Robotics

When robotic mowing first appeared in the late 1990s, the mowers were primarily focused on the residential market and were commonly referred to as “lawn Roombas”. These mowers were small and innovative, but weren’t all that reliable or productive. As the technology expanded, demand shifted to the commercial market, where expectations are significantly higher. Reliability, productivity and integration into existing operations are non-negotiable for most commercial lawn care and landscaping businesses. Today, we’ve moved from simple robotic mowers to autonomous mowing, an industry that is in the critical early-adoption phase and is comparable to where robotic vacuums were in the early 2010s. Autonomous mowers are seen as having real utility but are often met with skepticism and infrastructure challenges. What’s driving adoption? Despite an industry-wide lack of internal champions, labor shortages and the costs associated with labor, an improved return on investment (ROI), workforce redep...

Regarded by some as “the world’s largest robotics and artificial intelligence competition”,   RoboCup   returns to Brazil this month, with more than 250 teams from 37 countries preparing to compete in a high-stakes showdown of autonomous machines. Set to take place in Salvador, Brazil from July 17 to 21, RoboCup 2025 will feature cutting-edge robots battling it out in fully autonomous soccer matches, alongside competitions in rescue, home service, and industrial robotics. Founded in 1997, RoboCup has long served as a proving ground for AI and robotics researchers, with its most ambitious goal still decades in the making: to develop humanoid robots capable of defeating the human FIFA World Cup champions by 2050 in a fair match. According to organizers, RoboCup’s soccer leagues – featuring humanoid, wheeled, and simulated robots — are designed to drive the advances in real-time perception, planning, motion, and team coordination necessary to make that dream a reality. Dr Maike P...

Amazon has quietly passed a stunning milestone: the deployment of   1 million robots   across its global operations. While not all are fully autonomous, the scale and speed of the company’s automation push have sparked a bigger question – how soon will robots outnumber human workers inside Amazon’s warehouses? With the announcement of a new generative AI foundation model powering its fleet, Amazon is transforming its fulfillment network into one of the most advanced robotic ecosystems in the world. The implications – on efficiency, employment, and the future of logistics – are significant. 1 million robots and counting Amazon began deploying robots after its 2012 acquisition of Kiva Systems (now Amazon Robotics). From 1,000 bots in 2013, the company has scaled up its automation infrastructure year after year, culminating in the milestone reached in mid-2025. The robots in Amazon’s network range from simple guided carts to advanced mobile robots like Proteus, capable of autonom...

Kawasaki Heavy Industries   has co-developed nurse assistant robot “Nurabot” through a strategic partnership with   Foxconn , the world’s largest electronics manufacturing services company from Taiwan.  Aiming for market launch in FY2026, they have been conducting verification experiments since April 2025 at the Taichung Veterans General Hospital, a national hospital in Taiwan. Medical institutions in advanced countries are experiencing increasingly serious shortages of medical professionals, particularly nurses. In Taiwan specifically, the challenging physical and mental labor environment has led to a critical nursing shortage, becoming a serious social issue. To continue providing stable medical services to society, initiatives to reduce the burden on nurses who support medical settings are essential. Nurabot is a specially designed robot based on “Nyokkey”, Kawasaki’s autonomous social robot, for the purpose of assisting nurses’ work. Equipped with two arms capable of ...

  ABB Robotics’ IRB 1200 high performance small robot family is evolving into a new generation that is faster and more precise, improving productivity and efficiency for a wide range of applications, says the company. Marc Segura, president ABB Robotics, says: “With rising demand from SMEs, the need for adaptable and efficient small automation solutions has never been greater. The new IRB 1200 takes efficiency and productivity even further in the most precise automation tasks.” The new generation IRB 1200 family comes in four variants – 5, 7, 8, and 9 kg – the latter offering best-in-class payload, making it ideal for handling larger or heavier parts. Powered by ABB’s OmniCore controller, the new robots achieve class-leading motion control, with path accuracy to just 0.6mm and pose repeatability down to 0.011mm, even for multiple robots at high speeds of up to 1600 mm/s. A 5 percent faster cycle time ensures that the new IRB 1200 family delivers this precision with even greater pro...

Robots are increasingly becoming a part of our lives – from warehouse automation to robotic vacuum cleaners. And just like humans, robots need to know where they are to reliably navigate from A to B. How far, and for how long, a robot can navigate depends on how much power it consumes over time. Robot navigation systems are especially energy hungry. But what if power consumption was no longer a concern? Our research on “brain-inspired” computing, published in Science Robotics, could make navigational robots of the future more energy efficient than previously imagined. This could potentially extend and expand what’s possible for battery-powered systems working in challenging environments such as disaster zones, underwater, and even in space. How do robots ‘see’ the world? The battery going flat on your smartphone is usually just a minor inconvenience. For a robot, running out of power can mean the difference between life and death – including for the people it might be helping. Robots s...

Robots are machines designed to perform tasks – ranging from simple, repetitive actions to complex decision-making processes. But how do they actually work? At the most basic level, every robot operates through a combination of four core components: sensors, controllers, actuators, and software. These systems work together, often in a closed feedback loop, to carry out programmed instructions and respond to the environment in real time. Sensors: Robots perceive the world Just like humans rely on their senses, robots use sensors to gather information about their surroundings and their own internal state. These sensors can measure: Distance and proximity (lidar, ultrasonic sensors) Force and torque (pressure sensors in robotic grippers) Vision (cameras, infrared sensors) Orientation and position (gyroscopes, GPS, encoders) Environmental factors (temperature, light, chemical presence) Without sensors, a robot would be effectively blind and deaf – incapable of adjusting to changes or opera...