As Factories Struggle With How To Automate, Ready Robotics, Spun Out Of Johns Hopkins, Raises $23 Million For Robotic O/S – Forbes

Ready Robotics cofounders Kel Guerin (left) and Ben Gibbs

Ben Gibbs was working in Johns Hopkins Universitys office for licensing and commercialization of intellectual property when he teamed up with Ph.D. robotics researcher Kel Guerin on the technology that became Ready Robotics in 2016. Their idea: Software that could power industrial robots, with an easy-to-use dashboard, enabling even small- and mid-size manufacturers to get the productivity benefit of robotic arms.

Today, the Columbus, Ohio-based company said that it had raised $23 million, led by Canaan, to expand its robotic O/S. The startup counts major manufacturers like Stanley Black & Decker and Smith+Nephew as customers, as well as smaller shops that would not otherwise be able to automate. The new funding brings Ready Robotics total investment to $42 million at a valuation that Forbes estimates at $70 million, up from $32.5 million after its last round, according to venture-capital database PitchBook.

Factories are hungry for robotic automation, but there are only 32,000 robotics engineers employed in U.S. manufacturing today and there are not enough systems integrators, Gibbs, the companys 37-year-old CEO, told Forbes. Where we are at with robotic automation today is like making you write 10,000 lines of code before you can write an article in Word. These bottlenecks are a major problem for factories that are desperate to enable automation to remain competitive.

Readys operating system, called Forge O/S, allows workers without any robotics background or coding experience to easily program the robots their plant uses. Forge O/S can plug and play with the variety of robot manufacturers. That allows plants that have a mix of, say, Kuka and Universal Robots, for different jobs to operate them through one dashboard. Forge O/S is the first operating system that allows you to operate any robot from any brand, and it does that by fixing all the complex back-end work, says Guerin, 35. The system starts at a price around $10,000 a year, and goes up from there depending on complexity and the number of robots and factories integrated.

The entire market for robots as a service, including affiliated software, is less than $1 billion out of a total robotics market around $50 billion, according to ABI Research analyst Rian Whitton. But by 2030, he figures, it could grow to more than 30% of a $521 billion market. Its quite a nascent space, he says. The hardware manufacturers like Kuka and Fanuc have their own control platforms so they dont have interoperability. What Ready Robotics is trying to do is create a common platform so it doesnt matter what robots you are using, and anyone can use the platform not just an engineer from CalTech.

The idea for Ready Robotics grew out of Guerins Ph.D. research. I was preoccupied with the idea of usability, he says. Before he finished school, he approached Johns Hopkins tech transfer office, where he met Gibbs. The two decided to team up to create their own company. I was itching to get back out into the startup world, says Gibbs, who had previously founded a company that licensed technology developed by the U.S. Navy. As is common in university spinouts, Johns Hopkins owns a small stake in the business.

Gibbs and Guerin moved operations from Baltimore to Ohio after an investment by Drive Capital, a venture firm based in Columbus thats managed by former partners of Sequoia Capital, in 2018. Sixty percent of the factories in the United States are located in the Midwest, and they buy the vast majority of the robot arms, Gibbs says.

Later that year, Ready began speaking with tools giant Stanley Black & Decker, which has built a team to scour for high-tech startups and innovations to improve operations at its 122 factories worldwide. Sudhi Bangalore, Stanley Black & Deckers vice president of Industry 4.0, says that when he began looking at ways to scale cobots, or collaborative robots, he discovered that Ready Robotics was already doing a small project with one of the companys Oregon factories. We fast-tracked the paperwork to see how they could engage with us on a few sites, Bangalore says.

In mid-December, Bangalore gave Ready the okay to launch in its Ohio factory, which makes fastening systems, telling the startup it hoped to do so in a tight timetable of four weeks, including the Christmas holidays. I was quite skeptical about how they would pull everything together, Bangalore says. Thats where they proved me wrong. When the launch proved more difficult than expected due to the plants aging infrastructure, he says, Kel came over and started designing things.

Since then, Bangalore says, Stanley Black & Decker has expanded its partnership with Ready Robotics to other factories, including a power-tools plant in Greenfield, Indiana, and is considering rolling out further among its 60-or-so U.S. factories. But big companies like Stanley test products all the time, and as the emerging robots-as-a-service field heats up, a key question for that expansion will be whether Ready can scale up at a lower cost. We pay a premium for this interface they are building, Bangalore says. It looks like the industry is catching on. So how can they evolve their value proposition?

Gibbs and Guerin believe that the emergence of inexpensive robotics and the software with which to operate them would enable automation in factories where it previously had been too costly. A McKinsey studyfound that 88% of manufacturers and other companies in heavy industry have either increased their spending on robotic automation or plan to do so. Yet getting benefit out of spending on automation has not been easy: The same McKinsey study found that only 4% of those manufacturers showed significant bottom-line improvements.

There have been all these investments in computer vision and machine learning, yet you are not seeing it live up to the hype in the industrial setting out of a few use cases, says Canaans Rayfe Gaspar-Asaoka, who led the investment in Ready. What we learned is that the software programmability of the robots is just broken.

For Canaan, the deal follows an earlier investment in retail robotics firm Berkshire Grey, which raised a whopping $263 million from investors that include SoftBank and Khosla Ventures in January.

Other investors in the Ready Robotics deal include RRE Ventures, Eniac Ventures and Drive Capital.

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As Factories Struggle With How To Automate, Ready Robotics, Spun Out Of Johns Hopkins, Raises $23 Million For Robotic O/S - Forbes

Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain to Impact Robotics Field – CoinNewsSpan

We are witnessing a number of applications where the blockchain and artificial intelligence have come together to provide a significant increase in the efficiency and effectiveness of the processes. Some of the worth mentioning examples include cryptocurrencies, chatbots, or fledgling segment of voice-assisted technologies. As we set to ride another way of technology, one of the most promising areas where blockchain technology and artificial intelligence can come together to yield massive in the field of robotics.

As the name suggests, Robotics uses fully automatic or semi-automatic robots to carry out work processes. It is widely considered a very useful technique in order to up efficiency and replaces human intervention for more accurate results. The field of Robotics is challenging and in order to grow the segment, companies need to offer reliable solutions to the clients and customers.

There is a growing awareness in the robotics Industries that the use of blockchain and artificial intelligence can be of immense help. While artificial intelligence will make the processes more effective and error-free, blockchain technology will help to keep the data decentralized and free from any centralized control. By combining the decentralized feature of blockchain with artificial intelligence, the field of robotics can be benefited in a number of ways.

Performance and operating capabilities of Robots is the primary area where the benefits can be reaped enormously. The artificial intelligence features will multi-fold efficiency by automating processes, while data immutability offered by blockchain will make the process tamper-proof. Applying these technologies simultaneously to the robotics, the operating mechanism can be pre-set to achieve the desired objectives.

The significance of blockchain and artificial intelligence is more prominent in the case of Swarm Robotics. This is because both these innovations can be applied collectively in order to control a group of robots. Each and every robot in Swarm Robotics is controlled by AI and operates according to the pre-set principles. The collective behavior and response of the Robots can be significantly enhanced with the application of blockchain and artificial intelligence. This also has huge benefits on scalability as the scope of the operations can be enhanced significantly. We have already started witnessing the application of blockchain and artificial intelligence in Swarm robotics, specifically in the areas related to the medical, entertainment, and farming industry. Although concerns about the safety and security of the features have been expressed by a number of stakeholders working closely in the industry, there is hardly any negative view about the potential of applications to bring benefits to the industry. The blockchain is a credible measure to allay the concerns of the stakeholders about secrecy and privacy of the data. Using the secure cryptographic signatures and advanced technologies available in the blockchain space, safety and security concerns can be easily handled.

Its quite natural to have an integration of Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain Technology in order to make progress in the field of robotics. While artificial intelligence is going to power the Robots while staying at the forefront of this integration, Blockchain technology will play a more passive role by providing backup support in terms of safety and security of the data. Hence, when applied to the Robotics in an integrated manner, the technology can benefit the industry in a hugely positive manner.

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Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain to Impact Robotics Field - CoinNewsSpan

ABB and Covariant Partner… – Robotics Online

ABB Inc. Posted 02/28/2020

ABB, the world-leading supplier of industrial robots, and Silicon Valley AI start-up, Covariant, today announced a partnership to bring AI-enabled robotics solutions to market, starting with a fully autonomous warehouse order fulfilment solution.

The partnership brings together the two companies with a shared vision for robotics enabled by AI, where intelligent robots work alongside humans in dynamic environments, collectively learning and improving with every task completed.

Given the accelerated global growth experienced in the e-commerce sector, ABB identified a significant opportunity for AI-enabled robotics solutions across a broad range of applications including logistics, warehousing, and parcels and mail sorting. Global revenues in e-commerce are expected to increase by over 50 percent within the next five years, rising from 1.7 trillion Euros in 2019 to 2.6 trillion Euros in 2024, according to Statista.

The growing demand for e-commerce fulfilment services and the complex and labor-intensive nature of the process offers unique potential for intelligent automation. The market is growing at a steady pace (4-5% CAGR) and is expected to reach a value of 51.3 billion Euros by 2021, according to procurement intelligence firm Beroe Inc. Today, warehouse operations are labor intensive, and the industry struggles to find and retain employees for picking and packing. While robots are ideally suited to repetitive tasks, until now they lacked the intelligence to identify and handle tens of thousands of constantly changing products in a typical dynamic warehouse operation.

ABB launched a global competition in 2019 to assess 20 leading AI technology start-ups on their approach to solutions for 26 real-world picking, packing and sorting challenges. The aim was to understand if AI is mature enough to unlock the potential for robotics and automation in the segment. ABB also sought a technology partner with which to co-develop a robust AI solution capable of supporting autonomous materials handling, enabling its robots to handle items of infinite variety.

