Newswise — A system has been developed that can quickly and precisely perform sample collection and diagnosis in public health and medical settings in light of new and variant infectious diseases, such as COVID-19.
The Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials, an institution under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Science and ICT (President Sang Jin Park, hereafter referred to KIMM), has developed the first integrated system in Korea that can collect specimens at the medical sites using a specimen collection robot in a non-face-to-face manner to prevent the spread of infectious diseases such as COVID-19, and can automatically complete high-speed molecular diagnosis in 40 minutes. This newly developed system is expected to lay the foundation for preventing the spread of new and variant infectious diseases in advance and strengthening the competitiveness of K-Bio diagnostics technology.
To develop this system, the KIMM research team led by Dr. Dongkyu Lee, a principal researcher from the Department of Medical Devices at the Daegu Research Center for Medical Devices and Green Energy, and Dr. Joonho Seo, head of the Department of Medical Robotics (of the same Center), improved upon the sample collection technology of non-face-to-face samplings robot previously developed by KIMM. In addition to the existing sampling robot, by integrating rapid molecular diagnostic equipment, sample preparation technology of collected samples, and fast real-time PCR technology based on the rapid thermocycles, this system can now quickly and precisely conduct non-face-to-face procedures from sample collection to molecular diagnosis on site.
The whole world experienced the collapse of the medical system due to the continuous outbreak of new and variant infectious diseases, such as monkeypox and COVID-19, over the past three years. In order to respond to new and variant infectious diseases that are highly contagious, rapid and precise molecular diagnosis is required in public health and medical settings. However, through traditional methods, it takes approximately 6 to 12 hours to complete the process of face-to-face sample collection, transfer, and molecular diagnosis.
One problem with traditional molecular diagnostic equipment is that it takes 1 to 2 hours or more to obtain analysis results. To solve this problem, attempts have been made to utilize photothermal-based and microfluidics-based rapid thermocycle technology*. However, it is difficult to manufacture at low cost and quantitatively analyze in real time, thus limiting their on-site applications.
* Rapid thermocycle technology: a technology that rapidly performs repeated heating and cooling cycles
On the other hand, the KIMM research team’s newly developed rapid, automatic molecular diagnostic system, integrated with a sample collection robot, can obtain real-time PCR analysis results within 9 to 20 minutes at a speed 4.2 times faster than existing molecular diagnostic equipment. This is achieved by using a customized thermocycler that uses preset heating and cooling blocks in turn.
The KIMM research team performed validation tests using this new system by conducting diagnosis of pathogenic bacteria and infectious coronavirus. From sample collection to molecular diagnosis, bacterial DNA analysis was completed within 25 minutes and coronavirus RNA within 40 minutes. The molecular diagnosis results obtained using this new system were similar to those obtained when using commercial molecular diagnosis equipment.
KIMM’s newly developed system is a non-face-to-face system that applies automatic diagnostic technology throughout the entire process of sample dispensing, sample preparation processing, and rapid molecular diagnostics after sample collection, so that even unskilled users can quickly conduct diagnostics on site. When used in public health and medical settings such as screening clinics, airports, and emergency environments, the spread of new and variant infectious diseases can be quickly and accurately prevented in advance.
Dr. Dongkyu Lee said, “The rapid, automatic molecular diagnosis system integrated with a non-face-to-face sample collection robot will prevent the continuous spread of new and mutated infectious diseases, while also protecting medical staff and the health of the general public.” He added, “KIMM will work with medical institutions and industries to globalize K-Bio technology, prevent the spread of new and mutated infectious diseases, and strive for R&D efforts with the goal of protecting the healthy lives of everyone in Korea.”
###
The Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials (KIMM) is a non-profit government-funded research institute under the Ministry of Science and ICT. Since its foundation in 1976, KIMM is contributing to economic growth of the nation by performing R&D on key technologies in machinery and materials, conducting reliability test evaluation, and commercializing the developed products and technologies.
These research efforts were carried out by KIMM and Biot Korea, Inc., with the support of the Korean Health Industry Development Institute as part of the “Development of a rapid, automatic molecular diagnostic field-type system and POC (proof-of concept) verification with a sample collection robot” project.
[ad_2]
National Research Council of Science and Technology
Disclosure: Our goal is to feature products and services that we think you’ll find interesting and useful. If you purchase them, Entrepreneur may get a small share of the revenue from the sale from our commerce partners.
Companies love robots working alongside humans. They don’t take days off and are incredibly reliable. That’s why, in a restaurant industry plagued by labor shortages, kitchen automation solutions from Miso Robotics have been gaining a ton of traction.
MisoMiso Robotics
After successfully automating kitchen operations for major U.S. fast food brands, Miso is sending its robotic assistants to the international market and allowing investors a chance to join them.
Here’s why Miso may truly hold the key to the future of fast food.
Miso helps make restaurants more efficient.
From low wages to hot grease, people have found plenty of reasons not to work in fast-food kitchens. As a result, 500,000 new fast-food jobs go unfilled each month, leaving many brands in desperate need of automation solutions.
That’s why Miso designed robots to cook food, pour drinks, and perform other repetitive tasks that humans prefer to avoid. For example, Miso’s Flippy 2 robot can fry, its Sippy robot pours drinks, and its Flippy Lite robot can fry and season items, most recently used by partners to make tortilla chips.
All of these robots improve efficiency over time thanks to machine learning. And as a result, restaurant staff have more time to focus on customer-oriented service, knowing Miso’s bots deliver consistent quality.
What’s more, Miso’s tech also addresses the fast-food industry’s longstanding tradition of low profit (average 5% margin) and rapid labor turnover, which have contributed to many restaurants’ lack of consistency and quality.
With Miso, these are problems of the past. Its robots provide restaurants with a low-cost, user-friendly way to boost efficiency and have shown the potential to increase restaurant profit margins threefold.
And thanks to the Robot-as-a-Service (RaaS) model, restaurants only pay a monthly fee for Miso’s tech, allowing them to see a positive return on the first day of operations.
It’s no surprise that so many restaurants have already partnered with Miso, but this is just the beginning.
Miso’s world tour.
Many of fast food’s top brands have already adopted Miso’s AI-powered automation solutions. White Castle, Jack in the Box, Buffalo Wild Wings, and Caliburger are among many beloved restaurants that already have Flippys and Sippys lowering costs and boosting efficiency.
But the opportunity for Miso to expand its footprint is even bigger abroad. Take Europe, for example, where brands spend up to 50 percent more trying to fill the labor gaps.
That’s exactly why Miso’s landed a new international partnership that they expect will play a huge role in the company’s expansion to the 20-million-restaurant global marketplace — a 17 times larger opportunity than in the U.S. alone.
With several top fast-food restaurants stateside and a global house of brands on the horizon, Miso’s believes it has proven that there’s a universal need for its automation solutions.
Get in on Miso’s as it plans a global expansion.
More than 20,000 investors have already realized Miso’s status as an early mover, giving Miso the chance to build a solid foundation and partner with America’s most formidable fast-food brands. Now, they are going global and raising additional funds to further innovation in a market where demand is even stronger than when they started.
Miso Robotics is offering securities through the use of an Offering Statement that has been qualified by the Securities and Exchange Commission under Tier II of Regulation A. A copy of the Final Offering Circular that forms a part of the Offering Statement may be obtained from: Miso Robotics
Entrepreneur may receive monetary compensation by the issuer, or its agency, for publicizing the offering of the issuer’s securities. Entrepreneur and the issuer of this offering make no promises, representations, warranties, or guarantees that any of the services will result in a profit or will not result in a loss.
BERLIN — Berlin must change the way it deals with China as the country lurches back toward a more openly “Marxist-Leninist” political trajectory, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz wrote in an op-ed on Thursday.
In his article for POLITICO and the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Scholz defended his trip to China on Thursday but stressed that German companies would need to take steps to reduce “risky dependencies” in industrial supply chains, particularly in terms of “cutting-edge technologies.” Scholz noted that President Xi Jinping was deliberately pursuing a political strategy of making international companies reliant on China.
“The outcome of the Communist Party Congress that has just ended is unambiguous: Avowals of Marxism-Leninism take up a much broader space than in the conclusions of previous congresses … As China changes, the way that we deal with China must change, too,” Scholz wrote.
Germany has faced withering criticism for pressuring Europe into a strategically disastrous dependence on Russian gas over recent years, and Berlin is now having to hit back against suggestions that it is making exactly the same mistakes by depending on China as a manufacturing base and commercial partner.
While Scholz signaled a note of caution over China, he was far from suggesting that Germany was close to a major U-turn in its largely cozy relations with China. Indeed, he clearly echoed his predecessor Angela Merkel in insisting that the (unnamed but obviously identified) United States should not drag Germany into a new Cold War against Beijing.
