Information briefs for the week check out CES2024 with its fewer robots however far 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 answer” within the hunt for excellent palletizing in a projected $2.2 billion world market, ABB Robotics slicing in two new instructions with its robots (logistics and residential constructing), and a small North Carolina entrepreneur stick-building full houses with manufacturing facility robots.
CES2024: Few cobots, plenty of AI
Surprisingly, the Wall Road Journal despatched zero reporters to CES2024, with one WSJ journalist remarking that CES has actually turn into a super-size auto present with tons of devices; and “its affect in tech has been waning.” Appears a sound remark. Throw in a number of showrooms with slick autonomous farm robots and large idea drones for future city journey, and also you’ve received CES2024 in a nutshell.
One factor that just about 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 effectively 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 influence on varied enterprise segments.
One AI side for certain 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 will likely 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 power.
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 soar 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 answer designed to deal with unstructured and random-sized containers, which was developed in partnership with laptop imaginative and prescient expertise 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 Thirties, how greatest and the way shortly 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 nearly in isolation from individuals. If not, accidents to employees in shut proximity to the robotic and pallet can simply happen. Robots fulfill the velocity a part of the equation however nonetheless usually are not the best.
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 units are important for rising productiveness, decreasing guide labor, and optimizing materials dealing with procedures.
Cobot cells appear to be the most effective setup for employee proximity and productiveness, however mixed-load pallets are nonetheless an elusive problem that just about 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 accomplished the trick. Along with palletizing algorithms, Otto Matic will get skilled on photographs of each product form and dimension that it’s going to ever encounter on the job, due to this fact, says Doosan, their tech permits the system to acknowledge and classify combined and new object varieties, making it a extra versatile system. Otto Matic, due to this fact, has no problem in loading or unloading mixed-load pallets.
With using subtle sensors, and programming, cobot cells can organize merchandise on pallets in a methodical method, streamlining logistical processes and enabling the sleek circulate of products via warehouses, factories, and distribution facilities.
PALLETIZING MACHINE MARKET dimension was valued at $1.3 billion in 2023 and is anticipated to achieve $2.2 billion by the top of 2030 with a CAGR of 4.4% in the course of the Forecast Interval 2024-2030.
ABB Robotics future-readies itself…twice!
Because the days of former CEO Ulrich Spiesshofer (2013-2019), Swiss-Swedish ABB has made it some extent of being future-ready in all features of robotics in addition to that expertise’s future instructions. Twice not too long ago, ABB has demonstrated its chops at being future-ready.
FIRST: ABB’s cell robotics trifecta is an ideal instance. ABB, seeing the fast-approaching way forward for cell 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 cell 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 via a warehouse? It looks like ABB has been a logistics chief since endlessly!
SECONDLY: ABB and Porsche Consulting will tackle constructing houses in a manufacturing facility. One other first for ABB! In accordance with Enterprise Insider (14 January 2024): “modular housing…is plagued by corporations which have gone bust.” But, the necessity for single-family housing each within the U.S. and EU (particularly Germany) is vital (see video).
“Eberhard Weiblen, Chairman of the Government Board at Porsche Consulting, pressured the importance of addressing the challenges the development business faces. He emphasised the potential for extremely automated factories to provide 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 objective is to revamp the development business.”
Within the close to future, there could very effectively be households receiving packages shipped through ABB logistics to houses constructed by ABB’s robots.
Houses stick-built in a manufacturing facility
Even small entrepreneurs can construct houses 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 “absorb 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 houses in its manufacturing facility from scratch, relatively it focuses on simply establishing the framing. BotBuilt’s robots piece collectively panels for partitions, ground trusses and roof trusses, that are the most important framing parts of houses (see video).
Ames says that his system prices about $1 per hour to run, and “will be reprogrammed to construct “solely” totally different body designs for houses comparatively shortly.” And affordably!
