Bots & Business

The FTC will review the $1.7 billion takeover of robot vacuum maker iRobot by Amazon. It has to decide if the deal violates antitrust law. This review comes as the FTC is also conducting a monopolization probe of Amazon. The FTC is, among other things, investigating whether the data generated about a consumer by the Roomba vacuum will give it an unfair advantage over other retailers.

At IMTS in Chicago, September 12-17, OnRobot will demonstrate an automated, application-centered software platform for robotic deployment. D:PLOY is presented as a turning point in OnRobot’s strategic evolution that began with its line of intuitive robotic tools and software, expanding the concept of collaborative automation.

Universal Robots’ UR20 makes its U.S. Debut at IMTS 2022, Expanding Cobot Automation in Machining Industry. Earlier this Cobot was unveiled in Europe at Automatica 2022.

By 2026, conversational artificial intelligence (AI) deployments within contact centres will reduce agent labour costs by $80 billion, according to Gartner. Worldwide end-user spending on conversational AI solutions within contact centres is forecast to reach $1.99 billion in 2022.

For the third-straight quarter, robot sales in North America hit a record high, driven by a resurgence in sales to automotive companies and an ongoing need to manage increasing demand to automate logistics for e-commerce. According to the Association for Advancing Automation, of the 12,305 robots sold in Q2 2022, 59% of the orders came from the automotive industry with the remaining orders from non-automotive companies largely in the food & consumer goods industry, which saw a 13% increase in unit orders over the same period, April through June, in 2021.

In a research project West Virginia University engineers are deploying robots to help workers by saving them from potential slips, falls and workplace hazards. Yu Gu and Jason Gross, associate professors in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, have received $367,000 from the National Science Foundation to study ways of reducing falling risk in retail environments.

Spot Release 3.2 features built-in data processing and review, improved data collection pipeline, and a better operator experience. As modern organizations use data to drive their business’ decision-making this data can come from a wide variety of sources. Spot moves from asset to asset across a facility to get real-time information on equipment including pumps, motors, compressors, and more, so plant managers can improve uptime while decreasing costs of downtime and maintenance.

The University of Michigan (UM) Computer Science and Engineering department’s works to advance the intersection of programming systems and artificial intelligence (AI). As UiPath provides semantic automation it supports the research of Xinyu Wang, Assistant Professor at UM, who has a goal of building fundamental intelligent programming techniques that are useful in practice.

Wrekin Council in the UK, deploying an AI Assistant, managed to cut extremely high waiting times by 50%, shifting many users to digital. A year into the AI assisted operations, new services are added to support residents and lessen strain on staff. The Council’s AI acceleration eliminated the need to employ additional headcount, which is important given the current struggle to recruit and retain staff in the sector.

Pudu Robotics unveiled its newest offering, the PuduBot 2. Featuring a range of upgrades, this new generation of universal delivery robots offers better environment adaptability, stronger sensors, higher battery power capacity, and superior stability to the first-generation PuduBot launched in 2017.