Robotics & Automation News

Where Innovation Meets Imagination

Abdul Montaqim

Exclusive: ‘The future of artificial intelligence is here’, says Infosys big data boss

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Abdul Razack, SVP of platforms, big data and analytics at Infosys
Abdul Razack, SVP of platforms, big data and analytics at Infosys

By Abdul Razack, SVP and head of platforms, big data and analytics at Infosys

Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing the business and consumer landscape, but has it reached its full potential?

With the wide adoption of automation and machine learning among organisations, we’re closer than ever before. And in 2016, we will continue this momentum and see artificial intelligence redefine the future of work, deliver on the promise of big data, and even transform consumers’ lives.

Artificial intelligence will define the future of work

The pace at which large-scale organisations more widely adopt artificial intelligence to replace manual, repetitive tasks will rapidly increase.  [Read more…] about Exclusive: ‘The future of artificial intelligence is here’, says Infosys big data boss

Exclusive: Seiko Epson boss looks to robots for 70 per cent growth within 10 years

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Minoru Usui, president, Seiko Epson
Minoru Usui, president, Seiko Epson

Exclusive interview with Seiko Epson president Minoru Usui 

The president of Seiko Epson says he wants to increase the company’s total annual revenues by 70 per cent within 10 years, and believes industrial robots will be one of the fastest-growing business units, with a 500 per cent hike in that time.

In an exclusive interview with Robotics and Automation News, Minoru Usui says Seiko Epson is hoping to achieve a dramatic expansion of its robotics division in the next decade, and “take the company from being a 1-trillion-yen-a-year business to being a 1.7-trillion-yen-a-year business”.

Epson Robots is one of the top industrial robot manufacturers in the world, and Usui is keen to build on this success.

In its annual report, the company lists robots in the “sensing and industrial solutions” business segment, which accounts for approximately $2 billion revenue a year. Seiko Epson’s total revenue is approximately $10 billion a year. [Read more…] about Exclusive: Seiko Epson boss looks to robots for 70 per cent growth within 10 years

Exclusive: Daimler ‘totally committed’ to winning driverless car race

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Company has ‘no intention of stepping aside’ and letting tech companies take over the car market of the future, says Daimler’s autonomous driving lead engineer 

Mercedes of course has the longest history of any automaker in the world, having built the first ever car in 1879, when Carl Benz created the “Motorwagen”.

It might look like a fancy tricycle, but the Motorwagen was the first wheeled vehicle to feature a gasoline engine – a one-cylinder two-stroke unit which generated 0.75 horsepower, or 0.55 of a kilowatt.  [Read more…] about Exclusive: Daimler ‘totally committed’ to winning driverless car race

Billion dollar brain: Exclusive interview with Professor Alois Knoll

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Professor Alois Knoll, co-ordinator of the European Clearing House for Open Robotics Development (Echord), and one of the key scientists involved in the $1.5 billion-dollar Human Brain Project, speaks exclusively to Robotics and Automation News

It’s not every day you learn a new word you like. From my point of view, having been in journalism longer than I’d like to recall, it’s an interesting experience to be reminded of an extract from a biography of Dr Samuel Johnson, “father of the English dictionary”, written by James Boswell in 1791, which I read in my teens.

Nothing specific from what I read applies here, but I’ll paraphrase a quote from Johnson which I think may be most appropriate. “A writer only begins an article. A reader finishes it.”  [Read more…] about Billion dollar brain: Exclusive interview with Professor Alois Knoll

The car of the future: Think concierge on the move

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teradata car-of-future

In the 1970s, if you had a car with air-conditioning, you’d probably have been the envy of all your friends, and you’d even have gotten more for your car on the second hand market. Today, it’s pretty much impossible to buy a new car that doesn’t have air-conditioning.

You’re more likely to find that you new car offers not just air-conditioning, but also heated seats (that you can control remotely with your smartphone), climate control, heated windscreens and a whole lot more.

Product innovation has always been top priority for car manufacturers, which is why they are among the top spenders in research and development. The question now is whether this is enough. Product innovation is taking place at such speed that a unique innovation today can easily be copied and manufactured by a rival firm tomorrow.

