EDAP TMS S.A.

LYON, France, June 28, 2022 -- EDAP TMS SA (Nasdaq: EDAP) (the Company), the global leader in robotic energy-based therapies, today announced its participation to two major forthcoming international robotics and urology congresses:

The EAU Congress is one of the preeminent international events dedicated to the urology community. Focal One Robotic Focal HIFU will be featured and demonstrated at EDAPs booth #C26 for the duration of the event. Congress presentation topics will include use of HIFU focal therapy in prostate cancer along with supportive HIFU case reviews. Additionally, results from a randomized trial comparing ExactVu 29Mhz micro-ultrasound with MRI will also be presented.

The SRS Congress is the largest gathering of multi-specialty robotic physicians from around the world dedicated to advancing techniques and approaches in elevating patient care. Focal One Robotic Focal HIFU will be presented in the Friday Focal Therapy and Prostate Cancer plenary presentation given by Brian Miles, MD, FACS, Professor of Urology, Weill Cornell Medical College and Vice-Chair Dept. of Urology at Houston Methodist, Houston, TX. Focal One Robotic Focal HIFU will also be presented by Ryan Rhodes, CEO EDAP USA in the SRS Innovative Technologies Session held on Sunday.

Marc Oczachowski, EDAP's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, commented, We look forward to attending EAU this year, Europes largest urology congress and the first in-person event since 2019. EAU is a tremendous opportunity for us to hear positive experiences from our current customer base while engaging with new prospective customers and urology thought leaders from across Europe. We will also be demonstrating Focal One, which we believe is the most advanced focal therapy platform on the market today. It is high profile meetings such as EAU that allow us to raise the visibility of focal therapy as a viable option within the prostate cancer care continuum and are a key element of our Focal One growth strategy.

Story continues

Ryan Rhodes, CEO of EDAP USA, added: We look forward to meeting with many of the leading urology thought leaders from across the U.S while attending SRS. Many of these clinical attendees have been early adopters of new innovative and emerging robotic technologies in their clinical practice as a means to improve the quality of patient care. Focal therapy and specifically Focal One Robotic HIFU adoption continue to grow as more centers embrace the need to offer prostate cancer patients less invasive treatments. Focal One is the most advanced HIFU platform today controlled by Urologists incorporating robotics, advanced imaging, image fusion along with the ability to deliver precise targeted therapeutic ultrasound to ablate prostate tissue.

About EAU :

The EAU represents the leading authority within Europe on urological practice, research, and education. Over 18,000 medical professionals have joined its ranks and contributed to our mission: To raise the level of urological care throughout Europe and beyond.Aims and Objectives of EAU : to act as the representative body for European urologists and facilitate the continued development of urology and all its subspecialties, to foster the highest standards of urological care throughout Europe, to encourage urological research and enable the broadcasting of its results, to promote contributions to the medical and scientific literature by its members, to promote European urological achievements worldwide, to establish European standards for training and urological practice, to contribute to the determination of European urological health care policies, to disseminate high quality urological information to patients and public. https://uroweb.org

About SRS: This society is founded on the fundamental principles of education and collaboration as a means to tackle the complex issues of robotic surgery. This type of society gives us enormous possibilities in terms of multi-centric studies, database collection, fellowship training and funding support. We are an organization that will seek participation from residents and fellows and young faculty in the hope that we can assist them as they embrace robotics. The society is global with each continent having its own board and input into SRS activities. It is the pioneering spirit of our members and of our founding board that will make this society a success. The Society of Robotic Surgery will encompass robotics, minimally invasive techniques, NOTES and single port access surgery. This will provide the diversity to allow clinicians to adapt to changes in technology and will provide an innovative forum in which to expand our horizons and improve our clinical and academic potential. https://srobotics.org

About EDAP TMS SA

A recognized leader in the global therapeutic ultrasound market,EDAP TMSdevelops, manufactures, promotes and distributes worldwide minimally invasive medical devices for various pathologies using ultrasound technology. By combining the latest technologies in imaging and treatment modalities in its complete range of Robotic HIFU devices,EDAP TMSintroduced the Focal One inEuropeand in the U.S. as an answer to all requirements for ideal prostate tissue ablation. With the addition of the ExactVu Micro-Ultrasound device, EDAP TMS is now the only company offering a complete solution from diagnostics to focal treatment of Prostate Cancer. EDAP TMS also produces and distributes other medical equipment including the Sonolith i-move lithotripter and lasers for the treatment of urinary tract stones using extra-corporeal shockwave lithotripsy (ESWL). For more information on the Company, please visithttp://www.edap-tms.com, us.hifu-prostate.com and http://www.focalone.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

In addition to historical information, this press release contains forward-looking statements. Such statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including matters not yet known to us or not currently considered material by us, and there can be no assurance that anticipated events will occur or that the objectives set out will actually be achieved. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results anticipated in the forward-looking statements include, among others, the clinical status and market acceptance of our HIFU devices and the continued market potential for our lithotripsy device, as well as the length and severity of the recent COVID-19 outbreak, including its impacts across our businesses on demand for our devices and services. Factors that may cause such a difference also may include, but are not limited to, those described in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and in particular, in the sections "Cautionary Statement on Forward-Looking Information" and "Risk Factors" in the Company's Annual Report on Form 20-F.

Company ContactBlandine ConfortInvestor Relations / Legal AffairsEDAP TMS SA+33 4 72 15 31 50bconfort@edap-tms.com

Investor ContactJohn FrauncesLifeSci Advisors, LLC212-915-2568jfraunces@lifesciadvisors.com

See the original post here:

EDAPs Focal One HIFU to be Showcased at Two Major Robotics & Urology International Congresses - Yahoo Finance

Expedition 67 crew members pose with fresh fruit delivered aboard the Progress 81 cargo craft on June 3, 2022.

Space gardening and the human digestive system were at the top of the science schedule aboard the International Space Station on Wednesday. The seven Expedition 67 residents also worked throughout the day filming their activities, inspecting station hardware, and testing a new robotic arm.

Space agriculture is a way to sustain healthy astronauts on future missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond without relying on packed cargo missions traveling farther in space. The XROOTS experiment on the orbiting lab is exploring growing radishes and mizuna greens using hydroponic and aeroponic techniques. NASA Flight Engineer Bob Hines nourished those plants today and checked seed cartridges and wicks to ensure they germinate and grow.

Hines also inspected and photographed the condition of windows in the Destiny laboratory and the Kibo laboratory modules. NASA Flight Engineer Kjell Lindgren continued testing a headset that enables 3-D high definition holograms in real-time for immersive and innovative communication and research techniques. He also swapped hard drives on a station laptop computer.

Flight Engineers Jessica Watkins and Samantha Cristoforetti joined each other today inspecting and cleaning hatch components on the U.S. modules. Watkins also audited, inspected, and stowed hardware in the Tranquility module and the Quest airlock. Cristoforetti checked smoke detectors in the Columbus laboratory module and tested a specialized garment that can monitor an astronauts health wirelessly.

All four astronauts have also been filming their activities this week to prepare future crews training for upcoming station missions. The quartet have been recording, narrating, and downlinking videos documenting the operation of exercise equipment, network communications gear, and cargo stowage aboard the space station.

The lack of gravity affects the human body in a multitude of ways. Scientists observe station crew members during long-term missions to understand and counteract the undesired effects of weightlessness. Commander Oleg Artemyev and Flight Engineer Denis Matveev once again scanned their digestive system using an ultrasound device after breakfast. Researchers are exploring how organs and vessels in the gastrointestinal tract adapt to spaceflight.

Robotics testing is still ongoing this week in the stations Russian segment. Roscosmos Flight Engineer Sergey Korsakov continued checking out and filming the European robotic arm, the stations third and newest robotic manipulator, and its ability to maneuver on the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module.

NASA and Northrop Grumman are continuing to work on a plan for Cygnus to try another reboost attempt as early as Saturday, June 25, that would lead to Cygnus potentially departing the station next Tuesday, June 28. The plan is being discussed with the International Space Station partners this week and a forward plan is expected as early as Thursday.

The reboost is designed to provide Cygnus with an enhanced capability for station operations as a standard service for NASA.

Learn more about station activities by following thespace station blog,@space_stationand@ISS_Researchon Twitter, as well as theISS FacebookandISS Instagramaccounts.

Get weekly video highlights at:http://jscfeatures.jsc.nasa.gov/videoupdate/

Get the latest from NASA delivered every week. Subscribe here:www.nasa.gov/subscribe

The rest is here:

Space Gardening, Digestion, and Robotics Top Crew Schedule - NASA (.gov)

LONG HILL TWP. If you feel safer crossing the street some years into the future, Armaan Lerner and his robotics teammates might be responsible.

Lerner, a Millington resident and Watchung Hills Regional High School rising sophomore, competes with the Exit 65A robotics team based in Livingston. The squad received a 2021 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)-Lemelson InvenTeams Grant for a pedestrian safety module.

