Рубрика: Robotics

Robotics brings together a wide range of different machines including Pepper partnering with soft-bank; the Boston Dynamics humanoid robot Atlas, which can do backflips in movies and television and a plethora of humanoids and Bots that leave the human mind with awe and inspiration to achieve new tech heights. Much that the technology that powers robotics continues to achieve new pinnacle; people not familiar with the developments tend to hold polarized views, ranging from unrealistically high expectations of robots with human-level intelligence, or an underestimation of the potential of new research and technologies.

Over the past years, questions have been asked about what is actually going on in deep reinforcement learning and robotics industry. How are AI-enabled robots different from traditional ones and their underlying potential to revolutionize various industries, what is the new excitement the robotics industry holds for the future.

These questions point towards the challenging world of robotics and how difficult it can go to understand the current technological progress and industry landscape, to enable tech giants and newbies alike to make predictions for the future.

The Uniqueness Behind the AI powered Robots

So what is about the robot evolution from the automation to autonomy? What started off as a quest to make routine work easy through automation has come a long way towards full robot autonomy?

AI brings a game changer approach to robotics by enabling a move away from automation to true self-directed autonomy. When the robot needs to handle several tasks, or respond to humans or changes in the environment, it essentially needs certain levels of autonomy. The path from autonomy has been an uphill but a truly worthwhile change. According to a source, the evolution of robots can be explained by burrowing case studies from the autonomous car space. For an easy explanation of the process underlined below, robots are defined as the programmable machines capable of carrying out complex actions automatically.

• Level 0 stage is also called as the No automation stage where people operate machines, there is no automation without any robotic involvement.

• Level 1 stage is the driver assistance level, where a single function or task is automated, but the robot does not necessarily use information about the environment. Traditionally, robots are deployed in automotive or manufacturing industries programmed to repeatedly perform specific tasks with a high precision and speed.

• Level 2 stands for partial automation where a machine assists with certain functions, using sensory input from the environment to automate some operational decisions. Examples include identifying and handling different objects with a robotic vision sensor. In this stage, robots lack the ability to deal with surprises, new objects or changes.

• Level 3 is the Conditional autonomy where the machine controls the entire environment monitoring, but still requires a human’s intervention and attention for unpredictable events.

• Level 4 is the high autonomy stage where the machine is fully autonomous in certain situations or defined areas.

• Level 5 is the complete autonomy level powering the machine with full automation in all situations.

The Current Stage of Automation

Today, a majority of robots deployed in factories are non-feedback controlled, or open-looped implying that their actions are independent from sensor feedback as that happens in level 1 stage as discussed above.

Few robots in the business act and take commands based on sensor feedback as that happens in Level 2. A collaborative robot, or co-bot, is designed to be more versatile empowered to work with humans; however, the trade-off is less powerful and happens at lower speeds, especially when compared to industrial robots. Though a co-bot is relatively easier to program, it is not necessarily autonomous to handle. There is often a need of human workers to handhold a co-bot every whenever there is any change in the environment or the task.

Pilot projects integrated with AI-enabled robots, have started to become a regular feature incorporating a Level 3 or 4 autonomy, like warehouse piece-picking. Traditional computer vision cannot handle a wide variety of objects like that in e-commerce because each robot needs to be programmed beforehand and each item needs to be registered. However reinforcement learning and deep learning has enabled robots to learn to handle different objects with minimum human assistance.

In the times to come, there might be some goods that robots have never encountered before which would need a support system and a demonstration from human workers bringing the level 3 of automation. In the times to come, improvements will be seen into algorithms to get closer to full autonomy as the robots collect more data and improve through trial and error in Level 4.

Taking a clue from the autonomous car industry, robotics startups are additionally taking different approaches to autonomy for their robots. Some aspects believe in a collaborative future between robots and humans, and focus on Level 3 mastery. While in a fully autonomous future, skipping Level 3 and focusing on Level 4, and eventually on Level 5 will be difficult to assess the actual level of autonomy.

The Age of AI-Enabled Robots in Industries

Taking the brighter side, robots are being used in a lot more use cases and industries than ever before. AI-enabled robots are running warehouses, in a semi-controlled environment, picking up critical pieces that are fault-tolerant tasks. On the other hand, autonomous home or surgical robots will be a reality of the future, as there are uncertainties in the operating environment, where some tasks are not recoverable. With the change in time, the human eyes will see more AI-enabled robots being used across industries and scenarios as reliability and technology precision improves.

The world has seen only about 3 million robots, most of which work on welding, assembly and handling tasks. There have been very few robot arms being used in varied industries like agriculture, industries or warehouses apart from electronics and automotive units, due to the limitation of computer vision.

Over the next 20 years, the world will witness an explosive growth and a changing industry landscape which will bought by the next-generation robots as reinforcement learning, cloud computing and deep learning unlock the robotic potential.

The post Decoding the Next Generation of AI-Powered Robotics appeared first on Analytics Insight.

Back in 2010, James Kuffner, coined the term “cloud robotics” while working at Google. Since then years have gone by and Google has since tested various cloud robotics efforts, and is going full-bore in 2019 with the launch of the Google Cloud Robotics Platform for developers. Details of the much awaited launch are somewhat scarce at the moment but industry honchos say that the timing is right for the launch, thanks to the maturing of both the robotics market and Google Cloud products. The market is live with discussions like Robotics and the Cloud (RaaS) are like peanut butter and jelly, making the awaited integration more exciting.

