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How quickly things change

By Frank Tobe | March 17, 2014

At previous MODEX's, where they exhibit the latest manufacturing and supply chain equipment and technologies, Kiva had their own booth. Big booths with lots of people marveling at their orange robots. Today at MODEX, those orange robots were moving to a different drummer.

Amazon was marketing their full-service distribution service – and also doing some recruiting. Kiva was in the background playing a support role – which is what Amazon was marketing: that Amazon could do your distribution and fulfillment work for you.

At day 1 of MODEX, one could see lots of joint ventures involving robotics:

  • Adept provides a mobile platform for Demantic's AGVs
  • Yale provides a driverless lift for Seegrid's new autonomous forklift
  • Seegrid provides the navigation and vision systems for Yale's new autonomous forklift

Also shown were many products meant to ease ergonomic strain on human workers.

  • Caster and wheel companies were showing new technologies to reduce push and pull strain
  • Coiled vacuum lifts for lifting boxes onto tables or conveyors
  • Forklift companies were adding rollers on their forks to reduce torque needed to squeeze under a skid

This may explain why Google acquired Holomni, the creator of high-tech powered casters for omnidirectional motion… mobile consumer products in Google's  future? If so, they'll need to make them much less expensive. At present, similar powered omnidirectional wheels with servos cost many thousand dollars each.

About The Author

Frank Tobe

Frank Tobe is the founder of The Robot Report and co-founder of ROBO Global which has developed a tracking index for the robotics industry, the ROBO Global™ Robotics & Automation Index. The index of ~90 companies in 13 sub-sectors tracks and captures the entire economic value of this global opportunity in robotics, automation and enabling technologies.

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  • Home
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  • Robots
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    • Collaborative Robots
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    • Unmanned Maritime Systems
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    • Search Robotics Database
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