Despite a litany of forces working against them, American consumers spent a record amount of money during the 2021 holiday season. Shaking off supply chain woes, inflation concerns and a surge in Covid cases like a Taylor Swift song, consumers not only returned to physical stores but continued to shop online for their holiday gifts.

The relationship of technology and food production and distribution has a longer history than most people realize. Early man used sticks and stones to shovel dirt as subsistence farming was invented. The first plows made their appearance as early as 4,000 BCE, and Mendel famously applied scientific rigor alongside engineering as his experiments cross-breeding peas led him to be widely considered the “father of modern genetics”.

The process of producing food and bringing it to the table is an ever-evolving exercise. The introduction of automation into agriculture, and related areas of food technology, or FoodTech, are poised to revolutionize these fields again. FoodTech is a broad category of initiatives designed to help feed the explosive growth in our global population, to manage waste, to address food scarcity, support a troubled supply chain, and revolutionize food service to tackle labor challenges. Investors in FoodTech want to see technologies applied that will strengthen everything from production to distribution to consumption. With such an expansive scope, much of the FoodTech innovation often focuses very pointedly on solutions for specific yet complex issues. 

As the days of 2021 come to a close, we quickly anticipate the new year and all of our exciting new projects atInOrbit. But before we flip the calendar, let’s take a look at the trends we predicted back in January to see how we did. Was our crystal ball clear or cloudy?

This past year saw major changes for InOrbit, and we couldn’t be happier with the results. Through experiment-led development, lots of trial and error, and some great connections with our friends and family in the robotics community (that’s all of you), we’ve made our platform more accessible, and robust for our users.

As 2021 comes to a close we are taking time to look back and reflect, if only for a few minutes on the year that was, and highlight some of our successes.

At InOrbit, most of our time is spent thinking about robots and how to make them perform better. But part of that vision includes robots and humans working together – without the human factor, robots are just a collection of metal and plastic parts. Here is another in a series of posts highlighting some of the outstanding humans on the InOrbit team, also known as InOrbiters. The posts aim to share details on some members of the team, what drove them to work here, and what they find most interesting about robotics and the development of the InOrbit platform.

Today we sat down with our User Experience Designer, Ryu Sakai. He lives in Chandler, Arizona, and has been with InOrbit for about a year and a half.

Individual instruments in the hands of a professional musician can sound wonderful, but when many different instruments come together in an orchestra or band the result can be awe-inspiring and magical.

We think the same thing can be said about robots and robot operations (RobOps). Individually, a single robot can perform some pretty amazing tasks to help human co-workers with their jobs. But when you add several robots and then add different types of robots to the system performing different tasks, the end result can be an amazing workflow that exponentially scales efficiency for a company.

Next week will mark the unofficial start of the holiday season for many online shoppers, whether this means you’ll be skipping out after Thanksgiving dinner to look for deals, hopping on your laptop on Black Friday to avoid the long lines at physical stores, or taking advantage of your high-speed connection at the office (for those that still work in offices) on Cyber Monday. 

With the continuing surge in online orders expected this year, a big question will be how many packages will be delivered through robots, drones or self-driving vehicles over that “last mile”, where a package leaves a sortation center to get to a customer’s house.

One of the best indicators of the change of seasons is when the leaves begin to fall, the days get shorter and the air gets colder. It’s happening now in the Northern Hemisphere, while our brothers and sisters in the Southern Hemisphere get the opposite effect – they are preparing for the warmer weather in the months ahead.

Regardless of your location, this time of year presents a chance to look back on the past season as you prepare for the next one. We are doing the same thing here at InOrbit. These past few months have been very exciting. We’ve launched some new products and services for our users, as well as continued to share knowledge and information about how RobOps can help robot makers and robot deployers across different markets.

At InOrbit, most of our time is spent thinking about robots and how to make them perform better. But part of that vision includes robots and humans working together – without the human factor, robots are just a collection of metal and plastic parts. Here is another in a series of posts highlighting some of the outstanding humans on the InOrbit team, also known as InOrbiters. The posts aim to share details on some members of the team, what drove them to work here, and what they find most interesting about robotics and the development of the InOrbit platform.

Today we had a chance to chat with Lead Engineer, Hernan Badenes. He lives in the mountains of Patagonia, Argentina, and has been with InOrbit for a little more than three years.

The great news keeps rolling in at InOrbit. We are happy to announce that our Developer Portal is now available.