Robotics

Miso Robotics

Innovation

A new version of the robotic fry cook looks like the odds on favorite to automate fast food production. Miso Robotics, the creator of Flippy, the automated fry cook that hangs from a rail system over a conventional griddle, just announced a new version of its flagship robot, dubbed Flippy 2.With a pressing labor shortage and booming drive-thru and carryout demand over nearly two years of pandemic-induced recalibration, fast food has increasingly turned to technology to increase efficiencies and improve consistency and output. McDonald’s has been a leader in this arena, and just this week announced it was teaming up with IBM to create an automated drive-thru concept. Miso Robotics, an unusual success story in the crowd-funded technology space, is positioning itself as the go-to provider for automated cooking. The concept makes a lot of sense: fast food is built on repeatable, high-output cooking processes that increasingly rely on complex order management and prediction capabilities to reduce wait times and spoilage. Labor markets have been unpredictable over the past couple of years, and many fast food companies feel incentivized to look for a technological solution when faced with increasing minimum wages.The evolution of Flippy, the robotic fry cook, designed to automate fast food production, has been fun to watch. First, the robot, which looks decidedly like something out of The Jetsons, did a handstand, going from the floor to an overhead rail system in response to space constraints in the kitchen. There were key updates to its AI and an expanding menu of foods it could prepare to crispy perfection. Along the way, the robot got high marks behind the grill at some iconic chains, like White Castle, the original burger chain. Just recently, Miso Robotics, Flippy’s creators, spun out a chicken wings-specific model to service partners like Buffalo Wild Wings.Flippy 2 includes improvements that largely came from the company’s feedback from White Castle, with which Miso Robotics has been partnering for about a year.”We learned so much from Flippy and our partnership with Miso Robotics. It’s amazing to see the future of how we provide even better service and even more hot and tasty food to our craving customers happening right before us in real-time,” says Jamie Richardson, Vice President at White Castle. One improvement is the new AutoBin system for lower volume and speciality foods like onion rings or chicken tenders, providing restaurants with a more capable and complete frying solution. Each bin can hold as much as a full fry basket, be customized for a kitchen’s specific needs, and be delineated for individual products like vegetables and fish to prevent cross-contamination.

Flippy 2 also features a new design that takes up less space within the kitchen, which the company says accounts for 56% reduced aisle intrusion, 13% height reduction and fewer overall cleanable surfaces.”Like all technologies, Flippy 2 has evolved significantly from its predecessor, and we are extremely grateful for the insights collected from White Castle to truly push its development forward in a real restaurant environment,” says Mike Bell, CEO of Miso Robotics. “Flippy 2 takes up less space in the kitchen and increases production exponentially with its new basket filling, emptying and returning capabilities. Since Flippy’s inception, our goal has always been to provide a customizable solution that can function harmoniously with any kitchen and without disruption. Flippy 2 has more than 120 configurations built into its technology and is the only robotic fry station currently being produced at scale.”     Miso Robotics has several other pilot agreements with leading national brands in place, including its recently announced partnership with Inspire Brands. The company is hoping its technology will lead the way in a technology shift already happening in the $278.6 billion market. More

UBTech

Artificial Intelligence

Robots had a big year. Amid uncertainties related to the pandemic, chronic labor shortages, supply chain catastrophes, and renewed emphasis on touchless and autonomous service, the adoption of robotic systems has steadily increased.Supply chains are rapidly digitizing amid Industry 4.0 transitions. Competition and collaboration among rivals, particularly in the industrial robotics space, drives innovation and lowers the adoption threshold for automation solutions. Robots are also entering new markets, including food and beverage, textiles, wood products and plastics. Companies like Sarcos are transforming construction and infrastructure, bringing new efficiencies to old sectors, and the logistics space, which increasingly relies on autonomous picking and sorting solutions and mobile ground robots, is seeing explosive growth as habits shift further toward e-commerce.”As we come out of a global pandemic and continue to experience more issues with global supply chains and labor shortages like we see now,” John Rhee, SVP and General Manager of UBTECH North America, tells me, “the adoption of robotics will grow at a rate faster than previously forecasted.”I connected with Rhee, whose company makes robots for a variety of uses, including disinfection and education, to get his insights on how the past year shaped the automation sector, as well as what’s in store in the year ahead.
ABB
Robotics in manufacturingWhat were the most important milestones for robotics in manufacturing in 2021?John Rhee: For UBTECH, we were able to utilize our company’s strengths in both robotics as well as vertically integrated manufacturing in order to create solutions for the global pandemic in 2021. We recognized the ongoing pain points in 2020 with the pandemic by developing robots that performed tasks like surface cleaning and temperature monitoring in high-risk environments. That allowed us to identify a bigger need and move into robotics using UV-C light to provide a more cost-effective and less toxic method to sanitize autonomously. UBTECH was able to create a disinfection solution that is one of the highest intensity mobile options in the market today AND for the lowest cost on the market. Based on the current and future needs we were seeing and experiencing in the global market, we looked to leverage UV-C technology that hospitals and government municipalities have been using for decades. In creating the ADIBOT disinfection system, our goal was to provide this option to a wider group of organizations like school districts and businesses to help in their efforts to keep children and staff protected against COVID-19 c.diff, MRSA and more.Object manipulation