That invention is named MaPSS, which stands for Micromobility and Pedestrian Safety System. The Exit 65A team presented it on June 15 at MITs EurekaFest.

Lerner first became interested in robotics in the third grade while attending Millington Elementary School. After attending a clinic introducing young students to robotics and the involved coding, he began competing in the VEX IQ robotics league. The VEX competitions, which are held year-round at the regional, state and national levels, culminate in a world championship each April.

At these competitions, Lerner met other league competitors from Livingston, whom he competed against often through the years. Eventually, the Livingston VEX team decided to join the First Lego League for high schoolers, and recruited Lerner to join although he was only a seventh grader.

The teams first year together focused on a challenge called City Shaper, which required teams to form ideas that would improve city life. With his new teammates, Lerner helped devise the idea of an improved pedestrian safety system that would alert drivers of nearby pedestrians.

With this idea, the Exit 65A team won the New Jersey Robotics State Championship in 2020. The team was invited to present its invention at the Robotics World Festival in Detroit, but the event was canceled due to Covid.

In spring 2021, the team decided to apply for the MIT-Lemelson InvenTeams Grant, which would allow it to further develop its pedestrian safety module.

In August 2021, the team was notified that it was one of 30 finalists, out of which eight would receive the grant. Two months later, it was formally announced the Exit 65A team would receive the grant for its invention.

The MaPSS would replace the pedestrian crossing systems currently in use. Utilizing internal components such as a radio and radar, the module detects pedestrians and shines lights to alert drivers.

Prior to the recent EurekaFest, the team wanted professional input on its invention and turned to Livingston officials and police officers. We found that the officials were very receptive to our idea and thought it a viable solution to pedestrian safety, commented Lerner.

At the festival, the team presented a MaPSS prototype to MIT staff and other grant recipients. A small-scale road was constructed with blind turns and hills to show how the teams solution impacts current driving habits.

My favorite part of the process has been working with my team and collaborating with them to solve any problems that may arise, added Lerner. We do sometimes encounter issues, but they allow us to come together and problem-solve as a team.

Next steps include obtaining a provisional patent, which is already under way. Then, the team wishes to road test MaPSS, which was limited due to the grants guidelines on human testing.

I am very honored to have received this grant, and further motivated to keep this process going after attending the Eureka Festival, concluded Lerner. I am excited to keep working on this project to see where we can take it.

Continue reading here:

Millington teen and robotics teammates address pedestrian safety - New Jersey Hills

Quadintel published a new report on theLab RoboticsMarket. The research report consists of thorough information about demand, growth, opportunities, challenges, and restraints. In addition, it delivers an in-depth analysis of the structure and possibility of global and regional industries.

Global Lab Robotics Market is valued approximately at USD $$ Billion in 2021 and is anticipated to grow with a healthy growth rate of more than % over the forecast period 2022-2030.

Lab Robotics are the robots used in laboratories to perform multiple tasks like capping clipping labeling and dispensing. They help in managing workflow. Accuracy of the robots while performing tasks in the laboratories, high productivity with minimal wastage has driven the Lab Robotics Market.

Request To Download Sample of This Strategic Report: https://www.quadintel.com/request-sample/lab-robotics-market/QI037

For Instance: A study carried out in the Tokyo evaluated that up to 80% of task in life science industry can benefit vastly with high productivity rate by using lab robotics Also, increasing number of widespread evaluation studies and development of industry and task specific lab robots is most likely to boost the overall growth of the Global Lab Robotics Market. However, lack of utility guidelines, high installation cost and lack flexibility during multiple tasks can obstruct the markets expansion over the projection period of 2022-2028.

The key regions considered for the GlobalLab Robotics Marketstudy includes Asia Pacific, North America, Europe, Latin America and Rest of the World. North America is the leading region across the world. Advancement in robotic technology and presence of trained professionals to control the robots is driving the market growth in the North America. Whereas, Asia Pacific is also anticipated to exhibit highest growth rate over the forecast period 2022-2028. The market is expected to grow during the projected period, due to rising automation in the laboratories.

COVID-19 Impact Analysis

The pandemic of COVID-19 has also reduced the availability of and demand for non-COVID-19-related medical treatment. A wide range of treatments, including emergency care for acute diseases, routine check-ups, and recommended cancer screenings, are being postponed or avoided by patients. Undiagnosed illnesses and a failure to intervene early will have serious long-term health consequences. COVID-19 has accelerated a variety of existing and emerging healthcare trends, including changing consumer attitudes and habits, the convergence of life science and health care, rapid advances in digital health technologies, and new talent and care delivery models, to name a few.

Request a Sample PDF copy of the report @https://www.quadintel.com/request-sample/lab-robotics-market/QI037

Major market player included in this report are:

Ab Controls

Aurora Biomed

Peak Analysis and Automation

Thermo Fisher Scientific

Yaskawa Electric

Tecan Group

Chemspeed Technologies Als Automated Lab Solutions

Hudson Robotics

Universal Robots

St Robotics

The objective of the study is to define market sizes of different segments & countries in recent years and to forecast the values to the coming eight years. The report is designed to incorporate both qualitative and quantitative aspects of the Application within each of the regions and countries involved in the study. Furthermore, the report also caters the detailed information about the crucial aspects such as driving factors & challenges which will define the future growth of the market. Additionally, the report shall also incorporate available opportunities in micro markets for stakeholders to invest along with the detailed analysis of competitive landscape and product offerings of key players. The detailed segments and sub-segment of the market are explained below:

By End-User:

Pharmaceutical Industry

Life Science Industry

Biopharmaceutical Industry

Research Laboratories

Clinical Laboratories

DOWNLOAD FREE SAMPLE REPORThttps://www.quadintel.com/request-sample/lab-robotics-market/QI037

By Region:

North America

U.S.

Canada

Europe

UK

Germany

France

Spain

Italy

ROE

Asia Pacific

China

India

Japan

Australia

South Korea

RoAPAC

Latin America

Brazil

Mexico

Rest of the World

Furthermore, years considered for the study are as follows:

Historical year 2018, 2019, 2020

Base year 2021

Forecast period 2022 to 2028

Target Audience of the Global Lab Robotics Market in Market Study:

Key Consulting Companies & Advisors

Large, medium-sized, and small enterprises

Venture capitalists

Value-Added Resellers (VARs)

Third-party knowledge providers

Investment bankers

Investors

Access full Report Description, TOC, Table of Figure, Chart, etc. @ https://www.quadintel.com/request-sample/lab-robotics-market/QI037

Table of Contents:

Factors Influencing

The global market is forecast to witness a rapid growth, owing to increasing demand for technological advancements from end-users. Moreover, increasing investments in research and development activities, launches, partnerships, and other strategic initiatives will benefit the market. Furthermore, the growing focus of authorities towards increasing urbanization and industrialization is forecast to drive the market growth.

What aspects regarding the regional analysis Market are included in this report?

Request Full Report : https://www.quadintel.com/request-sample/lab-robotics-market/QI037

About Quadintel:

We are the best market research reports provider in the industry. Quadintel believes in providing quality reports to clients to meet the top line and bottom line goals which will boost your market share in todays competitive environment. Quadintel is a one-stop solution for individuals, organizations, and industries that are looking for innovative market research reports.

Get in Touch with Us:

Quadintel:Email:sales@quadintel.comAddress: Office 500 N Michigan Ave, Suite 600, Chicago, Illinois 60611, UNITED STATESTel: +1 888 212 3539 (US TOLL FREE)Website:https://www.quadintel.com/

Read the original post:

Lab Robotics Market 2022 Projections and Future Opportunities Recorded for the Period 2030 Designer Women - Designer Women

We are excited to bring Transform 2022 back in-person July 19 and virtually July 20 - 28. Join AI and data leaders for insightful talks and exciting networking opportunities. Register today!

RGo Robotics announced that it has exited stealth mode with $20 million in funding. The startup intends to enable mobile robots to operate autonomously by understanding their environment through artificial-perception technology. This removes the burden of robot manufacturers to develop this complex technology.

RGo Robotics says that is has developed an AI-powered perception engine to allow mobile robots to understand complex surroundings by achieving purportedly human-level perception. RGo says it has tested its technology in challenging indoor and outdoor field trials.

The startup reports that it has achieved design wins worth more than $10 million with leading global robot OEMs across multiple verticals. It envisions applications in logistics, manufacturing, last-mile delivery, service, agriculture and consumers.

Most mobile robots today are still blind and unable to navigate intelligently in dynamic and complex environments, and we see firsthand how hard it is for machine and robot manufacturers to develop basic visual perception on their own, said Amir Bousani, CEO and cofounder, RGo Robotics. Our technology changes this. Leveraging the most advanced AI and vision technologies,

The goal of the perception engine, Bousani says, it to allows mobile machines to understand the world around them so they can move autonomously, safely and intelligently in any environment. We call this intelligent autonomy.

