Agility Arc is a cloud-based platform for managing fleets of humanoids. Source: Agility Robotics

Agility Robotics made a couple of strategic moves this week as it continues to commercialize its Digit humanoid. Let’s start with the good news.

Agility is partnering with Manhattan Associates, a global leader in supply chain and omnichannel commerce. There are a lot of warehouse management systems (WMS) on the market, but as one source told The Robot Report, Manhattan Associates is “the standard bearer when it comes to large 3PL operations.”

Agility is joining the Manhattan Value Partner (MVP) program and the Manhattan Automation Network for warehouse automation providers. Manhattan and Agility will integrate Digit and Agility Arc, the company’s new fleet management software introduced at MODEX 2024, with the Manhattan Active Warehouse Management solution.

WMS integration an important step for Digit

Integrating new tools with existing systems can be challenging for warehouse operators. Ensuring compatibility with the industry-leading WMS is an important first step for Digit.

“Digit is already the world’s only bipedal robot currently delivering useful work for customers, increasing productivity and safety while helping workers with difficult and repetitive tasks in warehouse and manufacturing operations,” stated Peggy Johnson, CEO of Agility Robotics. “We’re thrilled to partner with Manhattan to streamline adoption of Agility’s solutions into existing best practices and bring Digit to more warehouses around the world.”

Manhattan Associates said Agility is the first humanoid to join both the MVP and the Manhattan Automation Network. Manhattan has similar partnerships with Exotec, a provider of automated storage and retrieval systems (ASRS) and Locus Robotics, the leading developer of autonomous mobile robots (AMRs).

“Companies are under enormous pressure to deliver more products faster and more efficiently, while facing massive and growing labor shortages,” said Eric Lamphier, senior director of alliances for Manhattan Associates. “Innovative robotics solutions, like Digit, can help fill those gaps, connecting islands of automation and improving operational efficiency.”

“We’re proud to be the first WMS provider to partner with a humanoid robotics provider,” he added. “Together, Agility and Manhattan are making it easy for customers to integrate cutting-edge technology, like Digit and Agility Arc, into their warehouse workflows.”

Agility Arc is a new cloud-based platform designed to give customers better control and insight into their Digit humanoids. Users can monitor the status and performance of each Digit, create workcells and workflows, and assign new tasks to the robots.

Agility Robotics also now offers a few accessories for the Arc platform, including a charging dock, a control pendant, and a workcell that comes with guarding, e-stops, monitored entrances, and more. Since there are no safety standards yet for humanoids, these robots will need to be caged off as they initially make their way into the world.

Agility Robotics lays off staff

Now for the bad news. Agility laid off an unspecified number of employees yesterday. Now-former employees posted about the layoffs on social media, and The Robot Report confirmed the reduction in staff. The company sent the following statement:

“As part of Agility’s ongoing efforts to structure the company for success, we have parted ways with a small number of employees that were not central to core product development and commercialization. At the same time, we are focused on meeting the extraordinary demand for bipedal robots across industrial use cases. That means ramping up production of Digit while continuing to win top-tier global customers, and adding new roles that meet these goals. We believe today’s actions will allow us to focus on the areas that drive productization, commercialization, and production of Digit.”

Johnson was named CEO of Agility Robotics one month ago. The veteran technology leader most recently served as CEO of Magic Leap, which produces augmented reality headsets. She led the company’s shift from consumer to enterprise and helped recapitalize the company.

Before Magic Leap, Johnson spent six years as executive vice president of business development at Microsoft. She reported directly to CEO Satya Nadella and was responsible for driving strategic partnerships and transactions to accelerate growth for the company and its customers.

Agility Robotics co-founder Damion Shelton, who served as CEO since the company’s founding in 2015, is now the company’s president and part of Johnson’s leadership team.

Humanoid robot race continues to accelerate

As we’ve said repeatedly over the past year, the humanoid race is heating up. And moves like this partnership with Manhattan, coupled with its fleet management system, show that Agility is the humanoid developer most ready to take on real-world work. The company has piloted its Digit humanoid with Amazon and GXO Logistics.

There are several other humanoid developers entering early pilots with customers. Figure recently raised $675 million and is working with BMW. And Apptronik is working with Mercedes-Benz.

Of course, all these humanoids still need to prove their reliability. NVIDIA is trying to help with its new foundation model for humanoids, called GR00T, that is designed to bring robotics and embodied AI together.

Accenture is also getting in on the action. Last week, it announced a strategic investment in Sanctuary AI, which is developing the Phoenix humanoid. The amount of the funding was not disclosed.

“AI-powered humanoid robots are essential to reinventing work and supporting human workers as labor shortage is becoming an issue in many countries and industries,” said Accenture.

You can learn more about the state of humanoids at the Robotics Summit & Expo, which takes place May 1-2 in Boston and is produced by The Robot Report and parent company WTWH Media.

Jonathan Hurst, co-founder and chief robot officer of Agility Robotics, will deliver a keynote called “Humanoid Robots Get to Work.” It will explore the technological breakthroughs propelling humanoids like Digit into real-world use cases. Attendees can learn about the ongoing challenges and opportunities and will go inside Digit’s first pilots.

Learn from Agility Robotics, Amazon, Disney, Teradyne and many more.

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Waymo now deploys fully driverless robotaxis in Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. | Source: Waymo

Less than two weeks after receiving approval to expand to Los Angeles, Waymo today opened its driverless robotaxi service to select members of the public in LA. Waymo also said it will roll out a fully driverless robotaxi service in Austin, Texas later in 2024.

In LA, Waymo said it is now offering rides 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in a 63-square-mile area from Santa Monica to Downtown LA. Waymo plans to scale the area over time, a similar approach it’s taken in both Phoenix and San Francisco. The rides in LA will initially be free, but it said it will transition to paid rides in the coming weeks. The company said there will be 50 robotaxis in the LA fleet.

Waymo has been testing its Level 4 autonomous ride-hailing service in LA since late 2022. The company said there are 50,000-plus people on its LA waitlist. It pointed out this marks the first time a fully driverless robotaxi service has ever operated in LA.

“Once an unimaginable future, autonomous driving is now a real-world way of getting around for tens of thousands of people each week,” said Tekedra Mawakana, co-CEO, Waymo. “After achieving key milestones in each city, we’re so excited to bring the safety, comfort and delight of our Waymo One service to more people in Los Angeles and Austin this year.”

The expansion into LA, the second-most populated city in the U.S., comes seven months after Waymo was approved to charge for rides 24/7 in San Francisco. Its fully driverless robotaxis have been operating in San Francisco since 2022. The Robot Report has taken multiple rides around San Francisco in Waymo robotaxis, and the experience was flawless each time.

There are some in LA who aren’t happy that Waymo is being allowed to operate in their city. There have been lawsuits and protests, and some labor leaders worry about issues with jobs and how the robotaxis will affect emergency vehicles.

Angelenos and Austinites: we’ve got news for you. Beginning tomorrow, we’ll start inviting members of our waitlist to ride with us permanently in LA. And in Austin, we’ll continue fully autonomous testing before welcoming public riders later this year. Read more:… pic.twitter.com/M5DbSPYJdA

— Waymo (@Waymo) March 13, 2024

“It’s clear that this technology is not ready to be introduced into our roads and our cities,” said Yvonne Wheeler, president of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. “Autonomous vehicles have been wreaking havoc wherever they go. From blocking fire trucks to crashing into buses, running over animals.”

To be fair, most of the troubles Wheeler is referring to were caused by robotaxis from Cruise, which up until late last year was Waymo’s top competitor in the U.S. Cruise has paused all operations after enduring a tumultuous few months. Waymo has had a couple notable incidents in SF, including hitting and killing a dog and hitting a bicyclist, who was able to leave the scene on their own.

Waymo lone bright spot in robotaxis

Waymo continues to really be the only bright spot when it comes to fully driverless robotaxis in the U.S. If it happens, Austin would be the fourth city in which it operates its Waymo One service. Motional continues to operate its robotaxi services with human safety drivers on board in a couple of cities. Several other companies are testing in California, but they aren’t close to launching a public service.

Waymo’s robotaxis have been charging for rides in Phoenix since 2020. Phoenix is the company’s largest operating area at 225 square miles. Waymo’s operating area in San Francisco is about 47 square miles. LA is the third city.

Waymo is currently testing fully autonomous rides across 43 square miles of Austin, encompassing the heart of downtown, Barton Hills, Riverside, East Austin, Hyde Park and more. At press time, these rides are reserved for its employees only.

If you want to sign up and get on the waitlist for the LA or Austin service, you need to download the Waymo One app.