RaaS and the Possibilities with Google Cloud Robotics Platform

According to the Google Cloud Robotics Platform website, the platform combines AI, the cloud and robotics to enable an open ecosystem of automation solutions that deploy cloud-connected collaborative robots. Google’s AI and ML services will foresee the unpredictable physical world and enable efficient robotic automation in highly dynamic environments.

Come 2019, and the launch of Google Cloud Robotics Platform will enable developers to have access to all of Google’s AI and data management capabilities, from Cloud AutoML to Cloud Bigtable, which currently includes the beta versions of Natural Language, and Vision processing and AutoML Translations. Google aims that the object intelligence service will pose detection which can be used for grasping automated inventory and provide low-latency object recognition.

The Google Cloud Robotics Platform will additionally use the Google Cartographer, which provides mapping (SLAM) in 2D and 3D and real-time simultaneous localization. Cartographer will continuously process sensor data coming from multiple sources and give access to robots to localize in shared maps. Even if the environment changes over time, its spatial intelligence services will analyse workspaces and will be programmed to handle query, react to changes in the environment and track changes.

Answering Data Privacy Issues

In a world where technology is fast evolving, data privacy issues are a big concern. Google has added that its customers will fully own their data, which will always be encrypted on its platform. Customers can take their data with them wherever they go, if they have a change in their plans and business processes.

The Google platform will cover foundational needs, and would include robust and secure connectivity between cloud and the robots. Users accessing the Google Platform will have an option to distribute and manage these digital assets with an open-source container-orchestration system Kubernetes, and can further deploy Stackdriver to monitor, data logging alerting, and dash-boarding operations.

The Age of Cloud Robotics

Cloud robotics offers a plethora of advantages on deployment, which include:

• Access to updated libraries of images, maps, and object/product data for Big Data integration.

• Access to parallel grid computing on demand for learning, statistical analysis and motion planning to ease cloud computing.

• Robots and systems in power to control policies, outcomes, and sharing trajectories.

• Use of crowdsourcing to tap human skills to analyse video and images, learning, classification and error recovery. The Cloud additionally can provide access to publications, datasets, models, simulation tools, benchmarks and open-source software.

The Demand of Robotics Developers

The timing of Google Cloud Robotics Platform may prove to be a coincidence, but robotics is making a comeback to tech giant Google which of late has been on a buying spree. In 2013 it acquired eight robotics companies, including Boston Dynamics, only to sell it to Softbank in 2017. Multiple reports have indicated that Google is developing a rival under the leadership of Ryan Hickman to match Amazon’s domestic robot under development.

Google’s robotics efforts look hopeful this time around, but things will not be easy, especially when it comes striking a winning cord over robotics developers. In 2018, at ROSCon Microsoft announced that it is working with the ROS Industrial Consortium (ROS-I) and Open Robotics to bring the Robot Operating System (ROS) to Windows 10.

This move may prove to be an exhilarating opportunity for Microsoft to further expose its Azure cloud platform, and associated products, to a vast number of ROS developers worldwide. The release referred to as an experimental move at this point will go a long way since biggies like Open Robotics, Microsoft, and ROS-I are committed to making this work.

With the advancement in robotic technologies, massive progress is witnessed in the progress of development tools. In the times to come, Robotics with artificial intelligence will be seen as the universally accessible technology to augment human abilities and this development will further bring the security and manageability of Windows 10 IoT Enterprise to the innovative ROS ecosystem. Microsoft’s interest on robotics developers has been seen since older times, with the launch of Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio (MRDS) in 2006. MRDS is a software and development package that was released about one year before Willow Garage announced ROS, an open-source, meta-operating system to build robot applications. However, MRDS never gained traction, and the last MRDS update was published in March 2012 with Microsoft’s robotics group officially getting shut down in 2014.

The post The Era of RaaS is Here: Google Cloud Robotics Platform to Go Live in 2019 appeared first on Analytics Insight.

If you venture into Facebook’s career section page, you will find that the social media giant has several open job listings for PhD students in “soft robotics”. The openings are listed for Research Intern open positions who would work at the Facebook Reality Labs (FRL), a world leader in the design of virtual reality systems.

Facebook seeks innovative research interns who have a passion for technology to work and develop the next-generation soft robotic systems at its FRL research location in Redmond, Washington. The research Intern roles are focused on the invention of haptics (a branch of nonverbal communication involving any form of interaction involving touch), research, fluidic actuators, novel manufacturing techniques and soft active materials. The social media giant welcomes PhD students in mechanical engineering, robotics, electrical engineering, materials science, bioengineering, or similar field to research into “soft robotics”.

Soft Robotics: The Next Hot Trend into Technology

Lot has been said about soft robotics which is dubbed as the next hot trend invading tech space in the coming years. Soft Robotics is an experimental field of robotics drawing inspiration from biology and living organisms from octopuses to chameleon tongues to create more flexible and versatile robots closer to animals than the traditional mechanical robots in vogue today.

Facebook is quietly hiring for interns to focus on developing flexible robots using next-generation materials that have the ability to adapt to the real-world environments. The hiring spree has been on for a year, and these roles don’t appear to be related to any publicly announced hardware projects at Facebook.

The Living Technology

Soft Robotics taking an inspiration from living organisms will use next-generation materials and experimental designs, to resemble cephalopods and worms flexible to bend and perform tasks rigid robots cannot handle and adapt to real-world environments.

