FABULOUS FEBRUARY

Hi everyone and welcome to This Is Robotics for February. 

It’s been a mere two months into 2023 and already big things, major innovations, are happening in robotics.

And some of them are quite fabulous and are the harbinger of follow-on innovations that are even more fabulous.

Because of what’s popped to the surface these last  2 months, we’re going into full-stop mode for This Is Robotics for February Episode 17. We’re calling it Fabulous February.

Because, If this is what the first two months of 2023 are like for robotics, the remaining 10 months may well be the best in years.

We’ll take a look at Service robotics, logistics, then cobots x3 with one of them being  the arrival of the ultimate, affordable, and simple-to-use cobot for SMEs at $9k.

I’ve been writing about cobots for ten years, and this is the first to come along that’s tailor-made for SMEs and its not from an old-line robot maker or a new-line cobot maker; it’s from a 50-year-old, German company that makes high-performance plastics. The company is named igus, and the cobot is called the ReBel. And it could easily revolutionize the use of cobots for SMEs.

 How about a personal robot as family historian?

All the elements to build one exist, there needs only a company smart enough to take it on. Perfect for ancestry.com.

Instead of a family scrap book or memory sticks of media loaded with a family’s life events and special occasions, what about an undying, self-repairing home robot as family historian that records and stores everything.  

A family robot that would record (audio and video) of the good, bad, and ugly of a family all year long, and then with the help of generative AI, organize it all into an annual movie co-narrated by Orson Wells and Lauren Becall (both deceased but with AI anything is possible)? Narrator choice is up to you.

It's the ultimate hand-me-down, like the grandfather clock of robots.

OKAY, LET’S GET ON WITH Fabulous February. 

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CHINA TO AMP UP ROBOT USAGE 2023-2025
Already the world’s largest buyer of industrial robots for 9 straight years. A country that buys on average 21,000 industrial robots a month!

Does that sound like a country that needs to “Amp Up” its robot usage?

Yes, and there’s good reason for it.

China’s got a failing grade for its “Made in China 2025” plan in which it promised 50% of all industrial robots bought would be homemade by Chinese robot makers. Today, that’s at 39%!  

More worrisome still, China registered more deaths than births last year, marking 2022 as the first time the country’s population has dropped since the 1960s. Fewer workers mean a need for more automation; robots primary substitute.

China’s new plan for 2023: “Robot + Application Action Plan”

INTERVIEW PT. 1: MARK MESSINA CEO ADDVERB: FIRST YEAR IN NA & MICROLOGISTICS 

That’s followed by the Top 5 Robotics Tech Trends for 2023. It’s our What’s New in Robotics? column from our partnering with Robotiq. The experts have made their forecasts, and we’ve got the Top 5. They’re awesome picks

WHAT’S NEW IN ROBOTICS? AFTERMATH OF CES2023 GOOD FOR ROBOTICS?
CES for 2023 came and went quietly this year (January 5 to 8, Las Vegas), minus much of the online-hoopla that for weeks preceding its opening usually attends the world’s largest consumer electronics show.

Attendees looking for robots at CES2023 also got a quiet show. 

Post-COVID (since 2021), CES simply has yet to fully recover and return to its heady times of years past. A half-day’s rambling about would have been enough to see all the robots at CES2023 that really mattered.

As Brian Heater of TechCrunch remarked: “At some point when we weren’t looking, CES became a car show.”

Isn’t it time we asked ourselves: “Should Robotics Events Have an Exclusive Online TV Network?”

There’s the Travel Channel, the Cooking Network, HGTV, Court TV, the Golf Channel, and myriad others. Why not a 24x7 Robotics TV Network?

See also Robotiq’s blog: See also: What’s New in Robotics? 13.01.2023

INTERVIEW PT#2: MARK MESSINA CEO ADDVERB: 5G & CYBERSECURITY FOR LOGISTICS 

Mark’s insights and outlook for how logistics will deal with 5G and Cybersecurity in 2023. Mark offers up a fascinating insider’s look at 5G and protecting logistics assets from his twin viewpoints as both a logistics engineer and an executive business leader delivering intra-logistics automation for Addverb Technologies.

