Spotlight

Fruit producer Unifrutti has partnered with Tevel, an Israeli robotics startup, to use artificial intelligence (AI)-driven robots in Chilean apple orchards. This initiative marks a new approach to fruit harvesting, with the potential to address labor shortages and other challenges that the global agriculture industry faces.

At automatica it was hard to miss the presence of the Danish robotics industry. Especially the robotics cluster of Odense was prominently represented, both in a pavilion and in the startup arena. During the event Odense robotics signed a partnership with Pittsburgh Robotics Network, a key hub in the US. And after an intensive pitch process and questioning from an expert panel, Aim Robotics emerged as the winners of the 2023 Odense Investor Summit. In this report Marco van der Hoeven from Rocking Robots discusses this with Søren Elmer Kristensen, CEO Odense Robotics and Martyna Waliszewska, Investment Manager at Invest in Odense.

In this video the Rocking Robots team takes a look at two innovative new robots presented at automatica 2023, the first one a robot by Fizyr, Zivid and The gripper Company that can, among other capabilities, handle transparent objects. The other robot is a lightweight machine by Cognibotics that has a unique combination of speed and reach. In this report we speak to Herbert ten Have, Fizyr; Mats Jonsson, Cognibotics; Henrik Schumann-Olsen, Zivid; Preben Hjørnet, The Gripper Company.

The future of work, AI and sustainability were the main trends at automatica 2023. Rocking Robots is official mediapartner of this event, the largest robotics-fair in Europe. In this videoreport our team speaks about these trends with Filip Tuypens, FANUC; Christopher Schneider, Yaskawa; Thibaud Verschoor, IMSystems.

For several years now, ‘taking the robot out of the human’ has been the motto of Ciphix. However, the way this can be done has evolved significantly, especially with generative AI taking center stage. At an event in Delft Ciphix discussed the way an automation journey can add value for an organization.

Today Matthijs Smakman will defend his doctoral thesis titled “Robots in Education: The Morally Responsible Deployment of Robot Assistants”. Conducted under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Elly Konijn, his empirically grounded research represents a significant milestone in achieving a morally responsible integration of social robots as educational assistants in primary schools. Previous studies have already indicated that the utilization of social robots yields better outcomes compared to traditional educational technologies.

Figure, an AI robotics company specializing in the development of general-purpose humanoid robots, has raised $70 million in a Series A funding round. This substantial funding will be utilized to accelerate the advancement of Figure 01, the company’s autonomous humanoid robot, establish Figure’s AI data pipeline for autonomous operations, and drive forward with commercialization efforts.

Roberta Nelson Shea, Universal Robot’s Global Technical Compliance Officer, has received the the world’s most prestigious robotics prize, the Joseph F. Engelberger Robotics Award, often described as the Nobel Prize of robotics. She received the award at a ceremony at the Automate Show in Detroit.

A recent survey of CEOs and senior executives by Gartner revealed that artificial intelligence (AI) was the top technology that CEOs believe will significantly impact their industry over the next three years, cited by 21% of survey respondents.

“As AI development affects nearly every aspect of our lives and its influence will further increase in the foreseeable future, member states must take concrete steps to ensure that people’s human rights are safeguarded in the design, development and deployment of AI systems” says Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatović in a report released yesterday.