Category Archives: Robotics

Another robotics firm is coming to Pittsburgh.

San Antonio-based Plus One Robotics announced that it would expand into the Avenu: Meyran space in the Pittsburgh Innovation District in May. The news comes after another growing robotics company, Neuraville, also announced an expansion to the innovation district and after Avenu announced the opening of the new Meyran location last month.

Nearly a year ago, Plus One Robotics announced a $33 million Series B round to fund international expansion. The goal was to meet increased demand for computer vision software for robotics in industries relying on warehouses and logistics. Founded in 2016, the company also raised $8.3 million in a Series A round in 2018, putting its total funding so far over $40 million.

Pittsburgh Innovation District is home to not one but two of the top-100 colleges in the United States. Being close to other startups in the District, plus Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh, was very important for us so we can situate ourselves in that high-energy, relevant, forward-looking and optimistic environment, said Bener Suay, senior developer for Plus One Robotics, in a statement. Our company is future-focused, industry-leading, and deeply knowledgeable in our field. We feel that these pillars are very much aligned with our neighbors in the Pittsburgh Innovation District.

Plus Ones software uses 3D and AI-powered perception tools to give robots increased coordination capabilities, including hand-eye coordination relevant to placement and sorting tasks required by warehouse and distribution center settings. Most recently, a press release noted, the company has branched into leveraging its software for depalletization capabilities, specifically looking to improve the computer vision for that feature using its Pittsburgh-based talent.

As someone with experience in material handling robots, I have a great deal of respect for Plus One Robotics. Having them come to Pittsburgh is a big deal and we welcome them to the community, Pittsburgh Robotics Network (PRN) Executive Director Joel Reed said. Pittsburgh is a world leader in research, innovation and commercial development for the robotics industry and is increasingly becoming the place to be if youre developing AI-driven autonomous and robotics solutions.

Plus Ones choice to expand to Pittsburgh next in its company journey also strengthens the conviction of Reed and PRNs claim last summer that the region is the robotics capital of the world. Its a sign that local business within that sector continues to grow beyond the realm of autonomous vehicles and leverage Pittsburghs robotics and AI expertise toward more commercial opportunities.

Suay and one of his colleagues, Senior Engineer Nick DePalma, said that the Pittsburgh Innovation District in particular will enable them to take advantage of all the benefits the city has to offer in robotics. With a growing number of businesses and access to CMU and Pitt, DePalm said he hopes Plus Ones new location will foster a sense of community with other innovators in Pittsburgh.

And it sounds like Plus One is here to stay. While it will continue development of its computer vision software for new applications, Suay said one of the first goals after the move is expanding the team.

Within the next 1-3 years, we hope to see our company grow its customer, application, and employee footprint, he said. We are working tirelessly on solving critical problems in warehouses and distribution centers. We hope to see our efforts scale, hire more talent, and augment our customers capacity to achieve more picks per day.

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Plus One Robotics expands to the Pittsburgh Innovation District with plans to grow here long term - Technical.ly

Brinker International has partnered with Flytrex and Serve Robotics to test drone and sidewalk robot deliveries in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area. Details are scant, but the Texas-based restaurant giant is including its Chilis and Maggianos Little Italy brick-and-mortar brands, as well as its Its Just Wings and Maggianos Italian Classics virtual concepts in the projects.

In an email to Food On Demand, Brinker said it wasnt prepared to share details about its future plans, but said it was very focused on the guest experience as we test our innovation efforts and work with Flytrex and Serve Robotics.

Israeli drone delivery provider, Flytrex, partnered with Brinker to launch its drone delivery service in Granbury, Texas, just outside of DFW. As part of the deal, Flytrex will expand its partnership with Chilis and Maggianos Little Italy, as well as the companys virtual brands, to deliver orders in the suburban market with a flight time of five minutes or less.

The service will operate in cooperation with longtime partner Causey Aviation Unmanned under a newly granted Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) waiver allowing a delivery radius of one nautical milereaching thousands of potential homes. Eligible households that have opted into the service can order food via the Flytrex app.