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Early bird registration for the Robotics Summit & Expo (May 1-2 in Boston) ends tonight at 11:59 PM. Buy your early bird pass now and save $200 (25%) on full access passes. Discounts are also available for academia, associations, and corporate groups. Please e-mail scrowe@wtwhmedia.com for more details about our discount programs.

Launched in 2018, the Robotics Summit has quickly become a must-attend event for commercial robotics developers. The 2024 edition will bring together more than 5,000 attendees from across the robotics ecosystem. The Robotics Summit & Expo will feature more than 70 speakers and over 45 technical sessions. Keynote speakers will include:

• Jonathan Hurst, co-founder and chief robot officer, Agility Robotics
• Tye Brady, chief technologist, Amazon Robotics
• Ujjwal Kumar, president, Teradyne Robotics
• Moritz Baecher, Tony Dohi, and Morgan Pope from Disney
• Medtronic will demonstrate a remote robotic-assisted surgical system

You can view the complete Robotics Summit agenda here. Speakers are still being added.

This will be the largest Robotics Summit ever. It will include more than 200 exhibitors, various networking opportunities, a women in robotics breakfast, a career fair, an engineering theater, a startup showcase, and more!

New to the event is the RBR50 Robotics Innovation Awards Gala. The event will include a cocktail hour, a plated dinner, photo opportunities, and the chance to hear from the Robot of the Year, Startup of the Year, and Application of the Year winners. Each RBR50 winner will receive two complimentary tickets to the Robotics Summit and RBR50 Gala. A limited number of tickets are available to attendees, but they’re selling fast.

The Robotics Summit & Expo will be co-located with DeviceTalks, an event focused on medical devices, and the inaugural Digital Transformation Forum.

Registration is now open for the event. Register by tonight at 11:59 PM to take advantage of early-bird pricing.

Sponsorship Opportunities
For information about sponsorship and exhibition opportunities, download the prospectus. Questions regarding sponsorship opportunities should be directed to Colleen Sepich at csepich[AT]wtwhmedia.com.

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Companies in North America bought 31,159 robots in 2023. That’s a 30% decrease from 2022. And that’s not sitting well with robotics industry veteran Juan Aparicio.

“We don’t sell and deploy enough robots in this country. There is no human contingency to the need to reshore manufacturing in the short term, and the stakes are high,” said Aparicio. Indeed, the stakes are high. There are currently 800,000 job openings in manufacturing. By 2030 the number is expected to reach 2 million, costing the U.S. economy $1 trillion, according to the National Association of Manufacturers.

After working at Siemens for a decade and stops at Ready Robotics and Rapid Robotics, Aparicio hopes his new startup Reshape Automation can chip away at this problem. Reshape is launching its platform in a preview-release, focusing on a selected group of manufacturers at first, and will fully launch in a few months. Companies will be able to request access to the platform starting today, and attendees to Modex next week will be able to experience it at the Reshape’s booth (in the Startup Pavilion)

In the preview release, users will benefit from various capabilities, including:

• Automation Discovery: curated catalog of leading automation brands, products, and turnkey solutions; powered by a 24/7 AI companion that is trained with the world’s knowledge in manufacturing and automation.
• Vendor matching: Reshape’s platform matches manufacturers with the most suitable system integrators for their specific needs. Also, a project management tool enables real-time communication and information sharing.
• Flexible Deployment Options: Manufacturers can purchase pre-configured solutions directly through the platform or request custom modifications to suit their specific needs, ensuring a smooth deployment process. Support plans are also available as a service.

Reshape Automation wants to make it easier for the U.S. manufacturing and logistics industries to adopt automation. At the core of the platform is an AI-powered marketplace. Reshape’s marketplace will launch with autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), robot arms, and various components and solutions from brands like Fanuc, Yaskawa, Robotize, Peer Robotics, Item, Nova Automation, Genba, OnRobot, Doosan, Fairino, and more.

Customers can design and purchase pre-configured workcells and reference designs for applications such as palletizing, welding, inspection, machine tending, sorting, packing, and more. “Custom modifications can also be requested,” Aparicio said.

But the platform doesn’t stop there. It features various project management tools in an attempt to make the deployment of automation more efficient and enjoyable. Reshape’s platform matches manufacturers with the most suitable system integrators for their specific needs. Aparicio said Reshape has also created AI agents that are available to address questions and provide guidance.

And, perhaps best of all, Reshape Automation is upfront about the costs of the system and integration, as well as when customers can expect their robots to be shipped and installed. Aparicio said this addresses the industry’s need for efficient vendor-customer communication and the elimination of trial-and-error methods in selecting the right system integrator.

“Automation can be daunting for a lot of folks. This market is highly fragmented. It easily leads to analysis paralysis,” he said. “There are like 150 AMR brands. How do you even pick one? We are trying to index this industry.”

Reshape Automation raised $1.7 million in pre-Seed funding. The round was led by Schematic Ventures and included Bee Partners. There was also a contribution from Oliver Cameron, who started the autonomous vehicle company Voyage in 2017 and sold it to Cruise in early 2021. Other robotics companies funded in part by Schematic Ventures include Plus One Robotics, Outrider, Root AI, which was acquired by AppHarvest for $60 million in 2021, and SVT Robotics.

“We were excited to lead Reshape Automation’s pre-seed round last year and support their mission to solve automation challenges faced by small and medium-sized manufacturers,” said Julian Counihan, general partner at Schematic Ventures. “The company’s end-to-end platform streamlines the automation process, from discovery to deployment, leveraging AI for solution design, project management and procurement. Reshape will make the U.S. manufacturing landscape more efficient, cost-effective, and competitive on a global scale.”

Aparicio will be speaking at the Robotics Summit & Expo (May 1-2 in Boston), which is produced by The Robot Report. Aparicio will be on a panel about how generative AI is impacting robotics development. He’ll be joined by Sandra Skaff, senior alliances and ecosystem manager at NVIDIA, and Russ Tedrake, VP of robotics research at the Toyota Research Institute.

“I believe Reshape is in an exciting position to own a brand new category of automation: manufacturers need an automation partner from concept design, to deployment, to ongoing dedicated Support – one who is productizing their automation offerings in both design and deploy categories,” said Kira Noodleman, partner at Bee Partners.

Aparicio said customers can use their smartphones to visualize a robot or workcell in augmented reality directly at their facility. Or if they prefer, see the robots and buy them from the moon using AR/VR goggles, as Reshape will demo in Modex. And, eventually, the AI agents in the platform will be able to automatically design workcells for customers. At first, all they’d have to do is enter the dimensions of boxes they want moved, for example. The platform will then use those specs to configure the workcell, change dimensions and pick a robot that’ll get the job done. In the future, Aparicio said, the agents will be able to automatically design the first sketch of workcell with just plain english inputs, or even by uploading a photo or video of your manual operations.

Aparicio co-founded Reshape Automation with Carlos Vanegas. The two met while living in a SF suburb, the only two robot enthusiasts in town, and while working together at Rapid Robotics. Prior to Rapid Robotics, Vanegas was senior director of software engineering at Bright Machines for three-plus years. And this isn’t Vanegas’ first startup. He co-founded a software company, Synthicity, in 2012 that he sold to Autodesk in 2015.

“Manufacturers in the U.S. are fighting an uphill battle with labor shortages. We owe it to them to put the latest advances in AI to their service so that they can finally adopt automation as a low-risk and trustworthy ally to win that battle,” said Carlos Vanegas, co-founder and CTO of Reshape Automation. “In this first release of our platform, our AI agents act as a navigational aid throughout the manufacturer’s automation journey, starting from the initial discovery and design phases. Looking ahead, we’ll expand the use of AI to offer manufacturers better support and maintenance of their automation investment.”

Reshape said its goal is “to become the tide that raises all boats. By making it easier to discover, design and purchase automation and labor, manufacturers in the U.S. will be more competitive, and the ecosystem of automation vendors and integrators will thrive.”

“The U.S. barely makes the top 10 in terms of robot density,” said Aparicio. “If we are successful, there won’t be 30,000 robots deployed a year, but millions, creating a more resilient and dynamic American manufacturing industry.”

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The humanoid race is continuing to heat up. Agility Robotics kicked off the week by naming Peggy Johnson its chief executive officer. Johnson is a veteran technology leader who most recently served as CEO of Magic Leap, which produces augmented reality headsets. She led the company’s shift from consumer to enterprise, recapitalized the company and more.

