Spotlight

The vision of Rocking Robots is to report on the interaction between humans and robots. The interviews we published this year show that we as humans are increasingly successful in making robots work for us. However, it remains important to pay attention to pre-eminently human issues such as ethics, acceptance and safety. Where that happens, applications of technology arise that actually help us as humans.

Dutch startup Fectar has developed an app that teaches Ukrainian children to recognize mines. This first-ever interactive augmented reality (AR) hologram lesson was created for explosives education. The lesson stems from the question soldier Charles Valentine asked himself: “How can we help the Ukrainian people to demine their country if 30% of the ammunition fired has not exploded but is still there?”

Hyundai Motor Group has started two pilot delivery service programs using autonomous robots based on its Plug & Drive (PnD) modular platform at a hotel and a residential-commercial complex located in the outskirts of Seoul.

ABB has opened its state-of-the-art, fully automated and flexible robotics factory in Kangqiao, Shanghai, China. The 67,000m2 production and research facility represents a $150 million (1.1 billion RMB) investment by ABB and will deploy the company’s digital and automation technologies to manufacture next generation robots – enhancing ABB’s robotics and automation leadership in China.

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.”

Banks and other financial institutions typically have hundreds or thousands of their headcount involved in manual IT application testing. This means testing is a big burden on their resources, especially since this industry is highly regulated. Therefore, effectively automating application testing presents a huge opportunity.

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.”

Last week, the fifth edition of the National Cobot Day took place at Olmia in Tiel. Visitors could network and exchange knowledge about the rapidly growing cobot market in a relaxed atmosphere. ‘We see that robots are not used to replace people, but to enable them to do other, more challenging work.’

Robotics startups can struggle to get the help needed to turn great ideas into successful businesses. That’s why leading investors and companies from Denmark’s robotics industry and prominent commercial foundations have joined forces to establish a fund that will provide robotics and drone startups with the support they need – for generations to come.  

To create sustainable performance, organisations should focus on impact instead of productivity. Employees need tools and technologies that empower them and increase the impact of their work. AI can increase the impact of employees by extending their reach, range and capabilities. The workforce of the future is AI-enabled, said Gartner at the first day of their CIO event in Barcelona.