How Cloud Is Assisting Emergence of Robotics The ability to move on-demand services for robotic assistance to a cloud platform will boost demand from small and medium businesses in the region, explains Doaa Sulaiman, robotics director of PROVEN Robotics.To get more news about RaaS, you can visit glprobotics.com official website. Companies worldwide are now required to be agile in their customer service and development processes to compete in their sector due to the ongoing trend of digitization, especially in the post pandemic era. Nowadays, firms must reconsider their strategy to meet the modern digital era as competitiveness demands efficiency in various activities. It is evident that the world needs a sustainable and automated solution that meets both the customer and the owner-stakeholder requirements. One promising strategy for businesses to automate operations, manage work seamlessly, and reduce costs is to implement robots as a service (RaaS) model. The RaaS model is continuously gaining momentum within several organizations to combat operational challenges in the new era. Automated machinery has always been one way to boost productivity and manage operations whenever human skills have been limited or unavailable onsite and in time. Present day advanced robots are sufficiently intelligent to complete many well defined, repetitive manual tasks inside households, commercial establishments, large enterprises, and sprawling communities. Typical use cases for service robots include hospitality, cleaning, delivery, inspection, quality control, sanitization, entertainment, security, across retail, , healthcare, logistics hubs, amongst others. Service robots are also designed by manufacturers with the primary function as collaborative, domestic, medical, entertainment, educational, amongst others. However, service robots are seldom utilized around the clock and are significantly capital extensive. The robots must be programmed to recognize their physical parameters, the tasks they carry out daily, the owners, and the customers. These factors may have been limiting regional and global ramp-up. Selected service providers like PROVEN Robotics in the GCC region have found a solution to this challenge through robotics as a service. RaaS offers a flexible alternative for small and medium enterprises considering employing robots but lacking the expertise or internal resources to maintain such robotic solutions. By renting robotic equipment and using a cloud-based subscription service, Robots as a Service enables a business to enjoy the advantages of robotic process automation. An ABI Research estimates that there will be 1.3 million installations of robotics as a service or RaaS by 2026, generating $34 billion in revenue. A technical explanation provided by Wikipedia explains robotics as a service to be a cloud computing unit that facilitates integration of a robot and embedded devices into a cloud computing environment. In terms of service-oriented architecture, a RaaS unit includes services for performing functionality, a service directory for discovery and publishing, and service clients for user’s direct access. RaaS is intriguing the interest of businesses because it is more flexible, scalable, and affordable than traditional robotics initiatives. Given how expensive robots are, it may be years before businesses see a return on their investment. This has discouraged many businesses from making robot investments. Small- and medium-sized firms can use robots and automation without making this initial investment thanks to RaaS. Additionally, it enables businesses to easily and quickly scale up or down in response to shifting customer and market demands. RaaS offers less initial start-up capital and more predictable costs.

What are the Implications of Service Robots in Hospitality for Consumers?

The Industrial Revolution, started in the late 18th century, dramatically increased our standard of living by making high-quality, low-cost manufactured goods available to the masses. Today, our economies seem to be facing a turning point, but now in the service sector. Technologies rapidly become smarter and more powerful, and at the same time, they get smaller, lighter, and cheaper. These include hardware such as physical robots, drones, and wearable technologies, as well as code and software related to analytics, speech processing, image processing, virtual and augmented reality, cloud technologies, mobile technologies, geo-tagging, robotic process automation (RPA), low-code platforms, and machine learning. Together, these technologies will transform virtually all service sectors. Service robots and artificial intelligence (AI), combined with these technologies, will lead to rapid innovation that can dramatically improve the customer experience, service quality, and productivity all at the same time (Wirtz & Zeithaml, 2018).To get more news about Robots as a Service, you can visit glprobotics.com official website.