How has object manipulation advanced over the past couple of years? What role will AI play, and what will robots be able to do soon that they can’t do now?John Rhee: With our Walker product, we’ve been able to show over the past few years how object manipulation has gotten more advanced within robotics. Our first iterations of Walker from 2018 could kick a soccer ball, and now in 2021, our Walker X can hold groceries, carry objects, write, and play interactive games with different members of the household. The Walker X humanoid robot is the latest in these types of advancements that includes progress to actions like hand-eye coordination, multi-terrain manipulation, and the addition of multimodal emotional interaction. Additionally, we continue to develop bin picking technologies for various use cases across our robotics portfolio. All these advancements are driven by AI with more intelligent uses of computer vision and sensor systems. Robots will be more versatile and precise in both the work and home space, being able to perform more solid functions than in the past.
UBTech
Robots in the classroomA lot of parents might back at the idea of using AI in the classroom. Can you discuss the benefits and possible applications, as well as some things we should watch out for? John Rhee: AI is likely already in the classroom in some way, shape, or form for a lot of children today. An Alexa ask for gaming simulations or complex LMS systems that the teacher uses to manage the classroom and measure performance. We believe that students understanding what AI is and how it can be used to solve real-world problems is more critical than what a basic computer lab curriculum was for students in the 1980’s. In our education division, UBTECH Education, we want to ensure children are taught a full understanding around Artificial Intelligence that includes not only learning how to build robots while incorporating programming with AI but also how AI can be used in the real world in all circumstances. As a part of our core belief to prepare students for the jobs of tomorrow, our curriculum and products are in line with also equipping them with all the angles for the job at hand.  More

Augury
Augury, an industrial AI + IoT company—with customers such as Colgate, Hershey’s and Pepsi – has raised $180M in Series E funding. The round, led by Baker Hughes, launches the company to unicorn status and makes it an important bellwether for Industry 4.0 transitions.The deal comes amidst a pandemic-driven disruption in manufacturing and supply chains, which VCs have taken keen notice of. Something on the order of $45.1B has been raised by industrial start-ups so far this year, compared with the $34B raised in all of 2020, according to PitchBook. Augury’s wireless sensors and cloud platform monitors the “vitals” (like temperature and vibration) of critical industrial equipment. AI is used to compare them to a database of over 80K+ machine sounds so that faults can be detected before they cause downtime. It does this at an accuracy rate of over 99%. This is especially important as automation and robotics become driving forces of global manufacturing and distribution.”We’ve spent the last decade building towards a future where we can always rely on the machines that matter, in the sectors that matter,” said Saar Yoskovitz, co-founder and CEO of Augury. “Today marks a significant step into that future since our industry’s leading organizations have recognized the importance of Machine Health to them and their customers, and trust Augury to be their Machine Health partner. I’m thrilled by the opportunity this funding, coupled with the market access our new investors provide, gives us to further fuel Augury’s exponential growth and bring the impact of Machine Health to new markets.” In many ways the technology specializes in increasing efficiency by decreasing the costs associated with downtime and catastrophic equipment failure. Examples abound, but three touted by Augury include one in which Colgate-Palmolive saved 2.8 million tubes of toothpaste by avoiding a single machine failure; another in which ICL saved a million dollars in downtime and production loss costs at a single facility in less than 10 months; and one in which PepsiCo has rolled out the tech on all North American Frito Lay plants after Augury saved them 1M+ pounds of snacks.Baker Hughes and SE Ventures are investing in Augury at a time of astonishing disruption for the supply chains. Global manufacturing is dealing with unprecedented uncertainty, and in that environment Augury’s pitch of shoring up owned infrastructure is landing on friendly ears.According to the company, proceeds will contribute to Augury’s over $200 million war chest as it expands globally in sectors like energy while strengthening its core manufacturing customer base. More

