Рубрика: Robotics

The ongoing crisis is accelerating the massive adoption of robotics.

The robotic revolution in modern-day industries is gaining much prominence. A large number of companies have deployed an advanced version of software bots, or RPA solution to perform repetitive tasks seamlessly. This robotics method automates processes and helps human employees to concentrate on valuable tasks. The robotics industry has been experiencing considerable growth for last the few years, as the adoption of robots continues increasing across industries. In the time of the COVID-19 crisis, robots emerge as an effective solution to keep people away from getting infected to the virus.

When it comes to robotics funding, robotics companies are luring more VC investment in the middle of the ongoing crisis and economic slowdown. Let’s have a look at the top robotics funding in August 2020.

Attabotics

Funding Amount: US$50 million

Transaction Type: Seriec C

Lead Investor(s): Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan

Attabotics, a Canada-based robotic warehousing and fulfillment system provider, raised US$50 million in Series C funding round, led by the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board, Canada’s largest pension plan. As the company specializes in the fields of industrial automation, robotics, and software engineering, the new funds will be used to further expedite its commercialization, invest in new technologies, scale manufacturing operations, and more. Attabotics currently has six live installations in North America and serving customers across retail, B2B, food and beverage, and one of the largest luxury retailers in the US, Nordstrom.

ICON

Funding Amount: US$35 million

Transaction Type: Series A

Lead Investor(s): Moderne Ventures

ICON is a developer of advanced construction technologies that employ a combination of software, robotics, and advanced materials to revolutionize homebuilding. The company has raised US$35 million in Series A funding round, led by Moderne Ventures, along with BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group, CAZ Investments, Citi, Crosstimbers Ventures, Ironspring Ventures, Next Coast Ventures, and others. This latest funding brings the ICON’s total funding to US$44 million. Reportedly, the fund will stimulate the development of the company’s printers, create a variety of home types and designs and enhance its core technology stack to further its mission of using enhanced construction technologies to advance humanity.

Ispace Technologies

Funding Amount: US$28 million

Transaction Type: Series B

Lead Investor(s): Incubate Fund

Ispace Technologies, a space resource exploration company, which develops micro-robots to locate the resources necessary to extend human life into outer space. As the company uses 3D printed and commercially off the shelf products (COTS) for rapid prototyping, it recently secured US$28 million in Series B funding round. The funding was led by Incubate Fund, Sparks Innovation for Future, Inc., Takasago Thermal Engineering Co., Ltd., and Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Co., Ltd., which brings Ispace’s cumulative total investment to nearly US$125 million. The company plans to use the funds toward the development of its commercial lunar lander for its first mission and second mission planned to launch in 2022 and 2023, respectively.

XYZ Robotics

Funding Amount: US$17 million

Transaction Type: Series A

Lead Investor(s): Source Code Capital

XYZ Robotics, an AI-driven robotic perception and manipulation technology developer for logistics and manufacturing automation, closed US$17 million in Series A funding round. Led by Source Code Capital, Gaorong Capital and Morningside Capital, the fund will fuel XYZ’s research and development, business expansion, and operational capabilities, as well as large-scale deployment. The company builds autonomous robotic solutions for put wall sorting and goods-to-person picking. Its robot also sorts unorganized, random warehouse goods into groups of customer orders.

Fox Robotics

Funding Amount: US$9 million

Transaction Type: Series A

Lead Investor(s): Menlo Ventures

Fox Robotics, an early-stage startup working on warehouse automation, received US$9 million in Series A funding round led by Menlo Ventures. The latest round brings the company’s total funding to US$13 million. According to Fox Robotics, the funds will enable it to grow its engineering, production and customer support teams so it can deliver more robots more quickly while keeping them and its customers happy and productive. The company values its team and is committed to sharing its successes with them.

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Small surgical robots, or the origami-inspired robots will enhance the precision and control of surgical procedures

Ever since its evolution, surgical procedures have undergone many technological advancements to simplify the complex procedure of surgery. Over the years, these surgical procedures have collaborated with technology rendering the surgeons to perform operations easily. In laparoscopic procedures especially which demands insertion of tools and tiny cameras for incision, the use of surgical robots has been observed as a major advancement. These Surgical robots, despite providing efficiency, control and precision takes up a huge amount of space due to their large form and have tools that are larger than the structures on which they are operated.

This drawback of large surgical robots has been countered by creating a small robot model in the size of a tennis ball. Developed by Wyss Associate faculty member Dr Robert Wood, of Harvard Business School, and Sony Corporation’s Robotics Engineer Hiroyuki Suzuki, this model is the origami-inspired miniature remote centre of motion manipulator (mini-RCM), weighs like a penny and has performed greatly with the mock surgical task.