Agility Robotics co-founder Damion Shelton has served as CEO since the company’s founding in 2015. Shelton will now be the company’s president and part of Johnson’s leadership team. Johnson will guide Agility’s next phase of growth as it expands commercial deployments, broadens its product portfolio, and prepares to manufacture Digit at scale.

Before Magic Leap, Johnson spent six years as executive vice president of business development at Microsoft. She reported directly to CEO Satya Nadella and was responsible for driving strategic partnerships and transactions to accelerate growth for the company and its customers. Johnson launched M12, Microsoft’s first corporate venture fund that in three years had added more than 80 companies to its portfolio.

“Peggy Johnson’s long track record of engineering and business success at Qualcomm and Microsoft, and her recent achievements driving change as CEO of Magic Leap, make her the perfect leader to take Agility through the transition from cutting-edge technology startup to leading global robotics company. I couldn’t be more excited to have her join us,” said Shelton. “I also want to recognize the incredible work of our employees and our leadership team in driving Agility’s success to date. With Peggy at the helm, Agility can bring robotics to new heights.”

Agility Robotics CEO Peggy Johnson

Prior to Microsoft, she spent 24 years at Qualcomm, where she served as a member of the company’s executive committee and held various leadership positions across engineering, sales, marketing, and business development. She was responsible for leading the Internet Services division, which launched a mobile app downloading platform, BREW, in 2001. BREW enabled the download of billions of apps to mobile phones, which enhanced Qualcomm’s chip sales and produced over $1 billion in revenue from app sales.

“I am thrilled to be joining the finest robotics team on the planet,” said Johnson. “In a field cluttered with ‘demo-ware’ and hype, Agility stands apart for having resolutely, steadily, and remarkably made a human-centric robot that actually works—and in demanding customer environments. Damion Shelton and his exceptional team have positioned the company for global scale and growth across industries. Together, we will make Agility the world’s most trusted maker of robots that are as helpful to workers as they are beneficial to bottom lines. This is Agility’s time.”

Digit is the world’s only bipedal robot currently delivering productive work for customers. It is also the only deployment-ready bipedal robot that is engineered to comply with OSHA’s stringent safety standards and demonstrated to run large AI models to adapt dynamically to new tasks.

This is another significant move for Agility Robotics as it gears up to manufacture its Digit humanoid at scale. In May 2023, the company named Melonee Wise CTO. Wise sold autonomous mobile robot maker (AMR) Fetch Robotics to Zebra Technologies in 2021 for $290 million.

Digit humanoid leads way

The Digit humanoid stands 5 ft. 9 in. (1.75 m) tall and can carry payloads up to 35 lb. (16 kg). Digit has been in development for several years now, but in late 2023 Amazon announced it is testing Digit in an R&D warehouse near Seattle. The initial task is to help with tote recycling.

GXO Logistics, the world’s largest pure-play contract logistics provider, is also testing Digit. It is also being tested for tote recycling at a Spanx facility in Flowery Branch, Ga. In this pilot, Digit is moving totes off of AMRs and onto a conveyor. The AMRs, which appear to be Chucks from 6 River Systems, bring the packed totes to a transfer station. Digit then uses its perception system to detect the AMR has arrived.

Later this year, Agility will open RoboFab, a 70,000-square-foot robot manufacturing facility in Salem, Oregon. Agility anticipates production capacity of hundreds of Digit robots in the first year, with the capability to scale to more than 10,000 robots per year at this location. Agility said Digit is engineered to meet the safety requirements for deployment in OSHA-regulated industries.

Jonathan Hurst, co-founder and chief robot officer of Agility Robotics, will keynote the Robotics Summit & Expo, which runs May 1 and 2 in Boston and is produced by The Robot Report. The event expects more than 5,000 attendees and is designed to help robotics engineers overcome the technical challenges of building commercial robots.

Humanoid race heating up

Nearly a dozen companies worldwide introduced humanoid prototypes in 2023. That includes Figure AI, a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company that last week raised $675 million in Series B funding.

Ash Sharma, managing director at Interact Analysis, has said warehousing offers humanoids the perfect combination of repetitiveness and menial work, coupled with a lack of standardization and a lack of uniformity of things handled. For companies operating fulfillment centers with a wide product mix or fluctuating demand, the flexibility of humanoid robots could deliver a solution to the ongoing labor and skills crisis in the logistics industry.

He added that Interact Analysis’ research suggests the flexibility and scalability humanoid robots offer could be a possible answer to ongoing labor and skills shortages. However, it does not come without complications, and it is yet to be seen whether these will be easily overcome to see their rapid deployment in warehouses.

The International Federation of Robotics (IFR) included humanoids as one of its top robotics trends for 2024. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates also recently shared five robotics startups that he’s excited about. Three of those are focused on humanoids, including Agility, Apptronik, and RoMeLa from UCLA.

And although it hasn’t announced any plans to commercialize its humanoid, Boston Dynamics recently released a video showing Atlas picking and placing automotive struts. The significance of the demo is that Atlas performs all of the object recognition using the robot’s onboard sensors. Atlas acquires the automotive struts, using its grippers from a vertical storage unit, and places them horizontally onto a flow cart.

The post Veteran tech exec Peggy Johnson named Agility Robotics CEO appeared first on The Robot Report.

Carnegie Mellon University researchers lived with Henry and Jane Evans for a week to test their Head-Worn Assistive Teleoperation (HAT) device with Henry, who lost his ability to speak and move his limbs 20 years ago. | Credit: CMU

No one could blame Carnegie Mellon University students Akhil Padmanabha and Janavi Gupta if they were a bit anxious this past August as they traveled to the Bay Area home of Henry and Jane Evans.

The students were about to live with strangers for the next seven days. On top of that, Henry, a person with quadriplegia, would spend the week putting their Head-Worn Assistive Teleoperation (HAT) — an experimental interface to control a mobile robot — to the test.

HAT requires fewer fine motor skills than other interfaces to help people with some form of paralysis or similar motor impairments control a mobile robot and manipulator. It allows users to control a mobile robot via head motion and speech recognition, and versions of the device have featured a hands-free microphone and head-worn sensor.

Padmanabha and Gupta quickly realized that any trepidation they may have felt was misplaced. Henry, who lost the ability to move his limbs and talk after a brain-stem stroke two decades ago, enjoyed using HAT to control the robot by moving his head and in some situations preferred HAT to the computer screen he normally uses.

“We were excited to see it work well in the real world,” said Padmanabha, a Ph.D. student in robotics who leads the HAT research team. “Henry became increasingly proficient in using HAT over the week and gave us lots of valuable feedback.”

During the home trial, the researchers had Henry perform predefined tasks, such as fetching a drink, feeding himself and scratching an itch. Henry directed a robot — Stretch, a commercially available mobile robot outfitted with a pincer-like gripper on its single arm — using HAT to control it.

Daily, Henry performed the so-called blanket+tissue+trash task, which involved moving a blanket off his body, grabbing a tissue and wiping his face with it, and then throwing the tissue away. As the week progressed, Henry could do it faster and faster and with fewer errors.

Henry said he preferred using HAT with a robot for certain tasks rather than depending on a caregiver.

“Definitely scratching itches,” he said. “I would be happy to have it stand next to me all day, ready to do that or hold a towel to my mouth. Also, feeding me soft foods, operating the blinds and doing odd jobs around the room.”

One innovation in particular, software called Driver Assistance that helps align the robot’s gripper with an object the user wants to pick up, was “awesome,” Henry said. Driver Assistance leaves the user in control while it makes the fine adjustments and corrections that can make controlling a robot both tedious and demanding.

“That’s better than anything I have tried for grasping,” Henry said, adding that he would like to see Driver Assistance used for every interface that controls Stretch robots.

Praise from Henry, as well as his suggestions for improving HAT, is no small thing. He has collaborated in multiple research projects, including the development of Stretch, and his expertise is widely admired within the assistive robotics community. He’s even been featured by The Washington Post and last year appeared on the cover of IEEE Spectrum.

Via email, Henry said his incentive for participating in research is simple. “Without technology I would spend each day staring at the ceiling waiting to die,” he said. “To be able to manipulate my environment again according to my will is motivation enough.”

Padmanabha said user-centered or participatory design is important within the assistive device community and requires getting feedback from potential users at every step. Henry’s feedback proved extremely helpful and gave the team new ideas to think about as they move forward.

The HAT researchers will present the results of their study at the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction March 11–15 in Boulder, Colorado.

HAT originated more than two years ago in a project course taught by Zackory Erickson, an assistant professor in the Robotics Institute. The students contacted Henry as part of their customer discovery process. Even then, he was excited about the possibility of using a prototype.