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CHINA’S CHRISTMAS MIRACLE & BEST GIFT EVER!
How China went from 88% of its people in utter poverty, making $2.06 per day, to having the largest middle class in human history. Larger than the entire population of Europe. And it’s all due to one man: Deng Xiaoping, the diminutive (5’2”) paramount leader of the People's Republic of China, who in 1978, at the age of 74, changed China forever. Keeping the sheen on Deng Xiaoping’s "Big Idea"
 China’s Christmas Miracle

TOP 5 ROBOTICS TECH TRENDS FOR 2023
That’s followed by the Top 5 Robotics Tech Trends for 2023. It’s our What’s New in Robotics? column from our partnering with Robotiq. The experts have made their forecasts, and we’ve got the Top 5. They’re awesome picks

What’s New in Robotics? Robotiq Blog 30.12.2022

KRISPY KREME GOES BIG TIME FOR ROBOTS
With cobots elbowing themselves into the food business like with White Castle burgers and Chipotle’s Chippy, the tortilla-chip-making cobot, both from Miso Robotics, what about confections and the sweet-tooth crowd? Are robots in their future, too?  Well, yes… Krispy Kreme, the 85-year-old, NC-based donut giant. is going robot.

SPACE JUNK & ROBOTS
We’ll visit with Space Junk in Low-Earth Orbit. Whether it’s mom’s dinner table or outer space, we haven’t learned to clean up after ourselves. Meet the robots that want to take on the chore.

Space Robots to Sweep Up Orbiting Debris

CAPSULE ROBOTICS
Instrument-free, noninvasive diagnosis and therapy inside the digestive tract will be performed through a new branch of robotics: capsule robotics.

Capsule Robotics: In the Future, All Surgery “Non-Invasive”

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ROBOTS, COBOTS AND PHARMA 4.0

Robots and cobots,  more and more, are beginning to exert an outsized impact on life-saving and disease-preventing new drug discoveries, medicines, and therapeutics. 

From drug discovery, to the manufacturing and packaging of new pharmaceuticals, the marriage of AI and robotics has been crucial to the process.

In what’s now being called Pharma 4.0, a new world is emerging for robots and cobots, and they are proving themselves up to the task, and then some.

NEW WORKPLACE LAW: NYC LAW 144

UPDATE: NOVEMBER 2022. New workplace law: NYC Law 144, which takes effect in 40 days or less, January 1, 2023. The new law covers the use of AI in hiring and promotions. Businesses in NYC will hire approximately 90,000 people in 2023 and all hiring will have to adhere to Law 144. There are over 200 robotics, AI and automation companies in NYC, which this law will most definitely impact. An adverse impact will have a definite ill-effect on innovation. What can be done, if anything, to avoid trouble?

And as with many laws emanating from New York, they have a habit of going nationwide, followed by worldwide implications as well.

The details: Confusion Reigns over Approaching New York City AI Bias Audit Law

TIME MAGAZINE’S BEST 200 INVENTIONS FOR 2022

WHAT’S NEW IN ROBOTICS? Time Magazine is out with its Best 200 Inventions for 2022. It’s got 25 separate categories, and robots are everywhere! Robotics,        now quickly integrating with AI, has seeped its way into a vast swarth of technology. And the future forecasts even more! Join us for a look. 

Read it all here: Robotiq: What’s New in Robotics? 18.11.2022

HOMAGE TO PITTSBURGH: BACK FROM THE BRINK!

The Fall & Rise of Pittsburgh: From Dying Steel Town to Global Robotics Hub. The inspirational story of America’s Steel Town collapsing and going bankrupt in the 1980s, and its fight to regain prominence as a great city and world renown as a global robotics hub.

Former Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto said that during the 1980s and early 1990s, when every politician was saying how they were going to bring the mills back, there were people in Pittsburgh who were building out an entirely new economy based upon technology and education. “It was not an overnight success; it was 30 years of work!”

Join us for this heartwarming Thanksgiving tale of a city refusing to give up. It’s become a fan favorite worldwide and an instant holiday classic here at This Is Robotics.

Read more: From Dying Steel Town to Global Robotics Hub

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IN A NUTSHELL AT PACK EXPO INTERNATIONAL 2022

Post-COVID, tradeshows have been slowly lumbering back into the global event circuit this past year or so, most to highly receptive audiences. One of the biggest returnees, PACK EXPO International (Chicago, October 23-26), absent since 2018, promised to return larger than ever with a flurry of new looks, staging, and attendee outreach.

Upon hitting the show floor, the jump-out realizations to grab onto at Pack Expo 2022 are two: More cobots doing more things better and more flexibly than ever; and then, upon closer inspection of those same cobots, the fact that integration of cobot systems is the next great advance in robotics.  If that’s all you took away from the show, you would have, in a nutshell, seen the future of packaging and packing.

