Keep pulling the thread on Spencer Krause.
At the urging of Seth Crawford, John Deere made connectivity a standard, free feature on all its tractors instead of a paid monthly subscription.
SKA Robotics provides field robotics services across the mining, construction, agriculture, and healthcare industries.
SKA Robotics has worked on projects including two hospital logistics robots, a surgical robot, a handheld medical device, and a prosthesis.
The process of integrating a new robot onto a hospital's IT network is a complex undertaking that typically takes multiple months to complete.
HIPAA regulations in the U.S. create challenges for camera-based robot navigation that are very similar to the challenges posed by GDPR in Europe, which also restricts capturing images of the public.
Aethon is the largest manufacturer of hospital logistics robots in the world.
To avoid patient privacy concerns, Aethon's earlier robots were designed without cameras, using sensors like sonar and infrared ranging for navigation.
Aethon's new products now incorporate cameras for navigation.
To comply with HIPAA, modern hospital robots with cameras must use on-edge algorithms to automatically detect and blur faces and other identifying information like name tags.
A key design principle for surgical robots is to include systems that prevent operator error by making it impossible to steer the device into a position that would harm the patient's anatomy.
The typical sales cycle for companies selling robotics technology to hospital systems is 18 to 24 months.
The mining industry is a late adopter of technology, with its technical capabilities estimated to be 10 to 20 years behind the state of the art.