technologies like the IoT, artificial intelligence, and robotics can help improve cleaning processes and procedures by making them much more efficient.

As governments lift lockdowns and companies prepare the workplace to welcome back workers, technology could prove to be a key ally in keeping workplaces cleaner and safer.

Cleaning and sanitization are now a top priority for organizations hoping to reopen their workplaces and help workers feel comfortable going back into the office.

Naturally, improving cleaning and sanitization processes will require time, effort, and money. Luckily, emerging technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT), automation, artificial intelligence, and robotics can help make the process much easier, efficient, and less time-consuming for workers.

Over the past five years, humans have been increasingly working alongside new technology such as robots, artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms. The post-pandemic world will offer a new area of opportunity for such collaboration.

Having an interconnected cleaning and sanitization system will enable more efficient protocols and procedures, while saving resources (mainly time and money).

Below are some of the potential applications of technology to drive cleaning and sanitization, therefore creating a much safer workplace environment for workers.

The IoT

By enabling smart lighting, smart temperature changes, and smart access, among many other things, the IoT can help keep workplaces clean and safe by reducing the amount of touch points a person has during a regular working day.

Furthermore, sensors and tracking capabilities of the IoT, combined with artificial intelligence, can help organizations determine high traffic areas or times during the day when certain areas (like bathrooms) are used the most. This data can be valuable so that organizations can make a more informed decision of how often certain areas should be cleaned and whether theres a time of day cleaning should be increased.

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In the example of the bathroom, a cleaner (human or robot) could be sent to clean and sanitize the bathroom after 50 people have used it or during a specific time frame.

Such data can also help organizations identify days of the week when traffic decreases and therefore when cleaning procedures do not need to take place as often as usual.

Bear in mind that with the IoT, the more things that are connected, the better the information and data available.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence can be a powerful tool for organizations as they seek to improve their cleaning and sanitization practices.

One area that artificial intelligence can be beneficial is in layout and space planning. As organizations adapt their workplaces to maintain physical distancing, artificial intelligence, combined with sensors and tracking capabilities, can help identify high and low traffic areas and help create a more efficient floor plan and desk distribution.

When combined with the IoT, artificial intelligence can be used to ensure that organizations keep a stock of cleaning supplies and it can inform management when a supply is about to run out, it can notify people when an area is ready to be used again (i.e. a meeting room that has been cleaned and disinfected), and it can notify people when an area has been contaminated, and it can notify a cleaner that an area needs to be cleaned.

Another potential use case is AI-handwashing, which could help detect insufficient or incorrect hand-washing practices.

Robotics

Basically, robots could be doing the dirty work for organizations as robots tend to perform extremely well in repetitive tasks (such as cleaning).

Robots could be used to scrub or sweep floors, clean surfaces, disinfect common areas, clean touchpoints, clean bathrooms, and more while providing real-time data on performance and analytics.

One notable advantage of using robots to clean is that it reduces or eliminates human exposure to bacteria, viruses, and allergens.

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Future of Work: How the IoT, AI, and Robotics Can Help Keep Workplaces Clean and Safe - Allwork.Space

As restaurants across the country start to reopen, one question weve been asking is, assuming people will even want to go back into restaurants, how will they want to be served? Will customers want their server to wear a mask or not wear a mask? Which is less off-putting?

Another third option that may become increasingly common is having a robot server in your restaurant. Autonomous robots can shuttle food and empty dishes to and from the kitchen, they dont get fevers and theyll never cough anywhere near you or your food.

One company making such robots is Chinas Keenon Robotics, which launched its first server robots back in 2016. Keenons robots use both 3D mapping and specially coded stickers mounted on ceilings to navigate. A camera pointing up on the robot sees the sticker and determines its route. The robots also feature obstacle detection and automated stopping so they dont bump into people. Robots can be leased for $1,500 $1,600 a month.

Other players in the space include Bear Robotics and PuduTech, but what sets Keenon apart is scale. Of the 9,000 robots Keenon has operational around the world, 6,000 are already in the hotel and restaurant industry. Simi Wang, the Director of Global Sales at Keenon Robotics, told me by phone this week that the company can produce 30,000 robots this year.

The question now is, will that be too many robots or too little?

