Inside Omron’s Next-Generation LD Mobile Robots

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0:40What's up, everybody? Welcome in episode 264 of the Robot Report podcast. I'm Steve Crow, executive editor of the Robot Report. Thank you, as always, for tuning into the show. Hope you're having a great week. Joined, as always, by Mike Oitzman, senior editor of the Robot Report. Good to see you, sir. I think we've seen the greatest robotics video of all time dropped earlier this week. What do you think? Video, not movie, huh? You think so? Yeah, I think so. I don't know if people have seen this. If you haven't, we'll link to it. It's all over all the different social media platforms. figure dropped a video uh they're now on figure three version three of its humanoid robot and they have an incredible video where they show some of the figure two humanoids basically jumping into a giant vat of lava over in poland mike melt melting themselves in a giant uh furnace a la terminator and just an incredible video and the way that this started is even more incredible um brett threw this out on twitter maybe a couple months ago at this point but saying hey you know we're decommissioning the figure two robots and he asked the the twitterverse how he should go about getting rid of the version twos and who chimed in but the terminator himself arnold schwarzenegger chimed in saying that he should melt the robots and that's what they actually did in this video i i just cannot believe i i truly think this is again we we've said a lot about figure we have our thoughts about figure um and as we have thoughts about every other robotics company that's out there this if you could just put all that stuff aside this is i think the greatest robotics video ever created i i think i have to agree in terms of great social media it hits it hits all of the boxes steve in terms of uh yeah just the cinema of it the the uh you know the suspense you're engaged the whole time going what's going to happen and you know as an engineer you're watching and going, did that robot really just grab the chain and hang on until it was lowered in?

2:43It puts its foot on the hook, right? It's incredible. Sorry. So yeah, you know, I'm sort of an amateur cinematographer myself, extremely amateur, but I'm always caught up in how the whole thing is pulled together. Great, great production all around and you kept you suspended till the end. Yeah, and they're big-time owed to the Terminator movie that came out a long time ago at this point in time, right? But they bring in the music as what the first humanoid is lowering itself into the furnace. It's just incredible. It's absolutely incredible. So job well done by them. And it is interesting. I'm trying to push all the other stuff aside about how much money Figure has raised.

3:27you know no humanoid for industrial purposes is really selling well at this point in time so they're not alone in this but there's so many comments on twitter and linkedin about what a waste of money this was and there's some people who feel bad for the robots because the robots if you you know according to figure and there's a great behind the scenes video of how this all came together too they train the robots on how to jump off this platform all right so there's behind the scenes video of these robots autonomously jumping off a platform. And then of course, when they're in Poland, they don't, they're jumping into a vat of lava and melting themselves.

4:03But there's people who actually felt bad for the robots. Again, there's people who are saying this was a waste of money, not only for the humanoids, right? All the, all the figure two humanoids, but also the production value of, of making this happen. And again, if you're just like, just push that stuff aside, like that's should be, I think in this case, a separate conversation because there's a lot of marketing videos from robotics companies over the years that you could say were a waste of money, right? This is just hands down. I think it's the best video I've ever, ever seen. Great, great. It's so fascinating.

4:37Yeah. Great, great entertainment. You know, I'm absolutely sure they didn't melt down every figure too. They had to save a couple for the museum in the future, which they'll want to have. But, you know, I haven't been through this process of the, you know, decommissioning old, old robots. In fact, I was, uh, some, uh, reason in the old, old depth ones for sale showed up on my feed, uh, the other day when I was, uh, surfing the web, those old robots still, you know, for sale, but those are production machines here. You're talking about prototypes, right? So it's the same thing for every company.

5:12You got all these prototype machines. You only need a few. And what do you do with the rest? They're, they're They're just going to sit as junk in the corner. I've seen it too many times in my career. So I think they got great production value out of this. As you said, social media is going crazy. So a ton of exposure, a ton of conversations. And, you know, it's interesting when you talk about people being, how the robots feel. We've talked about this many times in the past about, you know, even the dumber aspects of, aspects of dumber robots, like just mobile robots a decade ago. You know, do we bully the robots?

5:47What does the robot feel is being bullied? So, you know, that's a great part of this whole evolution for robotics is to have those sort of conversations about what robotics mean to us in society going forward. And I think that it's sparked that conversation. And it's real interesting to follow, you know, what people think about this situation. Yeah. And again, there's go watch the videos, I think three and a half minutes long. There's another behind the scenes video that's incredible as well. But I think proven it's not AI. Yeah, this is legit. And I wanted to shout out one specific, again, the comments are all over the place with this.

6:23But I thought Brendan Shulman from Boston Dynamics had the best comment about this. He said, again, Brendan does a lot of work with government leaders and trying to educate government leaders about policies and different natures like that. He did so at DJI. He's doing it now with Boston Dynamics and legged robots. He'll be speaking at RoboBusiness later this month. But he said, quote, on Twitter, spent the past five years explaining to government leaders in communities that advanced robots are not the Terminator. And then he's got the emoji man shrugging his shoulders. And it's just I thought that was pretty incredible.

6:58So awesome video. Go check it out. And if you haven't seen it, we'll make sure to link to it in the show notes. But we do have a great show for you folks today. Our guest coming up later on in the show is Miguel Garcias Moreno, product marketing manager for AMRs at Omron, which is where you used to work, Mike. So I assume you guys will be talking mobile robots today. Exactly. A little bit of a walk down memory lane for me. Indeed, I was responsible for the mobile robot products and business at Adept before we sold the company to Omron. Miguel now has responsibility for the mobile robot products in Europe.