Soft Robots can carry fragile and soft payloads without causing any damage and can squeeze through openings smaller than their nominal dimensions which makes them an ideal bet for the next gen applications like personal robots which interact with humans without causing injury, undertake painting and logistics jobs that need high dexterity to reach confined spaces, medical robots who can make complex surgeries easy and pain-free, and defence and rescue robots who can be deployed into unstructured environments instigating a new warfare.

Facebook’s Soft Robotics Internship

Facebook is offering internship opportunities for sixteen (16) to twenty-four (24) weeks duration where candidates can join the social media giant at various start dates throughout the year between January 1, 2019, and December 31, 2019.

The selected interns will develop “soft robotic technologies” and will undertake the following responsibilities, as per the job listing on its career page:

• Research on next generation soft haptic and robotic devices giving an emphasis on both physical embodiment and theory of the new concepts.

• The application areas include characterization of electromechanical devices.

• The job involves soft mechanism design (e.g. fluidic actuators) and working on sensor fusion software technology.

• Machine learning on embodied robotics and systems level soft robotics integration.

• The open position gives candidates an opportunity to work on micro- and macro- fluidics characterization.

• The position additionally will have an emphasis on fundamental scientific and engineering questions related to the still-unknown mechanisms of soft active materials to inform new concepts and the perceptual impact of those concepts.

• The research interns will collaborate with Facebook Reality Labs team to exchange inputs on creative leadership on soft robotics and characterization.

• The listing mentions that the research should be publishable research results into top-tier journals and at leading international conferences in robotics and materials science.

Does this job description interests you? Here is the minimum qualification benchmark that you need to pass to apply.

Minimum Qualification for the Internship

• The candidate has to be in the process of obtaining a PhD degree in the field of robotics, bioengineering, and materials science with soft matter focus, electrical engineering and mechanical engineering technologies.

• The applicant has to be currently enrolled in a full-time PhD program and returning to the program after the completion of the internship.

• The internship listing seeks 1+ years of experience into computational design, materials testing hardware prototyping and additive manufacturing.

• The internship listing further seeks 1+ years’ experience with experimental robotics and conducting laboratory work (i.e., demonstrated ability to construct proof-of-concept systems and to evaluate performance)

• Candidates have to have 2+ years’ experience with scientific programming languages such as Mathematica, Matlab, Python, or similar

• Interpersonal experience into cross-group and cross-culture collaborations.

• The interested applicants must obtain work authorization in country of employment at the time of hire, and maintain on-going work authorization during employment.

Additionally, the Social Media Giant seeks these Preferred Qualifications for the role:

• The candidates must have demonstrated experience in the field of robotics and mechatronics via work experience, an internship, or widely used contributions to open source projects.

• Have a proven track record of achieving significant results as demonstrated by first-authored publications.

Robotics 2.0

With this hiring, Facebook aims to bring a new era into robotics putting a heavy focus to create novel materials and develop this new technology. Facebook’s senior AI scientists have previously said that the company is broadly investing in robotics as the future holds enormous promise and the potential learning from the field may be transferable to its work in artificial intelligence. The Internship listing in its career page makes clear that these roles are not restricted to mere working on theory or simulation but build the physical robotics tech in reality.

The post Facebook is Silently Working on ‘Soft Robotics’, Adaptable Robots that Can Function and Walk Like Living Creatures appeared first on Analytics Insight.

Industrial automation has entered into a golden era of adoption and technological advancement, with consumer robotics taking the next level of growth indicators. The coming year promises to hold greater rewards for the Robotics sector with disruptive technologies and upgrades. Here are the five trends that will drive the Rise of Robots in 2019.

The Age of Cloud Robotics

Industry leaders point that 2019 will be a crucial year when cloud robotics becomes a vital component to industrial automations. It has been eight years since the concept of cloud robotics has been into the industry but the interest towards this stream is recent with Google and Amazon announcing new services aimed at cloud-based development, and/or management of robot applications and deployment efficiencies.

The advantages of connecting robots to the cloud bring increased computational power, storage, and effective communications, to name a few. Cloud connected robots are able to communicate with each other seamlessly in operations teams across environments. 2018 is often doubted as the year of the cloud as robotic companies have been at the forefront of cloud adoption and the benefits of a cloud-first approach is increasingly been felt.

Hailing CHINA

There is a growing international competition in this sector. With an intensifying global race for leadership in automation, as Europe, Asia, and North America join the race and vie for market share.

China in particular is running high on track to heavily influence the market as both a buyer and seller. According to Carl Vause, CEO of Soft Robotics China has bought more than half of all robots sold in the first half of 2018 and there are no signs of slowing down.

The International Federation of Robots has predicted there would be a massive increase of 1.8 million industrial robots in China by 2025, which is a tenfold increase over the current estimates. But the biggest impact on the industry is not the number units China purchases, but the number it manufactures at home.

The Made in China Plan

The Made in China 2025 plan, unveiled in 2015, asserts that China’s technology sector has been incentivized to satisfy the country’s domestic automation appetite through home-grown development with companies like Geek+ maker of logistics robots. Geek+ echoes China first instance, and just closed a $150 million Series B funding. Currently, China manufactures very few of its robots at home and according to the International Federation of Robots, by 2025, 70 percent of the industrial robots used in the country could be stamped with Made in China label.

