A trawl through Google reveals many messages warning us that robots are set to wipe out the human race. Eric Shepherd explains what's here, what's coming, and the benefits for us.
It seems we are both suspicious and scared of what we imagine they may become. Never mind the contributions of robotics already. Their abilities to diffuse bombs. Or the robot’s use in farming to increase crop yields. Or even their use in pharmacies improving on the accuracy of medical prescriptions. It’s therefore probably time to redress the balance and take a more realistic vision of what robotics can accomplish. Especially now that robots have landed in the workplace.
Over the next few years, robots will expand their skill sets, revealing impressive performance and retention rates, and moving up the ladder. More than just machines, working diligently to manufacture devices, vehicles, and machines, now robots come in all shapes and sizes. Here is a sample of robot types that we'll be discussing here:
Collaborative Industrial Robots (Cobots) that work alongside humans
Warehouse robots operate autonomously to pick and pack goods for shipment
In-store robots to provide information and a seamless checkout experience
Chatbots are systems that can engage in text or verbal conversations
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) that provides
Industrial robots that work autonomously to manufacture goods
Let's take a real look at how these robots are being deployed.
Collaborative Industrial Bots (Cobots)
Cobots are the latest model of robotic technologies that work alongside humans. The concept of collaboration is operating with people to create something. Tradition robots worked autonomously and in isolation relieving any safety concerns. Cobots collaborate with employees rather than as a substitute for them.
Cobots are industrial robots according to the definition of The Industry Federation of Robotics. Although cobots may be the future workforce, they only represent a small part of the annual revenue of industrial robots every year. The number of deployed units is still minimal, with only 3.24% share. In 2018, total industrial robots installed were 42,000, and out of them only 14, 000 were cobots, and in 2017, only 11,100 cobots were installed.
Warehouse Bots
Many machines can now move around the warehouse autonomously. In 2016, the warehouse robotics industry was estimated at 6 billion in value by 2022.
Amazon contracted $775 million for the Kiva Systems in 2012, and after 6 years, 45,000 Kiva robots were installed at the fulfillment centers. During the Christmas season, these robots processed 306 items per second.
Now several other stores are using these robots. Clothing Company Gap is using Kindred robots for processing, packing, and shipping products.
The main task is to make these robots available to other companies. The warehouse robots are inexpensive, easy to install, and will help the smaller companies to expand their business.
Delivery Bots
We will be seeing autonomous robots on the roads delivering packages in the upcoming years. Some organizations have been using them for home deliveries, but they are not yet in widespread use.
Domino's Pizza has introduced its Robotic unit. It is the very first robot for home delivery and looks like a combination of R2-D2 and the overweight oven. Four-wheeled, 3-ft high robots have been launched in 10 countries, including Germany, France, and New Zealand. Domino's Robotic Unit (DRU) uses several sensors for navigation and temperature maintenance. It maintains the temperature for both cold and hot food efficiently.
Starship Technologies have already a home delivery robot, and the company has confirmed its program to deploy thousands of its six-wheeled delivery robots. The robot contains GPS and a camera, but the upcoming models will have also have speakers, microphones, and they will be able to communicate with clients. Starship has already delivered 50,000 robots in 100 countries.
American company Kroger has been using the self-driving car to carry the cargo in Huston. A famous engineer of Google Jiajun Zhu, who founded Nuro, has developed this delivery robot. It can carry 12 bags of groceries. The new version of this delivery robot will carry 20 bags of groceries.
Amazon tested its Prime Air delivery drones secretly in 2016 and announced to build the drones, which can fly up to 15 miles, and it can deliver the packages in just 30 minutes. Soon after that, 7-Eleven, Walmart, Alibaba, and Google have also started working on delivery drones.
The Head of the Federal Aviation Authority's drone integration department has said that they are working on drone deliveries and very soon will start the operations soon.
In-Store Bots
Apart from home delivery and warehousing, other robotic opportunities integrate artificial intelligence to enhance the efficiency of a company and improve customer experience. In-store robots have been there for those who prefer shopping personally.
Softbank Company introduced a robot to interact with the human's tools and understand the emotions in 2010 and sold more than 12,000 to date. This robot is named Pepper, and it looks like the human body. This humanoid robot is 4 feet tall with a white plastic body and two black eyes.