Structure of the Small Surgical Robot

This model of small surgical robot was developed in the Woods lab using Pop-Up MEMS manufacturing technique. This technique allows deposition of materials on top of each other, in the form of layers, which are bonded together. It follows laser-cut in a specific pattern thus allowing the desired three-dimensional shape to pop-up. This technique simplifies the tiresome procedure of constructing complex structures with hands.

The main structure of the robot is in the form of a parallelogram, with the fabrication of three linear actuators known as mini-LA’s, which is built with the help of piezoelectric ceramic material, which changes the shape when an electric field is applied. The mini LA’s runner unit pushes its rail unit due to change in its shape, thus enabling a linear motion for moving the robot. As the piezoelectric material deforms easily, thus changing the shape of the robot, the actuators are integrated with LED-based optical sensors that would detect and correct any deviation caused due to tremor.

The actuators are smaller and lighter and are arranged in the following manner for controlling the movement of the robots.

• One actuator is placed parallel to the base of the parallelogram for raising and lowering the parallelogram.
• One actuator is placed perpendicular for rotating the parallelogram.
• And one is placed at the tip, which extends for retracting the tool in use.

Mock Surgical Trial

To mimic the teleoperated procedures the mini- RCM to a phantom Omni device, which manipulated the movement of a user’s hand by controlling a pen-like tool. This method was applied to evaluate the human’s ability for tracing the mini-LA’s with either the help of a microscope or by hand or by tracing it through RCM. It was found that mini-RCM improved user accuracy and reduced error by 68%, thus enhancing precisions for repairing small and structures of the human body.

After mimicking the teleoperated procedures, a mock surgical task was established called retinal vein cannulation, in which a needle is inserted by the surgeon through the eye to the tiny veins present at the back of the eyeball. A fabricated silicone-tube, after puncturing it, was attached to the end of the mini-RCM. With the help of this mock test, it was found that apart from being efficient in performing surgical tasks and procedures, this robot model is also easy to set up and install and can move from patients’ body to hand, in case of a power outrage, without compromising the surgical procedure.

The researchers are now aiming to increase the force of robots’ actuators so that maximum force during an operation can be covered by the robot and improving its precision position. A detailed study of this model and its invasive applications is published in Natural Machine Intelligence.

The small surgery robots would now enhance the invasive procedures involving the thin veins, especially in the surgeries associated with vital organs.

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What Makes Us Superior To Robots When It Comes To Common Intelligence?

The debate about man vs robots is an evergreen and common thing now. While robots are viewed as an enabler of a dystopian future brought by digital disruption, the main question that has baffled minds is how smart are they. When it comes to human intelligence, there isn’t any other living being or ‘mechanical or AI mind’ that can draw parallel with us. Yet, robots powered by AI have been able to perform trivial, monotonous tasks with accuracy far better than us. It is important to note that this does not imply robots have acquired cognitive intelligence nor common sense which are intrinsic to humans, despite de facto of the recent marvels of robotics.

The main problem is that most of the algorithms that are written for robots are based on machine learning coding. These codes are collected from a particular type of data, and models are trained based on individual test conditions. Hence, when put in a situation that is not in their code nor algorithm, robots can fail terribly or draw a conclusion that can be catastrophic. This has highlighted in Stanley Kubrick’s landmark film 2001: A Space Odyssey. The movie features a supercomputer, HAL-9000, who is informed by its creators of the purpose of the mission: to reach Jupiter and search for signs of extra-terrestrial intelligence. When HAL makes an error, it refuses to admit this and alleges that it was caused due to human error. Therefore, astronauts decide to shut HAL down, but unfortunately, the AI discovers their plot by lip-reading. Conclusively, HAL arrives at a new conclusion that wasn’t part of its original programming, deciding to save itself by systematically killing off the people onboard.

Another illustration which experts often mention it that, while we can teach a robot on how to open a door by training it and feeding data on 500 different types of door, the robots will still fail when asked to open the 501st door. Also, this example is the best way to explain why robots don’t share the typical thought process and intelligence of humans. Humans don’t need to be ‘trained’ they observe and learn, or they experiment thanks to curiosity. Further, every time someone knocks the door, we don’t tend to open it, there is always an unfriendly neighbor we dislike. Again we don’t need to be reminded to lock the door either, but robots need a clear set of instruction. Let us consider other aspects of our life, robots and AI are trained on a particular set of data; hence they will function effectively when the input is something they have been trained or programmed for, beyond it the observation is different. For instance, if one uses the expression “Hit the road” while driving a car, she means to say to herself or the driver to begin the journey emphatically. If a robot does not know the phrasal meaning of the same expression, it may believe that the person is asking to ‘hit’ the road. This misunderstanding can lead to accidents. While researchers are working hard, devising algorithms, running codes, we are yet to see a robot that understands the way humans converse, all with accents, dialects, colloquy and jargons.

