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By 2025, half of cloud data centres will deploy advanced robots with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities, resulting in 30% higher operating efficiency, according to Gartner.   

Published in the Journal of Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, a study by engineers from UNSW proposes a freeway network design with exclusive lanes for autonomous vehicles.

Launched officially in January 2021 under the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme, Robotics4EU aims to take concrete steps to ensure a more widespread adoption of (AI-based) robots in the EU, particularly in the areas of Healthcare, Inspection and Maintenance of Infrastructure, Agri-Food, and Agile Production.

The World Robotics 2021 Industrial Robots report shows a record of 3 million industrial robots operating in factories around the world – an increase of 10%. Sales of new robots grew slightly at 0.5% despite the global pandemic, with 384,000 units shipped globally in 2020. This trend was dominated by the positive market developments in China, compensating the contractions of other markets. This is the third most successful year in history for the robotics industry, following 2018 and 2017.

Despite increased focus and investment, 55% of digital government programmes are failing to scale, according to a survey from Gartner. Government CIOs can adopt practices from digitally advanced governments to successfully scale their own programs.

Can intelligence be taught to robots? Advances in physical reservoir computing, a technology that makes sense of brain signals, could contribute to creating artificial intelligence machines that think like us.

Badger Technologies has launched a robot pilot program with Busy Beaver Building Centers, operator of 24 full-line home improvement centers in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. As part of the pilot Badger multipurpose autonomous robots will monitor on-shelf product availability and verify prices for more than 30,000 Stock Keeping Units (SKUs) while freeing highly knowledgeable sales associates to spend more time with customers.

The Dutch government risks exacerbating racial discrimination through the continued use of unregulated algorithms in the public sector, Amnesty International said in a damning new analysis of the country’s childcare benefit scandal.

On October 6-7 the USF convention was held in Lille. With 1,410 unique visitors, 6 conferences, 70 workshops and 95 exhibitors, the 2021 USF convention was sold out, practically at the level of a pre-pandemic edition. Above all, it enabled users and the SAP ecosystem to conduct constructive discussions with the leading European software publisher.

Zebra Technologies introduced three new autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) – FlexShelf, FlexShelf Guide, and RollerTop Guide – and a new FetchCore fulfillment software package for order or batch picking.