As automation comes to retail industries, companies are giving machines more humanlike features in order to make them liked, not feared.
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When Tina Sorg first saw the robot rolling through her Giant supermarket in Harrisburg, Pa., she said to herself, "That thing is a little weird."
Programmed to detect spills and debris in the aisles, the robot looked like an inkjet printer with a long neck.
So, during one overnight shift, she went out to a nearby arts and craft store, brought back a large pair of googly eyes and, when no one was looking, affixed them on the top of the robot.
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Swarming robots avoid collisions, traffic jams: New algorithm could help control self-driving
For self-driving vehicles to become an everyday reality, they need to safely and flawlessly navigate one another without crashing or causing unnecessary traffic jams.
To help make this possible, Northwestern University researchers have developed the first decentralized algorithm with a collision-free, deadlock-free guarantee.
The researchers tested the algorithm in a simulation of 1,024 robots and on a swarm of 100 real robots in the laboratory. The robots reliably, safely and efficiently converged to form a pre-determined shape in less than a minute.
Robotics maker ABB has partnered with A.I. startup Covariant | Fortune
Covariant, ABB partner to integrate AI and warehouse robots
Industrial automation leader ABB and artificial intelligence startup Covariant today announced that they are working to jointly bring AI-enabled robots to market, starting with a fully autonomous system for e-commerce order fulfillment.
Covariant emerged from stealth last month , and The Robot Report named it one of “ 10 robotics startups to watch in 2020 .” Pieter Abbeel, co-founder, chief scientist, and president of Covariant (formerly Embodied Intelligence) spoke at RoboBusiness 2018.
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What do we look for in a 'good' robot colleague? - BBC Worklife
US Army explosive ordinance disposal technician Phillip Herndon was assigned a PackBot during his first tour in Iraq. Herndon’s team named their robot Duncan, after a mission when the robot glitched and began spinning in circles, or doughnuts (doughnuts led to Dunkin Donuts, hence Duncan). His fellow bomb disposal techs named theirs too, and snapped photos of themselves next to robots holding Xbox controllers, dressed in improvised costumes or posing with a drink in their claws.
AHS aligns with Mobile Industrial Robots as certified systems integrator - Modern Materials
AHS (Advanced Handling Systems), a full-service provider of integrated fulfillment, distribution, and robotic solutions, has formed a partnership with Mobile Industrial Robots – an autonomous industrial mobile robotic supplier based in Denmark as a Certified Systems Integrator.
MiR has quickly established a global distribution network in more than 47 countries with regional offices in New York, San Diego, Singapore, Frankfurt, Barcelona, and Shanghai; while MiR's headquarters reside in Odense, Denmark. Founded and run by experienced Danish robotics industry professionals, MiR has grown quickly since its founding in 2013, with sales rising by 500% from 2015 to 2016, 300% from 2016
to 2017, and 160% from 2017 to 2018.
Your next tire change could be performed by a robot – TechCrunch
Waiting in a service station waiting room purgatory one day, Victor Darolfi had a simple thought. "I sat at America's Tires for three hours and thought, hey, we use robots to put tires on at the factory," the founder explains. "Why don't we bring robots into the service industry?"
The notion was the first seed behind RoboTire, the Bay Area-based robotics company, which the former Spark Robotics CEO founded in October 2018. Now ready to come out of stealth as part of the latest batch of Y Combinator startups, RoboTire has already generated interest in the industry for its ability to change car tires in a fraction of the time of most mechanics.
As Factories Struggle With How To Automate, Ready Robotics, Spun Out Of Johns Hopkins, Raises $23
Today, the Columbus, Ohio-based company said that it had raised $23 million, led by Canaan, to expand its robotic O/S. The startup counts major manufacturers like Stanley Black & Decker and Smith+Nephew as customers, as well as smaller shops that would not otherwise be able to automate.
"Factories are hungry for robotic automation, but there are only 32,000 robotics engineers employed in U.S. manufacturing today and there are not enough systems integrators," Gibbs, the company's 37-year-old CEO, told Forbes . "Where we are at with robotic automation today is like making you write 10,000 lines of code before you can write an article in Word. These bottlenecks are a major problem for factories that are desperate to enable automation to remain competitive."
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