RGo Robotics exited stealth mode with a series A funding in January, providing over $20 million. It aims to expand R&D and commercial teams. The startup was founded in 2018. RGo further said it was awarded Robotics Business Reviews RBR50 Robotics Innovation Award.

RGos perception engine consists of both software and hardware components. The hardware designed to offer an low-cost and low power reference design, while the software is available as an SDK. The data for the perception engine, through which the robot learns its environment, is provided over an API. The robot control system takes care of path planning and autonomous behaviors, according to the company.

VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Learn more about membership.

Read the original:

How RGo Robotics aims to improve the vision of mobile robots - VentureBeat

Remember the IkeaBot? The robot went viral for its ability to build Ikea furniture as well (or better) than humans can. The team behind the project went on to found Eureka Robotics, which announced today that it has raised a pre-Series A round of $4.25 million, led by The University of Tokyo Edge Capital Partners (UTEC), one of Asias largest deep-tech investment firms, with participation from Vietnams Touchstone Partners and returning investor ATEQ.

Eureka Robotics products are based on research from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and MIT. It focuses on robotic software and systems to automate tasks that require High Accuracy and High Agility (HAHA). Its robots are used for precision handling, assembly, inspection, drilling and other tasks.

The Eureka Controllers High-Accuracy calibration synchronizes the reference frames of the robot and camera with high accuracy, enabling submillimeter accuracy on vision-guided tasks, while Force Control gives the robot the ability to perform tight assembly and insertion, with clearance down to 50 micron. Meanwhile, its High Agility involves computer vision that allows robots to recognize and locate randomly placed objects. Once the robot finds the position of an object, real-time motion planning helps it move toward it.

An example of how the Eureka Controller can be used is the Archimedes, which deployed technologies originally developed for the Ikea Robot to a shop floor for the first time. It is capable of handling multiple-sized lenses and mirrors and loading those delicate objects onto a tray in order to be coated. Eureka co-founder Dr. Pham Quang Cuong told TechCrunch that the Archimedes is currently operating in a factory in Singapore, serving a U.S. laser lens manufacturer, and that the company has received multiple follow-up orders of the robot.

The funding will be used on accelerating development of Eureka Controller, the companys flagship product, which allows factories to deploy HAHA tasks in System Integrators and factories. Eureka co-founder Dr. Pham said that while the core technologies are mature and have already been deployed in production, we want to make those technologies really easy to use by System Integrators. Making advanced technologies easy to use by non-programmer engineers is actually difficult. Part of the funding will be used to grow Eureka Robotics software engineering team and product teams to work on the Eureka Controller.

Eureka Robotics also plans to expand its commercialization in Singapore and China, and new markets like Japan and Vietnam, with the help of UTEC and Touchstone, respectively. It currently has offices in Singapore and France and distribution partners in China, Japan and the U.S.

Continue reading here:

Eureka Robotics, the team behind the IkeaBot, picks up $4.25M - TechCrunch

Robots have transformed automation across industries such as agtech, automotive, logistics, manufacturing and warehousing. Yet even the most advanced robots typically work in restricted workcells away from people due to safety concerns.

The field of human-robot interaction (HRI) offers the potential for robots with enough cognitive smarts to work effectively and safely alongside humans in places such as factory floors. The rise of the collaborative robot or cobot is well underway, with a projected market value of $8 billion by 2030.

Were thrilled to announce that two roboticists at the forefront of HRI Rodney Brooks, founder and CTO of Robust.AI (and co-inventor of Roomba, the popular household robot), along with Clara Vu, co-founder and CTO of Veo Robotics will join us on stage at at TC Sessions: Robotics 2022 on July 22 in Boston, Massachusetts.

Our conversation will cover the current state of HRI, the challenges of developing robots with common sense, and the technologies required for people and robots to work in close proximity. Of course, well ask what theyre up to right now and whats coming down the road.

Well also ask how long will it be before cobots become part of the everyday work environment. And what kind of training infrastructures do we need to create as more efficient cobots replace human workers in physically demanding or repetitive menial jobs?

Robotics legend Rodney Brooks founded Robust.AI in 2019 with a mission to build a first-of-its-kind industrial-grade cognitive platform for robots. The goal is to make robots that are smarter, safer, more robust, context aware and collaborative. Such robots could function reliably in construction, eldercare, households and other highly complex environments.

In 2020, Robust.AI raised a $15 million Series A.

In addition to his roles at Robust.AI, Brooks, an award-winning computer scientist, taught and held directorships at MIT. He was also founder and CTO at Rethink Robotics and iRobot.

Veo Robotics, an industrial automation company founded in 2016, created FreeMove, a comprehensive 3D safeguarding system for industrial robots that powers dynamic human-robot collaboration. In other words, it turns run-of-the mill industrial robots into machines that respond to humans.

When human skill and creativity join forces with the strength and speed of robots, the result is a flexible human-robot interaction, which would help manufacturers adjust to continuous, rapidly changing market demands.

In 2019, the company raised a $15 million Series A.

As Veo Robotics co-founder and CTO, Clara Vu leads the engineering team and developments of the computer vision-powered sensing and intelligence used by four of the biggest industrial robot companies in the world: FANUC, Yaskawa, ABB and Kuka.

With more than two decades of robotics experience, Vu has developed multiple products from inception to market. She began her career at iRobot programming robots for oil well exploration; she then moved on to interactive toys and the Roomba.

Prior to Veo, Vu was co-founder and director of software development for Harvest Automation, the makers of mobile robots for agricultural automation.

Dont miss a fascinating conversation with Rodney Brooks and Clara Vu, two roboticists on the cutting edge of human-robot interaction, about the reality and potential of humans and robots working side-by-side.

TC Sessions: Robotics 2022 takes place in person on July 22 in Boston, Massachusetts. Buy your pass by Friday, June 24 at 11:59 p.m. (PDT) and save $200.

View post:

Rodney Brooks and Clara Vu will discuss human-robot interaction at TC Sessions: Robotics 2022 - TechCrunch

Technology becomes more and more a part of our daily lives every year. Whether it's ever-improving smartphones or self-driving cars. One company is working to make technology specifically robots a bigger part of the industry Las Vegas relies on most: hospitality.Meet Adam, an entertaining robotic bartender and barista being developed at Richtech Robotics in Las Vegas. At the present time, Adam can perform tasks like creating the perfect cappuccino.Another Adam is being taught or programmed how to pour craft beer. The hope going forward, Richtech says, is that artificial intelligent cameras will transform Adam from repeating sequences to adapting to its environment."It would be able to detect faces so that it can take orders vocally," Timothy Tanksley, an assistant tech manager at Richtech, said. "Right now, all of our orders are processed on a tablet, but eventually, the customers will be able to talk with adam and put in the order there."While Adam may have been one of the stars of the show at the recent Bar and Restaurant Expo in March, Richtech says it already has thousands of customers worldwide using the services of other types of robots, such as Maitre D' to deliver drinks and meals to tables, the U-V Guardian, which is used to disinfect rooms, Richie, the tuxedo-clad hotel delivery robot for room service, and Dust-E, which vacuums, mops and disinfects floors.Each robot uses technology like AI cameras and lidar to perform each task, and even to stop to avoid colliding with anything that might cross its path. "Service and entertainment is really the driving factor for why robotics will be adopted so quickly," Richtech executive KC McCreery said. Watch the video above for more on this story.

Technology becomes more and more a part of our daily lives every year. Whether it's ever-improving smartphones or self-driving cars.

One company is working to make technology specifically robots a bigger part of the industry Las Vegas relies on most: hospitality.

Meet Adam, an entertaining robotic bartender and barista being developed at Richtech Robotics in Las Vegas. At the present time, Adam can perform tasks like creating the perfect cappuccino.

Another Adam is being taught or programmed how to pour craft beer.

The hope going forward, Richtech says, is that artificial intelligent cameras will transform Adam from repeating sequences to adapting to its environment.

"It would be able to detect faces so that it can take orders vocally," Timothy Tanksley, an assistant tech manager at Richtech, said. "Right now, all of our orders are processed on a tablet, but eventually, the customers will be able to talk with adam and put in the order there."

While Adam may have been one of the stars of the show at the recent Bar and Restaurant Expo in March, Richtech says it already has thousands of customers worldwide using the services of other types of robots, such as Maitre D' to deliver drinks and meals to tables, the U-V Guardian, which is used to disinfect rooms, Richie, the tuxedo-clad hotel delivery robot for room service, and Dust-E, which vacuums, mops and disinfects floors.

Each robot uses technology like AI cameras and lidar to perform each task, and even to stop to avoid colliding with anything that might cross its path.