Michio Kaku, a futurist and theoretical physicist, once said that “Our robots today, have the collective intelligence and wisdom of a cockroach.” While robots of today can make salads on our command, or robots like Deep Blue or AlphaGo Zero can defeat humans in chess, it does not necessarily qualify as ‘common sense’ nor smartness. And let us not forget that Deep Blue and AlphaGo Zero were following instructions given by a team of ‘smart’ human scientists. These robots were designed by people who were smart enough to solve a seemingly impossible task. So to sum up, while robots are becoming smarter that, they are now able to fold laundry, impersonate as a person looking for dating online, they still lag when it comes to cognitive intelligence and common sense. It is a long wait till we find a robot we see in sci-fi movies, i.e. C3P0, R2D2 or WALL-E.

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Demand of robots and automation technology is surging the robotics investment.

In recent years, developments and improvements in sensors, motion control and machine learning have made robots and cognitive systems ever more flexible. Already, robots are performing an array of business works and assisting companies and employees around the world. The COVID-19 crisis further emphasizes the need of robotics and automation in order to help industries and society. As the pandemic has accelerated rapid interest in and deployment of robotics, investors are taking a closer look at robotics, along with autonomous drone delivery and associated technologies.

Here is a look at the top robotics funding and investment in September 2020.

Seegrid

Amount Raised: US$52 million

Transaction Type: Equity Financing

Lead Investor(s): G2VP

Seegrid Corporation, a smart platform that supplies material handling equipment and fleet management software, closed a US$52 million growth equity financing round, bringing the company’s total funding to date to over US$150 million. The investment round previously was announced when lead investor G2VP funded the first US$25 million of the round. The company had the right to top off the round, which was oversubscribed, resulting in a total round of US$52 million with additional funding from leading technology and robotics investors.

Volansi

Amount Raised: US$50 million

Transaction Type: Series B

Lead Investor(s): Icon Ventures

Volansi, which builds and operates long-range, heavy-payload UAVs, sealed US$50 million in Series B funding round led by Icon Ventures. The new funds will use to expand its team, launch new projects, and scale current initiatives in both the U.S. and emerging markets. The company has developed and brought to market autonomous drones, including the VOLY M20 and VOLY C10, which it claimed were the first of their kind.

Sarcos Robotics

Amount Raised: US$40 Million

Transaction Type: Series C

Lead Investor(s): Rotor Capital

Sarcos Robotics, a leading industrial robotics company that augments humans to enhance productivity and safety, raised US$40 million in Series C funding round. The round was led by Rotor Capital, with most of the company’s existing investors participating in the financing. The latest fund has planned to use to begin commercial production of the company’s Guardian® XO® industrial exoskeleton, the world’s first full-body, a battery-powered wearable industrial robot designed to increase strength and endurance, which is scheduled for commercial release in 2021.

Ouster

Amount Raised: US$42 million

Transaction Type: Series B

Lead Investor(s): Cox Automotive, Tao Capital Partners and Fontinalis Partners

Ouster, which develops high-resolution lidar sensors for use in autonomous vehicles, robotics, and many other applications, secured US$42 million in Series B funding round. Led by Cox Automotive, Tao Capital Partners and Fontinalis Partners, the fund will support Ouster’s new product development and international sales efforts. Using its unique multi-beam flash lidar design, Ouster brings Moore’s Law to lidar with an all-semiconductor approach to 3D sensing.

Roboyo

Amount Raised: €21 million (US$24.8 million)

Transaction Type: Series A

Lead Investor(s): MML Capital Partners

Roboyo, Germany’s leading robotic process automation service provider, received €21 million in Series A funding.The minority investment comes from MML Capital Partners (MML), a leading growth capital investor with offices in London, Paris, and New York. The investment is one of the largest to date in the RPA market and is intended to further Roboyo’s goal of becoming the world’s leading automation solution provider.

Invento Robotics

Amount Raised: US$16 million

Transaction Type: Seed Round

Lead Investor(s): MSPL and Chiripal Group

Invento, a Bengaluru-based startup that makes and markets robots, raised US$16 million in a Seed round from iron ore mining company MSPL, textile firm Chiripal Group and a clutch of angel investors. The fresh capital will be used for the company’s global expansion and to build new technologies for its artificial intelligence platforms. The latest fundraise follows two rounds of undisclosed seed investments. One of Invento’s humanoid robots, Mitra, made a presence at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Hyderabad in 2017 and greeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump’s advisors.

