Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 7.61
July 27, 2021
…kitting operations.” AmbiKit can automate product bundling for faster delivery, increasing order accuracy and reducing operating costs, said Ambi Robotics. It added that its new system includes a five-robot line to augment the pick-and-place tasks associated with one of today’s fastest-growing e-commerce opportunities: online subscription boxes. “Retailers and global e-commerce brands are operating in a year-round ‘peak’ season,” stated Jim Liefer, CEO of Ambi Robotics. “In order for high-growth brands to fulfill online orders, companies are deploying AI-powered robotic systems to increase resilience in the supply chain. AmbiKit can immediately improve efficiency by deploying into existing workflows and successfully pick…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 7.72
July 26, 2021
…of micro-fulfillment centers, mobile robots for indoor use, and delivery drones and robots. Legacy, brick-and-mortar retailers faced shutdowns, staffing shortages, and tightened profit margins during the pandemic, causing many to delay projects and investment in new technologies, said STIQ, which does business as Styleintelligence. At the same time, larger e-commerce players such as Ocado Group PLC and Amazon.com Inc., which had acquired Whole Foods in 2017, experienced rapid growth and sought partnerships with existing grocers. As a matter of perspective, even if e-grocery doubled in size, it grew to only 10% of total grocery revenue, according to industry analysts. As…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 9.92
July 25, 2021
…customers online. About Instacart and Fabric Instacart provides same-day delivery and pickup services from nearly 55,000 stores across more than 5,500 cities in North America. The company said its delivery service is available to over 85% of U.S. households and 80% of Canadian households. Its enterprise technology also powers the e-commerce platforms of some of the world’s biggest retail players, supporting their websites, applications, and deliveries. Instacart offers an Instacart Express membership that includes reduced service fees and unlimited free delivery on orders over $35. Founded in 2015, Fabric is a retail technology company on a mission to enable on-demand…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 3.93
July 24, 2021
…Do the partners envision this information being gathered by delivery vehicles, utility trucks, or autonomous passenger vehicles? Right now, Motional’s autonomous vehicles are being developed as robotaxis for passenger transportation. Those robotaxis will be the vehicles used for energy infrastructure monitoring. What sorts of insights have you gained or are you looking to gain? Motional and Eversource are still evaluating the insights. We look forward to sharing our findings as we continue to collaborate. How would more data benefit municipalities? Is this technology more relevant for suburbs or even rural areas? There many ways this type of data could be…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 3.16
July 23, 2021
…that have nothing to do with floor cleaning, like delivery robots and shelf scanning. Our pilots with Walmart on in-store delivery are mostly for restocking to back rooms and stockers. Customers also like to have AMRs pull carts for trash runs. They go to drop zones, drop off and pick up carts. The cloud is also a huge feature for managing fleets of robots. Speaking of fleets, who should manage the different types of AMRs that are emerging? Thomason: Depending who you ask, you'll get different answers. Formant and InOrbit will say there should be a centralized company or software.…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 2.67
July 23, 2021
…described Intrinsic as its “other bet” in addition to Waymo autonomous cars, Verily Life Sciences for healthcare, and Wing delivery drones. Tan-White said Intrinsic has been working on its technologies for five and a half years, and it is looking for partners in the automotive, electronics, and healthcare industries that are already using robots. Intrinsic's staff is based in Mountain View and Munich, Germany. It includes leading roboticists and AI experts such as Chief Technology Officer Torsten Kroeger, Engelberger Award winner Martin Haegele, robotics innovator Rainer Bischoff, and reinforcement learning expert Stefan Schaal. The startup is hiring for several engineering…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 4.14
July 22, 2021
…reduces errors – and customer dissatisfaction due to wrong deliveries! As you can hire robots as part of a Robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) offering, you can flexibly scale up and down as your demand dictates. Hire more when it’s busier, return them when business calms down. Adding them for a peak is easy, too – they just need to be connected to your network (assuming the system is already in place). This makes them highly cost-effective, especially as you don’t have high upfront costs related to fixed automation. Besides this, they’re easy to integrate without disturbing operations and get to know their…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 2.87
July 21, 2021
…stated Florian Pestoni, co-founder and CEO. “Third-party logistics, parcel delivery, and warehouse operators need to orchestrate robots performing different tasks, and interoperability across robot vendors is one piece of that puzzle. Now customers can connect any compatible robot to the InOrbit cloud.” Mountain View, Calif.-based InOrbit said its robot-agnostic management platform can enable robotics suppliers and operators to develop, deploy, and orchestrate AMRs at global scale. The company said its multi-cloud platform provides secure real-time analytics and data collection, robot performance monitoring, incident management, and remote interventions. “MassRobotics released this standard to help move the industry to the next level…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 1.60
July 21, 2021
…of vehicle miles travel including ride hailing, sidewalk and delivery robots, and AVs. I do think the segment that Optimus Ride is focusing on is overlooked. City governments will restrict single-occupancy vehicles, including ride hailing, and as we see environmental collapse, people will realize that transportation is part of the solution. Autonomous shuttles are like putting back in a smaller version of street cars with more flexibility and without the infrastructure. Along with bike-sharing services, they can help deal with the demise in connectivity between neighborhoods. What is the role of public policy in encouraging autonomous transport? Klein: I'm not…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 6.47
July 20, 2021
…shared plenty of news stories about how automation is enabling the current e-commerce boom and how robotic and drone delivery trials are progressing. At the same time, smart speakers overtook several social robots, most agricultural systems are still in the prototype phase, and today's videos of dancing humanoids only came after years of failures such as those in the DARPA Robotics Challenge. Over the past year, many companies laid off staffers, but relatively few shut down. Here are some recent failures and possible lessons to be drawn from them.
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 27.03
July 17, 2021
…stock and convertible bonds sale. The company serves food delivery, ride-sharing, retail, hospitality, and other sectors. It said it serves more than 2,800 counties, districts, and cities in China, and it claimed that it makes more than 40 million orders per day. Tencent was founded in 1998 and provides social media, advertising platforms, and financial and business services, and it invests in technology companies. The Shenzhen, China-based company increased its share in Meituan from 17% to 17.2%, and the subscription price was HK $273.78 per share. Meituan expands deliveries, partnerships Along with JD.com and Neolix, Meituan obtained approval from Beijing…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 2.46
July 16, 2021
…market to rapidly expand into adjacent verticals including last-mile delivery and ride-hailing, which total $9.4 trillion annually. Aurora partners to scale commercialization Aurora Driver includes software, hardware and data services to autonomously operate passenger vehicles, light commercial vehicles, and heavy-duty trucks. Aurora said it has made extensive technical investments across the self-driving stack, including its long-range, multi-modal sensing suite with FirstLight Lidar, its Virtual Testing Suite, and the Aurora Atlas HD mapping system. The company has partnered with Volvo Group (including Volvo Autonomous Solutions) and PACCAR (including the Peterbilt and Kenworth brands), which together represent about 50% of the Class…