 PHILOSOPHY MEETS THE WORLD OF AI, ROBOTICS AND BIG DATA
We’ll visit the resumes of philosophy majors to see how they are uniquely qualified for the world of AI, robotics and big data. Yes, you heard right: philosophers.

According to David Deutsch, arguably the founding father of quantum computing, is betting on it in his article that he titles: “Philosophy will be the key that unlocks artificial intelligence.”

Yes, philosophy, that most ancient of human brain teasers. And if AI is to ever emulate the thinking capability of a human being, philosophy is the answer.

For all those job-hunting philosophers, listen up. Jobs are looking for you.

 INTERNATIONAL INTERNET DAY: WRONG DATE, WRONG PEOPLE…
 Every October 29th International Internet Day is celebrated around the world, but did you know that it’s the wrong date, the wrong people, and the wrong computers? Larry Roberts and Tom Marill did it first in February of 1966, three years earlier than 1969 event celebrated widely. And the reason why Larry and Tom did it is absolutely fascinating

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WHAT’S NEW IN ROBOTICS?
What’s New in Robotics? Travels to an Indonesian village, the Czech Republic, then Sweden, and finally California News briefs take a look at an exosuit or wearable robot to manage spastic muscles for those afflicted with multiple sclerosis (MS) and cerebral palsy (CP), followed homemade ingenuity in service robots with a service robot that has a rice cooker for a head; followed by a 3D-printed cobot arm that actually “works”, and finally the 45-second pizza, robot-made in a moving truck…only in CA

ROBO AI NEWS (NEW WEBSITE)

We have launched a new website that’s rapidly building itself out and nearing completion. It’s called RoboAINews (roboainews.com), and it’s located at roboainews.com. As its name denotes, it’s a website all about “smart robots” the convergence, that we see happening day by day, the inevitable convergence between robots and artificial intelligence. It’s a major step up for both robots and the rest of us, as “smart robots” are already changing the entire direction of robotics technology.

THE DEMISE OF DUMB
The rise of “smart” robots for factory and warehouse. A new generation of robots is on the rise, and their calling card reads, smart! A new type of robot, the “smart” robot, is quickening into reality. Robots (especially cobots) and mobile machines are getting interconnected with multiple sensors and onboard compute power, all imbued with artificial intelligence /machine learning (AI/ML), data analytics and cloud computing.  

WORLD ROBOTICS THROUGH THE YEAR 2030
Boston Consulting Group has put an interesting lens to the next decade of robotics, highlighting “seven unfolding developments that will influence the direction of robotics in the next ten years.”

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HONORING INDIA’S 75TH ANNIVERSARY OF INDEPENDENCE (1947-2022)
India: An Unexpected Revolution in Robotics

There’s a revolution in robotics just emerging in India that bears watching.

An unexpected revolution!

No one expects robotics revolutions to take place in India, no one ever has. Why?

Cerebral more than mechanical has been the rap most often heard about India. India has always shown itself fantastically adept at constructing unrivaled intellectual kingdoms.

However, India has been in search of its own, indigenous, mechanical realm in which to tinker and fashion, innovate and invent. 

Robotics just might be that magical realm. The long-awaited intersection of the cerebral with the mechanical.

The five Indian co-founders of Addverb Technologies have taken on the mission of bringing machine building, as robotics, to India

India: An Unexpected Revolution

 WORLD ROBOTICS THROUGH THE YEAR 2030
Boston Consulting Group has put an interesting lens to the next decade of robotics, highlighting “seven unfolding developments that will influence the direction of robotics in the next ten years.”

THE FOUR MOST REVOLUTIONARY ROBOTS OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM
We have our picks. What about yours?

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Will Farm Robots Become Our Next Gas-Guzzling, Fume-Spewing Agents of Climate Change?

Farm Robots…and the coming explosion in their numbers. As the world moves toward an additional 2 billion people, going from 7 to 9 billion total, the global food supply, according to the UN, will need 70% more food. Farm robots are the only way that will happen. But, with millions of new farm robots, will farm robots become our next gas-guzzling, fume-spewing agents of climate change? It’s going to happen, but there is a solution.

Is This the Beginning of "Womb-to-Tomb" Algorithms?

Hiring algorithms, says a recent study, mistakenly reject certain men, women, and handicapped. What does that mean for future of robotics and tech staffing? 