ThruWave

Amount Raised: US$6.4 million

Transaction Type: Seed Round

Lead Investor(s): The E14 Fund, Ubiquity Ventures

ThruWave, a producer of millimeter-wave imaging technology designed for markets including robotics, construction, and quality control, secured US$6.4 million in the Seed round. Led by E14 Fund and Ubiquity Ventures, along with additional participation from WRF Capital, Root Ventures, Blue Sky Capital and Tsingyuan Ventures, the company’s total funding to date stands at US$7.2 million. Thruwave produces low-cost sensors for commercial and industrial applications. Its technology helps in lowering the risks by imaging the internal structure of walls, ceilings and floors that enable construction professionals to work efficiently.

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The Guinness World record 3D motion film used Robotics and 3D printing for paying homage to David Bowie.

The real experience of watching a movie is felt on the big screen. Nothing can beat the excitement when our favourite actors and actresses perform on the TV screens or any OTT platform. But, as technology has invaded almost every sector, we are presented with more options where Artificial Intelligence is deployed.

Imagine a miniature film studio, where your favourite actor is the size of a finger, and performing in front of you. The thought seems impossible, but with the help of machine learning and robotics, this task is achievable. Stardust Odyssey is a movie, which deployed innovative ideas using robotics and 3D printing, by positioning the micro figurines in a Scanning Electronic Microscope (SEM). The film which was designed for paying homage to actor David Bowie, won the Guinness World Record, for the smallest 3D stop-motion animation character in the world.

Just like Stardust Odyssey, two other 3D motion movies, A Boy and His Atom, a film produced by IBM, and Dot, a movie produced by Nokia are also entitled with the Guinness Book of World Record.

Background

The movie aimed to project the capabilities of robotics and 3D printing. This 3D motion film utilized 3D figurines having a maximum 300micro meter height by printing them with a two-photon 3D printer, with a resolution of about 1 micrometre. The micro figurines were metalized so that they could be visible in the SEM.

Costume Designer of the Robotic Character

For sculpting the metallic metal for micro fingurines, two-photon lithography was used that enabled the production of complex 3D structures with submillimeter dimensions and submicrometer details. By creating this, the researchers were able to explore the phenomenon at the microscopic scale in multiple fields such as surface texturing, replication of bio-inspired structures, micro-robotics, molecular biology and microfluidic application. With the help of resolution and geometrical versatility, the technique for printing complex geometrical parts at the micron level became standard. With the help of incorporating a conductive material, the figurine with the metallic coating was post-processed.

Next, to counter the challenge of preventing any damage to the figurine due to any contact with the lens, or movement of the liquid resin induced by the lens, the microscopic lens was dipped into a liquid drop of photo-sensible resin deposited on a quartz substrate.

Another challenge that was faced after the printing was completed, involved removal of uncured resin without damaging the figurines. For this, figurines were first immersed in a developer solvent, and then into iso-propanol, while using a smooth cleaning process, so that the figurines do not get deformed. The adhesion surface between the shoe and the substrate was also analyzed, and increased by removing the part of the heel or the sole.

Constructing the make-up artist

After the 3D printing, the figurines were presented to a transparent photoresist deposited on glass slides. Therefore diffuse the two drawbacks of the resin which include, the insulation and transparency of photoresist, and to produce optical and SEM challenges, the figurines were coated with the layer of a metal, which was thin enough to keep the metal in metal phase to prevent deforming the details of the figurine.

In Stardust Odyssey, the tiny animated David Bowie wore chromium clothes which were designed using Physical Vapor Deposition. The process includes initially depositing a thin layer of chromium over the figurines, to allow all the 3D printing details while offering total coverage to achieve the evacuation of electronic charges during the imaging phases under an electron microscope.

Building A Robotic Camera Operator

In any conventional movie, the camera revolves around the actors. However, in Stardust Odyssey, the camera was static with the figurines revolving around the camera, which resulted in a challenge of having the figures larger than the camera. In order to offset this problem, the researchers used two precision microbots, so that figurines can be placed in the right position and a Smart Act GmbH robot, for introducing the star in the scene.

Tribute to David Bowie

Stardust Odyssey was a way through which Tino Pinsard and Michael Gauthier paid homage to David Bowie. Tino Pinsard was the director of Stardust Odyssey and used scientific innovation while directing the movie. It was made in the year 2016. Stardust Odyssey received Guinness World Record in the year 2019.

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Robots will not eat up our Jobs. Instead, these will make the workforce more impactful

Due to the coronavirus outbreak, industries did not take safety measures for their workers previously. They are now taking care of package food delivery, travel, hospitality, and even energy, communication, and construction for the workers. Most of these jobs can’t be accomplished online- through Zoom, requiring physical presence. Therefore, employers are looking for technologies to help protect their workers from getting infected. They have chosen to rely on technologies such as mobile agile robots to do the myriad of jobs that require a physical presence to ensure that human workers don’t run the risk of getting sick.

