From left to right: Jennifer Apicella, Mike Dooley, Reese Mozer and Tom Ryden.

Commercialization is the impact point where all expectations for your product are tested – right when it hits the market. Successful commercialization is good for the individual company and the robotics industry as a whole. Success leads to more products ­– whether they are follow-on, derivative, or brand-new new ideas.

In the panel session “Robotics Roadmap to Commercialization Success” during the Robotics Summit & Expo on May 10 at 11:45 AM, learn from four robotics industry experts about developing strategic partnerships to expedite commercial expansion and the steps required to succeed in this process. Gain insights on navigating the non-linear road to commercialization as these executives share their experience and thoughts on the need for precision and detail-oriented partners.

The session will include Jennifer Apicella, Vice President of the Pittsburgh Robotics Network, where she oversees the growth and development of strategic partnerships and major programs, for one of the top robotics ecosystems in the world. With 15-plus years of experience working in technology, she has spent the majority of her career helping clients succeed with enterprise technology solution adoption.

It will also include Mike Dooley, a leading pioneer in consumer robotics, successfully shipping millions of products into homes for over the past 20 years. He launched the original LEGO MindStorms product line, introducing millions of kids to robotics. Dooley later co-invented and launched what is now the Braava series of smart robotic mops (acquired by iRobot) and helped develop the systematic mapping behaviors used in Roomba today. In 2017, he co-founded Labrador Systems to establish a new category of assistive robots.

Reese Mozer, CEO and Co-Founder of American Robotics and President of Ondas Holdings will also be a panelist. He is an accomplished entrepreneur, executive, and technologist, with over 12 years of experience in the drone, robotics, and private equity sectors. He also serves as a Board member of the Commercial Drone Alliance (CDA). Mozer holds a Master’s in Robotic Systems Development from Carnegie Mellon University and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and Entrepreneurship from the University of Southern California.

Tom Ryden, Executive Director of MassRobotics, will moderate the session. Ryden is an experienced senior executive who has devoted his career to creating viable businesses based on technology, covering domains ranging from the factory to battlefield to healthcare. He has overseen the development and introduction of leading mobile robotics products.

You can find the full agenda for the Robotics Summit here. The Robotics Summit & Expo is the premier event for commercial robotics developers. There will be nearly 70 industry-leading speakers sharing their development expertise on stage during the conference, with 150-plus exhibitors on the show floor showcasing their latest enabling technologies, products and services that help develop commercial robots. There also will be a career fair, networking opportunities and more.

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The automotive industry has the largest number of robots working in factories around the world. The operational stock hit a new record of about one million units. This represents about one-third of the total number installed across all industries, according to research from the International Federation of Robotics (IFR).

“The automotive industry effectively invented automated manufacturing,” said IFR president Marina Bill. “Today, robots are playing a vital role in enabling this industry’s transition from combustion engines to electric power. Robotic automation helps car manufacturers manage the wholesale changes to long-established manufacturing methods and technologies.”

Robot density is a key indicator that illustrates the current level of automation in the top car-producing economies. In the Republic of Korea, 2,867 industrial robots per 10,000 employees were in operation in 2021. Germany ranks in second place with 1,500 units followed by the United States counting 1,457 units and Japan with 1,422 units per 10,000 workers.

The world´s biggest car manufacturer, China, has a robot density of 772 units, but is catching up fast, according to the IFR. Within a year, new robot installations in the Chinese automotive industry almost doubled to 61,598 units in 2021. This accounted for 52% of the total 119,405 units installed in factories around the world.

Ambitious political targets for electric vehicles are forcing the car industry to invest. The European Union has announced plans to end the sale of air-polluting vehicles by 2035. The U.S. government aims to reach a voluntary goal of 50% market share for electric vehicle sales by 2030 and all new vehicles sold in China must be powered by “new energy” by 2035. Half of them must be electric, fuel cell, or plug-in hybrid – the remaining 50%, are hybrid vehicles.

Most automotive manufacturers who have already invested in traditional “caged” industrial robots for basic assembling are now also investing in collaborative applications for final assembly and finishing tasks. Tier-two automotive parts suppliers, many of which are SMEs, are slower to automate fully. Yet, as robots become smaller, more adaptable, easier to program, and less capital-intensive this is expected to change.

In late 2022, the IFR released its latest world robotics report. The report showed that 517,385 new industrial robots were installed in 2021 in factories around the world, an all-time high for the industry. Robot installations grew by 31% year-over-year in 2021. They exceeded the pre-pandemic record of robot installations in 2018 by 22%. At the time the report was published, the stock of operational robots around the world also hit a new record of about 3.5 million units.

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Agility Robotics is unveiling at ProMat the next generation of its Digit humanoid. Most humanoids to date have been designed for research labs. Digit, on the other hand, is being built specifically to carry out tasks in warehouses and distribution centers. It’s starting by targeting bulk material handling tasks such as tote movement.

At ProMat, the Digit humanoid will carry out tasks autonomously in a replica warehouse in Agility’s booth. The Robot Report is attending ProMat.

Digit stands about 5 feet 9 inches tall and weighs about 140 lb. Updates in the next generation include newly designed end effectors optimized for reaching high/low, pulling, picking up, and placing objects commonly found in e-commerce and shipping warehouses, like plastic totes. Digit also has a new head with LED animated eyes, which allow for improved human-robot interaction such as using simple expressions to convey information and intent. For example, the new Digit uses body language and eye movement to indicate which direction it is about to turn.

Other new features include upgraded sensors and cameras, increased battery capacity, longer run time, improved rate of charging, and a new charging dock.

Agility is also opening up applications for a limited number of spots in the Agility Partner Program (APP). The APP will provide partners with an opportunity to shape the development of Digit’s skills. Agility said it expects to deliver the first beta robots to customers in this program in early 2024. The company expects the humanoid to be generally available in 2025.

Next-gen Digit humanoid. | Credit: Agility Robotics

“Three years ago, we introduced the first commercially available bipedal robot with a human form factor made for work. Since then, we have seen enormous interest in Digit from multinational logistics companies, and have worked closely with them to understand how they want to use Digit to improve warehouse and supply chain operations. We designed the next generation of Digit with those customer use cases in mind,” said Damion Shelton, co-founder and CEO of Agility Robotics.

Jonathan Hurst, CTO and co-founder of Agility Robotics, is also a professor of robotics at Oregon State University’s College of Engineering. His lab created ATRIAS, a research robot that was one of the first robots to reproduce human walking gait dynamics. Agility spun out of Oregon State University in 2015 to commercialize this research. Agility first launched the Cassie bipedal robot, which was then followed up by earlier versions of Digit.

In April 2022, Agility raised $150 million in Series B financing. DCVC and Playground Global led the funding round, which also included participation from the Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund.

“We’ve learned so much about how robots can partner with the human workforce and work naturally in human environments, and we can’t wait to see the positive impact that the new Digit will have in the world,” said Hurst. “When people and robots work together in logistics operations, working conditions improve for people, warehouse efficiency improves overall, the supply chain moves more smoothly – everybody wins.”

“Supply chains are still feeling the after-effects of the pandemic, and the demand for warehouse labor far exceeds available talent. Companies are turning to automation now more than ever to help mitigate future disruptions. With logistics labor issues such as high turnover, burnout, and injury continuing to rise, we believe Digit to be the future of work,” continued Shelton. “We look forward to Digit augmenting workforces, taking on the ‘dull, dirty, and dangerous’ tasks, and allowing people to focus on more creative and complex work. We like to think of Digit as enabling humans to be more human.”

Are humanoids gaining momentum?

Building a humanoid that can do anything reliably, including balancing and walking, is extremely difficult. But several companies think the enabling technologies have improved so much in the last 10 years that building a general-purpose humanoid might now be possible.

Tesla is certainly the most high-profile of the bunch with its Optimus humanoid. Tesla has at least shown a real-life version of Optimus, whereas a startup that just emerged from stealth, Figure, has only shown renderings of its humanoid. Apptronik is also developing a humanoid and will be talking about its approach at the upcoming Robotics Summit & Expo, which runs May 10-11 in Boston.

Of course, Boston Dynamics still has Atlas. It’s far and away the most impressive humanoid ever built. And, yes, it’s real. I’ve seen the parkour routine in person. Boston Dynamics has been clear throughout Atlas’ development that its humanoid is purely for R&D purposes. And although it recently unveiled a video of Atlas “working” at a mock construction site, it said humanoids that can routinely tackle dirty and dangerous jobs in the real world are a “long way off.”

