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Amazon (via AWS) has begun offering a number of SaaS packages for robotics  vendors and recently announced a startup collaboration with MassRobotics to encourage uptake of these solutions: "The AWS Robotics Accelerator" (link) Is this simply a software play from AWS to get vendors hooked on their cloud services or, is this a larger robotics play from Amazon and should robot vendors worry that Amazon might roll out their own in-house robots (Kiva Systems)? AWS currently offers a range of solutions, including RoboMaker (a simulation tool) and IOT TwinMaker (a digital twin solution): AWS RoboMaker - Robot Simulation Tool (AWS product page, blog post) AWS IOT...

Trade Shows have finally sprung back to life and whilst we will only visit national (UK) shows this year, we have plans to visit they key European and North American shows in 2022.  We visited two trade shows at the National Exhibition Centre on 3 Nov, 2021: Advanced Manufacturing (link) and Saltex (link). ADVANCED MANUFACTURING, Nov 3-4, 2021 The Advanced Manufacturing show focuses mainly on materials, but also includes a bit of handling, especially robotics handling. However, if you visit this show to see robots, you will be disappointed.  There were plenty of arm-robots on display, typically as part of a larger...

Finally, a real trade show with real people!  We visited PPMA at the National Exhibition Centre (NEC) in Birmingham, UK on Sep 29th, 2021 and were pleasantly surprised by the many visitors.  Next to the bag checking people, there were now also a few people checking our vaccination status. This was expected and had been communicated by the show organisers. PPMA (Processing & Packaging Machinery) primarily targets the food sector with plenty of companies providing bulk food and pallet packaging machinery.  Note that STIQ's focus is on mobile robots and retail tech so plenty of the food packaging machinery is not covered here. Visit...

Virtual events have taken over since the pandemic hit and it has become difficult to write a review of these events as there are so many of them.  In addition, some recent events do not allow media (us) to take part in some of the (perhaps more interesting) presentations or table talks - And this was the case at DELIVER as well...  1,000 However, luckily we were allowed into the virtual meeting zone to mingle with the many different delegates, and there were a lot of delegates to mingle with, nearly 1,000 to be more precise. Whilst we cannot review the presentations...

The view of all vendors is that automation will become more important as a result of Covid-19. While this is not unexpected, should vendors be more cautious? Economic activity has ground to a halt in much of the world. Grocers, medical device suppliers and pharmaceutical manufacturers appears to be the only winners in our Covid-19 pandemic world. More specifically, eGrocery has been one of the main beneficiaries of Covid. However, these companies have been so successful that they have had to limit access to their sites. Source: FT.com, March 28, 2020 The outsized demand for online grocer's services has led...