Were thrilled to be soaring into the Lone Star Statean outsized achievement for ultra-fast home delivery, said Yariv Bash, CEO and cofounder of Flytrex. After establishing drone delivery as a preferred option in North Carolina, we are excited to bring our unrivaled speed and convenience to Texas, where big things happen. We look forward to bringing drone delivery to backyards across the U.S. as we expand our service nationwide.

Dallas Innovates, a local tech-focused publication, said Brinker is also testing the Bear Robotics Rita table service bots at Chilis locations in the Dallas area, in addition to its work with Flytrex and Serve Robotics.

For Flytrex, this launch follows a series of additional milestones. Most recently, the drone delivery company received a waiver from the FAA enabling it to expand delivery service to 10,000 homes in cities across North Carolina as North Carolina Department of Transportations partner in the FAAs BEYOND program.

Flytrex has been operating in the First in Flight state since September 2020, beginning in Fayetteville, and expanding to the town of Raeford. In October 2021, Flytrex launched its third drone delivery station in North Carolina at the Holly Springs Towne Center, delivering food orders from Its Just Wings, to residents front and backyards. Flytrex has already completed thousands of drone deliveriesmore deliveries via drone than any other company in the U.S.conducting all operations while maintaining the highest safety standards.

As we continue to drive awareness and grow our virtual brand, Its Just Wings, we continue to explore and leverage technology and innovation, said Wade Allen, SVP, Innovation, Brinker International. With a focus on guest experience and conveniencealongside our killer wingsthis new outpost in partnership with Flytrex is another exciting step in the right direction.

While Dallas-Fort Worth is a big city with two downtowns, Flytrexs focus is on the suburbs. Although there are roughly 80 million homes in U.S. suburban areas, on-demand delivery has been largely seen as commercially unviable as traditional couriers are only able to make around two deliveries per hour in such areas. Flytrex says it is providing on-demand drone delivery directly to consumers homes in these underserved neighborhoods, offering a better, faster, more sustainable service at more affordable prices.

Since successfully launching the worlds first fully autonomous urban drone delivery system in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 2017, Flytrex has played an integral role in getting drone delivery off the ground. Flytrex is working with the North Carolina Department of Transportation, a lead participant in the FAAs BEYOND program, tackling the remaining challenges of UAS integration.

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Brinker Partners with Flytrex and Serve Robotics on Drone, Robot Deliveries - Food On Demand News

Pittsburghers seem reluctant to boast about something thats pretty significant the citys role as the birthplace of autonomous vehicles, says Joel Reed, executive director of the Pittsburgh Robotics Network. Or, maybe they just dont know about it.

When I was at IAM Robotics, more often than not, people associated with smart machines saw Pittsburgh as one of the top two regions for it in the world. In the U.S., theres Boston, Pittsburgh and San Francisco (including Silicon Valley), says Reed.

But that is not as well known in Pittsburgh.

The citys dominance in the field will certainly be a topic at a special event titled The State of Our Autonomous Vehicle Industry, on April 21 at the New Hazlett Theater on the North Side. The event will feature a keynote panel discussion, awards for contributions to the robotics industry and a VIP reception.

The gathering will also include the announcement of the Pittsburgh Robotics Cluster Profile, a document that focuses on the regions unique growth and opportunities in the robotics industry. The profile expands upon a report commissioned last year by the Regional Industrial Development Corporation called Forefront: Securing Pittsburghs Break-out Position in Autonomous Mobile Systems, which shows Pittsburghs powerful role in the autonomous vehicle sphere.

Aurora self-driving vehicles. Photo courtesy of Aurora.

That study estimates the direct employment of about 6,300 jobs in the autonomy sector in Western Pennsylvania, which generates an estimated $651 million in income, $34.7 million in state and local tax revenues, and $126.7 million in federal tax revenues. The industry also helped to create 8,604 full- or part-time indirect jobs, for a total of 14,923.

Thats not anywhere close to, say, banking or medicine in Pittsburghs economy. But its pretty good for a sector that barely existed 20 years ago.

Its growing, too. Last year, Waymo the self-driving vehicle operation affiliated with Google announced an expansion in Pittsburgh. Giants in the field such as Aurora and Argo AI have made Pittsburgh their headquarters, which anchors a lot of non-engineering jobs (that are crucial to growing the field) in the region.