With all this momentum around humanoids, perhaps we’ll soon find out who’s right.

The post Next-gen Digit humanoid wants to automate logistics tasks appeared first on The Robot Report.

ABB this morning started construction on the expansion of its existing North American robotics headquarters and manufacturing facility in Auburn Hills, Michigan. The $20 million project is expected to be completed in November 2023 and will create 72 highly skilled new jobs in the area and is supported by a $450,000 Michigan Business Development Program performance-based grant.

Adding to the $14 billion ABB has invested in the US since 2010, the latest investment in its robotics headquarters and factory will benefit customers in the Americas, particularly those in growth sectors including electric vehicles, healthcare, packaging and logistics. With the expansion set to increase the factory’s production capacity, it responds to the increased demand for automation from 70% of U.S. businesses looking to bring production closer to home, as revealed by ABB Robotics’ survey of 1,610 executives in the U.S. and Europe in June 2022.

“Our investment is a significant step in accelerating ABB Robotics’ global leadership in developing and manufacturing cutting-edge robotic solutions in the U.S., for the Americas,” said Sami Atiya, president of ABB Robotics and Discrete Automation. “As the global megatrends of labor shortages, uncertainty, the near and reshoring of production, and a desire to operate more sustainably accelerate, more businesses are turning to automation to build resilience while improving efficiency and flexibility. Our expanded facility will help us to better serve customers in the US and across the Americas, giving them access to innovative automated solutions.”

ABB Robotics moved into the 538,000-square-foot building in 1993 and opened the manufacturing plant in 2015. The expansion and increased use of automation in the factory will create new jobs, supporting the ABB Robotics Packaging & Logistics Headquarters in Atlanta and the Robotics Lifesciences and Healthcare Hub located at the Texas Medical Center in Houston. ABB already has a workforce of approximately 350 employees at Auburn Hills.

“ABB’s $20 million investment creating 72 jobs will build on our economic momentum and help us continue leading the future of robotics and automation,” said Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. “Thanks to companies like ABB Robotics and the support of our local partners, we can keep bringing jobs and investment to every region of our state, revitalizing communities, and building an economy of the future.”

ABB said this investment will see the latest digital and automation technologies implemented to manufacture next-generation robots in the U.S., for the Americas, streamlining the delivery process and reducing lead times. Close to 90% of robots delivered to customers in the U.S., Canada, Mexico and South America will soon be made in Auburn Hills. The plant will use flexible, modular production cells that are digitally connected and networked, and served by intelligent autonomous mobile robots. AI-powered robotic systems will take on tasks such as screw driving, assembling and material handling, relieving people from these tasks and enabling more rewarding work.

“The expanded facility will feature the most advanced technology available, with AI-enabled robots and smart digital manufacturing systems supporting the production and manufacture of state-of-the-art customer solutions,” said John Bubnikovich, ABB United States robotics division president. “Almost every aspect of the site will be upgraded to enrich our efforts to attract, retain and nurture the best automation talent, while creating a US manufacturing hub and headquarters befitting of a global leader in automation.

As a world-leading robotics company, ABB has made a number of important announcements over the last few months. In December 2022, it launched the SWIFTI CRB 1300 robot arm and opened a robotics mega factory in Shanghai. In October, ABB launched the IRB 1010, which is the company’s smallest industrial robot ever. 

And in September 2022 it launched its first range of rebranded autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) following the acquisition of mobile robot leader ASTI Mobile Robotics in 2021 for $190M. ASTI Mobile Robotics’ solutions are now rebranded and integrated into ABB’s portfolio, grouped under the Flexley name, indicating the flexibility of operations that the AMRs offer. The first rebranded models to be released, Flexley Tug and Flexley Mover, cover applications including towing, trolley transportation up to 5,350 lbs (2000 kg), as well as lifting and transporting racks, containers and pallets of 4,000 lbs (1,500 kg).

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The PR2 is one of the most beloved robots in the robotics industry. It was the state-of-the-art mobile manipulator when it was launched in 2009 by Willow Garage. The PR2 was sold in small numbers to research labs. Willow Garage continued to support the PR2 until the company was shut down in 2014.

If anyone’s interested in learning about the PR2, or reviving the platform, Clearpath Robotics is here to help. Clearpath took over service and support responsibilities of the PR2 after the Willow Garage shutdown. Clearpath posted on its new documentation website all design files for PR2. You need to give up some of your information to access the files, but there’s a lot there. You can now access resources such as wiring diagrams, schematics, cable and assembly drawings and everything else related to the most advanced research and development platform of its time.

“Clearpath Robotics has been a long-standing supporter of PR2, with the intention of providing important resources to its users,” the company said on its website. “On that account, we are thrilled to have all design files for PR2 available for download on our new documentation website. The hardware and 1000+ software libraries currently available for PR2 affirms new opportunities for robotics researchers to focus on. We are excited to see how these supplementary resources will help developers with their applications.”

The PR2 could navigate unknown, human-shared environments, and could grasp and manipulate objects. The ground-breaking platform propelled research in fields of automation, manipulation and human-robot interaction. The PR2 was entirely written in the Robot Operating System (ROS), making its capabilities available through ROS interfaces. It had two 7-DOF robot arms, a variety of sensors, two computers in its base and much more.

In the meantime, take a trip down memory lane and relive some of the milestones the PR2 team achieved.

The post Full set of design files released for PR2 robot appeared first on The Robot Report.

Ambi Robotics is deploying its parcel-sorting robots at OSM Worldwide’s warehouses in the U.S. Based on the minimum four-year robots-as-a-service (RAAS) deal, the flagship AmbiSort A-Series system will be installed at OSM warehouses in Atlanta, Chicago, and Las Vegas.

The AmbiSort A-Series is a configurable robotic sorting system that uses machine learning to adapt to mixed parcels like polybags, flats and boxes into last-mile mailsacks. The systems are modular and configurable to accept parcels via rolling bin or the new conveyor-fed automated induction system.

AmbiSort is powered by AmbiOS, the company’s proprietary operating system that leverages simulation-to-reality (Sim2Real) artificial intelligence (AI). AmbiOS is based on The Dexterity Network (Dex-Net) project that was developed at UC Berkeley to automate the training of deep neural networks to improve a robot’s ability to grasp various items. Many of Dex-Net’s developers are now working at Ambi Robotics.

According to Ambi Robotics, AmbiSort systems are first designed and trained in simulation, which speeds up training 10,000x faster than teaching algorithms in the physical world.

“At OSM Worldwide, we are always looking for ways to improve our sorting and delivery operations, and we’re excited to partner with Ambi Robotics to empower our workforce with cutting-edge technology across our warehouses,” said James Kelley, president at OSM Worldwide. “With the AmbiSort A-Series systems, we can improve order accuracy and speed to our ecommerce customers while improving efficiency and safety for our warehouse employees amid rising parcel demand.”

Ambi Robotics’ AmbiSort parcel sortation system. | Credit: Ambi Robotics

Ambi Robotics raised a $32 million funding round in October 2022. The company has now raised about $67 million since it was founded in 2018. It closed a $26 million Series A in September 2021.

Ambi said it deployed an additional 60 robots to its U.S. customer base in under 60 days ahead of the 2022 peak holiday season. It said its robotic sorting systems are being used in more than 13 cities across the U.S. Pitney Bowes, a global shipping and mailing company, is another high-profile customer for Ambi. The company’s recently signed a $23 million expansion deal that would bring AmbiSort systems to additional warehouse locations.

Jeff Mahler, co-founder and CTO of Ambi Robotics, will be speaking at the Robotics Summit & Expo, which takes place May 10-11 in Boston. Mahler will be on the panel “Innovation in Robotic Grasping” to discuss emerging approaches to robotic manipulation, including the work being done at Ambi.

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Early bird registration for the Robotics Summit & Expo ends March 9. Buy your full conference pass before then to save 50% ($300) and gain full access to the world’s leading event dedicated to commercial robotics development.

Discounts are also available for academia, associations, and corporate groups. Please e-mail events@wtwhmedia.com for more details about our discount programs. Expo only tickets are just $75.

Taking place May 10-11 at the Boston Convention Center, the Robotics Summit & Expo brings together the brightest minds in robotics to share their commercial robotics development experiences. Our conference programming will provide professionals the information they need to successfully develop the next generation of commercial robots.