Badger Technologies
Shelf-scanning robots, a technology that debuted in major grocery chains, are now venturing out of the dairy aisle and into home improvement. Automation developer Badger Technologies recently announced it’s bringing its scanning robots to Busy Beaver Building Centers, popular in the midwest, to monitor on-shelf product availability and verify prices for more than 30,000 SKUs.”Badger Technologies’ retail automation solutions close important data gaps that prevent retailers from getting an accurate picture of shelf conditions, buying trends and customer preferences,” says William (BJ) Santiago, CEO of Badger Technologies. “We complete storewide scans in hours, not days, and offer instant access to intelligent data to elevate shopping experiences and store profitability.”This is an important milestone for a technology that’s primarily been marketed for grocery retailers but that developers hope will spread to brick-and-mortar retailers of various kinds. The technology class received a bit of a PR backslide when Walmart killed a large contract with another player in the space, Bossa Nova.The Walmart contract notwithstanding, shelf-scanning technology has emerged as a crucial way for brick-and-mortar to adopt some of the efficiencies of ecommerce, reducing waste and extracting valuable insights about product performance. A number of developers in addition to Badger Technologies have commercialized shelf-scanning robots, which are typically automated ground robots that navigate retail spaces autonomously (although one company has created a shelf-scanning UAV).The data that these robots collect while roving aisles at retail locations, combined with powerful analysis, is meant to increase efficiency by solving for the $1.75 trillion “ghost economy,” defined by out of stocks, inaccurate price execution, and lack of product location optimization industry-wide. With up-to-date inventory information, managers using robots like Simbe’s flagship Tally robot can enact faster operational decisions at the store level and more nimble inventory management. The problem of poor stock management is so pervasive that inventory mishaps account for more lost revenue than theft. Brick and mortar retailers and especially large chains are doing all they can to shortcut the traditional inefficiencies of operating a storefront. Granular data models of how inventory moves through a store are considered a holy grail in that quest, bringing e-commerce analytics to traditional retail. Retailers, including smaller regional chains, are responding.”Technology is a key imperative in our mission to be the favorite neighborhood home improvement center in the communities we serve,” says Adam Gunnett, director of IT for Busy Beaver Building Centers. “We relentlessly look for innovative ways to increase efficiencies and empower our associates to provide legendary customer service, which is why the pilot with Badger Technologies is so exciting. We expect to demonstrate how Busy Beaver can keep our shelves fully stocked with the right mix of products—at the right prices—without overburdening our dedicated team members.”

Like many stories about the intersection of technology and retail, this one has a pandemic bent. Home improvement and DIY have boomed as consumers spend more time at home. According to the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, spending on home improvements grew by more than 3% last year to reach nearly $420 billion, despite the fact that the U.S. economy shrank 3.5% during that same period. Busy Beaver is smart to use the good times to invest in technology that could save it money in the long run. More

Skyline
Window cleaners are a common sight in New York City, where they work high above the sidewalk dexterously cleaning skyscraper windows. It’s a transfixing sight, and it’s also an incredibly dangerous job. It’s also one that may soon fall to robots. That’s thanks to a new agreement between the developers of a window washing robot named Ozmo and Platinum, a building maintenance service provider in New York.  Human window washers are transfixing to watch in action, but the work is incredibly dangerous. During one 15 year period, OSHA tracked 88 window washing accidents, a full 62 of which resulted in fatalities. That grim statistic highlights the thin margin of error when working sometimes hundreds of feet above the ground.Automation can address the safety concerns and lead to greater efficiency in a task that hasn’t had a substantial technological update in decades. The use case makes a lot of sense: managers of every commerce building in major U.S. cities need some way to clean their building’s exterior glass. In fact, window cleaning is $40B global market. The surfaces involved are generally uniform and the path predictable. It’s a perfect recipe for successful robotics development with a proven customer base.