7:31So we're going to learn about the latest Omron mobile robots and the state of the mobile robot market in Europe. Who had to cut who off in this conversation? Did he have to shut you up? Did you have to shut him up? I mean, this is what strap in folks. Is this a five hour episode of the robot report podcast? Yeah, no. Great stuff. So we'll play that later on. We'll also recap some of the other news stories this week. And before we do that, just plugging robo business, which is coming up quick. Mike 13, sorry, 19 days away coming up October 20th and 21st out in Santa Clara, California. Of course, our, as you've heard us say, our 20th anniversary show will have over 2000 people, over 100 exhibitors on the show floor.

8:11talking all things commercial robotics development, talking AI, humanoids, outdoor robots, all sorts of technical and business challenges related to developing robots. We'll have over 70 speakers on our stages, really sharing lessons that they've learned, building their businesses and deploying their robots in the field. So I would love to have you there. You can go see the agenda. It's basically done at robobusiness.com. And again, make sure you stay tuned to the end of the show where we'll share a discount code that's exclusively for you, our loyal podcast listeners, so that if you're coming to the show, we'll help you save a couple bucks on your conference passes.

8:49Again, Robo Business 20th anniversary show coming up October 20th and 21st out in Santa Clara. Hope to see everybody there. On to the news of the week. And we got you covered with all the latest news and information with our network of websites. Check us out at The Robot Report, an automated warehouse. Make sure you follow us on social media. Sign up for our weekly newsletters so you never miss a beat. This one we just dropped earlier today. Boston Dynamics released a new robot hand for the Atlas Humanoid. And it's got a unique design, Mike. We're seeing all these humanoid companies, all these other robot hand companies come out with dexterous five-fingered robot hands.

9:26Boston Dynamics, with this one, they decided to drop the pinky on this new hand. It's got four fingers, so a pretty unique design. Well, isn't that high society? They got to drop the pinky. Yeah. No reason to use it. So, you know, and again, they're actually, you know, increased from the original prototype, which had three fingers. So somewhere they've decided to optimize between three and five and four is that number. So that was also odd because the thumb could move. They could move their thumb around. Right. That's right. So they've got they've got some options there. So, yeah, it isn't it is an interesting story about the design process.

10:00Great, great discussion there. and so you know it's now got 13 degrees of freedom if i got that right up from the the seven degree of freedom which was the previous hand and you know trying trying to as you just described move from just broad gripping or grasping to more dexterous manipulation and tool usage which they believe you know the extra hand finger is useful for grabbing and moving things there so if you watch the video you know the robots manipulating screws and nuts and some some fine manipulation. So I think that's interesting is along with the discussion about, you know, why not, uh, the pinky within the complexity that it did one more digit brings, you know, into the, to the system.

10:44So, you know, I think it's all very interesting and, uh, um, I hope you guys will join me a webinar later in the month, uh, on motion control where I'm going to bring in a panel of, uh, of humanoid hand developers. I didn't extend one to, to Boston Dynamics. Maybe I'll go see if I can recruit one of those folks for this panel to talk about all this intricacies of what it takes for motion control for a hand. Yeah, they talked about the trade-offs, right? If they were to add the pinky, just the complexities with the extra parts and the power and all the weight, all that kind of stuff added to it.

11:18And they decided that it wasn't necessary to have the pinky in there. And there's a great story, Brianna wrote about it a little bit in the piece today, where they actually had Boston Dynamics engineers taping their pinky finger in their ring finger together. So it was like one large finger, right? So these people only had essentially four fingers for the day, walking around just living normal life in a day at Boston Dynamics with only four digits on their hand. And their job was to report back what they weren't able to do by tying their pinky and their ring fingers together. And that helped them.

11:50I think they already had a hunch that they obviously didn't really think that the pinky was necessary. And that helped them come to that conclusion, which is kind of fun. But there's great, I don't think this is in our piece, but it's in a blog that Boston Dynamics also wrote about the unveiling of this hand. And Alberto Rodriguez, I think is the one who got into this talking about the five finger dexterous hands and how none of them are ready. And I remember Jonathan Hurst recently wrote about this as well in the launch of Digit 5. Digit 5 does not have a dexterous hand. It's a parallel jaw gripper, And he also said the same thing, that these five-fingered hands are not reliable enough or they're way too expensive.

12:33And oftentimes, it's both of those combined. And Alberto kind of gets into that same theory or same idea, a conclusion in this video describing the new four-fingered robot hand for Atlas. So interesting to hear that from them. I mean, two very highly capable companies that have been working on this stuff for quite some time saying that these types of hands are just nowhere near being ready. It's an interesting debate. And maybe one we got to continue beyond this is, you know, just how complex the hands need to be. And I think that's good that market's going to decide by, you know, the applications that these things get deployed into.

13:09And again, the mean time between repair has been the one thing that I've sort of noted about humanoid hand design is that they're so complex, you're always repairing or fixing them from what I hear from folks. So, you know, the less complex, the longer it's going to run, the less time you're going to need to spend, you know, fixing things. So that's where we are today. Yeah, we're going to have a talk at Robo Business on dexterous humanoid hands. and it's from a company, it's more about a tendon-based approach to developing these robot hands. If you've seen, I think it was 1X technology, they created a lot of buzz with their recent robot hand that they released that was all tendon-based.