The partnership between people and machines will outlast the pandemic and redefine the future of work.

Pairing robots with humans can do physical work and deliver real intelligence. Perception and the ability of making decisions enable creation to continue in environments that would not be safe or pleasant for humans.

Consequently, this pairing is as effective as the robot itself. Boston Dynamics has created machines that have some of the physical intelligence that humans tend to take for granted. Negotiating messed-up room without tripping, climbing stairs, opening a door automatically becomes natural once we cross the toddler’s stage. However, until recently, these necessary skills have been beyond the capability of most mobile robots. Considering both capabilities and limitations of robots, we can better design a role for them within the workspace that enlarges human labour rather than replaces.

There are already several workspaces in which robots and humans work in tandem. While robots with assuming risks, tedious or physical demand in the job, human co-workers located remotely can provide guidance and critical judgement. For instance, Ford is pairing a robot with an engineer to map its facility after creating digital blueprints. Oil exploration and development company, Aker BP is trying to explore how robots can execute risky tasks on offshore operations.

Health care is absolute but impactful to use robotic technology as robots cannot get sick. Thus using robots in certain circumstances can aid protect both patients and health care workers. For example, first responders can now use robots to interact with Coronavirus-infected households and treat them accordingly.

Retail and delivery companies have experimented with robots and drones to sort or deliver packages for years. Growing Covid risks calls for immediate technology-related actions. Using robots to manage the distant delivery of packages and limiting human interactions can protect not only drivers, but also reassures customers. The previous year, DoorDash announced the launch of a food delivery robot and FedEx announced a rollout of an autonomous delivery robot. In this decade, health concerns will boost such robotic technology adoption.

Essential services, such as construction and electricity generation, are also now dependant on robots for repetitive and tedious inspection tasks to ensure human operators’ safety in a remote control centre. They are integrating robotics with unidentified speed and incorporating the technology into the regular responsibilities of site managers and project leads. The impact is strong and effective as the work of weeks or months can now be streamlined into days.

Rather than being insecure about robots replacing manual labour and entry-level positions, the global pandemic requires us to think about how technology can be expanded and even improve our current jobs. A solution like agile mobile robots can be taken up for today’s health and safety challenges. It is also versatile enough to be easily adapted for tomorrow’s need and a scaled workforce. So, it is well-positioned for widespread and sustained adoption. Although the pandemic may have built up a partnership between robots and human beings, businesses will eventually see the long-term payoff of keeping this technology in place post pandemic.

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Few technologies have been as significant or as disruptive to the manufacturing industry as automation. Thanks to automation, we are now able to produce much more stuff with far fewer people. Modern manufacturing lines are much more efficient and usually cheaper to run than previous iterations.

Automation is often associated with job losses and the devastation of communities. But what does the future of automation actually look like?

Reducing Manual Labor

Automation has been steadily reducing the number of people required in manufacturing production lines for decades now. American factories today can produce much more than past factories, and they can do so with a smaller workforce. Automation has played a big part in reducing the manual labor costs of manufacturing. However, many jobs have disappeared in the process.

Today, around half of all hours worked in manufacturing are spend doing manual labor. But by the year 2030, analysts anticipate that this will drop to just 35%.

With many manufacturing jobs becoming less reliant on manual labor, the composition of skills that recruiters look for will also change. As well as taking on physical and labor-intensive tasks, automation can even handle basic cognitive tasks. Businesses will start to look to humans to handle higher cognitive work and the social, emotional, and technological tasks that machines aren’t suited for.

Harmony with Humans

The most obvious downside of automation is the loss of jobs for people. However, there is another critical issue to consider when considering introducing more automation into the workplace. Over-investing in automation can leave humans seriously outnumbered by machines and ultimately demoralize them.

As this article from Kettering University puts it – “Heavily automating more functions than necessary may increase profits but it can contribute to a dehumanizing work environment. Less frequent human interaction can leave workers feeling increasingly isolated and may even decrease intrinsic motivation.”

Maintaining the right balance while continuing to increase the amount of automation in the workplace will be one of the most critical challenges for many businesses over the next decade. This challenge is especially prominent for the manufacturing sector.

Accelerating Impacts

We can already see the impacts that increased automation is having on the evolution of the manufacturing sector. Most analysts anticipate that the mid-2020s will be a tipping point for automation in the workplace. For example, this is when Price Waterhouse Coopers expects the impact on jobs in OECD countries to become noticeable.