The project showed promise and later was spun out of the class. An early version of HAT was developed and tested in the lab by participants both with and without motor impairments. When it came time to do an in-home case study, Henry seemed the logical person to start with.

During the weeklong study, Padmanabha and Gupta lived in the Evans home around the clock, both for travel convenience and to be able to perform testing whenever Henry was ready. Having strangers in the house 24/7 is typical of the studies Henry’s been involved in and is no big deal for him or Jane.

“We’re both from large families,” he said.

Padmanabha and Gupta, a computer science major, likewise adjusted quickly to the new surroundings and got used to communicating with Henry using a letterboard, a tool that allows Henry to spell out words by looking at or pointing a laser at each letter. The pair even played poker with Henry and Jane, with Henry using Stretch to manipulate his cards.

In the earlier tests, HAT used head movements and voice commands to control a robot. Henry can’t speak, but he can move his left thumb just enough to click a computer mouse. So the team reconfigured HAT for the Evans trial, substituting computer clicks for voice commands as a way to shift between modes that include controlling the movement of the robot base, arm or wrist, or pausing the robot.

“Among people with motor impairments, everyone has different levels of motor function,” Padmanabha said. “Some may have head movement, others may only have speech, others just have clicking capabilities. So it’s important that you allow for customization of your interface.”

Head motions are key to using HAT, which detects head movement using a sensor in a cap, headband or — in Henry’s case — a chin strap.

“People use head gesturing as a way to communicate with each other and I think it’s a natural way of controlling or gesturing to a robot,” Padmanabha said.

A graphical user interface — a computer screen — is more typical for controlling robots. But Gupta said users don’t like using a computer screen to control a robot that is operating around their body.

“It can be scary to have a robot close to your face, trying to feed you or wipe your face,” she said. Many user studies therefore shy away from attempting tasks that come close to the face. But once Henry got used to HAT, he didn’t hesitate to perform such tasks, she added.

A computer screen is available to control Stretch in tasks that are out of the user’s line of sight, such as sending the robot to fetch something from another room. At Henry’s suggestion, the researchers made it possible to use HAT to control a computer cursor with head movements.

In addition to Gupta, Padmanabha and Erickson, the research team includes CMU’s Carmel Majidi, the Clarence H. Adamson Professor of Mechanical Engineering; Douglas Weber, the Akhtar and Bhutta Professor of Mechanical Engineering; and Jehan Yang, a Ph.D. student in mechanical engineering. Also included are Vy Nguyen of Hello Robot, maker of Stretch; and Chen Chen, an undergraduate at Tsinghua University in Beijing, who implemented the Driver Assistance software.

Though Stretch is commercially available, it is still primarily used by researchers and CMU has 10–15 of them. It’s a simple robot with limited capabilities, but Padmanabha said its approximate $25,000 price tag inspires hope for expanded use of mobile robots.

“We’re getting to the price point where we think robots could be in the home in the near future,” he said.

Henry said Stretch/HAT still needs systemwide debugging and added features before it is more widely adopted. He thinks that might occur in as little as five years, though that will depend not only on price and features, but the choice of market.

“I believe the market for elderly people is larger and more affluent and will therefore develop faster than the market for people with disabilities,” he said.

Editor’s Note: This article was republished from Carnegie Mellon University.

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Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot (center) and Agility Robotics’ Digit humanoid at the 2023 Robotics Summit & Expo.

Behavior trees are a mechanism for representing and abstracting complex behavior for robots. While they originated in the video game industry, they have been steadily gaining popularity in robotics over the past several years.

At the Robotics Summit & Expo on May 1-2 in Boston, attendees will learn how to manage their robot’s autonomy with behavior trees. Sebastian Castro, a senior robotics engineer at PickNik Robotics, and Andrew Stout, a roboticist and software engineer at The AI Institute, will contrast behavior trees with other widely used approaches such as finite-state machines.

This presentation, which runs from 2:45-3:30 on May 1, will cover the basics of behavior trees, detail the main software packages and resources available for getting started, and present lessons learned from applying behavior trees in various robotics projects.

At PickNik Robotics, Castro works on the MoveIt Studio developer platform for robot behavior using ROS. Previously, he managed educational content for robotics student competitions using MATLAB and Simulink, stood up a home service robotics software framework at MIT CSAIL, and participated in behavior development and field testing for autonomous truck unloading with the Boston Dynamics.

Stout has led the adoption of behavior trees for autonomous behavior management in multiple projects, and has extensive experience integrating foundational robotic capabilities into coherent, autonomous, interactive, human-centered applications for new robot products. A veteran of several early-to-mid stage robot startups, Andrew has shipped production software to hundreds of thousands of deployed robots in consumer, healthcare, and education markets. He has also won and PIed research grants, and built and led a multidisciplinary engineering team.

Robotics Summit brings together 5,000+ robotics developers

Launched in 2018, the Robotics Summit has quickly become a must-attend event for commercial robotics developers. The 2024 edition will bring together more than 5,000 attendees from across the robotics ecosystem.

The Robotics Summit & Expo will feature more than 60 speakers and over 40 technical sessions. Keynote speakers will include:

• Jonathan Hurst, co-founder and chief robot officer, Agility Robotics
• Tye Brady, chief technologist, Amazon Robotics
• Ujjwal Kumar, president, Teradyne Robotics
• Moritz Baecher, Tony Dohi, and Morgan Pope from Disney
• Medtronic will demonstrate a remote robotic-assisted surgical system

You can view the complete Robotics Summit agenda here. Speakers are still being added.

This will be the largest Robotics Summit ever. It will include more than 200 exhibitors, various networking opportunities, a women in robotics breakfast, a career fair, an engineering theater, a startup showcases, and more!

New to the event is the RBR50 Robotics Innovation Awards Gala. The event will include a cocktail hour, a plated dinner, photo opportunities, and the chance to hear from the Robot of the Year, Startup of the Year, and Application of the Year winners. Each RBR50 winner will receive two complimentary tickets to the Robotics Summit and RBR50 Gala. A limited number of tickets are also available to summit attendees. 

Registration is now open for the event. Register by March 8 to take advantage of early-bird pricing.

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The same experiments were set up in, both, simulation and reality to see if the virtual regolith behaved realistically. This test looked at how small (16 g) samples of material flowed through narrow funnels. | Credit: Joe Louca

Researchers claim a new computer model mimics Moon dust so well that it could lead to smoother and safer Lunar robot teleoperations. The tool, developed by researchers at the University of Bristol and based at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, could be used to train astronauts ahead of Lunar missions.

Working with their industry partner, Thales Alenia Space in the UK, who has specific interest in creating working robotic systems for space applications, the team investigated a virtual version of regolith, another name for Moon dust.

Lunar regolith is of particular interest for the upcoming Lunar exploration missions planned over the next decade. From it, scientists can potentially extract valuable resources such as oxygen, rocket fuel or construction materials, to support a long-term presence on the Moon.

To collect regolith, remotely operated robots emerge as a practical choice due to their lower risks and costs compared to human spaceflight. However, operating robots over these large distances introduces large delays into the system, which make them more difficult to control.

Now that the team know this simulation behaves similarly to reality, they can use it to mirror operating a robot on the Moon. This approach allows operators to control the robot without delays, providing a smoother and more efficient experience. You learn more by reading the technical paper here.

Lead author Joe Louca, based in Bristol’s School of Engineering Mathematics and Technology explained: “Think of it like a realistic video game set on the Moon – we want to make sure the virtual version of moon dust behaves just like the actual thing, so that if we are using it to control a robot on the Moon, then it will behave as we expect.

“This model is accurate, scalable, and lightweight, so can be used to support upcoming lunar exploration missions.”

This study followed from previous work of the team, which found that expert robot operators want to train on their systems with gradually increasing risk and realism. That means starting in a simulation and building up to using physical mock-ups, before moving on to using the actual system. An accurate simulation model is crucial for training and developing the operator’s trust in the system.

While some especially accurate models of Moon dust had previously been developed, these are so detailed that they require a lot of computational time, making them too slow to control a robot smoothly. Researchers from DLR (German Aerospace Centre) tackled this challenge by developing a virtual model of regolith that considers its density, stickiness, and friction, as well as the Moon’s reduced gravity. Their model is of interest for the space industry as it is light on computational resources, and, hence, can be run in real-time. However, it works best with small quantities of Moon dust.

The Bristol team’s aims were to, firstly, extend the model so it can handle more regolith, while staying lightweight enough to run in real-time, and then to verify it experimentally.

Joe Louca added: “Our primary focus throughout this project was on enhancing the user experience for operators of these systems – how could we make their job easier?