World-class keynotes speakers

The Robotics Summit keynote speakers include the following:

• Howie Choset, Professor of Robotics, Carnegie Mellon University
  Idea to Reality: Commercializing Robotics Technologies
• Laura Major, CTO, Motional
  Scalable AI Solutions for Driverless Vehicles
• Marc Raibert, Executive Director, AI Institute
  The Next Decade in Robotics
• Martin Buehler, Global Head of Robotics R&D, Johnson & Johnson MedTech
  The Future of Surgical Robotics
• Nicolaus Radford, CEO, Nauticus Robotics
  Developing Robots for Final Frontiers

The expo hall at the Robotics Summit will have more than 150 exhibitors showcasing their latest enabling technologies, products and services that can help robotics engineers throughout their development journey. The Robotics Summit also offers networking opportunities, a Career Fair, a robotics development challenge and much more.

Co-located events

The Robotics Summit & Expo will be co-located with the Healthcare Robotics Engineering Forum, which offers two tracks dedicated to the development of healthcare robotics solutions. Also co-located with the Robotics Summit event is DeviceTalks Boston, the premier industry event for medical technology professionals, currently in its ninth year. Both events attract engineering and business professionals from a broad range of healthcare and medical technology backgrounds.

Sponsorships

For information about sponsorship and exhibition opportunities, download the prospectus. Questions regarding sponsorship opportunities should be directed to Colleen Sepich at csepich[AT]wtwhmedia.com.

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John Deere has acquired SparkAI, a New York-based startup that develops human-in-the-loop technology to help robots resolve edge cases in real-time. John Deere, which has developed autonomous tractors, was a SparkAI customer for a few years prior to the acquisition. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Willy Pell, VP of autonomy and new ventures at Blue River Technology, a company John Deere acquired in 2017 for $305 million, announced the acquisition on LinkedIn. Michael Kohen, founder and CEO of SparkAI, also posted about the acquisition on the social media platform. SparkAI was founded in 2020 and had raised $7.3 million before being scooped up by John Deere.

Kohen was a guest on The Robot Report Podcast in September 2022 and discussed the company’s human-in-the-loop technology at length.

Operating in a harsh environment like a farm with dust, rain and snow can occasionally make it difficult for machine learning models to consistently make confident & safe decisions. Here’s how the technology works with John Deere’s autonomous tractors:

In moments of low confidence, the autonomous tractor automatically calls SparkAI’s service, passing imagery and other metadata via REST API. The objective is to resolve difficult-to-discern details about the scene to support a real-time decision. SparkAI said it does this by combining two key components in real-time:

• 1. Cognitive input from multiple human mission specialists trained for the use case
• 2. Results from its proprietary software-based decision system

SparkAI returns this resolution to the autonomous tractor. The robot combines this resolution with its pre-existing knowledge of the world to decide on a safe and confident action. According to SparkAI, the entire round-trip process takes seconds and happens thousands of times per day, 24/7.

SparkAI’s role in the workflow is not to take over control and remotely pilot the autonomous tractor. SparkAI provides contextual cues that the autonomous tractor is sometimes missing in order to make confident decisions.

“Spark is going to expedite everything we do. We’re going to be able to ship products sooner and at higher quality with less work,” said Pell. “When we automate away the chunks of human intervention, we will do so with great datasets that characterize the problem across many situations and environments. And all the while we will be delivering value to the customers and learning more about our technology and the environment. And then we will apply that cognition to the next area of growth.”

This is the latest in a string of robotics-related moves by John Deere. In May 2022, it acquired numerous patents and other intellectual property from Light, which specializes in depth sensing and camera-based perception for autonomous vehicles. Financial terms of the deal are unknown. Light was founded in 2013 and raised $185.7 million before the acquisition.

In April 2022, John Deere formed a joint venture with GUSS Automation, a Kingsburg, California-based developer of semi-autonomous orchard and vineyard sprayers. Through the joint venture, Deere will help GUSS further collaborate with the Deere sales channel.

In August 2021, John Deere acquired Bear Flag Robotics for $250 million, a Calif.-based developer of autonomous driving technology for tractors. Founded in 2017, Bear Flag Robotics retrofits its autonomy stack onto existing tractors. It uses cameras, LiDAR and radar technology for redundant, 360-degree situational awareness on a farm.

And, of course, John Deere’s quest for autonomy was kicked off by its acquisition of Blue River Technology in 2017 for $305 million.

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MassRobotics announced the teams participating in its inaugural Form & Function Robotics Challenge. The finalists will be showcasing their robots on May 10-11 at the Robotics Summit & Expo in Boston. The winners will be announced on May 11 at 12:30 PM at the event.

The challenge calls for teams to create a robotics or automation project that delivers a compelling form factor specific to its tasks while accomplishing a useful function. The following universities will be participating:

• Brown University
• Indiana University Bloomington
• Kwame Nkrumah Science and Technology
• MIT
• Northeastern University
• Seoul National University
• Stevens Institute of Technology
• Tufts University
• University of Bath
• University of Calgary
• University of Southern Denmark
• Worcester Polytechnic Institute

“We received entries for the Form and Function Challenge from around the world,” said MassRobotics executive director Tom Ryden. “We are excited about the selected teams, their robot concepts and the ways they are planning to incorporate many of our partners’ offerings, from development kits to sensors to software. We look forward to the teams showcasing their robotic solutions at the Robotics Summit & Expo in May.”

The challenge encourages cross-collaboration between state-of-the-art software and hardware providers, including MassRobotics strategic partners Onshape, Lattice Semiconductor, Nano Dimension, Danfoss, FESTO, Novanta, and Analog Devices. The challenge requires teams to use the offerings from a minimum of two of the seven partners. Examples of the offerings available to participants include:

Lattice Semiconductor: FPGA technology with their solution stack for a machine vision camera
Onshape: cloud-native CAD platform
Nano Dimension: 3D printed circuit boards and design review
FESTO: vacuum gripper kit and Electrical Actuators
Novanta: drives, inductive position encoders, RFID
Danfoss: remote control and PLUS+1 controllers

Participating teams will be provided technical support in the form of software, hardware, expertise and regular check-ins with the challenge’s sponsoring partners. Teams have until May 5, 2023 to develop and complete their projects and will have the opportunity to present their work at the Robotics Summit & Expo.

The challenge offers a grand prize of $25,000, along with $5,000 prizes for second and third place and a $5,000 Audience Choice award.

The Robotics Summit & Expo is the premier event for commercial robotics developers. There will be nearly 70 industry-leading speakers sharing their development expertise on stage during the conference, with 150-plus exhibitors on the showfloor showcasing their latest enabling technologies, products and services that help develop commercial robots. There also will be a career fair, networking opportunities and more. Register for full conference passes by March 9 to save $300. Expo-only passes are just $75. Academic discounts are available and academic full conference rates are just $295.

The post Form & Function Robotics Challenge teams announced appeared first on The Robot Report.

The Robotics Summit & Expo, produced by The Robot Report and parent company WTWH Media, recently announced the full conference agenda for the May 10-11 event at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. Since its founding in 2018, the Robotics Summit & Expo has become the world’s premier commercial robotics development event.

The conference sessions at the event are designed to impart engineers with the information they need to develop and deploy the next generation of commercial robots. Beyond the keynotes and conference sessions, there will be 150-plus exhibits and demonstrations on the expo show floor, a career fair, a robotics development challenge, networking opportunities and more.

Register for full conference passes by March 9 to save $300. Expo-only passes are just $75. Academic discounts are available and academic full conference rates are just $295.

The Robotics Summit & Expo will be co-located with the Healthcare Robotics Engineering Forum (HREF), an event designed to provide engineers, engineering management, business professionals and others with information about how to successfully develop and deploy the next generation of healthcare robot. Also co-located with these events is DeviceTalks Boston, the premier industry event for medical technology professionals. HREF and DeviceTalks Boston attract engineering and business professionals from a range of medical technology backgrounds.

The complete agenda for the Robotics Summit & Expo is below. You can also view the entire agenda here and register here.

Wednesday, May 10, 2023

Opening Keynote: Idea to Reality: Commercializing Robotics Technologies
Howie Choset, Professor of Robotics, Carnegie Mellon University
8:45 AM -9:30 AM

Turning a technology developed inside a lab into a successful robotics company is no easy task. Howie Choset has done this several times with companies such as Medrobotics (surgical robots), Hebi Robotics (modular robots) and Bito Robotics (robot software). Choset will share insights about the robotics startups he founded and best practices for taking technological innovation from an idea to reality.

