The International Federation of Robotics (IFR), at a press conference here last week, announced preliminary 2018 figures for the industrial sector of the robotics industry. Last year set another record — but just barely. It was only up 1% over 2017. No information was given about service and field robotics.
It’s true that 2017 was a banner year, with a 30% year-over-year gain. So what happened in 2018 to slow that progress?
China’s auto sales were down for the first time in 28 years — down 6% — and U.S. sales were flat. Globally, car sales were down 3%. This caused the automotive sector of the robotics industry to be down by 15% in China and 26% in the US.
Global smartphones were also down 5%, which caused the electronics sector of the robotics industry to decline by 8%.
According to Henry Sun, director of strategy at MINO Automotive Equipment China, “Consumers appear to be taking a ‘wait and see’ approach, as there is some uncertainty with rumors of policies affecting auto purchases, as well as uncertainty surrounding the general economy.”
On the bright side, he also said: “EV manufacturing is a big stimulus for automotive robots. Installation of new production lines and plants and re-tooling of existing ones — such as battery and e-motor assembly — and expanding the EV portfolio is fundamental to many OEMs’ long-term strategies. China is the global focal point for EVs, and significant investments will be made [over the next many years].”
Although robot sales were down in Asia, they were up 6% in the Americas and 7% in in the EU. In fact, the U.S. had a really good year, up 15% from 2017, while both Canada and Mexico were down 15% and 13%, respectively.
Double-digit growth was seen in other types of manufacturing, including the food and beverage, pharmaceuticals, plastics, and metals sectors, reported the IFR.
IFR spokesman Steven Wyatt recaps 2018
Challenges on the horizon
Looking forward, the auto industry is likely to be more volatile, particularly as it transitions from the combustion engine to EVs (electric vehicles) and self-driving vehicles begin to come to market.
Speakers in the IFR CEO Roundtable, held at Automate in conjunction with the IFR’s announcement of its 2018 preliminary figures, stressed that finding skilled workers continues to be a primary concern.
Another challenge is that robot makers need to provide operating software for their products that is easy to learn, doesn’t require a legacy programmer, and is intuitive to use.
“The U.S. government is not doing a lot to strengthen U.S. competitiveness in robotics,” said Robert Atkinson, president of ITIF (Information Technology and Innovation Foundation). “The National Science Foundation does have a national robotics initiative to support research, but it is largely under-funded, not tied enough to industry needs, and is focused only on robots that complement, rather than replace workers.”
Byron Clayton, CEO of ARM (the Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing Institute), said: “The shortage of skilled workers is driving changes in how potential and existing employees are recruited and trained. Unskilled workers must be taught to operate, program, and maintain robots and related technologies.”
Introduction of machine learning
Junji Tsuda, IFR president and director chairman of the board of Yaskawa, discussed the role AI will play in the next few years in the robotics industry.
“AI is the great accelerator to enhance the capability of sensors and analysis of data,” he said. “AI technology application has already started, [but] we need system integrators‘ involvement to accelerate the process. There are two aspects of AI application: one for engineering, and the other for stable operations.”
For engineering, the digital twin will be the key method, and machine learning with a simulator will be the biggest contributor.
For stable operations, sensors will be the key factors to control quality of manufacturing and to keep machines running without unpredictable failures.
About the IFR
The IFR is composed of all of the national robot associations around the world, major R&D institutes, and big robot suppliers and integrators.
It is the primary resource for worldwide data on the use of robotics and produces two annual reports covering sales for the previous calendar year: World Robotics Industrial Robots and World Robotics Service Robots. The 2019 reports covering 2018 activity will be available in late September or October at a cost of around $2,250 for the set.
The IFR also sponsors the annual International Symposium on Robotics held this year in conjunction with Automate. It also co-sponsors the IERA Awards, which recognize the entrepreneurial commercialization of ideas into actual products.
Twenty-seven startups raised money in June to the tune of $2.1 billion, another great month for robotics! Also during June there were ten acquisitions and two IPOs. See below for details.
The top fundings were:
Rockwell (NYSE:ROK) made a $1 billion equity investment in PTC (NASDAQ:PTC), an automation control software provider to government and industry.
Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) is investing $500 million in JD (JingDong) (NASDAQ:JD), the Chinese equivalent to Amazon and China’s 2nd largest e-commerce provider.
Yitu Technology, a Chinese vision systems and AI startup, raised $200 million in a Series C funding.
CMR Surgical, the Cambridge, UK developer of the Versius surgical robotic system, raised $100 million in a Series B funding.
This month’s $2.1 billion in fundings brings the year-to-date total to $7.1 billion!
Fundings
PTC (NASDAQ:PTC), a IoT, Industry 4.0 and control software provider to government and industry, has partnered with Rockwell Automation (NYSE:ROK), the world’s largest company dedicated to industrial automation and information, “to accelerate growth for both companies and enable them to be the partner of choice for customers around the world who want to transform their physical operations with digital technology.” Rockwell is making a $1 billion equity investment in PTC as part of the deal in which the two agreed to align their respective smart factory technologies and industrial automation platforms.
JD (JingDong) (NASDAQ:JD), the Chinese equivalent to Amazon and China’s 2nd largest e-commerce provider, raised $500 million from Google/Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG). Like Amazon, JD is heavy in the automated logistics business and now, with this investment, JD plans to open restaurants staffed by robots starting this August and ramping up to 1,000 by 2020. (The restaurants will serve 40 or fewer dishes with customers ordering and paying by smartphone.) JD is also involved in last mile deliveries and just launched 20 mobile robot carts in the Beijing area (each robot can deliver up to 30 different parcels). Google has been partnering and investing in smart logistics, online grocery shopping, virtual assistant shopping and same day delivery and this investment in JD adds to that effort.
Yitu Technology, a Chinese vision systems and AI startup, raised $200 million in a Series C funding from ICBC International Holdings, SPDB International and Gaocheng Capital.
CMR Surgical, the Cambridge, UK developer of the Versius surgical robot system, raised $100 million in a Series B funding round led by Zhejiang Silk Road Fund and included existing investors Escala Capital Investments, LGT, Cambridge Innovation Capital and Watrium. CMR employs over 200 people and is close to submitting its surgical robotic system for regulatory approval.
Quantum Surgical, a French surgical robotics startup, raised $50 million in a Series A funding round led by Ally Bridge Group with participation from China’s Lifetech Scientific through its joint venture with Ally Bridge Group.
Bossa Nova Robotics, a San Francisco inventory management AI-enhanced robot maker, raised $29-million funding in a Series B-1 round led by Cota Capital, with participation from China Walden Ventures, LG Electronics, and Intel Capital, Lucas Venture Group, and WRV Capital.
Ceres Imaging, an Oakland, CA-based aerial spectral imagery and analytics company for the ag industry, raised $25 million in a Series B funding led by Insight Venture Partners and joined by Romulus Capital.
DroneDeploy, a San Francisco provider of software solutions for drones (automated safety checks, workflows and real-time mapping), raised $25 million in a Series C round led by Invenergy Future Fund with participation by Scale Venture Partners, AngelPad, Emergence Capital, AirTree Ventures and Uncork Capital.
Starship Technologies, the Estonian mobile robot delivery startup, raised $25 million in a seed round from existing investors Matrix Partners and Morpheus Ventures, along with extra funding from Airbnb co-founder Nathan Blecharczyk and Skype founding engineer Jaan Tallinn. The money will go toward expanding the fleet which they forecast to exceed 1,000 robots across 20 work and academic campuses, as well as various neighborhoods, in the next year.
Silexica, a provider of AI-on-a-chip for ADAS vehicle applications, raised $18 million in a Series B round led by EQT Ventures Fund with previous investors Merus Capital, Paua Ventures, Seed Fonds Aachen, and DSA Invest.
Verity Studios, a Swiss indoor entertainment drone startup from one of the co-founders of Kiva Systems, raised $18 million in a Series A round led by Fontinalis Partners with Airbus Ventures, Sony Innovation Fund, and Kitty Hawk.
Matternet, a Silicon Valley developer of drone logistics solutions, raised $16 million in Series A funding. Boeing HorizonX Ventures led the round and was joined by Swiss Post, Sony Innovation Fund and Levitate Capital.
Andrew Alliance, a Swiss developer of a line of bench-top lab pipetting robots, raised $14 million in a Series C funding round from Tecan Group, the Waters Corporation, Inpeco, Rancilio Cube, Sam Eletr Trust and Omega Funds. Andrew Alliance has supplied 18 of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies, the top four diagnostic companies, and 16 of the top 20 of the world’s leading academic research institutions with lab robots.
Savioke, the Silicon Valley hospitality robot maker, raised $13.4 million in a Series B funding from Brain Corp, Swisslog Healthcare, NESIC and Recruit. The addition of Swisslog as an investor opens a new market for Savioke: hospital point-to-point delivery helping nurses, lab techs and other healthcare workers deliver essential items throughout the hospital.
NextInput, a Silicon Valley developer of MEMS-based force-sensor solutions, raised $13 million in a Series B funding round from Sierra Ventures, Cota Capital and UMC Capital.
Hailo Technologies, an Israeli chip making startup developing deep learning capabilities on edge devices, raised $12.5 million in a Series A round from Ourcrowd.com, Maniv Mobility, Next Gear; Zohar Zisapel and Gil Agmon.
Sphero (Orbotix), a Colorado-based robotic toymaker (think Star Wars, Spider Man and Lightning Mcqueen), raised $12.1 million as the first part of a $20 million fundraising led by Mercato Partners. Sphero spun out Misty Robotics to handle new robot toy business, readjusted its staff after a lackluster holiday sales season, and is remaking itself into an education-first robotics company.
WaterBit, a Silicon Valley precision ag irrigation system provider, raised $11.4 million in Series A funding led by New Enterprise Associates and including TJ Rodgers and Heuristic Capital.
Chowbotics, the Silicon Valley salad-making robot, raised $11 million in a Series A-1 funding round led by the Foundry Group and Techstars. They will use the funding to develop grain, breakfast, poke, açai and yogurt bowls.
Box Bot, a Berkeley-based developer of autonomous delivery robots, raised $7.5 million in seed funding. Artiman Ventures led the round and was joined by Pear Ventures, Afore Capital, Ironfire Ventures and The House Fund.
Kittyhawk, a San Francisco-based drone innovation company, raised $5 million in a Series A funding round led by Bonfire Ventures and joined by Boeing HorizonX Ventures and Freestyle Capital.
Smart Ag, an Iowa developer of an aftermarket kit for driverless tractors, and AutoCart, a plug-and-play system that automates existing grain cart tractors, raised $5 million from Stine See Farm.
CyPhy Works, sans founder Helen Greiner, raised $4.5 million from unknown sources in a Series C funding round. CyPhy provides “persistent” tethered drone platforms for defense and public safety. The company previously raised ~$35 million. Its backers include Bessemer Venture Partners, Draper Nexus, Lux Capital, and investment arms of UPS and Motorola. Greiner is now working with the U.S. Army on robotics and artificial intelligence initiatives.
Chasing Innovation Technology, a Shenzhen startup making underwater drone products, raised $3 million in a Seed round from Shenzhen Capital Group.
InterModalics/Pick-it, a Belgian vision system provider for co-bots, raised $2.9 million from Urbain Vandeurzen and PMV to provide growth capital for the Pick-it vision and distancing device.
Acryl, a Korean voice and emotion recognition AI startup, raised around $934,000 from LG Electronics (which equated to a 10% stake in the venture).
Centaurs Tech (Chewrobot), a Chinese and American voice processing startup, raised an undisclosed Series A amount from Zongton Capital, Leaguer Venture Capital and Boyaa Interactive.
Acquisitions
Bonsai AI, a Berkeley software and AI startup, was acquired by Microsoft (in what might be called an acqui-talent grab) for an undisclosed amount. Bonsai’s 45+ employees will be used by Microsoft to build the machine learning model for autonomous systems of all types.
Carter Control Systems, a Maryland integrator of material handling logistics systems for high-volume mail handlers and postal automation, was acquired by Systems Solutions of Kentucky, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Lummus, a legacy provider of machinery and parts for cotton gin companies, for an undisclosed amount. Systems Solutions is an integrator of letter, parcel, baggage and cargo sortation devices and conveyor equipment. Carter offers a full range of robotic solutions for picking, packing, machine tending, assembly and palletizing.
ESYS Automation, a Michigan industrial robotics integrator, was acquired for an undisclosed amount by JR Automation Technologies, also an industrial robotics integrator.
FFT Production Systems, a German integrator of industrial robots, was acquired by Chinese conglomerate Fosun International for an undisclosed amount. FFT provides complete vehicles and production plants for Tier 1 equipment makers in Germany, the USA, Japan, China and other countries. In 2017, FFT recorded revenues of over $984 million and employs over 2,600 people.
HEXAGON (STO:HEXA-B), the Swedish conglomerate integrating sensors and software into precision measuring technologies, acquired American AutonomouStuff, a developer and supplier of autonomous vehicle solutions, for an undisclosed amount estimated to be around $160 million. Hexagon has ~18,000 employees and net sales of ~$4.2 billion. During 2017 Hexagon acquired MSC, Vires, Catavolt and Luciad to enhance their autonomous, visualization and mobile capabilities. AutonomouStuff joined Baidu’s Apollo project team working on autonomous vehicle solutions earlier this year and had 2017 sales of $45 million.
MyStemKits, an Atlanta-based STEM learning kit that uses 3D printed items, was acquired by Robo 3D, a San Diego 3D printing equipment and supplies provider, for an undisclosed amount.
