Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 4.56
…midsize food-service businesses? Al-Beik: Across the board, the challenges stem from logistics highly dependent on human labor. Even at capacity, the output is limited — human workers can't compete with 80 digital orders coming through in a single hour. As a result, customers have less of a burden when making an order, but they take it on when they wait to pick up their orders. Today, with the labor shortage alone, the logistics are overwhelmed, and the customer experience inevitably plummets. Therefore, the biggest challenge is upgrading logistics to support a much more streamlined input and output retail system while…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 3.95
…One of the biggest obstacles currently encountered by engineers stems from the fact that the material science supporting soft robotics is still in the early stages of its development. As a result, a number of sticking points continue to hinder soft robotics evolution. For example, the current collection of materials used by soft robot developers offers only limited functionality. Although elastomers and fluids have proven to be a good match for the mechanical properties of biological materials, they typically do not have adequate electrical, thermal or electromagnetic properties to replace the functions of motors and electronics. This shortcoming, however, has…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 3.80
…efficiency: analog processing. The catalyst for these development efforts stems from the fact that the leading processor contenders—namely GPUs, FPGAs and ASICs—require a digital data format. The catch here is that sensor output naturally comes in analog form. This means that digital systems require data to go through an analog-to-digital conversion process, which can increase the system’s latency, power consumption and cost. To address this problem—and to facilitate inclusion of AI in smart sensors—companies like Syntiant and AIStorm have chosen to provide analog data chips. In general, analog processors solve problems by representing variables and constants with voltage. The systems…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 3.70
…with a number of connectivity challenges. These challenges often stem from features of the operating environment. For example, in smart buildings, connected retail and smart warehouses, designers must deal with the presence of walls, floors, inventory and human occupants, which can degrade wireless signal propagation. Other challenges arise as a result of harsh radio frequency (RF) environments in which the commercial IoT system must compete with extraneous RF signals and noise over a broad frequency range. This heightens the importance of RF coexistence. Consideration of these connectivity challenges and many other issues should begin early in the development process, especially…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 2.96
…typical sources of customer value delivered by a warehouse stem from transaction-linked capabilities that enable successful deliveries and returns, such as ease, flexibility, velocity, visibility and reliability. Customer value can also be derived from product-linked features such as availability, personalization and quality. Needless to say, each business is unique and requires a clear definition of customer value that is specific to their product offerings, selling models, customer segments, markets and channels. Figure 4 illustrates the typical levers that a warehouse operation can pull to create customer value. These customer values should drive the definition of use cases and expected outcomes…