By the middle of the decade, as many as 15% of all jobs in manufacturing, transportation and storage, and both wholesale and retail trade could be automated to some degree. This automation doesn’t necessarily mean that people are going to lose their jobs, but it does mean that the nature of their roles might change considerably.

If current trends prevail, somewhere between 35-50% of jobs in the sectors mentioned above will incorporate automation in some way.

Cheaper and More Efficient Systems

As with any kind of technology, the longer automation technology is around, the cheaper and more accessible it becomes. The costs in setting up an automated manufacturing line are already much lower than they were just a few decades ago. The ongoing reductions in cost are a significant factor in driving the sector’s growth as a whole.

Thanks to these falling prices, sales of industrial automation robots are at an all-time high. The industry has done an impressive job of continuing to reduce costs and make automation more accessible to everyone.

Over the period of 2015 to 2025, analysts predict that an industrial robot’s cost will have fallen by as much as 65%. While the prices of automation fall, the costs of employing human laborers continue to rise. This discrepancy is responsible for accelerating the shift to a fully-automated manufacturing line within many businesses.

Creating (And Destroying) Jobs

We are all used to hearing about automation destroying jobs. However, it is essential to realize that automation also creates jobs. Furthermore, just because some of the tasks someone does as part of their job are automated, that doesn’t necessarily mean they will lose their jobs.

As the robots we need for automation – and the technologies that underpin them – become more advanced, their potential to both create and take away jobs increases. A decade from now, we might have automation robots doing the kind of tasks that we never thought could be automated.

There are now numerous examples of automation that utilize artificial intelligence and machine learning instead of manufacturing robots. For instance, GPT-3 is an advanced text generator, albeit not as advanced as some people would have you believe. While we can’t quite farm out all our content creation to algorithms, we are continually taking tentative steps in that direction.

The good news is that experts are broadly in agreement about the fact that automation will create new jobs. Unfortunately, no one can agree on how many new jobs are likely to be created by expanding the role of automation in business. Making predictions about the long-term societal and economic impacts of automation is difficult without an accurate figure for the number of jobs gained or lost.

Rebalancing Economies

On a global scale, one of the challenges that automation presents us with is its uneven distribution. Some countries are more dependent on manual work than others. The countries whose economies currently contain most of the simple cognitive and manual labor tasks that automation is taking over will feel any rapid shifts the hardest.

In some nations, including the United States and Slovakia, the number of manufacturing jobs with a high probability of being automated in the future is above 50%. By contrast, just 31% and 32% of manufacturing jobs in South Korea and Japan respectively are at risk of automation.

Like any sector of the tech industry considered vital to the future of the global economy, the field of automation evolves at a very fast rate. This rapid evolution can make it difficult to keep up with the latest trends and assess which ones are likely to have the greatest impact. However, despite this uncertainty, the trends that we have identified above are the most promising candidates for shaping the long-term future of automation worldwide.

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A Comprehensive List Of Top Robotics Startups Redefining Indian Robotics Industry

India boasts of the third highest start-up companies after the USA and China. And robotics has been a driving factor to this growth. Meanwhile, robots have evolved much from assembling machine parts to now as humanoid robots, from giant arms loading cargo to delivery bots of Starship Technologies. So, it is no brainer that robotics can help power economies along with making the technology leap, in the domestic market, much like its other Asian leaders, i.e., South Korea, China, and Japan. Analytics Insights brings the Top 10 Robotics Startups in India.

ASIMOV Robotics: Pvt Ltd is a single-window Solution and Services provider who can meet all robotics/automation needs. They provide engineering products solutions and consultancy in areas like robotic simulation and control, machine-vision, training, virtual reality, and navigation applications. Their main products include research robots (e.g. Lamarck Humanoid, X-Terrabot), medical robots (Cranio Robot), service robots (APSRA mini Service Robot) and defense robots. Apart from robots they offer several other robotics services too.

Sastra Robotics: This start-up builds and delivers Robotic solutions for human-like automated functional testing of real physical devices. Since 2013, its products are being used by OEMs and Service Providers to expedite test cycles and reduce the time-to-market for their products. The company is into building mobile robots, telepresence robots, robot interfacing and simulation software, robot APIs, open-source robotic libraries and a prosthetic robotic arm. Its SCARA (Selective Compliance Articulated Robotic Arm) robot can perform repetitive tasks, for uses such as moving products, milling, or even 3D printing, and is being used by Bosch to test touchscreens.

Systemantics: This is actually an industrial robotics start-up that aims to enable the widespread adoption of flexible automation in industry. They offer various products such as core technologies of robotic arms, AC servo motors, Servo motion controllers, Speed reducers, etc. The start-up offers cost-effective solutions to many big names in the robotics market. Systemantics is on a mission to drive widespread adoption of flexible automation globally, by providing ‘Sensible Robotics’ to simplify user experience through patented design innovations.

