Robotics
Buying robots: the questions that matter
For anyone evaluating an automation proposal, the specification sheet is the least useful document in the pack.
Robotics
Actuators, autonomy, factories and the demo-to-product gap.
Robotics
Autonomous mobile robots outside the warehouse
Hospitals, hotels, factories and pavements — where wheeled autonomy has spread, and the specific reasons each environment is harder than a warehouse.
Robotics
Automation and employment: what the evidence supports
The research is more equivocal than either the enthusiasts or the alarmists suggest, and the distributional findings are clearer than the aggregate ones.
Robotics
Safety standards and how robots are allowed near people
The rules governing industrial robots are specific, well developed, and the reason most machines still work behind a fence.
Robotics
Simulation, sim-to-real and how robots learn now
Training a controller in a physics simulator and transferring it to hardware became practical, and it changed how the field works.
Robotics
Legged robots: what they are for
Quadrupeds became a commercial product before humanoids, and the applications are narrower and more sensible than the videos suggest.
Robotics
Drones: the robotics that quietly became normal
Autonomous flight is a solved problem for most practical purposes, and the remaining constraints are airspace regulation and battery chemistry.
Robotics
Agricultural robotics and the labour that is disappearing
Fields are unstructured, produce is delicate, and the economics are being forced by a labour shortage rather than pulled by capability.
Robotics
Surgical robots and what teleoperation actually buys
The most commercially successful medical robot is not autonomous at all — it is an extremely good remote control, and that turns out to be the point.
Robotics
Industrial robots: what the installed base actually does
Several million arms are working in factories today, doing a narrower set of tasks than most people imagine.
Robotics
Warehouse robotics: the automation that actually happened
While humanoids get the attention, wheeled robots quietly became one of the largest deployed automation categories in the world.
Robotics
Humanoid robots and the demo-to-product gap
A robot that walks across a stage is solving a different problem from a robot that works an eight-hour shift.