That report shows that it has the potential to be a $10 billion market locally, says Reed.

William Red Whittaker of Carnegie Mellon University will receive the Pittsburgh Robotics Impact Award at the event.

Dr. Whittakers commitment to robotics spans decades and his work pioneered autonomous vehicles, space robotics, sensing and perception, robotic manipulation and industrial robotics, and has even given rise to the entire discipline of field robotics, says Jennifer Apicella, program director at the Pittsburgh Robotics Network.

The event, hosted by the Pittsburgh Robotics Network, kicks off a bimonthly Industry Insights Speaker Series with local robotics industry experts. Tickets for the April 21 event are $20 and are available to the public.

Keynote panel speakers include:

autonomous vehiclesPittsburgh roboticsPittsburgh robotsRIDCrobotics

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Robotics industry will convene in Pittsburgh to explore how the city became a leader in autonomous vehicles - NEXTpittsburgh

Weve got robots that can skateboard, robots going to outer space, robots with human-like skin, and now robots that can inch around like an earthworm. Scientists at Stanford and the Ohio State University banded together to create an origami-inspired tiny robotic crawler that shuffles around just like a tiny worm and looks so absolutely adorable doing so.

But this robot has loftier goals than just looking cute and feeling cute. As explained in a new study published March 30 in the journal Science Advances, the researchers constructed their crawler with flexible cylindrical units and a magnetic field that work to propel the yellow and blue robot forward through the repetitive movement of folding and expanding on itself. The aim is to one day use the man-made earthworm for exploration in confined spaces impossible for humans to navigateespecially for diagnostic medical procedures or to store and release vital medications within the human body.

The researchers borrowed techniques from a particular origami design called the Kresling pattern. Its something you can actually make on your own: If you take a hollow tube of paper and crush it inward clockwise and again counterclockwise, youll end up with two spiral patterns going in opposite directions of each other. And its deceptively powerful: When the paper is folded and expanded, it generates torque to move the worm forward.

The actual folding and expanding of the robot is accomplished through magnets. The researchers created four units of short, origami-folded cylinders interspersed between four magnets (two at the crawlers ends and two sandwiched in-between). What happens next is similar to the motions of operating an accordion: The robotic crawler is then placed under a magnetic field that moves the magnets back and forth, causing the cylinders to move as well.

In trials, the little robot managed to inch forward in one direction, as well as move in a zig-zag and crawl in a circular path when the direction of the magnetic field was changed. The research team also showed the robots were capable of delivering drugs by having them carry pills that later dissolved in water.

Miniaturizing robotic crawlers is considered challengingit can be hard to engineer the movements just rightbut this proof-of-concept creates a platform for further discovery and innovation in robotics. The researchers hope to build off their findings to create a crawler that can move around with great precision in small and confined spaces when steered by a magnetic field. These robotic crawlers may very well be the next extraterrestrial explorers investigating beneath the surface of new planets. Maybe theyll show up during your next colonoscopy to take pictures and biopsy suspicious growths. The sky or rather, the space they can fit in, is the limit for these little guys.

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Origami Inspired Robotic Crawlers Invented by Stanford Scientists for Medical Procedures and Drug Delivery - The Daily Beast

HAMPTON, Va. - The FIRST Chesapeake Robotics Championships, sponsored by Newport News Shipbuilding, wrapped up Saturday at the Hampton Coliseum.

More than 2,000 middle and high school students from Virginia, Washington, D.C. and Maryland competed for a chance to attend the FIRST World Robotics Championship in Houston, Texas.

In total, 140 robotics teams participated in the event.

This was the first large-scale championship in three years, according to a release from FIRST Chesapeake. To mark the occasion, the FIRST Tech Challenge District Championship was hosted in tandem with the FIRST Robotics Competition District Championship.

According to FIRST Chesapeake, 300 teams from around the region competed to participate in this event.

This is not like a science fair. It is a fast-paced sports-based competition. said Leighann Scott Boland, the executive director for FIRST Chesapeake. We are thrilled to be presenting these Championships in partnership with Newport News Shipbuilding. As the largest commercial manufacturer within the Commonwealth, they represent the pinnacle of technological advancement. We are so proud of what our students have accomplished and are pleased to share their hard work with the Hampton Roads community. Major corporations, including the Shipyard, tell us that FIRST experience is something they look for in their prospective employees.