The New Adopters are Here

Experts believe that 2019 will be a pivotal year for adoption as the industry is seeing a rapid adoption of industrial robots into new markets. Traditionally, the industrial robot market has been dominated by the automotive and electronics industries and over the past year, industry has seen a significant adoption and growth into the demand of robots into varied markets like food and beverage, warehousing, and logistics.

There is an increased debate about the concept of robots donning the role of perspective job killers and there is a need to prepare the workforce for the jobs of the future as automation becomes increasingly normalized across industries.

Consumer Robots

The consumer market has proven to be a tough nut to crack for robotics firms, and the last year has brought some abrupt company closures as well. Still, Gerkey from Open Robotics’ believes that in the year ahead, there may be some big progress in consumer robotics, with Anki’s release of Vector, continued development from PFF on Gita, and rumours of home robot projects at big tech companies. The industry seems to be getting closer to figuring out what a robot can usefully do for people in their everyday lives. Thus the scope for consumer robotics is here to stay.

Safety Still Continues to be a Challenge

There is a gold rush mentality in the automation sector right now, with new companies running to make their mark in the complex hardware to market. Underscoring all of these trends into the developments will eventually become a safety concern. This is true in an environment where compliance standards have not caught up which has made industry experts worried. The Industry believes that 2019 will be a year to recon into cloud robots as the ‘Era of Robots’ is knocking our doors.

The post Five Trends that Will Drive the Rise of Robots in 2019 appeared first on Analytics Insight.

Automation will redefine the next phase of digital transformation as it delivers new levels of customer value coming from higher quality and dependability, deeper personalization, faster delivery of products, and greater convenience offerings. Robotic process automation (RPA) is growing at a fast pace with projections from Gartner forecasting that the RPA business will grow 57% over the next year. Here are the major RPA predictions for 2019 that are all set to redefine the new year and the years to come.

1. Rise of Artificial Intelligence into RPA

The Artificial Intelligence (AI) wave is here and RPA is an essential component of that change. As we prepare to welcome the new year, Artificial Intelligence will gain more prominence and RPA will slowly merge with Artificial Intelligence to deliver an integrated business value, and this will propel the rise of the Intelligent Process Automation (IPA). Estimates show that in the coming years, more than 40% of enterprises will create state-of-the-art digital workers by combining AI with their Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Industry estimates show that the RPA market will reach to $1.7 billion in 2019 and $2.9 billion in 2021.

2. Centralisation Dominates Chaos

In the years to come, enterprises will have their automation centers in place which will bring change management, unpredictability, control, auditing, and security issues all together. These trends will raise governance concerns throughout 2019 making enterprises invest in central coordination through automation centers which are designed on the basis of unifying frameworks.

3. Licences Decline and Consultancy Increase

In the coming years, licenses for RPA will decline and this will not be the main revenue driver. As the number of robotic vendors increase, expect more of free trails which will eventually cause a hit on RPA licences. While on the other hand, the RPA industry will see more of consultancy revenues, driven out from core consulting, process documentations and pilot POCs.

4. Domination of Attended Robots

Attended robots that work alongside humans and augment workforce will accelerate past unattended robots in the new year. According to UiPath’s chief evangelist Guy Kirkwood, the ratio of unattended to attended robots is increasing, from the earlier 70:30, to the current levels at 54:46; the industry is witnessing a definite rise of attended robots. This figure is poised to reach at 50:50 when we ring the new year bells as the industry is ready to absorb more attended robots for automation solutions.

5. Public Sector will Embrace RPA

Gone are the days when RPA was the toast of the MNC’s and Private industries. The coming years will see an increasing dominance of RPA into public sector as governments across nationalities have woken up to the value of RPA which is witnessing a significant increase in citizen-centric services.

6. Employee Engagement will Continue

As industries increase their automation footprint, they add more and more employees to the RPA process. This will increase the employee engagement to new heights as more and more industries embrace RPA into their on-going business processes.

7. All Eyes on Unstructured Data

RPA products will continue to focus on unstructured data as information extraction from unstructured data sources gains an upper edge. Unstructured data sources like images, mails become the next information goldmine and organisations don’t want to miss this opportunity. This is making RPA vendors deploy OCR and AI technologies to structure data from invoices or orders in general, and then let a robot automate the process to give an immediate return of investment.

8. Job market will See Changes

Automation technologies have an impact on employment figures, and industry estimates insist that nearly half of jobs will be destroyed with due credit to automation. However, the new trend is that humans and machines will collaborate in many workflows and automation economy will create new jobs in the technology domain as designers, RPA specialists who improve user interfaces of chatbots and process experts will solve business problems.

9. Investment into Centres of Excellence

Experts predict that by the end of 2019, 40% of enterprises will have automation centers in place and will invest in centers of excellence or centralized coordination centers. These automation centers analyse which automation technologies applies to various business problems while driving base practices and technical compatibility and integration.

10. The Rise of Chatbots

As consumer use of conversational interface continues to grow, Chatbots will be the next wave of RPA. 2019 and the successive years will witness voice and chat-enabled products become a norm into the industry. The rise of chatbots will augment the use of cognitive knowledge engines that focus on the creation and maintenance of a corporate memory with the objective of providing answers to customers and clients.

Are you excited to witness these predictions in the new-year? The reverse countdown has already started!!

The post Top 10 Automation and RPA Predictions For 2019 appeared first on Analytics Insight.

