Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 0.31
…as detailed by Matthias Winkenbach, Ph.D., director of the MIT Megacity Logistics Lab. Podcast: How Final Mile Logistics & White Glove Services are Impacting Shipping To gain a competitive advantage in last-mile logistics, shippers need to understand the top seven trends in last mile logistics. 1. Last Mile Logistics Gets Faster Fulfillment Fulfillment timetables are changing. Consumers want faster fulfillment, and shippers need to move more product at a faster pace. Shipments that previously required one hour to process are now being forced into three-minute intervals, if not faster times. Consequently, last mile logistics is finally in a position to…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 0.30
…on display was what Jim Rice, a professor at MIT, calls “sustaining innovation.” This type of innovation represents “the combining and application of a mix of inventions, existing processes, and technologies in a new way to create improvements in cost, quality, cash, and/or service.” A great example of this recommended to me by several fellow MODEX attendees was the new goods-to-person system from OPEX, which decouples robots from its high-density storage medium. Goods-to-person isn’t new for the industry or OPEX, but the new product is a sustaining innovation based on what the company has already done. Industry consolidation continues One…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 0.27
…have been bought by several hospitals, as well as MIT. MatrixSpace designs a smarter drone Matthew King, vice president of autonomous systems at MatrixSpace Inc., said his company is developing an “AI software defined sensing and autonomous response platform” for drones. King said it starts with the company’s millimeter-wave radar and mesh network device, which he claimed no other autonomous drone making company has developed. “This has an AI sensor-fusion and perception layer that feeds into the mission autonomy engine onboard the drone that enables it to execute any mission that’s programmed into it,” King said. “Whether that is scanning…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 0.25
…illness, some health professionals are still not convinced. At MIT, professor and psychologist Sherry Turkle said she worried that the interactions of machines “push us along a road where we’re encouraged to forget what makes people special.” “The performance of empathy is not empathy,” Turkle said. “The area of companion, lover therapist, best friend is really one of the few areas where people need people.” About the author Oliver Mitchell is a partner at ff Venture Capital. His areas of focus are drones, robotics, and applied AI. Mitchell is also an adjunct professor at Yeshiva University. This column is reposted…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 0.25
…“Rise of the hyperlocal fulfillment centre”, Supply Chain at MIT.com, April 26, 2018. “The challenges of last mile logistics and delivery technology solutions”, Shelagh Dolan, Business Insider, May 10, 2018. “The future of grocery: e-commerce, digital technology and changing shopping preferences around the world”, Neilson.com, April 2015. “The race is on: 43% of consumer expect 'much faster' deliveries in 2018”, Marie Griffin, Retail Touch Points, April 2, 2018. “Real estate costs through the roof”, Emily Atkins, Inside Logistics, May 10, 2018. About the Author Greg Braun is a co-founder of C3 Solutions and is responsible for the marketing and sales…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 0.24
…team: Dexai Robotics (principal investigator), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Topic areas addressed: Automated robotic task planning Description: Fixed manipulators perform tasks that require speed and correctness. As the restaurant industry struggles to return to pre-pandemic levels and continues to navigate workforce shortages, robotics can help to fill the gap. This project will build upon Dexai Robotics’ existing product by doubling improvement on ingredient pickup robot moving time, improving the planning time for utensil pickup, and improving on meal throughput. While the use case is focused on the food industry, the deliverables from this project could benefit the broader robotics…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 0.22
…an “automation-readiness roadmap” for your own company. Participants included MIT’s Jeffrey Lipton, Dematic’s Crystal A. Parrott, Karen Leavitt of Locus, and Matt Wicks of Honeywell Intelligrated. During the discussions, Leavitt focused on the selection process and planning that should go into any investment in automation or robotics. “Robots are cool, but cool doesn’t pay the bill,” he pointed out. “The question is, will this investment really drive both the top and bottom lines? That’s what companies need to answer.” Pick a solution that’s right for your business, 6 River Systems’ Fergal Glynn added, and try to avoid pilot purgatory (i.e.,…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 0.22
…more picks. Mountz enlisted the help of his former MIT roommate Peter Wurman and Raffaello D’Andrea, who served as the faculty advisor and system architect of Cornell University’s robot soccer team. “I was a professor coming up for tenure,” Wurman told Robotics 24/7. “Mick pitched something interesting to me, but if the company failed, we'd have great material for years of research.” The trio went to work building a system. The result was a mobile robot and pod shelf designed to carry multiple items. “Once we decided that we should move orders and not just products, we worked out the…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 0.22
…to load up a container with sample boxes in a wide range of sizes and drop it off at MIT and say, 'Hey, you guys solve it,' as a new pick-and-place challenge,” he said. “We have so many projects that we're going to be working on for automation.”
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 0.17
…In this session, Yossi Sheffi, the director of the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics, examines how the pandemic has accelerated the development and adoption of these technologies and the implications they have for supply chain resilience—both now and in a post-pandemic world. “Every disruption is different,” says Sheffi. “It comes with its own litany of causes and effects and problems. No two are the same.” He goes on to say that risk management involves prevention, detection, and response. Many companies have some kind of emergency management, he adds, be it physical or virtual (the latter of which came about…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 0.16
…and more. All our code is open-source under an MIT license. For more information, see the PDF download “BenchBot: Evaluating Robotics Research in Photorealistic 3D Simulation and on Real Robots.” A lot of moving parts isn’t necessarily a good thing if they complicate the user experience, so designing the user experience was also a central focus in developing BenchBot. There are three basic commands for controlling the system: benchbot_install - -help benchbot_run - -help benchbot_submit - -help The following command helps builds powerful evaluation workflows across multiple environments: benchbot_batch - -help Here’s a simple Python command for interacting with the…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 0.16
…of Desktop Metal, and professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. “If you look at the history of manufacturing, it’s a rare opportunity to participate in as fundamental a change from the past,” he said, humbly reflecting on his career to date. 3D Printing's Place in Digital Transformation Today, the transformation of manufacturing is being driven by the influence of digital processes. Digital manufacturing is impacting business owners the world over, Christophe Schell, president of 3D printing and digital manufacturing at HP, told attendees. “On the business owner side, the digital manufacturing piece is massive from a change point of view.”…