People in Robotics

The role of finance changes from compliance to driving environmental and socially responsible value. And the CFO is at the heart of these changes. One of the instruments to accommodate this change, is robotic process automation (RPA). Steve Faulkner, leading the CFO practice with UiPath, a global RPA technology leader. Rocking Robots discussed with him the challenges CFOs are currently facing.

At the recent CIOFEST CIO conference Martin Bellamy, one of the UK’s most experienced public sector IT leaders, shared some top tips for lasting project achievement.

This week the Council of Europe’s Committee on Artificial Intelligence (CAI) will started its work on the AI Treaty. ALLAI co-founder Virginia Dignum was one of the speakers at the Inaugural Meeting of the CAI (High-Level Segment).

UNSW Engineering Professor Flora Salim has been honoured for her pioneering work in computing and machine learning by Women in AI, a global advocacy group for women in the artificial intelligence (AI) field.

On average the Danish robotics market grew 12% last year. But the highest growing companies, especially in the cobot-market, reported a growth between 30% and 40%. As this presents an intersting opportunity for investors, the City of Odense invited them last week for the Invest in odense Summit. The team of Rocking Robots attened, and interviewed Esben Østergaard, CEO REInvest Robotics; Joost Nijhoff, Director Invest in Odense and the Mayor of the City of Odense, Peter Rahbæk Juel.

‘We want our children to speak digital, says Odense Mayor Peter Rahbæk Juel.  This week Rocking Robots reports from the robotics capital of Europe, the Danish town of Odense.

 “Getting value from data” has been a common mantra in automation for some time. But providing insight into really large amounts of data has always been a problem. Holograms now appear to be ideally suited for this. The Dutch Tekle Holographics has quickly grown into a worldwide forerunner in the field of data visualization with its holographic technology. Following a notable presence at CES this year and partnerships with Nvidia and SAS, organizations from a wide variety of industries are showing interest in the business use of holograms.

CIOs and CFOs who want to maximize the benefits of automation increasingly turn to the next step, the addition of Artificial Intelligence (AI) functions. Increasingly, automation solutions are designed to help organizations tackle not only single processes but achieve end-to-end automations, by adding  technologies like machine learning (ML) and natural language processing. This week UiPath organized the AI Summit, where these trends were discussed. Rocking Robots sat down with Boris Krumrey, Global VP Automation Innovations at UiPath.

The automation of routine tasks is at the top of the agenda for Carsten Gram Andersen, CFO of Blue Ocean Robotics. The company markets the brands UVD Robots, GoBe Robots and PTR Robots, which open the door to automated disinfection, rehabilitation and telepresence. Blue Ocean Robotics is based in Denmark, the most digitalised country in Europe; more specifically, in the city of Odense, also known as the “European capital of robotics”. Carsten Gram Andersen sees his primary task as being able to free up as much time as possible to focus on business analysis of the company’s performance because that is where the finance department can really generate value for the rest of the organisation.

From 28 to 30 June, the thirteenth edition of the European Robotics Forum (ERF) will take place in Rotterdam. With about a thousand visitors, this will be the largest robotics event in Europe, where a diverse group of participants, from industry and science to government and end users, will exchange views on a wide range of topics.