OnFarm Systems, a Fresno, CA-based SaaS for farmers, was acquired by Swiim, a Denver, CO irrigation system provider, for an undisclosed amount. The plan for the acquisition is to integrate SWIIM’s water balance monitoring and reporting data into the OnFarm dashboard thereby creating a more user-friendly product for SWIIM’s clients.
On Robot, a Danish gripper maker startup, has become the remaining name in the 3-way merger/acquisition of On Robot, OptoForce, a Hungarian force sensor provider and Perception Robotics, a Los Angeles gripper and tactile sensor developer. No financial information was provided.
RedZone Robotics, a Pittsburgh-based multi-sensor inspection provider for wastewater pipeline systems founded 30 years ago by famed roboticist “Red” Whittaker, was acquired by a group of investors led by Milestone Partners and including ABS Capital Partners, for an undisclosed purchase price.
Albert Analytical Technology (TYO:3906), a Japanese analytics firm developing AI for self-driving vehicles, issued shares to Toyota Motor in return for $3.6 million of cash “For technological innovation as in the development of automated driving technologies with advanced analytical capacity centered on AI and machine learning.”
Odico Formwork Robotics (CPH:ODICO), a Danish construction robotics provider, issued 10 million shares to trade on the Nasdaq First North Denmark Exchange.
Automatica 2018 is one of Europe’s largest robotics and automation-related trade shows and a destination for global roboticists and business executives to view new products. It was held June 19-22 in Munich and had 890 exhibitors and 46,000 visitors (up 7% from the previous show).
The International Symposium on Robotics (ISR) was held in conjunction with Automatica with a series of robotics-related keynotes, poster presentations, talks and workshops.
The ISR also had an awards dinner in Munich on June 20th at the Hofbräuhaus, a touristy beer hall and garden with big steins of beer, plates full of Bavarian food and oompah bands on each floor.
Awards were given to:
The Joseph Engelberger Award was given to International Federation of Robotics (IFR) General Secretary Gudrun Litzenberger and also to Universal Robots CTO and co-founder Esben Østergaard.
The IFR Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Robotics and Automation (IERA) Award went to three recipients for their unique robotic creations:
Lely Holding, the Dutch manufacturer of milking robots, for their Discovery 120 Manure Collector (pooper scooper)
KUKA Robotics, for their new LBR Med medical robot, a lightweight robot certified for integration into medical products
Perception Robotics, for their Gecko Gripper which uses a grasping technology from biomimicry observed in Geckos
IFR CEO Roundtable and President’s Message
From left: Stefan Lampa, CEO, KUKA; Prof Dr Bruno Siciliano, Dir ICAROS and PRISMALab, U of Naples Federico II; Ken Fouhy, Moderator, Editor in Chief, Innovations & Trend Research, VDI News; Dr. Kiyonori Inaba, Exec Dir, Robot Business Division, FANUC; Markus Kueckelhaus, VP Innovations & Trend Research, DHL; and Per Vegard Nerseth, Group Senior VP, ABB.
In addition to the CEO roundtable discussion, IFR President Junji Tsuda previewed the statistics that will appear in this year’s IFR Industrial Robots Annual Report covering 2017 sales data. He reported that 2017 turnover was about $50 billion, that 381,000 robots were sold, a 29% increase over 2016, and that China, which deployed 138,000 robots, was the main driver of 2017’s growth with a 58% increase over 2016 (the US rose only 6% by comparison).
Tsuda attributed the drivers for the 2017 results – and a 15% CAGR forecast for the next few years (25% for service robots) – to be the growing simplification (ease of use) for training robots; collaborative robots; progress in overall digitalization; and AI enabling greater vision and perception.
During the CEO Roundtable discussion, panel moderator Ken Fouhy asked where each CEO thought we (and his company) would be five years from now.
Kuka’s CEO said we would see a big move toward mobile manipulators doing multiple tasks
ABB’s Sr VP said that programming robots would become as easy and intuitive as using today’s iPhones
Fanuc’s ED said that future mobile robots wouldn’t have to wait for work as current robots often do because they would become more flexible
DHL’s VP forecast that perception would have access to more physics and reality than today
The U of Naples professor said that the tide has turned and that more STEM kids are coming into the realm of automation and robotics
In relation to jobs, all panel members remarked that the next 30 years would see dramatic changes in new jobs net yet defined as present labor retires and skilled labor shortages force governments to invest in retraining.
In relation to AI, panel members said that major impact would be felt in the following ways:
In logistics, particularly in the combined activities of mobility and grasping
In the increased use of sensors which enable new efficiencies particularly in QC and anomaly detection
In clean room improvements
And in in-line improvements, eg, spray painting
The panel members also outlined current challenges for AI:
Navigation perception for yard management and last-mile delivery
Selecting the best grasping method for quick manipulation
Improving human-machine interaction via speech and general assistance
Takeaways
I was at Automatica from start to finish, seeing all aspects of the show, attending a few ISR keynotes, and had interviews and talks with some very informative industry executives. Here are some of my takeaways from this year’s Automatica and those conversations:
Co-bots were touted throughout the show
Universal Robots, the originator of the co-bot, had a mammoth booth which was always jammed with visitors
New vendors displayed new co-bots – often very stylish – but none with the mechanical prowess of the Danish-manufactured UR robots
UR robots were used in many, many non-UR booths all over Automatica to demonstrate their product or service thereby indicating UR’s acceptance within the industry
ABB and Kawasaki announced a common interface for each of their two-armed co-bots with the hope that other companies would join and use the interface and that the group would soon add single-arm robots to the software thereby emphasizing the problem in training robots where each has their own proprietary training method
Bin-picking, which had as much presence and hype 10 years ago as co-bots had 5 years ago and IoT and AI had this year, is blasé now because the technology has finally become widely deployed and almost matches the original hype
AI and Internet-of-Things were the buzzwords for this show and vendors that offered platforms to stream, store, handle, combine, process, analyze and make predictions were plentiful
Better programming solutions for co-bots and even industrial robots are appearing, but better-still are needed
24/7 robot monitoring is gaining favor, but access to company systems and equipment is still mostly withheld for security reasons
Many special-purpose exoskeletons were shown to help improve factory workers do their jobs
The Danish robotics cluster is every bit as good, comprehensive, supportive and successful as clusters in Silicon Valley, Boston/Cambridge and Pittsburgh
Vision and distancing systems – plus standards for same – are enabling cheaper automation
Grippers are improving (but see below for discussion of end-of-arm devices)
and promises (hype) about digitalization, data and AI, IoT, and machine (deep) learning was everywhere
End-of-arm devices
Plea from Dr. Michael Zürn, Daimler AG
An exec from Daimler AG, gave a talk about Mercedes Benz’s use of robotics. He said that they have 50 models and at least 500 different grippers. Yet humans with two hands could do every one of those tasks, albeit with superhuman strength in some cases. He welcomed the years of testing of YuMi’s two-armed robots because it’s the closest to what they need yet it is still nowhere near what a two-handed person can do, hence his plea to gripper makers to offer two hands in a flexible device that performs like a two-handed person, and be intuitive in how it learns to do its various jobs.
OnRobot’s goals
Enrico Krog Iversen was the CEO of Universal Robots from 2008 until 2016 when it sold to Teradyne. Since then he has invested in and cultivated three companies (OnRobot, Perception Robotics and OptoForce) which he merged together to become OnRobot A/S. Iversen is the CEO of the new entity. With this foundation of sensors, a growing business in grippers and integrating UR and MiR systems, and a promise to acquire a vision and perception component, Iversen foresees building an entity where everything that goes on a robot can be acquired from his company and it will have a single intuitive user interface. This latter aspect, a single intuitive interface for all, is a very convenient feature that users request but can’t often find.
Fraunhofer’s Hägele’s thesis
Martin Hägele, Head of the Robotics and Assistive Systems Department at Fraunhofer IPA in Stuttgart, advocated that there is a transformation coming where end-of-arm devices will increasingly include advanced sensing, more actuation, and user interaction. It seems logical. The end of the robot arm is where all the action is — the sensors, cameras, handling devices and the item to be processed. Times have changed from when robots were blind and being fed by expensive positioning systems; the end of the arm is where all the action is at.
Moves by market-leader Schunk
“We are convinced that industrial gripping will change radically in the coming years,” said Schunk CEO Henrik Schunk. “Smart grippers will interact with the user and their environment. They will continuously capture and process data and independently develop the gripping strategy in complex and changing environments and do so faster and more flexibly than man ever could.”
“As part of our digitalization initiative, we have set ourselves the target of allowing systems engineers and integrators to simulate entire assembly systems in three-dimensional spaces and map the entire engineering process from the design through to the mechanics, electrics and software right up to virtual commissioning in digitalized form, all in a single system. Even experienced designers are amazed at the benefits and the efficiency effects afforded by engineering with Mechatronics Concept Designer,” said Schunk in relation to Schunk’s OEM partnership with Siemens PLM Software, the provider of the simulation software.
Internet-of-Things
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said: “The world is in a massive transformation which can be seen as an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. The computing fabric is getting more distributed and more ubiquitous. Micro-controllers are appearing in everything from refrigerators to drills – every factory is going to have millions of sensors – thus computing is becoming ubiquitous and that means data is getting generated in large amounts. And once you have that, you use AI to reason over that data to give yourself predictive power – analytical power – power to automate things.”
Certainly the first or second thing sales people talked about at Automatica was AI, IoT and Industry 4.0. “It’s all coming together in the next few years,” they said. But they didn’t say whether businesses would open their systems to the cloud, or stream data to somebody else’s processor, or connect to an offsite analytics platform, or do it all onboard and post process the analytics.
Although the strategic goals for implementing IoT are different country by country (as can be seen in the interesting chart above from Forbes), there’s no doubt that businesses plan to spend on adding IoT. This can be seen in the black and blue chart on the right where the three big vertical bars on the left of the chart denote Discrete Manufacturing, Transportation and Logistics.
Silly Stuff
As at any show, there were pretty girls flaunting products they knew nothing about, giveaways of snacks, food, coffees and gimmicks, and loads of talk about deep learning and AI for products not yet available for viewing of fully understood by the speaker.
Kuka, in a booth far, far away from their main booth (where they were demonstrating their industrial, mobile and collaborative robotics product line including their award-winning LBR Med robot), was showing a 5′ high concept humanoid robot with a big screen and a stylish 18″ silver cone behind the screen. It looked like an airport or store guide. When I asked what it did I was told that it was the woofer for the sound system and the robot didn’t do anything – it was one of many concept devices they were reviewing.
Nevertheless, Kuka had a 4′ x 4′ brochure which didn’t show or even refer to any of the concept robots they showed. Instead it was all hype about what it might do sometime in the future: purify air, be a gaming console, have an “underhead projector”, HiFi speaker, camera, coffee and wellness head and “provide robotic intelligence that will enrich our daily lives.”
Front and back of 4 foot by 4 foot brochure (122cm x 122cm)
Twenty-seven startups were funded in May for a total of $2.5 billion.
The top five were:
Cruise Holdings announced a two-phase funding by SoftBank Vision Fund totaling $2.25 billion. $900 million will be funded right away. Future funding of $1.35 billion is contingent on two things: regulatory approval and at the time when Cruise AVs are ready for commercial deployment. At that time GM will also invest another $1.1 billion thereby providing sufficient capital to reach commercialization beginning in 2019.
UBTech Robotics, the Chinese toy robot builder, raised $820 million to help them develop adult-sized robots for commercial applications.
Ocado, the UK online grocer, raised $247 million by selling a 5% stake to US grocer Kroger.
Roadstar AI, another Chinese startup, raised $128 million for their radars and sensors for self-driving vehicles.
SoundHound, a Silicon Valley developer of voice-enabled AI for consumer robots and self-driving vehicles, raised $100 million.
This month’s $2.5 billion in fundings doubles the January thru April total of $2.5 billion. Thus a YTD of $5 billion!
Four acquisitions occurred in May. The most notable was SPX Corp., the large inspection equipment components manufacturer, which acquired CUES, a Florida robotic pipeline video inspection and rehab company, for $189 million.
Fundings
Cruise Holdings announced a two-phase funding by SoftBank Vision Fund totaling $2.25 billion. $900 million will be funded right away. Future funding of $1.35 billion is contingent on two things: regulatory approval and at the time when Cruise AVs are ready for commercial deployment. At that time GM will also invest another $1.1 billion to provide the combined capital to reach commercialization beginning in 2019. As a result of this two-pronged funding, SoftBank Vision Fund will end up owning a 19.6% equity stake in GM Cruise.
Placing the roof instruments. Look at all those LiDARs!
Functions of new UBTech humanoid robots.
UBTech Robotics, the Chinese toy robot builder that’s been featured in the Guiness Book of Records for the most simultaneous dancing robots, raised $820 million in a Series C funding round led by Tencent Holdings with participation from Green Pine Capital, Haier Group, Minsheng Securities, CDH Investments and Telstra. The new investment brings UBTech’s valuation to approximately $5 billion. UBTech said the money would be used to develop adult-sized humanoid robots and will focus particularly on the R&D of servo systems, movement control algorithms for walking, and computer vision.