“Germany of all countries, which had such a painful experience of division during the Cold War, has no interest in seeing new blocs emerge in the world,” he wrote. “What this means with regard to China is that of course this country with its 1.4 billion inhabitants and its economic power will play a key role on the world stage in the future — as it has for long periods throughout history.”
In a thinly veiled criticism of Washington’s policies, Scholz said Beijing’s rise did not justify “the calls by some to isolate China.”
Crucially, he insisted that the goal was not to “decouple” — or break manufacturing ties — from China. He added, however, that he was taking “seriously” an assertion by President Xi that Beijing’s goal was to “tighten international production chains’ dependence on China.”
Scholz is planning to fly to Beijing late on Thursday for a one-day trip to the Chinese capital on Friday, where he will be the first Western leader to meet Xi since his reappointment, and the first leader from the G7 group of leading economies to visit China since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.
The chancellor also sought to counter criticism that his trip undermines a joint European approach to China. According to French officials, President Emmanuel Macron had proposed that he and Scholz should visit Xi together to demonstrate unity and show that Beijing cannot divide European countries by playing their economic interests off against each other — an initiative that the German leader rejected.
“German policy on China can only be successful when it is embedded in European policy on China,” Scholz wrote. “In the run-up to my visit, we have therefore liaised closely with our European partners, including President Macron, and also with our transatlantic friends.”
Chancellor Olaf Scholz echoed his predecessor Angela Merkel in insisting that the United States should not drag Germany into a new Cold War against Beijing | Clemens Bilan-Pool/Getty Images
Scholz said he wanted Germany and the EU to cooperate with a rising China — including on the important issue of climate change — rather than trying to box it out.
At the same time, he warned Beijing that it should not pursue policies striving for “hegemonic Chinese dominance or even a Sinocentric world order.”
Scholz also pushed China to stop its support for Russia’s war against Ukraine and to take a more critical position toward Moscow: “As a permanent member of the [United Nations] Security Council, China bears a special responsibility,” he wrote. “Clear words addressed from Beijing to Moscow are important — to ensure that the Charter of the United Nations and its principles are upheld.”
This article is part of POLITICO Pro
The one-stop-shop solution for policy professionals fusing the depth of POLITICO journalism with the power of technology
As industries begin to see humans working closely with robots, there’s a need to ensure that the relationship is effective, smooth and beneficial to humans. Robot trustworthiness and humans’ willingness to trust robot behavior are vital to this working relationship. However, capturing human trust levels can be difficult due to subjectivity, a challenge researchers in the Wm Michael Barnes ’64 Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Texas A&M University aim to solve.
Dr. Ranjana Mehta, associate professor and director of the NeuroErgonomics Lab, said her lab’s human-autonomy trust research stemmed from a series of projects on human-robot Interactions in safety-critical work domains funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
“While our focus so far was to understand how operator states of fatigue and stress impact how humans interact with robots, trust became an important construct to study,” Mehta said. “We found that as humans get tired, they let their guards down and become more trusting of automation than they should. However, why that is the case becomes an important question to address.”
Mehta also has another publication in the journal Applied Ergonomics that investigates these human and robot factors.
Using functional near-infrared spectroscopy, Mehta’s lab captured functional brain activity as operators collaborated with robots on a manufacturing task. They found faulty robot actions decreased the operator’s trust in the robots. That distrust was associated with increased activation of regions in the frontal, motor and visual cortices, indicating increasing workload and heightened situational awareness. Interestingly, the same distrusting behavior was associated with the decoupling of these brain regions working together, which otherwise were well connected when the robot behaved reliably. Mehta said this decoupling was greater at higher robot autonomy levels, indicating that neural signatures of trust are influenced by the dynamics of human-autonomy teaming.
“What we found most interesting was that the neural signatures differed when we compared brain activation data across reliability conditions (manipulated using normal and faulty robot behavior) versus operator’s trust levels (collected via surveys) in the robot,” Mehta said. “This emphasized the importance of understanding and measuring brain-behavior relationships of trust in human-robot collaborations since perceptions of trust alone is not indicative of how operators’ trusting behaviors shape up.”
Dr. Sarah Hopko ’19, lead author on both papers and recent industrial engineering doctoral student, said neural responses and perceptions of trust are both symptoms of trusting and distrusting behaviors and relay distinct information on how trust builds, breaches and repairs with different robot behaviors. She emphasized the strengths of multimodal trust metrics — neural activity, eye tracking, behavioral analysis, etc. — can reveal new perspectives that subjective responses alone cannot offer.
The next step is to expand the research into a different work context, such as emergency response, and understand how trust in multi-human robot teams impact teamwork and taskwork in safety-critical environments. Mehta said the long-term goal is not to replace humans with autonomous robots but to support them by developing trust-aware autonomy agents.
“This work is critical, and we are motivated to ensure that humans-in-the-loop robotics design, evaluation and integration into the workplace are supportive and empowering of human capabilities,” Mehta said.
Newswise — The early-stage research tested the delivery and safety of the new implantable catheter design in two sheep to determine its potential for use in diagnosing and treating diseases in the brain.
If proven effective and safe for use in people, the platform could simplify and reduce the risks associated with diagnosing and treating disease in the deep, delicate recesses of the brain.
It could help surgeons to see deeper into the brain to diagnose disease, deliver treatment like drugs and laser ablation more precisely to tumours, and better deploy electrodes for deep brain stimulation in conditions such as Parkinson’s and epilepsy.
Senior author Professor Ferdinando Rodriguez y Baena, of Imperial’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, led the European effort and said: “The brain is a fragile, complex web of tightly packed nerve cells that each have their part to play. When disease arises, we want to be able to navigate this delicate environment to precisely target those areas without harming healthy cells.
“Our new precise, minimally invasive platform improves on currently available technology and could enhance our ability to safely and effectively diagnose and treat diseases in people, if proven to be safe and effective.”
It includes a soft, flexible catheter to avoid damaging brain tissue while delivering treatment, and an artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled robotic arm to help surgeons navigate the catheter through brain tissue.
Inspired by the organs used by parasitic wasps to stealthily lay eggs in tree bark, the catheter consists of four interlocking segments that slide over one another to allow for flexible navigation.
It connects to a robotic platform that combines human input and machine learning to carefully steer the catheter to the disease site. Surgeons then deliver optical fibres via the catheter so they can see and navigate the tip along brain tissue via joystick control.
The AI platform learns from the surgeon’s input and contact forces within brain tissues to guide the catheter with pinpoint accuracy.
Compared to traditional ‘open’ surgical techniques, the new approach could eventually help to reduce tissue damage during surgery, and improve patient recovery times and length of post-operative hospital stays.
While performing minimally invasive surgery on the brain, surgeons use deeply penetrating catheters to diagnose and treat disease. However, currently used catheters are rigid and difficult to place precisely without the aid of robotic navigational tools. The inflexibility of the catheters combined with the intricate, delicate structure of the brain means catheters can be difficult to place precisely, which brings risks to this type of surgery.
To test their platform, the researchers deployed the catheter in the brains of two live sheep at the University of Milan’s Veterinary Medicine Campus. The sheep were given pain relief and monitored for 24 hours a day over a week for signs of pain or distress before being euthanised so that researchers could examine the structural impact of the catheter on brain tissue.
They found no signs of suffering, tissue damage, or infection following catheter implantation.
Lead author Dr Riccardo Secoli, also from Imperial’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, said: “Our analysis showed that we implanted these new catheters safely, without damage, infection, or suffering. If we achieve equally promising results in humans, we hope we may be able to see this platform in the clinic within four years.
“Our findings could have major implications for minimally invasive, robotically delivered brain surgery. We hope it will help to improve the safety and effectiveness of current neurosurgical procedures where precise deployment of treatment and diagnostic systems is required, for instance in the context of localised gene therapy.”
Professor Lorenzo Bello, study co-author from the University of Milan, said: “One of the key limitations of current MIS is that if you want to get to a deep-seated site through a burr hole in the skull, you are constrained to a straight-line trajectory. The limitation of the rigid catheter is its accuracy within the shifting tissues of the brain, and the tissue deformation it can cause. We have now found that our steerable catheter can overcome most of these limitations.”
GENEVA (AP) — For their first trip to a celebrated robotics contest for high school students from scores of countries, a team of Ukrainian teens had a problem.
With shipments of goods to Ukraine uncertain, and Ukrainian customs officers careful about incoming merchandise, the group only received a base kit of gadgetry on the day they were set to leave for the event in Geneva.
That set off a mad scramble to assemble their robot for the latest edition of the “First Global” contest, a three-day affair that opened Friday, in-person for the first time since the pandemic. Nearly all the 180-odd teams, from countries across the world, had had months to prepare their robots.
“We couldn’t back down because we were really determined to compete here and to give our country a good result — because it really needs it right now,” said Danylo Gladkyi, a member of Ukraine’s team. He and his teammates are too young to be eligible for Ukraine’s national call-up of all men over 18 to take part in the war effort.
