Yesterday, Clearpath Robotics of Kitchener, Ontario in Canada (and Clearpath’s cellular logistics robotic division OTTO Motors) introduced that it was being acquired by the Milwaukee-based Rockwell Automation for an undisclosed quantity.
The press launch (which comes from Rockwell, not Clearpath) is concentrated solely on robotics for industrial purposes. That’s, on OTTO Motors’ Autonomous Cellular Robots (AMRs) within the context of manufacturing logistics. Should you check out what Rockwell does, this is sensible, as a result of as an automation firm, they’re not usually doing what most of us would consider as “robotics” within the sense that the mechanical methods that they automate don’t do the type of dynamic choice making that (in my view) distinguishes robots from machines. So, the OTTO Motors AMRs (and the folks at OTTO who get them to autonomously behave themselves) present an necessary and forward-looking addition to what Rockwell is ready to provide in an industrial context.
That’s all tremendous and dandy so far as OTTO Motors goes. What worries me, although, is that there’s zero point out of Clearpath’s well-known and far liked household of yellow and black analysis robots. This consists of the Husky UGV, arguably the usual platform for cellular robotics analysis and improvement, in addition to the marginally much less yellow however simply as impactful Turtlebot 4, introduced barely a yr in the past in partnership with iRobot and Open Robotics.
With iRobot, Open Robotics, and now Clearpath all getting partially or wholly subsumed (or consumed?) by different firms which have their very own priorities, it’s arduous to not be involved about what’s going to occur to those {hardware} and software program platforms (together with Turtlebot and ROS) which have supplied the basis for a lot robotics analysis and training. Clearpath specifically has been a pillar of the ROS neighborhood since there’s been a ROS neighborhood, and it’s unclear how issues are going to alter going ahead.
We’ve reached out to Clearpath to hopefully get a bit little bit of readability on all these items, and we’ll have an replace as quickly as we are able to.
From Your Website Articles
Associated Articles Across the Internet
