This document discusses the past, present, and future of industrial robots and how robots are integrating more into human workspaces and daily life. It notes that industrial robots first appeared over 60 years ago and were mainly used in the automotive sector, but there is now a trend of robots working alongside humans as co-workers in production. Advances in areas like artificial intelligence, sensors, machine vision and speech recognition are enabling consumer robots to become smarter companions and take on more tasks in homes, warehouses, hospitals and more. While robots replacing some jobs is a concern, others believe new opportunities will be created as tasks are automated. The future of robotics and AI looks promising as technologies continue to progress.

1. HUMANS & ROBOTS -
THE FUTURE IS NOW
DR. CLAUS LENZ
BLUE OCEAN ROBOTICS GMBH

2. INDUSTRIAL ROBOTS
▸ Machines with two or more programmable axes
▸ Mainly robot arms with 6 axes (DOFs)
▸ First robots appeared over 60 years ago
▸ Development mainly driven by automotive sector
▸ Universal, multi-purpose machines supplement special
machine designs
▸ Often:
▸ robot arms are holding very complex, specific tools

3. INDUSTRIAL ROBOTS
▸ Highly automated production
▸ Off-line programmed robots work on their own
▸ Strict separation of workspaces between robots and
humans

4. PRODUCTION
CAN YOU IMAGE A WORLD WITHOUT INDUSTRIAL ROBOTS?

5. CURRENT TREND - ROBOT CO-WORKERS
▸ Integration of (industrial) robots in
human dominated areas of production
▸ flexible and optimized assembly of
products with high variety
▸ support of human worker
▸ Combining skills of humans and robots
▸ robot and human work safely
together on a complex assembly task
as a team

6. CURRENT TREND - LOGISTICS
‣ Autonomous Mobile Robot (AMR)
‣ Automated warehouses
‣ Cope with high growth of e-commerce
‣ Logistic automation in
‣ Manufacturing
‣ Hospitals, care homes
‣ Facility management
‣ Drones (Amazon, DHL, ...)

7. ROBOTS ARE MORE THAN THAT

8. 2006:
„A ROBOT IN EVERY HOME“
Bill Gates

9. 2006: „A ROBOT IN EVERY HOME“ BY BILL GATES
▸ Compares development of robots with the development
of the PC
▸ Main Challenges:
▸ Lack of common standards and plattforms
▸ Lack of Perception and cognitive abilities
▸ Missing Software tools and ability to reuse code
è This has heavily changed

10. 2016 – THE TURNING POINT

11. 2016 – THE TURNING POINT

12. 2016 – THE TURNING POINT

13. 2016 – THE TURNING POINT

14. 2016 – THE TURNING POINT

15. MORE (CONSUMER) ROBOTS
Household
Personal Assistants
Consumer Service
Telepresence
Education
Sex

16. IMPORTANT DRIVERS
‣ Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and machine
learning
‣ Connectivity of devices (IoT), communication bandwidth and
computational power
‣ Cheap and high quality sensors
‣ Advances in machine vision and speech recognition
capabilities
‣ Advances in manipulation capabilites
è consumer robots are getting smarter and better companions
for humans, beyond being just helpers

17. ROBOTS ARE CHANGING OUR LIFES
ALREADY!

18. BEING REPLACED BY A ROBOT?
‣ Machines are beginning to take over
more and more tasks
à cognitive tasks and analytic tasks
‣ Controverse discussion:
èRobots will eliminate 6% of all US
jobs by 2021
è People will work more
independently and create new
business ideas and models
Forrester’s Brian Hopkins
Erik Brynjolfsson

19. WHAT ABOUT THE MONKEY?

20. WHAT ABOUT THE MONKEY?
‣ Robotics is a perfect match to the playful monkey!
‣ We need to continue to ask Questions and use our creativity!
‣ Robots are still very poor at asking insightful questions.
‣ By automating tasks, we are liberating human imagination and the human
spirit.
‣ The more we unlock the secrets of technology, the more we‘ll find ourselves.

21. THANK YOU!