Monarch Tractor’s recent petition to Cal/OSHA may have been denied, but this outcome is not the setback many fear. CEO Praveen Penmetsa shares why.

For manufacturers and others, tow-lines for assembly line conveyance deliver solid ROI, but AGVs and AMRs can provide equal efficiencies and value, with the added benefits of greater scalability and flexibility.

To optimize their effectiveness, increase human-robot collaboration, and reduce the risk of mishaps, autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) must understand, and take cues from, the social behavior of their human coworkers. Cloud-based technologies for deep learning training are key to making that happen.

Like all manufacturers, aerospace and defense firms must engineer existing or new facilities in preparation for much higher levels of robotic automation. To do otherwise places them at a competitive disadvantage.

The autonomous vehicle and robotics sectors often employ LiDAR as the primary system navigation sensor. But cameras and vision-based perception will increasingly serve as the technological underpinning for mobile robots going forward.

Technology providers such as Qualcomm are offering robotics development ‘platforms’ that incorporate ML and 5G enablers. But development platforms alone are not enough to drive robotics innovation forward, at least not until the supply robotics engineering talent exceeds demand.

Improving radar resolution has traditionally been based on a hardware advancements which significantly increase the cost, size, and power consumption of the sensors. But radar solutions empowered by (constantly improving) machine learning software, can deliver high resolution and long-range sensing in compact, low power, economical packages.

Asensus Surgical CEO Anthony Fernando extrapolates from current trends, and provides insights into the future of robotics-assisted surgery, digitized surgery and telesurgery.

Tactile sensing technologies allow collaborative robots to ‘feel’ many classes of objects – hard, soft, rigid, flexible, etc. As EU Automation’s Claudia Jarrett notes, this capability allows cobots to perform increasingly complex tasks while working in a collaborative manner with humans.

Robot behaviors are often built as computational graphs, with data flowing from sensors to compute technologies, all the way down to actuators and back. To obtain additional performance, robotics compute platforms must map these graph-like structures efficiently to CPUs, but also to specialized hardware including FPGAs and GPUs.

CNC shops, and their clients, both benefit from the many advantages accrued by incorporating robots into various CNC manufacturing and production processes.

The process of creating optimized, hardware specific, compute architectures can be time consuming and complex. The ROS 2 Hardware Acceleration Working Group (HAWG) is working to simplify hardware acceleration engineering tasks by creating acceleration kernels based on open standards.

While backflipping humanoid robots are exciting to watch, there is a far more pragmatic reality, one where intelligent machines are integrated into the workforce to function alongside humans, performing repetitive, risk-prone tasks, and gathering business critical data while doing so.

Developing SLAM systems is resource intensive, technically challenging, and expensive. In addition, the lack of common and shareable approaches for understanding the operational environment shared by robotics systems and humans has resulted in a multitude of system specific, spatial intelligence silos. There has to be a better way.

It is advanced software, working in conjunction with hardware systems, that has driven the commercial drone sector to new heights. Similarly, software is the key capabilities enabler for other types of robotics systems going forward, including mobile robots.

The food delivery sector faces serious supply chain challenges that could reduce consumer adoption and limit growth. A cloud kitchen execution architecture, supported by high levels of robotic automation, can address the problem while providing consumers with greater choice and value, and entrepreneurs with numerous business opportunities.

A critical challenge for manufacturers is the ongoing skills gap for programming, integrating and operating the robots and the capabilities operators possess. For manufacturers to become agile and autonomous, robots must be faster and easier to program and implement. Enter ‘no code’ programming.

The Parallel Structured Light approach for 3D sensing aims to fill a critical gap among 3D sensing solutions, enabling a whole new range of machine vision applications and tasks in the process.

Most industry experts agree that the technological capabilities for driverless tractors are there… and many farmers and technology providers believe it is more a matter of “when” than “if.”

Autonomous mobile robots, along with the first commercial autonomous mobile manipulation robots, can be used to automate many DC and warehouse tasks. They also enable whole news ways of executing warehouse operations, which in turn are increasing the resiliency and flexibility of supply chain workflows.

Robotics start-ups are releasing solutions designed to assist manufacturers address labor challenges, confront global competition and provide lasting business value. Examples include products and technologies that increase the ease and speed of robotics software development, as well as support sensor-driven autonomy and mobility.

When IoT technologies, robots and humans interoperate, advanced robotic capabilities are enabled, along with novel applications, and by extension, new business opportunities. Interoperability challenges remain, but solutions are available to overcome them.

Building Information Modeling (BIM) has found great success in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industries, and robotics solutions are making AEC inroads. The two technologies can be synergistic, and when used together can deliver additional value to AECs.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced businesses to innovate, including utilizing workplace robots. From telepresence capabilities to UV disinfection, mobile robots empowered people and provided business value. But even as the infection fades, their use will continue and expand.

The next production revolution will be a boon for a global economy that is sputtering and experiencing lagging growth and investment. This new technology wave should lead to a virtuous cycle of increased investment, higher productivity, more spending, and more investment.