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News briefs for the week check out UPS’s new warehouse that significantly maximizes the headcount of robots over employees, decades-old farm tractors modernized for autonomy through a retrofit, WeedBot’s “weeding as a service” that eliminates herbicides, the U.S. Navy leveraging Gecko Robotics to construct new ships, and robots and AI for 2024 spearheading a “Productivity Mega Cycle”.
UPS says extra robots, fewer employees
UPS Supply Chain Solutions, Big Brown’s warehousing, distribution, customs clearance, international freight forwarding, and logistics companies division, which is totally different from the e-commerce bundle supply aspect of United Parcel Service (UPS), simply opened its latest and largest warehouse, a 20-acre facility in Louisville, Kentucky.
Striking function: Lots of robots, fewer employees. In reality, the machine-to-human ratio is 15 to 1. Eventually, the tally will probably be 3,000 robots and 200 employees. And it’s not only a freakish warehouse anomaly. Quite on the contrary, that is the way forward for all logistics, all warehouses.
In reality, UPS Velocity, the e-commerce bundle supply of us, are additionally on the identical “robots in/workers out” trajectory. These goods-to-person operations use on the order of 700 robots, however as Big Brown says: “We plan to triple [robots] across our network in the next year. Goods-to-person technology uses AI to arrange space for optimal speed and can even pick up inventory.”
Bill Seward, president of UPS Supply Chain Solutions, says of the $79 million warehouse: “It’s a linchpin of our strategy. It’s important to be able to deliver best-in-class cost and best-in-class service for your customers.”
It’s a development that appears to be working. “Sales at UPS’s logistics business have climbed 11% in the first nine months of this year even as overall sales for Supply Chain Solutions, which also includes freight forwarding and truck brokerage, fell more than 22% amid a cargo slump.”
More to the purpose of future path, “Large operators, including UPS and GXO Logistics Inc., are using the draw of automation to grab market share from companies that run older facilities and count more on human workers.”
Transport Topics News experiences that Seward mentioned the robots enhance the pace and accuracy of processing orders, preserve higher monitor of stock and save house by fetching merchandise which might be stacked larger within the constructing.
Old tractors study new automation tips
Farm tractors and harvesters constructed within the Nineteen Seventies are instantly studying new tips on how one can function autonomously, like steering for themselves.
These days, with sliding commodity markets exhibiting corn and wheat futures down 29%, whereas soybean costs have fallen 14%, it’s a should for farmers to get cheaper. For wheat, canola, and lentils farmer Nick Welker, retrofitting his 52-year previous tractor as a substitute of shopping for automated gear from the likes of John Deere is the distinction between spending $700,000 for brand new versus a retrofit for $20,000.
Farm equipment producers Agco and CNH Industrial are taking heed and are increasing their strains of retrofit merchandise “to turn equipment already in service into smart machines that can plant seeds, spray crops and perform other tasks with more precision and automation.”
Even market chief John Deere, with practically two-thirds of the marketplace for new high-horsepower tractors within the U.S. and Canada, has begun promoting retrofits.
Agco causes that with simply 7% of farmers globally changing their tools in a given 12 months, that leaves 93% of farmers nonetheless utilizing older fashions. That whopping 93% are potential clients for upgrades and retrofits, which, in keeping with Agco, is a $150 billion-a-year market alternative.
“Most farm equipment has a useful life of about 17 years. Over that time, technology shifts so much. But the equipment is only used for a small part of the year,” mentioned Eric Hansotia, chief govt officer of Agco, the maker of Fendt and Massey Ferguson equipment.”
To capitalize on the chance, Agco paid $2 billion for an 85% stake in Colorado-based Trimble’s agriculture know-how enterprise. Trimble’s software program system for self-steering, precision spraying, information administration and tools monitoring Agco sees as an amazing match for its bolt-on retrofit choices.
WeedBot: saving crops with out herbicides
Any technique of saving crops from weeds with out using herbicides is a wallet-pleasing, near-miracle within the eyes of most farmers. Automate such an answer with an unattended robotic like WeedBot, from Kansas-based Greenfield Robotics, and there’s a multi-million 
greenback market on the prepared to help or change the worldwide $39 billion spent yearly on herbicides.