The Covariant Brain is a universal AI that allows robots to see, reason and act in the world around them, completing tasks too complex and varied for traditional programmed robots. Covariants software enables robots to engage in reinforcement learning: adapting to new tasks on their own through trial and error and therefore constantly broadening the range of objects they can pick.

Our partnership with Covariant is part of our strategy to expand into new growth sectors such as distribution and e-commerce and to leverage the scaling potential in these fields. It perfectly complements our offering and adds to our aim to be the number one choice in robotics solutions for our customers. Through the combination of artificial intelligence with our robots, we are opening an entire new field of opportunities and applications for a variety of industries, said Sami Atiya, President of ABBs Robotics and Discrete Automation business.

If you want to advance artificial intelligence, we now need to take it out of the laboratory and apply it to the real world. We are delighted to be able to work with ABB to create AI Robotics solutions for customers worldwide, benefitting from ABBs nearly five decades of domain knowledge and expertise in deploying automation systems into the most demanding industrial environments, said Peter Chen, Covariants chief executive and co-founder.

The first installation of the ABB and Covariant AI-enabled solution is already being deployed at Active Ants (part of the bpost group), a leading provider of e-commerce fulfilment services for web businesses in Utrecht in the Netherlands.

ABB (ABBN: SIX Swiss Ex) is a technology leader that is driving the digital transformation of industries. With a history of innovation spanning more than 130 years, ABB has four, customer-focused, globally leading businesses: Electrification, Industrial Automation, Motion, and Robotics & Discrete Automation, supported by the ABB Ability digital platform. ABBs Power Grids business will be divested to Hitachi in 2020. ABB operates in more than 100 countries with about 144,000 employees.

Covariant is building the Covariant Brain: universal AI that allows robots to see, reason and act on the world around them. Founded in 2017 by the worlds top AI researchers and roboticists from UC Berkeley and OpenAI, Covariant is bringing the latest artificial intelligence research breakthroughs to the biggest industry opportunities. The company is headquartered in Berkeley, CA.

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ABB and Covariant Partner... - Robotics Online

Robotics students put STEM skills to the test at state championship – WBAY

APPLETON, Wis. (WBAY) -- Students put their STEM skills to the test in Appleton Saturday for the VEX Robotics State Championship.

More than 700 elementary, middle and high school students from around the state competed at the Fox Cities Expo Center.

Teams had to design, build and program their own robots to complete certain challenges.

"You have to get as many blocks as you can and stack them in the corner. Whoever has the most points at the end wins, but the towers on the field are multipliers. So, if you get an orange block in the tower, all the orange blocks in the corner are scored for more points," explainted Hilbert Robotics team member Andrew Mader.

Teams that qualify will advance to the World Championship.

The competition is put on by Fox Valley Competitive Robotics Inc.

In addition to STEM skills, the non-profit says it also teaches students teamwork, leadership and project management.

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Robotics students put STEM skills to the test at state championship - WBAY

Area Robotics teams ready for action this weekend – Manistee News Advocate

KEN GRABOWSKI, Associate Editor

Members of the Brethren High School Robotics team work on their robot to prepare for Saturday's competition in Traverse City. Teams from Brethren, Bear Lake and Manistee Catholic Central will be in action this weekend. (Ken Grabowski/News Advocate)

Members of the Brethren High School Robotics team work on their robot to prepare for Saturday's competition in Traverse City. Teams from Brethren, Bear Lake and Manistee Catholic Central will be in action this

Members of the Brethren High School Robotics team work on their robot to prepare for Saturday's competition in Traverse City. Teams from Brethren, Bear Lake and Manistee Catholic Central will be in action this weekend. (Ken Grabowski/News Advocate)

Members of the Brethren High School Robotics team work on their robot to prepare for Saturday's competition in Traverse City. Teams from Brethren, Bear Lake and Manistee Catholic Central will be in action this

Area Robotics teams ready for action this weekend

MANISTEE Over the course of the past several years, Robotics has been growing in popularity across Manistee County as four school districts now offer programs to their students.

This weekend three of those four schools will be sending competitors to events in Traverse City to test their Robotics skills against students from all over the state. Teams from Manistee Catholic Central elementary and Brethren and Bear Lake High Schools will be competing in tournaments.

For three elementary Robotics teams from Manistee Catholic Central, it will be the opportunity to compete in VEX IQ State competition from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday in Traverse City's Grand Traverse Resort. Coach Laura Cameron said this is only the second year that MCC has fielded a team and they are excited about having three teams in the state finals.

"Attending the State Competition is a first for our school and we are excited for this experience (this is only our second year with a Robotics Team at MCC)," said Cameron. "We are looking forward to creating new friendships and learning more about this wonderful program from other students around Michigan. Some of the teams that we will meet have been to State and also to Worlds. I wish the best to all the children that are participating at Traverse City this weekend and I'm excited to see the Best of Michigan competing for a seat at World competition."

Winners from this competition will move on to the VEXIQ World Championship later this spring.

On one of those Manistee Catholic Central teams is team 93673 Legends of Robots and is comprised of third graders Jocelyn Howes, Selena Kosla and Alexis Logan. They are in their first year of competing in Robotics and took first place at a competition in January.

Another MCC team that will be in the state finals is Team 61325A-Spirit Bot consisting of fourth graders Holly Brindle, Trinity Hurford and Cory Whitman. They had a double qualification at state through their coding skills during the Autonomous Skills Challenge and by taking second place in the teamwork challenge.

The third Manistee Catholic Central team that will be participating in the state finals this weekend is Team 93673 with third grade students Logan Harvey and Reid Kieszkowski. They qualified in their first experience at Robotics with a second place in Teamwork Challenge and in the Autonomous Skills Challenge.

Also on Saturday the Brethren Bobcat and Bear Lake Robotics teams will be in Traverse City taking part in the Robotics First competition.

Brethren coach Mitchell Knoll is feeling good about his team's chances, but adds there is some apprehension heading into a new game setup.

"We are feeling confident with our robot at this time because we have made it capable of completing each of the different tasks before us," said Knoll. "Some of the new features that we've used for the first time are mecanum wheels that give us better maneuverability, a ball shooting mechanism that allows us launch seven inch diameter balls across the field and a climbing mechanism that has multiple stages where the hook detaches."

Knoll said they made other adjusts they feel will make a positive impact.

"We also added more advanced coding where we can have the robot make decisions along with using a color sensor when to have to turn motors on and off," said Knoll. "Another feature that we are excited to run in a match is our six ball autonomous, which is where we have the robot shoot three balls, drive and pick up three more and shoot them on the same goal."

That is a 15 second period where everything is coded ahead of time and there is no human interaction, so being able to complete the complex set of actions is vital.

The team has worked hard according to Knoll and he feels it is ready to compete.

"There usually is a steep learning curve, so we are hoping to jump out to a quick start by having many things solved and practiced a head of time," he said. "We look forward to finally seeing how our robot matches up against other schools."

Brethren team members include Eric Grismore, Justin Kissling, Jacob Hofacker, Rhiannon Gillis, Markus Jacobs, Erica Feller, Jeff Goble, William Pasqualone, Hannah Fitzgerald, Dekota Slawinski, Justin Moore, Nevada Wheeler, Ashlynn Wardie, Maddax Fitzgerald, Kash Peck, William Rubin and Aidan Wenzel.

Bear Lake will also be at that competition and coaches John Prokes and Steve Gomez said the team has worked hard to prepare for it.

"As we get closer the kids are getting more excited, moving past the design and build phases and on to testing and prep for the event," said Prokes. "The robot is ready, the kids are excited to compete."

This year the team consists of Trevor Eisenlohr, Edward Fairchild, Tai Babinec, Marcus Langland, Abram Smith, Megan Gydesen, Tehran Freeman, Tracy Bryce and Fabian Aguilar.

Manistee High School coach Troy Nezki said his Robotics team is not going to Traverse City to compete, but are looking forward to their first competition next week.

"My entire team is either on the swim team or Science Olympiad who are competing this week, so we can't go," said Nezki. "We are going next week to St Joseph and the kids are excited as well as quite nervous about our first event."

Manistee's team includes Matthew Blevins, Luke Herberger, Mason Schaubroeck, Titus Lind, Roger Lind, Brandon Sullivan, Isaiz Tomey, Griffen Antal, Kylar Thomas, Dylan Johnson and Anderson Johns.

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Area Robotics teams ready for action this weekend - Manistee News Advocate

Why Robotics and Curbside Pickup Won’t Save Grocers – Progressive Grocer

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Despite consumer interest in online grocery shopping, retained adoption is only about 5% because grocers aren't delivering a perfect operational experience and bringing fresh food inexpensively to customers doorsteps

If it seems like grocers are scrambling now to monetize online ordering and delivery, thats because theyre in a very tough spot.Grocers are reallystruggling in an $800 billion business, most are barely profitable and only about 3% of sales come from online orders. While theres definitely interest from consumers in online grocery shopping, retained adoption is hovering at a measly 5% because no grocer is delivering a perfect operational experience and bringing fresh food inexpensively to customers doorsteps.

The fact is, figuring out all of the mechanics of grocery ordering and delivery is still extremely difficult, and the technology has just not come far enough yet from the major tech players in this space, like Amazon and Instacart.

If we look back, when online grocery ordering really started to catch on, it was back in 2016, and Instacart became one of the go-to tech vendors grocers used to automate the whole process.But the economy of picking and delivering is challenging and quite expensive for grocers, so those costs got passed onto the consumer. For mid-market grocery shoppers, its just not feasible or affordable to go the online grocery route for weekly shopping, and while theyre quite interested in trying it, they just cant afford to do it regularly.

Grocers cant simply rip out Instacart and similar solutions and replace them with their own technology, pickers and drivers. For one, those jobs are union ones for grocers and arent simple or inexpensive for grocers to negotiate.

