Researchers are working with a mobile robotic platform called Husky A200 that could be used for autonomous logistic tasks on construction sites. This mobile robot is one of many projects pursued by the Fraunhofer Italia Innovation Engineering Center to advance the cause of digitalization in construction and bridge the gap between robotics and the building industry. Researchers at this center based in Bolzano, Italy, are developing a software interface that will enable mobile robots to find their way around in construction sites.
A group of LocusBots from autonomous mobile robot developer Locus Robotics. | Credit: Locus Robotics
June 2020 is off to a hot start for developers of autonomous mobile robots (AMRs). Yesterday, OTTO Motors announced a $29 million Series C, and today Locus Robotics closed $40 million in Series D funding.
The Series D brings Locus‘ total amount of funding raised to $105 million. Locus’ latest round was led by Zebra Ventures, the strategic investment arm of Zebra Technologies. Existing investors such as Scale Venture Partners also participated in the round. Locus raised its $26 million Series C in April 2019.
The new funding will be used for R&D purposes, but it will also accelerate the company’s expansion into new markets. Locus is now planning to open its European headquarters in Amsterdam in either the third or fourth quarter of 2020. A Locus spokesperson told The Robot Report “Amsterdam allows us to be centrally located and close to many of the key fulfillment and distribution centers that serve the European markets.”
Denis Niezgoda, who joined Locus in September 2019 as the Director of Business Development for the European Union, will lead the new headquarters. Prior to joining Locus, Niezgoda served as Robotics Accelerator Lead at DHL Customer Solutions and Innovation. He was responsible for identifying and implementing new technologies to drive innovation.
Locus also has multiple positions open in Cologne, Germany, including a Sales Executive. “We source our talent from all over the EU and offer remote work options to minimize the need for relocation or extensive travel,” the Locus spokesperson said. “The Cologne area is currently a key location based on some of our customer support needs.”
Many experts are saying the COVID-19 pandemic has expedited the shift to online shopping as the new normal across the globe. In the U.S. and Canada, for example, there’s been a 129% year-over-year growth of e-commerce orders as of April 21. AMRs from Locus and others are stepping up to help companies fulfill this surge in demand.
The LocusBot AMRs navigate autonomously within a warehouse to locate and transport pick items to associates. LocusBots can be flexibly deployed to support a range of picking strategies, helping to reduce time spent on routine or physically demanding tasks, reducing manual errors and increase productivity for customers.
“We have recently seen a dramatic disruption of retail with e-commerce growth as high as 400% year-over-year in some categories. And others were severely limited as the bulk of their inventory was in stores that they could not get into due to lockdowns. It’s critical that retailers are prepared for direct fulfillment from the warehouse,” said Greg Buzek, President of IHL Group, a global research and advisory firm for the retail and hospitality industries. “This announcement underscores the need for companies to prepare for today’s new labor challenges that will be impacted by the significant volume increases that are already occurring. Companies investing now in warehouse automation, particularly AMRs, will be better positioned for success in the post-pandemic economy as they can support sales from any channel.”
“Locus Robotics is thrilled to announce this new round of funding amid our most transformative year yet,” . “The new funding allows Locus to accelerate expansion into global markets, enabling us to strengthen our support of retail, industrial, healthcare, and 3PL businesses around the world as they navigate through the COVID-19 pandemic, ensuring that they come out stronger on the other side.”
Patent protection is best suited for inventions that are at risk of being publicly detected or independently developed. Innovation that will likely not become publicly available or would require significant work to recreate may be a good candidate for trade secret protection.
A Malaysian university is considering using robots dressed in gowns and mortarboards to act as stand-ins at graduation ceremonies to prevent coronavirus infections—but students have blown a fuse at the idea.
Roboticists at the University of California San Diego have developed flexible feet that can help robots walk up to 40 percent faster on uneven terrain such as pebbles and wood chips. The work has applications for search-and-rescue missions as well as space exploration.