Weeds are voracious, nutrient-stealing, sun-stealing crop killers. Of the present complete international grain manufacturing of ~2.1 billion metric tons, higher than 10% or ~200 million metric tons, is yearly misplaced to weeds. Kansas farmer Clint Brauer noticed “Marestail and pigweed wreak havoc on his soybean fields, and realized there was no way to stay ahead of weeds on broadacre crops without relying on chemicals.”
For instance, yield loss with no weed management in corn is 52% and in soybean is 49.5% with out herbicides.
Brauer’s seek for a substitute for chemical management resulted in an experiment with a prototype utilizing rotary mowers with the blades set a couple of half inch or decrease above the weeds. It labored. Brauer and two buddies then launched Greenfield Robotics.
“Weighing in at about 350 kilos, the machine is 24 inches large and three ft lengthy, travels at about 3.5 mph, and is water resistant. The robotic can cowl about an acre per hour.
“On a 100-acre field, we would deploy a fleet of 10 WeedBots,” Brauer says. “In 10 hours, we would be done weeding the field.”
Greenfield Robotics launched as a robotic as a service enterprise mannequin, with the WeedBot’s companies costing about $35 per acre, and normally weed as much as thrice per season relying on the local weather.
By comparability, herbicides price a farmer on common $95 per acre, with the standard vary being $65-$120 per acre.
At lower than half worth, appears WeedBot as a service is a cut price, plus it will increase productiveness and saves on a farm’s labor prices.
U.S. Navy enlists Gecko Robotics
Pittsburgh-based Gecko Robotics (based 2013) is on a mission, say the co-founders, Jake Loosararian and Troy Demmer, to make the most of its wall-climbing robots, sensors, and AI-powered information platform to offer clients a novel window into the present and future well being of their bodily property.
“Our nation’s most critical infrastructure—from pipelines and industrial plants to ships and suspension bridges—is slowly going to pieces, leading the American Society for Civil Engineers to give our infrastructure a C-minus on its most recent report card,” writes the Wall Street Journal.
How to inform the place issues are or are going to be is tough and time-consuming. Gecko Robotics, nonetheless, lets its robots hunt down and discover these issues. The robots are fast and thorough, which results in quicker, higher repairs.
Then the U.S. Navy got here calling with an issue. This time, it wasn’t for the robots to climb and scout current infrastructure, however moderately, the Navy was in search of assist with new development of its vessels. Specifically, to assist the Navy’s first Columbia-class submarine to be ocean prepared by 2027. “As it turned out, Gecko’s dexterous robots — which generate thousands and thousands of information factors as they traverse industrial tools checking for cracks, corrosion and different injury —might supply a perfect answer.
Gecko’s experience in a proof-of-concept demonstration proved to be the clincher in being awarded a Navy contract.
Although Gecko has beforehand targeted on the personal sector, gathering information from practically 70,000 industrial property throughout the globe, together with ships, factories and energy vegetation, now, fortunately, evidently army purposes have growing promise.
Robots and the “Productivity Mega Cycle” for 2024
For the investing crowd trying to get a really feel for 2024, Investing Haven is out claiming that subsequent 12 months AI & Robotics Stocks Set To 
Outperform the Market In 2024. Which, after all, could be motive to cheer for all the robotics and automation industries.
The reasoning is due to the convergence of robotics with synthetic intelligence in what Investing Haven refers to as “The Productivity Mega Cycle, a confluence of technological advancements and economic evolution that’s reshaping industries.”
“The core driver,” says Investing Haven, “is the integration of AI and robotics, propelling businesses towards unprecedented efficiency. AI-driven automation optimizes processes, reduces costs, and enhances decision-making. For investors, understanding this cycle is not just about technology; it’s recognizing how businesses leveraging AI will outperform, making AI-centric investments a key component of their strategy and portfolio 2024.”
Okay, now you recognize.
