Another year, another prediction. Let’s start with some of the ongoing trends before getting into the less obvious predictions.

Robotic technology is constantly evolving and has made significant advancements in recent years. The use of increasingly advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms has enabled robots to perform tasks more autonomously and adapt to changing conditions more easily. 

This past year at InOrbit has been our most exciting yet. Our company turned 5 years old, and we’ve been thrilled to witness and (modesty aside) help inform the changing robotics landscape. Today we reflect on our growth, and success as we look back at the year that was 2022.  

We've been thrilled to share InOrbit's story and our vision for the future of robotics with friends, colleagues, and customers extensively this year. From new partnerships to exciting product announcements and a lot of events InOrbit has made so many new connections in-person and online, it's hard to keep up. And with a broader reach, we've found that there is still a lot of room to share our expertise with those new to automation and RobOps. Today, InOrbit CEO Florian Pestoni answers a few of the most common questions we get about InOrbit and the state of robotics.  

Recently our partners at Kärcher were celebrated with a Corporate Innovation Award at the Plug and Play Silicon Valley November Summit 2022. The award, issued in the IoT category, was given during the event at the Plug and Play Tech Center in Sunnyvale, CA and the recognition of innovation is certainly well deserved. The award celebrates Kärcher for the ongoing successful collaboration between Kärcher and InOrbit. This relationship, which started at a Plug and Play event three years ago, has been a true success story.

John Simmons is the Head of Product at InOrbit. He is an accomplished Operations and Product leader with extensive experience deploying and managing technology at scale. John leads the advancement of the InOrbit platform leveraging his experience with autonomous mobile robots. Truly passionate about improving the lives of people through the application of emerging tech, John recently represented InOrbit at the inaugural RobOpsCon event this November in Santa Cruz. Today he shares his experiences at this community-driven conference, reflecting on how far we’ve come and the work to still be done.

A flock of seagulls. A school of fish. A gaggle of geese. Collective nouns in English are a lot of fun. However, when it comes to a collection of robots, we’re missing the mark, especially in the context of modern, smart robots.

In the industry, the term in wide use is a fleet of robots. In fact, many robotics companies sell a companion “fleet manager” box to control their robots. It’s not that the term is inherently wrong, but it has outlived its usefulness.

It seems like ever since our team hit the floor at the AMR & Logistics conference people have been buzzing more and more about interoperability between heterogeneous robots. Certainly, it's being covered more in the press, but we've been hearing the rising chatter for some time now. We're glad to have played a part in fostering an open discussion about the value interoperability provides to the robotics industry. Robots need to work together: co-existing, coordinating, and ultimately collaborating to realize robust orchestration. Interoperability is critical to this belief.

For anyone who has worked in a corporate office, you’ll probably know what we mean when we say you can sure get a case of the Mondays there. Certainly antiquated, in the post-pandemic world some employers still feel the need to impose over-bearing middle management and force employees to use archaic tools. 

Even a modern ROC (Robot Operations Center) can fall victim to office politics and entrenched ideas. In fact, we see the same problems again and again. Orchestration is needed. So in honor of our favorite classic workplace comedy and as a warning to all those falling into the trappings of bad operations solutions for their growing robot fleet we propose an alternative. 

This week at the Association for Advancing Automation’s AMR & Logistics week conference we were excited to announce the launch of the new InOrbit Developer Edition and a host of expanded orchestration capabilities. The full press release is available to read now.

Marking milestones is important, especially at a startup. Here at InOrbit, we couldn't be more thrilled to be celebrating our 5th anniversary. In honor of that achievement, our team has come together in beautiful Buenos Aires, Argentina this week. Many of us are meeting IRL for the first time, and it has been an incredible experience.