Participants in FIRST programs also qualify to apply for more than $80 million in college scholarships.

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140 robotics teams from Virginia, Maryland, DC compete in largest-ever FIRST Chesapeake Robotics Championship - News 3 WTKR Norfolk

The half dozen teenagers surround the small robot named Sparrow, their hands immersed in an array of metal, wires and computer components as they wield wire strippers, screwdrivers and zip ties with looks of utter concentration.

They have about 24 hours to make sure Sparrow can gather supersize tennis balls off the floor and shoot them 8 feet in the air before demonstrating it can lift itself off the floor to hang from a metal rod and then, like a kid on monkey bars, swing to another higher up.

Sparrow is currently not moving. Its a cam problem, one student says, motioning to a wire gripped between his fingers as he explains in technical language what that means.

For the first time in two years, these Lowell High School students in San Francisco will face off in person against students from across California and other countries in the Silicon Valley Regional First Robotics Competition Saturday and Sunday.

It is, according to organizers, a varsity sport for the mind, combining the excitement of sport with the rigors of science and technology.

The program is one of countless efforts started in the past two decades to lure young people into the fields needed for the 21st century economy. STEM science, technology, engineering and math became educations battle cry, with policymakers and corporate America pouring money into K-12 recruitment efforts.

To some degree, the investment is working.

For many of the Lowell Robotics Club members and thousands like them across the Bay Area and the U.S., building a robot and being on the robotics team can be frustrating, fun and challenging. It can also have a major influence on who they become as adults, many opting as a result for STEM college majors and careers.

For companies looking to attract future technology and science workers, encouraging kids to build a prize-winning robot is arguably among the best baits. And for those hoping to create a generation of problem-solving adults undeterred by setbacks, a stubborn robot with a cam issue will likely do the trick as well.

Lowell robotics coach Bryan Cooley, a physics teacher, points to former club members now working at Space X and Tesla, among other high-tech places.

He also notes building the robot is only part of the experience. Students have to give presentations, raise money and participate in community events demonstrating the robot, as well as in public relations efforts.

A year of teaching physics cant do that, Cooley says.

In the hallway of Lowells science building, the robotics team members alternate between being nervous, worried and confident.

I really feel this is one of the best robots weve ever built, says Ivy Mahncke, a junior and co-president of the schools robotics club.

That said, were in Silicon Valley, she said, adding they face the best teams, which are mentored by NASA and tech company engineers. Were an underdog.

A previous design of Sparrows climbing mechanisms was scrapped because it wasnt cool enough, so they redesigned it, says sophomore Lucas Rosenthal-Jones. Is it cool enough now?

If it works it is, he says.

This group, like hundreds of high school robotics teams across the country, has been getting ready for competition for months, designing, building and testing their robot after school until 9 p.m. most nights and on weekends. In between they sleep, eat, attend classes and do homework which is sometimes turned in late because Sparrow is stubborn.

The goal is to get to the national championship, held later this month in Houston. The Lowell team has been five times in a dozen years and believes Sparrow has the wings to get there in 2022.

Many of the robotics club students at Lowell, a historically rigorous and competitive academic high school, said they plan to pursue a STEM major in college, including various engineering fields, medicine or economics.

Cole Lewis of Lowell High Schools robotics club joins fellow team members on April 6 as they prepare the teams competition robot Sparrow for its next competition.

The recruitment effort has worked to a degree, but gaps remain in terms of demand and supply, said Susan Hackwood, executive director of the California Council on Science and Technology.

Silicon Valley and the rest of California continue to import top talent to fill jobs in science and technology fields. And the need remains to recruit women and people of color into STEM fields, experts said.

Theres still a huge, huge, huge access and opportunity gap into robotics, to STEM, said Lisa Andrews, president and CEO of the Silicon Valley Education Foundation, which works to increase that kind of access.

It needs to start with programs like clubs and competitions, where Black and brown students remain relatively rare, she said, including at Lowell.