“We began with the original virtual regolith model developed by DLR, and modified it to make it more scalable.

“Then, we conducted a series of experiments – half in a simulated environment, half in the real world – to measure whether the virtual moon dust behaved the same as its real-world counterpart.”

As this model of regolith is promising for being accurate, scalable and lightweight enough to be used in real-time, the team will next investigate whether it can be used when operating robots to collect regolith.

They also plan to investigate whether a similar system could be developed to simulate Martian soil, which could be of benefit for future exploration missions, or to train scientists to handle material from the highly anticipated Mars Sample Return mission.

Editor’s Note: This article was republished from the University of Bristol.

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ABB says its robotics story started in 1974 with what it calls the “sale of the world’s first commercial, all-electric robot, the IRB 6.” In 2024, 50 years later, ABB’s robotics portfolio is stronger than ever with new industrial robot arms, collaborative robot arms, and autonomous mobile robots.

ABB will be celebrating 50 years of robotic innovation throughout 2024. Marc Segura, president of ABB Robotics, is helping do just that by identifying the following three drivers of robotics-driven AI solutions in 2024 and beyond.

Editor’s Note: the following text has been republished from ABB with its permission.

“The coming year will see a growing focus on the critical role of AI,” said Segura. “From mobile robots and cobots, to enabling new robotic applications in new sectors and creating new opportunities for people to learn and develop, these new frontiers for AI are redefining the future of industrial robotics.”

ABB’s 3DQI quality inspection cell can detect defects less than half the width of a human hair. | Credit: ABB

1. AI will drive new levels of autonomy in robotic applications

Accelerating progress in AI is redefining what is possible with industrial robotics. AI is enhancing everything from robots’ ability to grip, pick and place as well as their ability to map and navigate through dynamic environments. From mobile robots to cobots and beyond, AI is giving robots unprecedented levels of speed, accuracy, and payload carrying ability, enabling them to take on more tasks in settings like flexible factories, warehouses, logistics centers and laboratories.

“AI-enabled mobile robots can transform sectors like discrete manufacturing, logistics and laboratories,” said Segura. “Robots equipped with ABB’s new Visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (Visual SLAM) technology, for example, have advanced mapping and navigation skills, granting new levels of autonomy, while greatly reducing the infrastructure needed by previous generations of guided robots. This paves the way for a shift from linear production lines to dynamic networks, creating significant efficiencies and taking on more dull, dirty and dangerous tasks, to enable workers to take up more rewarding jobs.”

2. AI will see robots enter new sectors

The potential offered by AI-enabled robotics is influencing sectors far beyond manufacturing. In 2024, these technologies are expected to bring substantial efficiency improvements to more dynamic environments, such as healthcare and life sciences, as well as retail. Another example is the construction industry, where AI-powered robotics can make a material contribution to boosting productivity, enhancing safety and sustainable construction practices while spurring growth.

“The construction industry is a great example of a sector where AI-powered robots will prove transformative, delivering real value by addressing many of the issues facing the industry today, including worker shortages, safety issues and stagnant productivity,” said Segura. “Abilities such as enhanced recognition and decision-making offered by AI, coupled with advances in collaborative robots enable safe deployment alongside workers. These advances also enable robots to perform key tasks such as bricklaying, modular assembly and 3D printing with greater precision and speed, all while contributing to more sustainable construction by lowering emissions, such as concrete mixing on site, to reducing the need to transport materials across far distances with on-site assembly.”

3. AI will offer new opportunities for education and working with robots

The advances being made in AI and robotics is significant for training and education, closing the automation skills gap and making robots more accessible to more people and businesses. With AI making programming easier, through lead-through and even natural language, education can shift more towards how robots can assist humans more effectively, rather than just teaching programming skills. This transition will make robots more approachable and bring them to a wider audience, leading to new job prospects while helping alleviate labor and skills shortages.

“A shortage of people with the skills needed to program and support robots has long been a hurdle to the uptake of robotic automation, especially in small to medium sized manufacturing companies,” said Segura. “We will see this increasingly being overcome as advances in generative AI lower the barriers to automation and expand the focus of education beyond programming. Developments in natural language programming, powered by AI in which workers can verbally instruct a robot in its task, will create a new dynamic in human-robot interactions.”

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Colo.-based Scythe Robotics is adopting the North American Charging Standard (NACS) charge port for its M.52 robot lawnmower. The company said this move will integrate NACS capabilities into their all-electric, fully autonomous commercial mower as early as Q4 2024.

NACS, also known as the “Tesla Charger” or SAE J3400, is becoming the standard in electric vehicle (EV) charging, according to Scythe. Leading automotive companies, including Ford, General Motors and BMW, have committed to transitioning to NACS by 2025. Scythe said this move toward standardized charging infrastructure is crucial in facilitating mass EV adoption, streamlining user experiences with reliable and simple charging solutions.

By eliminating proprietary connectors and technologies, Scythe said this transition ensures lower charging costs, greater ease of use, and expanded access to charging facilities for landscape companies mowing with M.52.

“We are committed to providing our landscape customers with meaningful solutions that sit at the forefront of technological innovation,” said Davis Foster, co-founder and chief engineer of Scythe. “With the U.S. moving towards the adoption of NACS across the board, it’s clear that this standardized charging solution will be the optimal and most convenient method for charging any EV or machine – including M.52 – for the foreseeable future. We are excited to extend these benefits to our customers.

The next generation of M.52, slated for production in late 2024, will integrate NACS components as they are made available for non-Tesla manufacturers. Existing generations of M.52 can be compatible with the new standards through a common NACS-to-J1772 connector. Looking forward, NACS holds the potential for future improvements and features like DC fast charging and automated billing with existing charger networks.

“By incorporating NACS into the next generation of our machine, M.52 will potentially be the first non-Tesla vehicle to implement this new standard,” explained Roger Dodrill, staff systems engineer at Scythe. “As pioneers in autonomous and electric outdoor power equipment, adopting this standardized solution is a critical step in our mission to electrify the industry. By providing the gold standard in charging capabilities, we aim to eliminate barriers to the adoption of electric equipment and enhance the overall user experience for our valued customers.”

Scythe Robotics is adopting the North American Charging Standard for its robot lawnmower. | Credit: Scythe Robotics

Scythe Robotics at Robotics Summit & Expo

Scythe will be speaking at the Robotics Summit & Expo, the world’s leading event for commercial robotics developers, that takes place May 1-2 in Boston. Nathaniel Czarnecki, Scythe’s lead test engineer, will be talking about how the company is “Building a Scalable Testing Program to Drive Robot Reliability.”

Czarnecki will share the company’s philosophy behind and framework for building highly effective robotics testing programs that can grow in scope and impact without becoming burdensome to the business. This involves prioritizing which facets of the product need the most in-depth testing, identifying meaningful metrics to measure them by, and using the findings to rapidly iterate on and improve the product – all with typically limited resources and an eye toward seriously expanded testing operations.

Scythe’s testing program has driven step-change product and performance improvements with each iteration of M.52, as well as significant updates between them. Through stories from the test fields at Scythe (along with plenty of destructive testing videos), Nathaniel will also share best practices for testing hardware and software in tandem, creating progressive testing programs, and building the rapport needed to collaborate with teams across an organization, offering insight relevant to any robotics company.

Produced by The Robot Report and parent company WTWH Media, the Robotics Summit & Expo focuses on the design, development, and scaling of commercial robots. There will be 60-plus speakers in 40-plus sessions sharing their commercial robotics development expertise. There will also be more than 130 exhibitors showing enabling technologies on the expo show floor.

Keynotes will feature the following industry luminaries:

• Jonathan Hurst, co-founder and chief robot officer at Agility Robotics
• Tye Brady, chief technologist at Amazon Robotics
• Ujjwal Kumar, group president at Teradyne Robotics
• Morgan Pope, research scientist, and Moritz Baecher, associate lab director for robotics, at Disney Research
• Medtronic will demonstrate its remote robotic-assisted surgical system.

The Robotics Summit will also include conference tracks on warehouse automation and AI in addition to development, enabling technologies, and healthcare. An Engineering Theater on the show floor will feature additional presentations on innovative systems and use cases.

On Wednesday, May 1, the Robotics Summit & Expo will host the inaugural RBR50 Robotics Innovation Awards Gala to celebrate this year’s winners of the prestigious recognition. Tickets will be available for this gala.

Registration is now open for the 2024 Robotics Summit & Expo. An Academic Outreach Program offers discounts for attendees coming from colleges, universities, and research institutions.