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“Facade maintenance is integral to the health and spirit of a building,” says Michael Brown, CEO & chairman, Skyline Robotics, maker of Ozmo. “Automation is poised to play a key role in the future of façade access work as it will both increase efficiency and reduce risk, and this is just the beginning.”The system combines artificial intelligence, machine learning, and computer vision with a robotic arm designed by KUKA, a leader in industrial robots. Ozmo uses a force sensor and knows how fragile glass is, and AI helps the system remain stable, even in gusty conditions. The system utilizes lidar to scan a building’s facade, memorizing surfaces and planning a cleaning path, which it continually updates.”The application puts several of the latest advancements in robotics to work in a new and exciting business sector and brings efficiency and safety to building maintenance,” says John Bubnikovich, North America chief regional officer for KUKA Robotics. “Advancements that made such a daunting task possible include on-the-fly control of the KUKA robots in terms of pressure applied during the cleaning process as well as the ability to compensate for a moving scaffolding due to weather and changing architectural building features.”

Platinum will add Ozmo operations to its existing window cleaning division, Palladium Window Solutions. Skyline Robotics, which recently secured $6M in funding, will train the Platinum staff and certify them as Ozmo operators. The Platinum staff will then run the operations of the Ozmo system.”Platinum’s commitment to driving innovation and adopting new technology is paramount to our market-leading success,” said James Halpin, CEO, Platinum. “Thus Skyline, whose DNA is based on innovation, is an ideal partner as its cutting-edge technology will help us further increase our market share and remain one step ahead of the competition.” More

A key part of realizing the future of commercial drones will be drone traffic management: An integrated way to manage airspace for UAV. That’s the goal of a recent trial in Japan led by NEDO (National Institute of New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization) to develop a drone traffic management system for multiple drone operators to fly in the same airspace safely.The trial, closely watched in the industry, brings together several prominent companies and consortiums, including ANRA Technologies, BIRD INITIATIVE, NEC Corporation, All Nippon Airways (ANA), and other partners. It will take place above Wakkanai City in Japan using ANRA’s airspace and delivery management software platforms. The testbed is part of an ongoing R&D effort led by NEDO with the aim of integrating drone traffic management and creating a blueprint for a nationwide traffic management system. Future use cases include drone-based logistics, disaster response, and inspection.In the U.S., non-military drones are not integrated into a nationwide air traffic management system except under voluntary programs. Currently, the technology used to keep track of commercial and military aircraft does not account for drone traffic. However, as in Japan, efforts to evolve the national airspace management ecosystem are underway. For example, a company called AirMap has been aggressively lobbying for a comprehensive drone aerial management service. Its technology ID’s individual drones, enabling tracking and paving the way for the kind of nationwide net used to monitor commercial and military aircraft. Raytheon, which makes the technology that powers the existing traffic management system for crewed aircraft in the U.S., and AirMap are hoping to develop solutions to provide a complete, real-time view of manned and unmanned flights in U.S. airspace, helping allay rising fears that increasing drone traffic is putting the national air transportation network at grave risk. There have already been a handful of verified aircraft collisions with drones, and several more near-misses, raising awareness of the growing problem.In Japan, ANRA’s decentralized traffic management platform will help to coordinate and negotiate the airspace used between operators to avoid collisions between drones. The project utilizes automatic negotiation AI technology, which is being researched and developed with RIKEN and Industrial Technology Research Institute, and digital twin technology, which is being researched with the National Institute of Informatics.One of the test cases will be pharmaceutical delivery via drone. The results of the test will be shared over the next few months. More