"Service and entertainment is really the driving factor for why robotics will be adopted so quickly," Richtech executive KC McCreery said.

Watch the video above for more on this story.

Follow this link:

Video: Robots are changing the way we think about the hospitality industry - WCVB Boston

"Cellula is excited to take the DRDC funded Solus-LR project to the next level of capability with TAS and RAN" said Adrian Woodroffe, Business Development Manager at Cellula. "Our fuel cell power system is the key enabler that gives SeaWolf a game changing submerged range and payload capacity."

CEO of TAS, Professor Jason Scholz noted "TAS are excited to see the progress on the SeaWolf project across engineering, manufacturing, regulatory, control, propulsion and other supporting technologies and concepts. The novel technologies and demonstrated capabilities at Cellula Robotics made them a partner of choice; and plans underway to establish an Australian Cellula entity will bring them closer to the sovereign enterprises in Australia already working on delivering our concept of an underwater loyal-wingman to the Royal Australian Navy".

While headquarters for Cellula are based in Burnaby, British Columbia, the company is in its final stages of establishing an Australian office in Brisbane to further the next stages of this project, including Australian-based design and manufacturing. Demonstration missions with Solus-LR and the prototype SeaWolf XLUUV will take place in the first quarter of 2023 in Australia.

About Cellula Robotics Ltd.Engineering solutions, intelligent systems.

Cellula Robotics Ltd. is a proudly Canadian, privately owned, world leading marine technology company specializing in turnkey design and production of subsea robotic systems. Headquartered in Burnaby, British Columbia, Cellula employs 70 staff with a dedicated team of highly-skilled engineers, designers, and technicians. Cellula's extensive experience in projects that require integrated mechanical, electrical, hydraulic, and software elements in a subsea environment is evident in its wide client base spanning over the defence, mineral exploration and oil & gas sectors. Cellula prides itself in having developed and implemented a rigorous ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management System that continues to meet and exceed client expectations.

For more information, please go towww.cellula.com.

SOURCE Cellula Robotics

Here is the original post:

Cellula Robotics Ltd. partners with Trusted Autonomous Systems and the Royal Australian Navy on the SeaWolf XLUUV Project - PR Newswire

Robotics jobs took the longest to fill across tech roles in the air force industry in Q1 2022 according to Airforce Technologys analysis of millions of online job advertisements.

Robotics job ads at these companies were online for an average of 71 days before being taken offline during the quarter, meaning they took 28.8 days longer to fill than an average job at the same companies.

The figure for Q1 2022 was an increase compared to the equivalent figure a year earlier, indicating that the required skillset for these roles has become harder to find in the past year.

Robotics is one of the topics that GlobalData, our parent company and from whom the data for this article is taken, have identified as being a key disruptive technology force facing companies in the coming years. Companies that excel and invest in these areas now are thought to be better prepared for the future business landscape and better equipped to survive unforeseen challenges.

Digitalization jobs took the second longest to fill on average at 54 days, while industrial automation came third among the tech themes tracked by GlobalData and which were linked to at least 100 job ads in the air force industry in each of the past five quarters.

The air force industry found it harder to recruit robotics jobs compared to the wider market, with ads online for 113.9% more time on average compared to similar jobs across the entire jobs market.

At the other end of the scale digital media related positions were the quickest to fill in the air force industry in Q1 2022 with positions closing during that period having been online for an average of 32 days.

GlobalData's job analytics database tracks the daily hiring patterns of thousands of companies across the world, drawing in jobs as they're posted and tagging them with additional layers of data on everything from the seniority of each position to whether a job is linked to wider industry trends.

You can keep track of the latest data from this database as it emerges by visiting our live dashboard here.

Advanced Composites Design and Manufacturing Solutions

Improved Material Composites for Better Defense

Read more here:

Robotics vacancies in the air force industry were the hardest tech roles to fill in Q1 2022 - Airforce Technology

DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The "Aerospace Robotics Market: Global Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2022-2027" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The global aerospace robotics market reached a value of US$ 2.82 Billion in 2021. Looking forward, the publisher expects the market to reach US$ 5.45 Billion by 2027, exhibiting at a CAGR of 11.82% during 2022-2027.

Companies Mentioned

Keeping in mind the uncertainties of COVID-19, we are continuously tracking and evaluating the direct as well as the indirect influence of the pandemic. These insights are included in the report as a major market contributor.

Aerospace robotics refers to the robots used for the assembly and maintenance of aircraft, satellites and space shuttles. They are commonly used for executing sensitive tasks, such as material handling, cutting, riveting, bolting, welding and fabrication of exterior and interior components of the aircraft. They are also utilized for detecting minute variations in the thickness, patency and integrity of aircraft skins, airfoils and paint coatings.

Aerospace robotics usually operate through articulated, cartesian, cylindrical, spherical, parallel and selective compliance articulated robot arm (SCARA) technologies. In comparison to the traditionally used manual systems, aerospace robotics solutions can perform repeated tasks with enhanced accuracy and offer consistent and speedy results. Space robotics also find extensive application for autonomously operating on new planetary surfaces.

Significant growth in the aerospace and aviation industries across the globe is one of the key factors creating a positive outlook for the market. Moreover, the increasing requirement for automating various labor-intensive inspection, fiber placement, sealing and dispensing processes is providing a thrust to the market growth. In line with this, the widespread production of narrow-body aircraft with lightweight and small-sized components is providing a thrust to the growth of the market.

Various technological advancements, such as the integration of robotics with 3D visualization, Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing solutions, are acting as other growth-inducing factors. These technologies aid in improving human-robot collaboration and minimizing the turnaround time for the manufacturing processes. Other factors, including extensive research and development (R&D) activities, along with significant improvements in the cyber-physical system (CPS) with automated decision-making functionalities, are anticipated to drive the market toward growth.

Key Questions Answered in This Report:

Key Topics Covered:

1 Preface

2 Scope and Methodology

3 Executive Summary

4 Introduction

4.1 Overview

4.2 Key Industry Trends

5 Global Aerospace Robotics Market

5.1 Market Overview

5.2 Market Performance

5.3 Impact of COVID-19

5.4 Market Forecast

6 Market Breakup by Type

7 Market Breakup by Component

8 Market Breakup by Technology

9 Market Breakup by Application

10 Market Breakup by Region

11 SWOT Analysis

12 Value Chain Analysis

13 Porters Five Forces Analysis

14 Price Analysis

15 Competitive Landscape

15.1 Market Structure

15.2 Key Players

15.3 Profiles of Key Players

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/aunath

More here:

Global Aerospace Robotics Market (2022 to 2027) - Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecasts - ResearchAndMarkets.com - Business...

A kid learns programming by reading instructions to "Robot Grace" for how to make a PB&J sandwich

A young kid playing with cubelets in the Robotic Sampler room

"Tommy", the robot that they took to the worlds event.At another station in the same room, a woman is showing two first graders how she directs a Lego vehicle on a track using a computer as two other little boys play with KEVA planks. In the next room over, DRI Nevada Robotics has an interactive game involving sensory cubelets designed to help people Think, Act, and Sense.You guys can go to another station, the attendant jokes to two elementary school-age boys who have been playing with the cubelets for quite a while. She adds, I always tell parents, you have a Christmas list going.

This activity appeals mostly to elementary school kids, but the volunteer says that some middle schoolers and the occasional parent who wants to practice some engineering comes over here as well, she smiles. Across the cubelet station, 610-year-olds are playing with remote control cars, zipping them around on a track.Wandering into the next room, a couple of kids are coloring at the Robot Art station and others are playing with oversized magnets, launching wooden balls down a rollercoaster line, and placing little plastic parachuter people into a vertical flute and watching them shoot up. The Shop next to DaVincis Corner is full of people, kids and parents using reflective sticker tape, cardboard rolls, and other materials to build robots and rockets.And on the lower level, a volunteer named Grace is in the Blue Party Room at the Program A Human Robot to Make a PBJ Sandwich activity. This human robot relies on detailed written instructions to successfully make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, allowing kids (and their parents) to physically see where they went wrong in their coding when Grace does exactly what they tell her to do.Local kids and families had a field day playing with robots, with all activities carrying an educational undertone. Itll be interesting to see what this generation of Northern Nevadans does twenty years from now.

"Bob", the robot that won the state championship for the VC Silver Circuits

Visit link:

Northern Nevada families come Out for Robots Rock! Event at the Discovery Museum - Northern Nevada Business Weekly

Gaussian Robotics, a leading solutions provider of AI-based autonomous cleaning and service robots, announced that it has changed its brand name to "Gausium". This heralds a new stage of a multi-brand strategy for the company, along with the rollout of its ground-breaking new cleaning bot product "Phantas".

Over the past few years, the company has ramped up its efforts in robotic cleaning and servicing, offering a comprehensive line of autonomous cleaning robots and launching the autonomous delivery bot "X1", and introducing a brand-new commercial cleaning bot "Phantas". The company has indicated that building a platform-based service robots ecosystem will be key to its development strategy in the coming years.