Keynote: Future of Open-Source Robotics Development
Wendy Tan White, CEO, Intrinsic
9:30 AM – 10:15 AM

In this fireside chat, Intrinsic CEO Wendy Tan White will discuss the company’s ongoing efforts to make industrial robotics more accessible and usable for millions more businesses, entrepreneurs and developers. Tan White will also discuss the recent acquisition of the Open Source Robotics Corporation and what it means going forward.

Keynote: Scalable AI Solutions for Driverless Vehicles
Laura Major Chief Technology Officer, Motional
10:45 AM – 11:30 AM

Major will discuss Motional’s approach to developing SAE Level 4 autonomous vehicles (AVs) that can safely navigate complex road scenarios. As part of the discussion, Laura will cover the core challenges of AVs, deep learning advancements, and Motional’s innovative Machine Learning-first solutions.

Breakout Session: Robotics Roadmap to Commercialization Success
Speakers: Jennifer Apicella, Vice President, Pittsburgh Robotics Network; Reese Mozer, CEO and Co-Founder, American Robotics; Andy McMillan, Advisory Board Chairman, Cirtronics
11:45 AM – 12:30 PM

Commercialization is the impact point where all expectations for your product are tested – right when it hits the market. Successful commercialization is good for the individual company and the robotics industry as a whole. Success leads to more products, whether they are next-gen, derivative, or brand-new new ideas. Join us in learning from three experts in the robotics industry about how developing strategic partnerships can expedite commercial expansion and the steps required to succeed in this process. While the road to commercialization may not be linear, executives share their firsthand experiences and requirements for precision and detail-oriented partners.

Breakout Session: Situational Awareness Using 3D LiDAR
Cedric Hutchings, Co-Founder & CEO, Outsight
11:45 AM – 12:30 PM

Many types of robots can leverage 3D LiDAR data to gain situational awareness in real time. This awareness is essential to perform required tasks but also to enable market adoption. However, effectively using LiDAR data in real time is complex and expensive. In this presentation, attendees will learn about a new category of LiDAR software – a real-time pre-processing engine – that allows application developers and integrators to use LiDAR data from any hardware supplier and for any application. Real-world use cases and LiDAR recordings will be used to illustrate the practical applications.

Breakout Session: Achieving Scalable Interoperability with Automated Negotiation
Michael Grey, Software Engineering Manager, Intrinsic
11:45 AM – 12:30 PM

With the rapid acceleration of robot deployments, the need for heterogeneous fleet management will become standard. In this session, Intrinsic will share recent developments in the Open-RMF platform and present use cases where it has been deployed. Intrinsic will also present a roadmap about the future of Open-RMF and interoperability and some of its latest tools and capabilities, including:

• Multi-agent planning framework – Mapf is a library for cooperative path finding
• Task Management – the latest improvements including a flexible task framework to allow custom task definitions, multi-phase tasks, prioritization and more
• Site Editor – a desktop or web utility to visualize and edit large deployment sites
• Crowd Simulation – a plugin to simulate human actors with multiple behaviors
• Obstacle Detectors – packages that infer the presence of obstacles from sensor inputs including LIDAR or 2D/3D cameras

Breakout Session: Designing Surgeon-Level Haptic Sensing for Surgical Robotics
Robert Brooks, CEO, Forcen
11:45 AM – 12:30 PM

Force and torque sensing play key roles in enabling surgical robotics, including at the tip of the instrument, trocar location/tissue contact, surgeon collaboration and the surgeon interface. During this session, attendees will learn about 13 core specifications for haptic sensors and the current state-of-the-art of what’s possible. This talk will detail best practices for implementing haptic sensors into surgical robots, including:

• Thermal compensation and considerations under surgical drapes
• Grounding & shielding inside ultra-compact robotic joints
• Engineered cable assemblies for high-flex, multidimensional, tight-bend application

How customizable cobot design enables success of your surgical robotics company
Speakers: Gene Matthews, Senior Product Manager, Kollmorgen; Dr. Jindong Tan, President and Founder, Azure Medical Innovation
1:45 AM – 12:30 PM

Collaborative robots and AI are becoming increasingly important for surgeons to perform repetitive and precise control tasks. But surgical applications have unique performance and certification requirements that are not available in the current cobot market. This presentation aims to help eliminate barriers to choosing customized surgical robots, as well as help surgical robotics companies build out their specifications so that they can focus on clinical applications. This talk will also address critical engineering considerations when specifying surgical application needs on collaborative features, AI integration in the surgical flow, and certification requirements:

• What are the unique requirements for cobots in surgical applications?
• How do key components such as frameless motors determine performance?
• How do cobots and AI-enabled vision impact surgical flow?
• How customized design can impact performance, development cycle, and certification

Breakout Session: Sensor Calibration and SLAM to increase ODD & reduce BOM cost
William Sitch, Chief Business Officer, Main Street Autonomy
2:00 PM – 2:45 PM

Autonomy and perception systems are built on the core components of sensor calibration, localization, and mapping. Calibration requires targets and trained personnel and maintenance. Localization and mapping only works in certain areas with expensive sensor systems. These issues drive higher robot cost, restrict robot deployments and constrain business growth. This talk will detail three innovations that solve these problems.

Breakout Session: Simplification of Advanced Motion Control Using Integrated Servo Drives
Andrew Zucker, Mechatronics Engineer, Harmonic Drive
2:00 PM – 2:45 PM

In modern robotic applications, space comes at a premium. Power density continues to be a leading factor in robotic applications, although it is often compromised by the cabling and hardware needed to implement the power and control systems. In this session, we will explore how to simplify the design of a robotic joint without compromising performance, reliability, or advanced motion control features that normally come at the cost of bulky cabling and electronics.

Breakout Session: Developing General Purpose Robots That Push the Boundaries of Technology
Jeff Cardenas, CEO, Apptronik
2:00 PM – 2:45 PM

New hardware, sensors, algorithms, and AI technologies have opened up the ability to rethink how robots are developed for use in unstructured environments. Using a first principles approach, Apptronik has used the same platform to develop a range of robots from exoskeletons to humanoids. This has resulted in reactive, compliant, lightweight, and affordable robots that can perform a variety of tasks in existing human environments. In this session, you will about Apptronik’s approach to developing a platform for general-purpose robots, their use cases, and the future viability of these systems.

Breakout Session: Developing a New Generation of Robots to Transform Care in the Home
Mike Dooley, CEO, Labrador Systems
2:00 PM – 2:45 PM

Across the globe, we are living older for longer than ever before. This is creating huge demands on caregivers, healthcare systems and societies overall, where many regions are already experiencing a labor shortage crisis. Robotics can play a significant role in helping people live more independently for longer.

To achieve this, robotics has to transform in at least two major ways. First, we need to develop robots that can scale to be affordable for personal, 1-to-1 use, which is a dramatic change from most commercial robots today. Second, making functional robots operate autonomously in homes requires solving for much greater complexity, with far more diverse and challenging settings and use case scenarios.

In this presentation, Labrador Systems will walk through the design and development of Retriever, a personal robot built from the ground up to operate in the home, lighten the load of daily activities, extend the impact of caregivers, and ultimately help us live more independently as we age.

Breakout Session: Keys to Using ROS 2 and Other Frameworks for Medical Robots
Tom Amlicke, Software Systems Engineer, MedAcuity
2:00 PM – 2:45 PM

What is the best architectural approach to use when building medical robots? Is it ROS, ROS 2 or other open-source or commercial frameworks? The answer is, “it depends.” In this presentation, we will explore engineering questions concerning the level of concern, risk, design controls, and evidence on a couple of different applications of these frameworks. Looking at three hypothetical robotic systems, we will explore these approaches:

1. An application based on the da Vinci Research Kit through regulatory clearance
2. ROS as test tools to verify the software requirements for a visual guidance system
3. Commercial off-the-shelve robot arm used for a medical application

Attending this session to learn how to create trade-offs with these different architectural approaches and how to validate the intended uses of these architectural approaches to ensure a successful submission package for your FDA, EMA, or other regulatory approval.

Breakout Session: How to Cut Build Cycles in Half and Supercharge Robotics Development
Dave Evans, Co-Founder & CEO, Fictiv
3:00 PM – 3:45 PM

When it comes to new product development in robotics, there is no silver bullet. But there are common and predictable bottlenecks and inefficiencies that prevent engineering teams from operating at maximum productivity that can be eliminated.

Attendees will learn strategies to overcome these barriers and accelerate development. Through inspiring success stories from industry-leading companies, including Honeywell and Gecko Robotics, this talk will detail how robotics teams shaved weeks and months off development cycles to drive improved quality, speed and time-to-market outcomes. Ultimately, attendees will leave with a clear plan of action on how they can transform new product development.