One of the hottest topics in robotics is the field of soft robots, which utilizes squishy and flexible materials rather than traditional rigid materials. But soft robots have been limited due to their lack of good sensing. A good robotic gripper needs to feel what it is touching (tactile sensing), and it needs to sense the positions of its fingers (proprioception). Such sensing has been missing from most soft robots.
A team of engineers have trained a robot to prepare an omelette, all the way from cracking the eggs to plating the finished dish, and refined the 'chef's' culinary skills to produce a reliable dish that actually tastes good.
The Houston Astros' use of cameras to steal signs and conceivably cheat to win the World Series has driven many recent conversations about the place and meaning of technology in sports. The Major League Baseball season is on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic, but this has only delayed the league addressing the controversy of using technology within the game.
In the 2019 development season, Season Alpha, Roborace hosted six events throughout the UK and Europe, providing a variety of challenges in the areas of performance, object avoidance, localization and precision.
In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks with Dave Coleman, CEO of PickNik Robotics, about the open source robotics manipulation platform called MoveIt. Coleman talks about MoveIt’s story, from inception and the early days to development and maintenance, as well as how MoveIt relates to the Robot Operating System (ROS) and their move to support ROS-2. He also speaks about MoveIt’s implementation, including global versus local planners and what that means. Coleman concludes by talking about World MoveIt Day and how those interested can begin learning MoveIt and contributing.
Here is a 2017 montage of how MoveIt has been used:
Dave Coleman
Dave Coleman completed his PhD in Computer Science at CU Boulder focusing on motion planning and his B.S. at Geogia Tech in Mechanical Engineering. Coleman has 12 years experience working in the field of robotics automation and is a leader in the open source MoveIt and ROS communities. His insights into robot-agnostic platforms for different morphologies, theoretical approaches, and different end-user requirements give him a well-rounded understanding for powerful robotic software. He has worked and consulted for all types of robotics companies including Google Robotics, Open Robotics, and Willow Garage.
You know robotics has ‘made it’ when Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) is reporting on it. Just five years ago, SVB barely had a hardware division, let alone a robotics and frontier tech team. This report itself shows the maturity of the field of robotics, and that’s also one of the key takeaways. There may be fewer deals in robotics, but the deals are getting bigger, as consolidation in new robotics markets starts to happen.
“Robotics is the latest advent in the multi-century trend toward the automation of production. The number of industrial robots, a key component of Industry 4.0, is accelerating. These machines are built by major multinationals and, increasingly, venture-backed startups.
As the segment continues to mature, data are coming in that allow founders, investors and policymakers to establish a framework for thinking about these companies. In this special sector report, we take a data-driven approach to emerging topics in the industry, including business models, performance metrics and capitalization trends.
Finally, we zoom out and consider how automation affects the labor market. In our view, the social implications of this industry will be massive and will require continuous examination by those driving this technology forward.”
Austin Badger, Director of Frontier Tech Practice at Silicon Valley Bank
Beyond the startup funding information though is valuable assessment of the economics of automation, from the shift from CapEx to OpEx and ARR, to the shift from automation to productivity to wealth creation. While it’s clear that automation increases wealth and productivity, there are still justifiable fears that automation will reduce labor opportunities. At the same time, it’s going to be primarily an issue for the developing countries that are currently serving as cheap labor for the world’s on-the-move manufacturing facilities.
Silicon Valley Robotics works closely with Silicon Valley Bank to help startups grow. SVB participates in our In-Depth Networks and Forums. You can download the SVB report “The Future of Robotics” here: https://www.svb.com/trends-insights/reports/the-future-of-robotics
ICRA is the largest robotics meeting in the world and is the flagship conference of the IEEE Robotics & Automation Society. It is thus our honor and pleasure to welcome you to this edition, although the current exceptional circumstances did not allow us to organize it in Paris as planned with the glimpse and splendor that our wonderful robotics community deserves. Now, for sure, Virtual ICRA 2020, the first online ICRA, will be one of the most memorable ICRA editions ever! [Message from the General & Program Chairs]
Our first Plenary is a hot topic panel on COVID-19 Pandemic & Robotics, moderated by Ken Goldberg and chaired by Wolfram Burgard. Catch it on Big Screen or on IEEE.TV.