Gladkyi said an international package delivery company wasn’t delivering into Ukraine, and reliance on a smaller private company to ship the kit from Poland into Ukraine got tangled up with customs officials. That logjam got cleared last Sunday, forcing the team to dash to get their robot ready with adaptations they had planned — only days before the contest began.
The event, launched in 2017 with backing from American innovator Dean Kamen, encourages young people from all corners of the globe to put their technical smarts and mechanical knowhow to challenges that represent symbolic solutions to global problems.
This year’s theme is carbon capture, a nascent technology in which excess heat-trapping CO2 in the atmosphere is sucked out of the skies and sequestered, often underground, to help fight global warming.
Teams use game controllers like those attached to consoles in millions of households worldwide to direct their self-designed robots to zip around pits, or “fields,” to scoop up hollow plastic balls with holes in them that symbolically represent carbon. Each round starts by emptying a clear rectangular box filled with the balls into the field, prompting a whirring, hissing scramble to pick them up.
The initial goal is to fill a tower topped by a funnel in the center of the field with as many balls as possible. Teams can do that in one of two ways: either by directing the robots to feed the balls into corner pockets, where team members can pluck them out and toss them by hand into the funnel or by having the robots catapult the balls up into the funnels themselves.
Every team has an interest in filling the funnel: the more collected, the more everyone benefits.
But in the final 30 seconds of each session, after the frenetic quest to collect the balls, a second, cutthroat challenge awaits: Along the stem of each tower are short branches, or bars, at varying levels that the teams — choosing the mechanism of their choice such as hooks, winches or extendable arms — try to direct their robots to ascend.
The higher the level reached, the greater the “multiplier” of the total point value of the balls they will receive. Success is getting as high as possible, and with six teams on the field, it’s a dash for the highest perch.
By meshing competition with common interest, the “First Global” initiative aims to offer a tonic to a troubled world, where kids look past politics to help solve problems that face everybody.
The opening-day ceremony had an Olympic vibe, with teams parading in behind their national flags, and short bars of national anthems playing, but the young people made it clear this was about a new kind of global high school sport, in an industrial domain that promises to leave a large footprint in the 21st century.
The competition takes many minds off troubles in the world, from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to the fallout from Syria’s lingering war, to famine in the Horn of Africa, and recent upheaval in Iran.
While most of the world’s countries were taking part, some were not: Russia, in particular, has been left out.
Past winners of such robotics competitions include “Team Hope” — refugees and stateless others — and a team of Afghan girls.
Are we finally starting to see the adoption of labor-saving robots in agriculture? The short and unfulfilling summary answer is “It depends”. Undeniably, we are seeing clear signs of progress yet, simultaneously, we see clear signs of more progress needed. (Hi-res copy of the landscape.)
Earlier this year, Western Growers Association produced an excellent report that outlined the need for robotics in agriculture. Ongoing labor challenges are, of course, a major driver, but so are rising costs, future demand, climate change impacts, and sustainability, among others. The use of robotics in agricultural production is the next progression of decades of increasing mechanization and automation to enhance crop production. Today’s crop robotics can build upon these preceding solutions and leverage newer technologies like precise navigation, vision and other sensor systems, connectivity and interoperability protocols, deep learning and artificial intelligence to address farmers’ current and future challenges.
So What is a Crop Robot?
We at The Mixing Bowl and Better Food Ventures create various market landscape maps that capture the use of technology in our food system. Our intent in producing these landscapes is to not only represent where a technology’s adoption is today, but, more importantly, where it is heading. So, as we developed this 2022 Crop Robotics Landscape, our frame of reference was to look beyond mechanization and defined automation to more autonomous crop robotics. This focus on “robotics” perhaps created the hardest challenge for us—defining a “Crop Robot”.
According to the definition of the Oxford English Dictionary, “A robot is a machine—especially one programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically.” Putting agriculture aside for a moment, that definition means that a dishwasher, washing machine, or a thermostat controlling an air conditioner could all be considered robots, not things that evoke “robot” to most people. When asking “What is a Crop Robot” in our interviews for this analysis, the theme of “labor savings” came through strongly. Must a crop robot be a labor reducing tool? This is where our definition of a crop robot started us down the “It depends” path?
If a machine is only sensing or gathering data, is it saving labor enough to be considering a robot?
If a machine does not have a fully autonomous mobility system to move around—perhaps just an implement pulled by a standard tractor—is it a robot?
If a machine is solely an autonomous mobility system not designed for any specific labor-saving agriculture task, is it a robot?
If the machine is an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)/aerial drone, is it a robot? Does the answer change if there are a fleet of drones coordinating amongst themselves the spraying of a field?
Eventually, for the purposes of this robotic landscape analysis, we focused on machines that use hardware and software to perceive surroundings, analyze data and take real-time action on information related to an agricultural crop-related function without human intervention.
This definition focuses on characteristics that enable autonomous, not deterministic, actions. In many instances repetitive or constrained automation can get a task completed in an efficient and cost effective manner. Much of the existing and indispensable agricultural machinery and automation used on farms today would fit that description. However, we wanted to look specifically at robotic technologies that can take more unplanned, appropriate and timely action in the dynamic, unpredictable, and unstructured environments that exist in agricultural production. That translates to more precision, more dexterity and more autonomy.
The Crop Robotics Landscape
Our 2022 Crop Robotics Landscape includes nearly 250 companies developing crop robotic systems today. The robots are a mix: some that are self-propelled and some that aren’t, some that can navigate autonomously and those that can’t, some that are precise and some that are not, both ground-based and air-based systems, and those focused on indoor or outdoor production. In general, the systems need to offer autonomous navigation or vision-aided precision or a combination to be included on the landscape. These included areas are highlighted in gold in the chart below. The white areas are not autonomous or not complete robotic systems and are not included on the landscape.
2022 Crop Robotics
Chris Taylor
The landscape is limited to robotic solutions utilized in the production of food crops; it does not include robotics for animal farming nor for the production of cannabis. Pre-production nursery and post-harvest segments are also excluded (but note that highly automated solutions for these tasks are commercially available today). Likewise, sensor-only and analytic offerings are also not included, unless they are part of a complete robotic system.
Additionally, we only included companies that are providing their robotic systems commercially to others. If they develop robotics only for their own internal use or only offer services then they are not included, nor are academic or consortium research projects unless they appear to be heading to a commercial offering. Product companies should have reached at least the demonstrable-prototype stage in their development. Finally, companies appear only once on the landscape, even though some may offer multiple or multi-use robotic solutions. They are also placed according to their most sophisticated or primary function.
The landscape is segmented vertically by crop production system: broadacre row crops, field-grown specialty, orchard and vineyard, and indoor. The landscape is also segmented horizontally by functional area: autonomous movement, crop management, and harvest. Within those functional areas are the more specific task/product segments described here:
Autonomous Movement
Navigation/Autonomy – more sophisticated autosteer systems with headland turning capability and autonomous navigation systems
Small Tractor/Platform – smaller, people size autonomous tractors and carriers
Large Tractor – larger autonomous tractors and carriers
Indoor Platform – smaller autonomous carriers specifically for indoor farms
Crop Management
Scouting and Indoor Scouting – autonomous mapping and scouting robots and aerial drones; note that robots appearing in other task/product categories may have scouting capabilities in addition to their primary function
Preparation & Planting – autonomous field preparation and planting robots
Drone Application – spraying and spreading aerial drones
Some of the task/product segments, like Large Tractor, span multiple crop systems, as the robotic solutions within them may be applicable to more than one crop type. Logo positions within these landscape boxes are not necessarily indicative of crop system applicability.
The diversity of offerings appearing on the landscape is perhaps the biggest takeaway; crop robotics is a very active sector across tasks and crops types. In the Autonomous Movement area, although autosteer has been in wide use for many years, more robust autonomous navigation technology and fully autonomous tractors and smaller multi-use motive platforms are just entering the market. In Crop Management there is a mix of self-propelled and trailed and attached implements. Vision-aided precision crop care tasks like spot spraying and weeding are areas of heavy development activity, particularly for the less automated specialty crop sector. Finally, high-value, high-labor crops like strawberries, fresh-market tomatoes, and orchard fruit are the focus for many robotic harvesting initiatives. As noted, there is a lot of activity; however, successful commercialization is more rare.
Traversing the Valley of Death to Achieve Scale
The Government of the United Kingdom recently released a report that reviews Automation in Horticulture. In the report they include the automation lifecycle analysis graphic shown below that they refer to as “Technology Readiness Levels in Horticulture”. If we were to map the more than 600 companies we researched in our analysis, well over 90 percent of these companies would still be labeled in the “Research” or “System Development” phases. Historically, many agriculture robotics companies have failed to succeed, perishing in the “Valley of Death”. Only a handful of companies have reached “Commercialization”, a phase where companies attempt to traverse the perilous journey from product success to business success and profitability.
