Transforming Industries Track

Robots are increasingly being used in environments where they are exposed to the public, whether it be in a shopping mall, a grocery store, a restaurant, an airport, or in the home. This raises concerns about whether these commercial & consumer robots can be trusted to operate safely around people, especially vulnerable groups such as children and elderly. Even when no humans are present, having a robot in a home or work place can increase risk. As a result, standards have been developed describing how these robots are to be assessed in terms of construction, materials, design, and testing to substantially reduce risk and increase public safety. In this presentation, UL’s Jason Smith and Karen Reddington will introduce these safety standards, including the new UL 3300, the standard for robotics systems, including service, information, educational and entertainment robots. Topics such as electrical safety, battery safety, safe mobility and functional safety, and designing for compliance will also be discussed.

While not commonplace, Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) are increasingly being utilized outside of industrial facilities. For years these robots have been behind the scenes in factories and warehouses, but increasingly, we are witnessing AMRs in airports, hotels, and even delivering our food. As these robots become more common, it is critical that their architecture be simplified, enabling lower cost platforms to perform in ever increasing dynamic environments. In this discussion, Parker Conroy, Head of Product at Verizon Robotics, will review the evolution of AMRs from standalone systems to devices that can operate on distributed computation platforms enabled by communications technologies. He will also highlight how seamless human / robot communication will result in greater levels of collaboration, increasing efficiency, productivity, and safety in the process.

Recent advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) have enabled collaborative robots to precisely execute tasks in dynamically changing workspaces, enabling operations to run more smoothly, efficiently and productively. In this session, Universal Robots’ Tim DeGrasse will describe and demonstrate how AI-powered cobots can increase production, decrease cost, and shorten cycle times in today’s high-tech manufacturing environments. Video case study examples will show how AI leverages billions of hours of iterative machine-learned practices to intelligently direct cobots in manufacturing, production and engineering.

In this presentation based on years developing numerous robotics products for companies across the world, Ted Larson, CEO of Ologic, a Silicon Valley based robotics design and development services firm, will outline the steps in his Guerilla Product Development program, a novel engineering approach for developing robotics systems. During the session, he will discuss the concepts underlying the product development technique, and provide specific examples of how the process has been used for the development of various robotic and consumer electronics products. Specifically, he will detail how the approach was utilized for the design of the commercial robotics offering from Dusty Robotics.

In the health systems of the United States, along with many parts of the world, healthcare providers are faced with many challenges including staff shortages, limited ability to recruit new staff, and burnout. For example, according to a report by healthcare automation provider Notable, since the pandemic first began, the healthcare industry lost nearly 30% of its workforce. Thankfully, there are technology solutions that mitigate these critical issues through automation, but navigating the healthcare space is not always straightforward.

In this session drawn from real world experience selling his company’s products into healthcare, Thuc Vu, CEO and Co-founder of OhmniLabs, will share his journey and the key insights he has gained. Vu will discuss various parts of the sales cycle including product design and pilot testing, how to identify and meet with decision-makers, and learning which features and requirements they care about the most. He will also discuss how to work with partners to amplify your company’s reach.

Within warehouses and fulfillment centers, robotics systems for dedicated tasks such as cleaning, scanning inventory, picking and packing, are increasingly working alongside autonomous forklifts and delivery robots. These various systems typically do not play well together, lacking heterogeneous fleet interoperability and orchestration. As a result, there is a growing need for orchestration of these various robots and tasks, not just to avoid one another, but to coordinate workflows and collaborate effectively with human labor sharing the same space.

In this session, John Simmons, Operations and Product leader at InOrbit will describe the best practices and solutions for efficient robot operations in heterogeneous robotics environments, including emerging interoperability standards, growing ecosystems, and advances in software integration. He will also share a vision of how effective multi-robot operations will drive automation in the future.