Hackwood said she believes the pandemic could help reframe STEM education toward social justice and other emerging needs, potentially exciting a broader range of students. She already sees that trend among her own science and technology college students.

Students are no longer saying, How am I going to get a high paying job? said Hackwood, an electrical engineer professor. I have an enormous number of students using STEM knowledge to help policymakers make the right decisions.

At the same time, Amit Roy Chowdhury, a robotics professor at UC Riverside, said recruiting students into STEM isnt necessarily the problem. Its keeping them there.

Robotics and other STEM departments lose 50% of students admitted to these majors due to early courses in high-level math and computer programming required for a degree.

What robotics clubs generate is an interest in knowing more about these subjects, Chowdhury said. They do not convey the challenges students will face if they want to be a roboticist.

Back in the hallway at Lowell, the students are still focused on how to get Sparrow working.

They fret that so many things could go wrong with their robot. Parts break and humans are fallible. There was one year during a competition, they said, when someone forgot to plug the joysticks into the computer, leaving their robot motionless on the competition floor for a solid 90 seconds before they figured it out.

Everything that could go wrong goes wrong and then you fix it, Rosenthal-Jones says, shrugging. You can use robotics as a metaphor for life.

Jill Tucker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jtucker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jilltucker

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Lowell Highs elite robotics team is racing to finish its robot. Can they make it to a high-stakes competition? - San Francisco Chronicle

Were beyond thrilled to tell you that the fifth TC Sessions: Robotics returns this year as a live and in-person event! Its been far too long, and we cant wait to see you and plenty of robots on July 22 at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, Massachusetts.

Artificial intelligence has driven the rapid advancement in robotics technology, and robots are not only changing the way people work, theyre accelerating business competition across nearly every industry, from agtech, delivery and food service to warehouse fulfillment, construction and healthcare.

Robotics technology will continue to revolutionize the way humans live, work and play, and TC Sessions: Robotics 2022 is where youll learn about whats coming next from the experts who know and explore potential opportunities.

What better way to celebrate such an auspicious occasion than by offering a hefty discount? Were kicking off ticket sales with a 2-for-1 limited-time offer. Buy your TC Sessions: Robotics 2022 pass for $165 and get a second pass for free. Who doesnt love free?

During this day-long summit, the TechCrunch editorial team will go in-depth with the worlds leading founders, technologists, engineers, researchers and investors in robotics and AI. Youll learn about new technologies and emerging trends and hear where investors think theyll find the next generation of robotic unicorns.

Expect a full roster of 1:1 interviews, panel discussions, interactive breakout sessions with Q&As and smaller roundtables for deeper conversations on specific topics. And with more than 2,000 robotics movers, shakers and makers in attendance, be prepared to engage in some world-class networking.

Now for the really fun stuff robot demos. Youll find them on the main stage and, for hands-on demos, head over to the expo area. Thats where youll find dozens of exciting early-stage startups displaying their latest robotics tech.

Whether youre looking for technology and product insights, investment, engineering talent, new partners or all of the above, make it a priority to attend TC Sessions: Robotics 2022 in Boston on July 22. And take advantage of serious savings buy your 2-for-1 pass now before they sell out.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TC Sessions: Robotics 2022? Contact our sponsorship sales team byfilling out this form.

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Registration opens with 2-4-1 passes to TC Sessions: Robotics 2022 - TechCrunch

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Teams Face Off In Robotics Competition - CBS Minnesota

Robotics and automation have never been hotter. And its not hard to see why. Squeezed by the ongoing e-commerce boom and a nationwide labor crunch, companies are finding they need these technologies to boost fulfillment speed and accuracy at a time when adding people is no longer an option.

To learn more about the current state of the robotics market as well as what lies ahead, DC Velocity Group Editorial Director David Maloney gathered experts from companies that participated in DC Velocitys Robotics Forum at last months Modex show for a freewheeling discussion. Among the topics we address in Part One (Part Two will appear in our May issue) are recent advances in robotics technology, the different ways in which robots can help ease the DC labor crunch, and the future of robot design.

Roundtable Participants:

Q: What do you consider to be the most significant advances in robotics technology within the past five years?