In the course of recent years, users have without doubt seen quantum jumps in the quality of a wide scope of ordinary innovations. Most clearly, the speech recognition functions on our cell phones work much better to anything they used to. When we utilize a voice direction to call our mates, we contact them now. Truth be told, we are progressively connecting with our PCs by simply conversing with them, regardless of whether it’s Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, or the many voice-responsive features of Google. Chinese pursuit monster Baidu says clients have tripled their utilization of its speech interfaces in the previous year.

Machine interpretation and different types of language processing have additionally turned out to be unquestionably all the more persuading, with Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Baidu disclosing new traps each month. Google Translate now renders spoken sentences in a single language into spoken sentences in another for 32 sets of languages, while offering text interpretations for 103 tongues, including Cebuano, Igbo, and Zulu. Google’s Inbox application offers three instant answers for many incoming mails.

Because of machine learning, and specifically deep learning, we currently have robots and gadgets that have a truly decent visual comprehension of their surroundings. But, let’s not overlook, sight is only one of the human senses. For algorithms that better copy human intelligence specialists are presently concentrating on datasets that draw from sensorimotor frameworks and tactile criticism. With this additional sense to draw on, future robots and AI devices will have much more noteworthy attention to their physical environment, opening up new use cases and potential outcomes.

The SenseNet project depends on deep reinforcement learning (RL), a part of machine learning that draws from both supervised and unsupervised learning strategies and depends on an arrangement of remunerations dependent on monitored interactions to discover better approaches to enhance results iteratively. Many trusts that RL offers a pathway to creating self-sufficient robots that could ace certain free practices with insignificant human interference. For instance, introductory assessments of deep RL strategies show that it is conceivable to utilize simulation to create adroit 3D manipulation abilities without having to physically make portrayals.

The SenseNet store on GitHub gives various assets past the 3D object dataset, including training models, classification tests, benchmarks, Python* code tests, and that’s just the beginning. The dataset is made significantly progressively helpful through the addition of a simulator that gives scientists a chance to stack and control the items. All this is basically like assembling a layer upon the Bullet physics engine. Bullet is a generally utilized physics engine in recreations, motion pictures, and most as of late, robotics and machine learning research. It is a real-time physics engine that simulates delicate and inflexible bodies, crash detection, and gravity. A robotic hand is incorporated considered the MPL that takes into consideration a full scope of movement in the fingers and a touch sensor is inserted on the tip of the index finger that enables the hand to reproduce contact.

Autonomous vehicles are likely self-evident. Rather than building a pipeline with visual odometry intertwined with GPS/INS, object discovery, tracking, semantic division and so on, one can track sensor inputs directly to controlling wheel/breaking/accelerator utilizing trained information and a deep neural net. As of late, the renowned programmer George Hotz accomplished something like this all alone. Such frameworks so far are additional weak in light of the fact that it would take a colossal dataset to record every one of the large numbers of corner cases that can occur on real world streets. Yet at the same time, they make for some amazing and quite affordable demos.

To quicken the training and testing of numerous reinforcement learning algorithms, Intel’s Reinforcement Learning Coach, a machine learning test system is incorporated. Working inside a Python domain, the Reinforcement Learning Coach let’s engineers model the connection between an agent and nature, joining different building blocks and giving visualization tools to powerfully show training and test results, the Reinforcement Learning Coach makes the training procedure progressively proficient, and additionally supporting testing of the agent on various situations. The advanced visualization devices, in light of information gathered amid the testing groupings, can be promptly accessed through the Coach dashboard and used to investigate and optimise the agent being tested.

Deep learning, in that vision, could change any industry. According to Jeff Dean, who drives the Google Brain venture emphasizes that there are essential changes that will happen since computer vision truly works. Does that mean it’s a great opportunity to support for “the singularity”, the hypothesized minute when hyper-savvy machines begin enhancing themselves without human contribution, setting off a runaway cycle that leaves humble people ever further in the dust, with unnerving consequences? Not at this time. Neural nets are great at perceiving designs, now and then in the same class as or superior to anything we are at it. However, they can’t reason.

The post The Impact of Deep Learning in Robotics appeared first on Analytics Insight.

There is only a thin line distinction to what people can do and what robot can do. The vast majority of the work currently is being finished by the machines or the robots in the working environment. Robots are as of now working in pretty much every field like medical, non-therapeutic, mechanical, documentation and numerous other fields. Numerous individuals expect that robots or full automation may sometime take their occupations, yet this is essentially not the situation. Robots convey a bigger number of points of interest than impediments to the working environment. They advance an organization’s capacity to succeed while enhancing the lives of genuine, human representatives who are as yet expected to keep tasks running easily.

Numerous organizations have started to utilize more robots in the working environment as advancements in robotic innovation have been made. While robots still can’t do numerous capacities that people can, they are more useful now than any time in recent years. The way of robots is being utilized in the work environment, they can furnish organizations and employees with various favorable advantages.

Mundane Tasks are Reduced

In many workplaces, employees consume innumerable hours doing ordinary exercises that could be better utilized somewhere else. For instance, in a manufacturing setting, workers may need to scroll forward and backward between a storage territory and the mechanical production assembly line to recover items. With the assistance of robots, these workers can be substantially more productive on the grounds that they are not sitting around idly recovering products for the assembling procedure. This can expand the yield of the organization and help profit.