Gridbots: Headquartered at Ahmedabad, this company’s robots find application in the defense, space, nuclear and industrial sectors. Gridbots’ underwater robot can clean water tanks, in homes, large buildings and in industrial settings. Their first client was Indian Navy and since then Gridbots has come a long way. Today Gridbots serves some of the leading PSUs (Public Sector Units) in the country such as ONGC, ISRO and National Gas Corporation among others.

DiFacto: This is a Robotics and Automation start-up which offers turnkey industrial Automation systems and solutions with industrial robots. Its solution offerings include Automotive BIW Weld lines (Manual and Robot Automated), Arc welding lines and cells, Robot based systems for machine tending, sealing, foundry, plastic cutting and other major industrial applications. DiFacto’s generic software services include Process Simulate (formerly Robcad), Delmia, CimStation Robotics (CSR). Its robot specific software products are Roboguide, Robotstudio and Motosim.

GreyOrange: This start-up creates robots for the warehousing and automation space, i.e. it designs, manufactures and deploys advanced robotics systems for automation at distribution and fulfillment centers. Its flagship product, the ‘Butler System’, is a high-tech material-handling system that simultaneously improves speed, accuracy, productivity and flexibility. It consists of a grid of paths across a warehouse floor on which fast-moving mobile robots traverse, fetching racks of items to a packer. Once the packer removes the item and packs it for shipping, the racks are replaced back in their place by the robots.

Omnipresent Robot Tech: Founded by ex-iRobot and Carnegie Mellon alumni, this robotics start-up has developed UAVs and river cleaning robots, apart from robots for home and health care. Its clients include the Center for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (CAIR), Isro, and Defence Terrain research laboratory. One of their products, Ro-Boat, is an autonomous river cleaning Robot that uses groundbreaking technology and promises to clean rivers back to a pristine clean state. The Ro-Boat was piloted and successfully tested in the Yamuna and Ganga Rivers in India. US-AID recognized it as top 5 innovations of 2013 in the area of water and sanitation.

Gade Autonomous Systems: Private Limited is a start-up that focuses on becoming a world leader in the robotics domain by introducing state-of-the-art social and service robots that could communicate with human beings and their surroundings. Its flagship product is AdverTron, a marketing and advertising robot that can play music and speak English, interact with smart devices, knows where it is and where it needs to go and move safely and smoothly around people and objects. The robot can also be used as a mobile information desk, tour guide, brand mascot, or entertainment robot for your shops, shopping malls, trade fairs, exhibitions, museums and for marketing events of any kind.

Mukunda Foods: It is basically a kitchen robotics company aiming to reduce dependability on labor, elevate consumer experience and help brands expand faster. Its premier product, Dosamatic, is a world’s first automated tabletop Dosa making machine, can make 50 dosas per hour. DosaMatic can make multiple types of Dosas at the touch of a button.

Invento Robotics: This start-up rose prominence with its 5-foot-tall Mitra robot which was first shown off at India’s 2017 Global Entrepreneurship Summit, where it greeted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The robot is designed for the service industry, and can interact with customers as well as provide autonomous navigation. Now the start-up repurposed its robots to help doctors and healthcare workers with screening in case they are exposed to infected patients. Currently, Mitra can do accurate thermal screening with advanced computer vision and ask relevant questions through voice. It can connect the patients to their family and loved ones via video, thus helps in improving the mental well-being & accelerate recovery.

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A survey states that 80% of the enterprises have integrated work-from-home in their organizational policies.

As the global economy is trying to regain its footing amidst the coronavirus pandemic, most organizations rely on remote work to meet the deadlines and finish of the task. The remote work concept is not novel but has been conducted and tested by the IT industry in the past. With COVID 19, however, employees face challenges to deliver the services efficiently despite the concept being well-established.

Undoubtedly, remote work has been observed to be in the productive domain, compelling the organizations to opt for remote work in the future. A recent enterprise survey by 451 Research (the emerging technology research unit of S&P Global market intelligence) found 80% of the enterprises have integrated remote work in their policies. Simultaneously, 67% of surveyed enterprises plan to integrate some amount of remote work in the future. Despite the promulgation of remote work, the remote employees do not have the administrative and technical support that they would otherwise have while working in an office in an organizational set-up. This includes a lack of hands-on interactive and immersive service for technical support, enhanced cybersecurity set-up, and automating the process to cover the mundane task for efficient working. Thus to counter such challenges, it becomes imperative for the organizations to utilize these immersive technologies; namely, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Embodied Cognition (EC), Augmented Reality (AR), and Virtual Reality (VR).

