Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 0.23
October 10, 2021
…increase in e-commerce sales since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, that’s got to hurt. “The sheer magnitude of returns, especially in e-commerce, has been so enormous in the past 18 months that reverse-logistics practices have not generally caught up with the increased volumes yet,” said Tony Hasman, principal consultant at Dematic. Furthermore, nearly 30% of consumers deliberately over order, and 19% of consumers order multiple styles, according to Barclaycard Research. Ouch. With that in mind, reverse logistics should rank higher on the list of to-dos than cleaning out the cellar or reorganizing the garage. That said, many reverse-logistics operations…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 0.72
October 07, 2021
…March 2020 because of high demand early in the COVID-19 pandemic. The company's vans will be outfitted with Wayve's autonomous technology and trialed on urban delivery routes. The online retailer said the collaboration will help it explore first-hand how Wayve can handle the congested streets and challenging maneuvers that last-mile delivery technology must be equipped to navigate. A portion of Ocado’s existing delivery fleet will also be outfitted with Wayve’s data-collection devices to provide data for training and validating Wayve’s technology. The company briefly suspended its delivery service because of “Ocado is on a journey to develop highly intelligent autonomous…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 0.74
October 06, 2021
…from 50% of its volume to 80% during the COVID-19 pandemic. With 35 years of experience in logistics, ISN’s customer service includes picking and shipping on the same day, so it needed high efficiency. A longtime user of the K.Motion warehouse management system (WMS), the Lakeland, Fla.-based company turned to Körber for help. Körber's Supply Chain business area said it provides software, robotics, and materials handling systems and the expertise to tie them together. Körber worked with long-time strategic partner Locus Robotics to deploy 49 autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) in ISN's warehouses in Atlanta, Indianapolis, and Fresno, Calif. ISN gets…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 0.64
October 05, 2021
…to position themselves strategically and gain a competitive advantage post-COVID-19.” Körber cited successes across a variety of industries that it will discuss in the sessions at Elevate. Robotics – Covering use cases across cold chain/food distribution, e-commerce, retail, and third-party logistics providers (3PLs), Kӧrber will demonstrate the latest autonomous mobile robots (AMRs). It will include key insights from implementation. Voice - Voice-assisted picking technology is capturing the attention of some of APAC's largest retailers and 3PLs. Kӧrber will present its latest functionalities and show how to unlock revenue opportunities. It will also unveil its regional voice strategy. Software – Körber…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 0.32
October 04, 2021
…next day.” After the acceleration of e-commerce during the COVID-19 pandemic, how does the approaching holiday shopping season look? “Santa's turning from reindeers to robots this year.” — Rick Faulk, CEO, Locus Robotics “Santa's turning from reindeers to robots this year,” said Faulk. “We're seeing a couple of dynamics. The peak is happening earlier this year, as companies offer sales before Black Friday to flatten out the peak. It's hard for operations to run during sharp peaks, and nobody can get enough labor. We're also hearing from customers that the online population is aging in a good way, as people…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 0.49
October 03, 2021
…purchases have moved back to brick-and-mortar stores as the COVID-19 pandemic began to ease in the U.S., about 20% of sales occurred online in the second quarter of 2021, reported Digital Commerce 360. Retailers and logistics companies are under pressure to improve throughput while maintaining worker safety. Developers have responded to this need with new robots and software. Processing orders optimally Researchers at the Viterbi School of Engineering at the University of Southern California recently collaborated with Shanghai University of Finance and Engineering. They studied online shopping experiences and created a system that would enable JD.com to optimize robots within…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 0.29
September 30, 2021
…Texas with almost 70 patients and all the necessary COVID-19 precautions.” Activ Surgical said it completed the world's first autonomous robotic surgery of soft tissue in 2018. The privately held company's patented ActivEdge software is designed to use computer vision, robots, and artificial intelligence to aggregate surgical data from around the world. The goal is to enhance interoperative decision making and reduce preventable errors. Activ Surgical moves to commercialization “The funding is helping Activ Surgical transition from an R&D to a commercial organization, with a product launch in the first quarter of next year,” Kim told Robotics 24/7. “We're helping…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 0.41
September 29, 2021
…incidences of crop, dairy, and meat waste during the COVID-19 pandemic.” “Second, the government is thinking of instituting new labor policies, because working in 110-degree temperatures is not sustainable,” she said. “The longer-term goal is for UGVs [unmanned ground vehicles] to gather data for crop metrics and to understand disease. With environmental sensors, there can be better use of resources, people, water, and pesticides.” Future Acres looks ahead Future Acres plans to conduct its first demonstration of its next-generation prototype at Sun World's International Center for Innovation during this year's harvest season. 'We're being realistic about the time needed to…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 0.31
September 28, 2021
…been challenged more than ever. The first year of COVID-19 was far less challenging. People were more interested in moving. Now, people have been hunkering down with the Delta variant, so hiring is still a big challenge. The robotics industry is also dealing with supply chain challenges. If you ask me what keeps me up at night, it's these two things—staffing and supply chains. Sarcos has provided systems to the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). How much military adoption do you expect in comparison with industrial? Wolff: The 40,000 units we assume to be entirely private and commercial, with half…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 0.39
September 27, 2021
…Cave Circuit was shifted to virtual-only because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The final, four-day event tested qualifying teams on courses that incorporated relevant challenges from all three environments. Team CERBERUS deployed a diverse set of robots with the prime systems being four ANYmal C legged systems and aerial drones. In the Prize Round of the Final Event, the team won the competition and scored 23 points by correctly detecting and localizing 23 of 40 of the artifacts that DARPA had placed inside the environment. “We are delighted to have done so well,” said Prof. Maurice Fallon, lead of the Oxford…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 0.32
September 27, 2021
…face in developing the Mark 3 release during the COVID-19 pandemic? Theobald: The pandemic has focused us as a species on challenges. It was hard for customers to deploy new technologies when people couldn't get on site to map a space. But at the executive level, they understood for the first time how important flexibility is in the automation they adopt. Prior to the pandemic, labor shortages were already a problem. Now, with stuff changing so fast, fixed-infrastructure automation is not as attractive as it used to be. It has a place to be sure, but we recently talked with…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 0.14
September 24, 2021
…to visit to participate in the design; then came COVID-19. From then on, that work took place remotely using video chats. Finally, the team established milestones to audit the performance of the system, such as the ability to pick representative SKUs before going live. Addressing those issues during a pandemic, even with video chats, wasn’t easy, especially those related to quality. Along with the pandemic-induced separation, the SBR and Berkshire Grey teams had to contend with time differences, as well as language and cultural differences. Okabe said he believes the rapport his team established with the robotics supplier allowed them…