So grocers started exploring robotics to improve efficiency and control costs.Beyond therobotsrecently introduced to stores for taking inventory and cleaning up messes, grocers have started looking toautomationto fill online orders and speed up delivery.While this could potentially improve just the pick efficiency, grocers can only really begin to make money on this when they start getting around 4,000 online orders a week connected to the automated location, which could be challenging.

Additionally, robots cant pick 100% of all SKUs; grocers will still need manual picking for items like produce.Finally, robotics still does not address one of the biggest challenges grocers have in the ecommerce economic equation: delivery. So the reality is that robotics is really just a stopgap, or a partial solution to fixing the real economic issues of grocery ecommerce.

The true promise of ecommerce is that it should be cheaper and more convenient to get your products delivered right to your doorstep than at the brick-and-mortar store, with no fees.

Consumers patience begins to wear thin, and they continue to do their grocery trips in person or use curbside pickup, another compromise.The true promise of ecommerce is that it should be cheaper and more convenient to get your products delivered right to your doorstep than at the brick-and-mortar store, with no fees.

To accomplish this will require a direct-to-consumer technology company to come in and restructure the entire ecommerce framework within the constraints of a single small ecommerce warehouse inventory control to reduce substitutions, manual or automated pick to reduce costs, and last-mile logistics to doorstep with its own drivers.

Robotics and curbside pickup arent going to fulfill the promise of ecommerce for the grocery industry; theyre just temporary solutions in encouraging more online ordering with better efficiency.To truly deliver on the promise of grocery ecommerce is going to require a completely different infrastructure and new technology to get food from local and national suppliers to customers doorsteps, on time, fresh, and more cheaply than if they went to the store.

Pradeep Elankumaran is the co-founder and CEO of San Francisco-based Farmstead, a fast-growing, tech-first digital grocer. Read More

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Why Robotics and Curbside Pickup Won't Save Grocers - Progressive Grocer

In first year, robotics team heads to Traverse City for state championship – The Times Herald

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New Life Christian Academy eight-grader Ben Gura sets up a test run of his team's robot Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2020, during the school's robotics team's practice.(Photo: Brian Wells/Times Herald)

Getting ready for practice, theNew Life Christian Academy robotics teams sat at a table around a pizza Tuesday.

It's the first year the Kimball Township school has offered the program, with a seventh grade team of four and eighth grade team of three.

Despite it being their first year, the eighth grade team is headedto theMichigan VEX IQ State Championship in Traverse City Feb. 28 to March 1.

Eighth-graderLuke Heinemann said his father teaches robotics at St. Clair County Community College, so robots havealways been on his radar. Math teacher Jack Hennesey brought up the idea of a club in November. Heinemann and fellow team members SamKeller andBen Gura jumped on it.

New Life Christian Academy's eight grade robotics team's robot lifts a box onto a 10-inch tower during a test run Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2020.(Photo: Brian Wells/Times Herald)

This year's game involves the movement and placement of cubes using a programmable robot. The teams must use their robot to lift the cubes and successfully place them atop platforms of various heights.

The team came together a little late in the season.

"We barely had a month to do it whereas the other teams had like six or more to start, so it's pretty cool that we made it to state with the little amount of time we had," Gura said, adding that he's learned a lot about coding through the process.

Hennesey said he used to teach at Yale Public Schools, and former colleagues there encouraged him to form a team. Hennesey also coaches cross country at the school, which wraps up in November.

This year, New Life Christian Academy started seventh and eighth grade robotics teams. The eighth grade team qualified for the state competition.(Photo: Brian Wells/Times Herald)

"So I said to (the students), 'you know what, I've got some time, what do you guys think?',"Hennesey said. "They just jumped on board."

But then comes the issue of cost.

"Believe it or not, this is about $1,200 worth of stuff," Hennesey said as the students worked with the robot on the practice space.

Then there's the cost of room and board and other expenses needed to travel.

"So grandparents and parents donated money to make it all possible," Hennesey said.

Hennesey said he plans to continue the team, and has an eye on a high school program when the current eighth graders are old enough. He's seen growth from both the seventh and eight grade teams. Sometimes when he chimes in to help, the students are already ahead of him.

"Most of my suggestions, to be truthful, they have said 'Mr. Hennessy, that doesn't work,'" he said.

The team also thanks God for their success.

"He's influenced us, He's given us this... we weren't coming into this expecting to win, not necessarily win, to get to a state level,"Heinemann said.

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Jeremy Ervin covers environment, education and more. Contact him at (810) 989-6276 or jervin@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter@ErvinJeremy.

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In first year, robotics team heads to Traverse City for state championship - The Times Herald

Robotic medicine may be the weapon the world needs to combat the coronavirus – CNBC

Nurse Cao Shan, right, working in the isolation ward, shows the conditions of a patient to a co-worker in Jinyintan Hospital. She and her husband, a doctor also working at the hospital, have slept in the vehicle for 23 nights to avoid bringing viral hazards around, save commuting time, and give their assigned nearby hotel room to colleagues.

Feature China | Barcroft Media via Getty Images

With top government health officials warning it is only a matter of time before there is a COVID-19 outbreak in the U.S., it's not likely that specialized masks and respirators, or canned goods and Clorox, will be sufficient to fight a global pandemic. Viral outbreaks like COVID-19 highlight the growing role new medical technology in particular, ideas from the field of robotics can play in fighting the spread of novel infectious diseases. But medical experts say it will be a mistake if innovation rolls out only when the world is on edge.

"Extreme cases make us rethink how we do things," says Dr. Robin Murphy, Raytheon professor of computer science & engineering at Texas A&M University. The 2014 Ebola outbreak in Texas, the first in the U.S., led to years of study by Murphy and others on emergency response and the integration of robotics with medicine to help limit pathways for a highly contagious disease to spread. "A hospital lost a whole wing temporarily. Two ambulances were infected," she recalled.

Still, she says, not enough has changed. Wild ideas from the world of robotics capture attention, but health-care experts like Murphy are focused on more basic automated solutions, like seeing robots perform routine medical work for contagious patients, without replacing or eliminating health-care workers, to free up medical staff so they can spend more time on direct care, as well as reduce risk of their exposure.

For starters, the robots don't look like people.

"There are lots of start-ups based on humanoid robots. No, no, no," Murphy said.

Think robots capable of helping to change IV bags or take patient samples, which require fine manipulation that is harder to perform in heavy and hot protective gear.

"There's an exposure risk just to change an IV bag," Murphy said. "Some things are so routine we take them for granted. How many times have you been in a hospital with loved ones and you hear that beep, beep, beep. ... Why aren't we automating it?"

Hospital beds that can be automated to cycle through a series of positions (e.g., elevate head for X amount of time, then lower and elevate Y) can perform work that is difficult to do for health-care professionals while they are wearing protective gear and focused on higher-priority items. "The medical professionals said they were always behind," according to Murphy, but this was one task that Ebola workers found did provide patient benefits.

Robots designed for handling biohazardous waste and decontaminating rooms and ambulances are also ideas born out of an era of increasing experience with pandemic risks.

"Why waste a person carrying the trash? Why send a nurse in to change a position on the bed. Now we're not thinking of the robots as things that look like a dog or humanoids think of the bed itself as being a robot," Murphy said.

Health officials wearing protective clothing carry medical waste out of an isolation ward at the Ernakulam Medical College in Kochi, India, on February 8, 2020. Robotic biohazardous waste removal has been promoted by experts in the U.S., including Texas A&M computer science and engineering professor Dr. Robin Murphy, an emergency response robotics advisor, who had direct experience with the 2015 Ebola outbreak in the U.S.

ARUN CHANDRABOSE | AFP via Getty Images

Dr. Edward Damrose, chief of medical staff at Stanford Health Care, said that to some extent the robots are already present and playing a role in our health-care system though many people are not aware of it. At Stanford, diagnosis and recommendations can come from telemedicine, and in the hospital, robots are bringing supplies and linens to the ward.

Stanford Medical Center IV bags are wirelessly connected to a network and can be remotely programmed an IV bag Internet of Things though the system does not include the robotic changing of bags that Murphy envisions. Sensors from Leaf Healthcare are used in the Stanford hospital to prompt nursing staff to turn or ambulate patients. UV sanitizing robots from Xenex are used in highly contagious infection rooms where virulent organisms are present. "I have a feeling in time that may become standard," Damrose said. "Look at the antibiotic crisis and how these organisms are adapting to disinfectants and antibiotics. It doesn't make sense to hand clean a room. Rooms of the future could all have UV cleaning robots."

But Damrose said much manual labor that nurses still often perform because physicians don't have the time, and residents in training have other priorities, are obvious places to look for robotic alternatives. Humans in a protective covering will always be available and required for lifesaving or critical care, but simple interactions can be handled by robots and reduce the "mundane risks of virus," Damrose said.

A nurse working in the isolation ward communicates with a co-worker on the talkie-walkie in Jinyintan Hospital, designated for COVID-19 patients, in Wuhan in central China's Hubei province Monday, Feb. 17, 2020.

Feature China | Barcroft Media via Getty Images

Transmission risks from spillover events are occurring with more frequency, said Dr. Jason Moats, associate division director with the Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service's Emergency Services Training Institute (TEEX), one of the largest training providers for first responders, emergency managers, and local government officials. It trained over 200,000 people last year from more than 100 countries.

"Robotics for menial tasks does not mean unimportant tasks," Moats said. "Moving patients around, radiology ... intake of patients. It could be a little robot the size of a Roomba that hooks into a bed," said Moats, who has been preparing the nation's first responders and emergency managers to respond to disasters, including infectious diseases, for more than two decades, and more specifically on enhance response technology since the 201415 Ebola outbreak.

"We bring out specialized equipment for these novel events, but if we're going to have specialized equipment it better be integrated into everyday operations. Then it becomes institutionalized and adopted," he said. "If we can teach a robot to aim a weapon, we can teach it to aim a bottle of disinfectant."

