Current Robotics Trends

                        Industrial robots used to be dumb, somewhat inflexible, and mostly blind – but also fast, precise and very efficient.  As the cost of components, sensors and vision systems has been dropping, vision-enabled robots are becoming more prevalent and capable, and the industry is dramatically changing.

For the past 50+ years industrial robots have picked the low-hanging fruit of manufacturing by handling the dull, dirty and dangerous tasks. But today, as consumers want more personalized products, and want them faster, and as costs have dropped and executives have pushed for greater productivity through automation, mobile and vision-enabled robots are emerging and being deployed in many new application areas, particularly for SMEs and in logistics, but also in government, agriculture, surveying, construction and healthcare.

The startups are now focused on industrial robotics and  address new areas of robotics such as: unmanned aerial, land and underwater devices for filming, marketing, delivery, surveillance, security, surveying, and for the military, science and oil and gas industries (25%); robotics for the agriculture industry (6%); mobile robots as platforms for various uses (7%); personal service bots (3%); professional service bots (7%); medical, surgical and rehabilitation robots (7%); consumer products such as for home cleaning, security, remote presence and entertainment (9%); educational and the hobby market (5%)

Collaborative Robots

Much has been said about the fast-growing market for collaborative robots. The most current are articles describing car companies replacing old-style industrial robots with a combination of humans and co-bots assisting humans to gain needed flexibility. The websites of Universal Robots (UR) and Rethink Robotics both contain numerous video use-cases in a variety of application areas. Bottom line: this is a viable and growing segment of the robotics industry started by UR but with competition coming from Kuka, ABB and others.

The major benefits of these new co-bots are their flexibility, safety, ability to be rapidly deployed, and ease of training. Improvements on each of these benefits will keep pressure on pricing as can be seen by the new low-cost Franka robots and the forthcoming rebranded Roberta robot. Also, at AUTOMATICA, held in Munich this June, every robot manufacturer was touting their safe collaborative robots even when, by any stretch of the imagination, they didn’t really have one.

Turning co-bots into a commodity may not be good for profits but it is good for businesses, particularly those wanting to take their first step into using robots.

Logistics and materials handling

Better and lower cost vision systems, particularly low-cost 3D vision, navigation and mobility are enabling a variety of existing and startup companies to offer enhanced material handling methods for factories, warehouses and distribution centers. During the financial crisis, capital expenditures for logistics were put off because existing systems seemed to be able to handle the load. But all that changed as we came back from the crisis and consumers wanted their products faster and warehouses couldn’t keep up without massive investments in new tech, new methods and, in many cases, new vendors. Further, these new technologies had to accommodate existing facilities and systems; few companies are building new warehouses; they are instead, changing their methods and systems.

Upstarts like Amazon and startups like MiR, Clearpath, Aethon, and Fetch are joining established companies like Swisslog, Grenzebach, FMC and many others as they attempt to bring new tech to help speed up the picking process and the movement of picked items to the packing/shipping stations.