Breakout Session: Coordinated Motion of a Manipulator and Mobile Base
Tiffany Cappellari, Engineer, Southwest Research Institute
3:00 PM – 3:45 PM

Robotics for large-scale fabrication or processing has relied on the ability to realize what is referred to as “coordinated motion.” This enables a robotic arm to work beyond its reach envelope by precise coordination with external axes. These external axes may be linear rails, or rotational axes to extend the working envelop of the combined robotic solution. Mobile robots have also gained in adoption and use, but, even in fairly complex mobile manipulator solutions, coordinated motion is only realized through the connection of the manipulator and the base via an external monitoring device. These solutions also normally make use of a “stop and go” approach in which the mobile base positions itself in a static pose first before the industrial manipulator begins its operation, thus not demonstrating true coordinated motion.

Southwest Research Institute seeks to pursue a coordinated motion solution that will enable richer continuous processing beyond the standard reach of the manipulator without the need to tie together the base and manipulator with an external tracking device, therefore opening a new frontier of industrial mobile robots that currently are not available in industry.

Breakout Session: Innovation in Robotic Grasping
Speakers: Roy Belak, CEO, Nexera Robotics; Nathan Brooks, CTO, PickNik Robotics, Jeff Mahler, Co-founder and CTO , Ambi Robotics; Boston Dynamics
3:00 PM – 3:45 PM

Grasping and manipulation, the ability to directly and physically interact with and modify objects in the environment, is perhaps the greatest differentiator between robotic systems and all other classes of automated systems. Many types of robots require the ability to coordinate tactile, vision, and proprioceptive sensing to pick-up and operate on all manner of objects, with goals ranging from providing human-like dexterity and autonomous manipulation, to high precision repeatability, and on to superhuman strength and endurance. During this panel session, attendees will learn of the latest grasping and manipulation technologies and techniques commercially available, as well as solutions emerging from the lab that will allow for whole new classes of robotics applications.

Breakout Session: Human Factor Design Considerations for Healthcare Robots
Speakers: Laura Birmingham, Associate Research Director, Emergo by UL; Alix Dorfman, Managing Human Factors Specialist, Emergo by UL
3:00 PM – 3:45 PM

Although human factors engineering touches many facets of overall system design, at its core, the practice facilitates the interaction between humans and technology; it aligns a system’s design with individuals’ cognitive and physical capabilities and limitations to produce a safe and satisfying user experience. Despite the level of autonomy healthcare robotics technologies might offer, there is always a human element that requires consideration.

During this talk, the presenters will discuss human factors implications and considerations related to the design of robotic healthcare technology used in clinical and non-clinical environments. The talk will describe how robotics disrupts the four key aspects of design analyzed when supporting product development: the system’s touchpoints, intended users, intended use environment(s), and its intended users’ tasks with the system. We will illuminate how such aspects can and should influence design decisions, as well as best practices when conducting research within the regulated medical device industry.

Breakout Session: Position feedback for healthcare robotics
Astrid Stock, Product Manager, SIKO
3:00 PM – 3:45 PM

Healthcare robots are quite different from their industrial counterparts. They do not work in fenced-off areas, but rather side by side with their operators. With this in mind, safety, accuracy, and size requirements have become more critical in today’s applications. Reliable control of the robot’s position, alignment and movement is essential. Rotary and linear encoders enable the position feedback of the motor and send vital information to the control.

This talk will illustrate different measurement principles (magnetic, glass, inductive) and explain the advantages of magnetic measurement. It will differentiate between absolute and incremental systems and will discuss the different interfaces from basic incremental TTL to absolute interfaces like CANopen or BiSS-C. Attendees will also learn about trends and requirements for compact designs and highly integrated solutions.

Breakout Session: Unlocking New Applications for Mobile Robots
Speakers: Niels Jul Jacobsen, CEO, Capra Robotics; Steve Boyle CEO, Essential Aero; Amir Bousani, Founder and CEO, RGo Robotics; Mike Oitzman, Editor of Robotics, WTWH Media
4:15 PM – 5:00 PM

Traditional sensors and navigation stacks have enabled AGVs and AMRs to bring tremendous value to a finite set of indoor material handling applications. But a much broader set of additional applications remains unsolved due to limitations in more challenging environments, including outdoor, indoor/outdoor, spaces with dynamic or repetitive features and where mobile robots must interact seamlessly together with humans. The panelists will discuss how recent technology advances are setting the stage for the next wave of innovation mobile robots and share examples of exciting new applications that will be unlocked.

Breakout Session: ASTM Standards for Robotics, Automation, and Autonomous Systems
Adam Norton, Associate Director, NERVE Center, UMass Lowell
4:15 PM – 5:00 PM

Robotics and automated systems used in many industries still lack sufficient standard specifications for interfaces, test methods for performance comparison, and practices for implementation. These gaps can stifle industry adoption and innovation.

The ASTM F45 Committee on Robotics, Automation, and Autonomous Systems is working to fill these gaps through the development of standard terminology, practices, classifications, guides, test methods, and specifications applicable to these systems.

This talk will include an overview presentation on the committee’s recent and upcoming activities, as well as an interactive discussion session to gather industry feedback on recommendations for future standards developments to ensure alignment with the needs of the community, both from a developer and user perspective.

The Era of Robotic Unicorns
Eliot Horowitz, CEO & Founder, Viam Robotics
4:15 PM – 5:00 PM

The robotics industry is at an inflection point because software advancements can offer a full paradigm shift in how to scale a successful robotics business. At MongoDB, Horowitz’s data platform was the foundation for dozens of $1B+ high-growth software companies. That same style of software infrastructure advancement is now coming to robotics to support a wave of high-growth robotics companies.

In this session, Viam and MongoDB co-founder Eliot Horowitz will detail why this is the best time to launch a robotics business and how a modern approach to software can get you from paper to prototype to production to successful, scaled business faster than ever.

Breakout Session: Motion Control Trends for Healthcare Robots
Prabhakar Gowrisankaran, VP of Engineering and Strategy, Performance Motion Devices
4:15 PM – 5:00 PM

In this presentation we will provide an update on recent developments in motion control technologies, applications, and products that are especially important for designers of medical analytical instruments and operating room equipment.

The emphasis will be on mobile & surgical robotics, patient therapy equipment, and advances in actuators and position sensors that are driving the next generation of motion control applications that deliver more accuracy, lower treatment costs, and improved medical outcomes.

Prabh Gowrisankaran, VP of Engineering and Strategy at Performance Motion Devices, Inc. (PMD), will share his extensive experience in electronic motion control and will lead this discussion designed to be interesting for both engineers and medical practitioners alike.

Healthcare Robotics Startup Showcase
4:15 PM – 5:00 PM

MassRobotics, FESTO, Mitsubishi Electric Automation, MITRE, Novanta and other key players in the healthcare and robotics space recently initiated the Healthcare Robotics Startup Catalyst Program. The goal is to advance healthcare robotics companies by providing the connections, guidance and resources they need to grow and succeed.

During this session, attendees will hear pitches from the following seven healthcare robotics startups currently in the catalyst program: Able Human Motion, Acumino, Andromeda, Maestro Surgical, Robot on Rails, Unlimited Robotics and Zeta Surgical

Thursday, May 11, 2023

Opening Keynote: The Next Decade in Robotics
Marc Raibert, Executive Director, AI Institute
9:00 AM – 9:45 AM

This fireside chat with Marc Raibert will discuss opportunities for the robotics industry and the most important and difficult challenges facing the creation of advanced robots. It will also describe how the new Boston Dynamics AI Institute is pushing the limits of technological innovation to solve these challenges.

Keynote: The Future of Surgical Robotics
Martin Buehler, Global Head of Robotics R&D, Johnson & Johnson MedTech
10:00 AM – 10:45 AM

Johnson & Johnson, one of the world’s leading healthcare companies, gives an inside look at the end-to-end development of its Monarch and Ottava robotics platforms, as well as strategy and innovation cadence across surgical robotics for MedTech.

Breakout Session: Guerilla Product Development for Robotics
Ted Larson, CEO, OLogic
11:30 AM – 12:15 PM

Based on years developing numerous robots for companies across the world, Ted Larson, CEO of OLogic, a Silicon Valley-based robotics design and development services firm, will outline the steps in his guerilla product development program, a novel engineering approach for developing robots. The talk will discuss the concepts underlying the product development technique and provide specific examples of how the process has been used for the development of various robotic and consumer electronics products. He will use specific case studies to detail how various commercial robotics companies.