13:49And again, some people love them, some people say it won't work. I don't think anybody knows at this point in time, which is why it's one of the more fascinating discussions. But cool stuff there, new four-fingered robot hand for Atlas from our friends over at Boston Dynamics. Moving forward here, Mike, an interesting robot launched this week, Flourish One, a Raspberry Pi-powered humanoid that's built for home applications. And they'll also be at RoboBusiness in the startup alley. But why don't you tell us about this robot? Yeah, I reported on this story this week. One of the things I love about this story is the scrappy startup arc.

14:25These guys launched the company in January, three people across two continents building this idea. Here we are in October, and they are launching this week, selling the first 50 units of this, which they want to begin production of by Christmas. Today, October 1st, when we're recording this, the company is tripled in size. They hired 10 new people today, brought them on. I heard what's happening today. So they are gearing up to begin building these things. Just to break down the story, it's a home robot. It's a wheeled robot. It has two arms and it's real simple parallel jaw grippers. So they have really tried to simplify all aspects of this.

15:17The unit that you'll see in the video looks 3D printed. They got to move beyond that, I think, for their production version. But here's the bottom line. They're pricing this at$3 ,555. And in talking to the company about this, that decision about putting a Raspberry Pi in this was critical to reaching that price list. Because as he said, if they were to put a NVIDIA processor in, it would immediately double, triple the price right there, just having the higher powered compute in it. So their strategy, of course, is to split where things get processed. We talk about that in the story, you know, between the cloud for training models that are then, you know, again, run locally on the system.

16:03So, you know, another great, interesting startup story, short arc here to market. And we'll be following them, see how they're successful and looking forward to seeing them at RoboBusiness in a couple of weeks. Yeah, adorable robot. I mean, it's got a little wearing a little hat on its head. It looks like, right? Very, very, very fashionable design. So yeah, we'll see him at RoboBusiness here in a few weeks. Moving forward, final story here. Amazon investing another$100 million pocket change for them in a new manufacturing facility, Mike, in Indiana. Almost a 600 ,000 square foot advanced manufacturing facility in Greenwood, Indiana, scheduled to launch sometime in 2028.

16:47It's going to create hundreds of jobs, but looking to build, what, some robots over there? Yeah, you imagine so. Again, they now have robots handling product assisting 75 % of their global customer orders now. I think that's going to continue if they're going to continue to grow. And so they've got to have somewhere to build them. I'm glad they're building them in the middle of the U.S., right? So that's amazing. And I think they're, again, a great company to look towards from the production here because we talk about them being one of the biggest robot companies, even though they don't sell them in the general market, right?

17:27So it's a great example. There was any robot company coveted them as a customer throughout the years. But again, for them, the smart move was to build them all internally. And we've had lots of Amazon folks come through the summit over the years, gotten to know them. They've got a real smart team over there. It's interesting to see that they're making this next step from a production standpoint. Yeah, great, crazy stuff from Amazon as always. And we'll have Bhavna Chandra Shikhar. She's a senior manager of applied science at Amazon Robotics. She's going to be on a keynote panel on the end of the first day about AI and production robots.

18:06So we're not interested in exploring AI and research labs, Mike. We're looking at how these major robotics companies thinking about AI, whether it's in the development process, whether it's on the factory floor, how are they using it in production? So we have Bhavna from Amazon Robotics. We got ABB Robotics. We have Teradyne. We have Collaborative Robotics. And we have, who else do we have? Cambridge Consultants is on that as well. So some amazing companies exploring how AI is being used in production robots. Be moderated by the great Eugene Dimitri on the end of the first day. And then Bafna is also our Women in Robotics luncheon speaker.

18:42So she'll be sitting down for a fireside chat on the afternoon of October 20th with Joy Sidopoulos from Mass Robotics just to talk about her career, how she's got to Amazon Robotics, what she's been building there, what are the challenges. So it should be fun stuff there. But that's going to do it for the news section. Again, we have you folks covered with our network of websites. Check us out at The Robot Report in Automated Warehouse. Make sure you follow us on social media. Make sure you sign up for our newsletters so you never miss a beat. All right, on to the featured interview. Again, we're going to talk to Miguel Garcia's Moreno, Product Marketing Manager for Autonomous Mobile Robots at Amron.

19:22Mike, why don't you set this up for us? Yeah, this is a conversation I had with Miguel a month ago. It was actually the week before the F1 race in Madrid. He lives in Madrid. Unfortunately, not a big F1 fan. So we don't talk about cars in this one, but we did talk about mobile robots and the European market. Again, a great check in there. And we're going to preview the new LD150 and LD300 robots, which they are launching shortly. So let's hear the interview with Miguel now.

19:57Well, Gene, on the show today, I want to welcome Miguel Garces Moreno. He's the EMEA Robotics Product Marketing Manager for Omron. Miguel, welcome to the show. Well, thank you very much. And it's a pleasure to be here. Why don't you start by telling us a little bit about your product responsibilities at Omron? Yes. So, well, I've been a long time in Omron. So I've been working for already 16 years. I started as a, I mean, I'm an industrial engineer. So I started as a technical person, usually mainly around robotics. At the beginning in Spain, but since seven years ago, I moved to the European marketing department and as a product marketing manager, mainly for mobile robots.

20:48But now I'm leading the product marketing managers in the robotics department here in the HEMIA region for all robots that we have. So mobile, collaborative, and industrial robots.