Ocado, the UK leader in home-delivered groceries using robot-run distribution centers, which raised ~$192.5 million (in Feb) by selling shares of it’s publicly traded stock (LON:OCDO), has established a licensing deal with US grocery chain Kroger whereby Kroger will take a 5% stake in Ocado – an investment valued at ~$247.5 million and Ocado will help Kroger set up systems to help it manage online ordering, fulfillment and delivery operations. Ocado invested $57.5 million on technology last year, up from $46 million the previous year. The company is developing proprietary technology and has also increased its tech staff to 1,100. The company uses about 500 robots interacting with each other on a grid which have allowed it to process more than 20,000 orders.
Roadstar.AI, a Chinese self-driving startup integrating multiple sensors and LiDARs, cameras, radars, GPS and IMU to provide time and spatial synchronization for self-driving vehicles, raised $128 million in a series A round led by Wu Capital and Shenzhen Capital Group and also Yunqi Partners, CMBI International Capital Corporation Ltd and Vision Capital.
SoundHound, a Silicon Valley developer of voice-enabled AI for consumer robots and self-driving vehicles, raised $100 million in a round full of strategic partners: Tencent, Midea, Hyundai, Daimler and France Telecom (Orange).
Rapid Micro Biosystems, a Mass-based lab sciences testing equipment provider, raised $60 million in a venture round led by Bain Capital and Xeraya Capital
Saildrone, an Alameda, CA autonomous marine surface vehicle collecting scientific data, raised $60 million in a Series B funding led by Horizons Ventures and also Capricorn’s Technology Impact Fund, Lux Capital, Social Capital, and The Schmidt Family Foundation.
Hesai Photonics Technology, a Chinese laser sensor maker for self-driving vehicles, raised $39 million in a Series B round led by Lightspeed and Baidu. Hesai also makes a natural gas safety drone which can sense leaks in hi-rise buildings.
Medical Microinstruments, an Italian maker of a robotic platform for microsurgery, raised $24.5 million in a Series A round led by Andera Partners with participation from Panakes Partners and Fountain Healthcare, returning seed investor Sambatech, and industry veterans Gus Castello, former Senior Vice President of Product Operations for Intuitive Surgical Inc., and John Engels, founder of AxoGen, Inc.
Cowa Robot, the Chinese follow-me suitcase startup, raised $21.2 million in a Series B round jointly led by SoftBank China Venture Capital and China Creation Ventures with additional participation from Infore Capital, China Minsheng Investment Group.
Soft Robotics, a Cambridge, MA-based startup which designs and builds soft robotic gripping systems, raised $20 million in a round led by Hyperplane Venture Capital and including Scale Venture Partners, Calibrate Ventures, Honeywell Ventures, Tekfen Ventures, Yamaha Motor, Material Impact, ABB Technology Ventures, Taylor Farms Ventures and Haiyin Capital.
Trio.AI, a Beijing startup developing a dialogue engine for IoT and robotics, raised $17 million in a Series B round led by HanFor, China Minsheng Investment Group, Foxconn Technology Group and Xiamen Torch Group.
Superpedestrian, the Boston-based developer of the Copenhagen Wheel to enhance bicycles by amplifying pedal power by up to 10X, raised $16.5 million in a Series B round from Extol Capital LLC, Spark Capital and General Catalyst. This brings Superpedestrian’s total investment to ~$44 million.
Fictiv, a San Francisco-based developer of a virtual manufacturing platform used by Silicon Valley autonomous vehicles and medical robotics providers, raised $15 million in a Series B funding from Accel, Intel Capital, FJ Labs, Tandon Group, Stanford-StartX Fund, and Bill Gates.
Arevo Labs, a Silicon Valley provider of carbon fiber 3D printing technology, raised $12.5 million in Series B funding led by Asahi Glass and joined by Sumitomo Corporation of Americas, Leslie Ventures and Khosla Ventures.
Resson, a Canadian ag analytics provider, raised $10.9 million in a Series C round led by Mahindra & Mahindra with existing partners McCain Foods, Monsanto Growth Ventures, Build Ventures, Rho Canada, BDC Capital, East Valley Ventures and the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation.
EcoRobotix, the Swiss ag-tech startup developing a mobile weeding robot, raised $10.7 million in a Series B funding round led by BASF Venture Capital with participation by Business Angels Swiss, 4FO Ventures, Investiere, and CapAgro.
Algolux, a Canadian provider of machine-learning stacks for autonomous vision and imaging, raised $10 million in Series A funding. General Motors Ventures led the round, and was joined by investors including Drive Capital, Intact Ventures, and Real Ventures.
ForwardX, a Chinese follow-me suitcase developer, raised $10 million in a Series A round led by CDH Investments and Eastern Bell Venture Capital
Metawave, a Silicon Valley developer of beam steering radars for autonomous vehicle apps, raised $10 million in funding. Investors include DENSO, Toyota AI Ventures, Hyundai Motor Company, Asahi Glass, Motus Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Autotech Ventures, Bold Capital, SAIC Capital, Western Technology Investment (WTI), and Alrai Capital.
Verifly Holdings, a U.K.-based manufacturer of drone control systems and on-demand insurance sales agency, raised $7 million in funding. Investors include Slow Ventures, OpenOcean, and the founders of Kayak and HotelTonight.
Hummingbird Technologies, a UK-based drone, aerial and satellite sensing ag startup, raised $4.1 million in a Series A funding round from The European Space Agency, Sir James Dyson, Newable Private Investing and Velcourt, the UK’s largest commercial farming operation.
Plus One Robotics, a Texas vision and controls systems developer for robotic automation, raised $2.35 million (in 2017) in a seed round led by Schematic Ventures and joined by Lerer Hippeau, FF Venture Capital, First Star and Dynamo.
SkySquirrel Technologies (which recently merged into VineView), a Canadian ag drone and analytics provider for the wine industry, raised $2.3 million (in January) from an Ontario-based private investor and Innovacorp.
Kewazo, a German robotic construction equipment startup, raised $1.2 million in a seed round led by MIG Fonds 14 and Alfred Bauer.
C2RO Robotics, a Canadian startup enabling mapping, self-localization, and autonomous path planning in real-time with cloud-based SLAM, has raised $1.1 million in a seed round led by Chicago-based Harbor Street Ventures, with the participation of Fonds InnovExport, TandemLaunch Ventures and several angel investors in Canada, the U.S. and Europe.
Beijing Tiddler (AI Nemo), a Chinese consumer products and home companion robot developer, raised an undisclosed amount in a Series C round led by Baidu with participation from Foxconn.
Acquisitions
CUES, a 50-year old, 365-person Florida robotic video pipeline inspection and rehab company, was acquired by SPX Corp, an inspection equipment components manufacturer, for $189 million.
SkySquirrel Technologies, a Canadian ag-industry startup, has merged into VineView, Scientific Aerial Imaging, a California ag startup which will now be headquartered in Halifax, Nova Scotia. SkySquirrel’s founder and CEO will remain CEO of the new combined company.
Mavrx, a failing San Francisco-based aerial imagery platform startup, was acquired for an undisclosed amount by Israeli ag aerial imagery provider Taranis. Mavrx, which raised $12.5 million since 2012, ran into some financial and operational difficulty and was not able to service its clients for the upcoming growing season despite providing a popular product with a 90% customer renewal rate.
Jodone, a Boston robotics-related software and AI startup, was acquired by RightHand Robotics for an undisclosed amount.
IPOs
None
Failures
Ticktock AI — tried lots of approaches but never solved any problems that people wanted solved — good review here.
An Aside:
It seems like seed rounds are getting bigger and less frequent while Series A rounds are happening later in the development cycle. So says Bessemer Venture partner Amit Karp in a recent post on Medium.
“Most early stage startups we meet these days attempt to raise a $2M-$4M seed investment with some seed rounds expanding even further. These larger seed rounds are often led by a new pool of dedicated seed funds. In addition, the larger funds sometimes also participate in these early rounds, which results in even larger seed rounds (and often higher valuations). Angel investors are often added into the mix to bring more credibility and help with their experience in the early stages of the startup, but it’s a ‘professional’ seed investor who often leads the seed round.”
According to Karp there are several implications to these new large seed rounds:
Series-A financing is pushed later, and Series-A investors now expect to see much more business traction before they commit.
Series-A rounds have also become larger and are now often north of $8M. This reduces the amount of Series-A investors as it requires a larger fund to invest in that stage.
Securing a Series-A investment is more difficult than it used to be since there are fewer funds and the startup needs to demonstrate more business traction.
Lastly, and likely most important, is that the winners are separated from the losers earlier than ever. It is very difficult for a startup which raised a $500K seed round to compete with another startup that raised $4M at the same stage. A similar phenomena to the massive SoftBank fundings.
Reviewing The Robot Report’s Y-T-D 2018 seed rounds, there were 13 fundings averaging $3.8 million each thus confirming Karp’s thesis from our smaller sample of robotics-related fundings.
Twenty-seven startups were funded in May for a total of $2.5 billion.
The top five were:
Cruise Holdings announced a two-phase funding by SoftBank Vision Fund totaling $2.25 billion. $900 million will be funded right away. Future funding of $1.35 billion is contingent on two things: regulatory approval and at the time when Cruise AVs are ready for commercial deployment. At that time GM will also invest another $1.1 billion thereby providing sufficient capital to reach commercialization beginning in 2019.
UBTech Robotics, the Chinese toy robot builder, raised $820 million to help them develop adult-sized robots for commercial applications.
Ocado, the UK online grocer, raised $247 million by selling a 5% stake to US grocer Kroger.
Roadstar AI, another Chinese startup, raised $128 million for their radars and sensors for self-driving vehicles.
SoundHound, a Silicon Valley developer of voice-enabled AI for consumer robots and self-driving vehicles, raised $100 million.
This month’s $2.5 billion in fundings doubles the January thru April total of $2.5 billion. Thus a YTD of $5 billion!
Four acquisitions occurred in May. The most notable was SPX Corp., the large inspection equipment components manufacturer, which acquired CUES, a Florida robotic pipeline video inspection and rehab company, for $189 million.
Fundings
Cruise Holdings announced a two-phase funding by SoftBank Vision Fund totaling $2.25 billion. $900 million will be funded right away. Future funding of $1.35 billion is contingent on two things: regulatory approval and at the time when Cruise AVs are ready for commercial deployment. At that time GM will also invest another $1.1 billion to provide the combined capital to reach commercialization beginning in 2019. As a result of this two-pronged funding, SoftBank Vision Fund will end up owning a 19.6% equity stake in GM Cruise.
Placing the roof instruments. Look at all those LiDARs!
Functions of new UBTech humanoid robots.
UBTech Robotics, the Chinese toy robot builder that’s been featured in the Guiness Book of Records for the most simultaneous dancing robots, raised $820 million in a Series C funding round led by Tencent Holdings with participation from Green Pine Capital, Haier Group, Minsheng Securities, CDH Investments and Telstra. The new investment brings UBTech’s valuation to approximately $5 billion. UBTech said the money would be used to develop adult-sized humanoid robots and will focus particularly on the R&D of servo systems, movement control algorithms for walking, and computer vision.
Ocado, the UK leader in home-delivered groceries using robot-run distribution centers, which raised ~$192.5 million (in Feb) by selling shares of it’s publicly traded stock (LON:OCDO), has established a licensing deal with US grocery chain Kroger whereby Kroger will take a 5% stake in Ocado – an investment valued at ~$247.5 million and Ocado will help Kroger set up systems to help it manage online ordering, fulfillment and delivery operations. Ocado invested $57.5 million on technology last year, up from $46 million the previous year. The company is developing proprietary technology and has also increased its tech staff to 1,100. The company uses about 500 robots interacting with each other on a grid which have allowed it to process more than 20,000 orders.
Roadstar.AI, a Chinese self-driving startup integrating multiple sensors and LiDARs, cameras, radars, GPS and IMU to provide time and spatial synchronization for self-driving vehicles, raised $128 million in a series A round led by Wu Capital and Shenzhen Capital Group and also Yunqi Partners, CMBI International Capital Corporation Ltd and Vision Capital.
SoundHound, a Silicon Valley developer of voice-enabled AI for consumer robots and self-driving vehicles, raised $100 million in a round full of strategic partners: Tencent, Midea, Hyundai, Daimler and France Telecom (Orange).
Rapid Micro Biosystems, a Mass-based lab sciences testing equipment provider, raised $60 million in a venture round led by Bain Capital and Xeraya Capital
Saildrone, an Alameda, CA autonomous marine surface vehicle collecting scientific data, raised $60 million in a Series B funding led by Horizons Ventures and also Capricorn’s Technology Impact Fund, Lux Capital, Social Capital, and The Schmidt Family Foundation.
Hesai Photonics Technology, a Chinese laser sensor maker for self-driving vehicles, raised $39 million in a Series B round led by Lightspeed and Baidu. Hesai also makes a natural gas safety drone which can sense leaks in hi-rise buildings.
Medical Microinstruments, an Italian maker of a robotic platform for microsurgery, raised $24.5 million in a Series A round led by Andera Partners with participation from Panakes Partners and Fountain Healthcare, returning seed investor Sambatech, and industry veterans Gus Castello, former Senior Vice President of Product Operations for Intuitive Surgical Inc., and John Engels, founder of AxoGen, Inc.
Cowa Robot, the Chinese follow-me suitcase startup, raised $21.2 million in a Series B round jointly led by SoftBank China Venture Capital and China Creation Ventures with additional participation from Infore Capital, China Minsheng Investment Group.
Soft Robotics, a Cambridge, MA-based startup which designs and builds soft robotic gripping systems, raised $20 million in a round led by Hyperplane Venture Capital and including Scale Venture Partners, Calibrate Ventures, Honeywell Ventures, Tekfen Ventures, Yamaha Motor, Material Impact, ABB Technology Ventures, Taylor Farms Ventures and Haiyin Capital.
