Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 2.87
…Demand for Instant Fulfillment Thanks in large part to Amazon's ever-accelerating fulfillment speed, e-commerce has become a race to the front door. Same-day delivery for urban customers has become simply table stakes, and the bar is moving higher with even shorter delivery windows on offer. Customers are growing used to faster fulfillment, with close to half expecting delivery speeds to continue increasing, according to a recent survey.[9] As same-day delivery becomes too slow, retailers will strive to match the “30-minutes or free” standard that used to be a pizza delivery promise. If you could begin deliveries only blocks from your…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 2.86
…[acquired in 2020 by Caterpillar] and Dispatch [acquired by Amazon in 2017] exploring this space. Are there certain types of robots where you expect strong growth? Any that are overhyped? Sharma: Articulated robots: Robotic arms, also known as articulated robots, are fast, reliable, and accurate and can be programmed to do an infinite number of tasks in a variety of environments. They are used in factories to automate execution of repetitive tasks, such as applying paint to equipment or parts. In warehouses, robot arms pick, select, or sort goods from distribution conveyors to fulfill customer orders. On farms, they can…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 2.81
…their bad habits.” Jindel adds that demographics, e-commerce and Amazon have permanently changed LTL market dynamics, which aren’t going back to the old days any time soon. “The LTL sector will continue to remain tight and favorable to carriers until autonomous vehicles are embraced by society and lawmakers,” he says. “Until then, it’s Christmas time for the LTL industry.” Indeed, LTL carriers can already hear Christmas bells ringing in data of their financial charts. Revenue per hundredweight jumped 3.7% year-over-year in the first quarter with tonnage up a whopping 4.7%. That would indicate a shifting of heavier freight shipments from…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 2.77
…firms are more comfortable using public cloud services like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, IBM Cloud and others. Most software providers that offer cloud options also typically provide some flexibility for customers who either won’t or can’t (due to regulatory requirements) move to a fully public cloud infrastructure. According to Stucker, early adopters in the cloud space have focused on private clouds, but that is slowly shifting to public cloud infrastructures. “These installed cloud architectures can become obsolete quickly,” Stucker says. “Leasing compute power makes more sense for companies than buying hardware and hiring a team to manage it.”…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 2.73
…has driven the use of put walls, starting with Amazon and then [radiating] out across most of the e-commerce space,” Eldred said. “But at the end of the day, a put wall is really still just a cubby for quickly consolidating items that are all going to the same customer.” Put walls can serve as a buffer beween conveyors, packing lines, robotics, and human order pickers. Source: VARGO An explosion of technologies They may just be cubbies where orders can quickly come together for packing and shipping, but put walls have been experiencing their own technological revolution over the past…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 2.66
…are good candidates for automation because they're labor-intensive. As Amazon has been growing, the number of its employees has grown alongside that of robots because of the growth in online ordering. The second is where there's a lack of qualified workers, such as in skilled trades for manufacturing. Robots are good candidates for repetitive tasks, such as welding, assembly, or machine tending. A CNC machine takes a block of metal and removes piece of it to achieve the desired shape. A robot can then take it out and put in a new block. The third is where product quality or…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 2.61
…properly integrated and communicating. Moreover, most companies don’t have Amazon’s advantage of scale. So how can automated guided vehicles (AGVs), autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), lift trucks, and fleet management software provide greater operational agility? Note that demand is driving innovation. The global market for logistics robots could expand from $8.28 billion in 2023 to $38.13 billion by 2033 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.5%, according to Future Market Insights. “The adoption of logistics robots cuts down warehouse labor expenditure and helps businesses function efficiently,” it said. This does not mean that robots are taking jobs but that…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 2.59
…of its customers are looking at using software from Amazon Web Services (AWS) called RoboRunner for this purpose. Other Automate exhibits of interest SVT Robotics had a sizeable booth at Automate. The vendor, which offers a software platform to speed and simplify integration of robotics solutions with host systems like a warehouse management system (WMS) or an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, has drawn significant funding from investors that see industry interest in rapid integration of robotics solutions. Jim Hodson, vice president of marketing for SVT, noted it’s not just deployment speed for one system that interests companies in SVT’s…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 2.57
…already used NVIDIA AI and the Jetson platform, including Amazon Web Services, Cisco, John Deere, Medtronic, PepsiCo, and Siemens, NVIDIA said. To accelerate AI application development and deployments at the edge, NVIDIA has also created a Generative AI Lab for Jetson developers to use with the latest open-source generative AI models. Generative AI could transform industries Generative AI can ease development by enabling users to provide more intuitive prompts and change AI models, said NVIDIA. Those models can be more flexible in detecting, segmenting, tracking, searching, and even reprogramming anything, it said. In addition, models created with generative AI can…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 2.56
…(ATG), and he has also held senior roles at Amazon and Qualcomm. Robotics 24/7 spoke with Thomason about his experience, his views on autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), and his plans for Brain Corp. You've been a software leader at tech companies like Uber ATG, Oculus, and Qualcomm. What brought you to Brain Corp? Thomason: While it seems like they're all different, the big commonality is that there's a lot of systems software. While artificial intelligence and deep learning are obviously components, there's a lot of other software—Web portals, interactions, real-time pipes, updates—with remarkable parallels in my 30 years in the…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 2.56
…has lead to a hiring frenzy by companies like Amazon and FedEx, while they have also turned to deploying robotics and automation into their operations. Why? Because the boom in e-commerce is growing faster than firms can hire. Source: FedEx 2. More manufacturing to reshore As the pandemic closed borders and factories around the world, supply chains took a major pounding and continue to do so. This has caused many business executives to rethink their supply chains, and some are even reshoring manufacturing back to the U.S. The Biden administration is also actively encouraging the reshoring efforts through new programs…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 2.50
…at Kiva Systems before the company was sold to Amazon in 2012. “When we founded the company in 2015, we decided that innovation means nothing unless it brings value to the customer,” Dubois says. “So, we asked: What’s the application that can be improved in the warehouse and that was pick-to-cart? Ultimately, our ah-ha moment was that it’s really a labor and a training issue. We decided not to go after the picking arm and replace the human, but create a solution that integrates the transport vehicle, the scanner, the WMS system, put-to-light and conveyor into one system that leads…