Robots

• [New] Beyond ride-hailing service, Waymo has reinvigorated its push into long-haul trucking, which many - including Waymo rival Aurora - believe will be the first practical operational applications for autonomous vehicles.
• [New] The retail industry is looking to adopt new robotic technology faster than expected due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with widespread adoption now expected in just a few years.
• [New] Industrial item-handling robots and autonomous systems that can work in warehouses and eventually in factories, will see widespread adoption globally over the next decade.
• [New] The rising demand for vehicle telematics and autonomous driving is creating growth opportunities for the vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication market in the Western Europe region.
• [New] The global robot end-effector market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 14.21% over the forecast period to reach a market size of US$ 7.640 billion in 2026 from US$ 3.014 billion in 2019.
• [New] Several tests with other autonomous systems will follow over the course of 2021, in preparation of an operational network of autonomous drones ready to be deployed in 2022.
• [New] With over 70% of respondents to a AAA annual survey on autonomous driving reporting they would fear being in a fully self-driving car, makers like Tesla may be back to the drawing board before rolling out fully autonomous self-driving systems.
• [New] The market for autonomous vehicles in levels 4 and 5 will reach $60 billion by 2030.
• [New] The global drone delivery market is expected to witness a high growth rate during the forecast period 2023-2030, owing to the growing demand for instant or same-day delivery globally.
• [New] Verizon's Private 5G Edge platform will give customers a reliable, secure, high bandwidth, low latency connection to AWS services, APIs and tools running on AWS Outposts.
• [New] Factories, warehouses, school campuses and large businesses will be able to use Verizon Private Edge services on-premises to support low-latency use cases like autonomous mobile robots and hazard condition monitoring.
• [New] Japanese investment firm The SoftBank Group this afternoon announced it will spend $2.8 billion to buy a 40% stake in robotics company AutoStore System, which specializes in robotics for warehouses.
• [New] Three Japanese companies have announced that in April they will launch a service to effectively coat event venues such as concert halls with antivirus agent using drones.
• [New] An autonomous system on Level 3 will be introduced in 2021 and will account for most revenue from autonomous vehicles by 2040.
• [New] Through the increased use of autonomous robots, which use machine learning and artificial intelligence to complete tasks, and collaborative robots, or cobots, designed to work alongside humans, the market segment for industrial robots is forecasted to grow to $14.9 billion globally in logistics.
• [New] By 2030, the Royal Navy plan to have moved carrier based 'Airborne Early Warning' capability from Merlin helicopters to Vixen fixed wing drones.
• [New] Before the conclusion of Perseverance's mission, it will be the first to gather Martian samples for eventual return to Earth, potentially also making it the first mission to uncover signs of life beyond Earth.
• [New] The US Congress is considering legislation that will force businesses to stop using forced labor from the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in their supply chains.
• [New] In other societies - Japan and South Korea, for example - where workers have been replaced by robots, steps are taken to retrain and redeploy them, helping them to take advantage of the new opportunities created by automation.
• The development of power sources for drones using gas turbine engines and Halbach generators will be an advanced initiative not only in Japan but also in the world.
• MDC Ltd's €500,000 investment is intended as an opportunity for foreign and local companies to carry out tests on drones in Malta, as well as professionally train drone pilots ready for a variety of industries.
• During the next fifteen years, there will be huge requirement of small UAVs by the defence services in the coming years.

Last updated: 11 April 2021