Dr. Laurel Riek, a professor of computer science and engineering, and emergency medicine at UC San Diego, said during the recent Ebola outbreaks health-care workers could sometimes spend over an hour getting into protective gear. While that helped improve safety, it was time intensive and took them away from treating patients. Even with strict protocols, a number of health-care workers were infected and died, and that is repeating itself in the COVID-19 outbreak, with many health-care workers infected and some fatalities.

Riek said systems that enable clinicians to control mobile manipulators such as mobile robots with the ability to grasp and manipulate objects are getting closer to the point of becoming affordable. "It's possible well-designed robots could help reduce the risks to health-care workers, who are already at a high risk of workplace injury," said Riek, who also serves as director of UC San Diego's Healthcare Robotics Lab. Robots can be used to take vital signs, provide comfort care, perform minor procedures and perform some delivery and cleaning tasks.

But don't think that anytime soon a "robot injects needles into veins like a phlebotomist does," Murphy said.

How to incorporate robotic technology into infectious-disease care is an issue that Doctors Without Borders (Mdecins Sans Frontires), which is on the front lines of many viral outbreaks around the globe, has been weighing.

"We routinely miss opportunities to innovate during outbreaks because it is a difficult time to do so. ... Robot development is just another form of this," said Armand Sprecher, public health specialist at Doctors Without Borders who worked on the West Africa outbreak of Ebola. "Maintaining momentum (and funding) between outbreaks can be a challenge."

Doctors Without Borders does use drones for some transport, but it does not yet use robotic technology on the ground, though it is interested in the potential, Sprecher said. One reason: Needs outstripped the organization's capacity as the past Ebola outbreak grew.

"The unaddressed suffering was distressing and a challenge," he said. "The value of robots appeared to be that they were not at risk of infection and not limited by heat stress." (Protective garments can be difficult for humans to wear for extended periods of time.)

Doctors and health-care workers in an Ebola treatment center run by the humanitarian medical aid organization Medecins Sans Frontieres, Doctors Without Borders, in Democratic Republic of the Congo. The 2018 outbreak with the tenth epidemic and the biggest ever recorded in DRC.

Andia | Universal Images Group | Getty Images

Robots may also provide a way to bring safer specimen processing and diagnostic procedures with no risk of infections to remote areas which are not up to the technological level of modern laboratory settings. "Humans are a significant source of laboratory error, so removing them where possible is often a good idea. Diagnostics requires precision, attention to detail and patience enough to do things the same way every time. Robots are good at this. People, less so," Sprecher said.

But there is a particular set of risks associated with automating too many medical tasks for Doctors without Borders, which employs a lot of local staff as part of building community trust in remote locations around the world. "If we exclude them and favor robots, we take away some of their self-efficacy and an important way for the community to know what is going on by being involved," he said.

"Outbreaks of new pathogens that lead to outsiders showing up in strange clothing coincident with lots of people dying gives rise to a host of rumors, many about what the evil people in the funny clothing are really up to. It is a tricky time to introduce novelty and innovative gadgets. This is not to say that it cannot be done, but one would have to do so with caution, transparency and communication of what one was up to," Sprecher said.

At Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett, Washington, a telemedical robot called Vici from InTouch Health, a company currently in the process of being acquired by Teladoc Health, was used with the first U.S. COVID-19 case. The simple-looking, lanky metal cart with a keyboard navel, tablet for a chest, and camera for a forehead allowed doctors to communicate with the patient in isolation.

"You don't want to make more people potential vectors," said Todd Czartoski, chief medical technology officer at Providence St. Joseph Health, which runs 51 hospitals including Everett, as well as more than 90 clinical programs across a total of 120 hospitals in eight states.

Three primary-care providers used the telemedical robot on a daily basis with the COVID-19 patient. "Mainly, it was communication, talking to the patient and listening to the heart and lungs, and also communicating with nursing staff in the room," Czartoski said. "It just helps to keep people from having to go in and out of the room. We still had to have a nurse gowned up with the appropriate equipment, but the robot made it easier to listen to the heart and lungs with a digital stethoscope and talk to patients without having to get suited up multiple times a day."

Amid concerns about the health-care system being able to effectively manage COVID-19 U.S. Secretary of Health & Human Services Alex Azar said on Tuesday the country has a stockpile of ventilators and masks but not enough for a coronavirus outbreak, and the CDC outlined what school and business closures would look like in the event of an epidemic telemedical technology is one solution that Czartoski thinks can scale quickly.

"China is struggling, and we would struggle, too. But telehealth will not be the biggest concern in terms of shortage. In homes and ICUs and elsewhere, it is designed to be scalable. It is not quite as ubiquitous as the iPhone, but it is the same idea, so it has lots of endpoints," he said. "If we were pushed to respond to a massive demand for telehealth, I think we could."

Zoom Video Communications was one of the few stock market winners as the Dow Jones Industrial Average tanked this week, as investors bet that demand for its services would continue to grow, not just in medical contexts but for general use as more businesses instruct employees to work remotely. Teladoc shares have risen roughly 25% over the past month, and over the past month, Zoom Video's stock has risen by an even larger percentage.

The Providence chief technology officer said even though it is the Vici robot that the organization's team of primary-care physicians have relied on in treating the current coronavirus case, ultimately the hardware is not the most important innovation for the future that will be core connectivity. InTouch TV is the device that Czartoski think will be the most broadly adopted. "That's the Amazon Firestick or Google Chromecast, the HDMI computer on a stick that can plug into any TV with an HDMI port," he said. "You can put in a zoom camera and mike and it turns any TV into a telehealth portal."

InTouchHealth TV in an intensive care room. Major health-care system Providence Health & Services, which recently used the InTouch Vici telemedical robot with a Washington state coronavirus patient, says the broader adoption of telemedicine will occur through TVs like this InTouch device.

InTouch Health

Providence currently has 200 endpoints of telemedicine deployed, between robotic carts and the TVs, which are the most cost-effective because they can be put in a room at low price point. A number of its hospital are in the process of converting entire intensive care units to InTouch TV. "That is the direction the field is headed, whether with InTouch or another vendor. The hospital room anywhere in the future, expect to have a virtual visit," Czartoski said. "You can use it to talk to loved ones, family members who don't want to be exposed or on the other side of the country, and have it hardwired for you and your doctor at the same time."

Czartoski, a neurologist by training, initially began using telemedicine in work with stroke patients, one of the best early use cases for telemedicine. "If I am seeing someone with stroke symptoms I can examine them with a camera fairly quickly and tell if there is left side weakness and trouble speaking, and I can look at a CT scan and labs, and make a decision with the ER physician."

Virtual visits are booming at Providence. The nonprofit health-care system completed roughly 100,000 virtual visits in 2019. In 2012, Providence performed a few hundred telemedical visits a year, and it has been growing at a rapid pace from 12,000 in 2016 to 41,000 visits in 2018 to over 100,000 last year. That number does not include the use of telemedicine in ICU specifically.

In a pandemic it would be great to have a robot, but as a force driver across all U.S. health care it is minor.

Dr. Edward Damrose

chief of medical staff at Stanford Health Care

While the 100,000 virtual visits logged last year represents only 1% of the Providence system's 10 million annual visits, Czartoski said his focus is on the rate of growth: "We weren't even a rounding error a few years ago," he said.

The organization is forecasting that at least 10% of visits will be conducted using telemedicine in the next three to five years, and the growth could reach as high as 20% of total visits. "Years ago we set annual goals for growth and we're beating it every year because it's growing so fast," Czartoski said. "Everything in life is tied to a smart device, except health care. It is the direction we need to go. That's why I gave up running a neurology department."

Stanford also has seen a rise in telemedicine visits in its primary care department. "It is a significant number," Damrose said.

A recent survey conducted by Bain & Company anticipates a 40% increase (from 17% to 57%) in doctors using some form of telemedicine over the next two years. A handful of routine infectious diseases, hypertension, diabetes and stroke diagnosis are among health issues for which telemedicine can at this point replace an office visit.

Health care is famously slow to adopt new technologies compared to sectors like consumer or retail, and often for good reason, said Tim van Biesen, Bain global healthcare lead. There are regulatory hurdles, and reimbursements are subject to abuse, which makes insurers hesitant to cover new procedures. "But it won't resist channels of online penetration indefinitely," Van Biesen said.

The Bain survey indicating many more doctors will use telemedicine in the next two years does not imply they will use it with a majority of the patient population (Van Biesen expects it will represent no more than 10% of patients). But ultimately there's a strong case for patients to use these services, especially for follow-up appointments.

"People take time off from jobs to go wait for 45 minutes. It's disruptive to daily life and that's why compliance is particularly hard to maintain among low-income communities. Even if it were cost neutral it would be a massive step forward in patient engagement," Van Biesen said.

Big health-care systems have the incentive to continue to move in this direction because it means higher levels of utilization of their assets, including doctors, which translates into better financial performance.

"Think about a traditional hospital, where you pay a neurologist to be on call. We take that concept and put it in the cloud. We give you virtual consulting services instead of paying a stroke doctor to be available 24/7," Czartoski said. Cloud-computing based clinical services InTouch Health hosts its own private cloud network can also help health systems work around a physician shortage in the U.S. which is expected to reach as high as 122,000 doctors by 2032.

"In this country we have medical deserts, where thousands of people are dying every day because of a lack of access to care," Riek said. Tele-manipulators are not yet ready for use with the types of tasks clinicians need to do, but there is reason to believe costs can come down, and capability and usability of these devices rise at a time when general telemedicine is more widely adopted.

"Infectious disease prevention may not be the motivating fiscal factor for health systems, but telemedicine and rural health absolutely could be," Riek said.

That's the catch for the present COVID-19 outbreak, and the novel infectious diseases that comes next: technology required to fight outbreaks may not be widely available unless the broader use cases are researched and tested. Doctors Without Borders' Sprecher said most of what his organization uses in management of outbreaks is not specific to them.

