April 2023 Issue: RBR50 Innovation Awards

Welcome to the 2023 RBR50 Robotics Innovation Awards

What do a humanoid, an autonomous tire-changing system and an asteroid redirection spacecraft all have in common? Well, if you guessed “robotics,” you would be correct. But the similarities do not end there, and they are more pointed and correlated. All the aforementioned examples are also winners of the 2023 RBR50 Robotics Innovation Awards (RBR50).

For more than a decade, Robotics Business Review has produced the RBR50 to recognize and celebrate forward-thinking companies from across the globe and the original, impactful solutions they have created. Widely recognized throughout the world as a leading indicator of robotics innovation leadership, the RBR50 is also a critical indicator of robotics sector growth.

For the robotics sector, the role, importance, and impact of innovation has never been greater. Moreover, it is the confluence of multiple, diverse innovation determinants – technological, business, and market – that act to accelerate robotics sector growth overall.

The RBR50 reflects that diversity of innovation and celebrates robotics innovation in all its forms, including:

• Business and Management Innovation – Business and management initiatives or practices that enhance a company’s commercial standing, foster robotics sector growth or improve society.
• Technology, Products and Services Innovation – New commercial solutions that have the potential to positively impact markets or the whole robotics sector.
• Application and Market Innovation – Industry-specific, newly developed applications that deliver value, provide entry to new markets or improve performance over existing approaches (i.e. improve productivity, increase quality, reduce cost, etc.).

The editors in WTWH Media’s Robotics Group – Steve Crowe, Mike Oitzman and Brianna Wessling – enjoyed the challenge of evaluating and selecting the 2023 RBR50 award winners and learned much during the process. We hope you share that enthusiasm and that the 2023 RBR50 Robotics Innovation Awards also increase your understanding of the global robotics sector. In that small way, the RBR50 will have done its part to drive the robotics sector forward.

Steve Crowe | Executive Editor, Robotics, WTWH Media