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The inaugural MassRobotics Accelerator cohort. | Credit: MassRobotics

BOSTON — During its annual partner celebration last night, MassRobotics introduced the 10 robotics startups chosen to participate in its inaugural equity-free accelerator. Each startup was awarded a $100,000, non-dilutive grant from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, or MassTech, as part of a $5 million state initiative.

The three-month accelerator will teach the startups about customer discovery, value proposition discovery, manufacturing for excellence, fundraising tactics, team management, and more. The startups will have access to MassRobotics and its expansive network.

“Technical founders can often jump to product-building mode before intimately understanding their end user and customer. During this program, our startups will each complete at least 25 customer discovery interviews, in an effort to hone in on their customer pain and needs,” said Marita McGinn, director of the MassRobotics Accelerator. “Our goal is to help these brilliant technical founders to bolster their business acumen through this curriculum.”

Tye Brady, chief technologist at Amazon Robotics, helped kick off the introduction of the 10 robotics startups. Brady is a co-founder of MassRobotics and chair of its board of directors.

“Boston is the hub of the robotics universe,” said Brady. “Robotics can change society in some many positive ways. It’s like computers in the 1980s. We should all be excited about the industry’s future.”

MassRobotics told The Robot Report more than 140 robotics startups from about 25 countries applied for the accelerator. A committee composed of roboticists, entrepreneurs, and academics selected the top 10.

The MassRobotics Accelerator will culminate at the Robotics Summit & Expo in Boston on May 1 and 2. The startups will all be on the expo floor and be discussing their journeys in a session on May 1 at 4:15 p.m. ET.

Brady will also be keynoting the Robotics Summit, which is produced by The Robot Report and parent company WTWH Media. Brady will discuss how Amazon has worked internally and with partners to develop and deploy technologies including mobile robots, automated storage, AI, and humanoid robots. Amazon will discuss its criteria for success and how it is striving to continually innovate.

Learn from Agility Robotics, Amazon, Disney, Teradyne and many more.

Below is more information about the 10 robotics startups in the MassRobotics Accelerator. Each of them gave brief pitches 

Meet the 10 startups in the MassRobotics Accelerator

Apparel Robotics

Conventional assembly of clothing is repetitive and labor-intensive. Founded in 2022, Apparel Robotics is working to change how clothing is manufactured. Demitri Balabanov, chief technology officer and CEO of Apparel Robotics, said the startup is developing both hardware and software to handle deformable objects and create autonomous clothing manufacturing techniques.

Apparel Robotics is developing its own grippers, which uses lift similar to an aircraft wing to pick up porus and soft objects. It is also developing machine learning and computer vision tools for accurate perception, pick-and-place operations, and manipulation tasks of fabric-like materials.

brd BOT

brd BOT is building a robotic vending machine for fresh fried foods. The machine reduces labor costs from 30% to 3.75% by eliminating all human labor from the ordering and cooking process, said the company.

Customers can get round-the-clock service, and they can expect better service and quality, according to brd BOT. Its first prototype debuted at the Open Sauce maker fair, and has a pilot at the University of California, Berkeley, with plans for 7-Eleven.  

Gopher Motion

Gopher Motion is still operating largely in stealth mode, so it didn’t reveal much other than its developing an autonomous mobile robot for last-mile delivery of goods that weigh less than 5 lb. (2.2 kg). The robot integrates ODOA/local mapping sensors, GPS, cellular communications, and compute capabilities tailored for speeds up to 20 MPH.

Could Gopher be developing an autonomous bicycle? During his presentation to those at MassRobotics, Max Makeev, Gopher Motion’s co-founder and CEO, referenced bike couriers several times.

He claimed that the hybrid approach of operating on the streets and sidewalks gives it a few advantages over other types of delivery services. In addition, the company’s logo includes a bike.

Makeev and co-founder and CTO Mark Schnittman met while working at iRobot. They re-connected in 2014 to co-found Owl Labs, which makes 360° video conferencing devices. Owl Labs now serves nearly 200,000 customers, and its product was honored as one of Time’s Best Inventions of 2020.

Hominid X

Hominid X has developed a wearable assistive device called Fiber that is designed for people with hand mobility issues. The lightweight device guides the user’s hand into a secure and natural grasp around objects. The company said Fiber can help with a wide variety of tasks, such as eating, writing, talking on the phone, drinking, and even playing sports.

Fiber is made from durable, skin-safe materials and is designed to be worn all day long. It is also adjustable to fit a variety of hand sizes. Hominid X said its device can help people with a variety of hand conditions, including stroke, cerebral palsy, arthritis, multiple sclerosis, and Parkinson’s disease.

Hominid X was co-founded by Soniya Patel and Thane Hunt co-founded Hominid X. Fiber, the company’s first product, is strategically priced at $99 to bypass the need for insurance and to be affordable for most who need it, they said.

“Approximately 200 million people worldwide need grasping assistance,” Hunt said. “We’re working on a model with force-torque sensors and reactive actuation. The non-powered version has already been available for 18 months.”

The co-founders both have experience in 3D printing, which they said has kept the price of Fiber low. Patel previously worked in the additive divisions at Stryker and Desktop Metal, while Hunt served as a senior systems engineer at both Desktop Metal and Formlabs.

Hunt told The Robot Report about Fiber user Megan Beth. Beth is a youth stroke survivor who runs a TikTok channel about cooking and various lifestyle topics.

In some of her videos, Beth has discussed how Fiber allowed her to open cans, hold cups, and stir frosting. “I haven’t been able to eat something and walk at the same time for so long,” she told followers.

Mapless AI

Founded in mid-2022, Mapless AI is developing technology that enables remote control of existing fleet vehicles from up to thousands of miles away. The startup is targeting applications such as car delivery, chauffeur-on-demand, and EV charging to partner fleets for its tele-driving technology.

Mapless is currently testing its vehicles at the Pittsburgh International Airport. The cars are being remotely driven from downtown Pittsburgh and Boston to test curbside pick-up/drop-off of rental vehicles at the airport. Instead of airline passengers having to go to the rental car service at the airport, the cars can come directly to their gates.

As part of the testing program, a person can summon a Mapless car with an app, said Philipp Robbel, co-founder and CEO of Mapless AI. Then a remote operator tele-drives the vehicle to the passenger’s location via commercial cellular networks.

The person gets in and drives manually from there, Robbel explained. The remote operator can take over again and drive the vehicle to a temporary location and wait for the next passenger.

The company raised seed funding in 2022 and has also tested its system at other airports and the Detroit Auto Show. Robbel previously worked on autonomous driving for Bosch Rexroth and nuTonomy.

“Rental car companies have long wanted to compete with Lyft and Uber,” he told The Robot Report. “Rental car companies want the experience to be as smooth as an Uber. And we’re helping to make that happen.”

Oligo

Jacob Rodriguez worked on MIT aerospace projects before becoming co-founder and CEO of Oligo. The company’s modular HERMES and APOLLO systems are universal electromechanical interfaces to “make space development more accessible,” he said.

Rodriguez said Oligo’s technology could significantly accelerate development of payloads by enabling them to integrate in a vehicle-agnostic way. The reconfigurable systems could also democratize robotics for orbital and lunar use, to “do real science, real fast,” he added.

Robotics 88

Wildfires are a global problem, but identifying where to conduct controlled burns can help prevent them. Robotics 88 is building an autonomous aerial drone to conduct subcanopy surveys of fuel loads for prescribed burn planning. The company said this will help land managers reduce wildfire risk for their communities.

The company has developed proprietary, generalized decision-making algorithms to enable the drone to explore cluttered forests. “You really need data from the forest floor to predict and plan for wildfires,” said Erin Linebarger, co-founder and CEO of Robotics 88.

Robotics 88 has completed a few initial projects:

• NOAA SBIR Phase 1: produced wildfire risk models from autonomous subcanopy UAS surveys
• STAC RI: funding to provide internship for rapid prototyping of its fire modeling UAS
• NSF STTR Phase 1: autonomous drone to map and explore a forest in 3D in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University

rStream

With 50 trillion tons of microplastics in the environment and 600 gigations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, standardizing waste collection is becoming increasingly urgent, according to rStream. The company is developing a robotic system for waste collection at high-traffic locations.

rStream said it has designed its system to capture the material that is lost upstream of processing facilities during collection, streamline waste processing operations, and aggregate environmental compliance data. rStream said its system is currently being piloted at UMass Amherst.

