This week's news briefing includes IFR's predictions for the top five trends in robotics for 2024, how Covariant is combining ChatGPT-like chatbots with smart cobots, and MODEX, Schneider Electric's Lexium debuts eight exemplary collaborative robots. Let’s take a look at the method presented. Case study and Staples are trying to go beyond signing a contract with RightHand Robotics to leverage its automation capabilities.
IFR: It’s a big year for collaborative robots!
The International Federation of Robotics (IFR) has made five big predictions for robots in 2024. Each of the five seems as interesting as it can be and will have a major impact on global robotics.
However, four out of five have cobot capabilities, which is notable because no cobot has sold more than 7% of total annual sales of robots worldwide in any year over the past decade. IFR Top 5: AI and Machine Learning, Cobots, Mobile Manipulators, Digita Twin and Humanoids in New Applications.
Cobots are already gearing up for a big year as they expand into new applications. In addition to their well-known manufacturing uses, cobots aligned with AI/ML have now moved into key positions in large pharmaceutical companies' laboratory discovery, discovering new chemicals, assisting with new drugs, assisting with critical medical procedures, and joining AMR in new tasks. Friends sitting on automated mobile robot. However, it is clear that the application of collaborative robots to new tasks and functions is nowhere near over.
The IFR states that “human-robot collaboration continues to be a major trend in robotics.” Rapid advances in sensors, vision technology and smart grippers will enable robots to respond in real time to changes in their environment and work safely alongside their human colleagues.”
IFR said it was confident that collaborative robots would complement workers rather than take jobs. As evidence, he cited the entry of new collaborative robots into welding. With 400,000 welders needed over the next decade in the U.S. alone, and with not many workers signing up to do the job, cobots will fill the void, working side by side with humans.
As talent shortages continue to grow in skilled trades, more cobot/worker collaboration will become a growing trend.
Cobot combined with chatbot
Emeryville, California-based Covariant has sourced a variety of elements from labor in the physical world to build the Covariant Brain, which is used to control robots and collaborative robots. It is a kind of universal AI platform for robots.
Covariant explained: “Giving robots the ability to see, reason, and act on the world around them is universal AI. We apply AI from laboratory research to the infinite variability and constant change of our customers’ real-world operations.”
“At Covariant, we believe the next technological breakthrough lies in extending these advancements into the physical realm. Robotics is at the forefront of this change, poised to unlock efficiencies in the physical world that mirror the efficiencies we have unlocked digitally.”
Founded in 2017, the startup built a ChatGPT-style chatbot to control the arm of a collaborative robot called RFM-1 for the Robot Foundation Model, and hopes to control the arm of a robot or cobot as a way to create more machines. can. It helps in the physical world.
Covariant's ChatGPT chatbot was trained on large amounts of text, but it was also provided with video, hardware control, and motion data from tens of millions of examples of robot movements from labor in the physical world.
Peter Chen, CEO and co-founder of Covariant, along with Pieter Abbeel, said there was hope that with RFM-1, AI could finally solve long-standing difficulties in robot programming and enable robots to do more than narrow chores. “When you combine the intelligence inflection point with the hardware inflection point, you will see an explosion of robotics applications,” he says.
Currently RFM-1 is excellent in terms of pick and place, but there are limitations that need to be overcome for Covariant Brain to be used more broadly. Pulkit Agrawal, professor of AI and robotics at MIT, says: “If you want to pick up and tighten a screw or peel a piece of ginger, it’s not really a matter of selection and placement.” Watch the video
MODEX and smart cobots come together
MODEX, the largest biennial supply chain trade show, hosted more than 1700 exhibitors at the Georgia Dome this week (March 11-14). Robots, collaborative robots and AMRs have outpaced the exhibition, which showed almost nothing in the field of robotics 12 years ago. Times have changed!
This week saw the launch of eight new collaborative robot product lines in 2012, many of which were unheard of. And exactly as IFR predicted (see article above), these cobots were all “smart” cobots. The era of stupid collaborative robots and robots seems to be passing quickly.
With the launch of Lexium RL 3 and RL 12 (designated RL 18, 3, 12 and 18 in late 2024), the products of 180-year-old French-based Schneider Electric seem to be none the faster in a hurry to get wise. Please refer to the lifting capacity (kg) of each collaborative robot.
What we see at MODEX is that the world no longer needs another collaborative robot. There are already more than 60 collaborative robot suppliers selling more than 120 collaborative robot models worldwide. However, “smart” robots are and will continue to be in high demand from many suppliers looking to develop them.
Here's why:
The Lexium lineup, combined with Schneider's digital twin, can easily make a big difference when it comes time to purchase. Digital twin software allows companies to create virtual digital copies, such as Lexium RL 12. Digital twins not only optimize the operation of collaborative robots, but also provide a simulation environment to try out new procedures before trying them in the real world. do. world.
“By digitizing these processes, we can reduce time to market by up to 50% and commissioning time by up to 60%,” says Schneider.
Schneider Electric said digitalization, including advances in AI/ML (machine learning), the Internet of Things (IoT) and digital twins, is the path toward Industry 5.0.
The above IFR article on today's blog predicted: “It’s clear that the work of adapting cobots to new tasks and capabilities is far from over.”
With seemingly every vendor rushing to make cobots “smart” (as seen in MODEX from several vendors), IFR predictions are coming true faster than previously thought. And the Lexium lineup is another collaborative robot brand that is preparing for this.
Staple Tabs Ask RightHand Robotics for Help
Staples, the nation's 14th-largest online retailer with $8 billion in sales, needs help with its warehouse. Staples, based in Framingham, Mass., has 40 warehouses/fulfillment centers in the U.S. and hopes to reach 98% of its customers through its “next-day” delivery service.
Robot-driven automation is the only answer to the 98% goal, and that's clear to Staples. “We have always placed a premium on automation and see it as the future of e-commerce sorting,” said Amit Kalra, Chief Supply Chain Officer. At Staples.
To remedy the situation, Staples signed a multi-year contract with Somerville-MA-based RightHand Robotics. In a joint announcement, RightHand's RightPick robots will be deployed throughout Staples fulfillment center floors. Fitting into the office supplies giant's large-scale fulfillment automation plans, the robots perform item handling with the primary goal of reducing delivery times. Staples has about 7,500 SKUs, which isn't an overly daunting task to automate.
Staples must contend with Amazon encroaching on a significant portion of its business. Amazon-like fast delivery seems to be the future, and Staples wants to be ready.
Data from Euromonitor shows a sharp decline in office supply and stationery stores over the past five years, with the market shrinking by 38% from 2016 to 2021. Although Staples controls the lion's share of the sector, Amazon is still lurking.
Founded in 2015, the company's mission is “to build intelligent machines so humans don't have to become robots,” according to RightHand Robotics.
The word intelligent is used again with cobots. The company's RightPick robot “will run on artificial intelligence (AI)-based software, also powered by RightHand.”
The RightPick system includes hardware, sensors and software. During the system's pilot phase at Staples DC, the companies claimed that “RightHand Robotics nearly doubled the range of items the station could accept.” (see video)