In Episode 195 of The Robotic Report Podcast, our visitor is Giovanni Campanella, the Industrial Automation and Robotics Basic Supervisor at Texas Devices (TI).
Present timeline
- 6:30 – Steve Crowe and Mike Oitzman recap the 2025 Robotics Summit and Expo reside from the Boston Conference Heart
- 13:20 – Mike interviews Giovanni Campanella, the Industrial Automation and Robotics Basic Supervisor at Texas Devices (TI).
Information of the week
Amazon’s Vulcan robotic makes use of power sensing to stow gadgets
- Amazon developed a brand new robotic known as Vulcan, designed to select gadgets from bulk and place them onto the movable cabinets.
- What makes Vulcan distinctive is that it’s geared up with power suggestions sensors and AI, giving it a way of contact. This “sense of contact” permits Vulcan to govern objects with higher precision and dexterity. Based on Amazon, Vulcan can choose and stow roughly 75% of the gadgets in Amazon warehouses, transferring them at speeds corresponding to human employees.
- Aaron Parness, Director of Utilized Science at Amazon Robotics, was a keynote session final week with Steve Crowe, Government Editor of The Robotic Report, to debate the expertise behind Vulcan throughout a keynote throughout final week’s Robotics Summit and Expo in Boston. Parness defined the significance of contact and power sensing to the way forward for robotics at Amazon.
- Amazon presently has a variety of different robotic selecting purposes deployed. Sparrow is presently selecting from totes, nevertheless it solely picks from the highest layer of the totes. Sparrow has a whole lot of intelligence to establish the gadgets and plan the trajectories, nevertheless it (presently) doesn’t require a way of contact.
- Amazon has one other robotic known as Cardinal, designed to fill a cart with packages. The important thing for Cardinal is to get the cart as full as attainable. Parness believes Cardinal may gain advantage from a way of contact to assist it maximize the cart load sooner or later.
- IEEE Transactions on Robotics papers
Teradyne Robotics makes management modifications at MiR, UR
- Teradyne immediately introduced management modifications for each of its robotics divisions, efficient instantly. Jean-Pierre Hathout transitions from main Cell Industrial Robots (MiR) to changing Kim Povlsen because the president of Common Robots (UR). Kevin Dumas succeeds Hathout as the brand new president of MIR. Povlsen is pursuing an exterior profession alternative.
- This adjustment comes on the heels of current Teradyne fiscal 2024 monetary outcomes. UR, a number one developer of collaborative robotic arms, declined 3% yr over yr, and autonomous cellular robotic (AMR) developer MiR grew 1% yr over yr. Teradyne Robotics Group laid off 10% of its world employees in January 2024.
Robots Put in in US Auto Trade Up by Double Digits
- Preliminary outcomes revealed by the Worldwide Federation of Robotics this week
- Studies that Automakers in the US have invested in additional automation:
- Whole installations of commercial robots within the automotive business elevated by 10.7%, reaching 13,700 items in 2024.
- In contrast, the Affiliation for Advancing Automation (A3) reported earlier this yr that U.S. automotive gross sales dropped 15% in 2024 in comparison with 2023.
- “The USA has some of the automated automotive industries on this planet: The ratio of robots to manufacturing facility employees ranks fifth, tied with Japan and Germany and forward of China,” says Takayuki Ito, President of the Worldwide Federation of Robotics. “It is a nice achievement of modernization. Nonetheless, in different key areas of producing automation, the US lags behind its rivals.”
- The majority of commercial robots are imports from abroad, as few robotic producers are producing in the US.
- Globally, 70% of installations are produced by 4 international locations: Japan, China, Germany and South Korea.
- Inside this group, Chinese language producers are probably the most dynamic, with manufacturing for his or her large home market greater than tripling in 5 years (2019-2023).
- This places them in second place after Japan.
- China´s success is predicated on their nationwide robotics technique.
- China‘s manufacturing business put in a complete of about 280,000 items per yr between 2021 and 2023, in comparison with a complete of 34,300 installations in the US in 2024.
In China, robotics and automation are penetrating all ranges of manufacturing. That is evidenced by its excessive robotic density of 470 robots per 10,000 staff in manufacturing – the third highest on this planet, surpassing Germany and Japan in 2023. The USA, then again, ranks solely tenth among the many world’s most automated manufacturing international locations with a robotic density of 295 robots per 10,000 staff. The nation’s automation is closely concentrated within the automotive sector: Round 40% of all new industrial robotic installations in 2024 are in automotive.
Teradyne additionally final week introduced monetary outcomes for the primary quarter of 2025. Based on the corporate, its robotics income was $69 million in Q1 2025, which is down from $98 million in This fall 2024. This additionally marked a 21% drop in gross sales in Q1 yr over yr. In its quarterly report, Teradyne mentioned “robotics continues to face ongoing finish market weak spot however delivering on AI product portfolio (MiR 1200 Pallet Jack, UR AI Accelerator).”
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