Feature
Robotics companies are using artificial intelligence (AI) in many of the robots they offer their commercial customers. While some robots have AI included in programming packages, others, particularly those with machine vision capabilities, have AI designed to map their environment and make real-time changes when necessary. With such capabilities, these AI robots are being used to transport goods, fry foods, mow lawns and for a variety of other purposes. Here, we look some of the top robotics companies using AI in their robots:
1. Boston Dynamics
Boston Dynamics offers several robots that employ AI, including Spot, which is shaped like a dog. Spot includes a dynamic sensing platform to provide valuable insights into routine operations, site health and potentially hazardous situations, performing work that is either too dangerous for humans or to enable workers to focus on activities that robots can’t perform. Spot can operate without interventions — autonomously charging, dynamically re-planning around new obstacles and self-righting if it falls. The company also offers other robots with AI for other uses.
2. Vecna Robotics
Vecna Robotics provides a variety of robotics and automation solutions for the warehousing and distribution industries. The company’s flagship product is its autonomous forklift. It navigates using a combination of 2D and 3D light detection and ranging (LIDAR) navigation technology and AI. The forklift offers vertical pick and place with a range of five feet and interfaces with equipment, like wrappers and conveyors, and it can handle payloads of up to 3,000 pounds.
3. FANUC
FANUC is a major supplier of robots for manufacturers and offers a variety of AI solutions. The company’s industrial PC, iPC, features software to locate boxes within stock carts, and AI helps determine the edges of different box shapes and sizes. Once located, a FANUC robot will depalletize boxes from one cart and use the PalletTool to palletize them on the opposite cart. iPC also enables high-performance advanced picking in challenging lighting conditions for reliable depalletizing.
4. ABB
ABB makes several robots for manufacturing customers. The AI-enabled Item Picker determines the optimal grasp points for each item before the suction gripper picks up and places the item into designated bins. The system does not require any human supervision or information about the physical attributes of the items it picks. With a picking rate of up to 1,400 items per hour, companies can handle more orders without increasing headcount or time. Featuring a robot, suction grippers and machine vision software, Item Picker automates complex picking and placing tasks for a range of items, including cuboids, cylinders, pouches, boxes, polybags and blister packs.
5. Hanson Robotics
Hanson Robotics’ human-like robots include a cognitive architecture and AI-based tools that enable them to simulate human personalities, have meaningful interactions with people and evolve from those interactions. The company has produced several robot characters that have received attention in global settings, including Sophia, the U.N. Development Program’s Innovation Champion in Asia-Pacific. The company envisions that through symbiotic partnerships with humans, its robots will evolve to become benevolent, superintelligent machines.
6. Miso Robotics
Miso Robotics specializes in robotics and automation for restaurants. Its smart commercial kitchen robot Flippy fries items, from french fries to chicken nuggets, and works alongside humans to enhance quality and consistency, while creating measurable cost savings for restaurants. Flippy is powered by Miso’s patent-protected AI. Customers have used Flippy fry more than 26 million baskets of food since its debut in 2018. The company also makes AI-based robots to season chips and dispense beverages.
7. Locus Robotics
Locus Robotics specializes in autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) for warehouses. LocusBots rely on AI to adapt to warehouse conditions, self-navigating through chaos, avoiding obstacles and self-adjusting routes. AI enables the robots to move around each other, perform precision two-robot passing maneuvers in tight spaces, re-route when obstacles pop up and maneuver around people. The LocusHub solution works with a company’s warehouse management system to supply a stream of operational intelligence, pinpointing inefficiencies and optimizing workflows in real-time.
8. Diligent Robotics
Diligent Robotics’ AI-powered Moxi robot is designed to help hospitals operate more efficiently around the clock by assisting clinical staff with non-patient-facing tasks: like running patient supplies; delivering lab samples; fetching items from central supply; distributing PPE; and delivering medications. AI enables Moxi to quickly learn, understand and operate in a new environment, such as a different floor of a medical facility or a different hospital. Diligent’s implementation team can add various operational workflows customized for a specific workspace.
9. Starship Technologies
Startship Technologies’ autonomous mobile robots use AI and GPS to plan their routes for food, beverage and other small deliveries at various college campuses and other defined environments of no more than a four-mile radius. The robot knows all the details of its environment and routes, including road crossings, and AI learns more about the environment. Starship robots make more than 140,000 street crossings every day around the world and have made more than six million deliveries to date.
10. Scythe Robotics
Scythe Robotics’ autonomous lawn mowers for commercial landscapers rely on advanced AI to enable the machines to follow lawn contours, tackle slopes and automatically adjust cut patterns to keep grass looking good. AI enables the autonomous lawn mower to operate safely without a human operator, because it detects obstacles, including a human or pet, in its path. It can also sense and go around inanimate objects, such as a pole, and stop and turn off its blades if it detects a human or animal in its path.