Breakout Session: Battery Power for Mobile Robotics – Guidelines & Solutions
Dan Friel, Battery Systems Specialist, VARTA
11:30 AM – 12:15 PM

Battery decisions for mobile robots are critical for achieving power autonomy, but they can be complex:

• How much capacity is needed?
• Where can I put the battery?
• What is the best charge method?

In this session, attendees will learn the answers to these questions and more. Detailed information for designers who need reliable portable power for mobile robots will be provided. Additional topics covered include system considerations such as non-motive loads, battery placement issues, and how to design for re-generative braking charging. Also discussed will be wired and wireless charging pros and cons, plus the trade-offs between short, quick charging and once-per-shift charging methodologies.

Breakout Session: The Rise of Cobots in Healthcare
Brad Porter, Founder & CEO, Collaborative Robotics
11:30 AM – 12:15 PM

Robotics is all about leading change. To realize the true potential of robotics requires a bold vision driven top-down that aligns R&D teams, operations, finance, and global IT, while also requiring a deep focus on the details of successful individual deployments. In this talk, Brad Porter will share his perspective on how soon collaborative robots, with more human-like capability and a greater ability to collaborate with humans, are coming and the new challenges and opportunities they will present in healthcare.

Breakout Session: Using Simulation to Design and Develop Autonomous Robots
Gerard Andrews, Product Marketing, Robotics, NVIDIA
11:30 AM – 12:15 PM

Warehouse logistics and advanced manufacturing are increasingly using robotics as a critical part of their automation strategies. They can improve operational efficiency, improve safety, and help companies address the persistent labor shortages that are being observed across the globe. Developing these intelligent robotic systems, however, is a complex, challenging, and costly undertaking. Thankfully, advanced simulation tools are available to engineers that can speed the design, development, and testing processes.

This talk will describe the many ways NVIDIA Isaac Sim can be used to accelerate the development and deployment of robots, including advanced AI and computer vision. Specifically, attendees will learn how simulation can test robot applications in photo-realistic, physically accurate digital twin environments. In addition, the robots can be placed in increasingly complex simulations involving digital humans and fleets of robots to optimize operational KPIs. This session is designed as an introduction to photo-realistic 3D simulation for robots and is appropriate for all levels.

Breakout Session: Launching Mobile Manipulation Robots in Hospitals
Siddhartha Banerjee, Lead Robotics Engineer, Diligent Robotics
11:30 AM – 12:15 PM

Over the years, robots have made huge strides in the mobile transport space as well as warehouse automation. However, mobile manipulation robots operating around people in semi-structured environments are still few and far between. Diligent Robotics is pushing the boundaries of socially-aware mobile manipulation by deploying robots into hospitals. This talk will cover the challenges of a startup putting Moxi, a socially-aware mobile manipulation platform, into a semi-structured environment with people (i.e. hospitals). It will include lessons learned and key takeaways as well as insights into healthcare automation given the rise of COVID-19 and the impact of labor shortages.

Form and Function Challenge Winners Announced
12:30 PM

Breakout Session: Oxidizing Your Software Development: Rust for Robots
Zach Goins, Senior Autonomy Software Engineer, Scythe Robotics
2:00 PM – 2:45 PM

For a long time, robotics software development has been forced to make the choice between safe software and fast software. Early on, Scythe Robotics chose a third path: Rust, the new programming language that promised a break from that dichotomy. It was a lonely and bold choice at the time, but it has paid huge dividends.

Scythe Robotics, a developer of commercial autonomous lawnmowers, will discuss its decision to use Rust and some learnings along the way. It will discuss how it benefited from Rust’s strengths to build a robot software platform that is both reliable and performant, while still enabling high-velocity development. For example, leveraging the best parts of both ROS and Rust is possible with the mature rosrust crate, which allows engineers to make use of existing ROS tools as well as the wider crates.io package ecosystem. Further, directly integrating with other existing C/C++ software is straightforward as well, enabling reuse of proven libraries and device-specific features like compute accelerators and other C/C++ platform SDKs.

Scythe’s rapid progress is, in no small part, due to the strengths of Rust and the confidence it has unlocked for developers to move fast and build things reliably. This talk will be a guide for others looking to oxidize and accelerate their software development process.

Breakout Session: Building Production-level Robots for Farming
Thomas Palomares, CTO & Co-Founder, FarmWise
2:00 PM – 2:45 PM

Vegetable farming still relies on labor-intensive processes. Weed control in particular, which is critical to ensure good yields, is mostly taken care of by hand crews who walk the field with hoes. After prototyping for 5 years in the epicenter of lettuce production in North America, FarmWise is about to release its first commercial robotic weeder. This machine can detect crops from weeds and mechanically uproot the undesired plants with extreme precision using deep learning and actuation control. This talk will walk you through the team’s journey and learnings from the first demo to the architectural decisions behind their new product.

Breakout Session on Legged Locomotion
Boston Dynamics
2:00 PM – 2:45 PM

Breakout Session: From Product Idea to Robotic Healthcare Solution – An Overview
Tobias Luksch, Manager, R&D, Robotics, ITK Engineering
2:00 PM – 2:45 PM

It is a long road with numerous hurdles to take a medical robot from an initial idea to a certified product. To achieve this, some important questions must be answered, such as:

• What is the intended use?
• What is the legal framework?
• What are the main risks?
• Which methods can be used to evaluate concepts, to develop prototypes and to verify the final product?

This session will give an overview of the essential steps required to turn a product idea into a market-ready healthcare robot. Attendees will be provided with practical advice on how to implement these steps, as well as a European perspective on the regulatory aspects of the product life cycle.

Breakout Session: Magnetic Robots for Diagnosis and Surgery
Giovanni Pittiglio, Research Fellow, Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School
2:00 PM – 2:45 PM

Robotics has the potential to democratize healthcare by complementing a surgeon’s skills and guaranteeing consistent quality of care. With the aim of reducing pain, discomfort and limiting disruptive interaction with the anatomy, soft magnetic robots are a novel, emerging solution. This technology can guarantee remote actuation, which equates to smaller size and softer devices. This talk will introduce the potential for magnetic soft robots in overcoming the main limitations of alternative approaches, such as minimally-invasive surgery which is difficult to scale due to the need for highly skilled personnel. The session will discuss a range of applications magnetic robots can cover in healthcare, with a focus on diagnosis and surgery. The main challenges and future research goals are introduced and reviewed.

Breakout Session: Motion Control and Robotics Opportunities
Speakers: Dave Rollinson, Co-Founder, HEBI Robotics
3:00 PM – 3:45 PM

Breakout Session: Using Emulation to Accelerate the Development of Wearable Machines
Josh Caputo, Founder, President & CEO, Humotech
3:00 PM – 3:45 PM

Emulation is a concept that will be familiar to anyone engaged in the development of computing systems (or fans of retro gaming), but did you know research & development groups around the world are leveraging the approach to develop more personalized and advanced prosthetics, orthotics, exoskeletons, wearable robotics, and more?

Wearable systems are costly to prototype and difficult to perfect, so it is crucial for this burgeoning industry to reimagine R&D processes to unlock greater efficiency, throughput, and more wildly successful products. Learn more about the opportunities, challenges, and innovative approaches being explored towards developing technology that augments human biomechanics and could one day be accessible to anyone looking for a boost to their physical performance.

Future of Autonomy in Robotics
Ryan Gariepy, Co-Founder & CTO, Clearpath Robotics & OTTO Motors
3:00 PM – 3:45 PM

From vacuums to quadrupeds to self-driving cars, robots are becoming increasingly physically capable, intelligent and cost-effective. As with any emerging industry, the earliest innovators didn’t have the luxury of decades of fundamental knowledge and best practices available to them. They built from the ground up and learned the hard way what not to do.

Today, we’re entering a new era of robotics. The most successful robotics companies of the next decade won’t be the ones building from scratch. They’ll build on existing platforms that have been hardened to solve very specific problems, including problems in autonomy, fleet management, simulation, and more throughout the robotics stack.

In this presentation, the audience will learn how robotics development has been done recently, what is changing, and what is coming in the next decade from an expert with fifteen years of experience in robot development and deployment across a variety of industries. Market expectations surrounding robotic capabilities, security and privacy, and robustness and safety are becoming increasingly difficult for new entrants to match. Nevertheless, a variety of market forces are making building robots cheaper and easier than ever before, and demand for robotics has never been higher!