Trio.AI, a Beijing startup developing a dialogue engine for IoT and robotics, raised $17 million in a Series B round led by HanFor, China Minsheng Investment Group, Foxconn Technology Group and Xiamen Torch Group.
Superpedestrian, the Boston-based developer of the Copenhagen Wheel to enhance bicycles by amplifying pedal power by up to 10X, raised $16.5 million in a Series B round from Extol Capital LLC, Spark Capital and General Catalyst. This brings Superpedestrian’s total investment to ~$44 million.
Fictiv, a San Francisco-based developer of a virtual manufacturing platform used by Silicon Valley autonomous vehicles and medical robotics providers, raised $15 million in a Series B funding from Accel, Intel Capital, FJ Labs, Tandon Group, Stanford-StartX Fund, and Bill Gates.
Arevo Labs, a Silicon Valley provider of carbon fiber 3D printing technology, raised $12.5 million in Series B funding led by Asahi Glass and joined by Sumitomo Corporation of Americas, Leslie Ventures and Khosla Ventures.
Resson, a Canadian ag analytics provider, raised $10.9 million in a Series C round led by Mahindra & Mahindra with existing partners McCain Foods, Monsanto Growth Ventures, Build Ventures, Rho Canada, BDC Capital, East Valley Ventures and the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation.
EcoRobotix, the Swiss ag-tech startup developing a mobile weeding robot, raised $10.7 million in a Series B funding round led by BASF Venture Capital with participation by Business Angels Swiss, 4FO Ventures, Investiere, and CapAgro.
Algolux, a Canadian provider of machine-learning stacks for autonomous vision and imaging, raised $10 million in Series A funding. General Motors Ventures led the round, and was joined by investors including Drive Capital, Intact Ventures, and Real Ventures.
ForwardX, a Chinese follow-me suitcase developer, raised $10 million in a Series A round led by CDH Investments and Eastern Bell Venture Capital
Metawave, a Silicon Valley developer of beam steering radars for autonomous vehicle apps, raised $10 million in funding. Investors include DENSO, Toyota AI Ventures, Hyundai Motor Company, Asahi Glass, Motus Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Autotech Ventures, Bold Capital, SAIC Capital, Western Technology Investment (WTI), and Alrai Capital.
Verifly Holdings, a U.K.-based manufacturer of drone control systems and on-demand insurance sales agency, raised $7 million in funding. Investors include Slow Ventures, OpenOcean, and the founders of Kayak and HotelTonight.
Hummingbird Technologies, a UK-based drone, aerial and satellite sensing ag startup, raised $4.1 million in a Series A funding round from The European Space Agency, Sir James Dyson, Newable Private Investing and Velcourt, the UK’s largest commercial farming operation.
Plus One Robotics, a Texas vision and controls systems developer for robotic automation, raised $2.35 million (in 2017) in a seed round led by Schematic Ventures and joined by Lerer Hippeau, FF Venture Capital, First Star and Dynamo.
SkySquirrel Technologies (which recently merged into VineView), a Canadian ag drone and analytics provider for the wine industry, raised $2.3 million (in January) from an Ontario-based private investor and Innovacorp.
Kewazo, a German robotic construction equipment startup, raised $1.2 million in a seed round led by MIG Fonds 14 and Alfred Bauer.
C2RO Robotics, a Canadian startup enabling mapping, self-localization, and autonomous path planning in real-time with cloud-based SLAM, has raised $1.1 million in a seed round led by Chicago-based Harbor Street Ventures, with the participation of Fonds InnovExport, TandemLaunch Ventures and several angel investors in Canada, the U.S. and Europe.
Beijing Tiddler (AI Nemo), a Chinese consumer products and home companion robot developer, raised an undisclosed amount in a Series C round led by Baidu with participation from Foxconn.
Acquisitions
CUES, a 50-year old, 365-person Florida robotic video pipeline inspection and rehab company, was acquired by SPX Corp, an inspection equipment components manufacturer, for $189 million.
SkySquirrel Technologies, a Canadian ag-industry startup, has merged into VineView, Scientific Aerial Imaging, a California ag startup which will now be headquartered in Halifax, Nova Scotia. SkySquirrel’s founder and CEO will remain CEO of the new combined company.
Mavrx, a failing San Francisco-based aerial imagery platform startup, was acquired for an undisclosed amount by Israeli ag aerial imagery provider Taranis. Mavrx, which raised $12.5 million since 2012, ran into some financial and operational difficulty and was not able to service its clients for the upcoming growing season despite providing a popular product with a 90% customer renewal rate.
Jodone, a Boston robotics-related software and AI startup, was acquired by RightHand Robotics for an undisclosed amount.
IPOs
None
Failures
Ticktock AI — tried lots of approaches but never solved any problems that people wanted solved — good review here.
An Aside:
It seems like seed rounds are getting bigger and less frequent while Series A rounds are happening later in the development cycle. So says Bessemer Venture partner Amit Karp in a recent post on Medium.
“Most early stage startups we meet these days attempt to raise a $2M-$4M seed investment with some seed rounds expanding even further. These larger seed rounds are often led by a new pool of dedicated seed funds. In addition, the larger funds sometimes also participate in these early rounds, which results in even larger seed rounds (and often higher valuations). Angel investors are often added into the mix to bring more credibility and help with their experience in the early stages of the startup, but it’s a ‘professional’ seed investor who often leads the seed round.”
According to Karp there are several implications to these new large seed rounds:
Series-A financing is pushed later, and Series-A investors now expect to see much more business traction before they commit.
Series-A rounds have also become larger and are now often north of $8M. This reduces the amount of Series-A investors as it requires a larger fund to invest in that stage.
Securing a Series-A investment is more difficult than it used to be since there are fewer funds and the startup needs to demonstrate more business traction.
Lastly, and likely most important, is that the winners are separated from the losers earlier than ever. It is very difficult for a startup which raised a $500K seed round to compete with another startup that raised $4M at the same stage. A similar phenomena to the massive SoftBank fundings.
Reviewing The Robot Report’s Y-T-D 2018 seed rounds, there were 13 fundings averaging $3.8 million each thus confirming Karp’s thesis from our smaller sample of robotics-related fundings.
Ocado , the UK leader in home-delivered groceries from robot-run distribution centers, has established a licensing deal with US grocery chain Kroger(NYSE:KR) whereby Kroger will take a 5% stake in Ocado – an investment valued at ~$247.5 million and Ocado will help Kroger set up systems to manage online ordering, fulfillment and delivery operations utilizing Ocado-proven technologies. Ocado will see the Kroger chain build up to 20 Ocado-designed robot-run warehouses over its first three years.
In a recent letter to Kroger stockholders, CEO Rodney McMullen said that Kroger is redeploying capital to emphasize improving its digital capabilities and enabling customers to shop in the store, by ordering online and picking up their order at the store, or getting their groceries delivered to their homes. Although McMullen didn’t single out Amazon or any other competitors in the supermarket arena, Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods and Walmart’s price-cutting moves and partnering with online grocery deliver service Instacart are rapidly changing the landscape of grocery shopping.
“Kroger is right in the middle of such a reinvention,” McMullen said in the shareholder letter. “We are proactively addressing customer changes and we’re making strategic investments to create the future of retail: a seamless digital experience, customer-centric technology solutions, an enhanced associate experience, space-optimized stores and smart-priced products.”
Ocado has begun to commercialize its technologies and signed its first major deal outside the U.K. with Casino, the operator of French supermarket chain Monoprix. Then came Canada’s Sobeys in January, and this month it was the turn of Sweden’s ICA. The Kroger deal is the biggest yet, and Ocado’s share price is at the time of writing up 56% on the news.
Ocado invested $57.5 million on technology in 2017, up from $46 million the previous year. The company is developing and deploying proprietary technology, has a tech staff of 1,100, and uses about 500 robots interacting with each other on a stacked grid which has allowed it to process more than 20,000 daily orders.
Earlier this year (in February) Ocado raised ~$192.5 million by selling shares. Back then the stock was priced at £487. Today it closed at £861, an increase of 76%!
E-commerce sales for 2017 were $453.5 billion in the U.S. and $1.1 trillion in China, an increase of 16.0% and 32.6% respectively over 2016. This upward trend is projected to continue for the next many years. Consequently flexibility and an ability to handle an ever-increasing number of parcels is of concern to warehousing, fulfillment and distribution center (DC) managers around the world.
Handling, distribution, transport and delivery – and the amortization of facility setup charges which often represent more cost than raw materials and manufacturing combined – are part of mounting challenges faced by today’s fulfillment executives. Accordingly, warehousing and material handling are a big business for hundreds of different types of companies that provide conveyors, rollers, racks, vision systems, hoists, shelving, electric motors, slides, barcode readers, printers, ladders, gantries, tugs, forklifts, skids, totes, carts, and software systems of all types. Most of these vendors provide products which serve the man-to-goods model, ie, a person goes somewhere in the warehouse, finds the item, and either puts it into further play in the system or packs it himself.
Kiva Systems shattered that model with their goods-to-person robots and dynamic shelving systems. Amazon was so enamored with Kiva’s robotic solution that it acquired Kiva and their robots. Since that acquisition Amazon Robotics (as Kiva Systems was renamed) has since produced over 130,000 Kiva robots and put them all to work in Amazon warehouses and DCs thus proving the efficacy of the method – a method which has been copied and also expanded upon by multiple vendors listed below.Bottom line: In warehouse and supply chain logistics focused on e-commerce fulfillment, whether third-party logistics service providers or e-retailers and their logistics arms, fixed and exorbitant front-end costs for conveyors, elevators and old style AS/RS systems have become anathema to warehouse executives worldwide who are clamoring to lower fixed costs while increasing flexibility and handling more goods. Comprehensive software and analytics — particularly predictive analytics — are on executives near-term agendas. Hence the need to invest in NextGen Supply Chain methods offered by the companies listed below.
Automating lifts, tows, carts and AGVs
Human-operated tows, lifts, AGVs and other warehouse and factory vehicles has been a staple in material movement for decades. Now, with low-cost cameras, sensors and advanced vision and depth-sensing systems, they are slowly transitioning to more flexible mobile robots (AMRs) that can autonomously tow, lift and carry and can work in either autonomous or human-operated modes.
Vendors providing kits and systems for existing forklifts and carts to convert them to Vision Guided Vehicles (VGVs, AMRs) for line-side replenishment, pallet movement, etc. include:
RoboCVis a Russian provider of autopilots for warehouse machines at Russian facilities for Samsung, VW and 3PLs. RoboCV also provides cloud-based task optimization and traffic control.
Balyo, a French provider of autonomous vehicle kits to forklift OEMs Hyster and Yale.
Seegrid, a Pittsburgh-based provider of vehicle autonomous kits for OEM Raymond, 3PLs and distribution centers of all types, also makes their own VGVs, and provides software and engineering systems to minimize human involvement and maximize VGV productivity.
Vendors providing AMRs, VGVs and AIVs (Autonomous Intelligent Vehicles) for goods-to-person, point-to-point, load transfer, restocking, etc. include:
6 River Systems
Aethon
Beijing Geekplus Technology (Geek+)
Canvas Technology
Clearpath’s OTTO robots
Fetch Robotics
Grenzebach
Kuka
Locus Robotics
Mobile Industrial Robots
Robotnik Automation
Seegrid
STILL
Swisslog
Toyota’s Autopilot
Vecna Robotics
and others
Grasping
Where humans surpass machines is in the quick visual determination of what to pick, how to grasp, and then move the item to wherever it needs to go. Until recently, this has been the missing link in automated fulfillment and one of the biggest challenges in robotics acceptance. A few vendors are perfecting the science that enables high speed random grasping from moving conveyors or bins:
RightHand Robotics
Universal Logic
Kinema Systems
Swisslog
Soft Robotics
Vendors providing grasping capabilities in addition to autonomous mobility include:
InVia Robotics
IAM Robotics
Magazino
Dorabot
GreyOrange (see below for details)
Indoor navigation
Navigation systems have changed along with all the other technological improvements and often don’t require floor grid markings, barcodes or extensive indoor localization and segregation systems such as those used by Kiva Systems (and subsequently Amazon). SLAM and combinations of floor grids, SLAM, path planning and mapping systems, indoor beacons, and collision avoidance systems are adding flexibility to swarms of point-to-point mobile robots and enabling traffic control and dynamic inventory placement.
Kiva look-alikes
In March 2012, in an effort to make their fulfillment centers as efficient as possible, Amazon acquired Kiva Systems for $775 million and almost immediately took them in-house, leaving a disgruntled set of Kiva customers who couldn’t expand and a larger group of prospective clients who were left with a technological gap and no solutions. I wrote about this gap and about the whole community of new providers that had sprung up to fill the void and were beginning to offer and demonstrate their solutions. Many of those new providers are listed above.
Recently, another set of competitors has emerged in this space. Chinese e-commerce giants Alibaba, JD (JingDong), VIPShop, Tencent and others have funded companies who copied the Kiva Systems formula to provide Kiva-like goods-to-person robot systems and dynamic free-form warehousing for their in-country fulfillment and distribution centers.
Now some of those companies are braving the prospect of IP infringement proceedings from Amazon and are expanding outside of China and SE Asia to Europe and America:
Grey Orange Robotics has sites using their systems in Japan and Europe and exhibited at Europe’s Logimat trade show where they launched PickPal, an autonomous picking robot which can pick a wide variety of SKUs using machine vision and a scalable gripper system specifically suitable for high-volume order fulfillment.