Product specifications and feature lists no longer offer that unique reason for the customer to choose one car model over another.So where does that leave car manufacturers? How can they find that X-Factor that will make customers desire one of their cars more than their competitors?  [Read more…] about The car of the future: Think concierge on the move

Interview with the inventors of near-field communications

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Inventors of NFC: Franz Amtmann and Philippe Maugars
Inventors of NFC: Franz Amtmann and Philippe Maugars

They’re not the most famous scientists in the world, but they’re well known enough within the tech community, certainly after winning European Inventor Award recently. And the communication system they invented is used by hundreds of millions of people around the world.

Franz Amtmann and Philippe Maugars, who both work for NXP, invented near-field communications (NFC) technology, which is enabling an ever-increasing number of people to pay for their shopping and whatever through contactless payment systems – using either their bank card or smartphone.

NFC can thought of as being like Bluetooth, but is said to be a lot simpler. Closely related to radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, NFC has a range of about 20 centimetres, whereas Bluetooth has a range of about five to 10 metres. [Read more…] about Interview with the inventors of near-field communications

Your artificially intelligent assistant is ready to take a letter

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boss dictates letter to secretaryOne of the many perks of being the boss of a reasonably sized company is having your own personal assistant, someone who you can dictate letters to, someone who keeps your diary updated, answers your phones and helps you organise your time so you are as efficient and as productive as you can be at work.

A good PA is often very highly paid, commensurate with the company and business sector he or she works for, and their image as super-fast typists and excellent organisers is one that is often celebrated and acknowledged.

However, the relationship between the boss and the PA could be about to change forever as a result of developments in artificially intelligent assistant technology. Already there are a number of artificially intelligent personal assistants – let’s call them AIPAs for now – on the market and according to some, they’re quite good. [Read more…] about Your artificially intelligent assistant is ready to take a letter

Robot vision: Mine eyes have seen the glory of three dimensions

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Euro NCAP has been conducting tests to see how well autonomous cars can see pedestrians
Euro NCAP has been conducting tests to see how well autonomous cars can see pedestrians

Exclusive interview with Claude Florin, CEO of Fastree3D, on helping robots finally see the light just that little bit better than they did before

How do robots see the world? Until now, most of them have had to make do with conventional digital cameras for eyes. In technological terms, these cameras are much like those available to consumers in the shops and, increasingly these days, in their smartphones. As clever as they are, and as high quality as the images turn out to be, these cameras only capture the image as a two-dimensional arrangement of pixels.

This means that a robot using such cameras would not able to perceive the three-dimensional space its “eyes” are looking at. This problem of perception – of perceiving 3D space as 2D space – is solved, or at least tackled, at the coding stage.

To program the robot to translate the flat image into a three-dimensional space, and infer such things as depth, distance and geospatial location, is really quite difficult if approached from a purely computer programming – as in, coding – standpoint.  [Read more…] about Robot vision: Mine eyes have seen the glory of three dimensions

Industrial robots: Fanuc sells record-breaking 400,000 robots worldwide

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FANUC 35iA, collaborative robot
The Fanuc CR-35iA is the industry’s first 35 kg payload force limited collaborative robot

Fanuc has set a new world record for production of over 400,000 robots.

“Over the last several years, there’s been an increasing global demand to implement the latest technologies in factories,” said Mike Cicco, vice president, Fanuc America.

“This demand has stimulated production of industrial robots in general, and has played a major role in Fanuc achieving this milestone, and maintaining our position as the world’s number one supplier of factory automation and industrial robots.” [Read more…] about Industrial robots: Fanuc sells record-breaking 400,000 robots worldwide

Marine robots: AMS ‘Datamarans’ set to provide unprecedented insights into the world’s oceans

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The total surface of Planet Earth spans some 510 million square kilometres, and the ocean accounts for more than 70 per cent. If there’s one man who would be familiar with these kind of numbers it’s Eamon Carrig, co-founder and chief roboticist at Autonomous Marine Systems (AMS), a US robotics startup which could scarcely have more compelling origins. (See video below.)

AMS was started by three aerospace engineers – Carrig, T.J. Edwards, and Walter Holemans, although Holemans has since left the company.

“We had all been working together on spacecraft mechanisms – TJ and Walt mostly mechanical, me mostly electrical and software – since 2006,” says Carrig in an exclusive interview with RoboticsandAutomationNews.com.

“Specifically we worked on satellite separation systems, which are the last systems that have to work to get a satellite on orbit. In my career as a sep system engineer, we produced about 15 systems for flight. I would have bet my life on every single system we delivered.” [Read more…] about Marine robots: AMS ‘Datamarans’ set to provide unprecedented insights into the world’s oceans

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