Spotlight

Researchers at Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) implemented a non-verbal Turing test that shows that people interacting with the humanoid robot iCub were not able to tell whether the robot was human-controlled or pre-programmed.

Annette Maier has a sucessful career in technology of over 20 years in general management. She was Sales Director Software Germany at HP, Vice President Germany at VMware, Managing Director Google Cloud Germany and since 2021 she is Area Vice President Central and Eastern Europe at UiPath. Dr Harald Karcher sat down with her to discuss trends in automation.

Processing hundreds of thousands to millions of documents can take a lot of time. Computers, however, are very capable of reading, understanding and processing documents. The Groningen-based firm Klippa develops specialised AI-based software to help companies automate administrative work, so that employees can focus on tasks that add more value and are more rewarding.

“It is in the DNA of our company to always pioneer”, says Carlos Garrido Pedraz, Head of European Business Services in this final edition or our CFO Chat with award winner Holcim. Host Armand Angeli of the CFO Automation Experience discussed teamwork as a success factor in the automation journey with him and his colleague Nikola Kisidayova, Manager Robotics, Automation, Process Improvement and Digitalization. “A motivated, happy team is the best investment.”

“What was once done by dozens of people is now done by three or four”. Earlier this year Holcim won the “Top Process – Automation Implementation” award at the CEE Business Services Summit & Awards in Warsaw. For this edition of our CFO Chat Rocking Robots worked with Armand Angeli from the CFO Automation Experience, who discussed the winning automation strategy of Holcim with Carlos Garrido Pedraz, Head of European Business Services  and Nikola Kisidayova, Manager Robotics, Automation, Process Improvement and Digitalization.

Everyone can simplify his or her work with a robot, but change is cumbersome. It is therefore important to tell employees in accessible and concrete terms how they can get started with RPA. Diana Kanostrevac of Generali Vitality discussed this process this during the recent Digital Insurance Agenda (DIA) event in Amsterdam. Her colleague Peter Stockhammer explains why RPA is indispensable in their strategy.

Head of Finance at Unilever in the Nordics, Alexey Pavlov, works with a team of 35 finance and data specialists, serving a Nordic organisation with approx. 400 employees in Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, and Iceland. To drive Unilever’s business, the team converts data into insights by identifying processes that are very complex and highly repetitive.

As sustainability was the overall theme of ERF 2022, one of the organisations present was ITU with AI for good, an initiative of the United Nations. Intelligent robots have become part of the mission of AI for Good, which is helping the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) of the UN with technology. At the same time it is important to inhibit the negative implications of the growing use of robotics, says Guillem Martínez Roura, AI and Robotics Programme Coordinator, AI for Good in this interview with Rocking Robots.

‘Robotics is a source of economic growth in Europe, but at the same time it raises societal concerns’, says Anneli Roose of Robotics4EU, a Horizon 2020-project of the European Commission in this interview with Marco van der Hoeven at ERF 2022. Robotics4EU aims to discuss and adress these concerns, and bring stakeholders together. Among other things, they launched the commmunity Robospot.org  ‘Robots, and AI-powered robots, are the future, but we must talk about the socio-economic issues.’

At the European Robotics Forum (ERF), which kicked off yesterday in Rotterdam, a broad range of topics related to robotics was discussed by representatives of science, business and public sector. In this interview with Rocking robots Bernd Liepert, president of euRobotics, discusses trends in robotics, the world class robotics start-up ecosystem in Europe and the crucial role of SMB.