University of Zurich
Expert human drone pilots have proven incredibly adept at piloting UAV through complex courses at high speeds which are still unmatched by autonomous systems. But researchers at the University of Zurich and Intel Labs are collaborating to change that, and their work, recently presented in the journal Science Robotics, could have far-reaching implications for the future of commercial drones.”Autonomous navigation in environments where conditions are constantly changing is restricted to very low speeds,” explains Matthias Müller, Lead of Embodied AI Lab at Intel Labs. “This makes drones unable to operate efficiently in real-world situations where something unexpected may block their path and time matters.”That’s obviously a big impediment to safely rolling out drones for commercial use. The solution seems to be harnessing the decision-making abilities of expert pilots to train drones to function autonomously.”In partnership with the University of Zurich, we were able to show how a drone trained exclusively in simulation by imitating an expert pilot is able to perform in challenging real-world scenarios and environments that weren’t used during the training of the convolutional network,” says Müller. “The trained autonomous drone was able to fly through previously unseen environments, such as forests, buildings and trains, keeping speeds up to 40 km/h, without crashing into trees, walls or any other obstacles – all while relying only on its onboard cameras and computation.”The results were achieved by having the drone’s neural network learn from a simulated expert pilot that flew a virtual drone through a simulated environment full of complex obstacles. The expert had access to the full 3D environment while the drone’s neural network only had access to the camera observations with realistic sensor noise and imperfect state estimation. That input imbalance (what researchers call a “privileged expert”) forced the drone to learn to act with exceptional dexterity in less than ideal conditions. The quadrotor demonstrated a decrease in the latency between perception and action while simultaneously demonstrating resiliency in the face of perception artifacts, such as motion blur, missing data, and sensor noise.

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“Existing systems use sensor data to create a map of the environment and then plan trajectories within the map – these steps require time and errors compound, making it impossible for the drones to fly at high speeds,” says Müller. “Unlike current systems, future drones could learn navigation end-to-end in a simulated environment before going out into the real-world. This research shows significant promise in deploying these new systems in a wide array of scenarios including disaster relief, construction sites, search and rescue, agriculture and logistics, and more.”

One of the benefits of this system is its applicability to a wide variety of real-world environments. The approach demonstrated in the research involved experiments that tested in a set of human-made environments (e.g. simulated disaster zone and urban city streets) and also diverse natural environments (forests of different types and densities and steep snowy mountain terrains). Future application areas for the technology could be disaster relief scenarios, construction sites, search and rescue, agriculture and logistics, and delivery. More

Matt Rutherford was just a few days into his planned unaided, non-stop solo-sailing trip around North and South America when he realized he’d left all his extra pants on the dock. The days of preparation before setting off had been frantic and a few things got left behind. This was a problem. He was facing 309 days at sea with little human contact and his small 27-foot sailboat, which he got for free and outfitted himself, was designed for bay sailing and not the notoriously unrelenting weather and towering seas of Cape Horn or the perilous ice of the Northwest Passage. To cap it off, he had just spilled diesel fuel all over himself, the result of a leaking fuel bladder, and he really wanted a change of clothes. Most people would have turned back. Rutherford, whose blue collar background and gruff presentation put him at odds with the Instagram sailing culture that’s proliferated among a new generation of seafarers, grumbled something under his breath, checked his course, and pressed ahead on a trip that would secure his place in the record book.That 2011 trip, during which Rutherford gained enormous respect for polar regions and for the surprising utility of small sailboats, would catalyze a mission that may seem odd in a digital world: To use sail power for science, and in so doing to prove that sailboats, one of the original technologies that helped humanity expand its horizons, are ideal platforms for next generation data collection in the world’s oceans.When I did the trip around Americas, the ocean became my home. I was no longer visiting the ocean, I was living at Sea. When I got back I wanted to do something that gives back, something that allows me to grow and utilize my skills as a sailor. I wanted something that I could work on for the rest of my life.Rutherford, a one-time drug dealer (he’s open about that fact in interviews) who watched his childhood friends get locked up or killed one by one before deciding life had different plans for him, does not have a science background, but on his adventure around the Americas he came face to face with the front lines of climate change. “Ground zero for the observations of climate change are in the polar regions,” he says. “That’s where you see the glaciers retreating and the ice melting.” Combined with frequent run-ins with garbage, it was an eye-opening experience.He also confronted a reality that has stymied scientists for generations: These places are phenomenally difficult to traverse, particularly via boat. “You know, it’s uncharted, you don’t know where the rocks are and there are rocks all over the place, compasses don’t work, the weather forecasts are garbage, there’s ice, there’s fog, there’s polar bears that will eat your head. So it’s a really unique challenge.”Those factors contribute to the astronomical price tag of doing science at sea in remote regions. The average cost of a scientific research vessel is estimated at $25,000 per day. In the arctic, that price tag can double, easily reaching or exceeding $50,000 per day. Almost without exception scientific expeditions are done on power vessels, and fuel accounts for a substantial portion of the total costs. It also limits the effective range and duration of expeditions, which must be able to safely return to shore to refuel with relative consistency. That significantly limits the kinds of data collection scientists are able to do at sea.  In 2013, Rutherford teamed up with scientist Nicole Trenholm to found Ocean Research Project, a 501(c)3 dedicated to scientific exploration under sail. We are forging a new path of discovery by combining modern technology with age-old efficiency to create lower cost research expeditions that provide an effective alternative to the more costly, big science paradigm. ORP’s research objectives are born from close collaboration with scientists focusing on the most important issues.