The brand name "Gausium" derives from the German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss, whose theories and models provided a foundation for the development of the autonomous navigation algorithms SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping). Unlike many of the industry players that started from supplying traditional cleaning equipment, Gausium was established as a provider of SLAM solutions and robotics software.

This becomes the bedrock of the company's fast scale-up of its robotic products. The technological edge in fields like Visual-LiDAR SLAM, back-end cloud computing, AIoT systems and mobile apps will secure for the company a leadership position in the marketplace.

According to Peter Kwestro, Overseas BD Director of Gausium, the new brand name represents the company's positioning of 3 "I"s "Innovative", "Intelligent", "Industry leader", and that the Gausium autonomous solutions are developed under a "3S Principle" "Smarter", "Safer" and "Simpler".

Gausium believes that the future of the service sectors will hinge on smart robotics solutions, and aims to promote the smart digital transformation of the service industries. It aspires to lead the service robot industry to create a new generation of smart service platform and build the AIoT-enabled smart city infrastructure for the future. "Finally, a smart service ecosystem will be built on a global scale to fulfill the 'prophecies' and make dreams into reality, " said Edward Cheng, founder & CEO of Gausium.

Source:https://gausium.com/

Go here to read the rest:

Gaussian Robotics' Brand Name Changed to Gausium - AZoRobotics

This article is part of ourcoverage of the latest inAI research.

For humans, working with deformable objects is not significantly more difficult than handling rigid objects. We learn naturally to shape them, fold them, and manipulate them in different ways and still recognize them.

But for robots and artificial intelligence systems, manipulating deformable objects present a huge challenge. Consider the series of steps that a robot must take to shape a ball of dough into pizza crusts. It must keep track of the dough as it changes shape, and at the same time, it must choose the right tool for each step of the work. These are challenging tasks for current AI systems, which are more stable in handling rigid-body objects, which have more predictable states.

Now, a new deep learning technique developed by researchers at MIT, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of California at San Diego, shows promise to make robotics systems more stable in handling deformable objects. Called DiffSkill, the technique uses deep neural networks to learn simple skills and a planning module for combining the skills to solve tasks that require multiple steps and tools.

If an AI system wants to handle an object, it has to be able to detect and define its state and predict how it will look in the future. This is a problem that has been largely solved for rigid objects. With a good set of training examples, a deep neural network will be able to detect a rigid object from different angles. However, when it comes to deformable objects, the space of possible states becomes much more complicated.

For rigid objects, we can describe its state with six numbers: Three numbers for its XYZ coordinates and another three numbers for its orientation, Xingyu Lin, Ph.D. student at CMU and lead author of the DiffSkill paper, told TechTalks.

However, deformable bodies, such as the dough or fabrics, have infinite degrees of freedom, making it much more difficult to describe their states precisely. Furthermore, the ways they deform are also harder to model in a mathematical way compared to rigid bodies.

The development of differentiable physics simulators enabled the application of gradient-based methods to solve deformable object manipulation tasks. This is in contrast to the traditional reinforcement learning approach that tries to learn the dynamics of the environment and objects through pure trial-and-error interactions.

DiffSkill was inspired by PlasticineLab, a differentiable physics simulator that was presented at the ICLR conference in 2021. PlasticineLab showed that differentiable simulators can help short-horizon tasks.

But differentiable simulators still struggle with long-horizon problems that require multiple steps and the use of different tools. AI systems based on differentiable simulators also require the agent to know the full simulation state and relevant physical parameters of the environment. This is especially limiting for real-world applications, where the agent usually perceives the world through visual and depth sensory data (RGB-D).

We started to ask if we can extract [the steps required to accomplish a task] as skills and also learn abstract notions about the skills so that we can chainthem to solve more complex tasks, Lin said.

DiffSkill is a framework where the AI agent learns skill abstraction using the differentiable physics model and composes them to accomplish complicated manipulation tasks.

Lins past work was focused on using reinforcement learning for the manipulation of deformable objects such as cloth, ropes, and liquids. For DiffSkill, he chose dough manipulation because of the challenges it poses.

Dough manipulation is particularly interesting because it cannot be easily performed with the robot gripper, but requires using different tools sequentially, something humans are good at but is not very common for robots to do, Lin said.

Once trained, DiffSkill can successfully accomplish a set of dough manipulation tasks using only RGB-D input.

DiffSkill is composed of two key components: a neural skill abstractor that uses neural networks to learn individual skills and a planner that composes the skill to solve long-horizon tasks.

DiffSkill uses a differentiable physics simulator to generate training examples for the skill abstractor. These samples show how to achieve a short-horizon goal with a single tool, such as using a roller to spread the dough or a spatula to displace the dough.

These examples are presented to the skill abstractor as RGB-D videos. Given an image observation, the skill abstractor must predict whether the desired goal is feasible or not. The model learns and tunes its parameters by comparing its prediction with the actual outcome of the physics simulator.

At the same time, DiffSkill trains a variational autoencoder (VAE) to learn a latent-space representation of the examples generated by the physics simulator. The VAE encodes images in a lower-dimension space that preserves important features and discards information that is not relevant to the task. By transferring the high-dimensional image space into the latent space, the VAE plays an important role in enabling DiffSkill to plan over long horizons and predict outcomes by observing sensory data.

One of the important challenges of training the VAE is making sure it learns the right features and generalizes to the real world, where the composition of visual data is different from those generated by the physics simulator. For example, the color of the roller pin or the table is not relevant to the task, but the position and angle of the roller and the location of the dough are.

Currently, the researchers are using a technique called domain randomization, which randomizesthe irrelevant properties of the training environment such as background and lighting, and keeps the important features such as the position and orientation of tools. This makes the VAE more stable when applied to the real world.

Doing this is not easy, as we need to cover all possible variations that are different between the simulation and the real world [known as the sim2real gap], Lin said. A better way is to use a 3D point cloud as representation of the scene, which is much easier to transfer from simulation to the real world. In fact, we are working on a follow-up project using point cloud as input.

Once the skill abstractor is trained, DiffSkill uses the planner module to solve long-horizon tasks. The planner must determine the number and sequence of skills needed to go from the initial state to the destination.

This planner iterates over possible combinations of skills and the intermediate outcomes they yield. The variational autoencoder comes in handy here. Instead of predicting full image outcomes, DiffSkill uses the VAE to predict the latent-space outcome of intermediate steps toward the final goal.

The combination of abstract skills and latent-space representations makes it much more computationally efficient to draw a trajectory from the initial state to the goal. In fact, the researchers didnt need to optimize the search function and used an exhaustive search of all combinations.

The computation is not too much since we are planning over the skills and the horizon is not very long, Lin said. This exhaustive search eliminates the need for designing a sketch for the planner and might lead to novel solutions not considered by the designer in a more general way, although we did not observe this in the limited tasks we tried. Furthermore, more sophisticated search techniques could be applied as well

According to the DiffSkill paper, optimization can be done efficiently in around 10 seconds for each skill combination on a single NVIDIA 2080Ti GPU.

The researchers tested the performance of DiffSkill against several baseline methods that have been applied to deformable objects, including two model-free reinforcement learning algorithms and a trajectory optimizer that only uses the physics simulator.

The models were tested on several tasks that require multiple steps and tools. For example, in one of the tasks, the AI agent must lift the dough with a spatula, place it on a cutting board, and spread it with a roller.

The results show that DiffSkill is significantly better than other techniques at solving long-horizon, multiple-tool tasks using only sensory information. The experiments show that when well trained, DiffSkills planner can find good intermediate states between the initial and goal states and find decent sequences of skills to solve tasks.

One takeaway is that a set of skills can provide very important temporal abstraction, allowing us to reason over long-horizon, Lin said. This is also similar to how human approaches different tasks: thinking at different temporal abstractions instead of thinking what to do at every next second.

However, there are also limits to DiffSkills capacity. For example, when performing one of the tasks that required three-stage planning, DiffSkills performance degrades significantly (though it is still better than other techniques). Lin also mentioned that in some cases, the feasibility predictor produces false positives. The researchers believe that learning a better latent space can help solve this problem.

The researchers are also exploring other directions to improve DiffSkill, including a more efficient planner algorithm that can be used for longer horizon tasks.

Lin hopes that one day, he can use DiffSkill on real pizza-making robots. We are still far from this. Various challenges emerge from control, sim2real transfer, and safety. But we are now more confident at trying some long-horizon tasks, he said.

Excerpt from:

This deep learning technique solves one of the tough challenges of robotics - TechTalks

The Association for Advancing Automation (A3) has announced six winners of the 2022 Engelberger Robotics Awards.