Jeff Christensen Seegrid: The most important advancements today are in the development of intelligent autonomy technology. In order for autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) and automation solutions to gain an extremely accurate understanding of their immediate surroundings, they need to see, collect, prioritize, and interpret a higher density of real-world live information. Any single sensor when used alone has its limitations. However, robotics companies that embrace sensor fusion will have solutions that offer an enhanced ability to perceive, plan, and control movement.

Matt Kohler Bastian Solutions:Artificial intelligence (AI)-powered vision is a game-changer for robotics. Robots have always been great at handling repeatable tasks, which has led to their widespread adoption in manufacturing, but not so much in distribution, primarily due to the wide variety of products you see in a distribution center. AI-powered vision helps fleets of robots learn how to handle the complexities involved in handling tens of thousands of SKUs and the random nature in which they are presented to robots.

Nicola Tomatis BlueBotics:One of the biggest changes in the last five years is that automated guided vehicles have become both the fastest-growing market and the largest market in service robotics. AGVs have overtaken both industrial robots and service robots working outside of industry.

Mike Futch Tompkins Robotics: Vision systems have made significant strides. Many picking software providers have made continual improvements in these systems. Two of the biggest hurdles that picking vision must overcome are the wide variety of items in warehouses and the unpredictability of what items are in a picking container. While human intervention is still required, picking vision has progressed to the point where the systems can economically replace or supplement manual labor in the warehouse environment.

Kevin Reader Knapp:Developments in artificial intelligence and machine learning have rapidly enhanced the capabilities of the latest generation of more capable robots, enabling them to perform more complex order picking tasks. At a time when labor shortages have risen to an unprecedented level of concern to supply chain practitioners, this category of robotics is moving from prototype consideration to the proven business case category.

Divya Prakash SICK:Simplification of user interfaces has opened up the robotics technology market to a much wider audience of end-users. Also, increased processing power enabled by GPUs (graphics processing units) and stronger CPUs (central processing units) better supports enhanced sensor capabilities.

Dan Coote Locus Robotics:The most important advancement in robotics technology lies in how robots are able to navigate around a warehouse. The granularity of a map within a warehouse along with the bots ability to navigate in a complex and convoluted environment both safely and efficiently have progressed by leaps and bounds. Its a combination of the physical hardware that goes into the bots (including LiDAR sensors) and enhancements in the back-end software tools.

Romain Moulin Exotec:Battery technologies have improved a lot in terms of efficiency, power density, and fast charging, which has allowed for new applications in mobile robotics.

Q: How can the increased use of robotics help distribution facilities cope with labor shortages?

Matt Kohler Bastian Solutions:We hear about labor challenges all the time, and of course, implementing robotics in a distribution facility will help reduce labor requirements. But it also allows companies to re-allocate that labor to more value-add areas of their operations. I believe that is important because it will help those employees become more engaged and [will] hopefully increase retention.

Mike Futch Tompkins Robotics: Robots have a bigger impact than just labor replacement. Consider that todays workforce seeks out technology. They would much prefer to work in an environment where they can interact with high-tech solutions over traditional manual processes or even traditional automation. Further, facilities are continuing to see positive impact by adding in gamification to their operations. Robotic solutions greatly enhance this ability.

Dan Coote Locus Robotics:Robotics reduces the requirements for the number of warehouse workers and increases productivity among the workers that a warehouse does have. During peak season, theres enormous demand for people, and the number of people available is dependent on where theyre located. To counteract this, botsand specifically RaaS (robots as a service) botsoffer the option of short-term rentals, which cuts down on the number of people required and provides the ability to [meet] your peak demands by augmenting throughput with a combination of people and robots. Also, the induction, training, and speed-to-competency times decrease with robotics.

Q: How will artificial intelligence and machine learning affect future robotic designs?

Kevin Reader Knapp:AI and machine learning solutions have the capability to impact a great many areas, from manufacturing through operations, delivery to customers, and beyond to our daily lives. But in a general context, there is consensus that the future of robotic design is not just driven by AI, but that cloud is the enabler, data is the driver, and AI is the differentiator.