20:59Miguel Garces Moreno: Well, can you tell us a little bit about the state of robotics in Europe? It's obviously one of the top regions in the world for industrial automation. But as with everywhere, it is constantly changing. What are you seeing from your seat? Are there certain trends or developments this year that you can share with us that you're observing? Well, still we see growth year by year and we expect the future that will remain the same. Of course, not in the same way as we saw in the past. For example, I said that I started around 15 years ago. and at that moment the group was in the classic robot arms so the scattered robots the articulated robots delta robots now even if those are still growing we see the biggest growth in the collaborative ones and especially the emrs i would say that in general in europe we see this growth but especially in the countries that actually are the ones that we are we are more focused like Germany, UK, France, Spain, or Italy, they are continuing growing.

22:18But also others like the Nordisk or like Poland, for instance. But it doesn't mean that we are not struggling. Of course, we are. Due to different factors. So, for instance, something that we are seeing is different competitors as what we had in the past. So now we have a lot of brands that are coming from other parts of the world, like China, for instance, that it was not so typical in the past. Okay, so in the past, there were few, for instance, for AMRs, there were few brands. We were a few companies in the world in order to offer AMRs. Now, there are a lot. So it's a different topic. In the past, there was a clear definition on the differences between AGVs and AMRs.

23:20Now, AGVs are becoming more AMRs. AMRs are trying to act as an AGV sometime. time. So it's changing. It's changing a lot, and it's changing a lot in a few years. So this is something that, of course, we need to adapt.

23:38Miguel Garces Moreno: You mentioned, obviously, there's a lot of international and global competition, particularly from China. And in the US, we've been reacting to that competition by erecting tariffs, which cause different effects. Is Europe looking at similar moves in terms of of dealing with competition? What we are trying to do basically is, for instance, in the AMR side, but also in UX robots and cobots, is trying to avoid the comparison just by hardware. So we try not to compete on price because this is really, really difficult, but we try to compete on the quality of the robots and also on the software. So for instance, on the navigation systems, on the fleet management, I mean, this is where we are trying to do in order to really be competitive with these other brands that are more focused on price and more focused on hardware.

24:38So, yeah, I think that this is a challenge that on Rockbat or also the companies have and that we are trying to focus on different aspects.

24:50Miguel Garces Moreno: And Miguel, you mentioned that there are some parts that are struggling. Are there particular industries or markets that are having difficulty right now in terms of automation? Yes, again, it's changing. So as I said in the past, like 15 years ago, automotive was the big one. And now we can see that there are investments in other industries. So automotive started with robotics many years ago, and factories are well-automatized. Price is very important. The economical situations affect their customers as well. And even many factories are not well-organized to add robots, like, for instance, the AMRs.

25:43It doesn't mean that there are no investments in automotive. But if we look at other industries, we see bigger investments. like for instance pharma pharma i think that well we are we are now growing more than the past but we expect that we'll continue growing even more why because well laboratories started in the last years to to automatize their factories their laboratories they usually have the capacity to invest in terms of budget. And the applications, but applications are a little bit different. So we are talking about the small spaces, strict regulations, clean room, ESD, these kinds of things that are different.

26:33But we see a big potential in this industry that in the past it was more difficult.

26:39Miguel Garces Moreno: You anticipated my next question. I was going to ask him about what applications are hot or not. and it sounds like there's a lot of opportunity for manipulation based on what you're saying. Yeah, exactly. So, for instance, in pharma, we see applications like, well, moving parts to do an inspection or a random inspection that they need to do from time to time. We see applications not only in pharma, but with an automotive or other markets about measurements that they need flexibility because it's not possible to have a lot of fixed stations in order to have a robot on its station. So for instance, it's better to have a mobile robot that can move conveyor or a lifter or a collaborative robot on top.

27:36So in this case, it adds flexibility to the application. And it reduces the investment because, well, maybe with one robot you can do what you need to do with different robots in different parts of the factory.

27:50Miguel Garces Moreno: I was going to ask about macroeconomic factors. Obviously, we hear a lot about labor shortages and that. But are there other factors as well as inflation or government subsidies or demand for specific types of products or electrification? Do those influence the adoption of these types of robots in Europe? Yes. So basically, in the past year, we have been struggling. And I think that every company is having the same situation, first with political situations around the world, but also with the wars that we have in the Middle East. So for instance, the manufacturing processes are more complex. the logistic processes as well.

28:39We have supply chain issues, shortage of components. So this increases the prices of the product, the prices of transportation. So this is something that we need to handle and it creates special difficulties. And what we can say is that the companies are delaying their projects because there is some instability. So they prefer not to... So we see now that it's changing a little bit, but last year we saw a lot of projects that were delayed because they preferred not to invest at that time. So this is an issue that we have. The other one that you said about the lack of people who are able to work in the factories, yeah this is a this is an actual issue and this is one of the reasons why companies want to want to add robots in the in their factories well especially some companies that they have peaks of production so we could say that as we all know in christmas maybe we can have some peaks in the food and beverage market or in summer, this kind of seasons, there are some peaks and it's not easy for companies to hire people just for some short period.

30:05So by having robots and the flexibility to add and remove robots from the production lines, this is something that it's an opportunity for robotics companies, of course. Well, thanks for giving us that snapshot. Again, you know, we're always interested to hear from folks around the world. And again, you're representing the picture in Europe and we are certainly very familiar with what's going on in North America. I want to turn the conversation over to some new products. I always love talking about new products, mobile robots, especially near and dear to my heart. And you guys recently announced, showed the first new generation of your LD series robots at Automate this year.