Just as a new software company today wouldn’t build its own cloud computing platform, and instead would use AWS, the next generation of robotics companies are not going to start with a hodgepodge of ROS nodes and custom circuit boards. It is highly likely that some of the world’s largest robotics companies haven’t even been founded yet!

Closing Keynote: Developing Robots for Final Frontiers
Nicolaus Radford, CEO, Nauticus Robotics
4:00 PM – 4:45 PM

Space is commonly referred to as the “final frontier.” But Nicolaus Radford and the team at Nauticus Robotics believe the world’s oceans are of the utmost near-term priority (and largely unexplored) final frontier. Founded by former NASA engineers, Nauticus is leading the way by developing novel ocean robotic platforms for unprecedented ways of working in and exploring the aquatic domain, while challenging the less-than-desirable and archaic paradigm of the legacy industry. The company’s vision is to become the most impactful ocean robotics company and to disrupt the current ocean services paradigm through the integration of autonomous robotic technologies. The deep sea is vast, full of potential, and yet remains largely as uncharted as space itself – and Nauticus is at the forefront of unlocking its possibilities.

This keynote will chart Radford’s journey from developing humanoid robotics for space and leveraging that experience to form Nauticus and its revolutionary ocean robotics portfolio. His work at NASA heavily influenced the advancements at Nauticus as the company develops robots capable of aiding in national security, repairing oil pipelines, and inspecting windfarms — all while significantly reducing emissions and hazards to human counterparts. During his keynote, Radford will provide insights about both environments, discuss the business and technology of Nauticus’ current work and explain his vision for the future of ocean technology and robotics.

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Microsoft researchers controlled this robotic arm using ChatGPT. | Credit: Microsoft

By now, you’ve likely heard of ChatGPT, OpenAI’s language model that can generate somewhat coherent responses to a variety of prompts and questions. It’s primarily being used to generate text, translate information, make calculations and explain topics you’re looking to learn about.

Researchers at Microsoft, which has invested billions into OpenAI and recently integrated ChatGPT into its Bing search engine, extended the capabilities of ChatGPT to control a robotic arm and aerial drone. Earlier this week, Microsoft released a technical paper that describes a series of design principles that can be used to guide language models toward solving robotics tasks.

“It turns out that ChatGPT can do a lot by itself, but it still needs some help,” Microsoft wrote about its ability to program robots.

Prompting LLMs for robotics control poses several challenges, Microsoft said, such as providing a complete and accurate description of the problem, identifying the right set of allowable function calls and APIs, and biasing the answer structure with special arguments. To make effective use of ChatGPT for robotics applications, the researchers constructed a pipeline composed of the following steps:

• 1. First, they defined a high-level robot function library. This library can be specific to the form factor or scenario of interest and should map to actual implementations on the robot platform while being named descriptively enough for ChatGPT to follow.
• 2. Next, they build a prompt for ChatGPT which described the objective while also identifying the set of allowed high-level functions from the library. The prompt can also contain information about constraints, or how ChatGPT should structure its responses.
• 3. The user stayed in the loop to evaluate code output by ChatGPT, either through direct analysis or through simulation and provides feedback to ChatGPT on the quality and safety of the output code.
• 4. After iterating on the ChatGPT-generated implementations, the final code can be deployed onto the robot.

Examples of ChatGPT controlling robots

In one example, Microsoft researchers used ChatGPT in a manipulation scenario with a robot arm. It used conversational feedback to teach the model how to compose the originally provided APIs into more complex high-level functions that ChatGPT coded by itself. Using a curriculum-based strategy, the model was able to chain these learned skills together logically to perform operations such as stacking blocks.

The model was also able to build the Microsoft logo out of wooden blocks. It was able to recall the Microsoft logo from its internal knowledge base, “draw” the logo as SVG code, and then use the skills learned above to figure out which existing robot actions can compose its physical form.

Researchers also tried to control an aerial drone using ChatGPT. First, they fed ChatGPT a rather long prompt laying out the computer commands it could write to control the drone. After that, the researchers could make requests to instruct ChatGPT to control the robot in various ways. This included asking ChatGPT to use the drone’s camera to identify a drink, such as coconut water and a can of Coca-Cola. It was also able to write code structures for drone navigation based solely on the prompt’s base APIs, according to the researchers.

“ChatGPT asked clarification questions when the user’s instructions were ambiguous and wrote complex code structures for the drone such as a zig-zag pattern to visually inspect shelves,” the team said.

Microsoft said it also applied this approach to a simulated domain, using the Microsoft AirSim simulator. “We explored the idea of a potentially non-technical user directing the model to control a drone and execute an industrial inspection scenario. We observe from the following excerpt that ChatGPT is able to effectively parse intent and geometrical cues from user input and control the drone accurately.”

Key limitation

The researchers did admit this approach has a major limitation: ChatGPT can only write the code for the robot based on the initial prompt the human gives it. A human engineer has to thoroughly explain to ChatGPT how the application programming interface for a robot works, otherwise, it will struggle to generate applicable code.

“We emphasize that these tools should not be given full control of the robotics pipeline, especially for safety-critical applications. Given the propensity of LLMs to eventually generate incorrect responses, it is fairly important to ensure solution quality and safety of the code with human supervision before executing it on the robot. We expect several research works to follow with the proper methodologies to properly design, build and create testing, validation and verification pipelines for LLM operating in the robotics space.

“Most of the examples we presented in this work demonstrated open perception-action loops where ChatGPT generated code to solve a task, with no feedback provided to the model afterwards. Given the importance of closed-loop controls in perception-action loops, we expect much of the future research in this space to explore how to properly use ChatGPT’s abilities to receive task feedback in the form of textual or special-purpose modalities.”

Microsoft said its goal with this research is to see if ChatGPT can think beyond text and reason about the physical world to help with robotics tasks.

“We want to help people interact with robots more easily, without needing to learn complex programming languages or details about robotic systems. The key challenge here is teaching ChatGPT how to solve problems considering the laws of physics, the context of the operating environment, and how the robot’s physical actions can change the state of the world.”

The post How ChatGPT can control robots appeared first on The Robot Report.

In this episode, we discuss a new Soft robotic wearable that restores arm function for people with ALS. The device was prototyped by a team of researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).

The device uses air pressure-driven, soft actuators to help assist in the movement of patients’ arms. The team developed a sensor system that detects the residual activity of the arm and calibrates the appropriate pressurization of the balloon actuator to move the person’s arm smoothly and naturally. The device promises to help restore ALS patient autonomy.

They also discuss a recent story where hoppers at GIANT Food Stores in Hellertown, Pennsylvania were surprised earlier this week, when Marty, an autonomous mobile robot that scans inventory on shelves, was spotted wandering the store’s parking lot. Videos of the rogue robot were posted on social media before it was ushered inside by employees.

Our guest on the podcast this week is Aaron Prather. Aaron is a well-known speaker and evangelist for the robotics industry. Prior to his current role at ASTM as Director, Robotics & Autonomous Systems Programs, he was senior technical advisor for FedEx.

Aaron discusses the current state of robotic standards at ASTM, specifically with the F45 committee work. Aaron also talks about some of the pitfalls that young robotics companies can trip over when attempting to sell their solutions to a large fortune 500 company like FedEx.

Robotics Summit & Expo (May 10-11) returns to Boston

Links from today’s show:

• Soft robotic wearable restores arm function for people with ALS
• Watch a Badger Technologies robot wander out of a grocery store
• The Robotics Summit registration link

If you want to be a guest on an upcoming episode of the podcast, or if you have recommendations for future guests or segment ideas, contact Steve Crowe or Mike Oitzman.

For sponsorship opportunities of The Robot Report Podcast, contact Courtney Nagle for more information.

The post ASTM’s Aaron Prather on standards and evaluating new robots appeared first on The Robot Report.

The Robotics Summit & Expo, produced by The Robot Report, has announced the keynote lineup for the May 10-11 event at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. The Robotics Summit is the world’s leading event focused on the design and development of commercial robots.

Click here to see the Robotics Summit speaker lineup. Registration for the Robotics Summit is also open. Register by March 9 to take advantage of the early bird price of $395 for full-conference passes. Academic registration is $295 and expo-only passes are just $75. Discounted group rates are available. Email events@wtwhmedia.com for more information.

You can also check out the agenda here and the expo floor here. 

