Information briefs for the week check out CES2024 with its fewer robots however way more AI (synthetic intelligence), Doosan Robotics at CES getting an early entry into the AI-infused cobot marketplace for 2024, cobots for 2024 pursuing the “remaining resolution” within the hunt for good palletizing in a projected $2.2 billion international market, ABB Robotics slicing in two new instructions with its robots (logistics and residential constructing), and a small North Carolina entrepreneur stick-building full properties with manufacturing facility robots.
CES2024: Few cobots, plenty of AI
Unusually, the Wall Avenue Journal despatched zero reporters to CES2024, with one WSJ journalist remarking that CES has actually grow to be a super-size auto present with tons of devices; and “its affect in tech has been waning.” Appears a sound commentary. Throw in a number of showrooms with slick autonomous farm robots and big idea drones for future city journey, and also you’ve received CES2024 in a nutshell.
One factor that almost each one of many 4,000-plus exhibitor cubicles had in frequent was some form of synthetic intelligence (AI) married to their merchandise. With CES struggling since COVID to return to these heady days of wall-to-wall humanity (circa 2018), AI served properly as a spark of curiosity to drive attendance, which a number of sources tabbed as within the 100K vary (report 180k in 2018).
Simply to be sure that AI received sufficient consideration as this 12 months’s headliner, CES 2024 featured greater than 30 panel discussions on AI, GenAI, machine studying (ML), and their impression on numerous enterprise segments.
One AI side for positive was that CES2024, held January 9-12, in Las Vegas, was the 12 months’s kickoff and vanguard of many tradeshows to come back that might be stockpiled to the rafters with AI-enabled industrial robots, cobots, and automation gear. As for CES2024, there was little in the way in which of commercial something, aside from cobot maker, Korea’s Doosan Robotics, that was there in pressure.
Since its wildly profitable IPO final October, Doosan has been ramping up public publicity and its PR agenda to the max. Getting a first-encounter bounce on the AI-enabled cobot scene, Doosan rolled into CES2024 with a full-blown, new-product showcase in its 8,000-square-foot sales space (common residence within the U.S. is 2,300 sq. ft). Doosan additionally made room for AI-controlled tractors from its Bobcat subsidiary.
Doosan took benefit of CES2024 to debut what it calls Dart-Suite, a cobot ecosystem that the corporate claims is “redefining the robotic expertise.”
Doosan’s new line of AI-enabled cobots are designed to tackle the extra labor-intensive duties throughout industries together with manufacturing, logistics, meals and beverage, structure, filmmaking, service sectors, and medical environments.
For one, Doosan unveiled its Otto Matic, a depalletizing and palletizing resolution designed to deal with unstructured and random-sized packing containers, which was developed in partnership with laptop imaginative and prescient know-how supplier Korea-based AiV and San Jose-based TDK Qeexo.
Going ahead, 2024 is shaping as much as be possibly the ultimate assault on depalletizing and palletizing options; Doosan and others are already claiming victory.
Cobots: In scorching pursuit of pallets
Ever because it was patented in 1925 and popularized within the Nineteen Thirties, how finest and the way rapidly to load and unload pallets has been pursued by employees and machines with out a lot enchancment, till the daybreak of the robotic, and now, its little brother, the cobot.
Palletizing and depalletizing with a robotic is completed just about in isolation from individuals. If not, accidents to employees in shut proximity to the robotic and pallet can simply happen. Robots fulfill the pace a part of the equation however nonetheless aren’t the perfect.
Cobots, now with larger payload capacities (between 20kg and 50kg) and longer reaches, are the instruments of selection when palletizing alongside employees or with mixed-load pallets. Palletizing gadgets are important for growing productiveness, decreasing guide labor, and optimizing materials dealing with procedures.
Cobot cells appear to be the perfect setup for employee proximity and productiveness, however mixed-load pallets are nonetheless an elusive problem that almost a dozen cobot distributors appear to be hotly pursuing, with assorted ranges of success.
It is the problem that Doosan and its Otto Matic cobot declare to have conquered. Including a 3D imaginative and prescient system, Dart Suite software program, and machine studying (ML) appears to have carried out the trick. Along with palletizing algorithms, Otto Matic will get educated on pictures of each product form and dimension that it’s going to ever encounter on the job, subsequently, says Doosan, their tech permits the system to acknowledge and classify combined and new object sorts, making it a extra versatile system. Otto Matic, subsequently, has no issue in loading or unloading mixed-load pallets.
With the usage of subtle sensors, and programming, cobot cells can organize merchandise on pallets in a methodical method, streamlining logistical processes and enabling the sleek move of products by way of warehouses, factories, and distribution facilities.
PALLETIZING MACHINE MARKET dimension was valued at $1.3 billion in 2023 and is predicted to succeed in $2.2 billion by the tip of 2030 with a CAGR of 4.4% through the Forecast Interval 2024-2030.
ABB Robotics future-readies itself…twice!
For the reason that days of former CEO Ulrich Spiesshofer (2013-2019), Swiss-Swedish ABB has made it a degree of being future-ready in all points of robotics in addition to that know-how’s future instructions. Twice just lately, ABB has demonstrated its chops at being future-ready.
FIRST: ABB’s cellular robotics trifecta is an ideal instance. ABB, seeing the fast-approaching way forward for cellular logistics, e-commerce, and AMRs, acquired (2018) Belgian robotics automation supplier, Intrion, to realize “area experience in fast-growing logistics automation market.” Then, in 2021, purchased Spanish-based ASTI cellular robotic maker, one of many EU’s best-known AMR builders. And now (5 days in the past), acquired Swiss startup Sevensense for its “eyes and brains” experience in AMR navigation.
So what do you assume now dominates ABB’s web site? How a couple of hero-image video clip of ABB’s AMRs (courtesy of ASTI) sporting eyes and sensors (courtesy of Sevensense) cruising by way of a warehouse? It looks like ABB has been a logistics chief since ceaselessly!
SECONDLY: ABB and Porsche Consulting will tackle constructing properties in a manufacturing facility. One other first for ABB! In response to Enterprise Insider (14 January 2024): “modular housing…is plagued by firms which have gone bust.” But, the necessity for single-family housing each within the U.S. and EU (particularly Germany) is essential (see video).
“Eberhard Weiblen, Chairman of the Government Board at Porsche Consulting, burdened the importance of addressing the challenges the development trade faces. He emphasised the potential for extremely automated factories to supply superior, cost-effective housing. By merging ABB’s cutting-edge robotic options with Porsche Consulting’s experience in state-of-the-art manufacturing facility planning and administration, the purpose is to revamp the development trade.”
Within the close to future, there might very properly be households receiving packages shipped by way of ABB logistics to properties constructed by ABB’s robots.
Properties stick-built in a manufacturing facility
Even small entrepreneurs can construct properties in a manufacturing facility utilizing robots. Meet North Carolina-based BotBuilt.
BotBuilt is the brainchild of Brent Wadas, Colin Devine and robotics engineer Barrett Ames. BotBuilt goals to create a robotic system that may “soak up a constructing plan, translate that plan right into a sequence of machine instructions and ship these instructions to its system.
”The corporate doesn’t construct properties in its manufacturing facility from scratch, quite it focuses on simply setting up the framing. BotBuilt’s robots piece collectively panels for partitions, ground trusses and roof trusses, that are the foremost framing elements of properties (see video).
Ames says that his system prices about $1 per hour to run, and “could be reprogrammed to construct “fully” totally different body designs for properties comparatively rapidly.” And affordably!