30:52I wasn't able to go. Why don't you give us an update on the announcement with the new LD series robots? What's new there to the product line and a little bit about what that means for opportunities. We are actually really excited about this coming product because well the the ld90 and 60 90 and 250 have been our core product in robotics in the past many years so this is basically the evolution of the ld90 and 250 so we are going to launch the ld150 and 300 um ld150 is basically the evolution of the ld90 and 300 is the evolution of the of the 250 And well, the plan is still the same as we informed in Automate in the US some months ago.

31:50We already have some data in our website and we will send the announcement very soon. So the goal is to start shipping before the end of this year and the project is now in the final phase. So we are basically collecting all the information, preparing the announcement and so on. So, yes, we are really excited about this new product. So, what does it mean for the current generation to keep the 60 and 90 products in the product line? Or do they become superseded by the 150 for those lower payload applications? Yes, exactly. So, we already announced the discontinuation of the LD60, 90, and 250. and basically because we will be compatible with the current robots.

32:45So for instance, it would be possible to have a mixed fleet between current generation of the LDs and the next generation of the LDs. So the software is the same. The fleet manager will be able to control both and actually it will be possible with adaptation plates to add the you know that every amr that we sell is just a platform but there is a system integrator who needs to add the something on top this something could be a conveyor could be a lifter could be a collaborative robot or whatever so and it will be possible to adapt the existing toppers to the new LD150 and 300. So yes, this is the target.

33:35Well, basically the reality is that LD90 and 250, so the current LD series were developed many years ago. So before the other touch acquisition by Onron. And we have learned a lot in these years. So in these years, we released the HD1500, we released the MD series, we incorporated a lot of things, especially related to navigation, but also safety. So what we are doing is to keep the strengths of the LD9 10 to 50 at our, I would say, mainly the dimensions, because they are very small. So it's, I was talking before about the pharma applications. in pharma dimensions are not too big so they need small robots so what we are doing is to release the these small robots but with the technology that we have in your robots that like for instance the md series so for instance we have we will have the possibility to have 360 safety coverage we will have the possibility to have different safety zones when the robot is going faster or slower or sending the sounds based on the directions so yes this is the this is the well i guess i have a little bit of tear in my eye here because the ld90 was my baby that was the last product that i released when i was leading the mobile business at adept before the acquisition.

35:07So end of an era for this product line, but it's very cool to see this next generation come out. So just back to the specs a little bit, the new product, because you've got a lot of partners who've built toppers for that original LD series. Is it bigger? So just a little bit on some of the differential specs for the robot in terms of the platform size for toppers. give us just a quick reminder of what some of the changes are from the physical specs of the interfaces for, you know, toppers and the rest for folks that might be supporting that current generation. And then, you know, inside the box, new compute.

35:52And you mentioned just briefly some new sensors there. So some new capabilities for opening up a whole new class of generation of applications. Yeah, as I said, the goal was to keep the strengths of the current generation, like the software, like the navigation, safety, and especially dimensions, but to add everything that we learned. So, for instance, what we incorporated is what we are going to incorporate, and we did on the MDs and HDs, is a PLC insight. and this PLC insight is accessible by the system integrators. So you know that, as I said, we develop, we supply only the platform, but there are a lot of integration to do on top.

36:39So what we want is to provide possibilities to system integrators to really create the robot that they need for the specific application. So this PLC insight creates a lot of opportunities for the system integrators to do their final machine. But also, we will have the possibility, as I said, to have 360 safety coverage, to have reverse and forward navigation at full speed with standard safety. So this is something that we didn't have in the current LD series. The robot will be shorter, so the height will be lower. and this is especially important for system intruditors because for instance in order to add a conveyor on top the lower the robot is the better is for the system intruditor to add whatever that they need to add like sensors or a plc or whatever that they could add but we are also integrating the integrating wireless charging so we will not have the docking station that we had with contact charging nowadays.

37:53We'll have fast charging. So for instance, we are going from, I don't have the exact data, but it's around four hours of charging time that we have today in LD90 and 250. And we will go to around 30 minutes in the new series. So this is quite important for the number of robots that could be necessary in a fleet. and something that we are also adding is serviceability and maintenance so you say that you you know very well the ld90 so you know that inside basically there is a core and everything is inside of the core so it's basically a black boss this is nice in some aspects but for service and for repairs, for instance, is not so good.

38:44So what we are doing is that we don't have this core anymore, so we have different parts. And actually, it will be possible to remove from the side of the robot. So for services, this is great. It will not be necessary to remove the top of the robot. Oh, nice. Nowadays, this is based on the top. It could be quite difficult. So in the future, it will not be necessary anymore. And what have you guys learned about safety in the last 10 years? How has safety improved with this generation of AMR? I'm specifically talking about its ability to do obstacle detection. I mean, of course, the LD series had a single planar, LIDAR, safety LIDAR for object detection.

39:31I don't believe I saw 3D cameras. You're not using 3D cameras. You're still using LIDAR, right? We tried. Actually, this was something that we tested, and the first idea was to actually have 3D cameras. But the reality is that after testing, we realized that the safety lidars are more reliable. And in terms of navigation, we believe that it's a better technology for now. What we saw is that 3D cameras still are struggling a lot with external conditions, like lights, for instance. So what we decided is that for navigation, it is going to work with safety lidars. But it will be possible for obstacle detection to add...

