Marco van der Hoeven

Exponential growth from 200 to 2,000 employees is, to put it mildly, a challenge for the Human Resources department. UiPath has experienced this growth recently, and in that process its own Robotic Process Automation (RPA) technology has been used to keep that process on the right track.

According to popular speaker Gerd Leonhard, there are still many misunderstandings about Artificial Intelligence. In many cases, the current possibilities are greatly overestimated, sometimes in combination with black scenarios for the future of humanity. In practice, AI is certainly a very useful tool, but still no more than that. We spoke with him at the Axians IT’s Yours event about his vision on “Artificial Intelligence and the future of humanity”. Bottom line from Leonhard: at the moment Artificial Intelligence is actually mainly Intelligent Assistance.

The new edition of Microsoft Flight Simulator has become a visual masterpiece, which is only possible by making smart use of AI, machine learning and the corresponding computing power in the cloud. As a result, the entire world is shown in detailed 3D image, in combination with live weather effects and other air traffic.

Spot, the well-known four-legged robot from Boston Dynamics, is now also for sale in Europe. Commercial sales of Spot had already started in the United States, following a successful Early Adopter program in which a number of companies in both Europe and North America integrated the robot into their operations.

The Robotic Process Automation (RPA) market will reach $ 1.89 billion globally by 2021, up 19.5% from this year. Despite the economic damage from the COVID-19 pandemic, the RPA market is expected to continue to grow at double digits through 2024, says research firm Gartner.

What will the workplace of the future look like? What role does AI play? What role do robots play? These questions are answered in UiPath’s Immersion Lab. The lab exists in physical form, but due to the current corona limitations, the experience of hyperautomation can also be undergone completely virtually. Visitors can experience for themselves, for example on the basis of a concrete business case, the advantages of working with a robot. The Rocking Robots team spoke about this with Chief Robotics Officer Boris Krumrey.

Stanford University researcher Mac Schwager entered the world of penguin counting through a chance meeting at his sister-in-law’s wedding in June 2016. There, he learned that Annie Schmidt, a biologist at Point Blue Conservation Science, was seeking a better way to image a large penguin colony in Antarctica. Schwager, who is an assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics, saw an opportunity to collaborate, given his work on controlling swarms of autonomous flying robots.

The video Slaughterbots is now two years old, and more than two million people have watched it worldwide. This visual warning against the danger of autonomous weapons is still relevant today, and although protests against such weapons are growing, no official measures have yet been taken to ban autonomous weapons.

In the United States, more and more stores are using retail robots. For example, retail chain Schnuck Markets will expand the deployment of Simbe Robotics robot Tally with another 46 stores, using the real-time data collected by Tally at 62 locations.

A Gartner poll of roughly 200 business and IT professionals on September 24, 2020 revealed that 24% of respondents’ organisations increased their artificial intelligence (AI) investments and 42% kept them unchanged since the onset of COVID-19.  Growth – namely customer experience and retention, and revenue growth – along with cost optimisation were the top focus areas for their current AI initiatives.