“Automation in Horticulture Review”
Dept. of Environment Food & Rural Affairs, Government of the United Kingdom July, 2022
There are many reasons why ag robotics has had a high failure rate in reaching commercial scale. At its core, it has been very difficult to provide a reliable machine capable of providing value to a farmer on par with a non-robotic or manual solution at a cost effective price point.
Amongst the technical challenges crop robotics companies face are:
Design: In the early days a company may want to vary its product design to try new things. But at some point as it begins to scale, it needs to lock in standardization to the degree possible. Updating deployed systems remains a continuous challenge.
Manufacturing: Maturing companies move from custom to standardized manufacturing. One company we spoke with had gone from building machines itself, to just building a base and then having vendors doing sub-assembly. Now they have gotten to a point of maturation that not a single team member touches a wrench as all manufacturing is done by partners.
Reliability: A metric commonly used is hours of uninterrupted operation, and scaling requires going from “faults per mile” to “miles per fault”. The ability to handle the adverse and unpredictable conditions of agricultural production exacerbates the difficulty in creating a reliable machine. As an example, one person told about the unforeseen challenge of working in vineyards where the acid from grape juice accelerates equipment deterioration.
Operation: At some point in the scaling process, farm staff will operate the machine without the presence of robotic solution provider support staff. At this point, there are often knowledge gaps on how to effectively operate the machine that need to be resolved. A step in scaling is getting farm staff trained to operate the machines themselves.
Service: Another metric we heard was about decreasing service support resource requirements: How could a robotics company switch from having X number of people support a single unit to having a single person support Y number of different units?
A last technical facet of scaling is the ease with which a platform can be modified to serve multiple crops or multiple tasks. The space is still so early that we don’t have that many data points about repurposing technology for multiple crops/tasks. However, it is something many companies are obviously looking to prove to upsell customers or convince investors they have the potential to serve a larger market.
We heard from numerous crop robotic startups and investors that the technology challenges need to be tackled first, then the economic and business challenges can be addressed. The reality, of course, is that a successful crop robotic solution developer must face several challenges simultaneously: sustaining a business while refining product-market fit to get paying customers; refining product-market fit while sustaining the interest of investors; and sustaining the engagement of farmer customers.
On the business side, we tried to identify when a company could claim it had made it through the “Valley of Death”. One group we spoke with very simply said there were three key business questions to ask:
Can we sell it?
Does demand outstrip supply?
Do the unit economics work out for all parties?
The answer to the question of “Can we sell it?” usually equated to when and if the robot could perform the task on par with a human—a comparable performance for a comparable cost. That performance clearly varies by crop and task. As an example, there was a generally shared sense that “picking” was the most difficult task to achieve on par with the time, accuracy and cost of a human.
One thread that came up in our conversations is that many farmers may not yet see the longer-term potential of what robots can do in agriculture. They look at (and value) them merely as a way to replace the tasks a human does—but do not look at what more efficient approaches beyond the capabilities of humans that could be enabled with these powerful platforms.
In our discussions we probed on whether the business model of a crop robotics company made a substantial difference in whether they could sell it. Responses were wide-ranging as to whether there is a benefit to having a “Robotics as a Service” (RaaS) model versus a machine buy/lease model. Our net conclusion regarding business models is that, while it may be advantageous to offer “Robotics-as-a-Service” (RaaS) in the early stages of a company’s development, over the longer run companies should plan to operate under both a buy/lease and a RaaS model. The advantages of RaaS in the early days are that they 1) allow a farmer to “try before you buy” which lowers the complexity and cost, and, thus, lowers the barrier to adoption and 2) offer a startup to work more closely with farmers to understand problems and identify potential new challenges to solve.
Many startups have “hyped” their solutions too early, before they could conquer the many complexities involved with successfully operating in the market. This “hype” has caused many farmers to be leery of crop robotics in general. Farmers just want (and need) things to work and many may have been burned in the past by adopting technologies that were not fully mature. As one startup said, “It is hard to get them to understand the iterative process”. Still, farmers are also known as problem solvers and many continue to engage with startups to help mature solutions.
Of course, the “Can we sell it?” question should really be extended to “Can we sell and support it?”. An interesting point to watch between incumbents and new solution providers will be the scaling of startups and the resulting need for those companies to have a cost-effective sales and service channel. Incumbent vendors, of course, have those channels, and John Deere and GUSS Automation have announced just such a partnership.
Like farmers, investors also walk hand-in-hand with a robotics startup crossing the Valley of Death. Investor sentiment toward agriculture robotics is mixed. On the one hand, there is an acknowledgement that there have not been notable exits of profitable startups in this space (as opposed to those just having desirable technology). On the other hand, there is a recognition that agriculture’s labor issues are becoming more acute and large potential markets could be realized this time around. Investors also see that the quality of the technology and startup teams have improved in the last few years.
It is encouraging to see more investors looking at the space than a few years ago, writing bigger checks in later rounds, and investing at high valuations. Investors also understand the challenges better than before so that they can differentiate between segments developers are targeting, e.g., the difficulty of harvesting in an open field versus scouting in a greenhouse.
What Gives us Optimism Crop Robotics is Making Progress?
So, given the above, why do we feel optimistic that crop robotics is making healthy progress? For a number of reasons, the Valley of Death may not be as wide nor as fatal as it has been in the past for companies in this space.
Beyond the growing need for labor-saving solutions in agriculture, we are optimistic that crop robotics is making progress simply because of the underlying technology progress that has occurred in the last decade or so. Again and again in the interviews we conducted, we heard phrases similar to “this would not have been possible a decade ago”. Someone flat out stated that a few years ago “The machines weren’t ready” for the conditions of farming. Large scale improvements in core compute technology, accessibility and performance of computer vision systems, deep learning capabilities, and even automated mobility systems have come a long way in the last ten years.
In addition to the improved technology base, there is more seasoned talent than a decade ago and that talent brings a range of experiences from across the robotics landscape, including insight into scaling to success. In this regard, crop robotics can leverage the broader, better-funded robotics spaces of self-driving vehicles and warehouse automation. Equally important, most of the teams that are seeing success employ a combination of robotics experts and farm experts. Past ag robotics teams may have had the technological prowess to develop a solution but may not have understood the ag market or the realities of farming environments.
We are also optimistic because the depth and breadth of crop robotic solutions is expanding, as illustrated by the number of companies represented on our landscape. Although large commodity row crop farms—like those of the Midwestern US—are already highly automated and have even adopted robotic autosteer systems en masse, a very clear indication of progress is that we are seeing a more diverse set of crop robotic solutions than in years past.
For example, new robotic platforms are successfully undertaking labor-saving tasks that are of modest difficulty. Perhaps the best example of this is the GUSS autonomous sprayer that can work in orchards. The self-powered GUSS machine navigates autonomously and can adjust its spraying selectively based on its ultrasonic sensors. It has reached commercial scale. We are also starting to see more solutions targeting farmers who have been underserved by labor-saving automation solutions, such as smaller farm operations or niche specialty crop systems. Examples of this are Burro, Naio or farm-ng. Lastly, we are seeing the development of “smart implements”. By not taking on the burden of developing autonomous movement, these solutions can be pulled behind a tractor to focus on complex agriculture tasks like vision-guided selective weeding and spraying. Verdant, Farmwise and Carbon Robotics are examples of this kind of solution.
One encouraging trend we are also watching is the role of incumbent agriculture equipment providers, particularly in specialty crops. John Deere (Blue River,Bear Flag Robotics) as well as Case New Holland (Raven Industries) have signaled a willingness to acquire companies in crop robotics to complement their ongoing internal R&D efforts. Yamaha and Toyota, through their venture funds, have also shown a desire to partner and invest in the space. The question remains to be seen if other incumbent equipment players have the willingness to invest in the assemblage of technology and talent required to bring robotic solutions to the marketplace.
Looking Ahead
The drivers for increased automation in agriculture are readily apparent and are likely to continue to increase over time. Thus, a large opportunity exists for robotic solutions that can help farmers mitigate their production challenges. That is, as long as those solutions perform well and at reasonable cost in the real world of commercial farm operations. As we observed while researching the landscape, there is an impressive number of companies focused on developing crop robotics solutions across a breadth of crop systems and tasks, and with more commercial focus than past projects. However, the market continues to feel early as companies continue to navigate the difficult process of creating and deploying robust solutions at scale for this challenging industry. Still, there is more room for optimism and more tangible progress being made now than ever before. The Crop Robotics “Valley of Death” that so many startups have failed to cross appears to be becoming less wide and ominous in great part due to the break-neck speed of technological progress. While a robotic revolution in crop production is likely still some time off, we are seeing a promising evolution and expect to see more successful crop robotic companies in the not too distant future.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources and The Vine for their strong interest in crop robotics and their continued support of this project. Thank you to Simon Pearson, Director, Lincoln Institute for Agri-Food Technology and Professor of Agri-Food Technology, University of Lincoln in the UK for his insights and the use of the graphic from the Automation in Horticulture Review report. Thank you to Walt Duflock of Western Growers Association for sharing his detailed perspective on the ag robotics sector. Most importantly we would like to acknowledge all the start-ups and innovators who are working tirelessly to make crop robotics a much needed reality. A special thanks to those entrepreneurs and investors that spoke with us and provided a unique view into the challenges and excitement of a crop robotic business.