Robot- and AI-delivered service offers unprecedented economies of scale and scope as the bulk of the costs are incurred in their development. Physical robots cost a fraction of adding headcount, and virtual robots (e.g., chatbots and virtual agents) can be scaled at close to zero incremental costs. Such dramatic salability does not only apply to virtual service robots such as chatbots but also to “visible” ones such as holograms. For example, an airport could install a hologram-based humanoid service robot every 50 meters to assist passengers and answer common questions (e.g., provide arrival information and directions to check-in counters) in all common languages. These holograms only require low-cost hardware (i.e., a camera, microphone, speaker, and projector), and do not take up floor space. (Travelers could push their baggage carts through a hologram when it gets crowded.)

Already, many firms show eager interest in experimenting with service robots. For example, in hotels lobbies, humanoid robots may be used to welcome guests, provide information, and entertain guests. At airports, they scan boarding passes and help passengers to find the right departure gate. Self-moving check-in kiosk robots detect busy areas and autonomously go there to help passengers reduce waiting time (Bruhn et al., 2020).

Such robots are the beginning of the Service Revolution. Similar to the shift that started in the Industrial Revolution from craftsmen to mass production, we believe an accelerated shift in the service sector towards robot- and AI-delivered services is imminent. The exciting prospect is that many services, including hospitality, healthcare, and education, are likely to become available at much lower prices and better quality. Consumers will be the big beneficiaries.
Service robots have been defined as “system-based autonomous and adaptable interfaces that interact, communicate and deliver service to an organization’s customers” (Wirtz et al., 2018). These abilities differentiate service robots from traditional self-service technologies (SSTs) we are familiar with in the context of ticketing machines, websites, and apps. As shown in Table 1, service robots can deal with unstructured interactions and guide customers through their service journey. For example, a ticketing robot will not let customers get stuck as it can ask clarifying questions (e.g., “Is your return trip today? Can you travel off-peak?”) and can even recover customer errors (e.g., a wrong button pressed or incorrect information entered). For most standard services, customers will interact with service robots much like with service employees do (e.g., “I need a same-day return ticket” and “Can I use Apple Pay?”).

Robots-as-a-service – the future of warehouses?

We recently sat down with Damien Skinner, UK Country Manager at Hai Robotics, for a look at what the warehouse of the future would look like. While we were talking, Damien mentioned that future warehouses would probably be built very differently to legacy warehouses, and potentially filled with robotic workers supplied in a whole new way – robots-as-a-service.To get more news about Robotics as a Service, you can visit glprobotics.com official website.

That will be split between two main user-groups – smaller, regional, and start-up warehouse owners, and larger companies with much higher throughput, even up to multi-national level like Amazon.

The big and the small
For the smaller companies, the key will be scalability – the ability to start small and grow to take advantage of the space and robotics capabilities they need as the business grows, so you may have more urban, relatively vertical warehouses, with a handful of robots and a very visual proposition to start with, for easy learning. Then you’ll be able to add in robots to deal with increased demand as and when you need them.

For larger companies, the key concern will be flexibility. They’ll need a solution that can adapt, change, grow – or even shrink – according to the customer demand. Imagine you have data on your regular monthly throughput, and you have only the robots you need to deal with that, because of course your bottom line is key.

Then you hit the preparation for Black Friday, Christmas, and the January sales. Boom – you’re going to need a lot more robots to deal with the peak demand in those three months. So you’ll need a solution with flexibility to help you cope with that – and that’s where robots-as-a-service (RaaS) comes in.

Using that model, where you lease the robots you need to deal with peak throughput, but aren’t tied into a purchase model, will allow large warehouse owners to reduce their capital expenditure, and deal with those productivity-spikes as an operating expense.
RaaS – a new way to do robotics
DS:

Ah, but it needn’t be that much hassle. I mean, the way you’d do it with traditional automation is that when you have a peak of need, you’d try to bring the peak down so your existing system could handle it, and then pay your operatives additional money to stay on longer and get the reduced peak dealt with.