Beijing Geekplus (Geek+) Technology also has sites using their systems in Japan and Poland and had booths at MODEX and CeMAT trade shows to introduce Geek+ to the West.
Xinyi Logistics Science & Technology (Alog) – has not yet ventured beyond China and SE Asia.
Hanzhou Hikrobot Technology (HIK) – has not yet ventured beyond China and SE Asia.
Kiva alternatives
Symbotic
Swisslog
Dematic
Locus Robotics
Fetch Robotics
[NOTE: The lists shown above are not fully comprehensive. The universe is much larger. I have some knowledge of the vendors shown and know that they are beyond pilot projects, researching and prototyping which was my criteria for including them.]
Fifteen disclosed transaction amounts totaling $808 million of which the $600 million to SenseTime, the Alibaba-funded Chinese deep learning and facial recognition software provider focused on smart self-driving vehicle systems, was by far the largest.
Year to date, fundings total $2.3 billion!
Seven acquisitions also occurred in April. The most notable was the acquisition by Teradyne (which previously acquired Universal Robots and Energid) of MiR (Mobile Industrial Robots) for $148 million with an additional $124 million predicated on very achievable milestones between now and 2020.
Robotics Fundings
SenseTime, a Chinese deep learning and facial recognition software provider focused on smart self-driving vehicle systems, raised $600 million in a Series C funding round led by Alibaba Group with participation by Temasek Holdings and Suning Commerce Group.
Formlabs, a Somerville, Mass.-based manufacturer of industrial quality 3D printing systems, raised $30 million in a Series C funding. Tyche Partners led the round, and was joined by Shenzhen Capital Group, UpNorth Investment Limited, DFJ, Pitango and Foundry Group.
Zimplistic, a Singapore-based kitchen robotics firm which makes the $999 Rotimatic roti maker, raised $30 million in a Series C funding led by Credence Partners and EDBI.
6 River Systems, a Massachusetts-based point-to-point logistics mobile robot maker, raised $25 million in Series B funding in a round led by Menlo Ventures with participation from all existing investors (Norwest Venture Partners, Eclipse Ventures and iRobot). Details here.
Houston Mechatronics, a Texas defense and space systems integrator, raised $20 million in Series B funding from Iain Cooper and Simple-Fill. Funds will be used to develop a novel transformer-like underwater device called Aquanaut.
Vicarious Surgical, a Cambridge, Mass-based robotic surgery startup, raised $16.75 million in Series A funding. Khosla Ventures and Innovation Endeavors led the round the round, and were joined by Gates Ventures, AME Cloud Ventures, and Marc Benioff.
Efy-Tech, a Chinese UAS control systems startup, raised $15.8 million in a Series A funding from Aviation Industry Corporation, a Chinese state-owned aerospace and defense company.
DeepScale, a Silicon Valley self-driving vehicle AI perception startup, raised $15 million in a Series A funding round led by Point72 and next47.
Ready Robotics, a Baltimore-based provider of collaborative robots as a service (RaaS), raised $15 million in funding. Drive Capital led the round, and was joined by Eniac Ventures and RRE Ventures.
Symbio Robotics, a Berkeley, CA robotics control software startup, raised $15 million from undisclosed sources.
Marble, a San Francisco-based developer of a fleet of intelligent courier robots, raised $10 million in Series A funding. Investors include Tencent, Lemnos, Crunchfund, and Maven.
Regulus Cyber, an Israeli startup developing and making security devices for drones and autonomous vehicles, raised $6.3 million in a Series A round led by Sierra Ventures and Canaan Partners Israel.
Comma.ai, the San Francisco startup led by superstar hacker George Hotz, raised $5 million in a Series A round although it’s unclear who invested in the round which was reported in an SEC filing.
Bear Robotics, a Silicon Valley mobile robot startup for the food industry, raised $3 million in a Seed round (in January) of which $2 million came from Korean food-tech firm Woowa Brothers.
Segway Robotics raised $1.1 million from 952 backers in an IndieGoGo campaign for their Loomo mobil robotic mini personal transporter which they are selling for $1,499 and begin shipping in May.
Robotics Fundings: amounts undisclosed
DroneSense, a Texas UAS platform for drone users and OEMs, raised an undisclosed amount from FLIR Systems. “This alliance with DroneSense will help bring to market a truly mission-critical solution needed by first responders to effectively deploy a complete UAS program across their organizations. We believe this platform is scalable geographically, across multiple markets, and across multiple FLIR Business Units,” said James Cannon, President and CEO of FLIR.
BBS Automation, a Germany-based global integrator of automated testing and inspection systems, raised an undisclosed amount from equity fund EQT Mid-Marketwhich intends to assist BBS Automation’s growth ambitions both organically and through add-on acquisitions in new end markets.
Plug-and-play Panda robot
Franka Emika, a German startup producing the Panda co-bot, raised an undisclosed amount from their new joint venture partner, German conglomerate Voith. The new joint venture has launched Voith Robotics which will develop the Panda co-bot business while Franka will focus on the research and selling to academia and the research community.
Franklin Robotics, the Lowell MA startup that created a garden weeding robot named Tertill, sold 25% of the company to Husqvarna Group for an undisclosed amount. “With almost 1,500,000 environmentally friendly robotic mowers sold all over the world, Husqvarna Group has vast experience and insight that will be invaluable to us as we bring Tertill to market, and continue to develop robotic weeding solutions for the garden and beyond”, says Rory MacKean, CEO Franklin Robotics.
Intuition Robotics, an Israeli startup developing an eldercare social robot, raised an undisclosed amount (in January) from SamsungNEXT Ventures.
Acquisitions
UPDATE to the acquisition of Energid by Teradyne in February for an undisclosed amount. The amount is now known to be $25 million.
Beijing Aresbots Technology (Ares Robot), a Beijing startup developing Kiva-like warehousing robots, was acquired for an undisclosed amount by Face++, a Beijing facial recognition and ID company also known as Megvii.
Genesis Advanced Technology, the Canadian startup developing LiveDrive, a direct-drive actuator with torque-to-weight that can meet or beat motor-gearbox actuators, has been acquired by Koch Industries for an undisclosed amount. Koch will form a new company Genesis Robotics & Motion Technologies (Genesis Robotics) – to commercialize LiveDrive and related technologies. Details here.
Genmark Automation, a Fremont, CA maker of automation tools and wafer handling robots for the semiconductor industry, was acquired by NidecSankyo, a Japanese maker of motors, clean-room robots and robot components, for an undisclosed amount.
JR Automation, a Michigan industrial robot integrator, acquired Setpoint Systems, a Littleton, CO, an integrator of building automation solutions, and Setpoint, an Ogden, Utah amusement and theme parks ride designer. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.
MiR (Mobile Industrial Robots), the Danish startup with 300% sales growth in 2017, was acquired by Teradyne (NYSE:TER) for $148 million with an additional $124 million predicated on very achievable milestones between now and 2020. Details here.
Van Hoecke Automation, a Belgian-based industrial robot integrator, was acquired by Michigan-based Burke Porter Groupfor an undisclosed amount. BPG is a multi-subsidiary conglomerate providing testing and clean room equipment to the auto industry.
Wind River, a control systems software provider acquired by Intel, has been acquired by private equity firm TPG Capital for an undisclosed amount. “This acquisition will establish Wind River as a leading independent software provider uniquely positioned to advance digital transformation within critical infrastructure segments with our comprehensive edge to cloud portfolio,” said Jim Douglas, Wind River President. “At the same time, TPG will provide Wind River with the flexibility and financial resources to fuel our many growth opportunities as a standalone software company that enables the deployment of safe, secure, and reliable intelligent systems.”
IPOs
None
Failures
Revolve Robotics (developer of the KUBI tabletop remote presence device) has folded and turned over remaining sales, service and support to their Northern California manufacturer Xandex.
MiR was just returning from celebrating its 300% growth in 2017 at a company get-together in Barcelona with 70 MiR employees from all over the world when the announcement was made. It tripled its revenue from autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) in 2017. MiR co-founder and CEO Thomas Visti said that growth in 2017 was primarily due to multinational companies that returned with orders for larger fleets of mobile robots after it tested and analyzed the results of its initial MiR robot orders.
Another factor in MiR’s 2017 growth was the launch of the MiR200 which can lift 440 pounds, pull 1,100 pounds, is ESD approved and cleanroom certified. “The MiR200 has been very well received and represents a large part of our sales. The product meets clear needs in the market and increases potential applications for autonomous mobile robots. Combined with our new and extremely user-friendly interface – which even employees without programming experience can use – it makes it even simpler for our customers to implement and use our robots,” Visti said.
Another reason for MiRs rapid growth has been its initial strategic decision to develop and market solely to a growing network of integrator/distributors originally developed by Visti when he was VP of Sales at Universal Robots. MiR presently has 132 distributors in 40 countries with regional offices in New York, San Diego, Singapore, Dortmund, Barcelona and Shanghai – and the lists are growing.
Teradyne, by this acquisition, is hoping to capitalize on the synergies between MiR and UR as shown in the chart above. Both offer end users fast ROI and low cost of entry and provide Teradyne with attractive gross margins and rapid growth.
“We are excited to have MiR join Teradyne’s widening portfolio of advanced, intelligent, automation products,” said Mark Jagiela, President and CEO of Teradyne. “MiR is the market leader in the nascent, but fast growing market for collaborative autonomous mobile robots (AMRs). Like Universal Robots’ collaborative robots, MiR collaborative AMRs lower the barrier for both large and small enterprises to incrementally automate their operations without the need for specialty staff or a re-layout of their existing workflow. This, combined with a fast return on investment, opens a vast new automation market. Following the path proven with Universal Robots, we expect to leverage Teradyne’s global capabilities to expand MiR’s reach.”
Earlier this year, Teradyne acquired Energid for $25 million in a talent and intellectual property acquisition. Energid, which is exhibiting and speaking at the Robotics Summit & Showcase, developed the robot control and tasking framework Actin which is used in industrial, commercial, collaborative, medical and space-based robotic systems and is a UR partner. Teradyne sees Actin as an enabling technology for advanced motion control and collision avoidance.
MiR founder and CSO Niels Jul Jacobsen, Visti, and investors Esben Østergaard, Torben Frigaard Rasmussen, and Søren Michael Juul Jørgensen should all be proud of their achievement thus far. Congratulations to all!
MODEX, ProMat and CeMAT are the biggest global material handling and logistics supply chain tech trade shows. But as I walked the corridors of this year’s MODEX in Atlanta, I was particularly aware of the widening disparity between the old and new.
Stats: Material Handling and Logistics
The 2018 MHI Annual Industry Report found that the 2018 adoption rate for driverless vehicles in material handling was only 10% and the adoption rate for AI was just 5% while the rate for robotics and automation was 35%.
The report indicated the top technologies expected to be a source of either disruption or competitive advantage within the next 3-5 years to be: (shown in order of importance)
Robotics and Automation – picking, packing, sorting orders; loading, unloading, stacking; receiving and put-away; assembly operations; QC and inspection processing
Predictive Analytics – manage lead times; synchronize links; avoid missteps
Internet-of-Things (IoT) – enable real-time info flow; predictive analytics; and QC
Driverless Vehicles – autonomous vehicles (and conversion kits for existing AGVs, tows and lifts); SLAM and point-to-point navigation; some with manipulators
The report also listed the key barriers to adoption of driverless vehicles and AI: (shown in order of importance)
lack of a clear business case
lack of adequate talent
lack of understanding of the technology landscape
lack of access to capital to make investments
cybersecurity
Other research reports were more optimistic in their forecasts:
A $3,500 report from QY Research made rosy forecasts for global parcel sorting robots and last mile delivery robots
A $10,000 report from Interact Analysis forecast five years of double-digit growth for AMRs and AGVs converted to AMRs
A $4,450 report from Grand View Research forecasts significant growth through 2024 driven by increasing demand for autonomous and safe point-to-point material handling equipment
Transforming lifts, tows, carts and AGVs to AMRs and VGVs
Human-operated AGVs, tows, lifts and other warehouse and factory vehicles have been a staple in material movement for decades. Now, with low-cost cameras, sensors and advanced vision systems, they are slowly transitioning to more flexible autonomous mobile robots that can tow, lift and carry. AMRs are Automated Mobile Robots which can be human operated or autonomous or a combination of both.
Vendors providing conversion systems for existing lifts and carts to Vision Guided Vehicles (AMRs) for line-side replenishment, pallet movement, etc. include:
Navigation systems have changed as well and often don’t require floor grid markings, barcodes or extensive indoor localization and segregation systems such as those used by Kiva Systems (and subsequently Amazon). SLAM and combinations of floor grids, SLAM, path planning, and collision avoidance systems are adding flexibility to swarms of point-to-point mobile robots.
Kiva look-alikes emerge
In March 2012, in an effort to make their fulfillment centers as efficient as possible, Amazon acquired Kiva Systems for $775 million and almost immediately took them in-house, leaving a disgruntled set of Kiva customers who couldn’t expand and a larger group of prospective clients who were left with a technological gap and no solutions. I wrote about this gap and about the whole community of new providers that had sprung up to fill the void and were beginning to offer and demonstrate their solutions. Many of those new providers are listed above.