At a special dinner in conjunction with the Automate 2022 Show and Conference in Detroit on June 8, three winners will be honored for their leadership in the field: Michael P. Jacobs, founder and CEO of Applied Manufacturing Technologies (AMT); Oussama Khatib, professor at Stanford University; and Marc Raibert, founder and chairman of Boston Dynamics.

The association will honor three more winners at automatica in Munich on June 20, and they are:

The award is named after the late Joseph F. Engelberger, known by many as the founding force behind industrial robotics, according to A3. Since 1977, the association has presented the awards to 134 robotics leaders from 17 different nations for excellence in technology development, application, education and leadership. Each winner receives a $5,000 honorarium and commemorative medallion.

In their unique ways, each of these six remarkable individuals have played prominent roles in shaping the robotics industry were a part of today, from educating future roboticists to advancing the role of mobile, industrial and collaborative robotics in manufacturing facilities and warehouses alike, said Jeff Burnstein, president of A3.

The past chairs of the A3 Technology Strategy Board selected the six honorees based on their achievements in the field. For example, Khatib, a roboticist and a professor of computer science, is credited with seminal work in areas ranging from robot motion planning and control, human-friendly robot design, to haptic interaction and human motion synthesis.

Wise, previously was the CEO of Fetch Robotics until its acquisition by Zebra Technologies in 2021. For nearly 20 years, Wise has been designing, building, and programming robotic hardware and software. She was the second employee at Willow Garage, a research and development laboratory specializing in robotics, where she led a team of engineers developing next-generation robot hardware and software. In 2014, she and other members of Willow Garage founded Fetch Robotics, which is best known for its autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) for warehouses.

Meanwhile, Jacobs is an expert in the robotic automation industry. At GMF Robotics (now FANUC), where he worked before AMT, Jacobs pioneered the product development and market introduction of robot simulation and offline programming systems.

The other Engelberger winners have led or been involved in advancing the automation industry in myriad ways. Marc Raibert founded Boston Dynamics, where he also served as CEO. The robotics company is known for creating BigDog, Atlas, Spot and Handle. Thorvaldsson joined ABB Robotics, a global leader in power and automation technologies, in 1976.

University of Naples Federico II's Siciliano, an engineer, is director of the ICAROS Center and coordinator of the PRISMA Lab at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology.

For more information about Automate 2022, visit https://www.automateshow.com/.

Read the rest here:

Robotics Pioneers to be Honored at Automate and automatica - Vision Systems Design

WESTCHESTER COUNTY, NY In the near future, your Amazon Prime delivery could be much more environmentally friendly and robotics enthusiasts at the French-American School of New York in Larchmont might well deserve the lion's share of the credit for innovations coming someday soon to a mailbox near you.

The robotics team from the French-American School of New York (FASNY), "The Green Brick Road," is already having quite an impressive 2021-2022 season.

The team made up of Middle School students, Ahmed Fliss (class of '28), Lavinia Gayet '27, Estelle Santulin '27, Ben Street '27, Vincent Revise '26, Denis Boudaliez '26 and Justin Gingrich '26, won the top prize in the qualifying round of the FIRST Lego League Robotics Challenge in February and then went on to claim first place in the Regional Hudson Valley competition, which secured their spot at the 2022 FIRST World Robotics Championship in Houston.

In late April, "The Green Brick Road" FASNY robotics team competed amongst 108 teams from all across the globe, showcasing their talents to 35,000 attendees. After several days of competition, "The Green Brick Road" finished in the top 25 percent of all teams.

And they're not done yet.

The team was selected independently as one of the 20 finalists in the worldwide Global Innovation Award competition for their Innovation Project in which they developed an automated "dropbox" that can accept package deliveries without any protective boxes or packaging, which would save millions of trees and reduce the amount of plastic headed for landfills.

The Global Innovation Award competition will take place in St. Louis from June 21 - June 23.

About the French-American School of New York:

Founded in 1980 as a one-classroom preschool, FASNY has evolved to become an international and bilingual N-12 day school educating more than 700 students on three campuses in Mamaroneck and Larchmont, New York. It is the only school in the New York metropolitan area accredited to offer both the International Baccalaureate (IB) diploma and the French baccalaureate. All students also graduate with a New York State high school diploma. Students at the French-American School of New York are offered the opportunity to participate in either the French-American Program or the International Program, which begins in grade 1 with no knowledge of French required. More information can be found on their website.

Here is the original post:

French-American School of New York Robotics Team Conquers The World - Patch

GLENDALE, CA - OCTOBER 22: General views of the IHOP, Dine Brands Global corporate headquarters, ... [+] home of IHOP and Applebee's restaurants on October 22, 2020 in Glendale, California. (Photo by AaronP/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images)

Dine Brands proved in Q1 that consumers pent-up demand for a casual dining experience outweighs their trepidation about inflation. On Wednesday, the parent company of Applebees and IHOP announced year-over-year same-store sales growth of 14.3% and 18.1%, respectively.

Further, the companys gross profits increased by 9% year-over-year despite significant inflationary headwinds, and it didnt see a decline in traffic despite historically high costs hitting consumers everywhere, from rent to groceries to fuel.

That said, those headwinds are expected to present a lingering challenge. Food costs, for instance, are expected to inflate up to 16% this year, which will be offset in part from menu pricing increases. In Q1, those increases averaged about 5% on the Applebees side and 7.9% on the IHOP side.

Labor may be the most pronounced challenge, however, as staffing at the chains remain about 10% below full capacity across the systems.

During a phone interview this week, Dine Brands CEO John Peyton said he isnt sure if the labor number is going to improveat least not in the near term. New numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics support this prediction, showing the hospitality sector had about 1.5 million unfulfilled positions in February.

The labor shortage becomes an even bigger issue considering both Applebees and IHOPs plan to grow their footprints and are managing higher volumes in off-premise channels even as dine-in returns.

Dine Brands has been managing some of these gaps through various technology deployments in the front and back of the house, including handheld devices at 500 Applebees locations that enable servers to turn tables faster, make more money and be more productive, Peyton said.

Further, IHOP has a new point-of-sale system that streamlines orders across channels and a franchisee is also testing a robot that can deliver food to guests and bus tables. Robotic servers are starting to pop up across the casual dining segment, including at Dennys and Chilis, the latter of which just expanded deployment to 51 more restaurants.

Its too early to tell if such an approach is worth a broader rollout. Peyton did say, however, that the robot makes servers more productive and efficient and guests and kids think its super cool.

Also, borrowing from QSR, were testing a robotic arm that can work the fryer station, he said. If we have one less cook in the kitchen, this can help them be more efficient and productive.

Chains such as White Castle, Jack in the Box JACK and Chipotle have been testing similar back-of-the-house robotics to free up tactical-level (and sometimes dangerous) tasks.

The reason to look at robotics is not just to look at robotics. Its because of this phenomenon where were only achieving 90% of staffing levels at restaurants, Peyton said. The responsible and strategic thing to say is what if this is the new normal? If thats the case, we have to figure out how to make front and back of the house more productive. That is the problem were trying to solve and has led us to investments in technology and robotics.

Technology investment is a key focus area for the company to enhance customer experience, Peyton said, including paying at the table, customizing meals via the brands apps or ordering delivery through a third-party aggregator. An uptick in that delivery piece has influenced both brands to expand into the ghost and virtual kitchen spaces.

In Q1, Applebees and IHOP opened 10 new international ghost kitchens, including its 29th overall model. Virtual concept Cosmic Wings, meanwhile, continues to provide incremental sales at participating Applebees locations, and IHOP recently started testing two virtual brands of its ownThrilled Cheese and Super Mega Dillawhich are now in 280 restaurants, from about 80 in February. IHOP locations with a virtual brand are generating about $1,000 in incremental revenues a week.

The idea is to drive incremental revenue with low capital, Peyton said. The key insight is that as a result of Covid, consumer behavior has changed. Before, the first question they asked is what do we want to eat? Now, it is do I want delivery, do I want to go out, do I want to pick it up? When theyre looking at their delivery apps, theyve made that decision and its not competing with dining in at an Applebees. We want to lean into all the ways consumers want to access our brands.

Dine Brands is also focused sharply on cost-cutting initiatives to help overcome inflationary pressures faced by operators. Earlier this year, the company pieced together a cross-functional team to identify about 140 cost mitigation opportunities across the system, such as lowering production costs and reducing food waste. This team is part of a broader three-point effort the company is making to combat rising prices, along with securing supply that is becoming hard to get and locking in commodity prices where possible.

An example of a product that is hard to get right now is coffee creamer. Its becoming scarce because of the metal on top you have to peel off. Creamer has a shelf life, so versus just-in-time-delivery, which is what we typically do, were now storing creamer in facilities across the country to meet demand at our restaurants, Peyton said.

The company is also looking at things like reducing to-go packaging, as paper product costs are up 16%; purchasing sliced lettuce versus whole head lettuce to free up back-of-the-house labor; and examining its beer distribution systems to minimize waste and spoilage.