Keenon certainly seems to be filling its pipeline. The company has partnerships with Burger King in China, the Haidilao hot pot restaurant chain, and recently entered into an agreement with Chinese delivery service Meituan Dianping to create a new contactless restaurant.

Will there be that same demand for server robots here in the U.S.? When I spoke with Bear Robotics CEO last month, he said that there was definitely more inbound interest in his robots. He attributed this increased interest to customers wanting more transparency into who has touched their food. But again, were at the very beginning stages of restaurants coming back online, so we dont know how much people will actually care.

Pre-COVID, the labor crunch was a big factor for restaurants considering a robotic workforce. Casual and quick service restaurants in particular had huge churn rates. With so many people out of work, and so many fewer restaurants still operational, the economics of human labor wont be as much of an issue. The question now will just be how much people trust other people to handle their food.

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Just in Time for a Contactless World, Keenon Robotics has 6,000 Food Server Robots Already in Action - The Spoon

This week Cisco had a presentation with AVA Robotics about using a robot that was partially controlled by a remote user to make the user feel as though they'd teleported to a remote site. With the likelihood that many of us will continue to work from home for the foreseeable future, our reliance on video conferencing will only increase. As a result, it has suddenly become essential to invest in and advance these tools to make them more useful.

While the use of robotics as a physical avatar for remote viewing isn't new, integrating the solution with an existing conferencing platform like Webex is, and the result appears to address the problem of feeling left out far more effectively.

Let's explore that this week.

I've followed video conferencing since the mid-1960s when I first saw the AT&T video phone at Disneyland as a child. Fast forward to the late 1980s, I participated in research that intended to put video cameras on everyone's desk. The technology back then was very raw, but the employees didn't want to use it because they thought their boss was using the camera to spy on them. Given this study was done at Apple, they probably were right to be concerned.

Since then, we have had an attempt each decade to make video conferencing mainstreamand each attempt failed. This failure was because companies didn't force the use of the technology, and remote attendees felt understandably left out.

While a lot of the early problems like poor video quality, latency, and horrid user interfaces have been sorted over the years, three things remained: Strong policies that forced video conferencing use over travel, a lack of interoperability between platforms, and an inability to mingle like you would if you were physically there.

The first point of problem is being addressed by national policies preventing travel, which force video conferencing. The second issue the industry is still avoiding. However, there is an increasing number of hardware products that support multiple video conferencing platforms. The third difficulty is getting a lot of attention with things like the Holoportation booth. Another earlier attempt put a big screen TV in a door frame in a portrait configuration that people could walk up to and chat with. (Done right, it looks like the remote person is standing just inside the room through the door.)

The issue with both solutions is that while they are natural (it feels like the person is there), they aren't mobile, which means the user is pretty much stuck in the conference room or wherever the booth or unique doorway is. (By the way, on the doorway solution, I've often thought it would be cool to rig it with an actual door and then put the display on a video loop of a doorway in some other part of the world. It could become, in the winter, your door into summer. Or with this COVID-19 event, your entrance into someplace else you'd rather be.).

As noted, using a robotic Avatar isn't new. Still, many of the earlier solutions used cheap robots and often iPads to create a relatively fragile and challenging solution that didn't integrate the conferencing software in use at the company. This means you'd tend to see retransmission of the video from a meetingthrough the robot's camerasrather than the natively streamed content going to a remote person without access to a robotic avatar.

With the integration, you should be able to see the presentation and speaker, as well as any other remote worker, while still being able to leave the room for a quick side conversation robotically. You could even go on a site tour (assuming there are no stairswhich is far more likely now that offices have to be ADA compliant). And their AVA Robot appears to be far more robust than many of the earlier efforts (though I still think it needs arms). It can even effectively raise to talk to a standing person or collapse down to talk eye-to-eye with a sitting person.

No one vendor can fully address the problems associated with current video conferencing solutions. However, the need for these solutions has never been higher, which is driving change. One of those changes that Cisco and AVA Robotics demonstrated is partnering to create more complete solutions. If this becomes a trend, I expect that by the end of the year, we'll have video conferring solutions that address most of the problems we currently have video conferencing.

Thanks to Cisco and AVA Robotics for getting us one big step closer so less of us have to get on planes during these troubled times.

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Cisco And AVA Robotics: Getting Closer to Teleportation - IT Business Edge

A team of students at Martinsville Middle School will be one of 20 semifinalists competing next month in a global robotics tournament.