Recently, another set of competitors has emerged in this space:
Companies started in China who copied the Kiva Systems formula to provide Kiva-like goods-to-person robot services and dynamic free-form warehousing to the major Chinese e-commerce vendors such as:
There are many forms of warehousing. But the area where NextGen tools are needed the most are in high-turn distribution and fulfillment centers.
The rate of acceptance of e-commerce is changing warehousing forever, particularly distribution and fulfillment centers. Total e-commerce sales for 2017 were $453.5 billion, an increase of 16.0% from 2016. E-commerce sales in 2017 accounted for 8.9% of total sales versus 8.0% of total sales in 2016 according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Consequently flexibility and an ability to handle an ever-increasing number of parcels is paramount and fixed costs for conveyors, elevators and old style AS/RS systems has become anathema to warehouse executives worldwide. Hence the need to invest in NextGen Supply Chain methods as shown at shows like MODEX.
Although 31,000 people went to this year’s MODEX, I wonder how many share my view about the disparity between the old and new shown at the show. Certainly there were enough new tech vendors offering “a mixed fleet of intelligent, collaborative mobile robots and fully-autonomous, zero-infrastructure AGVs designed specifically for safe and flexible material flows in dynamic, human-centric environments.” Yet the emphasis on the show – and the favorable booth space placement – was to the old-line vendors rather than the NextGen companies listed above.
In the constantly changing landscape of today’s global digital workspace, AI’s presence grows in almost every industry. Retail giants like Amazon and Alibaba are using algorithms written by machine learning software to add value to the customer experience. Machine learning is also prevalent in the new Service Robotics world as robots transition from blind, dumb and caged to mobile and perceptive.
Competition is particularly focused between the US and China even though other countries and global corporations have large AI programs as well. The competition is real, fierce and dramatic. Talent is hard to find and costly. It’s a complex field that few fully understand, consequently the talent pool is limited. Grabs of key players and companies headline the news every few days. “Apple hires away Google’s chief of search and AI.” “Amazon acquires AI cybersecurity startup.” “IBM invests millions into MIT AI research lab.” “Oracle acquires Zenedge.” “Ford acquires auto tech startup Argo AI.” “Baidu hires three world-renowned artificial intelligence scientists.”
Media, partly from the complexity of the subject, and partly from lack of knowledge, frighten people with scare headlines about misuse and autonomous weaponry. They exaggerate the competition into a hotly contested war for mastery of the field. It’s not really a “war” but it is dramatic and it’s playing out right now on many levels: immigration law, intellectual property transgressions, trade war fears, labor cost and availability challenges, and unfair competitive practices as well as technological breakthroughs and lower costs enabling experimentation and testing.
Two recent trends have sparked widespread use of machine learning: the availability of massive amounts of training data, and powerful and efficient parallel computing. GPUs are parallel processors and are used to train these deep neural networks. GPUs do so in less time, using far less datacenter infrastructure than non-parallel-processing super-computers.
Service and mobile robots often need to have all their computing power onboard as compared to stationary robots with control systems in separate nearby boxes. Sometimes onboard computing involves multiple processors; other times it necessitates super-computing power such as offered by chip makers that offer parallel processing and super-computer speeds. Nvidia’s Jetson chip, Isaac lab, and toolset are an example.
Nvidia
The recent Nvidia GPU Developers Conference held in San Jose last month highlighted Nvidia’s goal to capture the robotics AI market. They’ve set up an SDK and lab to help robotics companies capture and learn from the amount of data they are processing as they go about their tasks in mobility and vision processing.
Nvidia’s Jetson GPU, SDK, toolset and simulation platform are designed to help roboticists build and test robotics applications and simultaneously manage all the various onboard processes such as perception, navigation and manipulation. As a demonstration of the breath of capabilities in their toolset, Nvidia had a delivery robot to cart around objects at the show.
Nvidia is offering libraries, SDK, APIs, an open source deep learning accelerator, and other tools to encourage the use by robot makers for them to incorporate Nvidia chips into their products. Nvidia sees this as a future source of revenue. Right now it is mostly all research and experimentation.
Examples of deep learning in robotics
In a recent CBInsights graphic categorizing the 2018 AI 100, 12 companies were highlighted in the robotics and auto technology sectors. Note from the Venn Diagram that not all AI companies are involved with robotics (in fact, most aren’t – there were 2,000+ startups in the pool of companies from which the 100 were chosen). The same is true for robotics.
Here are four use cases of robot companies using AI chips in their products:
Cobalt Robotics – Says CEO and Co-founder Travis Deyle, “Cobalt uses a high-end NVidia GPU (a 1080 variant) directly on the robot. We do a lot of processing locally (e.g. anomaly detection, person detection, etc) using a host of libraries: CUDA, TensorFlow, and various computer vision libraries. The algorithms running on the robot are just the tip of the iceberg. The on-robot detectors and classifiers are tuned to be very sensitive; upon detection, data is transmitted to the internet and runs through an extensive cloud-based machine learning pipeline and ultimately flags a remote human specialist for additional input and high-level decision making. The cloud-based pipeline also makes use of deep-learning processing power, which is likely powered by NVidia as well.”
Bossa Nova Robotics– Walmart is partnering with San Francisco-based robotics Bossa Nova on robots that roam the grocery and health products aisles of Walmart stores, auditing shelves and then sending data back to employees to ensure that missing items are restocked, as well as locating incorrect prices and wrong or missing labels. Bossa Nova’s Walmart robots house three Nvidia GPUs: one for navigation and mapping; another for perception and image stitching (it’s viewing 6′ of shelving at 2 mph); and for computing and analyzing what it’s seeing and turning that info into actionable restocking reports.
Fetch Robotics – Fetch Robotics’ automated material transports and Fetch’s new data survey line of AMRs, all, in addition to navigation, collision avoidance and mapping, collect data continuously and consistently. When the robots recharge themselves, all the stored collected data is uploaded to the cloud for post-processing and analytics.
TUSimple (CN) – Beijing-based TuSimple’s truck driving technology is focused on the middle mile, ie, the need for transporting container boxes from one hub to another. Along the way TUSimple trucks are able to detect and track objects at distances of greater than 300 meters through advanced sensor fusion that combines data from multiple cameras using decimeter-level localization technology. Simultaneously, the truck’s decision-making system dynamically adapts to road conditions including changing lanes and adjusting driving speeds. TuSimple uses NVIDIA GPUs, NVIDIA DRIVE PX 2, Jetson TX2, CUDA, TensorRT and cuDNN in its autonomous driving solution.
The China factor
Twelve years ago, as a national long-term strategic goal, China crafted 5-year plans with specific goals to encourage the use of robots in manufacturing to enhance quality and reduce the need for unskilled labor, and to establish the manufacture of robots in-country to reduce the reliance on foreign suppliers. After three successive well funded and fully incentivized 5-year robotics plans, one can easily see the transformation: robot and component manufacturers have grown from fewer than 10 to more than 700 while companies using robots in their manufacturing and material handling process have grown similarly.
[NOTE: During the same period, America implemented various manufacturing initiatives involving robotics, however none were comparably funded or, more importantly, continuously funded over time.]
Recently China turned its focus to artificial intelligence. Specifically, they’ve set out a three-pronged plan to catch up by 2020, achieve mid-term parity in autonomous vehicles, image recognition and, perhaps, simultaneous translation by 2025, and lead the world in AI and machine learning by 2030.
Western companies doing business in China have been plagued by intellectual property thievery, copying and reverse engineering, and heavy-handed partnerships and joint ventures where IP must be given to the Chinese venture. Steve Dickinson, a lawyer with Harris | Bricken, a Seattle law firm whose slogan is “Tough Markets; Bold Lawyers,” wrote:
“With respect to appropriating the technology and then selling it back into the developed market from which it came: that is of course the Chinese strategy. It is the strategy of businesses in every developing country. The U.S. followed this approach during the entire 19th and early 20th centuries. Japan and Korea and Taiwan did it with great success in the post WWII era. That is how technical progress is made.”
“It is clear that appropriating foreign AI technology is the goal of every Chinese company operating in this sector [robotics, e-commerce, logistics and manufacturing]. For that reason, all foreign entities that work with Chinese companies in any way must be aware of the significant risk and must take the steps required to protect themselves.”
What is really clear is that where data in large quantity is available, as in China, and where speed is normal and privacy is nil, as in China, AI techniques such as machine and deep learning can thrive and achieve remarkable results at breakneck speed. That’s what is happening right now in China.
Bottom line:
Growth in the service robotics sector is still a promise more than a reality and there is a pressing need to deliver on those promises. We have seen tremendous progress on processors, sensors, cameras and communications but so far the integration is lacking. One roboticist characterized the integration of all that data as a need for a “reality sensor”, i.e., a higher-level indicator of what is being seen or processed. If the sensors pick up a series of pixels that are interpreted to be a person, and the processing determines its motion to be intersecting with your robot, it would be helpful to know whether it’s a pedestrian, a policeman, a fireman, a sanitation worker, a construction worker, a surveyor, etc. That information would help refine the prediction and your actions. It would add reality to image processing and visual perception.
Even as the ratio of development in hardware to software shifts more toward software, there are still many challenges to overcome. Henrik Christensen, the director of the Institute for Contextual Robotics at the University of California San Diego, cited a few of those challenges:
Better end-effectors / hands. We still only have very limited capability hands and they are WAY too expensive
The user interfaces for most robots are still very limited, eg, different robots have different chargers
The cost of integrating systems is very high. We need much better plug-n-play systems
We see lots of use of AI / deep learning but in most cases without performance guarantees; not a viable long-term solution until things improve
One often forgets the science involved in robotics, embedded AI, and the many challenges remaining until we have a functional fully-capable, fully-interactive service robot.
Twenty-four startups were funded in March 2018 raising a combined total of $350 million. That brings the 3-month total to $1.5 billion!
Sorting robots at JD’s smart automated warehouse in Shanghai
There was an additional funding of $2.5 billion to JD Logistics, an 81.4%-owned spin-off that is the logistics arm of JD, China’s 2nd largest online retailer. Funding came from Hillhouse, Sequoia, China Merchants, Tencent, China Life, China Development Bank, China Structural Reform and ICBC International.
JD Logistics has 14 smart warehouses serving a network of ~500 warehouses occupying over 130 million sq ft of warehouse space. The 14 smart warehouses are using robotic shuttles, AS/RS systems, parallel robots and AGVs and JD Logistics is experimenting with autonomous delivery vehicles. Consequently, some of that funding will be used to research, develop and increase the number of smart warehouses with robotic logistics solutions.
Also in March there were three acquisitions and an IPO.
Fundings
Desktop Metal, a Burlington, Mass.-based company making metal 3d printing system for mass production raised $65 million in funding. Ford Motor Company led the round, and was joined by other investors including Future Fund. Desktop Metal has raised $277 million to date, has over 225 employees and has sold products into more than 40 countries.
Mythic, an Austin, Texas-based AI chip company, raised $40 million in Series B funding. SoftBank Ventures led the round, and was joined by investors including DFJ, Lux Capital, Data Collective, AME Cloud Ventures, Lockheed Martin Ventures and Andy Bechtolsheim. Mythic’s low-power lightweight chips are used for onboard processing in drones.
, a Waltham, MA-based robotic-assisted surgical platform and the developer of the FDA-approved CorPath GRX system, raised another $25 million in a post-IPO equity private placement to existing investors including Hudson Executive Capital and BioStar Ventures, and new investors. Corrindus has raised $118 million and installed 33 systems to date.
ReWalk Robotics, an Israeli exoskeleton provider, in another post-IPO equity private placement, exchanged 16 million shares of its stock RWLK for $20 million in a private placement with Hong Kong Timwell Garment, a wholesale distributor of men’s and boy’s apparel. Timwell and ReWalk are joint venturing in China with RealCan Ambrum, a Shenzhen VC for healthcare products, to develop, manufacture and market ReWalk’s new soft-suit exoskeleton. ReWalk will provide the technology; Timwell and RealCan will provide additional funding and do the rest.
Airspace Systems Inc, a San Leandro, Calif.-based manufacturer of comprehensive drone defense systems, raised $20 million in Series A funding. Singtel Innov8 led the round, and was joined by investors including s28 Capital, Shasta Ventures and Granite Hill Capital Partners.
Blackmore Sensors and Analytics, a Bozeman, Montana-based developer of frequency-modulated continuous wave LiDAR for the auto industry, raised $18 million in Series B funding. BMW i Ventures led the round and was joined by Toyota AI Ventures, Millennium Technology Value Partners and Next Frontier Capital.
Starsky Robotics, a San Francisco-based self-driving truck startup, raised $16.5 million in funding. Investors include Shasta Ventures, Y Combinator, Trucks.vc, 50 Years, and 9Point Ventures.
Fortem Technologies, a Utah developer and provider of ultra small C-SWAP radar for beyond line of sight UAS operations, raised $15 million in a Series A round led by Data Collective with participation by New Ground Ventures, Mubadala Investment Co, New Ground Ventures, Signia Venture Partiers and The Boeing Company.
Laifual Drive, a Chinese harmonic drive gearbox manufacturer and robot reducer supplier, raised $15 million in a Series A round led by Northern Light VC with participation from Rushan Investment.
Transphorm, a CA chipmaker using gallium nitride semiconductors, has raised $15 million from Yaskawa Electric who uses Transphorm products in the servo motors for robots.
Blue Vision Labs, a Los Angeles machine perception startup, raised $14.5 million in a Series A round led by GV with participation by Accel Partners, Horizons Ventures and SV Angel.
