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News briefs for the week check out the IFR’s forecast for Top 5 Trends in Robotics for 2024, how Covariant is marrying a ChatGPT-like chatbot to a wise cobot, how MODEX confirmed off eight cobot debuts of which Schneider Electric’s Lexium is an exemplary case research, and Staples attempting to remain greater than related contracting with RightHand Robotics to pitch in with its automation prowess.
IFR: Big 12 months for cobots!
The International Federation of Robotics (IFR) has made 5 large predictions for robots in 2024. Each of the 5 seems to be to be as thrilling as they’re doable and will have main impression on world robotics.
However, of the 5, the cobot options in 4, which is outstanding as a result of yearly for the previous decade cobots haven’t offered over 7% of worldwide robotics annual totals. The IFR Top 5: AI & Machine Learning, Cobots in New Applications, Mobile Manipulators, Digita Twin, and Humanoids.
Cobots increasing to new functions is already shaping up for an enormous 12 months. Aside from its well-known manufacturing makes use of, the cobot, matched to AI/ML has now moved into key positions with lab discoveries for giant pharma, discovered new chemical substances, assisted with new medicines, important medical procedures, and joined with AMRs as new work buddies whereas sitting atop the automated cellular robots. But, it’s clear that the cobot isn’t anyplace close to completed with making use of itself to new jobs and capabilities.
“Human-robot collaboration,” says the IFR, “continues to be a major trend in robotics. Rapid advances in sensors, vision technologies and smart grippers allow robots to respond in real-time to changes in their environment and thus work safely with human associates.”
The IFR says it’s assured that the cobot will grow to be a complement to employees and never a job stealer. As proof, it cited the brand new cobot entry into welding. With the U.S. alone needing 400,000 welders over the subsequent decade, with not many employees signing as much as tackle the duty, cobots will fill the void working aspect by aspect with people.
As shortages of employees proceed to mount up within the expert trades, extra cobot/employee collaborations may effectively be an ever-rising development.
Cobot mixed with chatbot
Sourcing a multiplicity of components from labor within the bodily world, Emeryville, CA-based Covariant has constructed what it calls the Covariant Brain, which is used to manage robots and cobots. A form of common AI platform for robots, if you’ll.
As Covariant described it: “It’s a universal AI to give robots the ability to see, reason and act on the world around them. Bringing AI from research in the lab to the infinite variability and constant change of our customer’s real-world operations.”
“At Covariant, we believe that the next major technological breakthrough lies in extending these advancements into the physical realm. Robotics stands at the forefront of this shift, poised to unlock efficiencies in the physical world that mirror those we’ve unlocked digitally.”
Founded in 2017, the startup has constructed a ChatGPT-style chatbot that controls a cobot’s arm, which it calls RFM-1, for Robot Foundation Model, and it may well management a robotic or cobot arm as a option to create machines that may be extra useful within the bodily world.
Covariant’s ChatGPT chatbot has been educated with massive quantities of textual content, but it surely has additionally been fed video and {hardware} management and movement information from tens of hundreds of thousands of examples of robotic actions sourced from the labor within the bodily world.
Peter Chen, CEO and co-founder of Covariant, along with Pieter Abbeel, says that with RFM-1 there’s hope that AI might lastly repair the long-standing problem of programming robots and having them do greater than a slim set of chores. “Coupling the intelligence inflection point,” he says, “with the hardware inflection point is where we will see even more explosion of robot applications.”
For now, RFM-1 is great at choose & place, but it surely has limitations to beat for wider use of Covariant Brain. As Pulkit Agrawal, an AI and robotics professor at MIT, says: “If you want to pick up a screw and screw it in, or peel a piece of ginger, that isn’t really a pick & place problem.” See video
MODEX & good cobots collectively
MODEX, the large, biannual supply-chain tradeshow, hit the Georgia Dome this week (March 11 to 14) with 1700-plus exhibitors underneath the roof. Robots, cobots, and AMRs have overtaken a present that again 12 years in the past exhibited only a few of something in robotics. Times have modified!
This week eight new cobot product traces debuted, unparalleled in 2012. And precisely just like the IFR forecast (see article above), these cobots had been all “smart” cobots. Seems the times of dumb cobots and robots are passing shortly.
Seemingly none sooner at getting good in a rush are these from 180-year-old, France-based Schneider Electric with its debut of Lexium RL 3 and RL 12 (and later in 2024, the RL 18; the three, 12 and 18 designations refer to every cobot’s lifting capability in kilos).
What we’re seeing at MODEX is that the world doesn’t want JUST one other cobot any longer; already there are over 60 cobot distributors promoting in extra of 120 cobot fashions worldwide. “Smart” robots, nevertheless, are and will likely be in nice demand from as many suppliers who search to develop them.
Here’s why.
The Lexium lineup is paired with Schneider’s digital twin which might simply make an enormous distinction when buy time rolls round. Digital twin software program permits companies to create a digital digital copy of, say, a Lexium RL 12, and the digital twin would then optimize the cobot’s operation in addition to present a simulation setting during which to check out new procedures earlier than being tried in the actual world.
Schneider says that “digitizing these processes can scale back time to market by as much as 50% and commissioning time by as much as 60%.
Digitization, which incorporates advances in AI/ML (machine studying), the Internet of Things (IoT), and now digital twins, is the way in which ahead towards Industry 5.0, stated Schneider Electric.
As the IFR article above in at this time’s weblog forecasts: “It’s clear that the cobot is not anywhere finished with applying itself to new jobs and functions.”
With seemingly all distributors speeding to make their cobots “smart” (as seen at MODEX from a number of distributors), the IFR forecast is changing into realized sooner than beforehand thought. And the Lexium lineup is one other cobot model in readiness for it.
Staples tabs RightHand Robotics for assist
Staples, the #14 largest on-line retailer within the U.S., with $8 billion in gross sales, wants assist in its warehouses. Framingham-MA-based Staples has 40 warehouses/success facilities within the U.S., and desires to succeed in 98% of its prospects on a “next-day” supply service.
Robot-driven automation is the one reply for its 98% purpose, which is clearly evident to Staples.“We have always valued automation, and we see it as the future of e-commerce picking,” stated Amit Kalra, chief provide chain officer at Staples.
To treatment the scenario, Staples has entered right into a multi-year settlement with Somerville-MA-based RightHand Robotics. In the joint announcement, RightHand’s RightPick robots will likely be deployed throughout the flooring of Staples success facilities. The robots, which can match into bigger success automation plans on the workplace provides large, carry out merchandise dealing with with an underlying purpose of shortening supply instances. Staples carries about 7,500 SKUs, which isn’t a very arduous activity to automate.
Staples should take care of Amazon consuming away massive chunks of its enterprise. Speedy supply, a la Amazon, appears to be the long run and Staples desires to be prepared.
Data from Euromonitor reveals a steep decline at workplace provide and stationary shops over the previous 5 years, with the market contracting by 38% between 2016 and 2021. Although Staples controls the most important chunk of the sector, Amazon remains to be on the market lurking.
Founded in 2015, the corporate’s mission in keeping with RightHand Robotics: is “To build intelligent machines so that humans don’t have to be robots.”
There’s that phrase clever used along with cobots once more. The firm’s RightPick robots “will run on artificial intelligence (AI)-powered software, also provided by RightHand.”
The RightPick system consists of {hardware}, sensors, and software program. In a trial section of the system at a Staples DC, the 2 corporations declare “that RightHand Robotics “nearly doubled the range of items” that its stations can accommodate. (See video)