Algorithms sift through our resumes; algorithms scrutinize our job interviews. They are also part of our annual performance reviews and raises, weigh in on our promotions, layoffs…even firings. New York City is cracking down on them, others may follow. See what we uncovered.

Nationwide Implications for New York City’s AI Bias Audit Law

Robots Offer Singapore a Bright Future

Like other countries in East and Southeast Asia, Singapore has taken on a 20-year project to build a robot technopolis or robot city.

The Jurong Innovation District (JID) has received $313 million in new investments over the past year. It’s part of Singapore’s future vision to mobilize Industry 4.0 and its Industrial Transformation Asia-Pacific plans into a place where robots, cobots, automation, industry, education, and people will coexist together in harmony that pegs robots and automation as “essential enablers” for its future.

Robots Offer Singapore a Bright Future, If…

 Who Are the New Heroes of Robotics?

They are not Hollywood creations. They are real, and their explorations are more than enough to send thousands of young people off in pursuit of careers in robotics. 

Yet very few kids know about them and their fantastic adventures.

Last month, I was asked to speak to a cohort of high school students hellbent on robotics careers. The group was a robotics scholars summer program for high school kids put on by SuperTech and Code Tenderloin in San Francisco. Great course; wonderful bunch of high schoolers.

Many young people are urged to get into robotics, but many times that’s as far as the advice goes. What awaits them in robotics is a bit of a mystery. For inspirational models, they harken to things like Star War’s sagas and Guardians of the Galaxy.

Nice, but there’s so much more, I told them. Like the new heroes of robotics. 

“Smart” Job Tracks Powered by Robotics & AI

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KOREA’S ROBOT TECHNOPOLIS
 A fascinating piece on the rise of Daegu City, which will be, by 2028, the biggest and most important robot city in all of Asia.  Decade of work pays off in high-tech victory as Daegu City wins nationwide competition as mega-site for Korea’s Robot Technopolis

Daegu City Prospectus

MOXI AND THE WOMEN WHO BUILT HER 
 A well-deserved shout to Diligent Robotics scoring a $30 million investment, and what it means for service robotics as well as to robotics companies founded by women

CLASH OF TITANS: HACKING ROBOTS
 With all that’s going on in the world today, how do we cyber-harden our industrial robots from malicious interventions? With 3-million industrial robots deployed worldwide, protecting them is becoming a very real problem. The newest game in town for robots is defending themselves from hacking and cybercrime.

FANTASTIC FIVE
 Showcasing five ways to save big on robots, cobots and automation, while streamlining productivity on the cheap.

ELON AND HIS ROBOT HOMBRE
 Elon Musk, as humanoid robot builder, in a story we call Elon and His Robot Hombre. So what if he misses a few deadlines. You know he’s going to ace the final exam. 

Elon Musk is the best thing to ever happen to humanoid robotics.

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The Very Best of This Is Robotics: Radio News
 Fan Favorite Top 5 podcasts 

THE TROUBLE WITH COBOTS
 from 9/2021 podcast #2
Arguably the most important advance in robotics in the last 50 years has got a problem: sales. Why is that? Important and far-reaching consequences of those puny sales are a major concern for manufacturing and productivity.

SEX ROBOTS WILL NEVER MAKE YOU CRY
 from 8/2021 podcast #1
The allure, fascination and repulsion for humanity’s new best friend

THE FANTASTIC FIVE OF ASIA
 from 9/2021 podcast #2
Five fascinating robot innovations from Asia, each with a massive upside for the global robotics industry.

IS THIS THE GOLDEN AGE OF AMRs?
 from 11/2021 podcast #4
Unless you’ve been under a rock somewhere, you’ve undoubtedly heard the noise of their wheels and the rush of their whizzing by you, either on TV news, YouTube, or better, in person. What you’re seeing and hearing is the future arriving in a hurry. They’re called AMRs, robotics newest celebrities, autonomous mobile robots.

FINDING THE GENIUSES THAT ROBOTICS NEEDS Are You One of Them?
 from 2/2022 podcast #7
There are a million undiscovered geniuses in the world who, in order to be revealed and flourish, need to experience a spark of passion that ignites and illuminates their genius. Among them are roboticists-in-waiting who will change the world. Let’s find them. These 35 free online robotics courses—from superb educators at prestigious universities—certainly help. 

Visit the winners: Top 5 audio stories from previous podcasts

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