40:22Actually, it is possible already in the current robots. it is possible to add a 3D sensor in order to have obstacle detection above the safety ladder. So this is something that is nowadays already possible. And in the past, we could only add the side lasers that are basically lasers that are vertical planes. So we could somehow detect obstacles above and below the main laser. but depending on the application this was not enough so now it is possible to add a 3D sensor it's configurable from the mobile planner which is the software that we have for the mobile robots and it's fully integrated and we can monitor the laser we can monitor everything so in general it's something that we improved but not only that i would say that in the past years we have improved in terms of safety a lot so some examples are for instance that we added i've seen five years ago already a dynamic obstacle detection so for instance in the past there is a a person or a forklift or whatever that it's going to stay in the vision of the robot.

41:53In the past, the robot was not detecting if this vehicle or person was moving. Now it's detecting that it's moving, so it predicts the movement, so it can change based on the movement of the obstacle. So this is something that we added. And actually it creates a lot of improvements in terms of cycle time because we have less stops that we had in the past. But some other things that we have added, for instance, is that in the LDs we have, I think, eight safety sectors based on the speed. but now with the with the new robots and with the with the newer robots that we already launched we have i think around 100 sectors so based on speed based on the direction so if the robot is turning right the safety areas are turning right as well based on if it's going backwards so there a lot of differences and actually it's also possible to have a dual set of safety zones I put the most clear example if we are we have an application that is a car transporter and usually the car is bigger than the robot itself so the safety area should be different when the robot has the card than when the robot doesn't have the card.

43:22So we have now safety IOs in order to really detect in a safe way if we have the card or not. And we completely change the safety configuration based on that. So a lot of these are things that we have been learning and adding in the past, I don't know, five to six years. Last question on sort of the mobile product line with this new generation. You know, with the growth and, you know, maturity of AI-based applications, you know, the need for edge compute to process AI models for things. Is that possible with you talked about the new processing unit that's embedded here? Or if you wanted to do some of that perception with AI-based models, would you need to maybe deploy another compute device on the topper or in the payload that's on top of the robot?

44:18It is, of course. Actually, our AMRs are already completely autonomous. They take all the decisions on their own. So they don't need to connect to any fleet manager or server or anything. So, for instance, if we have a Wi-Fi issue, the robot will continue moving. Of course, it will not send anything, but it will be completely moving and be completely autonomous. In terms of AI, yes, I think that actually we are already adding some autonomy to the robot in order to take decisions. So, for instance, the robot could decide to take a different path based on the historical data. so if the robot knows that usually he is taking the path one or the path whatever because in the end they can move based on the map in the direction that they want if historically it's having issues on that path then it could change and after several times it could decide to go on a different path so we are already starting step by step but I'm sure that in the future we will start adding more AI to the robots.

45:32I would say for the navigation, for sure.

45:36Miguel Garces Moreno: On another note, Miguel, you mentioned earlier mobile manipulation, and Omron recently announced its higher payload TMS series for some power limited arms and updated TMFlow software. It sounds like these COBOT arms could be used in mobile manipulation setups when they're on top of the LD or HD series mobile robots. Are you actively deploying mobile manipulators yourselves? Are you working with integrators? Are you combining your AMRs and your COBOT arms? we think that this mobile manipulator manipulator what we call the the moma we think that it's it has a a great future and actually you will see that we are using it in almost every events every marketing action so and it's quite successful we have several applications with with the MoMA.

46:40But the point is that every applications are different. So it is really difficult for us to really design a MoMA, mobile manipulator, that we can sell to the market as one product. So the strategy that we have now is that we provide the guidelines in order to help the system integrators to do it. Why? Because we have several AMRs, but we have a lot of cobots. So we have co-watch with a camera, without camera. We have, I think that, probably 50 part numbers. So it's really difficult to create one mobile manipulator. And actually, as I said, every applications are completely different. So we prefer to rely on system integrators in order to do that.

47:31But we know that it's complex. It's not something easy to create a MoMA. they need to have in mind a lot of safety aspects. So we are helping a lot. We have guides in order to help the system integrators. And we have examples. So this is the strategy that we are following for now.

47:55Miguel Garces Moreno: And can you give an example of some of the applications? Because there is a diverse range. But what are some of the applications that Amran's MoMA can be used for? Yeah. So we've deployed a lot of applications already with the MoMA. For instance, quality inspection. There is a public case that we have in trains that the robot is inspecting the panels of the train. we have measuring systems in automotive manipulation in laboratories mass intending flexible palletizers where the pallet is not going to be always in the same place we have even some strange combinations like for instance we have an md with two cobots on top so So the double head MoMA that we call, that one of the cobots is for inspection and the other one is for manipulation.

48:58So multiple applications that we can do with MoMA.

49:04Miguel Garces Moreno: And are you seeing a lot of, as these manipulators go out into the market, and it sounds like they can do a lot of different things, are you seeing demand increasing as people become aware? For sure. Actually, in the past, when we started to promote it, that was maybe six years ago, something like that. It was so everybody liked the idea, but it took a lot of time for customers to really invest on the mobile manipulators. So in the past, basically, we had a lot of activities and demos and proof of concept for that. But now, yes, we see that the demand is quite higher. And we also see in our system integrators that they are investing in designs and they are going to exhibitions in order to show the mobile manipulators.