, a Silicon Valley mobile security robot startup, raised $13 million in a Series A financing led by Sequoia Capital with participation by Founders Fund, Storm Ventures, Bloomberg Beta, Promus Ventures and others.
Bestmile, a Swiss autonomous driving fleet management platform startup, raised $11 million in a Series A round let by Road Ventures with participation from Serena Capital, Partech, Airbus Ventures, Mobility.fund and Aéroport de Paris.
Robotic Vision Technologies, an Illinois developer and integrator of vision systems, raised $10.5 million from unknown sources. RVT has a 3D vision guidance system for guided vehicles and the collaborative robot market.
Ascent Robotics, a Tokyo-based AI startup focusing on self-driving vehicles and autonomous robotic systems, raised $10.3 million in a Series A round led by SBI Investment with participation from Bart Joseph Broadman.
OpenTrons, a Brooklyn, NY lab liquid-handling pipetting robot maker, raised $10 million in a seed round led by Khosla Ventures with participation by Y Combinator, Lerer Hippeau Ventures and Jeffrey Kindler.
Arraiy, a Silicon Valley vision systems and machine learning startup, raised $10 million in a Series A round led by Softbank Ventures Korea and Lux Capital with participation by IDG Capital Partners, Dentsu Ventures, Cherry Tree Investments and CRCM Ventures.
, an Oregon startup developing legged robots into products that need rugged mobility and must fit into human spaces, closed a $8 million Series A round. Playground Global led the round, with participation from Sony Innovation Fund and existing investor Robotics Hub. Agility’s two-legged Cassie robot is already deployed in 6 research institutes. Agility is planning on using Cassie for everything from deliveries to facility inspections to hazardous search-and-rescue operations.
Scotty Labs, a tele-operations company working on technology for remote control-enabled self-driving cars, raised $6 million in seed funding. Gradient Ventures led the round, and was joined by investors including Horizon Ventures and Hemi Ventures.
Hummingbird Technologies, a UK drone, aerial and satellite imagery and remote sensing ag startup, raised $4.1 million in a Series A round led by Sir James Dyson, the European Space Agency, Newable Private Investing and Velcourt.
Circular Wave Drive, an Ohio startup developing a long-life speed reducer gear for robots, raised $2 million in a Seed round led by Ikove Venture Partners.
Skycision, a Pittsburgh-based ag drone analytics startup, raised $1.1 million in a seed round from Innova Memphis, AgLaunch Accelerator, Scurich Berry Farms and individual investors.
Mojio Inc, a Vancouver-based connected car platform, raised funding of an undisclosed amount. Investors include Iris Capital and Telus Ventures.
Oxford Robotics (Dynium), an Oxford, UK autonomous farm tractor startup, raised an unknown amount in seed investment from unknown sources.
Acquisitions
Energid, a Cambridge, MA-based integrator, engineering firm and developer of robot control, simulation and machine vision software, was acquired by Teradyne (NYSE:TER), the company that acquired Universal Robots back in 2015.
Syngenta (NYSE:SYT), an ag conglomerate which was acquired by ChemChina in 2017, has acquired NC ag analytics startup FarmShots, for an undisclosed amount. FarmShots will be integrated into Syngenta’s AgriEdge Excelsior whole-farm management system and be available to growers worldwide.
Tarena Intl, a Chinese educational services company, acquired Wuhan Haoxiaozi Robot Technology, also known as Rtec, a K-12 robotics programming education service. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Octopus Robots (FP:MLOCT), a French developer of mobile robots for the ag industry, raised $32.8 million from selling 1.765M shares of stock on the Paris Stock Exchange.
In a 2+ hour talk that filled the Keynote Hall and spillover rooms at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center and had thousands of people in line for hours before, Nvidia’s CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, in characteristic jeans, leather jacket, and humble humor, described the world of graphics processing units (GPUs) with brilliant images and memorable one-liners:
“Data is the new source code”
“Simulation is the key to learning”
“AI is the turbocharger of software and deep learning is the catalyst for AI”
“Everything that moves will be autonomous”
“Robotics boosts every industry”
Most of Nvidia’s revenue comes from GPUs for gaming, super-capable ray-tracing professional graphics, and extraordinarily powerful super computers for data centers. Most of their current research and development is involved with AI-ready chips that enable clients to develop machine and deep learning models and apps. Nvidia is banking on these new development chips to be the chips of the future.
In AI-focused healthcare, this covers CLARA, a deep learning engine that uses present-day black and white sonogram, PET and MRI 2D scans and enhances the data to 3D and then color rendering. In the example on the right, a black and white ultrasound sonogram on the left is enhanced into the fully rendered baby picture on the right.
In the area of robotics this covers cramming AI, deep learning and real-time control and simulation into chips for autonomous vehicles of all types (cars, trucks, mobile robots).
Nvidia boasts 370 partners developing cars, trucks, mobility services, mapping, LiDAR, camera/radar and startups and suppliers for the autonomous vehicles market — all using various Nvidia GPUs.
Ever the salesman, Huang introduced Isaac SDK for robotics to accelerate creating autonomous machines using the Nvidia Jetson embedded platform for autonomous vehicles and simulation.
Finally, in a very convincing demonstration, Huang showed a virtual reality car on the screen. He then showed a very real human near the screen at a control console. Then that very real human placed his virtual avatar behind the wheel and proceeded to remotely drive a very real car outside the convention center around an obstacle and over to a parking lot where he parked it. Very impressive.
$1 million in awards
Nvidia encouraged 200 startups to participate in a three-segment contest to share $1 million in awards. All received hardware grants, training with deep learning experts, and marketing support. Two finalists were picked from each of three categories: healthcare, enterprise and autonomous systems. Kinema Systems, the Silicon Valley material handling company that can depalletize a mixed case pallet at full speed, won the autonomous systems award and received $333,333.
Robotics is undergoing fundamental change in three core areas: collaboration, autonomous mobility and increasing intelligence.
Autonomous mobility technology is entering the industrial vehicle marketplace of AGVs, forklifts and tugs with new products, better navigation technologies and lower costs.
Forecasters Grandview Research and IDTechEx suggest that autonomous forklifts and tugs will emerge as the standard from 2022/2023 onwards, ultimately growing to represent 70% of annual mobile material handling equipment by 2037. The key to this transformation is unmanned mobile autonomy. These new mobile autonomous robots can achieve higher productivity and cost efficiencies because the technology largely reduces the driver labor costs, increases safety, and lowers insurance rates and spoilage.
The Vecna Story
Cambridge, MA-based Vecna Technologies, founded in 1998 by a group of MIT scientists on a $5,000 shoe-string investment from the founders, has self-funded itself into a profitable ongoing manufacturer, researcher and software firm serving the healthcare, logistics and remote presence marketplaces. They have amassed more than a hundred issued and pending patents and employ more than 200.
Earlier this year Vecna Technologies spun off 60 employees and the robotics business to found and operate Vecna Robotics working with a large number of partners and contractors. The new entity’s primary applications are to provide mixed fleets of mobile robotic solutions for:
Goods to person
Receiving to warehouse
Production cell to cell
Point to point gofering
Zone picking transport
Tote and case picking transport
Vecna already has a broad range of products serving these applications: from tuggers like at FedEx (see video below) to RC20s which are the lowest cost per performance mobile robot on the market and several models in between. Thousands of Vecna robots are deployed worldwide in (1) major manufacturing facilities doing line-side replenishment; (2) in major shipping companies moving non-conveyables and automating indoor and outdoor tuggers and lifts; and (3) in major 3PLs and retailers doing order fulfillment transport both for store replenishment and for e-commerce.
A recent NY Times story exemplifies how these new Vecna Robotics autonomous mobile robots are impacting the world of material handling. In this case, Vecna robots are used by FedEx to handle large items that don’t fit on conveyor belts.
“When a truck filled with packages arrives, workers load the bulky items onto trailers hitched to a robot. Once these trailers are full, they press a button that sends the vehicle on its way. Equipped with laser-based sensors, cameras and other navigation tools, the robots stop when people or other vehicles get in the way. In some cases, they even figure out a new way to go.”
Vecna robots have vision systems that allow them to navigate safely around humans so that they can share common paths. And they have Autonomy Kit, a general purpose robot brain that can turn any piece of equipment into a safe and efficient mobile robot. Everything from large earth moving and construction equipment to forklifts, tuggers, floor cleaners, and even small order fulfillment and each picking systems can easily be automated and operate in collaborative human-filled environments. Further, all Vecna systems are directed by a smart centralized controller for optimization, traffic control and service. Because Vecna Robotics is finding so much demand (and success) in this sector, it is considering bringing in outside money to fund a more rapid expansion into the marketplace.
Meanwhile, Vecna Technologies, sans the robotics group, remains a leader in healthcare information technology providing patient portals, payment solutions, kiosks, mobile apps, telepresence and medical logistics, and “will continue to innovate and accelerate cutting edge solutions to our customers in the commercial and government healthcare markets,” says Vecna CTO Daniel Theobald.
Marketplace full of competitors, many from China
Source: Styleintelligence G2P Robotics, Feb 2018
As competitors sense the growing demand from distribution and fulfillment center executives in need of solutions to pick, pack and ship more parcels quickly, there are many startups and companies inventing or modifying their products to solve those problems and take advantage of the demand.
There is also increasing demand from factory managers who need flexibility to move goods within their facilities that cannot be handled economically by human workers or fixed conveyor systems.
Both markets are growing exponentially and, as can be seen by the two charts above, there are many players competing in the field. Further, the market is also fueled by approved investment priorities in capital purchases that were put off during and after the financial crisis of 2008-9. This can be seen in the VDC Research graphic on the right which surveyed manufacturing executives about their capital purchasing plans for 2018-2020.
Vecna responded to those demands years ago when it began developing and expanding its line of robots and accompanying software. The refocusing that went into spinning off Vecna Robotics will help enable Vecna to continue to be a big, innovative and progressive player in the mobile robotics market.
Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu and JD.com from China are in a global competition with Google/Alphabet, Apple, Facebook, Walmart and Amazon from the USA and SoftBank from Japan. All are agressively searching for talent, intellectual property, market share, logistics and supply chain technology, and presence all around the world.
These leading tech-savvy companies have many things in common. Foremost, they are all in pursuit of global growth and the funding, technology and talent to propel that growth. And they all are investing in voice assistance and other forms of AI and robotics.
Although Amazon is leading the way with its ecosystem surrounding its AI assistant Alexa, each of the others either has or are developing competing systems of equal or greater capability… think OK Google, Siri and Apple’s new Homepod and Cortana or, in China, Alibaba’s Tmall Genie, Baidu’s Little Fish and JD’s DingDong.
Also, they are all moving toward providing AI as a service.
Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) is China’s primary search source and also provides Internet-related services and products as well as targeted advertising, transaction services and a video platform. Baidu is heavily investing in researching deep learning, computer vision, speech recognition and synthesis, natural language understanding, data mining and knowledge discovery, business intelligence, artificial general intelligence, high performance computing, robotics and autonomous driving (at their new self-driving lab in Silicon Valley).
Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) is a multi-national China-based e-commerce retailer, payment and technology conglomerate, cloud provider, whose two shopping malls (Tmall and Taobao) have over 1 billion combined active users and are supported by a budding logistics network. Alibaba’s AI-powered platform (which it uses internally for its shopping malls and logistics processing) was recently rolled out in Kuala Lumpur to support smart cities in their digital transformation. It analyzes large data volumes extracted from various sources in an urban environment, through video, image, and speech recognition. The system then uses machine learning to provide insights for city administrators to improve operational efficiencies and monitor security risks.
Tencent (HKG:0700) is a Chinese provider of Internet and cloud-related services and products, entertainment, music services, AI, real estate and social media including WeChat (which recently hit 1 billion users). More than 35% of WeChat users spend over four hours a day on the service compared to the little more than an hour a day spent on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter combined. Tencent has set up AI labs in Shenzhen and Seattle and is researching voice and image recognition systems and transforming what they’ve learned into apps and algorithms to keep their users informed and attentive.
NOTE: Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent make up B A T, the acronym given to the trio of main competitors in China’s quantum computer and machine learning research. In addition to labs in China, each has a Silicon Valley research center. Funding and incentives are provided by the Chinese government. The three BAT companies already collect and analyze huge amounts of data from their e-commerce transactions, mobile gaming, online search and payments to social media, video streaming and on-demand services such as ride-sharing and food deliveries. With quantum computing, they will be able to sift through massive data streams faster and better than with existing supercomputers.
JD.Com (NASDAQ:JD) is a Chinese e-commerce competitor with about half the user base of Alibaba yet with very progressive logistics and infrastructure programs. JD (Jingdong) is testing robotic delivery services, operating driverless delivery trucks and building drone delivery ports. JD operates 7 fulfillment centers and 405 warehouses in China. Last month it raised $2.5 billion for its JD Logistics subsidiary to build out and expand their logistics network.
SoftBank (TYO:9984) is a Japanese telecom conglomerate. Softbank is also the instigator of the SoftBank Vision Fund which is investing massive amounts ($98 bn) in technologies and entrepreneurs pioneering the future through a wide range of sectors: IoT, AI, robotics, mobile applications and computing, and infrastructure, cloud technologies and software. SoftBank, with it’s funding partners Apple, Qualcomm and various sovereign wealth funds, wants to invest another $900 billion in 1,000 AI and robotics companies in the next decade. SoftBank is also a partner with Alibaba and Foxconn to produce and market Pepper and Nao robots.