Safety

Safety is the clearest favorable position of using robotics technology. Heavy hardware, machines and tools that keep running at a hot temperature, and sharp items can undoubtedly harm a person. By designating dangerous assignments to a robot, you’re bound to take a look at a repair bill than a genuine hospital expense or a claim. Employees who work on hazardous jobs will be grateful that robots can evacuate a portion of the dangers. Robots can go into conceivably dangerous circumstances and perform without taking a risk with the health of workers in the meantime. For instance, the military has drones and remote-controlled vehicles that can go into combat areas without really putting at risk with the life of a fighter.

Reduction in Labor

While decreasing work may not be to the greatest advantage of workers, it can assist organizations with the main concern. At the point when robots can perform a large number of activities that low paid workers do, utilizing a robot can spare the organization a lot of cash and time. For instance, in a hospital facility setting, a few robots are being utilized to transport medication and tests starting with one area then onto the next without depending on people to do it. This can reduce compensation for the organization and help it be increasingly useful.

Consistency

Robots never need to separate their consideration between a large number of things. Their work is never dependent upon the work by other individuals. They won’t have sudden crises, and they won’t be migrated to finish an alternate time-sensitive assignment. They’re generally there, and they’re doing what they should do. Automation is regularly more reliable than human work.

Precision

The robots at workplace are with a more noteworthy level of precision and exactness. They work with the comparable speed the entire day and not at all like people, their vitality never blurs away. Additionally, they can repeat the assignment any number of times in a day without getting worn out. Robots will dependably convey quality. Since they’re customized for exact, repetitive movement, they’re more averse to commit errors. Somehow or another, robots are at the same time an employee and a quality control framework. An absence of quirks and inclinations joined with the eliminated possibility of human blunder, will make a typically impeccable product without fail.

Increased Output

Robots are every now and then utilized in manufacturing settings as a part of the way toward amassing the product. For instance, auto producers have effectively utilized robots for a long time. A robot is set on the mechanical production system and assembles a bit of the hardware before it is passed on to a human laborer. This enables people to keep away from these basic assignments and it can likewise guarantee that different workers have plenty of things to do.

Flexibility

The robots are flexible in working. They can work even in the unfriendly conditions, yet this wasn’t possible by the human. In this way, where the human has no reach, the robots are utilized, send and assignment is achieved. Along these lines, hence, they are adaptable in each circumstance no matter what.

While we’re still light years far from a completely robotic working environment, the automated capacities that numerous organizations are as of now using have turned out to be one of the best advancements in recent years. Begin by including a couple of robots, and see where it takes you.

The post Top 7 Benefits of Robots in the Workplace appeared first on Analytics Insight.

The US Army is seeking a few good robots not to fight rather help the men and women who do. These robots aren’t taking up weapons, but the companies are making them fight a different kind of battle. There is a contract worth approximately half a billion dollars for 3,000 backpack-sized robots which can defuse bombs and explore enemy positions. This work has led competition between Congress and federal court.

The project is liked by others as it could help troops one day. “look around the corner, over the next hillside and let the robot be in harm’s way and let the robot get shot,” said Paul Scharre, a military technology expert at the Center for a New American Security.

The battle over small robots create path intersection of technology and national defense and shows how panic that China could go beyond the US drives even small tech startups to play geopolitics to get the better off rivals. It also raises questions that whether defense technology should be sourced exclusively to American companies to stay away from the risk of tampering by foreign rivals.

In spite of prevailing of certain companies, the competition indicates a future in which robots, which are already well-known military tools, become even more common. The immediate plans of the Army alone visualize a new fleet of 5,000 ground robots of varying sizes and levels of autonomy. The Marines, Navy and Air Force are making similar investments.

“My personal estimate is that robots will play a significant role in combat inside of a decade or a decade and a half,” the chief of the Army, Gen. Mark Milley, said in May at a Senate hearing where he appealed for more money to modernize the force.

Milley advised that adversaries like China and Russia “are investing heavily and very quickly” in the use of aerial, sea and ground robots. He also told, ” we are doing the same.”

This swing will be a “huge game-changer for combat,” said Scharre, who credits Milley’s leadership for the drive.

The US defense contractors and technology startups have been taking the benefits from the big Pentagon investments in robotics. But the circumstances are murkier for firms having foreign ties.

Worries behind popular commercial drones made by Chinese company DJI that it could be vulnerable to spying led the Army to forbid their use by soldiers in 2017. According to a published report of the Pentagon, China is performing espionage to obtain foreign military technologies — sometimes by using students or researchers as “procurement agents and intermediaries.” At a December defense expo in Egypt, many US firms marked that they viewed as Chinese knock-offs of their robots.

China fears reached at a rivalry between Israeli firm Roboteam and Massachusetts-based Endeavor Robotics over a chain of major contracts to build the Army’s next generation of ground robots. Those machines will be made to be smarter and easier to install than the remote-controlled rovers that have helped troops disable bombs for over 15 years.

The biggest contract whose worth is $429 million — calls for mass production of 25-pound robots which are light, easily moveable and can be “carried by infantry for long distances without taxing the soldier,” said Bryan McVeigh, project manager for force projection at the Army’s research and contracting center in Warren, Michigan.

Other heavier models are tank-sized unmanned supply vehicles that have been tried in the rough and cold landscape outside Fort Drum, New York.

In late 2017, a third $100 million contract won by Endeavor was concluded for a medium-sized investigation and bomb-disabling robot nicknamed the Centaur.

The competition raised into a legal fight when Roboteam charged Endeavor of evaluating its prospects for those contracts by appointing a lobbying firm that spread false information to politicians about the Israeli firm’s Chinese investors. A federal judge rejected Roboteam’s lawsuit in April.