And yes, your traditional automation system would tend to be hardwired, heavy plant, miles of complicated belts and all that, so yes, traditionally, that’d be the way you’d think of an expansion – lots of work, lots of upheaval, and probably not something you could economically do just for, say, three months of the year. Traditional automation definitely ran you into that complexity, cost, and capital expenditure mire.

The future will be easier
But with a RaaS system, if the supplier has the robots in stock, they’re relatively easy to put in place. And you update your warehouse management system to recognize a new robot on the line, and as soon as it recognizes the task it’s there for, boom! You’ve increased your throughput – and by using operating expense, rather than capital expenditure.

It’s not as easy yet as it will be as the system matures and gets more well known and used, but it’s about as easy as moving house, compared to having to knock down your existing house and building a new one in your new location. The RaaS model is the key to “as-needed” robofication of warehouses in the future. It can be done right now, but in the future, it will be done easily, regularly, and ahead of time, to maximize throughput in those months of peak demand.

Examples of service robotics

Service robotics is currently emerging as a way for companies to improve their competitiveness, production capacity and innovation. Here you can read about examples of service robotics and different uses.To get more news about GRS, you can visit glprobotics.com official website.

This article discusses the use of service robots, robot as a service (RaaS) and some interesting facts about the service robot market provided by the IFR Service Robots Group (IFR: International Federation of Robotics).

It also includes an article by Roberto Guzmán, CEO at Robotnik, published on 5 July in Harvard Deusto.

Robotnik’s co-founder provides his vision on current service robotics, the main area of work of the company. This is the case of Artificial Intelligence as an enabler of service robotics and its introduction in the market.
What is a service robot?
A service robot is a robot that “performs useful tasks for people or equipment, excluding industrial automation applications” (IFR).

According to the 2021 World Robotics – Service Robots report, generated and published by the IFR stadistica department, the market for professional service robots grew by 12% in 2020, from a sample turnover of $6 billion to $6.7 billion. The IFR itself classifies AMRs as service robots, often used in industrial environments.

Robotnik has been involved in the development, manufacturing and marketing of service robotics, namely autonomous mobile robots and manipulators, for 20 years.Service robots can operate in different sectors and scenarios, depending on their technical specifications: outdoor agriculture, intralogistics in a warehouse, tunnel inspection or logistics in a hospital. Wikipedia gives an example of one of Robotnik’s first service robots working in a public hospital in Valencia.

Robot as a service has gained some popularity in recent years. This is a business model in which an end-user pays for the use of the robot for a period of time, but does not purchase it permanently. In other words, they pay for a service – in this case, a robotic service. Despite the recent boom, RaaS represents less than 3% of the 43,500 units named above.

One advantage of RaaS is that it can serve to lower the barrier to entry for task automation in some companies that are more reluctant. A drawback is that, in reality, for most applications, RaaS business models are not offered.

The service robotics market and adjacent technologies are in a constant ‘work in progress’. The development of digitalisation, cloud technologies, 5G and Artificial Intelligence, specifically in machine learning, are a boost for service robotics and specifically, in autonomous and collaborative mobile robotics.

Industrial robots surge to help companies meet demand

North American companies boosted spending on industrial robots in the first quarter as they scrambled to keep up with surging demand in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.To get more news about Robots on Demand, you can visit glprobotics.com official website.

Companies ordered 9,098 robots in the first quarter, a 19.6% increase over a year ago, according to the Association for Advancing Automation, an industry group based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The orders were valued at over $466 million in total.Robots were once concentrated in the auto industry but are now moving into more corners of the economy, from ecommerce warehouses to food processing plants. For the first time last year, most of the robots ordered by companies in North America weren’t destined for auto factories or their parts suppliers.

The strongest growth in the latest quarter was to metal producers, where orders surged 86%. Orders to life science, pharmaceutical and biomedical companies rose 72%, while orders to consumer goods companies increased 32%.
The strong economy obviously helps,” said Jeff Burnstein, president of the Association for Advancing Automation. “It gives companies the confidence to invest in more things — including in more automation.”