Bios
Chris Taylor is a Senior Consultant on The Mixing Bowl team and has spent more than 20 years on global IT strategy and development innovation in manufacturing, design and healthcare, focusing most recently on AgTech.
Michael Rose is a Partner at The Mixing Bowl and Better Food Ventures where he brings more than 25 years immersed in new venture creation and innovation as an operating executive and investor across the Food Tech, AgTech, restaurant, Internet, and mobile sectors.
Rob Trice founded The Mixing Bowl to connect food, agriculture and IT innovators for thought and action leadership and Better Food Ventures to invest in startups harnessing IT for positive impact in Agrifoodtech.
Newswise — Inspired by living things from trees to shellfish, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin set out to create a plastic much like many life forms that are hard and rigid in some places and soft and stretchy in others. Their success — a first, using only light and a catalyst to change properties such as hardness and elasticity in molecules of the same type — has brought about a new material that is 10 times as tough as natural rubber and could lead to more flexible electronics and robotics.
The findings are published today in the journal Science.
“This is the first material of its type,” said Zachariah Page, assistant professor of chemistry and corresponding author on the paper. “The ability to control crystallization, and therefore the physical properties of the material, with the application of light is potentially transformative for wearable electronics or actuators in soft robotics.”
Scientists have long sought to mimic the properties of living structures, like skin and muscle, with synthetic materials. In living organisms, structures often combine attributes such as strength and flexibility with ease. When using a mix of different synthetic materials to mimic these attributes, materials often fail, coming apart and ripping at the junctures between different materials.
Oftentimes, when bringing materials together, particularly if they have very different mechanical properties, they want to come apart,” Page said. Page and his team were able to control and change the structure of a plastic-like material, using light to alter how firm or stretchy the material would be.
Chemists started with a monomer, a small molecule that binds with others like it to form the building blocks for larger structures called polymers that were similar to the polymer found in the most commonly used plastic. After testing a dozen catalysts, they found one that, when added to their monomer and shown visible light, resulted in a semicrystalline polymer similar to those found in existing synthetic rubber. A harder and more rigid material was formed in the areas the light touched, while the unlit areas retained their soft, stretchy properties.
Because the substance is made of one material with different properties, it was stronger and could be stretched farther than most mixed materials.
The reaction takes place at room temperature, the monomer and catalyst are commercially available, and researchers used inexpensive blue LEDs as the light source in the experiment. The reaction also takes less than an hour and minimizes use of any hazardous waste, which makes the process rapid, inexpensive, energy efficient and environmentally benign.
The researchers will next seek to develop more objects with the material to continue to test its usability.
“We are looking forward to exploring methods of applying this chemistry towards making 3D objects containing both hard and soft components,” said first author Adrian Rylski, a doctoral student at UT Austin.
The team envisions the material could be used as a flexible foundation to anchor electronic components in medical devices or wearable tech. In robotics, strong and flexible materials are desirable to improve movement and durability.
Henry L. Cater, Keldy S. Mason, Marshall J. Allen, Anthony J. Arrowood, Benny D. Freeman and Gabriel E. Sanoja of The University of Texas at Austin also contributed to the research.
The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy and the Robert A. Welch Foundation.
DETROIT — An early prototype of Tesla Inc.’s proposed Optimus humanoid robot slowly and awkwardly walked onto a stage, turned, and waved to a cheering crowd at the company’s artificial intelligence event Friday.
But the basic tasks by the robot with exposed wires and electronics — as well as a later, next generation version that had to be carried onstage by three men — was a long way from CEO Elon Musk’s vision of a human-like robot that can change the world.
Musk told the crowd, many of whom might be hired by Tesla, that the robot can do much more than the audience saw Friday. He said it is also delicate and “we just didn’t want it to fall on its face.”
Musk suggested that the problem with flashy robot demonstrations is that the robots are “missing a brain” and don’t have the intelligence to navigate themselves, but he gave little evidence Friday that Optimus was any more intelligent than robots developed by other companies and researchers.
The demo didn’t impress AI researcher Filip Piekniewski, who tweeted it was “next level cringeworthy” and a “complete and utter scam.” He said it would be “good to test falling, as this thing will be falling a lot.”
“None of this is cutting edge,” tweeted robotics expert Cynthia Yeung. “Hire some PhDs and go to some robotics conferences @Tesla.”
Yeung also questioned why Tesla opted for its robot to have a human-like hand with five fingers, noting “there’s a reason why” warehouse robots developed by startup firms use pinchers with two or three fingers.
Musk said that Friday night was the first time the early robot walked onstage without a tether. Tesla’s goal, he said, is to make an “extremely capable” robot in high volumes — possibly millions of them — at a cost that could be less than a car, that he guessed would be less than $20,000.
Tesla showed a video of the robot, which uses artificial intelligence that Tesla is testing in its “Full Self-Driving” vehicles, carrying boxes and placing a metal bar into what appeared to be a factory machine. But there was no live demonstration of the robot completing the tasks.
Employees told the crowd in Palo Alto, California, as well as those watching via livestream, that they have been working on Optimus for six to eight months. People can probably buy an Optimus “within three to five years,” Musk said.
Employees said Optimus robots would have four fingers and a thumb with a tendon-like system so they could have the dexterity of humans.
The robot is backed by giant artificial intelligence computers that track millions of video frames from “Full Self-Driving” autos. Similar computers would be used to teach tasks to the robots, they said.
Experts in the robotics field were skeptical that Tesla is anywhere near close to rolling out legions of human-like home robots that can do the “useful things” Musk wants them to do – say, make dinner, mow the lawn, keep watch on an aging grandmother.
“When you’re trying to develop a robot that is both affordable and useful, a humanoid kind of shape and size is not necessarily the best way,” said Tom Ryden, executive director of the nonprofit startup incubator Mass Robotics.
Tesla isn’t the first car company to experiment with humanoid robots.
Honda more than two decades ago unveiled Asimo, which resembled a life-size space suit and was shown in a carefully-orchestrated demonstration to be able to pour liquid into a cup. Hyundai also owns a collection of humanoid and animal-like robots through its 2021 acquisition of robotics firm Boston Dynamics. Ford has partnered with Oregon startup Agility Robotics, which makes robots with two legs and two arms that can walk and lift packages.
Ryden said carmakers’ research into humanoid robotics can potentially lead to machines that can walk, climb and get over obstacles, but impressive demos of the past haven’t led to an “actual use scenario” that lives up to the hype.
“There’s a lot of learning that they’re getting from understanding the way humanoids function,” he said. “But in terms of directly having a humanoid as a product, I’m not sure that that’s going to be coming out anytime soon.”
Critics also said years ago that Musk and Tesla wouldn’t be able to build a profitable new car company that used batteries for power rather than gasoline.
Tesla is testing “Full Self-Driving” vehicles on public roads, but they have to be monitored by selected owners who must be ready to intervene at all times. The company says it has about 160,000 vehicles equipped with the test software on the road today.
Critics have said the Teslas, which rely on cameras and powerful computers to drive by themselves, don’t have enough sensors to drive safely. Tesla’s less capable Autopilot driver-assist system, with the same camera sensors, is under investigation by U.S. safety regulators for braking for no reason and repeatedly running into emergency vehicles with flashing lights parked along freeways.
In 2019, Musk promised a fleet of autonomous robotaxis would be in use by the end of 2020. They are still being tested.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk and leaders from the company’s AI and hardware teams are expected to speak at the company’s AI Day 2022, an engineer-recruiting event, which will be live-streamed on Friday starting around 5:00 p.m. in California. You can watch AI Day 2022 here.
During the last AI Day in August 2021, Musk said Tesla was going to build a humanoid robot, which is referred to as either the Tesla Bot or Optimus today.
“It’s intended to be friendly, of course, and navigate through a world of humans, and eliminate dangerous, repetitive and boring tasks,” Musk said at the time.
Tesla didn’t have a hardware prototype to show last year and made the 2021 announcement with an actor dressed in a Tesla Bot body suit dancing on stage. The stunt drew sneers from critics and cheers from fans.
This year, investors are expecting a real tech demonstration of the robot, along with updates on Tesla’s progress developing self-driving technology that can turn the company’s existing electric vehicles into robotaxis.
Musk has been promising a truly self-driving Tesla since 2016 when he said a coast-to-coast demo would happen by the end of 2017. To-date the company has only released driver assistance systems that need to be constantly supervised by a human driver who remains attentive to the road and their car, ready to take over at any time.