“They alleged that we had somehow defamed them,” said Endeavor CEO Sean Bielat, a former Marine who twice ran for Congress as a Republican. “What we had done was taken publicly available documents and presented them to members of Congress because we think there’s a reason to be concerned about Chinese influence on defense technologies.”

The Boston-based lobbying firm, Sachem Strategies, distributed a memo to members of the House Armed Services Committee. Implementing Endeavor’s cause was Rep. Seth Moulton, a Massachusetts Democrat — and, like Bielat, a Marine veteran — who wrote a letter to a top military official in December 2016 influencing the Army to “examine the evidence of Chinese influence” before awarding the robot contracts.

Roboteam CEO Elad Levy rejected to give the statement on the dispute but said the firm is still “working very closely with U.S. forces,” including the Air Force, and other countries. But it’s no longer in the running for the lucrative Army opportunities.

Endeavor searching for something like a small forklift on tank treads and its prototype called the Scorpion has been zipping around a test track behind an office park in a Boston community.

The only other finalist is just 20 miles away at the former Massachusetts headquarters of Foster-Miller, currently a part of British defense contractor QinetiQ. The company did not react to repetitive requests for comment. The contract is likely to be awarded in early 2019.

Both Endeavor and Qinetiq have good track records with the US military, having offered it with its former generation of ground robots, for example, Endeavor’s Packbot and Qinetiq’s Talon and Dragon Runner.

At a recent Army conference, after hiding the Scorpion behind a covering, Bielat and engineers at Endeavor presented it for the first time in public to The Associated Press in November. By means of a touchscreen controller, an engineer navigated it through tunnels, over a playground-like structure and through an icy pool of water, and used its grabber to lift up objects.

The previous version, the Packbot was bigger than this and it was first used by US troops in Afghanistan in 2002 and later became one of the soldiers’ essential tools for safely disabling improvised explosives in Iraq. According to Bielat, the newer Scorpion and Centaur robots are designed to be easier for the average soldier to use quickly without having advanced technical training.

“Their primary job is to be a rifle squad member,” Bielat said. “They don’t have time to mess with the robot. They’re going to demand greater levels of autonomy.”

The Defense Department is careful about developing machines for the battlefield that make their own decisions. That keeps the US aside from endeavors by China and Russia to design artificially intelligent war-fighting armory.

As per the November report from the Congressional Research Service, in spite of the Pentagon’s “insistence” that a human must always be in the loop, the military could soon feel required to develop fully autonomous systems if rivals do the same. Or, as with drones, humans will still pull the trigger, but a distant robot will strike the bombs.

“China has showed off armed ones. Russia has showed them off. It’s coming.” said P.W. Singer, a strategist for the New America Foundation think tank.

The post US Army’s Lookout for Good Robots Raises Global Competition appeared first on Analytics Insight.

It is just a few days that we have bid a goodbye to 2018, but how was 2018 for Robotic Company investments? Ever wondered?

Well 2018 was a phenomenal year when we talk about investments in the robotics industry, these investments were led by companies which are working on logistics automation, enabling technologies and self-driving cars. So, which are the ones which made it to the coveted list? Here is a sneak peak!!

1. Uber: $3.1 billion

Uber raised $3.1 billion in 2018. The San Francisco headquartered giant raised $2 billion in debt financing (Oct 18); $500 million Corporate Round from Toyota (August 27) specifically to co-develop autonomous vehicles and raised $600 million Secondary Round (May 23)

2. SenseTime: $2.2 billion

SenseTime, based in Beijing, China, has quite a few feathers in its cap. SenseTime is the world’s most valuable artificial intelligence (AI) unicorn, it is the largest pure-play AI Company focused on computer vision and deep learning. Sense Time raised $2.2 billion in 2018. It raised $1 billion in Series D Rounds; $620 million in Series C+ and $600 million in Series C funding. The funding was led by Softbank China (Series D); Alibaba Group (Series C), Fidelity International (Series C+). The company boasts more than 700 customers and partners in China and overseas, including China Mobile, Honda, Alibaba, Suning, OPPO, Vivo, Weibo, UnionPay, Wanda, Xiaomi, MIT, Qualcomm and NVIDIA.

3. Cruise Automation: $1.65 billion

Cruise Automation, the San Francisco-based self-driving unit of General Motors, raised $1.65 billion funding in 2018. The major investments came from Honda and the Softbank Vision Fund. The SoftBank Vision Fund announced a two-part investment in Cruise Automation aggregating to $2.25 billion in May 2018. The first phase of $900 million was invested immediately in the Corporate Round (Softbank Vision Fund) in May 31, 2018 and $750 million equity investment was made by Honda on October 3

In early October Cruise Automation partnered with Honda to develop a purpose-built autonomous vehicle for Cruise which can serve a wide variety of use cases and can be manufactured at high volume for global deployment.

4. PTC: $1 billion

PTC, an automation control software provider to the government and industry received an equity funding of $1 billion from Rockwell Automation, the world’s largest company dedicated to industrial automation in June 2018. As part of the funding deal, the two companies have agreed to align their respective smart factory technologies and industrial automation platforms. PTC is a well-established player in both PLM software and CAD software.