49:55So, yes, we see a lot of demand. In the world of humanoids, I think that mobile manipulation is an interesting differentiator for Armrun, given the classic product lines that breed those opportunities. So that's really, I think, a very interesting product space that we're going to follow for you guys. But sort of just wrap things up on other product lines. You guys have had a ton of other smaller product lines, new mast on your cart moving, AMR, and a few other things. So any other sort of interesting, from your perspective, product announcements over the last year that since the last time we've caught up with you guys?

50:38So we launched one year ago, more or less, a little bit more. Maybe we want to have the OL450S. That was the first, not the first, because in the past we had the car transporter, but it's the only ready to use robot that we have now. So this is a robot that is a complete different model than the one that we have now. I mentioned that we usually supply only the platform. in this case is completely different. So the OL450S is a robot for car transporters, for car movements, and it comes with the integrated lifter. So basically the system integrator will be focused on the deployment of the robot, but they don't need to create anything on top.

51:26So yeah, this is something that we recently launched. It's a complete robot. and well for the future who knows if we are going to to to continue in this in this path or not but it could happen that we continue looking for a really two robots yeah well i mean i guess i was going to try to push you on that perspective i mean looking ahead now into 2027 and again i know we've got some other upcoming product announcements you haven't made public yet, but where do you see the innovation happening based on what customers are telling you and the opportunities you see in those various applications that you described for us at the top of the show?

52:14Is there anything else you can hint at in terms of, you know, where you think this segment of the market is moving? Yeah, for AMRs, we are just going to launch the LD15300. So this is basically a huge project that we started years ago and one we are finishing now. So now we are going to finish it end of this year. So of course it's time to start thinking about all the robots. There are different opportunities to continue expanding the portfolio. There are opportunities like assignments on several times in pharma. So we are evaluating what we could do maybe in order to have specific robots for specific industries or robots ready to use for bigger payloads, these kind of things.

53:14Not clear yet, but of course we are evaluating. What is clear now is that we need to continue improving the software. As I said, the hardware in the AMRC is important, but I said at the beginning that the AGVs are becoming AMRs and AMRs are starting to work as AGVs sometimes. So we need to differentiate with the software. And we always say that the best of the AMRs in OnRona is the navigation and the fleet management. So we need to continue working on this direction and the roadmap in the short term. I'm sure that it's about the software improvements. There are, for instance, some topics that are starting to be very popular, like for instance interoperability.

54:05So having different brands working under the same fleet, there are different initiatives. There is one in Europe, another one in Asia, another one in America, and there is no standard yet. So we are working on ways to facilitate the end users and the system in Toritos how to do that. We recently launched a piece of software in order to monitor different vehicles, or not vehicles, or manual or driving vehicles, for instance, in order to monitor them in our software, in our fleet manager, and to allow our robots to act based on what other vehicles that are not on run could do. So this is something that we want to progress and we want to expand on this direction that is really, really popular.

55:03And I would say that every month we get some questions about these kind of things. Well, we've covered the interoperability initiatives, whether it's VDA 5050 in Europe or the mass robotics efforts, as well as the in-orbit demo at Automate this year.

55:22Miguel Garces Moreno: And I think they had an Omron roadmap as part of that. So, you know, definitely it's interesting to see that expanding. Where does AI fit into Omron's mobile robotics roadmap going forward? because you talk about refinements in software and obviously ai is a topic of a lot of conversations right now is it for path planning and navigation is it for protective maintenance is for object recognition is it for user interaction or that higher level of fleet management that you just mentioned where do you see omron you know as it moves as it expands from classic automation into software-defined warehouses and factories.

56:06Miguel Garces Moreno: Where do you see it focusing on AI? Yeah, still under investigation, but as I said, our AMS can already take some decisions by themselves. But what we see is AI is very interesting for path planning, and we see that AI could help a lot in order to allow the robot to take better decisions. And actually, as I said, the navigation is one of the core of our mobile robots. Of course, predictive maintenance is also important because this is a way to drastically reduce the downtime. So for sure, I'm sure that we are going to work on that direction as well. But going back to the mobile manipulator, adding a cobot on top with an integrated camera and AI can be easily used for object recognition, quality.

57:10So this for sure will be the first step. And this is something that is already coming in the short future.

57:19Miguel Garces Moreno: Well, and speaking of physical AI, you mentioned the five manual manipulation or mobile manipulator that you've had. What do you think or what does Amaran think about all the interest now in humanoids and physical AI? Is it something that you're involved in or is it something that you think, OK, our mobile manipulators are actually sufficient for current or near future needs? Are you looking at humanoids? Not for now. We know that human aids are now very popular and they are in every fairs and exhibitions. But we think that for now, for the real factories, it's better to have a robot on wheels than a robot on legs.

58:07We think that current factories are based on that robots can go on wheels. they are not based on that we could have humanoids and the reality is that well what we see is that there are a lot of innovations related to humanoids but at the moment they are not fully stable and reliable that in order to really be deployed in factories that really need to be safe, to be on time. So for now, we are not focused on organized robots. Of course, let's say in some years, but it's not something that is in the robot now. Well, thanks for sharing that. We had to ask you that question anyways because we're always curious about what's going on on that side of it.

59:07Before I let you go, Omron and Adept before built, you know, their success out of the integration channels, you've already talked about in the conversation, the fact that, you know, the integration channel does the work of bringing all the parts and bits together for the actual customers, you know, and application. And sounds like that strategy continues to live going forward, your dependence on the channel. But just sort of as the last word, talk to us a bit about some of the, you know, the ecosystem some partnerships and how that helps clients deploy faster and achieve their end goals. Yeah, our partners are the key elements in the whole process.

