In #hkuiom, we recently spoke about unmanned trucks and other forms of complex, autonomous systems that would revolutionize the supply chains of the future. Rio Tinto’s Mine of the Future program portends a future of convergence of unmanned systems, big data and virtual/augmented realities.
The most recent video is below:
Here is one of the earlier videos (circa 2012)
Remember Kiva from #hkuiom – the mobile robotics company that provided automated warehouse solutions? After its acquisition by Amazon, Kiva’s sales efforts went quiet and it seemed that the technology had become ‘internal’ to Amazon. Here’s Auto Store, which offers more a space efficient solution, mobile robot based warehouse solution. Another step towards a future of automated, cooperative, self-learning agents with distributed intelligence.
What happens when you combine drones, gesture control, learning and autonomy? More in #hkuiom
Cubli, a cube shaped robot can walk across a desk by jumping up and balancing on its edges. Another step towards the future we talk about in #hkuiom!
These self-organizing, autonomous robots from Harvard University work on principles inspired by nature to create complex structures. A view into a future of small and many complex adaptive systems @ #hkuiom?
Amazon.com has acquired Kiva Systems, the manufacturer of warehouse automation robots that are used to great success by Gap, Office Depot, Quidsi and Zappos, among others. The last two of these were acquired by Amazon over the past year.
Kiva’s orange robots, which can slide under shelves and bins of products, are used by Quidsi Inc. — the company behind Soap.com and Diapers.com that Amazon acquired for about $545 million last year.
Image via Kiva Systems
Under the terms of the agreement, which has been approved by Kiva’s stockholders, Amazon will acquire all of the outstanding shares of Kiva for approximately $775 million in cash, as adjusted for the assumption of options and other items. Subject to various closing conditions, the acquisition is expected to close in the second quarter of 2012.
Some videos with Kiva robots in action are below:
Small mobile robots are being increasingly used to automate labor-intensive processes across various industries and are a harbinger of a future of automated, agents with distributed intelligence that can communicate with one another to accomplish large tasks.
Read more at Amazon Media Room: Press Releases and Amazon Acquires Kiva Systems in Second-Biggest Takeover – Bloomberg.
This recent TED talk introduced autonomous, agile, aerial quadrotor robots. These small-sized robots can navigate complex obstacles by transforming a 12 dimensional map into 4 dimensions and calculating the best path 600 times a second. They apply several concepts of multi-agent systems and complex adaptive systems theory to interact and cooperate, thereby resulting in the ability to accomplish intricate tasks at a system level. This behavior is emergent from simple rules at the individual level.
This kind of autonomous intelligence and cooperative behavior lends itself to several applications (besides the ability to perform the James Bond Theme). These include military and civilian applications such as the ability to lift heavy loads, reconnaissance and search & rescue efforts. Once the learning rules that allow the robots to adapt are coupled with long term memory and swarming behavior, the potential applications and implications are phenomenal.