The surgical masks currently in such short supply that everyone is wearing were not designed for respiratory protection in coronavirus outbreaks. The Toyota 1978 hardtop Land Cruiser is "perhaps the most important moving part of Ebola outbreak response," but this model remains in production year after year because it is used all over the developing world to cope with underdeveloped road infrastructure. Doctors Without Borders also has begun using drones, originally developed for more general use, in medical specimen transport. "I imagine the robots will be the same," he said. "Adapted/customized for use in outbreak response."

"In a pandemic it would be great to have a robot, but as a force driver across all U.S. health care, it is minor," Damrose said.

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Robotic medicine may be the weapon the world needs to combat the coronavirus - CNBC

Robotics, AI Working Hand-in-Hand Will Propel Disruptive ETFs – ETF Trends

For companies that can afford to implement both artificial intelligence and robotics, it can be a dichotomy of disruptive technologies that can work hand-in-hand if deployed correctly. As barriers to entry like cost begin to lower for disruptive technology, more companies could be using both as part of their core businesses, which should only propel disruptive-focused exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

Robotics has kept pace with artificial intelligence, and its innovations have become quite practical, a Cloud Wedge article noted. Samsung unveiled a Bot Chef who is skilled at making you a salad on command, for example. Delta Airlines showed off an exoskeleton that can boost the strength and endurance of the human body. Robotics offers a lot of promise from the creation of artificial limbs to entire suits that can help us performs difficult tasks so much easier. Combining AI and robotics introduces interesting interplays. There are several benefits to the industry that the combination of AI and robotics can offer.

The proliferation of artificial intelligence and robotics will only reach greater levels, especially as the cost to implement this disruptive technology falls.

While businesses through increased demand to drive down prices will eventually make these machines affordable, for the time being (and for quite a while into the future), the application of AI and robotics as a combined unit remains too expensive to apply to routine tasks, the article added. As development in the field moves forward, we may see robots that work on machine learning within the next decade. The question of whether humanity is ready for the impact it will make both socially and economically is something that experts are still debating today.

As such, investors looking for a broad ETF play in disruptive technology can look at theARK Innovation ETF (NYSEArca: ARKK). The actively-managed ETF seeks to provide investors with:

For more market trends, visitETF Trends.

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Augean Robotics: mechanizing food production from farm to table – Robot Report

Editors Note: Oliver Mitchell is a Venture Partner at ff Venture Capital. Augean Robotics is a portfolio company of ff Venture Capital.

It spanned over 120 feet and took up a considerable area inside the already overpacked robotics section of the Las Vegas Convention Center. It left many wondering, What on earth is a tractor doing at CES?

Ever the since the acquisition of the artificial intelligence startup Blue River Technologies for $305 million, John Deere has been betting its future on data-driven agriculture. Explaining the presence of the enormous green combine on the show floor, Laurel Caes of John Deere declared, Its a great chance for those in the tech industry to visit with them and to learn more about how their food is produced and the important role technology plays and will continue to play in putting food on their tables.

I hosted Charles Andersen, CEO of Augean Robotics, last month at RobotLab to dig into the agritech market. Andersen worked for John Deeres largest competitor, Case New Holland (CHNi), after business school and knows the industry from the ground up as child of multigenerational farmers. After analyzing Blue River and the wider unmanned marketplace for CHNi, he concluded that autonomy is a force for new market disruption within agriculture, meaning that it is a force best commercialized by startups, so I decided to start a robotics company focused on agriculture.

Augean Robotics, one of The Robot Reports 2019 Startups to Watch, is one of the few systems actually working in the fields, while other upstarts are still tinkering indoors. Andersen exclaimed, Roughly two million US farms produce about $400 billion in revenue annually on a revenue basis, half of output is crops, and half is livestock.

In his opinion, livestock and grain productions are already on track to becoming fully automated. Livestock production is often fairly mechanized and in some cases automated (robotic milking parlors for example). Meanwhile, about one quarter of US farm output is grains corn, soybeans, wheat, etc. and other field crops like cotton these crops are very mechanized, with little in the way of labor in their production this is where Deere, CNHi, Kubota, AGCO, and others focus their marketing and R&D dollars building bigger/better tractors, combines, sprayers, etc.

This leaves speciality crop production (e.g., berries, orchards, and vegetables), which accounts for 88% of labor, as the low-hanging fruit for disruption. Andersen painted a portrait of aging farmers struggling with increasing overhead and razor-thin margins, forcing many owners to sell their family estates and move production to Central and South America.

Overall, there is rising demand for food with growing global population the irony of rising population is that as we have more people on the planet we have fewer farmers and fewer people looking to work for farmers. Thus, inputs across the board, from labor to water to fertilizer to machinery, are increasingly expensive and scarce, and generally speaking, growers are looking to do more with less.

Based on Andersens remarks, robotics is more than the newest equipment: it could be the savior of the US agrarian economy.

While many financial analysts have projected uber growth for agritech, the present reality is stymied by long sale cycles and difficult operating environments.

On the challenges side, the average age of a US farmer is 58, and these rising ages correlate with consolidation and an ever-smaller number of larger operators, Andersen said. Simultaneously, the conditions are often very challenging for autonomy, with the lighting, weather, field variability, and harshness that robots must face and handle consistently over and over again, the diversity of each industry makes finding industries with large TAMs difficult, and developing solutions that scale from one industry to another, is quite difficult.

At the same time, the opportunities could be larger than the other areas of autonomy as unmanned farm vehicles are able to immediately navigate around workers without regulations, pedestrians and other obstacles.

Rather than replacing humans, Augean Robotics approach is to alleviate todays agronomy inefficiencies by augmenting farmhands with mechanical donkeys called Burros.

We are doing something different, boasted Andersen, taking a stepped or phased approach towards full autonomy, beginning with a collaborative robotic platform called Burro that helps people work more productively today, collects tons of data, over time can be modularly expanded towards fully autonomous farming in a variety of different settings, and which we can get into the market today, not 5 years from now.

After observing how table grapes were picked and collected, Andersen launched a self-driving wheelbarrow to autonomously steer through vineyard rows as a shopping cart for harvesters.

Augean Robotics Burro robot. | Credit: Augean Robotics

Weve found that, like Kiva Systems in Amazon Warehouses, if you automate in-field transit you can enable people doing high-value/high-dexterity work like picking to be much more productive, Andersen said. A crew of 10 people harvesting table grapes with one of our robots running them back and forth can pick 40% more fruit per day, and the payback on one of our robots is accordingly just 30 and 40 days.

Long term he hopes to translate his success in table grapes to other labor-intensive crops such as berries and orchard fruits. In fact, his biggest worry for Augean Robotics being a startup is scaling his team to keep up with demand.

Every grower that buys our robots starts asking about five other use cases, often in different crops, that we didnt imagine our Burros going in to, and we have to ensure that our autonomy functions consistently and reliably everywhere, he said.

Andersen imagines a robotic herd shaping into a complete farming logistics platform over the next few years,

In 5 years, I see our Burro robots forming the core API for many of the future autonomous tasks people would like in specialty crops. By mastering the process of moving from A to B in complex farming settings, with a powerful and modular autonomous platform, I believe we are building a tool carrying platform that can enable autonomous picking, pruning, weeding, spot spraying, and a host of other tasks.

Andersens vision is embraced by many other roboticists that see a convoy of logistical solutions from the farm to the table. Last month, I was introduced to RoboJuice, a tasty invention by juice bar proprietor Mikalai Sakhno.

In the words of RoboJuice CEO Igor Nefedov, I realize that the automation of the food is an inevitable future and I wanted to participate in the change. He added, our smoothies will be cheaper, higher quality and little wait.

In light of the recent spat of robo-downturns, including Zume Pizza, Creator and CafeX, society might not be ready to turn over the kitchen to the bots. Nefedov retorted, were using human-like robots because its scientifically proven that people prefer robots that look like them people will eventually create an emotional connection that will drive repeat customers.

RoboJuice is still in building mode planning to open a first kiosk to showcase its franchise concept later this year. In the meantime, on a busy Vegas evening at CES last month I passed a completely empty automated bar, Tipsy Robot. Asking the hostess whats good, she responded the casinos nightclub, as the bartender there makes a mean mojito.

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A New Study Finds People Prefer Robots That Explain Themselves – Smithsonian.com

Artificial intelligence is entering our lives in many ways on our smartphones, in our homes, in our cars. These systems can help people make appointments, drive and even diagnose illnesses. But as AI systems continue to serve important and collaborative roles in peoples lives, a natural question is: Can I trust them? How do I know they will do what I expect?

Explainable AI (XAI) is a branch of A.I. research that examines how artificial agents can be made more transparent and trustworthy to their human users. Trustworthiness is essential if robots and people are to work together. XAI seeks to develop A.I. systems that human beings find trustworthy while also performing well to fulfill designed tasks.

At the Center for Vision, Cognition, Learning, and Autonomy at UCLA, we and our colleagues are interested in what factors make machines more trustworthy, and how well different learning algorithms enable trust. Our lab uses a type of knowledge representation a model of the world that an A.I. uses to interpret its surroundings and make decisions that can be more easily understood by humans. This naturally aids in explanation and transparency, thereby improving trust of human users.

In our latest research, we experimented with different ways a robot could explain its actions to a human observer. Interestingly, the forms of explanation that fostered the most human trust did not correspond to the learning algorithms that produced the best task performance. This suggests performance and explanation are not inherently dependent upon each other optimizing for one alone may not lead to the best outcome for the other. This divergence calls for robot designs that takes into account both good task performance and trustworthy explanations.

In undertaking this study, our group was interested in two things. How does a robot best learn to perform a particular task? Then, how do people respond to the robots explanation of its actions?

We taught a robot to learn from human demonstrations how to open a medicine bottle with a safety lock. A person wore a tactile glove that recorded the poses and forces of the human hand as it opened the bottle. That information helped the robot learn what the human did in two ways: symbolic and haptic. Symbolic refers to meaningful representations of your actions: for example, the word grasp. Haptic refers to the feelings associated with your bodys postures and motions: for example, the sensation of your fingers closing together.