Sail power is having something of a renaissance. Mounting pressure to reduce carbon emissions in shipping have led to renewed interest in wind-assisted ships. Fixed-sail propulsion designs have been proposed for a variety of large ship applications. Autonomous data collection platforms, including underwater gliding drones and sail drones, are making their way into the modern naturalist’s toolkit. One problem with these drones, interestingly, is that though they’re small and easy to launch, it’s expensive for scientists to mount expeditions for launch and recovery, events that can be weeks apart.Ocean Research Project (ORP) is born from the same spirit. The organization designs unique expeditions that enable small, core teams of researchers to gather critical information from remote, sensitive areas worldwide. During an early expedition in 2013, Rutherford and Trennholm spent 70 days in the Atlantic to survey the eastern side of the North Atlantic Garbage Patch, which at that time was unmapped. “One of the reasons it hadn’t been mapped, and why we were out there so long, is you have to sail all the way to basically the Azores before you can even start,” says Rutherford. As any recreational sailor knows, that kind of long range expedition is perfectly suited to a sailboat, which moves slowly but inexpensively and can sustain a small crew essentially indefinitely with the right kind of equipment and food supplies.Ocean Research Project is decidedly a bootstrapped affair, in accordance with the lifestyle that has taken Rutherford around the world. It is grant and donation funded and has relied on boats that are begged, borrowed, or bartered. These are often small boats originally designed for short hops in protected waters. Rutherford and Trenholm strip them down and remake them into purpose-built research sailboats. In January 2019, Rutherford was taping an episode of his podcast, Single-handed Sailing, which is a stream-of-consciousness affair that has a cult following among a certain kind go-it-alone sailor, when he began describing his ideal boat for ORP expeditions. After the show he got an email from a listener who knew of someone with a 65-foot steel sailboat, exactly the kind Rutherford had described. The boat was a home-build project and Rutherford was understandably wary, but when he got there he was delighted. The boat had masts installed and seemed 70% of the way there. ORP has been outfitting and rebuilding it ever since — an arduous process funded by word-of-mouth donors and support of Rutherford’s podcast.”We need to have the boat in the water early April and then we got to leave for Greenland probably by mid-may and we have about a half million dollars of scientific equipment this time.”That includes a multi-beam sonar for mapping the ocean floor in accordance with the UN Seabed 2030 Project, as well as equipment to measure glacial sediment and resulting nutrient blooms in arctic waters. ORP will also be ground truthing satellites for NASA, conducting microplastics research, and doing a variety of water sampling.The estimated daily cost of the expedition will be $3000 per 24 hours, a small fraction of a traditional research vessel.Interestingly, Rutherford sees a blending of the newest and oldest technologies as an ideal approach to data collection. Aerial, aquatic, and submersible drones, for example, are a perfect use case for his organization’s sail expeditions.”Fully autonomous data collecting robots are going to play a large role in the future of ocean research and they’re already playing a bigger bigger role every single year. These Technologies are not massive and are perfectly supported on, say, a 65-foot boat at a fraction of the cost. And really that’s where you show the true capability of the sailboat being a professional data collection platform. It’s slower in important ways for probes and mapping the seafloor, it’s much more cost-efficient, and it’s the integration of these these new technologies that are really going to take off as time goes on.”Visit the Ocean Research Project website for information on how you can support the organization’s work. More