Burnstein said the pandemic froze many businesses, as operations shut down to protect human health. “But ultimately it accelerated the adoption of automation, because companies recognized if they were going to do it, now would be the time.”

Tyson Foods, the U.S. meat company, is among those looking to use more robots on its production lines. In 2019, the company opened a 26,000 square foot automation research center near its headquarters in Springdale, Arkansas.

“For the most part, it’s still too soon for some of the really innovative and proprietary systems we’re developing,” said Marty Linn, the center’s director of engineering. Automating jobs such as deboning chickens is extremely difficult, he noted, because the size and shape of each chicken can vary greatly. Robots work best when they can handle uniform items.

With that in mind, Linn said, Tyson has already started installing at its plants robots that sit at the end of production lines and automatically stack and wrap boxes on pallets — a process that involves standard shapes and the repetition of precise movements.

A Perspective on Robot as a Service with UiPath Platform

In the pursuit of defining RaaS, let’s think about organizations, in the verve of implementing automation. To shape processes, you need to purchase licenses and set up favorable automation environments and investigate in depth hardware requirements. Now let’s imagine a model designed for organizations, regardless their size which provides them with robotic process automation (RPA), and a complete package of services including licenses, automation, maintenance, automation governance, scalability, all gathered in an interactive platform. To get more news aboutRobotics as a Service, you can visit glprobotics.com official website.

Why is Robot as a Service needed?

The answer is remarkably simple. In this era, in which companies strive to become fully automated enterprises, RaaS comes in as a stepping stone. It is cost-effective, and very suitable for small, medium or large organizations. UiPath provides a comprehensive service package together with an extensive product offer.
Use Case for RaaS model using UiPath

Let’s see a practical approach to the RaaS model using UiPath products. Dive in a use case for small-scale business involved in selling home appliances. The owner of the business has applied for a solution where he can manage his inventory. Let's look at user access management. Employees who will be accessing the solution should be added to Accounts and Groups. To do that, on Automation Cloud™, go to Admins page and move to Accounts and Groups. Now under the Users tab, invite all the users who would be accessing the solution. Alternatively, you can also add them as part of a group.

We named the solution "Invento", an inventory management app which helps the user interact with automation by keeping track of products in the inventory and raising orders when the quantity is below the threshold. The app also triggers reports to the admins based on inventory consumption.

We'll explore the solution in three major steps: the interactive app or how our solution is presented, its back end made of Data Service and its entities or how our inventory data is stored and the UiPath workflows. Below you can see an overview of the complete process captured in a diagram. Here you can also see how UiPath products interact with each other.

Step 1

To build an interactive application using UiPath, the first step is to build a Sign Up page for the user. The idea behind this page is to register all employees before they start using Invento.
1. An employee won't need to register each time, just sign in. On the Sign Up page, there will also be a link to the sign in page. An error message will also be shown if the employee registration information isn't complete.

2. Let’s check the forgotten password page and sign out page. The new password will be sent in an email.
3. The home page of Invento gives the employee a range of selections where they can select how they want to use the application. They can choose to view the current inventory, check active orders, place or cancel an order. There's also a page where the user can view all kinds of orders (active, cancelled, or successful orders).

4. Active Orders Page contains information on the orders that have been placed recently or are yet to be delivered. Information such as order number and the date the order was placed is displayed on this page. There is also a link to go back to the home page or sign out.
5. Current Inventor page is the heart of Invento as it contains all the items serial number, code present in the inventory. It holds the name and the quantity. If the quantity is below the threshold, an email will be triggered. Also, this information (current inventory) will be captured and emailed to the admins before closing the day for visibility. If the employees see that there is a need to replenish a certain item in the inventory, they can place an order using the Create Order button on the page.