First, the robot learned a symbolic model that encodes the sequence of steps needed to complete the task of opening the bottle. Second, the robot learned a haptic model that allows the robot to imagine itself in the role of the human demonstrator and predict what action a person would take when encountering particular poses and forces.

It turns out the robot was able to achieve its best performance when combining the symbolic and haptic components. The robot did better using knowledge of the steps for performing the task and real-time sensing from its gripper than using either alone.

Now that the robot knows what to do, how can it explain its behavior to a person? And how well does that explanation foster human trust?

To explain its actions, the robot can draw on its internal decision process as well as its behavior. The symbolic model provides step-by-step descriptions of the robots actions, and the haptic model provides a sense of what the robot gripper is feeling.

In our experiment, we added an additional explanation for humans: a text write-up that provided a summary after the robot has finished attempting to open the medicine bottle. We wanted to see if summary descriptions would be as effective as the step-by-step symbolic explanation to gain human trust.

We asked 150 human participants, divided into four groups, to observe the robot attempting to open the medicine bottle. The robot then gave each group a different explanation of the task: symbolic, step-by-step, haptic arm positions and motions, text summary, or symbolic and haptic together. A baseline group observed only a video of the robot attempting to open the bottle, without providing any additional explanations.

We found that providing both the symbolic and haptic explanations fostered the most trust, with the symbolic component contributing the most. Interestingly, the explanation in the form of a text summary didnt foster more trust than simply watching the robot perform the task, indicating that humans prefer robots to give step-by-step explanations of what theyre doing.

The most interesting outcome of this research is that what makes robots perform well is not the same as what makes people see them as trustworthy. The robot needed both the symbolic and haptic components to do the best job. But it was the symbolic explanation that made people trust the robot most.

This divergence highlights important goals for future A.I. and robotics research: to focus on pursuing both task performance and explainability. Only focusing on task performance may not lead to a robot that explains itself well. Our lab uses a hybrid model to provide both high performance and trustworthy explanations.

Performance and explanation do not naturally complement each other, so both goals need to be a priority from the start when building A.I. systems. This work represents an important step in systematically studying how human-machine relationships develop, but much more needs to be done. A challenging step for future research will be to move from I trust the robot to do X to I trust the robot.

For robots to earn a place in peoples daily lives, humans need to trust their robotic counterparts. Understanding how robots can provide explanations that foster human trust is an important step toward enabling humans and robots to work together.

Mark Edmonds is a Ph.D. candidate in computer science and Yixin Zhu is a postdoctoral scholar in computer science, both at the University of California, Los Angeles.

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Robots in retail: Assessing current progress and long-term vision – Robotics Business Review

The ongoing technological odyssey of robots and their acceptance into retail stores has given way to some interesting observations. Timing is everything is an ironic truth.

In my early days, developing a robotic solution for retail and defining its roadmap, I would say it was the beginning of embracing the technology and its presence to pave the way for adoption. There was reluctance and worry of what image a robot solution would project in stores; would it take away jobs? Interfere with and affect their shoppers? etc. Concerns faded away as developments progressed and time passed. Some even humanized the robot and gave it a name, such as Marty from Badger. Others used a more inconspicuous design, such as Tally from Simbe, to mold with the surroundings and provide less interference to shoppers and employees. There has been progress as solutions evolve, and competition from the likes of Amazon motivate retailers to integrate new technologies faster than usual. I call that advancement and realization maturity.

The road to automating retail stores with robots, as with any changing technology, will be prolonged and challenging. Any paradigm shift for retailers and everyone in their ecosystem requires management and leadership. Understandably, typical startup challenges can lead to costly delays. Add the multiple, significant components needed to build a robotic solution for each retailer, and you compound these challenges that can create a recipe for disaster. The components are:

All the current players have achieved various levels of success in accurately, repeatedly, and reliably scanning retail shelves at scale. I believe they have gained reasonable reliability in autonomous navigation. Image processing is the most complex lengthy in effort and the bulk of the complete solution, along with scale challenges. We are still a distance from attaining 80% of a usable shelf compliance solution, but this is within reach more so for some.

Here is my perspective on where we are:

Bossa Nova recently announced plans to expand its Walmart deployment to 1,000 robots. Image: Bossa Nova Robotics

Bossa Nova Robotics Currently the longest-running company to bring realization to a robotic solution for retail and the apparent leader. Completing major milestones in installation of autonomous data collection robots in 350 Walmart stores and just receiving a commitment for an additional 650 stores to be completed by summer of 2020. This is great news and a sizable milestone that Bossa Nova can use in its next funding round. As Sarjoun Skaff, CTO of Bossa Nova puts it, This is a very complex solution and as we found out, there are no shortcuts. Everyone has to go through the same challenges to get here. We are focused on solving problems to deliver a scalable solution and providing true value to our customers

The 350-store mark has been long in the works and is a considerable accomplishment, we will stay attentive to the new 1,000-store milestone. Bossa Nova has the most sophisticated equipment designed compared to others. Building a solution with cost to scale has always been an issue for all. With the release of the new 2020 hardware, claims are made that it comes at lower cost. I believe this is an area of opportunity for Bossa Nova to break away and add additional retailer banners.

Simbe Robotics There is big news in Simbes raising $26 million in funding, and a partnership with SoftBank inventory financing to expedite deployment of their robots globally. Simbe believes they have the largest geographical deployment of their robots. Brad Bogolea, CEO of Simbe Robotics shared, We have been focused on operationalizing the data as a priority in getting ready to scale. We feel we have done a good job diversifying our customer base and making the solution work for all departments and partners, this puts us in a good position to grow to chain wide rollouts this year, announcements forthcoming

Simbe has presence in the U.S. at Schnucks and Giant Eagle, using the vision solution and now with Decathlon using the recently added RFID capabilities. They also have coverage in Europe, the UAE and Asia with notable large global retailers. This might prove to be a winning strategy, diversifying early on and capturing a wide group of the 250 global retailers, as they get ready to scale. I still look for larger store count rollout beyond the 50 stores publicly announced, and expansion of current installations at Schnucks and Giant Eagle. The recent money raised and SoftBank partnership to increase production efficiencies could give them the boost they need to mature their capabilities and scale. Simbe did not participate with a presence at NRF this year; with their current global retailer coverage this could be a strategy to go dark with heads down, using the latest infusion to build up their abilities and get ready for the next phase to scale, we will wait and see.

Badger Technologies Marty, a spill detection robot that is looking to integrate inventory scanning. Image: Badger Technologies

Badger Technologies I recognized this company early on for its accomplishment of building a spill detection solution for retail stores, in a short couple of years. Although less complex, they were able to scale it and deploy it to over 500 stores; Giant, Martins, and Stop and Shop. Tim Rowland, CEO of Badger Technologies says, We see a need for a multi-function robot, we were surprised by the demand for a combined spill detection and inventory data collection robot as we expand our discussion with retailers, we also notice retailers looking beyond the hype of the robot idea and to focus more on how to operationalize the data collected to improve efficiencies and shopping experiences.

I think Badger starting out with a spill detection machine is an advantage, getting experience testing in live environments, and monetizing early on to help go further without having to rely on constant money-raising efforts. It helps as well to be part of Jabil, a $26 billion manufacturing solutions provider. If the Badger/Jabil combo cannot bring manufacturing costs down, no one can. Badger Technologies has an impressive local seasoned team that works well together and has the feel-good sense of a small town in Kentucky coming together and getting it done. They are now testing Badger Retail Insight, a robot that addresses out of stock, planogram compliance, and price integrity issues, competing with Bossa Nova and others. The processing capability is the biggest challenge and is a one- to three-year effort to complete and achieve an acceptable compliance reporting functionality. This will be key to how fast the solution penetrates and wins market share. We will continue to observe how Badger matures, given its current tests with Walmart and a half-dozen other retailers globally.

Zippedi Zippedi has been stealthily building its solution capabilities, leveraging local university talent and getting reasonable store coverage in South America. Luis Vera, CEO of Zippedi shared, We have tried several approaches to bring a real solution to our customers, from fixed cameras to robots. I think with the current robotic solution capability and tools we provide the expanded retailer partners; we are minimizing the out of stock problem for them by allowing them to respond quicker to shelf conditions.

Zippedi has built a solution for the retail ecosystem to scale from the ground up. They capitalized on retail expertise from the leaderships previous venture, called SCOPIX, that provided video analytics for retailers to improve business operations, sales and profits. They validated the robotic solution in several retailers in grocery and home improvement across five countries. Now testing in several major U.S. retailers, we can look forward to seeing if their model will gain traction and expand.

Zebra Technologies Finally, the best kept secret that everyone knew is out. Zebra rolled out its intelligent automation solution at NRF called SmartSight, which features the EMA50 and has the advantage of integrating with its portfolio of Zebra mobile computers. Zebra has been providing retailers with store-level solutions for more than 50 years. Undoubtedly, they have a respectable size and a diverse set of retailers to introduce their solution and expand quickly. Rob Armstrong, vice president of portfolio marketing at Zebra Technologies commented, With the SmartSight solution integrated with the rest of our portfolio, we can prioritize the tasks as they are pushed to the store associates mobile computers increasing their availability to interact directly with shoppers. We feel confident our existing capabilities are strong enough to optimize replenishment, reduce out-of-stocks, and provide value around compliance while reassigning labor to higher value assignments that enhance the shopper experience.

Normally I would say this is a bit late to the party, but Zebra leveraging its heritage, infrastructure, portfolio, and reach might be the game changer. What Zebra lacks in agility because of its size, it makes it up with maturity, certainly a rare ingredient in the startup world of robots. Image processing and computer vision proficiencies could have gotten a boost as well from a recent acquisition of Cortexica, and an investment in Focal Systems. Although shelf insights are a more complex problem to solve, it is possible the new talent will help mature the solution. These are very interesting moves made recently by Zebra Technologies. We will watch closely how it all comes together over the next year.

