Robotic Research with Berlin Robotics
2018 in numbers and things we learned
In August, we launched Berlin-Robotics, with access to Jobs, News, as well as Podcasts. We are planning to add one more chapter which will discuss opportunities within areas of the robotics spectrum. And we may need your help :)
We managed to publish four podcasts and started with our first Meetup session. As of today we had 261 plays on Soundcloud and 126 community members on MeetUp.
Come and join our mailing-list! We are trying to send updates quite frequently.
A name such as Berlin-Robotics implies (kind of forces us) to stay within those boundaries. We believe it is necessary to look further in order to paint a better picture and that is what we want to foster by publishing our findings about the industry we care so much about.
In this context, we have to look back and learn from historic moments in time. We are starting to notice certain pattern which created our today’s industry.
What we learned in 2018
Those are loose paragraphs and should not be considered “market-research”. All that this represented is an executive summary about things we read or learned throughout conversations. The order of paragraphs is by no means an indication of anything.
A) The robotics market has witnessed significant growth and adoption in recent years and the industry is currently undergoing intensive investments in startups focusing on areas, such as manufacturing, healthcare, and retail applications.
B) Ecommerce is drastically changing the intra logistics of companies, due to customer expectations such as fast delivery. This does not include the attempts to fully customise manufacturing processes where customer’s are heavily involved with their product.
C) Convergence of Cloud technology and Artificial Intelligence is further likely to drive adoption for Robot as a Service applications. Even-though leading organisations across sectors are likely to adopt robots in their daily operations, adoption is still in its infancy when in comes to robust scaleability of hardware and software components.
D) Telecom service providers can empower the robots with large bandwidth, high reliability, and low latency in order to meet the demands of cloud robots. Telecom operators can further expand their offerings through network function virtualisation and software defined architecture to provide security services for robotic data and control in the big data center environment.
However, there are still points of discussion that aren’t unclear to most of us. Sorry, the entry below is in German only. Let me know in the comments if you can find one in english.
E) Fifth generation (5G) wireless technologies will empower various industries with the necessary communications and bandwidth required for the next wave of the robotics evolution. 5G networks will enable key aspects of industry automation by increasing overall manufacturing and operational productivity within the next three years.
F) China is aggressively investing in AI, NLP, mixed reality, 5G and may have actually surpassed the US in 2018 in terms of spending on AI technologies for manufacturing purposes. This makes China the preferred destination for innovation as well as investment.
G) In order to maintain efficient functioning of robots, the system components like controllers, sensors, digital integrated circuits, batteries, and software need to be upgraded periodically. And by comparison to topics in AI, this sector seems to be unsexy due to a lack in information on that topic.
Come and join as at our Meetups in Berlin!
H) The robotic industry is facing the same challenges that the computer industry has been dealing with for years. Connected systems of systems contain distributed control systems to enhance productivity but are in danger to be destroyed by hackers completely which will lead to tremendous losses.
I) VR/AR can enhance robots with additional virtual capabilities or can enable robots to interact with humans without sharing physical space. It can be useful in robotics for a flexible testing platform and development of control algorithms.
J) Robotic User Interfaces are crucial for human behaviour interaction. The combination of Robotic User Interfaces will enhance the robotic motion of robots through virtual kinematics. A combination will enable adding or changing virtual features as well as visual information of the controlled robot in the physical space.
K) Edge computing introduces a shift to acquiring, storing, and processing data. Edge computing technology places the control functions closer to the source of the data. This allows data processing and decision making closer to the source. Recent advancements offer almost all the major computing resources such as infrastructure, storage, platforms and so on to be used as services, collectively known as XaaS (anything-as-a-service).
Testing and sourcing of algorithms will become ubiquitous duo to the vast landscape of platforms such as the Roboter Operating System.
L) Systems powered by cloud computing will store the daily production plan in the cloud. Once the production plans/instructions are stored in the cloud and linked with the system, it will start working on the production based on the information available in the cloud. This way certain aspects in the cloud will support production plan optimisations as well as to mitigate any lag or delay in production.
Come and join our mailing-list! We are trying to send updates quite frequently.
Things up for discussion
Addressing industry challenges using intelligent robots is of critical importance. For example, collaborating open source systems and intelligent robots will orchestrate the entire production process and this will lead to embrace of industry 4.0. How are those systems architected so they are easy and manageable? Who is in charge of managing the network? Where are the bottlenecks in terms of computational power in combination with low-cost systems?
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