United Kingdom

Exoskeletons – wearable devices used by workers on assembly lines or in warehouses to alleviate stress on their lower backs – may compete with valuable resources in the brain while people work, canceling out the physical benefits of wearing them, a new study suggests.

Morgan Medical Center (MMC) has bought two LightStrike Germ-Zapping Robots by Xenex. The robots quickly destroy microscopic pathogens in high-traffic areas, including the emergency department, patient rooms, operating rooms and public restrooms.

Cloud infrastructure services spending increased 36% to US$47.0 billion in Q2 2021, as workload migration and cloud native application development accelerated. According to the latest Canalys data, expenditure was over US$5 billion higher than the previous quarter and over US$12 billion more than Q2 2020.

Researchers from the University of Southern California (USC) Department of Computer Science and NVIDIA have unveiled a new simulator for robotic cutting that can accurately reproduce the forces acting on a knife as it slices through common foodstuffs, such as fruit and vegetables. The system could also simulate cutting through human tissue, offering potential applications in surgical robotics.

Gartner identified the top five business trends that will impact the global manufacturing sector in 2021. These trends will drive business disruption and widen opportunities for manufacturers. Gartner predicts that by 2025, the top 50 consumer goods manufacturers will have invested in a brand app using AI, embedded technology in the product, videos as a digital asset and/or integrated innovation with IT and R&D teams.

inVia Robotics, provider of warehouse automation robots, has secured a $30 million Series C funding round from M12, Microsoft’s venture fund, and Qualcomm Ventures LLC. The two firms are also joined by Hitachi Ventures (the strategic corporate venture arm of Hitachi, Ltd.) and inVia Robotics’ existing investors (Point 72, Upfront, and Embark). To date, inVia has raised $59 million from strategic funders committed to the company’s growth.

Analytics Insight has announced ‘Top Robotics Companies at the Forefront of Innovation in 2021’. They describe ten robotics companies leveraging disruptive technologies to transform different industries from healthcare and manufacturing to defence and education. According to the researchers these companies have evolved beyond their boundaries and showed significant growth through their efforts in R&D, new initiatives, product launches thereby playing a key role to channelize global industries.

The CFO Automation Experience is an independent Round Table, where CFOs and practitioners freely discuss automation. Recently a new edition was organized by founder Armand Angeli, in which the benefits and challenges of robotization in the finance function were the main topic. “The RPA journey of the company is the RPA journey of the individual employees as well.”

A major US airport authority that owns and operates several airports will be deploying the ROSA180 (Responsive Observation Security Agent) by Robotic Assistance Devices (RAD), a subsidiary of Artificial Intelligence Technology Solutions. The name of the client is not disclosed by RAD.

By 2025, cyber attackers will have weaponised operational technology (OT) environments to successfully harm or kill humans, according to Gartner.  Attacks on OT – hardware and software that monitors or controls equipment, assets and processes – have become more common. They have also evolved from immediate process disruption such as shutting down a plant, to compromising the integrity of industrial environments with intent to create physical harm. Other recent events like the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack have highlighted the need to have properly segmented networks for IT and OT.