Absolute Zero, a Division 2 FIRST LEGO team comprised of 10 Martinsville Middle School students ages 12-14, won regional and state competitions to advance to the world tournament, the school district announced in a release.

The FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) LEGO League is an annual competition attracting more than 60,000 teams from around the world.

Competitors develop projects based on a theme and are judged on four components: robot game, robot design, project innovation, and core values. On the basis of its previous competitions, Martinsville was nominated by its region for a Global Innovation Award, where they could win a $20,000 grant to make their innovative solution to the annual challenge theme's problem a reality. Submissions were reviewed by a panel of judges consisting of experts for their problem identification, innovation, implementation and effective use of STEM principles.

Semifinalists normally compete at Disney World in Orlando, but because of COVID-19, this year's global tournament will shift to a virtual platform, and the world competition will take place June 24-27.

This seasons theme was City Shapers, and team members were tasked with identifying a problem in their community and creating a realistic solution.

Absolute Zero worked with Lieut. Todd Owen of Martinsville Fire & EMS on a taxing problem first responders face: maneuvering a traditional stretcher through snow on the ground.

Absolute Zero then partnered with Henry County Public Safety, who provided a stretcher to help the team design and create its solution, the Wheel2Ski: a ski-like adaptation that EMS workers can quickly attach to a traditional stretcher, transforming it into a life-saving device that can glide across the snow for faster patient rescue.

The team is applying for a provisional patent for their innovation.

Henry students make all-state band

Dylan Royal (left) and Dakota Sports of Magna Vista High School.

Evan Joyce (left) and Fabiola Vasquez of Bassett.

Four students from Bassett High School and Magna Vista High School qualified for the All Virginia Band this year.

The students are chosen from auditions by those who previously had been selected to the all-district band. Henry County High Schools had more than 40 students in the all-district competition. Auditions were conducted in February at James Madison University.

From Magna Vista, Dakota Sports, son of Pete and Heather Sports, was selected as a member of the concert band on trumpet, and Dylan Royal, son of Vincent and Donna Royal, was named to the symphonic band on baritone saxophone. Dylan received the highest score on his instrument in the state.

From Bassett, Fabiola Vasquez, daughter of Antonio Cruz Vazquez and Fabiola Becerra, was selected as a member of the concert band on clarinet, and Evan Joyce, son of Donald and Tammy Joyce, was selected as a member of the concert band on French horn.

Deadlines for students

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SCHOOLS BRIEFS: Martinsville robotics team in world event; 4 HCPS students named to All Virginia Band - Martinsville Bulletin

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Rehabilitation Robotics Market With Top Companies like AlterG, Bionik Inc.,COVID-19 Impact, Statistics Analysis, Market Size, Share, Growth, Trends,...

Pittsburgh International Airport has put UVC fixtures on its floor-cleaning robots, making it the first airport in the US to test the use of the ultraviolet rays to scrub the coronavirus from surfaces. If effective, the UV-cleaning robots could be a model for other airports as they plan to reopen and try to persuade people to travel again.

Allegheny County Airport Authority CEO Christina Cassotis said the partnership with Pittsburgh-based Carnegie Robotics highlights how the burgeoning robotics sector in Pittsburgh works alongside the community to solve big-picture problems.

We have a whole innovation culture that is looking for ways to do things better, especially in the pandemic, Cassotis said. And one of the things that we recognized immediately is that while we have to manage the crisis day to day we have to keep a line of sight into the future, to help inspire confidence in travel again.

She said they were starting to have those conversations internally when Carnegie Robotics CFO Daniel Beaven called her and said he had an idea to retrofit the airports existing floor scrubbers with UV lights.

UVC light is the same technology New York City will start using to sanitize its subway system next week. While UVC rays are known to be effective at killing viral particles, including other coronaviruses like MERS, its still unknown how effective they are against the virus that causes COVID-19.

Carnegie Robotics developed the AI and robotic systems for the Nilfisk floor scrubbers so they can map and clean an area autonomously. Now, after cleaning the floor surface with water pressure and chemical disinfectant, the UVC light will pass over the airports floors for a deeper cleaning.

The partnership with the airport and Pittsburgh-based Carnegie Robotics is a potential model for other airports, and it also highlights Pittsburghs status as a robotics hub. Its the latest sign of the airports focus on tech innovation. In 2018, the airport announced it was partnering with Carnegie Mellon University for the Metro21: Smart Cities Institute, to develop tech projects for the aviation industry.