Robotics Summit & Expo Keynotes

Idea to Reality: Commercializing Robotics Technologies

Howie Choset, Professor of Robotics, Carnegie Mellon University
May 10: 8:45 AM – 9:30 AM

Turning a technology developed inside a lab into a successful robotics company is no easy task. Howie Choset has done this several times with companies such as Medrobotics (surgical robots), Hebi Robotics (modular robots) and Bito Robotics (robot software). Choset will share insights about the robotics startups he founded and best practices for taking technological innovation from an idea to reality.

Future of Open-Source Robotics Development

Wendy Tan White, CEO, Intrinsic
May 10: 9:30 AM – 10:15 AM

This conversation with Intrinsic CEO Wendy Tan White will discuss the company’s ongoing efforts to make industrial robotics more accessible and usable for millions more businesses, entrepreneurs and developers. Tan White will also discuss the recent acquisition of the Open Source Robotics Corporation and what it means going forward.

Scalable AI Solutions for Driverless Vehicles

Laura Major, CTO, Motional
May 10: 10:45 AM – 11:30 AM

Laura Major will discuss Motional’s approach to developing SAE Level 4 autonomous vehicles (AVs) that can safely navigate complex road scenarios. As part of the discussion, Laura will cover the core challenges of AVs, deep learning advancements, and Motional’s innovative Machine Learning-first solutions.

The Next Decade in Robotics

Marc Raibert, Executive Director, The AI Institute
May 11: 9 AM – 9:45 AM

This fireside chat with Marc Raibert will discuss opportunities for the robotics industry and the most important and difficult challenges facing the creation of advanced robots. It will also describe how the new Boston Dynamics AI Institute is pushing the limits of technological innovation to solve these challenges.

The Future of Surgical Robotics

Martin Buehler, Global Head of Robotics R&D, Johnson & Johnson MedTech
May 11: 10 AM – 10:45 AM

Johnson & Johnson, one of the world’s leading healthcare companies, gives an inside look at the end-to-end development of its Monarch and Ottava robotics platforms, as well as strategy and innovation cadence across surgical robotics for MedTech.

Developing Robots for Final Frontiers

Nicolaus Radford, Founder & CEO, Nauticus Robotics
May 11: 4 PM – 4:45 PM

Space is commonly referred to as the “final frontier.” But Nicolaus Radford and the team at Nauticus Robotics believe the world’s oceans are of the utmost near-term priority (and largely unexplored) final frontier. Founded by former NASA engineers, Nauticus is leading the way by developing novel ocean robotic platforms for unprecedented ways of working in and exploring the aquatic domain, while challenging the less-than-desirable and archaic paradigm of the legacy industry. The company’s vision is to become the most impactful ocean robotics company and to disrupt the current ocean services paradigm through the integration of autonomous robotic technologies. The deep sea is vast, full of potential, and yet remains largely as uncharted as space itself – and Nauticus is at the forefront of unlocking its possibilities.

This keynote will chart Radford’s journey from developing humanoid robotics for space and leveraging that experience to form Nauticus and its revolutionary ocean robotics portfolio. His work at NASA heavily influenced the advancements at Nauticus as the company develops robots capable of aiding in national security, repairing oil pipelines, and inspecting windfarms — all while significantly reducing emissions and hazards to human counterparts. During his keynote, Radford will provide insights about both environments, discuss the business and technology of Nauticus’ current work and explain his vision for the future of ocean technology and robotics.

Sponsorship Opportunities

For information about Robotics Summit & Expo sponsorship and exhibition opportunities, please download the prospectus and/or contact Colleen Sepich at csepich@wtwhmedia.com.

The post Meet the Robotics Summit & Expo keynote speakers appeared first on The Robot Report.

Scythe Robotics, a Colorado-based developer of autonomous lawnmowers for the professional landscape industry, raised $42 million in Series B financing. The round was led by Energy Impact Partners and included additional new investors ArcTern Ventures, Alumni Ventures and Amazon’s Alexa Fund, alongside participation from existing investors True Ventures, Inspired Capital and more.

Scythe Robotics said the funding will help it meet demand for the more than 7,500 reservations for its all-electric, fully autonomous M.52 mower. Founded in 2018, this financing round brings the company’s total capital raised to date to $60.6 million.

According to Scythe Robotics, the latest generation of Scythe M.52 can mow all day on a single charge. It features a suite of sensors that enable it to operate safely in dynamic environments by identifying and responding to the presence of humans, animals and other potential obstacles. Simultaneously, it captures property and mower performance data that helps landscapers improve workflow, identify upsell opportunities, schedule more efficiently and manage labor costs.

“Since launching from stealth in June 2021, we’ve seen overwhelming interest from commercial landscape contractors in Scythe M.52 as a solution addressing both their crippling labor pains and their electrification needs,” said Jack Morrison, co-founder and CEO of Scythe. “We’re thrilled to expand our outstanding investor list, particularly with the addition of influential climate-tech investors Energy Impact Partners and ArcTern Ventures, and secure more capital to scale and meet the phenomenal demand for M.52 as we work to decarbonize the landscape industry.”

Morrison was a guest on The Robot Report Podcast in June 2022. He discussed the commercial market for autonomous mowers and how Scythe is going to market to support the needs of commercial landscapers with its Robots-as-a-service (RaaS) business model. You can listen to that interview here.

Robotics Summit & Expo (May 10-11) returns to Boston

Zach Goins, a senior autonomy software engineer at Scythe Robotics, will be speaking at the Robotics Summit & Expo (May 10-11 in Boston), the world’s leading design and development event about commercial robots. Goins will be discussing how Scythe Robotics built its autonomous lawnmower with the Rust programming language. Goins will dive into Scythe’s decision to use Rust, the journey of building a fully autonomous system in Rust, and some of the lessons learned along the way.

Scythe Robotics said the U.S. landscape business is a $176 billion industry. The company added that about 2% of the continental U.S. (40M+ acres) is covered with carbon-sequestering turfgrass, but each gas-powered mower used to maintain green spaces today produces the same amount of air pollution in just one hour of operation as driving a car 300 miles.

“Commercial landscaping electrification represents a massive but undercapitalized decarbonization opportunity, tackling more than 40 million metric tons of CO2e emissions annually,” said Sameer Reddy, managing partner, Venture at Energy Impact Partners. “By combining cutting-edge robotics with a purpose-built electric platform, Scythe is delivering a no-brainer value proposition for its customers that unlocks the economics of electrification while also alleviating unprecedented labor constraints. With increasing regulatory pressures on emissions and air pollution, we see Scythe playing an instrumental role in decarbonizing our nation’s largest crop: grass.”

Scythe Robotics uses a pay-as-you-mow pricing model that it said aligns with the objectives of landscape contractors to decrease mowing costs and maximize uptime. Scythe Robotics’ M.52 autonomous lawnmower has already been deployed to customer operations in Texas and are currently rolling out to customers in Florida.

“As a landscape veteran, it’s exciting to see this level of investment and interest in our industry,” said Ben Collinsworth, director of operational technology at Yellowstone Landscape, a Scythe customer and one of the largest privately-held commercial landscape companies in North America. “The team at Scythe has developed cutting-edge solutions that tackle real, deeply-felt challenges our business wrestles with every day. We’re excited to partner with them in transforming the industry as we roll out M.52 to our operations.”

The post Scythe Robotics raises $42M to scale autonomous lawnmowers appeared first on The Robot Report.

Welcome to Episode 103 of The Robot Report Podcast, which brings conversations with robotics innovators straight to you. Join us each week for discussions with leading roboticists, innovative robotics companies and other key members of the robotics community.

In this episode, we discuss Mike’s recent adventure at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2023. Steve and Mike recap the event, the types of robots that were at this years event, and difficulties covering so many interesting product.

The podcast features interviews from CES 2023 with:

• [25:25] Dan Haddick, Head of Product for Aeolus Robotics
• [45:35] Tony Crisp, Chief Marketing Officer for Robosen Robotics
• [56:05] Paul Mitchell, President and founder of Indy Autonomous Challenge

Steve and Mike also discuss the capabilities of the Boston Dynamics Atlas robot that are demonstrated the recent video released this week.

Links from today’s show:

• CES 2023 Recap story (The Robot Report)
• IAC 2023 recap story (The Robot Report)
• Boston Dynamics Atlas video (The Robot Report)
  
• The Robotics Summit registration link

If you want to be a guest on an upcoming episode of the podcast, or if you have recommendations for future guests or segment ideas, contact Steve Crowe or Mike Oitzman.

For sponsorship opportunities of The Robot Report Podcast, contact Courtney Nagle for more information.

The post Best robots of CES 2023; Boston Dynamics Atlas video review appeared first on The Robot Report.