Matt Kohler Bastian Solutions:The biggest impact will be in the sheer number of different robotic applications that those technologies enable. But from a robotic system design standpoint, I see the biggest impact being on end of arm tooling (EoAT) designs. AI will be able to evaluate products presented to the robot and determine how best to handle the product. AI can tell the robot to use only certain suction cups on a particular product surface or to only clamp a product in a certain location, or it may even tell the robot to swap out its current EoAT to use a different style of EoAT to handle a particular product.

Jeff Christensen Seegrid: Robot design will benefit from AI and machine learning as the software will increasingly take on decision-making. Industrial automation solutions will move from robots that have to do many things to robots that will be more task-specific. This specialization, along with coordinated flow and interoperability across these disparate robot types, will enable process innovation and ongoing AI-driven optimization. Not only will movement be automated through the robots, but the optimization of flow and continual improvement will also be automated.

Divya Prakash SICK:As artificial intelligence and machine learning advance, they will allow robots to complete more complex tasks in a shorter time. In the context of increased sensor capabilities, such as being able to localize mixed parts in a bin, this will lead to more advanced robot capabilities to support the additional sensor capabilities. Seven axis arms may become more common. More advanced flexible tooling (soft grippers) will come to market. Ease of use will need to be maintained or improved.

Romain Moulin Exotec:Artificial intelligence, coupled with new generations of sensors, allows robotics to tackle operations that once could only be done by human operators. Bin picking is still the most typical application.

Q: How has warehousing software evolved to make it easier tointegrate the robots that are taking on a growing role in fulfillment operations?

Jeff Christensen Seegrid: In the past, warehouse software interacted with automation such as AMRs and automated storage and retrieval systems (AS/RS), but had no visibility to the progress of work once it entered these systems. Tighter levels of integration through generic APIs (application programming interfaces) give todays warehouse software much better visibility into automation and robotic technologies. This also allows for changes to either system without time-consuming and costly integration changes.

Kevin Reader Knapp:As with most technologies these days, when it comes to warehouse and fulfillment operations, software is not stand-alone but rather, integrated across an array of areasfrom overall inventory management to sequencing, order picking, device control, and daily operation. One of the most significant improvements is the development of control tower technologies that focus on warehouse and fulfillment center management and are designed to manage overall resources. Best-of-breed warehouse management systems are also being re-architected for the real-time nature of the latest technology, including goods-to-person systems, robotic palletizers, and fully robotic order picking.

Nicola Tomatis BlueBotics:Software has improved in two key areas: human usability and machine interfacing. Warehouse software today is easier to use, while at the same time, it needs to interface with more vehicles and systems than ever before. It has improved, but a lot remains to be done.

Q: What will robotics look like by the end of the decade?

Nicola Tomatis BlueBotics:Two trends will define this decade in robotics: ease of use and interoperability. Robotic systems will be simpler to put in place and easier to use on a day-to-day basis. We will also see more and more different types of robotsand even brands of robotsworking together as interoperability becomes the default.

Romain Moulin Exotec:More and more operations associated with picking, packing, and loading/unloading will be fully automated.

Divya Prakash SICK:Themerging of sensors and robotic systems into a more cohesive, pre-engineered application-based product will allow for more advanced applications to be solved. Rather than customizing automation to existing processes, existing processes must mold to the needs of the automation system. Some of the newer tasks being attempted with automation are complex enough that there may only be one or two ways to solve them. This contrasts with the past in robotics, where there were many ways to solve an application and customize to the users existing processes.

Dan Coote Locus Robotics:By the end of the decade, it will be commonplace to have a multitude of bots performing various functions across the warehouse or [robots from] a multitude of vendors deployed within the warehouse.

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An inside look at the robotic revolution and what it all means for you - DC Velocity

Robots are already adept at certain things, such as lifting objects that are too heavy or cumbersome for people to manage. Another application theyre well suited for is the precision assembly of items like watches that have large numbers of tiny parts some so small they can barely be seen with the naked eye.

Much harder are tasks that require situational awareness, involving almost instantaneous adaptations to changing circumstances in the environment, explains Theodoros Stouraitis, a visiting scientist in the Interactive Robotics Group at MITs Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).

