Marco van der Hoeven

Mobile Industrial Robots (MiR), provider of autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), experienced a 42% increase in sales in 2021 over 2020. December alone was a record month for the company, with close to 300 robots shipped, which is more than any previous month.

Danish producer of collaborative robots Universal Robots has reported record annual revenue of USD 311M, 41% up on 2020 and 23% up on pre-pandemic results in 2019.

What are the latest trends in automation? At the beginning of the new year there are of course all kinds of predictions. For the manufacturing-industry Diego Lombardo, VP of Product Marketing at UiPath, recently highlighted some market trends for Europe in the webinar Automation Accelerates: Industry Trends for 2022 and Beyond.

Steep sections on slippery ground, high steps, scree and forest trails full of roots: the path up the 1,098-metre-high Mount Etzel at the southern end of Lake Zurich is peppered with numerous obstacles. But ANYmal, the quadrupedal robot from the Robotic Systems Lab at ETH Zurich, overcomes the 120 vertical metres effortlessly in a 31-minute hike. That’s 4 minutes faster than the estimated duration for human hikers – and with no falls or missteps.

Recently IDC has published the whitepaper  Automation as a Force for Good – 6 Steps to Transform Theory into Practice. In this study authors Angela Salmeron and Neil Ward-Dutton discuss the role of automation in supporting companies with their ESG programs, given the trend that 47% of organizations are planning to introduce Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to the workplace in the next 18 months, 39%  intend to implement other process automation technologies (including workflow automation), and 63% are planning to add task-focused apps on mobile devices.

The new 5-year plan for the robotics industry in China, released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) in Beijing, focuses on promoting innovation – making China a global leader for robot technology and industrial advancement. The statistical department of the International Federation of Robotics reports about the domestic and foreign engagement on the world’s largest market.

Worldwide IT spending is projected to total $4.5 trillion in 2022, an increase of 5.1% from 2021, according to the latest forecast by Gartner. Despite the potential impacts of the Omicron variant, economic recovery with high expectations for digital market prosperity will continue to boost technology investments.

U.S. Army Medical Materiel Center-Korea teams are using robots to increase efficiency and reduce staff burden in their distribution warehouse. Launched as a pilot program in December 2021, USAMMC-K installed a robotic carrier system the goal of reducing manpower requirements to deliver processed medical supplies from the warehouse’s receiving section to storage and shipping sections as workers fulfill customer requests.

The NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA) awarded the European leading robotics and autonomous systems (RAS) developer and system integrator Milrem Robotics a contract to provide RAS Concept Development and Experimentation (CD&E) Services to the Italian Army.

Reliable Robotics, vendor of automated aircraft systems, announced the appointments of David DeRose as Director of Finance and Lee Tomlinson as Director of Operations to the company’s fully owned Part 135 airline subsidiary in preparation for commercial cargo flights. DeRose and Tomlinson join Jeff Drees, Director of Cargo Strategy, to begin cargo services this year.