Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 6.81
…go to the ISO [International Organization for Standards], as MassRobotics is doing. With an international body, you can have more open discussion. Right now, there are many efforts with a few people in pockets. Funding, partnerships, and industry challenges Avidbots recently raised $70 million in Series C funding. How is its market expansion going? Molina: We'll soon expand our product portfolio and add-ons, and we're also expanding to new geographic areas. We're at a beautiful inflection point for robotics. We're still at the beginning, but be aware that with commoditization lowering the costs of robots, there will be explosive growth.…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 6.75
…organizations such as the Association for Advancing Automation (A3), MassRobotics, and the Robot Operations Group (ROG)? “We are keeping abreast and have a dialogue with robotics vendors,” Sakharkar said. “Ultimately, orchestration is critical in two dimensions. We bring our expertise in contract logistics to connecting the dots and finding optimized orchestration for any given situation, based on customer needs.” “Second, in terms of collaborating with vendors, we work with best-of-breed technologies,” he said. “We're looking at the latest technologies and POCs [proofs of concept] and then see what use cases to progress further.” While there is a lot of talk…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 6.41
…laparoscopic surgery.” Activ Surgical is a resident member of MassRobotics, a collective dedicated to nurturing the Massachusetts robotics community. The company is looking to expand globally, starting with Europe. “We have filed the paperwork for CE Mark and expect approval by the end of this year or early next,” Kim noted. Bobby Yazdani, founder of Cota Capital, will join Activ Surgical's board of directors. He has more than three decades of entrepreneurial experience, including more than 20 years of investing in technology companies. “The addition of seven new investors spanning the medical and technology industries is a wonderful testament to…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 6.09
…industrial markets. American Robotics is a member of the MassRobotics consortium. American Robotics markets its Scout autonomous system as a “drone in a box” under a robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) business model. Scout was the first drone to receive U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approval for automated beyond visual line-of-sight (BVLOS) flights without a human operator on site. The Ondas subsidiaries will move their business functions to an 18,000-sq.-ft. facility that will include 6,000 sq. ft. of flex lab space. The Waverly Oaks Park in Waltham is also home to Vecna Robotics and Veo Robotics. Reese Mozer, co-founder and CEO of American…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 6.07
…a variety of industries, as well as with the MassRobotics interoperability standard. “Since we started in 2015, we focused on the broad automation sector—drones, mobile robots, and more recently, ASRS and semi-autonomous carts,” Waters told Robotics 24/7. “We started by selling charging hardware to companies building drone-in-a-box systems and saw great challenges in precision landing.” As the drone industry pivoted from consumer markets to industrial applications such as remote inspection, it had to overcome the Federal Aviation Administration's restrictions on beyond visual line-of-sight (BVLOS) flights, he recalled. However, changes in FAA regulations and increasing demand for infrastructure and other data…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 6.03
…the de facto standard in robotics.” From BattleBots and MassRobotics Innovation Challenge winners to sensor fusion for patient care and ROS 2-based autonomous vehicles, Kria enables new users to adopt adaptive computing, he said. “With the REV Robotics' DC brushless motor, like a Lego 2-in-1 kit, there's a connector to a simple robot arm and a foam ball shooter,” said Khona. “They're inherently unstable systems with lots of calculations on the back end. Dropping a ball into the chute shouldn't affect its trajectory.” “We're also looking to integrate a vision camera for shooting balls,” he said. “We hope it will…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 6.02
…founded American Robotics in 2016. The company is a MassRobotics member and is moving from Marlborough, Mass., to Waltham, Mass. It applies innovations in robot autonomy, machine vision, edge computing, and artificial intelligence. American Robotics said it has designed its fully autonomous Scout drones for rugged, real-world environments. It offers them through a robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) model. Ardenna provides data for maintenance decisions Ardenna is a spinoff of Bihrle Applied Research Inc., which was founded in 1973 as an aeronautical research and development firm. In 2014, Bihrle partnered with BNSF Railway and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) Pathfinder Program to…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 5.97
…as the Robot Industries Association (RIA) Interoperability Task Force, MassRobotics' Autonomous Mobile Robot (AMR) Interoperability Working Group, and the Robot Operations Group. Surviving coronavirus disruptions and avoiding vendor lock-in Although automotive manufacturing, one of the biggest users of industrial automation, experienced a slowdown last year because of U.S. trade disputes with China and supply chain disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic, many e-commerce and logistics providers have described an acceleration of demand. Increases that were predicted for five years coincided first with staffing shortages and then the need for social distancing. “A lot has changed in the past year,” acknowledged Prather.…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 5.96
…up to help enable interoperability across robot brands. The MassRobotics AMR Interoperability Working Group is developing standards that will “allow organizations to deploy autonomous mobile robots from multiple vendors and have them work together in the same environment, better realizing the promise of warehouse and factory automation.” Version 1.0 was released last May, and it was demonstrated in October 2021. The group includes Mobile Industrial Robots, AutoGuide, and others. 4. Cybersecurity protects critical data as automation uses more of it Cybersecurity might not immediately come to mind when it comes to technologies advancing AMRs, but that’s changing. With AI, interoperability,…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 5.86
…agency for the state. It has provided funding to MassRobotics and other organizations. Created in 2003, the Innovation Institute conducts research into unmet needs and opportunities, serves as a strategic broker, manages high-value projects, and makes strategic investments into innovation. “Our Innovation Institute team launched information sessions on the R&D grant program, designed to uncover new research collaborations that can advance our tech and innovation ecosystem,” said Carolyn Kirk, executive director of the MassTech Collaborative. “The proposals that receive grants are reviewed by an independent advisory group, which identify the key qualities that we look for in investments: ability to…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 5.84
…a much bigger issue, and the ARM Institute and MassRobotics are starting to think about it.” “It's not just the physical interface of contact chargers, but also some devices use 24- or 48-volt batteries, and others need charge fast or slow,” he said. “We need to deliver the right intelligence for a particular robot in the system to be able to scale up or down.” “Imagine a setup with just two different robots with a charging station each,” added Waters. “If a worker moves it for a box in a warehouse, for most systems, they then have to go into…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 5.83
…Wave Automation, A3, and Open Robotics, is part of MassRobotics' AMR Interoperability Working Group. “Going two or three years back, an installation of two or three AMRs was really the standard,” Nicolay said. “You saw a lot of customers started with small fleets just to test the technology. “But these days, you have installations of multiple robots—20, 30, and beyond— and not only from one vendor, but from multiple vendors for different applications, different use cases,” he added. “There really is a demand for a single internal logistics system.” The company has an ROI Calculator on its website to help…