Things become even more complicated when a robot has to interact with a human and work together to safely and successfully complete a task, adds Shen Li, a PhD candidate in the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Li and Stouraitis along with Michael Gienger of the Honda Research Institute Europe, Professor Sethu Vijayakumar of the University of Edinburgh, and Professor Julie A. Shah of MIT, who directs the Interactive Robotics Group have selected a problem that offers, quite literally, an armful of challenges: designing a robot that can help people get dressed. Last year, Li and Shah and two other MIT researchers completed a project involving robot-assisted dressing without sleeves. In a new work, described in a paper that appears in an April 2022 issue of IEEE Robotics and Automation, Li, Stouraitis, Gienger, Vijayakumar, and Shah explain the headway theyve made on a more demanding problem robot-assisted dressing with sleeved clothes.

The big difference in the latter case is due to visual occlusion, Li says. The robot cannot see the human arm during the entire dressing process. In particular, it cannot always see the elbow or determine its precise position or bearing. That, in turn, affects the amount of force the robot has to apply to pull the article of clothing such as a long-sleeve shirt from the hand to the shoulder.

To deal with the issue of obstructed vision, the team has developed a state estimation algorithm that allows them to make reasonably precise educated guesses as to where, at any given moment, the elbow is and how the arm is inclined whether it is extended straight out or bent at the elbow, pointing upwards, downwards, or sideways even when its completely obscured by clothing. At each instance of time, the algorithm takes the robots measurement of the force applied to the cloth as input and then estimates the elbows position not exactly, but placing it within a box or volume that encompasses all possible positions.

That knowledge, in turn, tells the robot how to move, Stouraitis says. If the arm is straight, then the robot will follow a straight line; if the arm is bent, the robot will have to curve around the elbow. Getting a reliable picture is important, he adds. If the elbow estimation is wrong, the robot could decide on a motion that would create an excessive, and unsafe, force.

The algorithm includes a dynamic model that predicts how the arm will move in the future, and each prediction is corrected by a measurement of the force thats being exerted on the cloth at a particular time. While other researchers have made state estimation predictions of this sort, what distinguishes this new work is that the MIT investigators and their partners can set a clear upper limit on the uncertainty and guarantee that the elbow will be somewhere within a prescribed box.

The model for predicting arm movements and elbow position and the model for measuring the force applied by the robot both incorporate machine learning techniques. The data used to train the machine learning systems were obtained from people wearing Xsens suits with built-sensors that accurately track and record body movements. After the robot was trained, it was able to infer the elbow pose when putting a jacket on a human subject, a man who moved his arm in various ways during the procedure sometimes in response to the robots tugging on the jacket and sometimes engaging in random motions of his own accord.

This work was strictly focused on estimation determining the location of the elbow and the arm pose as accurately as possible but Shahs team has already moved on to the next phase: developing a robot that can continually adjust its movements in response to shifts in the arm and elbow orientation.

In the future, they plan to address the issue of personalization developing a robot that can account for the idiosyncratic ways in which different people move. In a similar vein, they envision robots versatile enough to work with a diverse range of cloth materials, each of which may respond somewhat differently to pulling.

Although the researchers in this group are definitely interested in robot-assisted dressing, they recognize the technologys potential for far broader utility. We didnt specialize this algorithm in any way to make it work only for robot dressing, Li notes. Our algorithm solves the general state estimation problem and could therefore lend itself to many possible applications. The key to it all is having the ability to guess, or anticipate, the unobservable state. Such an algorithm could, for instance, guide a robot to recognize the intentions of its human partner as it works collaboratively to move blocks around in an orderly manner or set a dinner table.

Heres a conceivable scenario for the not-too-distant future: A robot could set the table for dinner and maybe even clear up the blocks your child left on the dining room floor, stacking them neatly in the corner of the room. It could then help you get your dinner jacket on to make yourself more presentable before the meal. It might even carry the platters to the table and serve appropriate portions to the diners. One thing the robot would not do would be to eat up all the food before you and others make it to the table. Fortunately, thats one app as in application rather than appetite that is not on the drawing board.

This research was supported by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, the Alan Turing Institute, and the Honda Research Institute Europe.

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Robots dress humans without the full picture | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology - MIT News