5. UBTech Robotics: $820 million Series C

UBTech Robotics, a Chinese toy robot builder based in Shenzhen, China raised $820 million in a Series C funding which was announced on May3, 2018. This round was led by Tencent Holdings, with participation from Green Pine Capital, CDH Investments, Telstra, Haier Group and Minsheng Securities. UBTech has raised an aggregate of $940 million to date, and the Series C round brought the company’s valuation to $5 billion. The company said that the money would be used to develop adult-sized humanoid robots and will focus particularly on the R&D of movement control algorithms and servo systems for walking, and computer vision.

6. JD: $550 million

JD, China’s second-largest e-commerce provider raised $550 million from Google in June 2018. The Chinese equivalent to Amazon, JD is heavy in the automated logistics business and is also involved in last mile deliveries. JD has just launched 20 mobile robot carts in the Beijing area as a part of its growth spree.

7. Zoox: $500 million

Zoox, based in Foster City, California is a developer of electric, autonomous vehicles for its own ride-hailing service. The company received $500 million in a Series B round led by Grok Ventures in July 2018. With this investment, the company has received a total of $790 million in funding. Zoox’s focuses to deploy all-electric and fully autonomous vehicles by 2020 in the form of its own ride-hailing services.

8. Ocado: $440 million

Ocado, the UK leader based in Hatfield is a British online supermarket specializing in home-delivered groceries deploying robot-run distribution centers. Ocado established a licensing deal with US grocery chain Kroger, the later purchased a 5% stake in Ocado an investment which is valued at $247.5 million on May 17 additional $192.5 million was infused on Feb 6. As a part of the deal, Ocado will help Kroger set up systems to help it manage its online ordering, delivery and fulfilment operations.

9. Yitu Technology: $300 million

Yitu Technology, based in Shanghai, raised $200 million Series C funding in June 12’2018 from ICBC International Holdings, SPDB International and Gaocheng Capital and raised $100 million Extended Series C funding from China Industrial Asset Management. Yitu Technology offers computer vision, video understanding technologies and intelligent imaging to recognize human faces, automobiles and more.

10. Auris Health: $220 million

Auris Health based in Redwood City, Califonia is the lone healthcare robotics company on the list. In late November 2018, the company closed a $220 million Series E to support its next-generation Monarch robotic interventional platform.

Note: The Funding information as discussed in this post is collected from a number of varied sources including the public and private sources like press releases, conferences and seminars, corporate briefings, association and industry publications. Unverifiable investments are not covered in this post.

The post Report: 2018’s Top 10 Highest Funded Robotics Companies appeared first on Analytics Insight.

The technology corporation Nvidia has officially established a Robotics Research Lab in Seattle having 13,000 ft. area. Robotics lab will be comprised of 20 Roboticists and 30 academic experts. Cobots that will work alongside humans, is one of the major focus area of lab’s operation.

Dieter Fox, a researcher, and professor in robotics said “We want to develop robots that can naturally perform tasks alongside people… “By pulling together recent advances in perception, control, learning, and simulation, we can help the research community solve some of the greatest challenges in robotics.”

Additionally, the lab consists of specially designed IKEA kitchen for setting up an experiment for ‘Kitchen Manipulator Robot’ that employs AI and deep learning to perform certain functions.

It is assumed that Nvidia’s venture into Robotics and AI will be a better verdict than the company’s last involvement into cryptocurrency. Nvidia dropped the focus from cryptocurrency in 2018.

Nvidia research umbrella has its coverage in Canada as well. It has an AI Research lab in Toronto with team of 200 scientists who are labouring over self-driving cars, computer vision and graphics.

A Challenging Year for Chipmaker Nvidia

• Nvidia combated the battle towards the end of 2018 due to low demands for its graphics processor unit (GPU) mining chips.

• The company joined technology stocks and the wider markets heading towards the end of conflicted 2018.

• Reportedly, SoftBank could sell its stake in Nvidia.

• By the end of December, Nvidia’s share value was down by 54 percent, marking its as worst performer on the S&P 500.

• Nvidia’s data centre product sales to cloud providers became a failure in matching up with the demands and expectations.

• Due to falling chip sales, semiconductor equities are under pressure with tech company Samsung.

Todd Gordon from Trading Analysis said asserted “The bounce back in the semis since the lows has been a little bit of an underperformance compared to the Nasdaq… I actually like Nvidia, and one of the reasons is because it’s so beaten up it really looks unlikely for Nvidia to get much cheaper at this point. We’re looking at about 50 percent profit growth for 2019.”

Erin Gibbs of S&P Global Market Intelligence believes that Nvidia shares may rise after this venture, yet she warns that the semiconductor market as a whole has tossed from 5 percent rise in expected profits 6 months ago to an expected fall of 7 percent.

Further Gibbs added – “Overall, the semiconductor industry is the one industry that we do not recommend to buy.”

Prospective and Constructive Resolution of Nvidia

An analyst at Sunset Robinson Humphrey, William Stein is optimistic regarding the semiconductor industry and Nvidia and believes in the positive results of trade talks between US and China. Stein stated “We believe a constructive resolution will lift semis, but a delay or destructive resolution will take most lower.”

As per Stein’s belief, Nvidia’s GeFroceRTX 2060 gaming graphics card will upgrade the earnings of the company and it will emerge as an accelerating opportunity in semiconductor market.

Reportedly, like Nvidia, Amazon is creating a new game streaming service to race with tech giants Microsoft and Google to invade into the new markets with better and enhanced performance.

The post Nvidia’s Shift from Chipmaker to Robotics, a New Pursuit for Improved Action in Market appeared first on Analytics Insight.