Bots & Business

Volansi, vendor of vertical take-off and landing (VTOL), middle-mile drone delivery services, has begun a commercial healthcare drone delivery project in North Carolina. In collaboration with Merck Volansi is piloting the delivery of cold chain medicines from Merck’s Wilson, N.C. manufacturing site to Vidant Healthplex-Wilson, a Vidant Health clinic, as the first of three phases in a project to learn about drone technology’s role and ability to improve access to healthcare.

Simbe Robotics today announced the launch of Tally 3.0 – the latest design iteration of its autonomous retail robot, Tally. Simbe’s unique, human-centered approach to design has set Tally apart from competitors since its initial debut in 2015. With enhancements to the robot’s optical system, greater durability and maneuverability to ensure cost-effective top performance, and the introduction of an embedded data processor, Tally 3.0 continues to lead the pack and remains the most innovative, efficient retail robot on the market.

Worldwide IT spending is projected to total $3.8 trillion in 2021, an increase of 4% from 2020, according to the latest forecast by Gartner, Inc. IT spending in 2020 is expected to total $3.6 trillion, down 5.4% from 2019.

The latest Canalys forecast expects the global smart speaker market, including smart displays, to reach 163 million units in 2021, a growth of 21%.

Motional and Lyft today announce the resumption of their self-driving mobility service in Las Vegas. The publicly-available autonomous fleet — the world’s longest-standing, which has provided more than 100,000 paid rides — consists of Motional robotaxis, operating on the Lyft network.

Sales value of professional service robots increased by 32% to 11.2 billion U.S. dollars worldwide…