Artificial intelligence promises to make industrial robots smarter and easier to use, but innovators need help getting them there. ABB Robotics today named Mbodi and T-Robotics the winners of its 2024 ABB Robotics AI Startup Challenge. The company picked the two startups from more than 100 global applicants, with 15 chosen to give pitches and five to give MVP proposals.
“Today’s manufacturing challenges demand solutions that combine simplicity with sophisticated AI capabilities,” stated Marc Segura, president of ABB Robotics. “T-Robotics and Mbodi demonstrated groundbreaking innovations, and by collaborating with both, we will accelerate the development of more intuitive, adaptable, and easier-to-use robotic solutions that will make business more efficient, flexible, and resilient.”
“For this challenge, we wanted to explore natural language interfaces and enabling robots to plan autonomously,” he told The Robot Report. “We’re looking at a wider domain rather than dexterous picking or navigation or technical KPIs [key performance indicators] for each. We …