Robots and drones: how everything is changing

The world of robotics is being fundamentally transformed along three primary axes: increased collaboration, increased autonomous mobility and increased intelligence. This change will shape the future of automation and thus robotics and drones.

In this webinar we will explain how the world of robotics and drones is changing, showing that our market forecasts demonstrate that old robotics/drones will dominate the market in the short term but it will be new robotics/drones that will experience phenomenal growth in the long term and come to represent the majority of the market .

We will then cover the following themes:

• Why now? To answer this question we will consider major long-term developments in performance and cost of key constituent components for emerging robots and drones such as sensors, memory, computing, electronic motors; whilst reviewing key innovations and progress on the software side particularly focusing on some achievements of deep learning.

• Autonomous mobile robots (AMRs): We will show that autonomous mobility is much more diverse than just cars for general driving. We will briefly consider AMRs in cleaning, security, retail, hospital, and other applications. We will then offer insights on the potential future business trends (e.g., commoditization and modularization of hardware/software and shift to RaaS)

• AMRs in agriculture: We will look at robots and drones in agriculture. We will focus on the diversity of forms and functions, discussing intelligent robotic implements, fresh fruit picking, and robots in dairy farming. We will then focus on the progress in autonomous tractors whilst exploring the long-term implication of autonomous mobility: the rise of fleets of small slow agrobots.

• AMRs in logistics and last mile delivery: We will consider the progression of navigational technology from human operation to automated and to autonomous mobility. We will assess the status and potential of AMRs and autonomous forklifts whilst also discussing the progress in grid-based AGCs serving e-commerce warehouses. We will also show how fleets of AMRs can transform the last mile delivery step.