Our team attended Automate 2024 in Chicago and wanted to share our thoughts.
TL;DR:
- Hardware was still the main attraction, but software is the rising force.
- Humanoid robots weren’t on display in the numbers we were expecting.
- Manufacturing and supply chain companies aren’t talking much about generative AI … yet.
Hardware was the main attraction, but software was the rising force.
We saw an increasing number of hardware companies offer software platforms with their solutions and more standalone software offerings.
This is great from two vantage points:
- Robotics companies have more options for off-the-shelf software to help their team.
- End consumers of robotics have options for how to manage their robotics fleets.
Humanoid Robots
- With all the venture attention on humanoid robotics, we only found one exhibit at Automate, Neura.
- We’re curious how humanoid robotics will fit into the industrial sector over time.
Not as much talk about Generative AI … yet
- The most significant buzz in AI was absent at Automate.
- We imagine this will have more impact on software tools next year.
Some Highlights for us:
- Intrinsic showed off Flowstate , a no-code/low-code interface for robotics arm programming. some text
- We think a host of robot arms will be built using this soon.
- All of the lower-level device code is abstracted away for supported hardware, leaving you with a flowchart-like coding experience.
- Vention’s all-in-one platform allows someone to design, automate, order, and deploy their factory with a few clicks. some text
- It’s easily the slickest system integrator experience we’ve seen.
- Vention’s reimagining of the robotics e-commerce experience reminded us of an Apple store-like experience for industrial robotics.
- Meili Robots' fleet management platform, which primarily handles mission management, fleet control, traffic control, and route planning, occupies a place in the fleet management stack that few have tackled previously.
- Also, we’ve possibly found our new mascot.
