Bots & Business

Gartner highlighted the top trends that will impact technology providers through 2025. These trends reflect three overarching themes: businesses increasing their reliance on technology, new opportunities emerging through technology and the impact of external macro forces.

COVU, an AI-enabled digital platform for insurance agencies, has released a new executive forecast on the industry shift toward using generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools to help insurance agencies streamline operations, customer service, and cross-selling opportunities.

Ottonomy.IO has demonstrated Ottobot Yeti, an autonomous delivery robot capable of unattended deliveries, at NRF 2023, retail’s big show, at the Javitz Center in New York. Designed for first mile, last mile deliveries and locker integration, Ottobot Yeti enables unattended deliveries as the next step in autonomous deliveries for companies.

OffWorld, provider of AI-powered industrial Swarm Robotic Mining systems, has started selling a new line of robot species, built for surveying environments (on the surface and deep underground), performing precision excavation, and collecting, hauling, and processing material. The company aims for swarm robotics in mining to improve customer productivity and cost efficiency.

Universal Robots, the Danish collaborative robot (cobot) company, has reported Q4 revenue of USD 85 million, bringing 2022 annual revenue to USD 326 million, up 5% on 2021. On a constant currency basis, growth over the year was 12%.

Built Robotics, maker of robotic Exosystem and working in construction autonomy, will acquire Roin Technologies, makers of an automated concrete power trowel. With this acquisition Built Robotics wants to expand automation beyond construction into new applications and markets.

In a large joint AI initiative, NVIDIA and Dell Technologies have launched a wave of Dell PowerEdge systems with NVIDIA acceleration. A total of 15 next-generation Dell PowerEdge systems can draw from NVIDIA’s full AI stack — including GPUs, DPUs and the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software suite — providing AI applications, including speech recognition, cybersecurity, recommendation systems and language-based services.

Soft Robotics, a Bedford, Mass., startup, is using NVIDIA Isaac Sim to help close the ‘sim to real gap’ for robotic gripping applications. One area is perfecting gripping for pick and placement of foods for packaging. Unlike other industries that have adopted robotics, the $8 trillion food market has been slow to develop robots to handle variable items in unstructured environments, says Soft Robotics.

The restructuring announced by Microsoft particularly affects the teams behind AltSpaceVR and the Mixed Reality Tool Kit. According to reports in American media, these have been completely fired. For the time being, the expected AI investment of ten billion dollar in ChatGPT seems to continue.

FANUC robotics integrator Aerobotix has received a special award at a Lockheed Martin supplier conference. Aerobotix was presented with a 2022 Supplier Recognition Award for Ease of Doing Business. The award describes Aerobotix as “a vital partner” of Lockheed Martin’s Space division.