$49.4 Billion Worldwide Logistics Robots Industry to 2027

The global logistics robots market reached a value of US$ 11.7 Billion in 2021. Looking forward, the publisher expects the market to reach US$ 49.4 Billion by 2027, exhibiting a CAGR of 24.16% during 2022-2027. Keeping in mind the uncertainties of COVID-19, we are continuously tracking and evaluating the direct as well as the indirect influence of the pandemic on different end use industries. These insights are included in the report as a major market contributor.To get more news about Logistics Robotics, you can visit glprobotics.com official website.
Logistics robots are self-directed floating devices utilized in warehouses and storage facilities to organize and transport products, a process which is known as intralogistics. These robots automate the process of storing and moving goods as they pass through the supply chain, improve the efficiency of logistics operations and reduce labor, machinery and maintenance costs.

They also enhance human-machine collaboration and assist companies in complying with various workers' safety regulations. Logistics robots lead to significant productivity gains and profitability as compared to conventional counterparts, such as forklifts, due to which their demand is escalating around the world.

An increase in the number of logistics and warehousing companies that are incorporating robots to improve speed and efficiency and remain competitive in the market are propelling the demand for logistics robots worldwide.

Moreover, the adoption of advanced technologies, such as robotic warehousing and logistics technologies, is growing on account of the sudden outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and the consequent lockdowns imposed by governments of various countries to prevent the transmission of the pandemic. This can also be accredited to the temporary closure of manufacturing units, disruptions in the supply chain and labor shortage.

Apart from this, due to the increasing internet penetration and a rising preference for online shopping, the e-commerce sector is burgeoning, especially in emerging economies. Organizations in this sector are emphasizing on improving the packaging quality, concentrating on timely delivery and deploying logistics robots, which is anticipated to fuel the market growth in the upcoming years

Hy-Tek and AHS Announce Partnership With Tompkins Robotics

AHS, a Hy-Tek Material Handling Company and leading full-service provider of integrated fulfillment and distribution solutions, has partnered with Tompkins Robotics, a global leader focused on the robotic automation of sortation solutions. This partnership will help to expand the automated material handling capabilities of AHS and the entire Hy-Tek organization. With Hy-Tek's comprehensive suite of services, the addition of the modular and scalable tSort Sortation solution will support a streamlined process, improve employee productivity, and maximize the return on investment for the supply chain industry.To get more news about Logistics Robotics, you can visit glprobotics.com official website.
"We are excited to start our partnership with Tompkins Robotics, a proven scalable and flexible robotic sortation solution," said Zac Boehm, Vice President of Innovation and Technology at AHS. "By formalizing our partnership, it allows Hy-Tek to add to its existing solutions by not only enhancing our G2P technologies, but allowing us to solve inbound, outbound, and product sortation with a scalable robotic solution."

Changing economic conditions, a tight labor market, and consumer spending habits require today's supply chain to be adaptable, scalable, and demonstrate a faster ROI than systems of the past. This new product offering will help AHS deploy a robotic sortation solution faster and more seamlessly than ever before.

"This partnership with Tompkins Robotics offers a simple, low-cost approach to sortation that can be quickly integrated into our customer's distribution and order fulfillment processes to drive efficiency and increase throughput," said Collette Henn, Sr. Manager of R&D and Software Deployment at AHS.

Tompkins Robotics systems can be deployed in every node of the supply chain. The modular solution deploys effectively in small operations in the backroom of a grocery, supercenter, or mall anchor store to large fulfillment centers processing millions of units a day. Their systems maximize performance, making our clients more agile, adaptable, profitable, and successful in today's dynamic marketplace.

