Spotlight

‘We are at the beginning of a big explosion of robotics’, says Melonee Wise of Zebra Technologies in this report from Automatica in Munich. This week she received the  ‘Nobel Prize’ of robotics, the 2022 Engelberger Award for her contributions to robotics technology. The award is bestowed by the Association for Advancing Automation (A3).

Yesterday Universal Robots unveiled their newest cobot, the UR20, at Automatica 2022.  Afterwards Rocking Robots talked to president Kim Povlsen on the challenges this cobot is addressing, and his vision on the rapidly growing cobotmarket.

This week Amsterdam hosted the largest automation event in Europe: UiPath Together 2022. A broad range of topics related to automation was presented to the people attending, showing automation at this stage is far more then just RPA. A growing number of organizations is not just scaling their software robots, but actually innovating with technologies like AI, machine learning, document understanding and process mining.

After several year of research and development Delft start-up IMSystems is ready to present its patented speed reducer to the market. This high precision gearbox uses rollers instead of gear teeth. At Automatica in Munich it will demonstrate its first product, a development kit for robot companies to test the system.

Organization face a broad spectrum of challenges. A major challenge is the Great Resignation. In the UK for example 43% of office workers are considering resigning from their jobs within the next months. As a result others are having to take up multiple new tasks, resulting in feelings of exhaustion. This means automation is becoming a top priority for C-level executives. Rocking Robots sat down with Gavin Mee, MD of Northern Europe at UiPath, to discuss these trends.

In a few weeks the city of Rotterdam will host the European Robotics Forum (ERF). At this event science, business and public sector will meet to discuss all aspects of robotics. Rocking Robots will cover ERF as mediapartner., Preceding this event sat down for a preview with Professor Stefano Stramigioli and Nico Nijenhuis of Twente University, which organizes ERF on behalf of EU Robotics.

On June 14th a broad spectrum of aspects regarding automation will be highlighted at UiPath Together 2022. One of the industries which will be discussed on stage is Insurance, as sometimes unexpectedly innovative part of the sector Finance.  Rocking Robots discussed trends in insurance and automation with Elaine Mannix, Insurance Industry Expert at UiPath.

Part of the content attendees of Together Amsterdam 2022 get to see is some revolutionary innovation in automation, especially as it comes to robots as a service, cloud, artificial intelligence and machine learning. One of the presenters on this topic will be Bogdan Ripa, VP Product Management at UiPath. Rocking Robots sat down with him to discuss the new ways business users can interact with robots.

This year, it took Denmark less than three months to use our share of the world’s natural resources for 2022, and last year it took the world less than seven months to hit Earth Overshoot Day.

Many organisations, both in government and in business, now have experience with digital employees. But implementing Robotic Process Automation (RPA) successfully at an operational level is not the same as taking strategic advantage of this technology. This is where Frank Mester of MvR Digital Workforce sees more and more questions arising, especially now that robotisation has become an irreversible phenomenon.