Research

Business, technological, and social drivers, as well as the Covid pandemic, have had an accelerative effect on the mobile robotics sector, particularly for autonomous mobile robots (AMRs). Deployments are up and increasing rapidly, and you can expect more of the same in the future.

Field tests affirm the wearable, lightweight, non-powered HeroWear Apex exosuit device lends flexible support for heavy lifting.

ABB, a key supplier of industrial robots, extends its offering portfolio to include AMRs and AGVs. Other industrial automation providers – and not limited only to robotics suppliers – are sure to follow suit.

Zebra Technologies announced that it would be acquiring autonomous mobile robotics supplier Fetch Robotics. Interact Analysis’ Ash Sharma breaks it all down.

Researchers, including Ken Goldberg’s team at UC Berkley, are hard at work developing robotic systems that assist surgeons by automating routine, often tedious subtasks common to all surgical procedures.

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.

In this podcast, Association for Advancing Automation’s president Jeff Burnstein comments on 2020 Robotics Sales for North America. Also, Canvas founders discuss their robotic drywall solution.

While third-party logistics (3PLs) companies have offered Fulfillment–as–a–Service (FaaS) for years, automation technology vendors are now beginning to provide FaaS solutions along with their more traditional technologies, products and services offerings.

As application opportunities increase, the mobile robotics sector continues to expand rapidly, with funding to start-ups continuing, and larger established technology companies, including AGV suppliers, entering the market with solutions developed in-house or acquired. As standardization and commoditization looms, companies emphasize SW, RaaS and specialization as differentiators.

Industrial Robot’s Joanne Pransky interviews Hugh Herr, head of the Biomechatronics Research Group and Center for Extreme Bionics at MIT, about the challenges and joys of developing and commercializing robotic prostheses.

China has witnessed significant robotics sales and investment in 2020, a continuation of an earlier pattern. Still, young Chinese robotics companies face many challenges including a price sensitive domestic market, relatively low labor wages, trade conflicts and geopolitical tensions.

Market research and consultancy firm Interact Analysis estimates that worldwide revenues for mobile robots will reach US $2.4B in 2020, representing a 45% increase for AMRs and 11% for AGVs over 2019. But that is only the beginning.

The Covid-19 pandemic has broadened the use case for food and grocery delivery services, and enhanced their value proposition. The same can be said for autonomous food and grocery delivery, but significant, business, technological, social and political challenges remain which the accelerative effects of the Covid-19 pandemic do not ameliorate.

Trade conflicts, geopolitical tensions, and now the COVID-19 crisis, is putting global supply chain at risk, and as a result companies are expected to reverse the multi-decade trend of offshoring. As robotics and automation becomes more capable, cheaper, and easier to implement, the technology is likely to accelerate reshoring initiatives.

Monash University’s Dr. Nicole Robinson explains how social robots can play a role in diet and weight reduction without the need for human intervention.

Cloud computing represents the most important horizontal innovation for the robotics industry to date, with the market for robot-related services powered by cloud computing reaching US$157.8 billion in annual revenue by 2030.

A new study co-authored by an MIT economist Daron Acemoglu shows firms that move quickly to use robots tend to add workers to their payroll, while industry job losses are more concentrated in firms that make this change more slowly.

LogisticsIQ expects the overall revenues from the Warehouse Automation Market to increase from US $13 billion in 2018 to reach US $27 billion by 2025, at a CAGR of 11.7% (2019 to 2025).

MIT economist Daron Acemoglu’s new research puts a number on the job costs of automation.

In 2019, overall robot market revenues experienced negative growth for the first time in many years affected by the global manufacturing downturn and reduced demand in major end industries such as automotive and electronics. However, the collaborative robot market still maintains a high growth rate of more than 30% (32.1% in revenue term and 31.3%…

Modular robotics are currently a niche market, but the need for flexibility could propel demand, predicts one global market analyst.

Nominations are now open for companies and groups to apply for the RBR50 2020 Innovation Awards.

Incident management, rural communications among most cited use cases.

‘Top trends of 2020’ includes predictions for 2 million new industrial robots by 2022.

Robotics, automation, AI and drones are enabling digitization efforts for the future supply chain.