Brain Corp and Savioke Brain Corp specializing in the robot operating system with its early success of implanting its technology into floor-scrubbing machines and successfully completing it at Walmart, is now collaborating with Savioke. Savioke is the maker of robots for hospitality. Together they are working on a shelf-scanning solution. Like Zebra, these are the early days and they will soon learn the complications of collecting and processing retail data at scale. The field is getting crowded, prospects of collaborating and simplifying efforts to accomplish fast results are growing.

All are progressing at different speeds, maturing their capabilities with differing models. No question about it, robots are here to stay, and will be a permanent moving fixture in every retail aisle. They will have various robot duties, providing real data to feed many solutions and finally making them usable. The future we dreamed about is here!

As these companies scale, the impact of robotics in retail will start to touch the whole ecosystem beyond obvious data collection efficiencies and labor savings. Retail will not be the same. Current solutions in retail will either be enhanced and made more effective or rendered obsolete. Regardless, this opens the door to countless possibilities that many in the industry long await. This realization occurs when robots reach the threshold of truly scaling and collecting data from the whole store in all stores as Danny Sacco, former retail leader at Nielsen, keeps reminding me. I agree and say, This is when the fun begins.

Editors note: This article originally appeared in Winsight Grocery Business

About the author: Georges Mirza has been ahead of trends developing retail/CPG market leading industry changing solutions. He led the charge and established the road map for robotic indoor data collection, image recognition and analytics for retail to address out of stock, inventory levels and compliance. Georges currently advises companies on how to strategize and prioritize their road maps for growth. Follow him on LinkedIn, Twitter or e-mail.

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Robots in retail: Assessing current progress and long-term vision - Robotics Business Review

Join WearRA, ASTM and ASU for Robotics Week – Yahoo Finance

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., Feb. 27, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --Get ready for an exciting week in Arizona! The week kicks off with the Annual WearRAcon Symposium on March 30th. Immediately following WearRAcon, ASTM Committee F48 Exoskeletons and Exosuits will host their biannual meeting, and to round out the week ASU will host the Southwest Robotics Symposium. "We are excited to collaborate with ASTM and ASU to bring a full week of robotics education and events to Arizona," said Joseph Hitt, Ph.D., Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Wearable Robotics Association. "These events bring together wearable robotics professionals and entrepreneurs from industry, medical/rehab, academia, and government all in one place."

(PRNewsfoto/Wearable Robotics Association)

WearRAcon 20 | March 30-April 1:Join the Wearable Robotics Association (WearRA) at WearRAcon 20! The annual event, now in its 5th year, brings together 250 attendees from across the globe. The event includes keynote presentations from Norm Bafunno, Senior VP, Toyota Motor North America; Michael Goldfarb, Professor, Vanderbilt University and Creator of the Indego Exoskeleton; and Rich Mahoney, CEO and Founder, Seismic. View full agendaand register here. WearRA is pleased to provide special discounted rates for ASTM members attend the full event, or just come for the day!

ASTM F48 Meetings | April 1-2:The ASTMCommittee F48 on Exoskeletons and Exosuits will lead two days of meetings and breakout sessions on the development of consensus standards. Topics will address use of active and passive systems in settings involving industry, emergency response, health care, military, and consumer use. F48 subcommittees will target topics such as safety, quality, performance, ergonomics, security and informational technologies, and terminology for systems and components during the full life cycle of the product from before usage, to maintenance, to disposal. More information.

ASU Southwest Robotics Symposium | April 2-3:The ASU Southwest Robotics Symposium will focus on three themes this year: Manufacturing and Robotics, Agriculture and Robotics, and Mobility and Robotics. The main goal of the symposium is to build a community by fostering collaboration and promoting close interaction between leading researchers, engineers, and technology adopters while learning about state-of-the-art applications of robotics and autonomous systems. The event includes a Drone Delivery Challenge Competition (D2C2) on April 2nd and a special keynote by Dr. Vijay Kumaron April 3rd. Click herefor more information.

For more information contact:Amy Gallagher, Conference ManagerWearable Robotics Associationamy.gallagher@wearablerobotics.com

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Join WearRA, ASTM and ASU for Robotics Week - Yahoo Finance

Robolution Robotics headed to world competition – KBZK Bozeman News

BUTTE If at first you dont succeed, try again. The Robolution Robotics team made of students from both Anaconda and Butte High are proof that idea works.

Last year the group was brand new to robotics competition. It placed 36 out of 37 teams. This year the team won the INSPIRE Award for being the best example of what robotics teams are all about. For that honor the team is headed to the world competition in Houston in April.

Kaden Dean a junior at Butte High, and Caleb Thompson a senior from Anaconda talked live with Montana This Mornings Chet Layman Thursday morning about the team. Both say theyve learned much from working with the 8-person team from two high schools, and are excited about the trip to Houston. While they will travel as a team, part of the world competition requires a two-person effort where team members will be paired up with a person from another team. That means they could be working with students from any of the 70 countries being represented at the event in Houston.

The team is made up of five Anaconda High School students: Caleb Thompson, Liam Barrington, Will Griffis, Jaiden Connors, and Farabeth Barrington, as well as two students from Butte High School: Kaden Dean and Aaliyah Andersch. The team is coached by Carlton Nelson, an Anaconda High School teacher, who has spent the last ten years working for Upward Bound as a summer instructor and now serves as the after-school robotics coach. The team is mentored by Montana Tech students, Justin Bak and Emily Maynard.

The team is asking for community support to travel to Houston for the FIRST Championship Competition. For more information, please visit https://impact.mtech.edu/project/19260.

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Robolution Robotics headed to world competition - KBZK Bozeman News

Smart Robots: The Potential Benefits of Combining AI with Robotics – Analytics Insight

What would you call a machine that looks like a human? Obviously a Robot!

Robots are machines or mechanical human beings that are designed to assist humans with laborious and complex tasks. However, such robots are no more just mechanical design rather they have become smarter with time and advancement of technologies. AI developments have induced evolution and better capacity in robots. Even robotics and AI together can revolutionize almost any industry for the greater good.

As the industry is realizing the combined potential of both the technologies, will we see the combination anytime soon?

Well, some of them have already arrived in the market. In CES 2020, Samsung unveiled a bot chef who is capable of making people a salad on their command. Also, Delta Airlines showcased an exoskeleton that can boost the strength and endurance of the human body. We can observe that robotics offers a lot of promise from the creation of artificial limbs to entire suits that can help people performs difficult tasks so much easier. Amid this, the amalgamation of AI and robotics introduces interesting interplays. The industry can be benefitted from earnest promises of AI+Robots.

Using AIs subset Machine Learning (ML), if we design a system where the device learns from its mistakes and automatically compensates for errors as it works, then weve successfully combined AI and robotics. The combination of these technologies has the potential to make peoples lives a lot easier. People can monitor the performance of robots as opposed to manually performing tasks themselves. The downside of these systems would be that the labor demand for any industry that utilizes these robots will be far less. The robots will correct themselves if any errors arise, and only massive, glaring problems would need a human to address them.

Moreover, we already have machines that can perform these complex tasks and learn from them. The UC Berkeley PR2 can fold laundry and learn the way youd like it to be folded, but the cost of such a system is prohibitively expensive. While businesses through increased demand to drive down prices will eventually make these machines affordable, for the time being (and for quite a while into the future), the application of AI and robotics as a combined unit remains too expensive to apply to routine tasks. As development in the field moves forward, we may see robots that work on machine learning within the next decade. The question of whether humanity is ready for the impact it will make both socially and economically is something that experts are still debating today.

According to a report, in todays global manufacturing sector, there are a few main ways in which AI is deployed along with robotics. AI is a highly useful tool in robotic assembly applications. When combined with advanced vision systems, AI can help with real-time course correction, which is particularly useful in complex manufacturing sectors like aerospace. AI can also be used to help a robot learn on its own which paths are best for certain processes while its in operation.

Moreover, robotics packaging uses forms of AI frequently for quicker, lower cost and more accurate packaging. AI helps save certain motions a robotic system makes, while constantly refining them, which makes installing and moving robotic systems easy enough for anybody to do.

Furthermore, robots are now being used in a customer service capacity in retail stores and hotels around the world. Most of these robots leverage AIs natural language processing abilities to interact with customers in a more human way. Often, the more these systems can interact with humans, the more they learn.

A handful of robotic systems are now being sold as open-source systems with AI capability. This way, users can teach their robots to do custom tasks based on their specific applications, such as small-scale agriculture. The convergence of open source robotics and AI could be a huge trend in the future of AI robots.

When working together, robots are smarter, more accurate and more profitable. AI has yet to come close to reaching its full potential, but as it advances, so will robotics.

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Smriti is a Content Analyst at Analytics Insight. She writes Tech/Business articles for Analytics Insight. Her creative work can be confirmed @analyticsinsight.net. She adores crushing over books, crafts, creative works and people, movies and music from eternity!!

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TTA’s robotics team heading to competition in Dayton – 13abc Action News

TOLEDO, Ohio (WTVG) - The robotics team at Toledo Technology Academy is all geeked up about Tuesday's episode of Blackish. It centers around a robotics competition.

"I think its great, and it spreads the message of STEM and just a great addition to the show," said Cordelia Vanderveer, who implements the code to power Team 279's new robot.

The TTA students are taking their robot to competition in Dayton on Wednesday.

"First, robotics is a fantastic program that is the hardest fun kids can ever have. They work side-by-side with professional engineers and mechanics, and they have to design a robot from concept to finished product in six weeks," TTA teacher and robotics coach Dale Price said

The team has spent hours during the week and on the weekends getting this 90-pound robot ready to navigate an obstacle course.

"This year our objective is to pick up these balls and and put them into slots in a wall," said team member Cecilia Dietsch.

