INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
The Robot Report Podcast · Safety and Efficiency in Robotics DesignIn Episode 195 of The Robot Report Podcast, our guest is Giovanni
Campanella, the Industrial Automation and Robotics General Manager at Texas Instruments (TI).Show timeline6:30 – Steve Crowe and Mike
Oitzman recap the 2025 Robotics Summit and Expo live from the Boston Convention Center13:20 – Mike interviews Giovanni Campanella, the
Industrial Automation and Robotics General Manager at Texas Instruments (TI).News of the weekAmazon’s Vulcan robot uses force sensing to
stow itemsAmazon developed a new robot called Vulcan, designed to pick items from bulk and place them onto the movable shelves.What makes
Vulcan unique is that it is equipped with force feedback sensors and AI, giving it a sense of touch. This “sense of touch” allows
Vulcan to manipulate objects with greater precision and dexterity
According to Amazon, Vulcan can pick and stow approximately 75% of the items in Amazon warehouses, moving them at speeds comparable to human
workers.Aaron Parness, Director of Applied Science at Amazon Robotics, was a keynote session last week with Steve Crowe, Executive Editor of
The Robot Report, to discuss the technology behind Vulcan during a keynote during last week’s Robotics Summit and Expo in Boston
Parness explained the importance of touch and force sensing to the future of robotics at Amazon.Amazon currently has a number of other
robotic picking applications deployed
Sparrow is currently picking from totes, but it only picks from the top layer of the totes
Sparrow has a lot of intelligence to identify the items and plan the trajectories, but it (currently) doesn’t require a sense of
touch.Amazon has another robot called Cardinal, designed to fill a cart with packages
The key for Cardinal is to get the cart as full as possible
Parness believes Cardinal could benefit from a sense of touch to help it maximize the cart load in the future.IEEE Transactions on Robotics
papers
A Dexterous and Compliant (DexCo) Hand Based on Soft Hydraulic Actuation for Human-Inspired Fine In-Hand ManipulationDIH-Tele:
Dexterous In-Hand Teleoperation Framework for Learning Multiobjects Manipulation With Tactile SensingSpecial Collection on Tactile
RoboticsTeradyne Robotics makes leadership changes at MiR, URTeradyne today announced leadership changes for both of its robotics divisions,
Jean-Pierre Hathout transitions from leading Mobile Industrial Robots (MiR) to replacing Kim Povlsen as the president of Universal Robots
Kevin Dumas succeeds Hathout as the new president of MIR
Povlsen is pursuing an external career opportunity.This adjustment comes on the heels of recent Teradyne fiscal 2024 financial results
UR, a leading developer of collaborative robotic arms, declined 3% year over year, and autonomous mobile robot (AMR) developer MiR grew 1%
Teradyne Robotics Group laid off 10% of its global staff in January 2024.Robots Installed in US Auto Industry Up by Double DigitsPreliminary
results published by the International Federation of Robotics this weekReports that Automakers in the United States have invested in more
automation:
Total installations of industrial robots in the car industry increased by 10.7%, reaching 13,700 units in 2024.By contrast, the
Association for Advancing Automation (A3) reported earlier this year that U.S
automotive sales dropped 15% in 2024 compared to 2023.“The United States has one of the most automated car industries in the world: The
ratio of robots to factory workers ranks fifth, tied with Japan and Germany and ahead of China,” says Takayuki Ito, President of the
International Federation of Robotics
“This is a great achievement of modernization
However, in other key areas of manufacturing automation, the US lags behind its competitors.”The majority of industrial robots are imports
from overseas, as few robot manufacturers are producing in the United States.Globally, 70% of installations are produced by four countries:
Japan, China, Germany and South Korea.
Within this group, Chinese manufacturers are the most dynamic, with production for their huge
domestic market more than tripling in five years (2019-2023).This puts them in second place after Japan.China´s success is based on their
national robotics strategy.China‘s manufacturing industry installed a total of about 280,000 units per year between 2021 and 2023,
compared to a total of 34,300 installations in the United States in 2024.In China, robotics and automation are penetrating all levels of
This is evidenced by its high robot density of 470 robots per 10,000 employees in manufacturing – the third highest in the world,
surpassing Germany and Japan in 2023
The United States, on the other hand, ranks only tenth among the world’s most automated manufacturing countries with a robot density of
295 robots per 10,000 employees
The country’s automation is heavily concentrated in the car sector: Around 40% of all new industrial robot installations in 2024 are in
automotive.Teradyne also last week announced financial results for the first quarter of 2025
According to the company, its robotics revenue was $69 million in Q1 2025, which is down from $98 million in Q4 2024
This also marked a 21% drop in sales in Q1 year over year
In its quarterly report, Teradyne said “robotics continues to face ongoing end market weakness but delivering on AI product portfolio (MiR
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Discover the difference!Visit sdp-si.com/podcast/index.phpNow accepting session submissions!The post Safety and efficiency in robotics
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