"AHS is a leader in innovative solutions. This partnership gives AHS and the entire Hy-Tek organization the unique ability to leverage their wide range of automated and robotic material handling and fulfillment technologies for a truly integrated solution that delivers an industry-leading value proposition," said Thompson Brockmann, Vice President of Operations at Tompkins Robotics.
Tompkins Robotics is a global leader focused on the robotic automation of distribution and fulfillment operations. Our primary system, tSort, consists of autonomous mobile robots that sort a wide range of items and parcels to consolidation points for order fulfillment, store replenishment, returns, parcel distribution – virtually any process in the supply chain. tSort is a truly modular, scalable, and portable robotic sortation system that helps build world-class supply chains while providing unmatched flexibility and throughput. With three models, tSort; tSort Plus; tSort Mini; and two sortation methods, tilt trays and cross belts, Tompkins Robotics systems handle the broadest range of product on the market - as small as a penny to up to 40 inches long by 30 inches wide and weighing up to 120 pounds. Our systems work in small operations in the backroom of a grocery, supercenter or mall anchor store to large fulfillment centers processing millions of units a day. Our systems maximize performance, making our clients more agile, adaptable, profitable, and successful in today’s dynamic marketplace.

We also have other proprietary solutions such as the xChange, tSort3D, and xPress. xChange is a robotic sortation order removal and replacement system for orders and shipping systems. tSort3D is a new, very dense sortation system ideal for ecommerce and provides as much as 10 times the sort destinations and volume compared to competing solutions. xPress is an overhead robotic transport system that can be used in retail to DC environments. We continue to expand the core systems with complementary robotics and integrated material handling systems to automate fulfillment operations.

Armach was launched in November 2021 to capitalize on Greensea’s digital expertise to offer an industry-leading subscription model, proactive and robotic hull cleaning system using autonomy, intelligence and data fusion.To get more news about Robotics as a Service, you can visit glprobotics.com official website.
Part of the company’s USP is the HSR itself as it’s a disruptive technology in hull cleaning, being man-portable at under 66lbs (30kgs) and around 34 inches (86cm) long, greatly reducing deployment costs and increasing convenience. This Smaller, Smarter, Better robot was recently launched for its first in-water trials at Plymouth, Massachusetts marking an important milestone in making proactive in water cleaning a viable solution for fuel saving and optimized ship performance.

James Truman, Armach’s VP of Engineering says: “My favorite job in this industry is working on next-generation systems. The team learns so much in the development and testing of a product for a new application but once a vehicle is sufficiently functional then the pace of design evolution slows dramatically. Designing the next generation, once you have a good understanding of the requirements and have developed proven key components, is an amazing opportunity.”

The original prototypes consisted of off-the-shelf navigation systems, a custom crawler skid, and a separate ROV all bolted together, but as James explains, there were more efficient ways of integrating this equipment in the finalized vehicle: “It worked well in the prototypes but was expensive and clunky. For the purpose-built Armach HSR we stripped out a lot of the structural and electrical overhead from the prototypes. That gave us a smaller, lighter, and more streamlined vehicle that can operate in faster water currents and on lower friction coatings. We’ve tested extensively to minimize hull-coating impact and will continue accelerated life testing and design iteration to ensure long term reliability”.
Greensea has enormous experience in intelligent control systems for underwater robots, indeed this is how Armach came into being. The vehicle is purpose built around the state of the art in miniaturized navigation sensors. Greensea’s OPENSEA fuses a navigation solution from the myriad sensors and provides rock-solid vehicle control.

For the HSR vehicle, Armach designed and is producing the electro-mechanical drive and cleaning components in-house because it needed not only high power-density and unique packaging but also precision control and feedback. This bespoke approach pays dividends when it comes to in-water usability and control, along with the quality of the hull data fed back: “The resulting performance driving on a hull as well as the free-flying stability are amazing. The networked architecture and SAFEC2 functionality mean we can monitor or control the vehicles from anywhere in the world,” adds James.

Armach offers shipowners a proactive, autonomous in-water robotic cleaning solution. The company’s ‘Robot as a Service’ solution simply offers shipowners a constantly clean hull and following each cleaning operation provides an accurate georeferenced hull condition survey. The technology is not coating specific and is based on a state-of-the-art system, powered by Greensea’s autonomy, intelligence and data fusion technologies. Armach’s business model provides cleaning robots to ships, ports, harbours and established service providers on a monthly subscription basis.