The robot also has to suspend off a swinging bar on the obstacle course.

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TTA's robotics team heading to competition in Dayton - 13abc Action News

Sports for the mind: Annual FIRST Robotics Competition returns to Myrtle Beach – WBTW

Myrtle Beach, SC (WBTW) The annual FIRST Robotics competition is back this weekend at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center.

More than 1,000 high school students, teachers and engineers will compete with Star Wars themed robots in the three-day competition.

This year, there are 64 teams from 8 states competing; 10 of those teams are from Horry County and this years rookie team is from Georgetown.

Each team uses the same kit of parts to come up with a unique design and has been working on their robot for about six weeks leading up to the competition.

Today is a practice and inspection day for teams, but starting tomorrow morning and continuing through Saturday, teams will get the chance to compete.

Although all teams are vying for first place, there are more than 20 other awards up for grabs for things like entrepreneurship, inspiration and engineering.

Frank Lanford, a founder of the Palmetto Region of FIRST Robotics, tells News13 its inspiring to see the different things students come up with each year, and their hope is the competition inspires students to further their STEM education.

Thats the vehicle to get kids to a point of incorporating STEM activities and working with engineers, Lanford said. The whole purpose again is on inspiration and that robot from our standpoint is the vehicle that drives that. Its the fun part.

Parking and admission for the competition is free at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center.

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Sports for the mind: Annual FIRST Robotics Competition returns to Myrtle Beach - WBTW

For warehouse robotics, the dock is the final frontier – DC Velocity

Material Handling February 27, 2020

material handling | Automation

Despite rising interest in automated truck loading/unloading equipment, adoption has been sluggish to date. There are three reasons for that, experts say.

By Victoria Kickham

A near full-employment economy is making it difficult to find warehouse help and driving more companies toward automated solutions that can ease the labor crunch and speed operations throughout the facility. Such solutions are becoming increasingly common for storing and retrieving inventory as well as picking and packing orders, but there's one area of the warehouse where automated equipment is still pretty scarce: the loading dock.

The main reason? An inconsistent environment. Trucks and trailers come in different shapes and sizes, and their contents often vary in weight, shape, and size as well. On top of that, items may have been loaded inconsistently, making it even more difficult to locate and extract specific boxes or pallets. It's tough to apply machine-based solutions in such a variable environment, according to Tim Criswell, senior vice president of innovation and technology development for Daifuku Wynright Corp., which makes and installs material handling solutions, including robotic truck loading and unloading equipment.

"When you're trying to automate [operations in] trailers specifically, there's much more variety in the location of the products you're trying to move and [in] their size and shape and position within the trailer," Criswell says, explaining the difficulty of developing technology that can grasp and move a variety of items without damaging articles around them or bumping into trailer walls, for instance. "All those things are easy for a human to do, [but it's] more challenging to automate that process."

Easy for humans to do, yes, but not so enjoyable in practice. Loading or unloading hundreds of heavy boxes, often in extreme temperatures, makes the loading dock an area of high employee turnover for many operationsand a prime driver of what Criswell and others describe as a steadily growing interest in robotic truck loading and unloading solutions. DC Velocityasked industry experts to weigh in on where the technology stands today and what may be holding it back from widespread adoption. They identified three key challenges.

CHALLENGE #1: VARIETY

The deployment of automated truck loading and unloading equipment remains fairly limited, largely because of the need to accommodate a wide variety of items in a changing environment. As Criswell explains, the technology thus far has been best suited to operations that handle a high volume of a limited number of stock-keeping units (SKUs), where the items are loaded on pallets or in similarly sized cases and boxes. The most common solutions involve a robotic arm and conveyor operating inside the trailer. In loading applications, boxes and cases are fed into the trailer on the conveyor; a robotic arm at the end of the conveyor picks up the boxes individually and stacks them systematically from back to front. Unloading works much the same way, with a robotic arm picking up individual cases and/or boxes and depositing them on an outbound conveyor. Solutions are customized to meet specific needs and loading/unloading environments.

The method works well for high-volume operations than can justify the steep cost of the technologyincluding cargo container import operations, which are pretty much the "sweet spot," Criswell saysbut not so well in applications that call for unloading a large variety of SKUs. That's why today's challenge in developing truck loading and unloading solutions lies in refining the technology to create an off-the-shelf version that can handle a more diverse product mix. The key to thatespecially for unloading applicationsis utilizing today's 3D vision technology, which allows engineers to program equipment that can "see" into the trailer and adjust its grasping and retrieval mechanisms to fit the specific application.

CHALLENGE #2: FRAGILITY

Companies are beginning to make headway on new loading and unloading methods that can address the varied conditions on the loading dock. One of the newest trends involves technology that loads and unloads boxes quickly, though not necessarily gently. In unloading applications, for example, such solutions have a robotic arm that incorporates vacuum technology that can quickly "grab and toss" items onto an outbound conveyor.

The process increases the number and variety of items a system can handle and boosts throughput, allowing the technology to be applied to more unloading situations and making the economics more attractive to customers, Criswell explains. But it's hardly a universal solution. While such systems work well in operations that handle relatively sturdy itemsincluding parcel environments, where robust packaging makes it possible to grab and toss itemsthey're not well suited to operations that handle fragile products, like cases of wine or boxes of glassware.

"The challenge is that it can damage products because you're not identifying them and being careful to pick up a case at a time," Criswell says. "You're grabbing what you can and letting it fall, so, depending on the product, there's a possibility of damage."

Such challenges illustrate the difficultythough not the impossibilityof applying robotic automation to the loading dock, adds Joe Zoghzoghy, chief technology officer for Bastian Solutions, a material handling systems integrator that also develops robotic truck loading and unloading equipment.

"[Robotic loading and unloading] is not a solution that you can provide right away to customers because it's a very complicated setup," he says, emphasizing the need to tailor solutions to different clients and their varying requirements. "[But] a lot of people are trying to figure it out and get it to a point where it can be scaled up. ... There are a lot of challenges, but it's only a matter of time."

The fast pace of advancing technology is helping to move the process forward. As technological capabilities expand and costs come down, designers and engineers have a wider variety of tools at their disposal and can create more flexible, affordable solutions, Zoghzoghy adds.

CHALLENGE #3: ROI

As Zoghzoghy notes, cost still remains the biggest obstacle to widespread adoption of automated truck loading and unloading solutions. Although implementation costs can vary widely depending on a company's needs, experts warn that the outlay can be considerable. Nonetheless, demand for such solutions is only going to increase.

Statistics on the warehouse automation market in general bear this out, with some projections showing the overall market for automation will more than double by 2025reaching $27 billion compared with $13 billion in 2018. What's more, the market for collaborative robotsthose that work alongside humansis set to increase to $5.6 billion in 2027 from $550 million in 2018, according to research firm Interact Analysis, which says the majority of that growth will be driven by the logistics sector. Today, material handling, assembly, and pick-and-place applications of all kinds account for about three-quarters of the collaborative robot market, the company said in a 2019 report.

It only makes sense that the loading dock will eventually see its fair share of that investment.

"The trend is that technology is getting better and more cost-effective, the labor shortage is making demand from customers greater, and at some point, those lines cross and the idea is that it becomes more broadly used in the market," Criswell says.

Zoghzoghy agrees.

"I definitely see this type of robotic solution becoming more common on the [loading] dock over the next few years. But I don't think it will be overnight; it will be a process," he says. "A lot of people are excited to see this type of technology within their hands, and we are working hard to get it out there."

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Idaho’s biggest robotics competition hosted at ISU – LocalNews8.com

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POCATELLO, Idaho (KIFI/KIDK) - High schools from across the state were represented at Idaho's biggest robotics competition on Thursday.

The VEX Robotics Competition is the state championships for robotics teams, a culmination of nearly a year of hard work.

Idaho State University hosted the tournament for the first time, led by ISU's Robotics Club.

After qualifying in regionals, thirty teams came to compete at the state's biggest event. Teams came from Nampa, Rigby, Weiser, Rexburg and other areas of Idaho.

They get super excited. They spend all this time programming, building, trouble-shooting to get it to what they envision on paper. Then they get to build it and see it work or not work, said Dane Davids, the president of the Robotics Club.

Students are given guidelines to create a robot to finish a task. This year's task: stacking blocks.

Winners will be announced at 4:00 p.m. on Thursday. Five teams will get to go on to the World Championships in April. Results can be found here.

Education / Idaho / Local News / Pocatello / Top Stories

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Idaho's biggest robotics competition hosted at ISU - LocalNews8.com

Where top VCs are investing in manufacturing and warehouse robotics – TechCrunch

Robotics and automation tools are now foundational parts of warehouses and manufacturing facilities around the world. Unlike many other robotics and AI use cases, the technology has moved well beyond the theoretical into practice and is used by small suppliers and large companies like Amazon and Walmart.

Theres no doubt that automation will transform every step of the supply chain, from manufacturing to fulfillment to shipping and logistics. The only question is how long such a revolution will take.

Theres still plenty of market left to transform and lots of room for new players to redefine different verticals, even with many of the existing leaders having already staked their claim. Naturally, VCs are plenty eager to invest millions in the technology. In 2019 alone, manufacturing, machinery and automation saw roughly 800-900 venture-backed fundraising rounds, according to data from Pitchbook and Crunchbase, close to two-thirds of which were still early-stage (pre-seed to Series B) investments.

With our 2020 Robotics+AI sessions event less than two weeks away, weve decided to perform temperature checks across some of the hottest robotics sub-verticals to see which trends are coming down the pipe and where checks are actually being written. Just as we did with construction robotics last week, this time, we asked seven leading VCs who actively invest in manufacturing automation robotics to share whats exciting them most and where they see opportunities in the sector:

Which trends are you most excited about in manufacturing/warehouse automation robotics from an investing perspective?

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Where top VCs are investing in manufacturing and warehouse robotics - TechCrunch