When Musk originally floated the humanoid robot concept at AI Day 2021, Musk said of Optimus, “It should be able to, ‘please go to the store and get me the following groceries,’ that kind of thing.”
Later, Musk said that robots made by Tesla will one day be worth more than its cars, and that thousands of them would be put to work moving parts around the factories, where humans build cars and batteries.
During Tesla’s 2021 fourth-quarter earnings call, Musk remarked: “If you think about the economy– the foundation of the economy is labor. Capital equipment is distilled labor. So what happens if you don’t actually have a labor shortage? I’m not sure what an economy even means at that point. That’s what Optimus is about, so very important.”
As Bernstein senior research analyst Toni Sacconaghi wrote in a September 30 note ahead of AI Day 2022, In 2018 Tesla “had mistakenly tried to hyper-automate its final assembly (i.e. putting parts into cars).” The result was that Musk soon admitted “excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake,” and “humans are underrated.”
Tesla brought more people back to its manufacturing and assembly lines after that, but Sacconaghi writes that today Tesla is over-automating its customer service. Tesla owners generally find it difficult to get in touch with individual sales and service reps at Tesla, and are steered to conduct all possible resolution of complaints through Tesla’s mobile app.
A long-time robotics engineer, Alexander Kernbaum, who now serves as interim director of robotics at the vaunted research and development non-profit SRI International, says whether Tesla impresses with its robotics update at AI Day or not, the company has the resources to develop something meaningful and has inspired new interest in the field.
However, Kernbaum notes, when it comes to creating a robot that can make a difference in an car assembly plant, there’s really no need for Tesla to develop a bi-pedal robot. “Mobile robots will find uses,” he explains, “But mobility should be as simple as possible for a factory environment meaning wheels would be the way to go, not legs.”
Robotic legs require a lot of power, for one thing, which would put strain on any battery Tesla develops for its robotics. Additionally, legged robots — like people — can trip and fall. Wheeled robots would not be as likely to tip over. The safety concern should be tantamount in a factory, Kernbaum suggests.
Kernbaum believes Tesla would be best-served to focus on robotic hands. He said, “Hands are like the ultimate multi-tool. Dexterity and in-hand object manipulation are the grand 10-year challenges that will have an obvious impact on all precision manufacturing and on everything really.”
AI Day 2022 will be the company’s first major event since former AI leader of Tesla Andrej Karpathy resigned. AI Day precedes Tesla’s third-quarter vehicle production and deliveries report which is expected within days.
BUFFALO, N.Y., May 24, 2022 (Newswire.com)
– WNY STEM Hub has announced a long-term strategic partnership with NeuroMaker to benefit the STEM community. The partnership will connect the community of Western New York with the broader world of STEM technologies and career opportunities in the 21st-century economy. Collaboration with industry, community, educational, and technology leaders will be at the core of work with the partnership.
The first of many programs and initiatives enabled by this partnership is the “Hand in Hand” enrichment program. It will be hosted by the WNY STEM Hub this summer (Aug. 1 to 12, 2022). NeuroMaker will provide its STEM activity hardware along with a curriculum and exercises that will introduce participants to topics including ethical engineering, robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), and biotechnology with the goal of engaging students as they learn the interdisciplinary skills needed to succeed in the tech workforce.
NeuroMaker is a K12 education technology company that was incubated in the Harvard Innovation Lab. The company offers brain-machine technology and hardware products based on real-world applications: the NeuroMaker HAND, which is based on a prosthetic robotic hand to help students understand concepts such as technology accessibility, robotics, and biomechanics, and NeuroMaker BCI, which uses a brain-sensing headband to introduce neuroscience concepts and includes coding exercises that allow users to control devices with their brainwaves.
NeuroMaker Director of Strategic Partnerships Joshua Varela said, “As a University at Buffalo alumni, this partnership is especially meaningful to me. We know that students in this area haven’t historically had access to STEM career opportunities and we are proud to help bring Western New York to the forefront of innovation.”
WNY STEM Hub is pleased to partner with NeuroMaker and to introduce to the WNY region this comprehensive curriculum and platform that is the perfect next step for our signature summer programs, the Girls Coding Project and Hand in Hand program. In addition to exposing the students to this Hands-On STEM platform, we are offering educators the opportunity for a first up-close look and introductory training. -Merging Hand in Hand – a unique technology, disability awareness, and service-learning opportunity with NeuroMaker STEM is a perfect fit.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla., April 28, 2022 (Newswire.com)
– Shiva Robotics Academy presents Roboticist 2022, taking place at the University of North Florida John A. Delaney Student Union on April 30, 2022 and featuring LEGO and metal robots built by students in elementary, middle, and high school.
Shiva Robotics Academy is proud to bring Roboticist 2022 to the University of North Florida for the second time. Roboticist 2022 is an annual celebration showcasing student talents in LEGO/Metal Robotics.
Event Highlights
Students from FIRST Robotics Team will demonstrate their robots
We are expecting 300 participants to attend. Dr. Schonning, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at UNF is the keynote speaker
The event is open to the public.
There is a demonstration of 3D Printing
Thanks to student volunteers and SHIVA alumni for supporting this event
As customers move to online shopping, one thing is clear: Retail Robotics is the next technology company to watch in 2022.
Press Release –
Apr 5, 2022
NEW YORK, April 5, 2022 (Newswire.com)
– Retail Robotics, one of the top-rated companies in innovative tech solutions for retailers and logistic services providers, shares new insights on robotic innovations, which can solve problems of so-called “last-mile” and revolutionize global delivery infrastructure for e-commerce and e-grocery. It addresses big challenges the market is currently facing.
The market is booming and the forecasts show the growth to $7.385 trillion of global e-commerce sales by 2025. While demand for online deals could grow without limits, the current infrastructure cannot handle the increased volumes. Everything indicates that robotic pick-up points will become one of the key answers to the expectations of online retailers and consumers.
“Classic solutions have low capacity and occupy large space. Whereas home delivery causes higher traffic in cities and generates air pollution. With today’s rapid growth of online shopping, many retailers still lack the efficient delivery options in terms of costs, footprint, capacity, and consumer experience,” explained CEO and Founder at Retail Robotics, Łukasz Nowiński. With the multichannel technology from Retail Robotics, retailers can reduce costs and boost their sales, ultimately contributing to the sustainable development of cities. “Today’s consumers have high expectations for more convenient options allowing them to collect their orders 24/7, safe, fast, easy and for free,” Nowiński added.
For e-grocery retailers, the company provides Arctan technology, the most efficient click-and-collect robotic solution that increases profitability and customer experience, and at the same time offers the lowest footprint. In fact, one Arctan (capacity 202 logistic bins and 28 freezer lockers) replaces 14 classic refrigerated lockers. Arctan Drive version for e-grocery curbside pickup has a high capacity of 896 logistic bins or more (capacity of 56 classic lockers), can fit eight standard parking spots and serve seven customers at a time. It can be integrated with Micro Fulfillment Center for remote loading, enabling a very efficient process.
In the parcel delivery market, Retail Robotics enables logistics providers to reduce costs by up to 90% with its other flagship innovation PickupHero, a robotic parcel locker. It fits 90% of local stores and gives a top customer experience without the involvement of a salesperson. The additional advantage for local shops is a 70% pick-up to purchase ratio.
PickupHero allows rapid expansion in agglomerations such as NY, Paris or London – just by allowing the use of large local store networks like 7-Eleven, without interfering with the city’s architecture. After the successful debut at NRF 2022 Innovation Lab, the company announced plans to implement them on several European markets in 2022.
This kind of transition from home delivery to robotic solutions remains crucial to continued success in the retail landscape ahead. “Retail Robotics carved its path by staying ahead of the competition. I am proud to begin talks with the world’s biggest players to change traditional logistics to robotized parcel lockers, automated machines for e-grocery and click-and-collect pickup points, that will drastically reduce the number of home deliveries, congestion and pollution in cities and increase the efficiency of retail. We all need to be on board to make a significant impact,” announced Łukasz Nowiński.
About Retail Robotics
Retail Robotics is a leading company that creates robotic solutions for retailers and providers of logistic services. Its convenient delivery and collection technologies unleash the full potential of retail, reduce the costs and remove the bottleneck of last-mile delivery.
Parents worldwide can now give their children access to ESSK’s quality summer camps and certified instructors
Press Release –
updated: Jun 12, 2020
SAN MATEO, Calif., June 12, 2020 (Newswire.com)
– Wonder Workshop is announcing a partnership with Extreme STEAM Science for Kids (ESSK) to launch online coding camps for kids ages 6-11, available this summer. ESSK, accredited with the American Camps Association (“ACA”), will host the virtual camps with certified instructors and Dash’s Neighborhood, a virtual robot coding platform from Wonder Workshop, to teach children programming and how to apply these skills to real-world robotics. The virtual camps are designed to provide children learning and engagement for several hours a day with qualified camp instructors.