Marita McGinn, director of the MassRobotics Accelerator, introduces the cohort with MassRobotics Executive Director Tom Ryden (left). Credit: Eugene Demaitre

SIMPL Automation

SIMPL Automation is logistics automation startup developing an automated storage and retrieval system (ASRS) called “SIMPL Cube.” The company said it is trying to take an easier approach to integrating an ASRS by using a warehouse’s existing infrastructure. It said SIMPL Cube features a modular design to accommodate various storage needs, from cases, to totes, and trays.

The accelerator recipient just opened its 18,000-sq.-ft. headquarters and research and development facility in Waltham, Mass., and its first customer is a Fortune 500 company in Massachusetts.

Yard Robotics

Divya Thakur founded Yard Robotics in 2021. He spent five years working on autonomous vehicles at Cruise in San Francisco before moving to Huntsville, Ala. A lot of things changed with the move to Alabama, including the need to now mow his lawn.

“Once I mowed the lawn the first time, I said, ‘Never again,'” Thakur joked to the crowd.

So he built an autonomous, electric lawn mower and started mowing lawns in his new neighborhood. Thakur said Yard Robotics has since developed a fleet of robots and is actively mowing 200-plus lawns. The company doesn’t sell lawn mowers, rather it sells a lawn mowing service.

The autonomous mowers can fit three across in a truck bed, and a robotic service makes more sense than do-it-yourself consumer robots or trying to sell to commercial providers, Thakur said.

“I’m now a lawn guy,” he said.

Editor’s note: Eugene Demaitre contributed to this article.

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The road continues to be bumpy for robotaxi developers. Earlier this week, Cruise and Motional, two leading U.S.-based robotaxi companies, lost major funding sources that could significantly alter their futures.

Let’s start with Cruise. And this news shouldn’t be shocking if you’ve been following Cruise for the past few months. General Motors, which acquired Cruise in 2016, said this week it will cut spending on the robotaxi unit by about $1 billion in 2024.

What is surprising is that the cuts seem more significant than previously thought. GM said in November 2023 that it would reduce spending on Cruise by “hundreds of millions.”

According to GM financial documents, GM has lost a preposterous $8.2 billion on Cruise since 2017. GM also said Cruise lost $2.7 billion in 2023, compared with a loss of $1.9 billion in 2022.

However, GM CEO Mary Barra insisted this week that Cruise still has a future. “We are committed to Cruise,” she said. “When we look at the technology, the foundational technology is sound. We had already demonstrated and validated externally that Cruise technology is already safer than a human driver.”

While Barra didn’t provide specifics about how Cruise will relaunch, GM dropped some hints on Feb. 1 at the J.D. Power Auto Summit in Las Vegas. According to the Detroit Free Press, GM president Mark Reuss said at the event that it will likely take Cruise four to five years to earn back the trust of the public.

“In the next four to five years, you’ll see, hopefully, we regain that trust,” he said. “We continue on the technical progress for that.”

“I’d say in the next one to two years, we return back to the roads with great products and great delivery for both the taxi piece of it, but also delivering goods to people that can’t, don’t have mobility perhaps, or for companies that need an autonomous delivery system,” added Reuss. “So we’ll do that. And I think we’re capable of doing it.”

Cruise tries to come back from safety setbacks

Cruise has been in freefall since an incident on Oct. 2, 2023. A Cruise robotaxi dragged a woman after she was hit by a different car driven by a human. After being hit by the first car, the woman was thrown into the path of the Cruise vehicle, which didn’t brake in time to avoid her.

Following the incident, the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) called Cruise’s robotaxis a risk to the public and suspended its autonomous vehicle permits.

This then sent Cruise into a tailspin. Cruise paused its robotaxi operations nationwide in mid-October, and co-founder and CEO Kyle Vogt resigned on Nov. 19. In mid-December, Cruise laid off 900 employees, or 24% of its workforce.

Before all this, Cruise was running or testing robotaxi services in San Francisco, Austin, Houston, and Phoenix, with plans to expand to more than a dozen cities in 2024. According to co-founder and former chief product officer Dan Kan, who also recently stepped down, Cruise was giving up to 10,000 autonomous rides per week.

Aptiv no longer funding robotaxi developer Motional

But Cruise is not alone. Motional, the $4 billion joint autonomous vehicle venture created in 2017 by Hyundai and Aptiv, lost one of its main financial backers. Aptiv, a leading automotive parts supplier, said it will stop further funding after incurring millions in losses.

During this week’s earnings call, Aptiv said its 2024 profit forecast includes a non-cash equity loss of about $340 million related to Motional’s losses.

“While our Motional joint venture continues to make progress on their technology roadmap, we’ve decided to no longer allocate capital to Motional and are pursuing alternatives to further reduce our ownership interest,” Aptiv CEO Kevin Clark said in the call.

“The costs related to delivering the tech, principally in and around hardware, really make it challenging from an adoption standpoint in the mobility on-demand market,” he added.

Motional started testing its robotaxis at night in Las Vegas in Feb. 2023. | Credit: Motional

Motional to continue pursuing roadmap, partnerships

Motional is testing its autonomous vehicles with human safety operators behind the wheel in Boston, Pittsburgh, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and Singapore. At CES 2024, Motional announced plans to work with Kia on a next-generation vehicle that will enter commercial operations later this decade.

Joe Massaro, chief financial officer at Aptiv, said Motional is “exploring steps to reduce a significant portion of our common equity while working within the construct of the joint venture agreement.”

Motional released a statement that said: “We’re confident in our funding roadmap and are well-positioned for the next phase of our commercialization. Our team is focused on scaling our driverless services, expanding Motional’s commercial partnerships, and furthering development on Motional’s next-generation robotaxi in collaboration with Kia. Aptiv and the Hyundai Motor Group remain Motional shareholders, and there are no ownership updates at this time. Motional is uniquely positioned through our strategic partnerships with our shareholders, and we continue to have their strong support and collaboration.”

Follow along here, but Aptiv started out as Boston-based nuTonomy in 2013. It was founded by Karl Iagnemma and Emilio Frazzoli and had early success testing autonomous vehicles on public roads near Boston’s Seaport District.

Automotive parts supplier Delphi acquired nuTonomy in 2017 for $450 million. But Delphi soon split into two companies, one of which was Aptiv. Hyundai and Aptiv partnered in 2017 on Motional.

The post Cruise and Motional backers slash robotaxi funding appeared first on The Robot Report.

RoboTire, a robotics startup developing an automated tire-changing system for mechanics, has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. RoboTire was founded in 2018, was based in Plymouth, Michigan, and won an RBR50 Robotics Innovation Award in 2023.

RoboTire filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in the Court of Delaware on January 19, 2024. You can read the filing here (PDF). According to the filing, RoboTire has $12.7 million in liabilities and $12.3 million in assets. There are 78 unsecured creditors in the case, most of which are based in Michigan. In December 2023, RoboTire was sued by American Funding Services, which claimed the robotics startup owed it more than $130,000.

Chapter 7 bankruptcy is also called a liquidation bankruptcy. Businesses that file for Chapter 7 need to sell non-exempt possessions and use the proceeds to repay creditors. Once the process is complete, the remainder of a business’ included debts are discharged. Chapter 7 bankruptcy is the most common form of bankruptcy in the U.S. It differs from Chapter 11 and Chapter 13 bankruptcies, which govern the process of reorganization of a debtor.

The Robot Report has reached out to RoboTire founder and CEO Victor Darolfi multiple times but has yet to hear back.

RoboTire uses an industrial-grade, six-axis robotic arm and an end-of-arm tool that houses the robot’s vision system, gripper, and torque wrench. Onboard cameras drive RoboTire’s automated guidance system, enabling the robot to independently find the wheel, recognize socket requirements and positioning, and render 3D depth maps. You can watch the robot in action in the video above and learn more about it here.

RoboTire raised $7.5 million in Series A funding back in 2022. The round was led by The Reinalt-Thomas Corporation, which does business as Discount Tire and America’s Tire and is the world’s largest independent tire retailer.

“Discount Tire is excited to support RoboTire in the development of new and innovative technologies that drive a better customer experience,” the company said at the time of the Series A round closing. “As customer expectations around the ‘buy and book online’ experience and our ability to deliver reduced wait times continue to grow, we will continue to pursue automation and enhancements that ensure an inviting, easy and safe experience for all our customers.”

Learn from Agility Robotics, Amazon, Disney, Teradyne and many more.

Three months ago, Darolfi said on LinkedIn that RoboTire had just finished installing its fifth “live system.” The company installed its first system in 2022 at a Discount Tire facility in Fountain Hills, Arizona. It installed another system with a different Discount Tire shop in early 2023. RoboTire also worked with Creamery Tire, a locally owned and operated tire service center founded in Pennsylvania in 1988.