Weve looked at alternative suppliers, renegotiated contracts and basically have gone through items line-by-line to look at opportunities, Peyton said. Were approaching this challenge of cost mitigation with the same spirited innovation we have taken through the past couple of years.

Its too soon to gauge results of this effort, but Peyton expects cost reductions of 200 basis points at Applebees and 100 basis points at IHOP.

See the rest here:

Applebees And IHOP Are Adding New Technologies, Including Robotics, To Offset Labor Shortages - Forbes

Robotic surgery has gone from rare to the standard of care in some fields in the last 15 years, according to surgeons in the region.

The global market for surgical robots was $3.6 billion in 2021 and is expected to reach $18.2 billion by 2030, according to market analyst Grand View Research. North America holds more than one-half of the current market share.

"If we look where robotics was in the early 2000s and then look 15 years later, to the point where almost everything in urology is robotic, it's definitely here to stay," said Dr. John Terrell, urologist at Baptist Health in Fort Smith.

As robotic technology becomes more advanced, it will only lead to more precision, smaller instruments and better outcomes for patients, Terrell said.

Advanced technology has been applied across multiple fields in recent years from gynecology to orthopedic surgery to neurosurgery.

The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock began a multispecialty robotic surgery curriculum last fall, training residents in general, gynecologic and urologic surgery.

In Northwest Arkansas, doctors at Mercy, Northwest Health and Washington Regional Medical Center use Intuitive's da Vinci robotic surgical system.

There have been several thousand robotic surgeries at Baptist Health in Fort Smith in the decade since the hospital acquired its first da Vinci robot, Terrell said.

Washington Regional does many robotic surgeries with most surgeons having completed hundreds of cases, according to Dr. Jeffrey Bell, assistant chief medical officer for surgery at Washington Regional.

Mercy Fort Smith acquired a da Vinci robot about a year ago, according to Dr. Adeel Shamim. He said he uses robotic technology in about 25% to 30% of his surgeries, and he expects about 70% of his surgeries could be robot-assisted in the future.

Dr. Raj Nangunoori at Mercy Northwest Arkansas in Rogers is one of a small group of neurosurgeons across the country who have access to Synaptive's Modus V robot.

The robot is the only Modus V in Northwest Arkansas, one of two in the state and one of about 30 in operation in the United States, according to Nangunoori.

In about 10 years, Nangunoori could be using the Modus V in about 80% to 90% of his surgeries, he said.

Many surgeons said the term "robot" is a bit of a misnomer.

"When people think of a robot, they're thinking of something on 'The Jetsons,' something that is going to be thinking on its own. This is almost like any other instrument in that you control its movements precisely with your hands," Terrell said of the da Vinci system.

"It should really be called robot-assisted surgery," Shamim said.

COSTS AND BENEFITS

Surgical methods have evolved over the last 50 years, moving from open surgeries with large incisions to laparoscopic surgeries with smaller incisions, to even less invasive robotic surgeries that use three-dimensional imaging, according to Shamim.

Although there may always be surgeries that cannot be done with a robot, the technology will continue to improve, Bell said.

As a part of this evolution, the medical industry will continue to see more specific and precise robots for a growing number of niche purposes, Terrell said.

Bell added one drawback is the learning curve for more experienced surgeons.

"Most surgeons coming out of residency programs now have robotic experience as part of their surgical training," Bell said. "For surgeons who did not experience robotic training in residency, there is a process to follow."

Bell said the training process involves an informational course, a simulator program, formal training and more simulated procedures supervised by experienced robotic surgeons followed by proctored cases.

The da Vinci system costs as much as a few million dollars, but the benefits outweigh the cost, according to Shamim.

"It's made me a more efficient surgeon," he said, adding that some three-hour surgeries now take him around 50 minutes with the da Vinci system.

That efficiency allows the hospital to take on more patients in addition to giving those patients better care, he said.

The benefits for patients include less pain and quicker recovery times without adding any cost, he said.

"This has enhanced patient care," Shamim said. "Everyone's talking about the cost, but surgeons are able to do a better surgery, period."

ROBOTICS IN UROLOGY

Urology has always been at the forefront of technology, according to Terrell.

The need for very precise incisions "made it very fertile ground for robotics to grow in," Terrell said.

"The da Vinci tech is just a means to control the instruments in a more precise way," he said.

Unlike traditional laparoscopic surgery, the robot allows a smaller incision, uses a smaller instrument, has better movement and shows a 3D image, he said.

Procept's AquaBeam system is another recent application of robotics to urological procedures.

After ultrasound is used to plan the treatment, the system uses a heat-free water jet, controlled by robotic technology, to treat urinary tract symptoms due to enlarged prostate.

"It's almost like a self-driving car," Terrell said. "We're just giving it a program that it's going to run and do."

Baptist Health in Fort Smith has used the robotic system for over a year, according to Terrell. Northwest Medical Center in Bentonville also recently began using the technology.

"It has cut those hospital stays shorter. It's also allowed us to expand our treatment of older people that traditionally were not eligible because of their age or size of prostate," Terrell said.

Physicians guide the parameters of the robot as it completes the surgery under constant monitoring, according to Dr. Chad Brekelbaum, urologist at Northwest Arkansas Urology Associates.

The treatment is unique because it allows doctors to have a real-time understanding of the tissue they are treating and see the results throughout the process, according to Dr. Matthew Kincade, urologist at Arkansas Urology in Fayetteville.

"I foresee this treatment becoming the standard of care in urology in the near future," Kincade said. "As more and more patients are able to get this treatment, we will see not only how well patients do during the short term, but the medium- and long-term benefits really exceeding current treatments with much less risk of bothersome side effects."

ROBOTICS IN NEUROLOGY

In neurosurgery, robotic technology is still in its infancy, according to Nangunoori, the Mercy neurosurgeon.

Mercy's Synaptive Modus V system is a robotic, digital microscope that projects a high-resolution, 4K image onto a monitor.

"The key is visualization," Nangunoori said.

Like several other surgical robots, the Modus V also makes surgery more comfortable for the physician, he said.

"The surgeon operates while looking ahead instead of looking down, so ergonomically, it is much easier to use," he said. The system can also be controlled by the surgeon's voice.

By reducing the toll surgery often takes on a doctor's neck or wrists, the technology could prolong surgeons' careers and help combat a shortage of medical personnel, Nangunoori said.

"There almost isn't a reason not to use it," he said. "It really is an honor and privilege that we had a very generous donor who provided the funding to get this technology."

The development of surgical robots

1985: The first recorded robot-assisted surgical procedure was performed at the Memorial Medical Center in Long Beach, Calif.

1992: Computer Motions AESOP system became the first surgical robot to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

1995: Robotics company Intuitive Surgical was founded.

2000: Intuitives da Vinci robot became the first robotic surgery system cleared by the FDA for general laparoscopic surgery.

2001: Computer Motions ZEUS became the first commercially available surgical robot to complete a transatlantic surgery.

Source: National Center for Biotechnology Information

Go here to read the rest:

From rare to standard of care: Robotics a growing tool among Northwest Arkansas surgeons - Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The "Warehouse Robotics Global Market Forecast 2022-2027" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The global warehouse robotics market reached a value of US$ 5.04 billion in 2021. Looking forward, the market is projected to reach a value of US$ 11.3 billion by 2027, exhibiting a CAGR of 13.20% during 2022-2027.

Companies Mentioned

Keeping in mind the uncertainties of COVID-19, the analyst is continuously tracking and evaluating the direct as well as the indirect influence of the pandemic on different End-use industries. These insights are included in the report as a major market contributor.

Warehouse robotics is a computer-controlled solution used for transportation of materials and streamlining and automating warehouse processes. It utilizes specialized machines and software solutions for pick-place, packing, transportation, packaging and palletizing of material and products with enhanced accuracy. Warehouse robotics includes industrial robots, sortation, conveyors, autonomous mobile robots (AMR) and automated storage and retrieval systems (AS/RS).

They use computer systems, onboard sensors, magnetic strips, infrared cameras and integrated maps to navigate workspaces, identify obstacles, avoid collisions and deliver inventory around the warehouse. These robots aid in minimizing redundant processes and are not prone to fatigue and frequent wear and tear. As a result, warehouse robotics finds extensive applications across various industries, including food and beverage, automotive, pharmaceutical and retail.

Significant growth in the e-commerce industry across the globe is among the key factors creating a positive outlook for the market. Warehouse robotics offers enhanced convenience to the consumers by minimizing overall business and operational costs and human errors in product deliveries.

Moreover, the widespread adoption of AS/RS systems across industries is providing a thrust to the market growth. The system operates through cranes and shuttles on fixed tracks to facilitate speedy retrieval and placement of products in aisles and vertical columns. Additionally, various technological advancements, such as the integration of connected devices with the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI) solutions, are acting as other growth-inducing factors.