Like other airports, Pittsburgh International has seen a sharp drop-off in flights during the coronavirus pandemic. The number of daily travelers is usually around 13,000, but it has dwindled to a few hundred a day. Many of the shops in the terminals have closed, and a planned $1.1 billion renovation has been put on hold.

Cassotis said working with companies like Carnegie Robotics is part of PITs larger organizational philosophy that an airport should be part of its community. Were not just the gateway to the region, we want to bring forward its best assets, she said. We want to make sure were taking care of passengers and staff. That bubbles up from the bottom and down from the top.

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Pittsburghs airport is the first in the US to use UV-cleaning robots - The Verge

Science teacher Douglas Albrecht and junior XiaXia Saavedra recently received FIRST Robotics Competition Regional Awards.

While most of the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) awards are team-based, two are for individuals: the Woodie Flowers Award and the Dean's List Award. Mr. Albrecht, an adviser to the Engineering Club and Ossining O-Bots Robotics Team, received the Woodie Flowers Award for the Hudson Valley Region. XiaXia got a Dean's List Award for the New York City region. She was one of 14 Dean's List winners in New York.

The Woodie Flowers Finalist Award recognizes mentors who inspire students through the art and science of engineering and design. Students nominate mentors in each region. One regional winner is selected worldwide for the Championship Woodie Flowers Award.

"Woodie Flowers was a professor at MIT, co-founder of FIRST Robotics, and one of the kindest, most inspirational people I've ever been lucky enough to meet," Mr. Albrecht said. "He passed away last fall. I'm honored to have my name in the same sentence as his."

In announcing the award in an email, the judges wrote that Mr. Albrecht "has lived and promoted the ideals of FIRST.

"He may know the answer to the questions outright but always challenges the students to seek their own solutions. Through his guidance and knowledge, he has served as a role model for many students who now pursue engineering fields," they said.

Mr. Albrecht said XiaXia is one of the outstanding leaders of Team 4122 and he is proud of her for winning the Dean's List Award.

Each team nominates two students as Dean's List Semifinalists each year. In addition to XiaXia, Ossining nominated junior Michael Pavelchek. FIRST selected winners based on interviews, which were conducted online this year due to COVID-19.

"It is such a challenge picking only two candidates as our nominees," Mr. Albrecht said, adding that Ossining has had seven finalists since 2014. "There are so many hard-working students on the team who would be excellent candidates for the award."

Students are selected for the award based on academic performance, commitment to the team, robotic building skills, leadership and community service. "XiaXia and Michael are both the embodiment of these traits and are leaders on the team, and I look forward to seeing what they accomplish in the future," Mr. Albrecht said.

In their essay nominating XiaXia, the Ossining team described her as "one of the leaders and driving forces for Team 4122." She joined the team as a freshman, working on the mechanical design team training program in addition to the FIRST Robotics Competition robot. As a sophomore, XiaXia was captain of Team 7004, the development team for freshmen and sophomores.

"This team was meant to be a chance for the younger students to learn without being bumped aside by older students, but no one told Xia," the essay said. "She learned the ropes at her first competition and led her team to be ranked #7 and 5 alliance captain at NYC Regional last year."

This year, XiaXia was Team 4122 secretary. She learned to work with bigger groups and expand her knowledge of mechanical systems, game strategy and communicating with sponsors. She continued her involvement in the mechanical department and taught younger students to fill her shoes. She also led a team of six students in preparing awards submissions and taught coding to elementary students during Hour of Code last fall.

"Her work in outreach and with elementary school students is typical of her attitude towards promoting STEM and ensuring the next generation of students gets to experience FIRST," the essay said.

Outside of robotics, XiaXia is a leader in the school community. She plays varsity softball and is a member of the National Honor Society and other clubs. She has a 99.5 cumulative GPA and takes AP and SUNY classes. She is investigating genetic engineering and diabetes in the school's Science Research Program.

"Her passion and excitement for science and technology is contagious and sets the tone for our entire team," the essay said. "Xia is a force in our entire program and her leadership skills separate her out from the rest of the cohort."

Link:

Ossining Student and Teacher Receive Awards for Robotics - Patch.com