59:50So we are not experts on developing platforms, navigation, fleet management, and automation systems. But the AMR applications are very different to each other. This is actually why we develop only the platform. So our system integrators are able to adapt this platform to the needs of the customer. So not only by creating the top of the robot, but as I said, it could be very, very different. Even if we say a conveyor, it could be a double conveyor. It could be a conveyor for pallets, a conveyor for boxes, a conveyor with one or two or three sensors. There are many, many aspects that could define what the top of the robot could be.

1:00:36but also to integrate the the robots the fleet of the robots into the factory systems so to connect to the erp in order to send the jobs to the fleet or to to have to design the fixed stations that will connect to the robots later to create this communication that well there are a lot of a lot of aspects that a system in territory is fully needed. And also, it's also important that we are, as I said, we are experts on developing technology, but we have system in territory in our ecosystem that are aspects on specific industries. Like we have system in territory that are specialized in laboratories with all the regulations and all the difficulties that they have.

1:01:31We have system operators that are experts on hospitals. So they had a fleet of robots in a hospital. We have an example of a hospital with eight floors and the robots are entering into the elevator. They are calling the elevator. They are entering and sharing the space with people that it's not even, that it's public. so they are not even the workers so there are a lot of things that we don't have the expertise and our system have so yes at the moment our model is to continue expanding this ecosystem and actually what we are trying is in Europe to have in every country to have system integrators in order to be able to to provide this expertise.

1:02:28Miguel, I want to thank you for coming on the show today, giving us a snapshot update of what's going on with Omron, specifically in Europe. So thanks for sharing that. Thanks for being here and look forward to following your success in the future. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure.

1:02:49Interesting stuff there from Miguel. You know, we obviously don't live in Europe, Mike, But always fun to get a firsthand perspective on the mobile robotics market over there, as you said in the piece there. But it seems like AMRs are growing. Competition is intensifying. Automotive remains important. Pharma, an emerging opportunity in the AMR space. Some cool stuff there from Miguel. What was some of your takeaways? Yeah, I wanted to come back to my perspective that Omron and Mir, I think, are two of the key, what I would call robotics, mobile robotics platforms, systems that don't do anything out of the box but need another payload built on top of them.

1:03:28And that's exactly how we sold them 10 years ago, still finding market opportunities for integrators to configure and build a specific payload on top of the robots to go do some task delivery or material handling, what have you. So, you know, big play for system integrators in this go to market for them, as well as a strong third party opportunity to design and produce those payloads, the toppers that go on top. So that's also evolved. You know, the third thing we talked about as well is that software remains a key differentiator. We talk about this multiple times throughout the year, Steve, that the navigation fleet management opportunity for a variety of companies.

1:04:12now that heterogeneous fleets are becoming a real thing for mobile robots. So we, again, talked about those pressures. And, you know, lastly, with the introduction of the new LD-150 and the LD-300, it's a little bit poignant for me. And the fact that they're sunsetting or end-of-lifing, I don't think they're going to drop them off any platforms and, you know, scrap metal. But the LD60 and LD90 are two robots that I introduced to the market 10 years ago when I was managing the business. So sort of end of an era. So bookended the end of the era here for those products for me and looking forward to seeing the success with their LD150 and 300 robots going forward.

1:04:54Did you need a moment in the interview when he told you that? Did you have to take a breather? You should connect him with Brett. Maybe they could sunset him over in Poland. Liquid hot magma, which was awesome. Good stuff there. Thanks again to Miguel. All right. That's going to do it for the show. But before we go again, a final reminder about Robo Business, our 20th anniversary show coming up October 20th and 21st out in Santa Clara, California, talking all things commercial robotics development and building and scaling and deploying robots in the field. we'll have over 2 ,000 people over 100 exhibitors on the show floor and again we want to help you guys save some money we understand the ask of getting you folks to the show it's not easy everybody's super busy and everybody's who's listened to this podcast for 264 episodes we thank you for that and want to help you save 15 % off your tickets so enter the code ROBO15 ROBO15 at checkout you'll save 15 % off your conference passes for RoboBusiness.

1:05:57Again, we're going to have 70 plus people on our stages over the course of the two days. I'm kicking things off with a future of robotics panel, Mike. We're going to have Rodney Brooks, Ken Goldberg, Jonathan Hurst. Jonathan said he wants it to get a little spicy. I think he probably disagrees with Rodney and Ken on some things, which is great, right? That's what we need. We don't want everybody to agree, but - That alone may be worth the price of admission. I think so. But those are the types of folks that we have here. Legends of robotics and people who have spent decades deploying, trying to deploy, learning lessons in the field.

1:06:31So go check out robobusiness.com, buy your tickets and enter the code ROBO15 at checkout. You'll save 15 % off your tickets. And again, we really hope to see everybody out at Robo Business October 20th and 21st out in Santa Clara, California, as we celebrate 20 years of helping the global robotics community. And that's going to do it. Episode 264 of the program. Thanks again to everybody for tuning into the show. Thanks to Miguel Garcias Moreno for joining us on the show today. New episodes of the Robot Report podcast drop each week. You can find us anywhere you listen to your podcast. Please subscribe, leave us a rating, give us a review.

1:07:09This episode was produced by Mike Oitzman and edited by Tyler Kubisti. Our executive producer is Amanda Buhner. Thanks to Ibotic for sponsoring the show this month. My name is Steve Crow. Thanks so much, folks, for tuning in. We'll talk to you again next week.