Robotics World

Cleo Robotics Announces Availability of Rugged Drone

Cleo Robotics, which has developed a stable and highly maneuverable ducted bi-rotor drone, has announced the availability of the Dronut X1, aimed at law enforcement, industrial inspection, construction and defense use cases. The company’s patented thrust vectoring technology has made the hyper-efficient ducted fan design stable in flight. The Dronut’s completely enclosed propellers enable the X1 to safely bounce off objects and people, and is a fraction of the size of similarly featured drones. For industrial and commercial applications, the Dronut X1 enables unmanned inspections of dangerous and confined spaces, such as tanks, pressure vessels, and crawl spaces, where no drone or robot could previously go. The Dronut X1 is portable, rugged and also a reliable intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) solution for GPS-denied environments, making it ideal for defense use cases. In the law enforcement space, the X1 can scout areas in advance of deploying officers into high-risk situations, or act as a flying surveillance camera for facility security operations.

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Percepto Upgrades Inspection Platform, Launches New Mobile Drone

Percepto, which is developing autonomous inspection with industrial robotics, has announced the launch of its 2022 Autonomous Inspection & Monitoring (AIM) platform, and new Air Mobile drone. Percepto aims to offer customers an end-to-end solution powered by artificial intelligence to collate and streamline all visual data. The new AIM 2022 Insight Manager delivers AI-powered packaged solutions for sector-specific use cases, including solar, mining, energy, oil & gas and other industries. By drawing on tens of thousands of hours collected by autonomous robot missions at industrial facilities, Percepto’s AI change detection framework offers unified visual data and business insights for each of these sectors.

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Celera Motion Unveils Multiturn Inductive Angle Encoder

Celera Motion has announced the latest addition to its IncOder and Ultra IncOder series – the Multiturn IncOder inductive angle encoder. The new encoders offer precise angle measurements for applications that include robot joints, cranes and antenna masts. Using an inductive technique, the non-contact Multiturn IncOder enables precise and reliable absolute angle measurements over multiple revolutions, even in harsh environments. The company said it is easy to install this in several applications. In addition to the joints, cranes and antenna masts, the Multiturn IncOder can be installed in servo motors, linear stages, cartesian robots, and wind turbines.

Kontron, which develops IoT/embedded computing technology (ECT), has announced a strategic partnership with AI chipmaker Hailo to develop next-generation AI edge inference solutions. The Hailo-8 AI processor enables edge devices to run at performance levels previously only possible in the cloud. The new collaboration will offer customers a new level of high-performance, scalable AI-edge application-ready platforms for several market segments, including Industry 4.0, smart cities, and smart retail. Kontron’s pITX-iMX8M-AI-H8 Arm-based 2.5-inch SBC and the KBox A-150-WKL-AI-H8 x86-based featuring a range of Intel Core i processors (8365UE, formerly Whiskey Lake) for x86-based applications are compact, energy-efficient, fanless high-performance edge compute platforms that can integrate with the Hailo-8 AI-accelerator.

Nala Robotics has announced the launch of its fully automatic robotic kitchen, which can cook millions of recipes from around the world without any human intervention. Through robotics, artificial intelligence and machine learning, Nala can “master any dish in a matter of minutes.” The Nala recipe catalog aims to offer dishes from chefs and celebrities from around the world, and users can upload their recipes that are coded and then replicated by Nala. The system can also personalize and customize ingredients to a customer’s liking, or in the words of the company’s founder, Ajay Sunkara, “immortalize your grandma’s recipe” to create a one-stop eatery for every palate, across multiple cuisines.

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Lumentum Expands VCSEL-based Arrays for 1D, 2D Offerings

Lumentum Holdings, which develops vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) arrays for 3D sensing and light detection and ranging (lidar) applications, has announced it expanded its multi-junction VCSEL-based offerings to include new breakthrough high-performance 1D and 2D addressable arrays. The new arrays can assist developers of advanced automotive, consumer and industrial lidar and 3D sensing applications. Lumentum said VCSEL arrays have become the preferred laser illumination source for short-range 3D sensing applications, such as biometric security and world-facing lidar in consumer mobile devices, due to its reliability and ability to be manufactured at scale. The company’s multi-junction VCSEL arrays are a way to deliver the significantly higher peak optical power densities and efficiencies required for longer-range applications by decreasing the electrical current needed and simplifying electrical driver and package design.

Fieldin Acquires Midnight Robotics to Accelerate Autonomous Farming
Smart farm operations management company Fieldin has announced it acquired Midnight Robotics, a developer of agricultural autonomous driving technology. The acquisition combines a sensor-based operational farming platform with autonomous driving technologies to empower growers in the day-to-day management of their farms. Fieldin said it is already deploying the combined platform in major platforms in California, with additional deployments of the end-to-end system in coming months. The platform collects farming data and turns it into actionable insights, as well as guided decision-making and autonomous execution via driverless tractors and other machinery from within the same dashboard. Fielin said the onboarding of the new autonomous capabilities takes less than one day, with Fieldin arriving at the farm and retrofitting tractors and other machinery with lidar-based autonomy kits that send data back to the platform in real time.
iRobot Acquires Air Purification Firm Aeris Cleantec
Consumer robot maker iRobot has announced it acquired privately-held Aeris Cleantec AG, a provider of premium air purifiers based in Cham, Zug Switzerland. iRobot said the acquisition supports is vision of building “the most thoughtful robotics and developing intelligent home innovations that make life better.” Founded in 2015, Aeris Cleantec designs and sells a range of high-performance air purifiers that use HEPA filtration, intelligence and sophisticated design. The purifiers aim to quietly remove a wide range of pollutants, including allergens, smoke, odors and pet dander. Through a mobile app, Aeris users can activate the purifier, control the fan speed, compare indoor and outdoor air quality, and leverage other intelligent technologies to train the device to operate according to their individual needs.
Surfacide Launches Eos, a Portable UV Disinfection Device
Surfacide, which develops UV-C technologies for cleaning and disinfection, has announced Eos, a portable, hospital-grade UV light disinfection device aimed at high-traffic, everyday spaces such as schools, offices, gyms, hotels, and restaurants. The company said Eos is a stand-alone alternative to the company’s robotic Helios System, a trio of UV robots that aims to fight pathogens in hospitals and healthcare facilities. At 71-inches tall, the Eos is a compact device on wheels that delivers floor-to-ceiling, 360-degree UV light disinfection, and can be moved from one environment to the next. Once it is wheeled into a room and an operator leaves, the Eos can begin its disinfection cycle via a wireless tablet. When the cycle is complete, the device can send an alert to the tablet. The Eos app is cloud-connected via Wi-Fi, allowing for real-time data access and instant, actionable reporting to help drive outcomes and utilization. View Video
Formic Helps Manufacturer Automate for First Time in 105 Years With Cobot
Polar Hardware, which manufactures door and truck body hardware, announced it chose Formic’s robotics-as-a-service system to automate for the first time in 105 years of business. Formic partnered with DesignHawk from Chicago to engineer a machine tending system, which leverages a Universal Robot URe collaborative robot (cobot) to automate Polar’s press brake application. The company said it was struggling to meet its production goals and fill orders, and decided to turn to an automation solution. “If Polar didn’t automate, we would be out of business,” said Jose Figuerao, the plant manager at Polar. “We cannot compete if we cannot produce.” Polar said it turned to Formic to deliver customized robots at a low hourly rate with no money upfront and guaranteed uptime after it researched other automation options. The Formic service includes planning, deployment and maintenance capabilities.