These technologies offer improved object perception and positioning that facilitate efficient material batching, picking, ordering, packaging, warehouse security and inspection. Other factors, including the increasing automation across industries, along with the rapid modernization of existing small and medium-scale warehouses, are anticipated to drive the market toward growth.

Key Questions Answered in This Report

Key Topics Covered:

1 Preface

2 Scope and Methodology

3 Executive Summary

4 Introduction

4.1 Overview

4.2 Key Industry Trends

5 Global Warehouse Robotics Market

5.1 Market Overview

5.2 Market Performance

5.3 Impact of COVID-19

5.4 Market Forecast

6 Market Breakup by Type

7 Market Breakup by Function

8 Market Breakup by End User

9 Market Breakup by Region

10 SWOT Analysis

11 Value Chain Analysis

12 Porters Five Forces Analysis

13 Price Analysis

14 Competitive Landscape

14.1 Market Structure

14.2 Key Players

14.3 Profiles of Key Players

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/g2jaod

More here:

Global Warehouse Robotics Market (2022 to 2027) - Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecasts - ResearchAndMarkets.com - Business...

Christian Pilon, Head of Robotics - Nuclear at SNC Lavalin, explores the opportunities for integration of robots with remote-control and digital twin technologies in the nuclear industry.

Above: Spot is a quadrupedal robot that can be used for characterisation

THERE IS A WELL-KNOWN saying in robotics and automation that if a task is dirty, dull or dangerous then it should be automated. Difficult and dear are sometimes added to the list. There are plenty of tasks that fall into one of these five categories in the nuclear industry, yet robots are still used relatively rarely.

Nuclear sites are amongst the most challenging environments for robots, with high radiation levels, limited access and lack of automation infrastructure. All these operational risks are precisely why robots should be used to minimise risk to humans. However, technology used on nuclear sites must be at a high readiness and robustness level and this requirement often prohibits experiments in adopting emerging technology.

How can we overcome these barriers to unlock the potential of robotics for nuclear?

In other industries, such as automotive, electronics and packaging, robots are not emerging technology. Robots typically excel at repetitive tasks in well-structured environments, such as a production line in a car factory. When the environment is predictable, for tasks such as material handling or machine tending, the robot requires limited intelligence to do its job and, when the production volumes are high, there is generally a good business case for automation and robotics.

As production costs in other industries have increased and robot prices have decreased and, other industries have also looked to robots to solve their challenges. Aerospace is a good example. Compared to the automotive industry, production volumes are relatively low and the complexity of the manufacturing processes is high, but there are still plenty of applications where automation makes sense. That may be from for safety (avoiding repetitive operations); quality (sometimes manual processes cannot meet precision and tolerance requirements) or cost efficiencies. Agriculture is another example of a challenging, less structured environment where robots are making an entry. Picking fruits would not have been considered an achievable application ten years ago.

The challenges of the nuclear industry for robot implementation may be unique, but the solutions and technologies do not have to be, which is why it makes sense to consider how other industries are embracing robotics.

For robots to operate in challenging conditions, their technologies have improve perception and ability to interact with the environment. While the standard approach in robotics has always been to change a process to simplify automation adapting the environment to the robot this is not always practical in the nuclear industry. It is increasingly important to have robots that can adapt to the world, not the other way around.

A common example of how robots can perceive their environment is the use of cameras and machine vision. In recent years, the lower cost of cameras and algorithms that combine machine learning with greater processing power have resulted in new capabilities that could benefit nuclear. In e-commerce fulfilment centres, some robots now use low-cost 3D vision sensors and AI to prepare orders for consumer products. This ability to identify and select objects of different shapes and appearances could be applied to nuclear waste segregation, if the technology can be adapted to such challenging environments.

Progress is also being made in force control, providing the robot with a sense of touch. Mechanical innovations can also help, such as adaptive robot grippers that can grasp objects that vary in shape and size, without having to rely on sophisticated sensors and software.

Advances in human-robot collaboration will facilitate the deployment of robots in the future, particularly as we use robotics to reduce risk and enhance workforce safety.

Collaborative robots, for instance, are a type of robot intended to be deployed safely around people, with features such as collision detection and force limitation. A complete safety risk assessment is always required before deploying any robot but, in the right conditions, these robots can operate alongside operators withoutsafety fencing. On a nuclear site, that could translate to robots conducting inspections and measurements without disrupting people on site conducting normal operations.

Collaborative robots typically sacrifice speed and payload, when compared to traditional industrial robots, but may have features that enable intuitive operation and programming. Safety devices can also be paired to robots to allow easier collaboration or cooperation between humans and robots. For example, safety scanners can be programmed to limit the speed of a robot when someone enters a warning zone and stop it if someone enters a danger zone.

Translating these technologies into practical applications is a useful way to see how robots can improve safety and productivity in different ways.

The following are examples of how our robotics team is exploring multiple applications.

Data collection is increasingly important for nuclear sites, both for safe operation and to inform applications, from performance monitoring to predictive maintenance and the development of digital twins. These data include radiological measurements, image acquisition and 3D scans, tasks that robots could do instead of humans.

There are two main benefits to this. First it reduces risk, as it avoids sending people into hazardous areas. If data needs to be collected in an uncharacterised environment, it is far safer to send a robot in first to assess risks and plan further activities properly. Second, even in characterised environments, routine surveys still have to be conducted.

In that case, robots can help get data at pre-programmed times and locations, so people can focus on what to do with the data, boosting productivity as well as safety.

A great example is Spot, from Boston Dynamics. Spot is a quadrupedal robot that can be used as a platform to deploy instruments such as cameras, 3D scanners and gamma monitors. It can navigate through unstructured environments, over obstacles and up or down stairs, and it is equipped with an arm to open doors and pick up or drag objects, enabling remote data collection across different sites and challenging environments.

Operating a robot remotely may be the best solution for situations where full automation is not possible. Robots can augment people, so work can be done safely and more efficiently.

In the UK, we are removing hands from glovebox operations by developing a remote-controlled robotic system. Robot arms can be deployed through the existing ports of the gloveboxes (where the minimum inner diameter of the port is 150mm), keeping people away from harm. For this application, the Kinova Gen3 collaborative arm is equipped with tools such as grippers, angle grinders, screw drivers and plasma cutters to perform the glovebox tasks effectively, and can be programmed to avoid interferences with the glovebox and its content.

Selecting and installing a robot is only a small part of solving the problem. Operating a robot remotely requires a combination of intuitive user interface, sophisticated robot control, low-latency communication and sensors, to provide the operator with all the required information such as cameras, scanners and haptic feedback. In this instance, tools and technologies can be leveraged such as gaming engines for visualisation and user interface, the robot operating system (ROS) in our software back-end, 3D cameras to capture the robots environment and virtual reality (VR) to develop an immersive and intuitive user experience.

Developing these kinds of solutions creates a replicable approach that can be adapted to other applications. The focus here is adapting existing robots and established technology to create new, nuclear-specific functionality faster and more efficiently than researching and developing new robotics for the sector.

There are also applications where we can take standard industrial robots and design automated process around them, such as handling alpha-contaminated gloveboxes or managing decommissioned waste. In the latter we can sort waste according to its radioactivity level to optimise storage and generate cost savings, using an industrial robot with a sophisticated vision system and software and pairing it with standard characterisation instruments.

To truly realise the potential of robotics and create robust solutions, we must avoid re-inventing the wheel and working in isolation. We need to maximise the lessons learned from technologies that have been developed by other industries and adapt them to solve nuclear-specific challenges.

We act as a systems integrator, partnering with manufacturers and suppliers from the robotics industries to identify opportunities to adapt and enhance existing technology to meet nuclears specific requirements. This kind of collaboration bridges the gap between academia and the industry: it feeds-in those specific requirements, enables experimentation and focuses research and development efforts on those areas or use-cases where new technologies are required.

The nuclear industry is a challenging environment to implement robots, but it has a high potential opportunities and rewards. Unlocking those benefits can truly transform our sector.

Want to learn more about the potential for robots and AI in nuclear decommissioning?

Register to join us on 17thMay for Nuclear Decommissioning: International perspectives virtual event to hear about some of the latest innovations being used in nuclear decommissioning projects around the globe. Sam Stephens, global head of digital: nuclear and power at SNC-Lavalin and Darren Grears, EMEA digital director: nuclear and power at Atkins a member of the SNC-Lavalin Group, will be both be speaking at this event.

Their presentation will discuss the latest technologies that are transforming decommissioning planning, drawing on examples from SNC-Lavalins international activities with nuclear plant operators around the world to show where these approaches have added value to projects, and sharing their view of what to expect from the next disruptive innovations to support this new way of working.

Excerpt from:

Unlocking the potential of robotics in nuclear - Nuclear Engineering