New Florence. New Renaissance.

Flying, swimming and crawling robots at BP

People look at me funny when I say BP is a very innovative company. A boring oil company? Yes, read the case study I had on them in The New Polymath.  More recently, I had interviewed Dave Truch for my book on automation, Silicon Collar.

It’s good to see him describe more of how robots and drones help BP in all kinds of remote and extreme terrain in the video below.

As he says, he has one of the best jobs at BP!

Fiat Chrsyler’s cheap path to driverless cars

When Waymo picks up its first paying customer in a driverless taxi later this year, the car doing the honors will be made by Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV. Not the sensors and software—the futuristic technology that allows a robot to drive a minivan will be made by Waymo. The relatively boring minivan itself? That’s pretty much Fiat Chrysler’s only significant contribution to the race to develop autonomous vehicles.

It’s an ironic twist that Fiat Chrysler, the world’s seventh-largest automaker, with a reputation for being frugal with research budgets, will provide the cars for one of the pioneering driverless businesses. The company’s decision to forgo serious investment in self-driving technology has led some analysts to issue grim warnings for its future if ride-hailing ends up cannibalizing individual car ownership.

Bloomberg

Disrupting the Car

From CB Insights

In this briefing, we dive into how Big Auto, Big Tech, and startups are battling to own this future, covering the following:

• What’s driving record levels of investment in bike- and scooter-sharing startups, including Uber and Lyft’s recent moves to acquire startups in the bike-sharing space.
• How advances in battery technology are generating a resurgence in investment in electric vehicles, including bikes and scooters.
• Where the $3.4B invested in self-driving technology went in 2017, and how major AV players such as Waymo and GM will influence the ride-hailing business moving forward.
• How OEMs such as Daimler and BMW are changing the face of auto retail with car subscriptions and car-sharing services.

Disney “Stuntronics”

Have you heard of Stickman? It’s a 7-foot-tall swinging robot performer who weighs just around 40 pounds, can execute backflips, and then decide on his own when to untuck and land flat on its back.

First revealed in May, Stickman was an early version of a fearless robotic performer, while the newest artificial acrobatic figure that Disney has shown off is in a category they call “Stuntronics.” They’re building flying machines like these for a couple reasons. First, these robots can achieve feats that would be too difficult or dangerous for a human to do.

Popular Science

 

The Digital Factory

The contours of the digital factory are still evolving as technology advances, but in today’s nascent reckoning, it looks something like Fujitsu’s plant in Augsburg, Germany. At this site, an all-encompassing information technology backbone controls a supply “supermarket” where components for Fujitsu’s computers and other hardware products are stored. As customer orders are received, parts are picked for assembly by robots, loaded onto self-driving electric vehicles — which make up what’s known as the logistics train — and carried out to production stations using just-in-time and just-in-sequence processes. The specifications of each assembled product may differ and dynamic screens show workers precisely which components belong to each order and display detailed work instructions. Changes to product features can be made on the fly throughout the assembly process by on-site design and engineering teams, whose members are also available to respond to late shifts in customer requirements. Downtime is minimized because predictive maintenance procedures, based on historical and real-time data for each piece of equipment, automatically address incipient problems before a breakdown. The entire production process is paperless, the factory leaves virtually no carbon footprint, and the daily output of 12,000 PCs, laptops, and workstations and more than 1,000 servers ranks Fujitsu’s Augsburg plant among the most productive and cost-effective in the world.

Strategy+Business

 

Autonomous grocery delivery

Nuro, an autonomous vehicle startup focused on local deliveries, has partnered with 135-year-old grocery retailer Kroger to offer same-day deliveries. The two have yet to announce which market this will be live in, but the plan is to launch the several-month-long pilot this fall.

Nuro’s intent is to use its self-driving technology in the last mile for the delivery of local goods and services. That could be things like groceries, dry cleaning, an item you left at a friend’s house or really anything within city limits that can fit inside one of Nuro’s vehicles. Nuro has two compartments that can fit up to six grocery bags each.

TechCrunch

 

 

FedEx’s autonomous tuggers

Following a successful trial of five automated “tuggers” in a North Carolina shipping hub, the company plans to expand its use of robotic labor.

The New York Times on Saturday pulled back the curtain on the Kernersville facility, where Jefe, El Guapo, Lucky, Dusty, and Ned use a digital map to get around on their own.

The RT4500 autonomous tuggers, built by Massachusetts-based robotics company Vecna Technologies, joined FedEx last year—assisting, not replacing, human workers.

Geek.com

 

 

How AI may actually increase employment

Courtesy of Frank Scavo saw this Sloan Review article about McKinsey Global Institute’s broad-based research initiative aimed at understanding the spread of AI in economies, sectors, and companies. “We polled 20,000 AI-aware C-level executives in 10 countries to compile a sample of more than 3,000 companies (mostly large), identified distinct clusters within that pool, and ran a variety of scenarios on those clusters to project the effects of AI on employment, revenue, and profitability.

This research and analysis suggest that although AI will probably lead to less overall full-time-equivalent employment by 2030, it won’t inevitably lead to massive unemployment. One major reason for this prediction is because early, innovation-focused adopters are positioning themselves for growth, which tends to stimulate employment.”

Robotic Harvesting

This is the EXPAND R5090, a mechanical tarpaulin that can speed up the harvesting process by 25% according to its creators. It can work in conjunction with the Pellenc Buggy 5000 Shaker to harvest a range of fruit quickly.

The Buggy 5000 Shaker can harvest up to 1200 trees a day and Pellenc claim it harvests up to 99% of the olives on each tree.

Pellenc make a range of other harvesting vehicles. The CV5045 harvesting machine can strip a tree of fruit simply by driving over it. It has a pneumatic sorter that separates the olives quickly and is perfect for high density sites.

Business Insider

Autonomous cars and better suspensions

when autonomy makes everyone a passenger, staring at smartphones (or one another) and not looking out the windows will make car sickness a bigger problem—one that diminishes as ride quality improves.

Here’s how ClearMotion’s system works: A small turbine pump, power pack, and control electronics module gloms on to a conventional monotube or twin-tube damper at each suspension corner. This 48-volt electric pump pressurizes one side or the other of the damper piston and drives the wheel down into a pothole or pulls it up over a bump. As was the case with the Bose suspension, the pump then regenerates much of the electricity it just expended as gravity, or spring energy drives the fluid back through it during rebound. Hence net power consumption from the vehicle remains modest, though ClearMotion isn’t talking specifics yet.

MotorTrend