Utilizing RPA and Automation for Remote work

Any organization whose prime focus is customer satisfaction receive a tremendous amount of customer invoices daily. This is specifically observed in the banking and telecommunication sector, where the employees receive customer or vendor invoices in PDF’s emails, fax, or photocopy. Since the data present in these invoices are often massive, unsegregated, and the employees have to manually enter the data, the whole process becomes tedious. By implementing automation and RPA in these processes, the organizations can scale up the output’s efficiency, with increased productivity. The employees can also focus on the tasks that require immediate focus and social skills instead of focusing on such a mundane task.

Leveraging Embodied Cognition

The remote work can often create unnecessary pressure on the system’s hardware that the employees are working remotely. Hence Embodied recognition, which utilized sensor-driven artificial intelligence for anchoring robotics in the physical environment, helps bridge the gap between the traditional hardware-based robots as multifunctional Robotic Digital assistants.

With this regard, Facebook has already started research about the embodied Cognition of its AI assistants to observe AI assistants’ capabilities to understand the physical world. By integrating embodied Cognition in the AI assistants, Facebook is hopeful to scale up its AI assistants’ performance for efficient interaction with the environment. Facebook’s SoundSpaces is a realistic acoustic platform for audio-visual embodied AI research and trains the robotic agents in the 3-D environment for processing AI data.

Embodied Cognition in philosophy implies that the mind, body, and the human surrounding are all part of humans’ cognitive units. And the body, as well as mind, are equally responsible for the cognitive responses that humans form.

Utilizing AR for remote work

Often due to bad connectivity, the communication between employees gets hindered while working remotely, which often impacts the task that requires the team effort. Implementing augmented reality in the working environment would help the workers and employees better during the live video call.

The AR can also be utilized in customer-oriented businesses to provide technical support. With AR’s help, the inherent technical and administrative challenges like locating an order or the server issue can be immediately countered.

Conclusion

By integrating the immersive technologies in their workforce while working remotely, the organization can increase productivity and performance. Since COVID 19 would have a prolonged effect, the immersive technologies will have enterprises to work efficiently.

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How is human-robot collaboration redefining the industrial workflow?

The idea of human-machine collaboration at a shared workplace in recent years has gained much interest in businesses. In today’s digital age, we are already experiencing transformation in the way people live, engage with others, work, and perform business. Artificial Intelligence, which is considered the most powerful technological innovation of the 21st century, is making its way in almost all industries. Technology has even entered our daily lives making things easier and more convenient. However, it also raises reasonable fears that AI will ultimately replace human workers throughout the economy. In some scenarios, the technology already outperforms humans, leaving many jobs and positions at risk.

Despite this concern, reports show that the collaboration between humans and machines can complement each other and improve productivity. According to Accenture research, the collaboration could bolster revenue by 38 percent by 2022. In recent years, there have been major robotics developments that are supporting human activity in perilous, menial, and dull tasks and even exploring unreachable environments, from deep oceans to deep space.

Advances in both sensing and actuation allow robots to perform operations in the proximity of humans. Within an organization, the implementation of a sensor-based robotic co-worker that brings robots closer to humans in industrial settings and enable close cooperation is a critical goal in robotics.

Bringing Humans and Robots to Work Together

The next wave of AI and robotics promises a new era of disruption and productivity, where human creativity and ability is enhanced by speed and precision. In manufacturing, robotics plays a significant role. The installation of rigid single-arm robots on a factory floor is very familiar and on the rise. These robots are not curbed to a single workspace or task; they have the ability to move, learn, and generate real-time data that flows through control, planning, and logistics systems. This will give robots the ability to make fundamental decisions about their tasks and motions in milliseconds. In addition, these collaborative robots (Cobots) are capable of gleaning and sharing data in real-time with distinct systems, such as manufacturing execution systems (MES) and warehouse management systems (WMS).

Human-robot collaborations at shared workplaces can extend to any process involving a physical flow of materials, making finished goods, and then packing and shipping. The partnerships can be advantageous in a wide range of functions inside, outside, and around the factory and warehouse.

Embracing robotic co-workers and cobots provides an economically-viable entry-point to robotic automation. These robotic solutions also need to ensure safety in the workplace. They can be leveraged to automate parts of a production line with minimal changes to the rest of the line, providing companies the ability to automate production processes that have not yet automated.

Beyond industrial processes, developers have also designed new robotic models, such as soft robots and software robots. While soft robots can help with space explorations, transform the way surgeries are performed, and complete certain rescue missions, software robots are virtual robots and can perform the tasks which are done by administrators and white-collar workers. These robots can help expedite and automate operational processes in offices, creating a digital workforce that represents a whole new operational, highly scalable, reliable, and auditable work capability for businesses.

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