Proudly featuring:
Robin Murphy Brad Nelson Richard Voyles Kris Hauser Antonio Bicchi Andra Keay
Gangtie Zheng
Ayanna Howard Kirsten Thurow Helen Grenier Howie Choset Guang-Zhong Yang
Join us for the virtual conference taking place May 31 to August 31 with sessions available both live and on demand. Plenaries and keynotes will be featured every afternoon (Central European Time) from June 1 to June 15, with live interactive Q&A sessions with the speaker. Our goal is bringing cutting-edge ICRA sessions to our community around the globe and provide opportunities to network with like-minded professionals from around the world. We hope that this offering reaches new members of our community and creates engaging discussions within the virtual conference platform.
Robot Technology for Super Resilience – Remote Technology for Response to Disasters, Accidents, and Pandemic
Wednesday June 17, 1PM UTC
Special RAS Events
There are also several virtual gatherings for IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) society members and Students. Scroll below for more information.
RAS Meet the Leaders (formally Lunch with Leaders)
RAS Meet the Leaders is the virtual equivalent of the popular RAS Lunch with Leaders event traditionally held at IEEE RAS’s flagship conferences: ICRA, CASE, and IROS.
Meet the Leaders is planned for multiple dates and time zones to accommodate the international robotics community. Each Leader will begin with an informal 5-minute presentation about their career, followed by a question and answer session.
Participants (students and young professionals) may sign up for ONE session to participate in a relaxed chat with academic and industry leaders from around the world.
The following Leaders are confirmed for the dates and times listed below (check back often for additional sessions):
Tuesday, June 2nd @ 12:00 PDT / 19:00 GMT Aleksandra Faust, 2020 RAS Early Industry Career Award in Robotics and Automation
Wednesday, June 3rd @ 10:00 am AEST / 00:00 GMT Peter Corke, 2020 RAS George Saridis Leadership Award, (and colleagues)
Thursday, June 4th @ 8:00 pm JST / 11:00 GMT Toshio Fukuda, IEEE President
Thursday, June 4th @ 13:00 EDT / 17:00 GMT Jaydev Desai, RAS AdCom Class of 2022
Monday, June 8th @ 12:30 JST / 03:30 GMT Zhidong Wang, RAS VP Electronic Products and Services Board, Yasushi Nakauchi RAS VP Financial Activities Board, Yasuhisa Hirata, RAS AdCom Class of 2022
Tuesday, June 9th @ 1:00 am KST / 16:00:00 GMT (Monday, June 8) Frank Park, RAS President Elect
Tuesday, June 9th @ 12:00 CDT / 17:00 GMT Lydia Kavraki, 2020 RAS Pioneer Award Winner
Thursday, June 11th @ 10:00 am PDT / 17:00:00 GMT Allison Okamura, Editor-in-Chief of RA-L and Marcia O’Malley, IROS 2020 Program Chair
Thursday, June 11th @ 12:00 pm PDT / 19:00:00 GMT Dieter Fox, 2020 RAS Pioneer Award WinnerFriday,
June 12th @ 3:00 pm CEST / 13:00 GMT Torsten Kroeger, RAS Vice President of Conference Activities
Robots are increasingly being deployed in retail environments. The reasons for this include: to relieve staff from the performance of repetitive and mundane tasks; to reallocate staff to more value-added, customer-facing activities; to realize operational improvements; and, to utilize real-time in-store generated data. Due to the impact of the 2020 Coronavirus outbreak, we can now add a new reason to use robots in retail: to assist with customer and employee safety.