As the school year ends this year, parents are finding themselves at home with their children without access to traditional drop-off summer camps. An independent study published in the Journal of Youth Development demonstrated that camps help children grow in self-confidence, independence, making friends, exploring and learning new activities. Without access to drop-off summer camps, families are turning to virtual camps. However, there is a significant gap in quality summer camps offered virtually with experienced instructors, especially for children ages 6-10.
ESSK brings the experience from six decades of running camps for kids to a home-based virtual camp curriculum. The camp will be created and hosted by ESSK camp professionals. Each camp session will limit the number of campers working with one instructor to 10. Instructors will track camper engagement in real-time through the Class Connect online tool, and personalize the instruction with breakout sessions to create a fun and memorable summer for campers. Parents can choose half or full-day camp hours, and sign up for one or two-week-long camps.
“Millions of children have used Dash robots to learn to code, and we’re excited to bring that engaging learning platform to summer camps in partnership with ESSK so that students can continue their learning during the summer,” said Vikas Gupta, co-founder and CEO of Wonder Workshop.
Summer camps will begin July 6, and new one-week sessions start every week until August 24. Two-week camp sessions begin July 6, and new sessions start every two weeks until August 17.
“Summer camps have been the bedrock of time away from schools for children for decades. We are excited to bring this experience to an online world and look forward to bringing the same quality and engagement to all the kids at home this summer,” said Bob Budah, the founder of ESSK and the CEO of Park Shore Country Day Camp.
Wonder Workshop’s mission is to spark creativity among kids of all ages, inspiring lifelong learning. Wonder Workshop’s Class Connect is the world’s leading educational platform for K-5 that makes learning and teaching coding literacy engaging, easy, and affordable. Class Connect gives teachers a software solution to implement coding literacy with 1-1 student access, and a seamless integration with Dash robots. Wonder Workshop’s platform is used by students to master 21st-century skills, such as critical thinking and Computer Science, in more than 4,000 school districts. Contact: Brisa.ayub@makewonder.com
Extreme STEAM Science Kids (ESSK)
Celebrating nearly 10 years of bringing robotics programs to camp, Extreme STEAM Science Kids is a summer science Steam camp based on Long Island that specializes in providing “campified” on-site and virtual robotics programs to camps. ESSK was founded by Bob Budah, whose family has owned and operated the Park Shore Day Camp in Long Island, NY, for six decades.
Nexeraa Technologies seeks to revolutionize software industry with positive social change.
Press Release –
updated: Apr 9, 2018
NEW YORK, April 9, 2018 (Newswire.com)
– Nexeraa Technologies, an open-sourced, non-programmer’s freeware development platform that is seeking to transform the lives of everyday people in our world today, is proud to announce they have launched their initial crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo.
Determined to map the shortest path to efficiency and agility, Nexeraa wants to equip as many people as possible with life-changing opportunities which will make their value more than that of a robotic counterpart.
Together, with the help of the community, we are working preemptively to do something about the impending robotics age. We need everyone’s interested support to make a difference and curtail the predicted unemployment that is coming. That is why we have launched a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo that is aimed at doing just that. We’re all gifted. We believe that everyone has something special to give.
Novem Yong, Founder
Through open-sourced development and a desktop-based drag-and-drop automation application, Nexeraa has created a software tool with unlimited automating potential.
“As society heads toward the digital edge, a world in which robots have assumed most jobs leaving millions unemployed, we’ve developed a platform that is going to make a shift,” said Novem Yong, Founder and Owner of Nexeraa Technologies.
“Together, with the help of the community, we are working preemptively to do something about the impending robotics age.”
Nexeraa’s software application enables users with a computer and basic knowledge of Internet functionality to complete more value-added tasks daily. The platform leverages and reverses the same technology used to create unemployment in the first place. This allows potential opportunities to become available to individuals before they lose their own employment.
“We proudly program for humanity, not for profit,” said Novem. “Our open-source library provides free educational resources, gearing up everyday people for the invisible war that is to come.”
“We need everyone’s interested support to make a difference and curtail the predicted unemployment that is coming. That is why we have launched a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo that is aimed at doing just that.”
Everyday people can go into Nexeraa, drag-and-drop what they would like the application to mimic through a desktop, and sit back while the software provides the support and confidence these people need to feel valued in a digital age.
Nexeraa has until May 9, 2018 to meet their fundraising goal on Indiegogo.
“Automation will help people free up more time for a more value-added task today,” said Novem. “We’re all gifted. We believe that everyone has something special to give.”
“Spread the word on the official launch of our crowdfunding campaign. Then head on over to check out our branded videos and campaign information today.”
ABOUT NEXERAA TECHNOLOGIES
Nexeraa Technologies is an open-sourced, non-programmer’s freeware development platform that is seeking to transform the lives of everyday people in our world today. Developed with everyday people in mind, Aatos, this drag-and-drop software solution will be freely accessible through the Free Community Platform. Regular people can go into Aatos, drag-and-drop what they would like the application to mimic through a desktop, and sit back while the software provides the support and confidence these people need to feel valued in a digital age.
Presently, Nexeraa is hosting a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo, to complete May 9, 2018.
For more information, visit: http://bit.ly/Nex2Igg or contact Jerome Sanders via email at jerome@nexeraa.com.
Dispensing systems for benchtop to full laboratory deployment in life sciences and medical diagnostics.
Press Release –
updated: Jan 25, 2018
Carlsbad, Calif., January 25, 2018 (Newswire.com)
– Let’s Go Robotics today announced Precise Drop™ micro-dispensing systems. These systems are the latest innovation by the company for life sciences and medical diagnostics applications. Precise Drop is highly configurable, making it easy to use in any environment from benchtop to full laboratory. The Let’s Go Robotics team focuses on system integration, custom engineering, and standard product development, leveraging its decades of experience in engineering and robotics.
“We have been designing and delivering small volume dispensing systems for years,” said Brian L. Ganz, Let’s Go Robotics President and CEO. “Precise Drop systems package this expertise into a more standard line of flexible dispensers that scales from benchtop to full production.”
We have been designing and delivering small volume dispensing systems for years. Precise Drop systems package this expertise into a more standard line of flexible dispensers that scales from benchtop to full production.
Brian L. Ganz, President and CEO of Let’s Go Robotics Inc
Precise Drop dispensers are compact, low cost and fully customizable. Available for 1 to 16 channels in the packaged configuration, the dispensers can be configured with more than 64 channels as needed. Each channel is independently controlled, dispensing volumes from 50nL to 650μL and bulk fill up to 2mL. The systems support a wide range of substrates, microwell plates, and membranes.
Small volume dispensing is important for life science companies to conserve samples and improve experimental results. The systems are easily used in genomic and proteomic research, drug discovery, mass spectrometry, and screening assays. These systems eliminate inconsistency and spillage problems common in manual processes.
For medical device (DX) applications, Precise Drop enables low cost, highly accurate and repeatable reagent dispensing. Applications include manufacturing of rapid testing strips and other flow-through wetted diagnostics kits.
Precision Non-Contact Dispensing
Precise Drop systems use solenoid valves to meter consistent volumes into the substrate, microwell plate or membrane. A digital control system ensures accurate, precise dispensing. Each valve has a dedicated independent microcontroller. Channels can be coordinated, individually timed or timed based on some external event. This flexibility is critical for both multi-well dispense and for multi-line dispense onto a membrane web.
The user interface to the microcontrollers is browser-based, allowing operators to set up protocols and recipes using a smartphone, tablet, netbook, laptop, desktop computer or any other web-based device. Precise Drop also interfaces with SiLA and TCP/IP socket.
“Precise Drop technology remains the same as it scales from benchtop to production operations,” said Ganz. “This ensures consistency and eliminates the need for retraining as systems grow.”
Precise Drop Systems
Precise Drop Systems are available in 3 core configurations:
Precise Drop Lite—for projects still in research mode, but the scope of testing expands beyond an individual researcher and pipettes.
Precise Drop Standard—for prototypes, additional testing and initial production.
Precise Drop Extended—for benchtop, research, testing and production.
In addition, Let’s Go Robotics can design custom end-user systems and OEM configurations.
To learn more about specific configurations, contact Let’s Go Robotics and request the Precise Drop Micro-Dispensing Systems brochure.
SLAS 2018
Precise Drop micro-dispensing systems will be featured at SLAS 2018 in booth #1001. Representatives will be available throughout the exhibition to demonstrate the systems and answer any questions.
About Let’s Go Robotics
Let’s Go Robotics specializes in Robotics and automation for the future. Our team focuses on system integration, custom engineering, and standard product development, leveraging our extensive experience in engineering and robotics. We are 100% committed to your success, delivering the automation or custom engineering you need to improve your efficiency. As experts in integrating complex systems involving motion control and instrumentation, our team can provide complete laboratory automation, custom engineering services, and everything in between.
