Bots in Society

This week the future of robotics will be on show in Spain. At IFEMA Madrid a broad spectrum of technologies related to robotics will take center stage. Approximately 10.000 visitors will be informed about a trends in robotics. Compared to several years ago the main trend is the intelligent connection of these technologies. As CEO Enric Forner says: “The future of robotics is intelligent robotics.”

Collect&Go, Colruyt Group’s online shopping service, is currently testing a vehicle built by the Estonian technology company Clevon that combines remote teleoperation with advanced autopilot functionality. The aim is to find out what such a vehicle can mean for Collect&Go in a rapidly changing e-commerce context.

Despite some minor setbacks, the number of cities where robot taxi ‘s are deployed keeps growing. Recently both Cruise, Waymo, Motional and Lyft announced expansion of their activities in autonomous transport of people.

Last week the City of Amsterdam received the 2022 Softbot Award for their innovative use of RPA. This award celebrates innovation in automation, with a broad spectrum of use cases from both public and private sector.  “A few years ago, RPA was mainly seen as a technology with which organizations started experimenting on a small scale. Now we see that we are in discussion at board level about organizing organizations differently with intelligent process automation.”

The Asia Pacific micro-surgical robot market is expected to grow from US$ 245.19 million in 2022 to US$ 581.11 million by 2028; it is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 13.1% from 2022 to 2028, according to the report “Asia Pacific Micro-Surgical Robot Market Forecast to 2028 – COVID-19 Impact and Regional Analysis – by Component, Application, and End User” by ResearchAndMarkets.com

The North America medical robots market is expected to grow from US$ 3,982.30 million in 2022 to US$ 11,112.23 million by 2028; it is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 18.7% from 2022 to 2028, according to The “North America Medical Robots Market Forecast to 2028 – COVID-19 Impact and Regional Analysis By Product, Application, and End User” by ResearchAndMarkets.com.

Miko 3, made by robotics company Miko, will be launched in Canada, together with enhancements including more facial expressions, a more emotive voice and interactive experiences like Freeze Dance, and storybooks featuring Disney and Pixar characters.

As they traverse the air, land, or sea, encountering one another or other obstacles, autonomous vehicles will need to talk to each other. Even cars with actual drivers could benefit from the ability to work together to avoid calamity and assure efficiency. Temporary, ad hoc networks will form around sets of vehicles and the onboard sensors and communications technology that allow them to navigate; they will interact, enabling them all to “see” one another and react accordingly.

Self-driving company Argo AI, is closing down after Ford and VW announced that the companies would be ending their investments in the self-driving company. “Profitable, fully autonomous vehicles at scale are a long way off,” CEO Jim Farley said in a statement.

Sarcos Technology and Robotics Corporation  has executed field trials for shipyard operations at the Naval Base Ventura County. The Company performed field tests on the ground and at height using a suite of Sarcos solutions, including the Guardian DX teleoperated dexterous robot for defense; the Sapien 6M dexterous robot; the Sapien Sea Class underwater robot; and the Guardian S remote visual inspection robot.