Marco van der Hoeven

Inspired by the succesful Invest in Odense events in Denmark the Danish representatives of Odense participated in the FundingBox Start-up Arena at Automatica in Munich, where new connections were made between investors and robot companies. Rocking Robots discussed this event with Martyna Waliszewska, Investment Manager at Invest in Odense.

Aerobotix and Automated Solutions Australia (ASA)  officially announced a robotic automation international partnership between the two companies for the development, testing and manufacturing of hypersonic missiles. The partnership follows the 2021 signing of the AUKUS security pact between the U.S., U.K. and Australian Governments, which includes provisions for the allies to work together on hypersonic and counter-hypersonic capabilities.

A lot of the solutions shown at Automatica are based on Cobots. One of the companies using Cobots in their offering is Robotiq. originally started as a provider of ‘end of arm’- tools, it has developed into a provideer of a broader portfolio. Rocking Robots spoke about their strategy with Leif Möller and Vincent Vandomme.

‘We are at the beginning of a big explosion of robotics’, says Melonee Wise of Zebra Technologies in this report from Automatica in Munich. This week she received the  ‘Nobel Prize’ of robotics, the 2022 Engelberger Award for her contributions to robotics technology. The award is bestowed by the Association for Advancing Automation (A3).

Automated understanding of individual documents is being used more and more. But the next step is coming: semantic understanding, which means generative AI is generating the robot flows to make processes more efficient. At TOGETHER Amsterdam Rocking Robots discussed semantic automation with Boris Krumrey, Global VP Automation Innovations at UiPath.

Yesterday Universal Robots unveiled their newest cobot, the UR20, at Automatica 2022.  Afterwards Rocking Robots talked to president Kim Povlsen on the challenges this cobot is addressing, and his vision on the rapidly growing cobotmarket.

Sales of industrial robots have reached a strong recovery: A new record of 486,800 units were shipped globally – an increase of 27% compared to the previous year. Asia/Australia saw the largest growth in demand: installations were up 33% reaching 354,500 units. The Americas increased by 27% with 49,400 units sold. Europe saw double digit growth of 15% with 78,000 units installed. These preliminary results for 2021 have been published by the International Federation of Robotics.

In Munich Automatica 2022 has begun. Rocking Robots will be present as mediapartner of the Holland Pavillion, to report on this robotics event. A broad range of robotics related themes will be covered this week.

Automation is technology, but in succesfully implementing it the human factor should be considered as well. This is one of the topics UiPath Immersion Labs is focussed on. At TOGETHER Amsterdam the Rocking Robots team disucussed the involvement of people and the opportunities digital upskilling provides them with Claudia Pedersen, Immersion Labs Operations Director at UiPath.

The drone company Dronamics has contracted a new partnership with UAS Denmark Test Center hosted at Odense’s Hans Christian Andersen Airport. The airport will host the Dronamics Black Swan cargo aircraft, which will enable same-day delivery service and provide access to more than 6 million people within a 1-hour drive of the airport. The expansion sees the Dronamics European Droneport network grow to a total of 42 locations in 14 European countries.