GUEST COLUMN
The rise of service robots The transition of robots from industrial applications to service roles that bisect and positively impact day-to-day human life.
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n the book ‘In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination,’ novelist, literary critic, environmental activist, and inventor Margaret Atwood stated, “Human toolmakers always make tools that will help us get what we want, and what we want hasn’t changed for thousands of years because as far as we can tell the human template hasn’t changed either.” This statement seems true for the foreseeable future when we look back through our history, current trends, and fictional depictions of the time ahead. Humanity has always found ways and means to improve things, whether by necessity or desire. The next stage encompasses the broader integration of robots into our personal and business lives. Of course, robots have been serving as critical parts of engineering chains such as industrial production for many years, known as industrial robots. However, some robots, known as service robots, can operate as standalone, isolated machines that perform select tasks continuously, with minimal intervention or interruption. Service robots are relatively new to the market, and, as their name might imply, they are designed to support humans in their daily lives. For the last few years, innovation around service robots has been limited, but that is rapidly changing, thanks to a convergence of technologies that are bringing with them previously unheard-of levels of sophistication and capability to these machines.
service robots are ideal fit since they can be programmed to address any of these segments of the warehousing operational processes. The form factor of these robots can be anything from autonomous vehicles to lifters and carriers and, more recently, even highly capable drones. These relatively low intelligence machines are usually deployed in large numbers (to be helpful) and so are enjoying high demand. In fact, over the next decade, robots fitting these form factors are expected to see a CAGR of 21%.
A Hive of Activity - The World of Logistics
Keeping it Clean!
The logistic and warehousing sector is where volume goods are delivered, stacked, indexed, retrieved, and dispatched constantly. Given the repetitive, potentially dangerous, and strenuous nature of work in this scenario,
Taking advantage of service robots in the cleaning and sanitization sector makes perfect sense as this sector is characterized by repetitive tasks that must be accomplished on a set schedule and
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Service robots are ideal fit since they can be programmed to address any of the segments of the warehousing operational processes
J U N E 2023
6/16/2023 5:37:22 PM