In this Research Article, the Retail Analytics Council at NWU presents information on the benefits associated with deploying robots in stores. Estimates of the size of the global retail robot market are advanced. The impact on demand for robots in the grocery industry, in light of the Coronavirus outbreak, is discussed as well. This is followed by a review of U.S. retail robot deployments and the advancing of some emerging applications.
In summary, we find that the trend toward deploying robots in retail environments is accelerating. The reasons for this include their functional utility, advances in AI, and the ability to address both labor challenges and customer and employee safety concerns. The introduction of new uses of real-time, in-store generated data is another advantage. Further, the movement toward multimodal robots that are efficient at performing various functions adds to the value equation. We also find that changing consumer behavior to increase online purchases, especially in grocery, is a major impetus fueling this movement. Finally, establishing industry standards, which is ongoing, will fuel adoption.
Previous impediments to adoption, which are not detailed here, are also at play. These, for the most part, include issues of cost and training. The costs of robots will decrease, and the ROI will greatly increase, as complex computing moves off the payload via 5G and sensor costs continue to decrease. Increased vendor competition will also be a factor. The cost and complexity associated with environmental training are also being addressed via the introduction of synthetic data.
As the industry is still in its infancy, there are minimal reliable studies regarding market size. Estimates range from $4.8 billion to $19 billion in the 2015 to 2018 time frame, to as much as $52 billion by 2025. In April 2018, Bekryl Market Analysts published its Global Retail Robots Market Size Analysis, 2018-2028. Bekryl estimates the global retail robot market at $19 billion in 2018. They further estimate that the market will grow at a CAGR of 12.7 percent over the next ten years.
Now consider a different perspective. Verified Market Research valued the global retail robotics market at $4.78 billion in 2018, but expects a much more rapid rate of growth of 31.89 percent from 2019- 2026, reaching $41.67 billion by 2026.12 In 2016, yet another point of view was advanced by consulting firm Roland Berger, which stated “[t]he segment of robots designed for retail stores is emerging in a global robotics market that is already significant ($19 billion in 2015) and growing steadily ($52 billion in 2025).”
As the current Coronavirus pandemic constrains consumers’ ability to shop in stores, there is ample evidence that a shift to online purchasing is occurring in select categories, particularly grocery. To realize operating efficiencies while meeting this increased demand, grocery retailers, which represent the largest segment currently invested in robotics technology, are expected to accelerate their rate of investment.
The pressing question is whether this current movement to online grocery purchases during the pandemic represents a more permanent shift in consumer behavior. Consumers seem to think so. For example, in an April 2020 survey, 43 percent of adults said they were somewhat or very likely to
continue ordering groceries online once the pandemic ends (see Chart 11). McKinsey & Company’s COVID-19 U.S. Digital Sentiment Survey found that fully “75 percent of people using digital channels for the first time indicate that they will continue to use them when things return to normal.”
In conclusion, we see the pace of retail robot adoption accelerating, especially in the grocery segment. Technology advancements surrounding deployments in stores, backroom/warehouses, and delivery applications will continue to improve. Deployment costs will fall, as will the time to deploy, which will increase ROI, as will multi-functional payloads that perform a variety of tasks. Emerging innovations will add interesting new use cases. Increasing uses of real-time data generated, and the application/integration thereof, will also create additional value. Finally, ongoing efforts to establish industry standards will aid in industry adoption.
The robot baristas are an evolving technological development made to deliver great cups of coffee and to cut back on several factors including human deficiencies like tiredness and falling sick.
Dave Coleman completed his PhD in Computer Science at CU Boulder focusing on motion planning and his B.S. at Geogia Tech in Mechanical Engineering. Coleman has 12 years experience working in the field of robotics automation and is a leader in the open source MoveIt and ROS communities. His insights into robot-agnostic platforms for different morphologies, theoretical approaches, and different end-user requirements give him a well-rounded understanding for powerful robotic software. He has worked and consulted for all types of robotics companies including Google Robotics, Open Robotics, and Willow Garage.