There's a touch screen across its chest, which helps in communication. Pepper is a cute and polite humanoid meant to be a companion at the house and assist clients in stores. It gesticulates, speaks, and always seems committed to making everyone smile.
Pepper welcomes the visitors at Pizza Hut in Singapore and offers ice-cream in Japan. Pepper is the first intelligent machine that is making our lives easier and creating a fantastic new form of communication.
Walmart has also been using in-store robots for inventory management. Electronics retailer Best Buy also uses robots as a cashier. Lowe's Home improvement has been using a robot that monitors the stock and helps the clients to find the products they need.
Chatbots
A chatbot is a system that can engage in text or verbal conversations. Chatbots are designed to provide help and a convincing simulation of a conversation with a human. This type of robot is used for customer service or information services. Early chatbots were based on rules that matched keywords with potential responses and could only engage in very narrowly defined conversations. Chatbots now use natural language processing to understand the meaning, sentiment, and context of questions that provide more useful responses.
Chatbots are used for conversational commerce, education, entertainment, finance, health, news, and productivity. And chatbots are now more human in their conversations, albeit limited within a narrow domain. Examples of sophisticated chatbots are Google Assistant, Amazon's Alexa, and Apple's Siri, which are acting as virtual assistants.
The more chatbots are used, the more data that they collect. By connecting the success of the interaction and subsequent interactions, chatbots can learn and improve their communication styles. Just as a child learn, these narrowly focused systems will learn and improve the service that they provide.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
RPA is a form of business process automation that uses software bots that are programmed to complete repetitive tasks that might have been previously completed by humans. RPA uses APIs to source data from and push data to different systems. RPA is being enhanced with natural language processing (NLP) and AI for such things as facial/voice recognition.
RPA can be used to automate repetitive tasks such as completing expense forms, processing invoices received by email, producing proposals, etc. Data for these documents might exist in different systems, and some information might need to be harvested from a user. With these various inputs, RPA can quickly deliver a complete product in seconds rather than days or weeks.
Although RPA is used in all industries, banking, insurance, and utilities are the largest adopters. RPA works well for organizations with numerous legacy systems, whereas newer organizations tend to product suites that are already integrated.
RPA software revenue grew 63.1% in 2018 to $846 million and is forecasted to reach $1.3 Billion in 2019 making it the fastest-growing segment of the global enterprise software market
Industrial Bots
There's been a massive increase in the sales of industrial robots. According to the new World Robotics Report, yearly world sales were 16.5 billion USD in 2018. The Industry Federation of Robotics predicts deliveries in 2019 will drop from the record level in 2018, but they have predicted an annual average increase of 12% from 2020 to 2022. In 2018, 422,000 units were shipped worldwide, which is a rise of 6% compared with the previous year.
In the automotive industry, car parts manufacturers and assembly operations are the primary users of robotics, and this sector managed to remain the biggest adopter of the robots worldwide in 2018, with a share of around 30% of the overall supply. The demands of robots have steadily increased due to investments in automation for new vehicle production.
In five major markets, there have been already up to 79% of industrial robotic installations. These five markets are China, Germany, Japan, the United States, and the Republic of Korea. India is not on that list, which is probably due to low labor costs vs. the cost of using robots.
In the electrical/electronics industry, the figures for 2018 show that there was a decline in robot installations up to 14% compared to the previous year. Three countries have installed 79% of the total robot installations in the electrical/electronics industry. China is leading with 43%, the Republic of Korea has 19%, and Japan has 17% of the total robots installed.
Takeaways
Robots were known to be useful for performing mechanical tasks repeatedly. Their precision, and being isolated from humans, meant that they could be deployed at scale within manufacturing plants. As new generations of technology, including AI, enable new types of robots, they will become increasingly used in the workplace. Some will be very visible, and some, like RPA, will be diligently working in the background. We will interact with in-store bots and chatbots, and they will learn from our interactions.
Robots will be working alongside us, physically and virtually, to enhance our capabilities to a new level. Over time, technological innovation and learning from data will mean that robots will increase the quality of service being provided.
The potential contributions of robotics are too significant to be ignored!