Google/Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) is a Silicon Valley search engine and Internet products company with a stable of forthcoming AI ventures such as Waymo, Verb Surgical and Nest along with consumer products like Google Home, Android phones and Chromebook computers. Google is leveraging their data, processing power, and talent into an array of AI-based apps, processes and products. Their foray into robotics hardware has resulted in much valuable research but all of the units have either been sold off or closed (except for Boston Dynamics and Shaft which are held up from sale by government regulators). Although still a leader in machine learning, Google is finding much competition from their Chinese competitors.
Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) is Apple, a Silicon Valley designer, manufacturer and marketer of phones, media and hardware devices and provider of software, services and digital content. Apple is the world’s largest information technology company by revenue and the world’s second-largest mobile phone manufacturer after Samsung with annual revenue of $229 billion. Building out Siri from the virtual world into the consumer product world with their new Homepod is off to a late start.
Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) is also a Silicon Valley-based Internet phenomena with products that include Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp and Oculus. Facebook has over 2.2 billion active users. Their investments in AI appear to be focused on developing a virtual (or physical) assistant. Their acquisition of Ozlo to help Messenger build out a more elaborate virtual assistant for users is an example.
Walmart (NYSE:WMT) is a global retailer with wholesale facilities, logistics and distribution centers all around the world. Walmart operates over 11,000 stores under 59 names in 28 countries and e-commerce sites in 11 countries. It grosses over $480 billion annually and employs over 2.3 million workers. As Walmart increases its online e-commerce market share while simultaneously changing practices to provide better product transparency (particularly in and faster material handling at its stores and distribution centers, it too is on a talent hunt for roboticists and AI/machine learning people and providers.
Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) Amazon is the leading e-commerce seller of products, supply chain services, AI, and cloud services that is copied and competed with around the world. Amazon accounts for ~4% of all retail and ~44% of all e-commerce spending in the US. Amazon’s supply chain and logistics facilities use more than 60,000 robots in its various warehouses and distribution centers, and its cloud services, which not only services Amazon, provides on-demand cloud computing platforms to companies and governments on a subscription basis. Amazon’s Echo/Alexa home assistant has started to include capabilities like a display, camera and alarm clock, security cameras, and even a fashion advisor. It is combining all these different incremental parts to build a smart home robot as they become viable and front-ended by the Alexa voice assistant.
Amazon is the company to watch in terms of early innovation. Others follow and emulate; Amazon quietly goes forward and China is on its horizon. CBInsights had two interesting comments on the subject as can be seen in these two charts:
CBInsights looked at which peers companies were talked about in financial reports and calls and found that Amazon doesn’t mention competitors. But Amazon mentions of China are up 57% over 2016.
NOTE: There are no Europeans in this list nor in the Top 15 Alexa Sites. Large robotics firms in Germany and Italy have been sold to China. ARM, the British chip-maker, was sold to SoftBank and DeepMind, the UK AI wonder, was picked up by Google. Many fear that Europe may excel at manufacturing but don’t have protectionist impulses to fend off (and keep up with) America or China and to know that smart manufacturing and smart cars – in fact smart everything – is the new game. Recently European leadership has shown fear in the use of and connection to cloud and analytics platforms in the age of IoT – even though Europeans pioneered the term Industry 4.0.
A major talent-hunting event is the big NVIDIA GPU tech conference being held in San Jose March 26-29. Over 8,000 industry professionals of all types are planning to attend this job fair and place to learn about AI, machine learning and deep learning.
Infrastructure
Common to all is e-commerce and the systems that pick, pack, ship and deliver all the goods. Thus, in addition to investments and interest in cloud platforms, super computing and AI, there is a global explosion in warehouse construction and reconfiguration for automation. According to Cushman & Wakefield, U.S. developers added almost 1 billion square feet of warehouse space from 2013 to 2017, a 2X increase over the previous 5 years. It’s harder to get information for China but news stories indicate similar if not greater growth, new forms of automation and labor shortages.
The constant lament heard in the U.S. is captured (and presumed to be relevant worldwide) is this quote from a fulfillment executive:
“A big part of our strategy is how do we make the current employees we have more productive and to reduce the requirement for more labor at peak times.”
Providing warehouse labor is a big business because workers are hard to find and turnover is more than 10% per month. Hence the simultaneous investment in robotics and smart warehousing systems to maximize human effort and reduce costly errors and turnover.
Warehousing has always been as automated as possible, particularly in pallet and box handling, but as labor has become more scarce and costly, as robotic systems have improved and costs been reduced, and as the number of shipments has increased exponentially due to e-commerce, the nature of material handling and fulfillment has radically changed. Hence the need for mechanical assistance.
But this is fodder for another article to follow shortly on the global inroads being made in fulfillment and material handling. Stay tuned.
The IFR is composed of all of the national robot associations around the world, major R&D institutes, and big robot suppliers and integrators.
Twenty-seven startups raised money in June to the tune of 
PTC (NASDAQ:PTC)
Bonsai AI
Albert Analytical Technology (TYO:3906)
Automatica 2018 is one of Europe’s largest robotics and automation-related trade shows and a destination for global roboticists and business executives to view new products. It was held June 19-22 in Munich and had 890 exhibitors and 46,000 visitors (up 7% from the previous show).
The Joseph Engelberger Award was given to International Federation of Robotics (IFR) General Secretary Gudrun Litzenberger and also to Universal Robots CTO and co-founder Esben Østergaard.
An exec from Daimler AG, gave a talk about Mercedes Benz’s use of robotics. He said that they have 50 models and at least 500 different grippers. Yet humans with two hands could do every one of those tasks, albeit with superhuman strength in some cases. He welcomed the years of testing of YuMi’s two-armed robots because it’s the closest to what they need yet it is still nowhere near what a two-handed person can do, hence his plea to gripper makers to offer two hands in a flexible device that performs like a two-handed person, and be intuitive in how it learns to do its various jobs.
Enrico Krog Iversen was the CEO of Universal Robots from 2008 until 2016 when it sold to Teradyne. Since then he has invested in and cultivated three companies (OnRobot, Perception Robotics and OptoForce) which he merged together to become OnRobot A/S. Iversen is the CEO of the new entity. With this foundation of sensors, a growing business in grippers and integrating UR and MiR systems, and a promise to acquire a vision and perception component, Iversen foresees building an entity where everything that goes on a robot can be acquired from his company and it will have a single intuitive user interface. This latter aspect, a single intuitive interface for all, is a very convenient feature that users request but can’t often find.
“We are convinced that industrial gripping will change radically in the coming years,” said Schunk CEO Henrik Schunk. “Smart grippers will interact with the user and their environment. They will continuously capture and process data and independently develop the gripping strategy in complex and changing environments and do so faster and more flexibly than man ever could.”
As at any show, there were pretty girls flaunting products they knew nothing about, giveaways of snacks, food, coffees and gimmicks, and loads of talk about deep learning and AI for products not yet available for viewing of fully understood by the speaker.
Cruise Holdings announced a two-phase funding by SoftBank Vision Fund totaling 
In a recent letter to Kroger stockholders, CEO Rodney McMullen said that Kroger is redeploying capital to emphasize improving its digital capabilities and enabling customers to shop in the store, by ordering online and picking up their order at the store, or getting their groceries delivered to their homes. Although McMullen didn’t single out Amazon or any other competitors in the supermarket arena, Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods and Walmart’s price-cutting moves and partnering with online grocery deliver service Instacart are rapidly changing the landscape of grocery shopping.
E-commerce sales for 2017 were $453.5 billion in the U.S. and 
In a surprise but smart move, 
Another factor in MiR’s 2017 growth was the launch of the MiR200 which can lift 440 pounds, pull 1,100 pounds, is ESD approved and cleanroom certified. “The MiR200 has been very well received and represents a large part of our sales. The product meets clear needs in the market and increases potential applications for autonomous mobile robots. Combined with our new and extremely user-friendly interface – which even employees without programming experience can use – it makes it even simpler for our customers to implement and use our robots,” Visti said.
Twelve years ago, as a national long-term strategic goal, China crafted 5-year plans with specific goals to encourage the use of robots in manufacturing to enhance quality and reduce the need for unskilled labor, and to establish the manufacture of robots in-country to reduce the reliance on foreign suppliers. After three successive well funded and fully incentivized 5-year robotics plans, one can easily see the transformation: robot and component manufacturers have grown from fewer than 10 to more than 700 while companies using robots in their manufacturing and material handling process have grown similarly.
In a 2+ hour talk that filled the Keynote Hall and spillover rooms at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center and had thousands of people in line for hours before, Nvidia’s CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, in characteristic jeans, leather jacket, and humble humor, described the world of graphics processing units (GPUs) with brilliant images and memorable one-liners:
Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu and JD.com from China are in a global competition with Google/Alphabet, Apple, Facebook, Walmart and Amazon from the USA and SoftBank from Japan. All are agressively searching for talent, intellectual property, market share, logistics and supply chain technology, and presence all around the world.
Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) is China’s primary search source and also provides Internet-related services and products as well as targeted advertising, transaction services and a video platform. Baidu is heavily investing in researching deep learning, computer vision, speech recognition and synthesis, natural language understanding, data mining and knowledge discovery, business intelligence, artificial general intelligence, high performance computing, robotics and autonomous driving (at their new self-driving lab in Silicon Valley).
Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) is a multi-national China-based e-commerce retailer, payment and technology conglomerate, cloud provider, whose two shopping malls (Tmall and Taobao) have over 1 billion combined active users and are supported by a budding logistics network. Alibaba’s AI-powered platform (which it uses internally for its shopping malls and logistics processing) was recently rolled out in Kuala Lumpur to support smart cities in their digital transformation. It analyzes large data volumes extracted from various sources in an urban environment, through video, image, and speech recognition. The system then uses machine learning to provide insights for city administrators to improve operational efficiencies and monitor security risks.
Tencent (HKG:0700) is a Chinese provider of Internet and cloud-related services and products, entertainment, music services, AI, real estate and social media including WeChat (which recently hit 1 billion users). More than 35% of WeChat users spend over four hours a day on the service compared to the little more than an hour a day spent on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter combined. Tencent has set up AI labs in Shenzhen and Seattle and is researching voice and image recognition systems and transforming what they’ve learned into apps and algorithms to keep their users informed and attentive.
JD.Com (NASDAQ:JD) is a Chinese e-commerce competitor with about half the user base of Alibaba yet with very progressive logistics and infrastructure programs. JD (Jingdong) is testing robotic delivery services, operating driverless delivery trucks and building drone delivery ports. JD operates 7 fulfillment centers and 405 warehouses in China. Last month it raised $2.5 billion for its JD Logistics subsidiary to build out and expand their logistics network.
SoftBank (TYO:9984) is a Japanese telecom conglomerate. Softbank is also the instigator of the SoftBank Vision Fund which is investing massive amounts ($98 bn) in technologies and entrepreneurs pioneering the future through a wide range of sectors: IoT, AI, robotics, mobile applications and computing, and infrastructure, cloud technologies and software. SoftBank, with it’s funding partners Apple, Qualcomm and various sovereign wealth funds, wants to invest another $900 billion in 1,000 AI and robotics companies in the next decade. SoftBank is also a partner with Alibaba and Foxconn to produce and market Pepper and Nao robots.
Google/Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) is a Silicon Valley search engine and Internet products company with a stable of forthcoming AI ventures such as Waymo, Verb Surgical and Nest along with consumer products like Google Home, Android phones and Chromebook computers. Google is leveraging their data, processing power, and talent into an array of AI-based apps, processes and products. Their foray into robotics hardware has resulted in much valuable research but all of the units have either been sold off or closed (except for Boston Dynamics and Shaft which are held up from sale by government regulators). Although still a leader in machine learning, Google is finding much competition from their Chinese competitors.
Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) is Apple, a Silicon Valley designer, manufacturer and marketer of phones, media and hardware devices and provider of software, services and digital content. Apple is the world’s largest information technology company by revenue and the world’s second-largest mobile phone manufacturer after Samsung with annual revenue of $229 billion. Building out Siri from the virtual world into the consumer product world with their new Homepod is off to a late start.
Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) is also a Silicon Valley-based Internet phenomena with products that include Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp and Oculus. Facebook has over 2.2 billion active users. Their investments in AI appear to be focused on developing a virtual (or physical) assistant. Their acquisition of Ozlo to help Messenger build out a more elaborate virtual assistant for users is an example.
Walmart (NYSE:WMT) is a global retailer with wholesale facilities, logistics and distribution centers all around the world. Walmart operates over 11,000 stores under 59 names in 28 countries and e-commerce sites in 11 countries. It grosses over $480 billion annually and employs over 2.3 million workers. As Walmart increases its online e-commerce market share while simultaneously changing practices to provide better product transparency (particularly in and faster material handling at its stores and distribution centers, it too is on a talent hunt for roboticists and AI/machine learning people and providers.
Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) Amazon is the leading e-commerce seller of products, supply chain services, AI, and cloud services that is copied and competed with around the world. Amazon accounts for ~4% of all retail and ~44% of all e-commerce spending in the US. Amazon’s supply chain and logistics facilities use more than 60,000 robots in its various warehouses and distribution centers, and its cloud services, which not only services Amazon, provides on-demand cloud computing platforms to companies and governments on a subscription basis. Amazon’s Echo/Alexa home assistant has started to include capabilities like a display, camera and alarm clock, security cameras, and even a fashion advisor. It is combining all these different incremental parts to build a smart home robot as they become viable and front-ended by the Alexa voice assistant.
Infrastructure