Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 3.49
May 14, 2021
…with the need for increased efficiency.” Automation for workforce, 'Amazon effect' challenges Before the pandemic, factors like record-low unemployment and rising wage rates had already made robotic lift trucks attractive to some operations, said Kevin Paramore, emerging technology commercialization manager at Yale Materials Handling Corp. The labor situation is different now, but due to social distancing measures and health and safety policies requiring workers who are feeling ill to stay home, distribution centers may still have difficulty maintaining their workforce. The end effect is that more operations will see automation as part of the answer to labor shortages. “When you…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 3.49
September 21, 2021
…are in production, they're still in the single digits. Amazon can hire tens of thousands of people and use thousands of robots, but very few companies can do that.” “We're seeing human beings picking everywhere,” he said. “Most facilities start with pilot projects, but a lot of automation deployments end there because the solution provider wasn't at the technology level to be stable in production.” “Having systems stop all the time kills productivity gains. You shouldn't need a human being to watch a robot all the time,” said Diankov. “Mujin has been doing this for the past five years.” “One…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 3.48
April 04, 2022
…warehouse for reasons of safety. It was homogenous. After Amazon bought Kiva, we saw a whole new set of robot-to-goods solutions from companies like Locus Robotics, 6 River Systems, and Fetch Robotics. However, like Kiva, they were homogenous solutions. They did one thing and did it well, but they were “islands of automation.” At this year's MODEX, we saw vendors such as Addverb Technologies, Geek+, or Mujin showing off their robot portfolios. Or, we saw vendors like RightHand Robotics, HAI Robotics, or Tompkins Robotics demonstrating how all of their different robot types could work together. For instance, RightHand showed its…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 3.47
April 27, 2021
…Motors had a $1.5 billion initial public offering, and Amazon.com bought Zoox for $1.2 billion. Lyft ride-hailing rival Uber Inc. sold its Advanced Technologies Group to Aurora Innovation Inc. for $4 billion in equity in December 2020. Recent partnership examples include AutoX and Honda China collaborating on testing in China, Aurora and Volvo partnering on autonomous trucks, and Siemens Digital Industries Software working with the MaRS Discovery District in Toronto. Race to autonomous driving is a marathon, not a sprint Toyota has said that it plans to offer next-generation mobility services rather than fully autonomous vehicles. Both Woven Planet and…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 3.46
December 03, 2019
…cost or delivery time. The dominance of companies like Amazon has pushed two-day shipping options to become standard in many cases. What the space faces next is a preference and competitive advantage of one-day or same-day shipping demands. And customers are willing to pay for it. Same-day shipping is a multi-billion-dollar opportunity that is expected to grow continuously through 2025 thanks to e-commerce offers and consumers being always connected to the Internet. Meeting this demand requires real-time inventory understanding throughout a supply chain, including options to turn almost any point in a supply chain to a distribution node. If an…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 3.45
February 05, 2020
…Technology Trends 2020 to Stay Competitive E-commerce and the Amazon Effect continue to stand apart in the global supply chain. As the value of e-commerce moves to take a larger market share in retail, shippers need to know how to leverage technology to reap greater rewards and value. The right applications of technology, inclusive of analytics, advanced TMS solutions, and automation, will make the biggest difference and help shippers stay competitive and survive. Will 2020 - the presumed “Golden Era of Supply Chain Technology” - finally bring balance to the forces of logistics? All indicators say, “yes,” but only if…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 3.45
January 17, 2019
…talking with industrial real estate developers that work with Amazon and other large retailers, occupiers that drive developers business, Thompson said he floated his human centric design thesis to corporate occupier, industrial real estate developers, and investors and heard back from Prologis, a major U.S.-based industrial developer, whom asked him if he was familiar with well certification. “I did not know anything about it, but it was exactly in line with this whole [human centric design] topic,” he said. “Prologis had just completed its first WELL-certified building. The results, in terms of can it get more rent for it and…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 3.44
July 26, 2021
…larger e-commerce players such as Ocado Group PLC and Amazon.com Inc., which had acquired Whole Foods in 2017, experienced rapid growth and sought partnerships with existing grocers. As a matter of perspective, even if e-grocery doubled in size, it grew to only 10% of total grocery revenue, according to industry analysts. As a result, several said they expect that portion of the market to continue growing, if at a slightly slower rate than during the past year. They cited increasing consumer familiarity with online shopping for food starting in the U.K., the success of companies such as Instacart, and increasing…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 3.41
November 02, 2022
…last-mile perspective instead of coming out of like an Amazon mega fulfillment center,” Cherewka added. He acknowledged that e-commerce volumes are down a bit compared with last year and 2020, but volumes remain high overall. “I think one of the 3PL [third-party logistics] sites we're at, their peak volumes goes up 6x around this time of the year, so it is still as crazy as ever, maybe not just as crazy as last year,” said Cherewka. Autonomous forklifts grow in popularity Like OTTO Motors, Vecna’s counterbalanced forklift has been very popular. It has become the company’s most popular lift truck,…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 3.40
September 19, 2022
…and MassMEC. Local technology companies also had booths, including Amazon Robotics, which has a facility in Westborough, Mass., as well as Pison, Synagex, Tulip, and 6K. Attendees saw some manufacturing technology in action at the Innovation Center. The FORGE Showcase area featured 20 of the supply chain nonprofit’s manufacturing partners. New this year, over 300 students from the state's Innovation Pathways high schools, community colleges, and universities were also invited to attend. They also participated in a series of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) challenges. Massachusetts state Rep Jeff Roy, D-Franklin, and state Sen. Eric Lesser, D-Longmeadow, chairs of…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 3.37
October 04, 2022
…to reserve a percentage for high-touch customers,” she added. “Amazon and others aren't doing that. ShipHero and inVia enable an autobagger to push workers doing motonous things to higher-paying custom work such as returns.” With its WMS, ShipHero already collected a lot of data before its partnership with inVia, said Barnett. “What is the most helpful data we can push back to a 3PL and its merchants?” she said. “We have a Replenishment Report tool. We put in one 25,000-sq.-ft. area everything that should moving out with inVia in one day. Moneymaking spaces are the key to profitability.” “The great…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 3.34
November 08, 2021
…on the market and could enable new applications. “At Amazon's re:MARS conference in 2019, Jeff Bezos said that people 40 years ago thought that the hardest challenges would be in artificial intelligence and machine learning,” recalled Zakareya Hussein, CEO of Touchlab. “Many of those have been addressed, but grasping is still hard.” “We were approached by clients trying to solve the grasping problem,” he told Robotics 24/7. “We're aware that physical robots are the future and looked the tiger in the eye. With electronic skin, we can enable robots to pick and place fresh produce.” Why touch matters Robotics designers…
