Business and Technologies Insight Forums Seoul 2018

New Robotics: Technology Innovations & Market Trends

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Robots are becoming uncaged, mobile, collaborative and increasingly intelligent and dexterous, moving beyond their traditional strongholds to bring automation to previously inaccessible tasks.

Indeed, this new era of intelligent robotics will be one of the great stories of our time, transforming many aspects of our lives in not too distant a future. We are now only at the beginning of this new era of transformation.

In this overview class, we will give you a big picture of how the world of robotics is changing, exploring the applications of new robotics in diverse walks of life ranging from transport to agricultural to material handling to retail to medical care to homes and so on. We will then highlight the key technological trends in hardware and software, discussing why we are only now entering into this new era of rapid progress and innovation in these physically-embodied forms of artificial intelligence (AI).

More specifically, we will cover the following themes:

• Robotic arms: This class will open by considering robotic arms. First, different types of industrial robotics arms are reviewed and some of their key application highlighted. Next, we will consider collaborative robotic arms. Here, we will assess different degrees of collaboration and the different sensors and techniques used in ensuring safe collaboration. We will then benchmark existing collaborative robots on the market before reviewing key existing and emerging applications. Finally, in this section we will discuss robotic-assisted surgery, looking at its progress to-date, introducing different players, and considering market trends.
• Market analysis: We will first consider the market evolution for industrial robotic arms. To this end, we will look at the historical development of robotic arm sales- in units and value- for more than two decades. We will then analyse the market by territory before looking at robot adoption trends in specific countries. We then suggest that we are currently in a growth super-cycle phase which is mainly driven by the rise of automation in China. This will lead us towards our focus on China where we describe our models which project the future behaviour of robot sales in China over the coming decade. Finally, we will provide market forecasts for collaborative robots as well as surgical robotic arms.
• The rise of new robotics: In this section we will introduce the emergence of new robotics. Here, robots will become uncaged, mobile, collaborative and increasingly intelligent. They will therefore many aspects of live beyond factories. As examples, we will first consider personal robotics, reviewing the likes of vacuum cleaners, lawn mowers, personal 3D printers, and so on. We will then switch our focus towards more commercial examples, briefly discussing autonomous security guards, material handling robots in hospitals and hotels, autonomous robots in retailing, heavy-duty and off-road autonomous vehicles and so on.
• Enabling technology behind new robotics: In this section we will assess the performance and cost trends behind key hardware components that are increasingly enabling the commercial viability of new robotics. In particular, we will consider performance and cost trends in computing, memory technologies, energy storage, electric motors, cameras, MEMS, GPS, and so on. We will then consider the key developments in software and artificial intelligence. In particular, we will briefly describe the various types of deep learning, highlight key milestones/achievements, and consider the role of big data in enabling such progress.
• Case study I- agricultural robots: We will describe how robotics is quietly transforming agriculture. First, we consider how advances in computer vision are opening up new approaches to ultra-precision agriculture with far reaching consequences for the agrochemical industry. Next, we will demonstrate how agriculture is the leading adaptor of autonomous mobility technology. Here, we will analyse the evolution of autonomous mobility in agriculture, showing that the rise of fleets of small unmanned robots that change the way agricultural machinery is envisioned. We then assess the latest developments in robotic fresh fruit harvesting before closing this session by discussing the progress of robotics in dairy farming.
• Case study II- mobile robotics in warehousing and logistics: The rise of e-commerce is pushing the adoption of robotic technology in warehouses. Here, we are witnessing an evolution in technology, going from infrastructure-dependent rigid automated systems towards infrastructure-independent flexible autonomous systems. In this section, we will review AGVs and AGVs as well as AMR (autonomous mobile robots). We will also discuss autonomous delivery driods (ground based robots) aiming to boost productivity in last mile delivery. Finally, we will briefly consider the progress in autonomous long-haulage trucks.
• Case study III- Drones: In this section we will consider the latest trends in drone technology. To this end, we will look how aggressive pricing trends have led to the commoditization of consumer drones and how this is forcing a pivot towards enterprise drones and vertical-focused services. We then consider the latest investment trends in drone companies before reviewing the application pipeline for drones. Lastly, we will highlight the use of drones in agriculture and logistics as two major examples of enterprise drones.

For those attending.

• The PDF files of the presentations will be available to download from this website after the sessions are ended.
• All Insight Forums will be conducted in English

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Exhibitor Opportunities

Report Package

Forum 4 / Agenda

22 February / Afternoon / The-K Hotel Seoul
Keumgang Hall (2nd Floor), Annex Building

IDTechEx Korean Analyst Danny Jung, will be available at this Insight Forum for further discussion

Please join IDTechEx Analysts for lunch and networking from 13:00-14:00

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Timings and the agenda are subject to change