The LGR team consists of experienced Mechanical, Electrical, Software and Processing Engineers. Our expert team will integrate key technologies with your automation requirements to create a system that meets your needs now, with the flexibility to adapt for the future.
Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act:
With the exception of the historical information contained in this release, the matters described herein contain forward-looking statements that involve risk and uncertainties that may individually or mutually impact the matters herein described, including but not limited to, product acceptance, the ability to continually obtained increased orders of its products, the ability to meet installation goals, economic, competitive, governmental impacts, whether pending patents will be granted or defendable, validity of intellectual property and patents, the ability to license patents, the ability to commercialize developmental products, as well as technological and/or other factors.
Inland Empire Magazine Readers Vote Creative Brain and RUSD’s Afterschool Program Best Afterschool Program of Inland Empire
Press Release –
updated: May 16, 2017
RIVERSIDE, Calif., May 16, 2017 (Newswire.com)
– The Creative Brain Learning/RUSD Afterschool Program at 20 of Riverside’s public schools was recently voted Best Afterschool Program of Inland Empire of 2017 by the readers of the Inland Empire Magazine.
What sets Creative Brain Learning apart from other afterschool providers is its vast enrichment education catalog. As part of the RUSD afterschool program, Creative Brain Learning provides a comprehensive music and S.T.E.M. enrichment program for all students in all grade groups at the 20 Riverside school sites. Educational Enrichment components are grade-specific, and include comprehensive piano, guitar, ukulele, recorder, violin, drum line, Rock Band, LEGO engineering, Video Game Design, Computer Programming, Robotics, Advanced Robotics classes, and more!
What sets Creative Brain Learning apart from other after school providers is its vast enrichment education catalog.
Eckart Peter, Communications Director
Janet Downey, Coordinator of After School Programs at Riverside Unified School District, recognized Creative Brain Staff at a recent District event (see picture), and praised the vast and unique educational opportunities Riverside students were able to benefit from thanks to Creative Brain Learning, and their capable staff.
Creative Brain Learning has been providing successful afterschool programs and has served as an enrichment education partner for the past 14 years, offering unique and innovative educational opportunities to thousands of students in schools around Los Angeles (LAUSD), in Montebello, Pico Rivera, Whittier, San Gabriel, Pasadena, South Pasadena, Etiwanda, Riverside, San Diego, Perris, Temecula, and many other cities. Most of these programs are state-funded by ASES (After School Education and Safety) grants and are absolutely free to the students and parents. The California Department of Education (CDE) and the Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE) have both recognized Creative Brain Learning for their exemplary standards in afterschool education.
Creative Brain Learning and its division of MUSICSTAR provide extensive enrichment components for other afterschool programs, and offer a wide range of community education classes in partnership with many other public and private institutions, such as the Cities of Riverside, Moreno Valley, Escondido, Poway, Rancho Cucamonga, Corona, Eastvale, Fontana, Claremont, Yorba Linda, Placentia, Brea, Ontario, as well as many other cities throughout California. Creative Brain Learning and MUSICSTAR also offer exciting educational camps every summer in partnership with the cities of Folsom, Roseville, Vacaville, Lodi, Elk Grove, Atascadero, Visalia, Paso Robles, Lompoc, Tracy, Ridgecrest, Solvang, Apple Valley, Moreno Valley, San Marcos, San Diego, and many others.
Vienna, VA, February 3, 2017 (Newswire.com)
– Stemtree Education Center has been named one of the Best Summer Camps in Northern Virginia Magazine’s March 2017 Best Summer Camps edition. Stemtree was chosen by readers and vetted by staff in the magazine’s search for the best-of-the-best local summer camp program.
This award comes on the heels of Stemtree’s recent selection as Best STEM Program in Washington FAMILY Magazine’s 2016 Best for Families survey.
We are thrilled to be recognized once again for the exceptional experience we provide our students. I’m particularly proud of our camp program because it is no small feat to make summertime learning both productive and fun. But we have done it here at Stemtree, and that’s generating a lot of enthusiasm in the community.
Abdelghani Bellaachia, Founder and CEO
“We are thrilled to be recognized once again for the exceptional experience we provide our students,” says Stemtree founder and Curriculum Director Dr. Abdelghani “Bell” Bellaachia. “I’m particularly proud of our camp program because it is no small feat to make summertime learning both productive and fun. But we have done it here at Stemtree, and that’s generating a lot of enthusiasm in the community.”
Building on the momentum of another successful school year, plans for an exciting 2017 summer program are well underway. Stemtree campers will spend the dog days of summer exploring science, technology, and engineering through fun, hands-on activities and one-on-one instruction. Returning students will continue with their curriculum, while new attendees will be given an initial assessment from which a customized lesson plan will be developed.
Campers will delve into science experiments, computer programming and game design, and robotics and electrical engineering, all while having fun with their peers. “Stemtree’s summer camp is a win-win proposition,” explains Dr. Bell. “The children are happy because they are having a blast, and the parents are happy because not only are their kids engaged, safe, and happy, they are getting an edge for the upcoming school year.”
September through June, Stemtree offers after-school programs at its Vienna location for elementary, middle, and high school students, with optional pick up at local elementary schools. Students enjoy snack time, playtime, and workouts in science, engineering and technology, plus support for homework, test preparation, and exam support (SOL, AP, IB) as needed.
Stemtree also coordinates with local elementary school PTA/PTOs to offer school-based after-school programs to supplement or enhance the core science curriculum. Tutoring services in the fields of science, technology, and engineering are also available. Fun, science-related birthday parties can be hosted on request.
2017 Camp registration is now open online at https://www.stemtree.com/camps. Spots available for Student Holiday Camp (March 24 and April 17), Spring Break Camp (April 10-14), and Summer Camp (sessions available from June 26 – August 25). Space is limited.
Franchise opportunities are available at www.stemtreefranchise.com. Stemtree Education Center is located at 220 Maple Ave West, in Vienna, Virginia. To learn more, visit www.stemtree.com.
Let’s Go Robotics announces new patent on robotic gripper. Gripper handles microwell plates without dropping, crushing or mishandling. Product can retrofit most robotic arms and positioners.
Press Release –
Jun 1, 2016
Carlsbad, California, June 1, 2016 (Newswire.com)
– Let’s Go Robotics today announced that the US Patent and Trademark Office has granted patent #9,327,411 for a robotic gripper that eliminates common points of failure in robotics used in life sciences and other applications. The method is based on sensor-less force detection to avoid crushing and novel rack and pinion gears to avoid dropping. The patent is used in the Let’s Go Robotics electro servo gripper named The Gripster and used in a wide range of robotic systems. Let’s Go Robotics specializes in life sciences automation for the future.
“Our revolutionary gripper handles microwell plates without dropping, crushing or otherwise mishandling them,” said Brian Ganz, Let’s Go Robotics President. “These plates may contain drug discovery experiments worth thousands of dollars or drug trial testing materials that are irreplaceable. Our patented technology safeguards these experiments as plates are transferred between instruments.”
“Our revolutionary gripper handles microwell plates without dropping, crushing or otherwise mishandling them. These plates may contain drug discovery experiments worth thousands of dollars or drug trial testing materials that are irreplaceable. Our patented technology safeguards these experiments as plates are transferred between instruments.”
Brian Ganz, President
The patented robotic gripper detects the presence of an object such as a microwell based on force rather than a sensor. Once force is detected, power is held constant, eliminating the risk of crushing. Only a small amount of current is required, avoiding common overheating problems. Force is created by a small stepping motor driving mechanical gears and is fully programmable for each environment. Grip forces are varied automatically based on plate width, and whether the plate is lidded or un-lidded, empty, full or partially filled. Objects can be gripped in landscape and portrait orientation. Software is included to setup the gripper for unique applications. No plastic is used, just all precise bearings and machined aluminum for quality and longevity.
The gripper uses rack and pinion gears with a worm drive to eliminate dropping risk. The worm drive turns the gears but the gears cannot turn the worm drive. As a result, the gripper cannot lose its grip on a microwell plate. A manual override button can be pressed to free a plate, at the gripper if needed. Other features covered in the patent include top and rear mounting options and collision detection to protect the microplate.
The Gripster can retrofit most robotic arms and positioners. Its built-in controller easily interfaces with robot controllers. Let’s Go Robotics regularly works with scientists and engineers to get the best fit for their laboratory automation needs. Other features include a bar-code reader mounted on the gripper, along with additional I/O for future automation support.
“Grippers are an extremely important component in life science robotics and a common point of failure,” said Ganz. “This patent recognizes the innovative nature of our robotic gripper and represents a significant improvement in reliability in unattended laboratory operations.”
Patent #9,327,411 was issued on May 3, 2016. The patent claims the benefit of Provisional Application 61/422,571 filed December 13, 2010. Brian Ganz is a named inventor on this patent and more than 20 other US patents. Read the full text of the patent on the US Patent and Trademark Office web site.