According to the bankruptcy filing, RoboTire also had an “open contract” with Luke Air Force Base in Arizona for a system that costs $348,277.57. The filing does not specify if the contract was for one RoboTire system or multiple units.

Darolfi joined episode 94 of The Robot Report Podcast to discuss the challenges and opportunities of the tire-changing robot. You can listen to that episode here.

It’s been a tough start to 2024 for the robotics industry. There have been layoffs at Locus Robotics and Vecna Robotics, among others. And Amazon’s $1.45 billion acquisition of iRobot was terminated due to it having no path of being approved by the European Commission. As a result of the deal falling through, iRobot is laying off 31% of its staff.

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Teradyne Inc. said in an earnings call today that its robotics group generated $375 million in revenue in fiscal 2023. The North Reading, Mass.-based company owns Energid (which produces motion-planning software), Mobile Industrial Robots (autonomous mobile robots) and Universal Robots (collaborative robot arms). The group generated $404 million in revenue in 2022.

Universal Robots (UR) generated $304 million in revenue in 2023. While its sales were down 7% year-over-year from the record $326 million generated in 2022, the cobot maker ended the year on a high note.

The fourth quarter of 2023 was UR’s largest revenue quarter ever. This represented 21% growth from Q4 2022 and 47% growth from Q3 2023, which the company attributed to demand for its the UR20 and UR30 cobots.

Here is a breakdown of Universal Robots’ revenue by quarter:

• Q1 revenue = $72 million
• Q2 revenue = $58 million
• Q3 revenue = $71 million
• Q4 revenue = $103 million

Overall, Teradyne’s robotics group generated $129 million in revenue in the fourth quarter. UR generated $311 million in revenue in 2021, which was up 41% on 2020 and 23% on pre-pandemic results in 2019.

“2023 was characterized by a difficult economic and business environment for many of our core customers, with global industrial activity slowing in the first half of the year,” stated Kim Povlsen, president of UR. “Nevertheless, we saw growth in our focus accounts and key segments, including palletizing, and in our strategically important OEM channel. We ended the year strong and enter 2024 with a great foundation for further growth.”

The UR30 demonstrates machine tending at iREX. Source: Universal Robots

Bigger cobots yield profits

Universal Robots said 30% of its revenue in the fourth quarter came from the UR20 and UR30. The company said it experienced strong demand for its UR20, especially for palletizing and welding applications.

Unveiled in 2022, the UR20 is the company’s first heavy-duty cobot arm. It has a 1,750 mm (5.7 ft.) reach and 20 kg (44 lb.) payload capacity. And in late 2023, UR had to increase production of the UR20 to meet growing demand from its customer base.

In November 2023, UR launched its second heavy-duty cobot arm, the UR30. Built on the same architecture as the UR20, the UR30 offers more payload capacity in a compact footprint.

With a 30 kg (66.13 lb.) lifting capacity, 1,300 mm (51.2 in.) reach, and weight of 63.5 kg (139.9 lb.), the UR30 can tend larger machines, palletize heavy products, and support high-torque screw driving, said the company.

“We are already shipping UR30s and have ramped up production in the fourth quarter to more than 1,200 units to meet sustained demand for the UR20,” Povlsen added. “Ultimately, though, our success depends on our strength as a platform. It will be our continued software excellence and ease of use, on top of our hardware innovation, that creates value for our partners and end customers.”

During the fiscal 2023 and fourth-quarter earnings call, Teradyne President and CEO Greg Smith noted that UR has a “record backlog” for the UR20 cobot. He also said UR continues to have success growing its channel strategy, adding that it now has more than 50 OEM partners and that its OEM sales grew nearly 10%.

Teradyne said its robotics portfolio has penetrated less than 5% of its market opportunity and that it expects robotics revenue to grow between 10-20% in 2024.

Ujjwal Kumar, president of Teradyne’s robotics group, is delivering a keynote at our Robotics Summit & Expo, which takes place May 1-2 in Boston. The event is designed for robotics developers and will attract 5,000-plus attendees.

Over his 25-plus-year career, Kumar has scaled businesses at major multinationals including General Motors, General Electric, and Honeywell. In his keynote on May 2 from 9:00 to 9:45 a.m. ET, Kumar will share some lessons he has learned and how they can be applied to accelerate the transformation of industry with robotics.

MiR also ends 2023 on high note

Mobile Industrial Robots (MiR) generated $71 million in revenue in 2023. This marks an 8% decrease from the $77 million in revenue in 2022. However, MiR also ended 2023 strong by generating $26 million in revenue in the fourth quarter. 

Here is a breakdown of MiR’s 2023 revenue by quarter:

• Q1 revenue = $17 million
• Q2 revenue = $14 million
• Q3 revenue = $14 million
• Q4 revenue = $26 million

In October 2022, Teradyne merged its autonomous mobile robot (AMR) subsidiaries, MiR and AutoGuide Mobile Robots, into a single company. At the end of September 2022, the integrated AMR supplier officially became known as Mobile Industrial Robots.

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MiR leadership changes

Søren E. Nielsen then stepped down as president of MiR at the beginning of 2023. He had stepped into the role in August 2020, taking over the role from founder Thomas Visti Jensen. Nielsen was previously MiR’s chief technology since January 2018.

On May 1, 2023, MiR named Jean-Pierre Hathout its new president. Hathout replaced interim CEO Walter Vahey, who will remain with the company as an advisor until his planned retirement in 2024.

Hathout came from a role as president of SIT Controls USA. Prior to this, he built a 17-year career at Bosch, including several international management roles. Hathout has a doctoral degree in mechanical engineering from MIT, and he has technological expertise and global leadership skills, including management of operations in the U.S., Germany, the Netherlands, Turkey and China.

MiR celebrated its 10-year anniversary in 2023. It also introduced its MiR Insights cloud software that provides fleet owners with actionable insights to improve performance. MiR also received certifications for 13 safety functions on its MiR600 and MiR1350 AMRs in accordance with the ISO 13849-1 industry standard.

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Universal Robots recently announced a change to the M8 connector on all of its e-Series collaborative robot arms (cobots). The connecter was changed from a male version to a female version. It said the planned implementation will take effect in production cobots by the end of the first quarter of 2024.

Universal Robots, the world’s leading developer of cobot arms, said it also update the tool cap to fit with the new female version of the M8 connecter. The connector will be inside the tool cap as illustrated in the pictures above. Universal Robots said it will provide an adapter (15 cm adaptor cable, male – male M8) to soften the transition and enable tools with the current connector type.

“This [connector change] was introduced as it is a more robust design and brings the e-Series to match the new UR20/UR30 design so UR+ tools and any end effector connectors that use the tool port will be compatible with both hardware generations,” a Universal Robots spokesperson told The Robot Report.

Universal Robots said detailed information about the implantation date will be announced during Q1 2024.

The UR30 cobot was introduced in November 2023. It is built on the same architecture as the UR20, but the UR30 offers more payload capacity in a compact footprint. With a 30 kg (66.13 lb.) lifting capacity, 1,300 mm (51.2 in.) reach, and weight of 63.5 kg (139.9 lb.), the company said the UR30 can tend larger machines, palletize heavy products and support high-torque screwdriving.

“We saw some applications where the UR20 was too big,” Anders Billesø Beck, vice president of strategy and innovation at Universal Robots, told The Robot Report when the UR30 was unveiled. “We’ve found that ideal combination of size and power.”

Universal Robots is owned by Teradyne, an automatic test equipment designer and manufacturer based in North Reading, Massachusetts. Teradyne will be releasing its financial results for the fourth quarter and full year 2023 on Tuesday, January 30, 2024. Teradyne also owns Energid (motion control software) and Mobile Industrial Robots (autonomous mobile robots). Teradyne merged AutoGuide Mobile Robots with Mobile Industrial Robots in late 2022.

Ujjwal Kumar, who was named president of Teradyne Robotics in mid-2023, is keynoting our Robotics Summit & Expo. Taking place May 1-2 in Boston, the Robotics Summit is the world’s leading event for commercial robotics developers. Over his 25-plus-year career, Kumar has scaled businesses at major multinationals including General Motors, General Electric, and Honeywell. In this keynote on May 2 from 9-9:45 AM, he will share some lessons he has learned and how they can be applied to accelerate the transformation of industry with robotics.

Agility Robotics, Amazon, Disney and Medtronic will also deliver keynotes at the event, which will have 5,000-plus attendees from the global robotics ecosystem. There will also be 150+ exhibitors showcasing enabling technologies, products and services for commercial robotics developers.

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