October 9

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RoboBusiness 2016 Update

By Mike Oitzman

October 9, 2016

robotics

There were lot's of interesting things to see at the RoboBusiness 2016 expo, held at the San Jose convention center this year.

This post contains a quick update with some of the interesting things that I learned and saw at the RoboBusiness 2016 event last week.

First of all, mobile robots are alive and well with several vendors showing their wares at the RoboBusiness show. FetchRobotics was there, with the largest booth at the show. This year, in addition to the Freight robot, they were demonstrating the ability of the robot to carry a sensor array and scan the environment for inspection and data collection tasks. Here’s a quick video of a showdown in the aisles between the Fetch robot and the military robot from BlackDog Robotics.

The Fellow Robotics folks were also in attendance, showing off the latest generation of their Navii Retail Assistance vehicles and announcing that they are deploying the vehicles at every Lowes store in the bay area this fall. In addition, they also announced that the vehicle is now equipped with a camera and software sufficient to perform inventory management activities, in addition to guiding customers throughout the store. However, I am not convinced yet that the optics employed on a single camera mounted on the vehicle is sufficient to produce the quality imaging to resolve barcodes in real life situations. This is the same market that Simbe Robotics is chasing with their Tally robot.

Navii Robot

Navii Robot from Fellow

The Aethon team was on the expo floor with an booth spot right at the entrance to the showfloor. Of significance for Aethon is that this is the first time that I’ve seen the Aethon Tug running around the booth at a show, definitely a much better crowd pleaser than having a stationary bot. Aethon is expanding beyond their successful installed base in hospitals to deploy robots into industrial applications, including parts-to-line and handling final-goods-inventory use cases.

The Savioke team didn’t have a booth this year, but I did catch the Savioke Relay running around the lobby of the show. The machine seems to have few sensors, relying on a design principle that it’s too lightweight to do any damage if it runs into something.

On the logistics side of things, the Magazino product leaders were in town in the Siemens Next 47 booth. They didn’t have a full size robot to show off, but they did have a 1 foot tall model of their new logistics robot. The system looks like it will handle boxes and books well, but the jury is out for this systems’ capability to handle less structured warehouses. The machine does however appear to be well engineered to meet stringent German and EU safety standards. I also had the chance to briefly catch up with the folks from InVia, who’ve come a long way over the last year when they presented their idea at the 2015 pitchfire event. The InVia team now has a fully functional system and they are deploying at their first customer sites. They are delivering their solution using a Robots-as-a-Service business model.

Which reminds me, although OMRON Adept Technology wasn’t present at the show, they have announced a global launch of the Adept Lynx mobile robot into the OMRON channel. While there are no significant product enhancements with this launch, it does up the game for OMRON, given the breadth and strength of their worldwide channel.

I learned quite a bit about Autonomous Solution Inc.,who are already able to control a variety of vehicle types in the field, including full size trucks, bull dozers, buses, pickup trucks and tractors. They now have a complete solution which can quickly be adapted for vehicles of any size.

I talked to the founder of SeaDrone, who are bringing an affordable underwater teleoperated vehicle to market. It’s not autonomous, but they have a sold and simple platform which is operated from the surface via a single cable and an interface on your tablet.

I got introduced to PlusOne Robotics cofounder Shaun Edwards from at the RoboBusiness show. Shaun was a little coy about exactly what PlusOne Robotics is up to, but Shaun became famous for helping to lead the ROS Industrial revolution. Together with Erik Nieves, they are embarking on a new adventure with PlusOne and you should definitely follow these two as they set new standards for mobile robot software.

Finally, I had a very interesting conversation with the CEO from Genesis Dimensions who are attempting to change the way that buildings are constructed by “printing” them just like a 3D printer. They are still in the early stages of their design, but idea is definitely intriguing.

Mike Oitzman

About the author

With twenty plus years of product management and product marketing experience, Mike has seen everything necessary to successfully launch and market a new product or service.

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