My team has been watching the trend around service robots for a while, and, in all honesty, I thought it was going to be a bit further out. The COVID-19 pandemic changed all that. We’re seeing an acceleration of robotics and the push into physical automation — autonomous robots that are breaking free of fixed locations and can smartly navigate through a variety of spaces, completing their missions independently.

Today, robots are being applied across a range of use cases – like cleaning and sanitizing hospitals; delivering food and supplies; inspecting assets; mapping remote, dangerous and inaccessible parts of an infrastructure; and evaluating the health of agricultural crops.

Autonomous mobile robots come in many form factors, and the software and hardware architecture is different from standard industrial robots. They’re headed into unknown environments where they have to be autonomous. Industrial robots that are in a fixed location have service technicians in case of failure, but autonomous robots must be able to be serviced remotely. David Inggs, CEO of Rocos, a robotics platform company, has said that “the ability of autonomous robots to do jobs in unmanned environments makes them viable to perform tasks in a much wider range of industries.”

It takes a village

At Avanade, we’re helping our early adopter clients navigate this landscape, and it takes an ecosystem of partners to make it all work. You not only need the robots, but also the management side, as well as ensuring you’ve got the right scenario and a services company that can bring those integrations together.

We recently hosted a “Rise of the service robots” webinar in partnership with Rocos. I facilitated a discussion alongside Inggs, Dr. Julio Hajdenberg from Orlando Health, and Aaron Edsinger, CEO and co-founder at Hello Robot.

Watch the full webinar to learn more, including:

• How to make a success of autonomous robots in the workforce
• Why IoT systems are not fit for operating robots
• How interoperability standards between robot platforms are evolving

As we keep progressing in this emerging space, we’ll share more, and, as always, feel free to reach out to collaborate.