Race Between Technologies in Cathodes & Cobots
NMC and LFP cathodes duke it out for dominance while new funding looks to scale new battery chemistries, LMFP and LMX. Generative AI assist supply chain management and worker training.
Shop Talk
Capturing this week's zeitgeist
The LK-99 saga is over, with evidence confirming that it is not only not a superconductor, but rather an insulator. But, the RTX powdered metal contamination effects are beginning to show up in cash flow expectations and airline operations.
Electric vehicle battery technology advancement is captivating the financial press with the FT and TechCrunch going in depth on lithium-ion technology while analysts seek to identify the winners in the value chain.
Ready Robotics’ Chief Innovation Officer and Founder and Kel Guerin breaks down Automatica 2023’s top five trends. Also, NVIDIA’s CEO Jensen Huang details power of the industrial metaverse in the last 20 minutes of his keynote at SIGGRAPH 2023.
Assembly Line
This week's most influential Industry 4.0 media
🛣️ America’s Bridges, Factories and Highways Are in Dire Need of Repairs. Bring in the Robots.
📅 Date: August 18, 2023
✍️ Author: Christopher Mims
🔖 Topics: Corrosion, Machine Vision
🏢 Organizations: Gecko Robotics, Shell, Skydio, VideoRay, Anybotics, Invert Robotics, Greensea
These days, Shell is able to keep the plant running, and keep repair personnel on the ground and at a safe distance as they operate wall-climbing robots that inspect things like steel holding tanks at millimeter resolution, says Steven Treviño, a robotics engineer at Shell. Using a variety of sensors, the robots can look for both corrosion and cracking. This helps the team shorten the list of things they have to take care of when a full shutdown occurs. The magnetic wall climbers Shell is using are made by a Pittsburgh-based startup called, appropriately, Gecko Robotics.
“There are hundreds of types of corrosion,” says Jake Loosararian, CEO of Gecko Robotics, “and we’ve been developing technology and software to analyze what kind of damage is happening.” Gecko began as a robotics company, but has since expanded into creating software to process the data its robots gather. The startup makes systems that are now used to track more than 60,000 assets across the globe, including power plants, pipelines, oil refineries, dams, U.S. Navy vessels and other military equipment.
When it comes to inspections, “often the data you need is literally in plain sight, it’s just hard to collect it,” says Bry, of Skydio.
Read more at Wall Street Journal
⛓️🧠 Multinationals turn to generative AI to manage supply chains
📅 Date: August 13, 2023
✍️ Author: Oliver Telling
🔖 Topics: Generative AI, Supply Chain Control Tower
🏢 Organizations: Unilever, Siemens, Maersk, Pactum, Walmart, Scoutbee, Altana
Navneet Kapoor, chief technology officer at Maersk, said “things have changed dramatically over the past year with the advent of generative AI”, which can be used to build chatbots and other software that generates responses to human prompts.
New supply chain laws in countries such as Germany, which require companies to monitor environmental and human rights issues in their supply chains, have driven interest and investment in the area.
Read more at Financial Times
🧑🏭🧠 Hitachi to use generative AI to pass expert skills to next generation
📅 Date: August 14, 2023
✍️ Authors: Yoichiro Hiroi, Tsuyoshi Tamesue
🔖 Topics: Generative AI, Worker Training
🏢 Organizations: Hitachi
Japan’s Hitachi will utilize generative artificial intelligence to pass on expert skills in maintenance and manufacturing to newer workers, aiming to blunt the impact of mass retirements of experienced employees. The company will use the technology to generate videos depicting difficulties or accidents at railways, power stations and manufacturing plants and use them in virtual training for employees.
Hitachi already has developed an AI system that creates images based on 3D data of plants and infrastructure. It projects possible malfunctions – smoke, a cave-in, a rail buckling – onto an image of an actual rail track. This can also be done on images of manufacturing sites, including metal processing and assembly lines. Hitachi will merge this technology into a program for virtual drills that is now under development.
Read more at Nikkei Asia
🖨️ Authentise CEO: We’ve Arrived But Work Remains
🏢 Organizations: Authentise
🖨️ Thermwood introduces large-format Cut Layer Additive manufacturing process
📅 Date: August 14, 2023
✍️ Author: Laura Griffiths
🔖 Topics: Additive Manufacturing
Thermwood has introduced a new approach to large-format additive manufacturing (AM), which it believes offers a lower cost route to leveraging the benefits of AM but with materials which can’t typically be 3D printed.
The real backbone behind the process appears to be its machine intelligence background. Claiming that Cut Layer Additive doesn’t require programming, ‘in the usual sense,’ Thermwood says it has taught its machine control technology to create Cut Layer Additive parts by simply sending a CAD file and telling it a set of desirables such as material choice, wall thickness, nesting layers, etc. The machine then automatically creates the additive part and layer segments needed to make it, nests them on your chosen material and creates an internal multi tool program to cut it out.
Read more at TCT Magazine
🔋 What *Really* happens to used Electric Car Batteries?
🦾 Boston Dynamics wants to change the world with its state-of-the-art robots
📅 Date: August 15, 2023
✍️ Author: Bobbie van der List
🏢 Organizations: Boston Dynamics
CEO Robert Playter dispels worries about the potential harm robots could inflict and thinks they will empower people instead of displacing them. Playter sat down with strategy+business to talk about the company’s ongoing transformation, the role that robotics plays in powering the next evolution in business, and the importance of human leadership at even the most tech-enabled company.
The transition to a product company didn’t happen overnight—it was a slow transition, with the acquisition by Google in 2013 being the initial catalyst. We really began thinking through how our technologies could be used by industries, and what it would take to make a reliable robot that could function outside a controlled environment. Then, when SoftBank bought us in 2017, we became even more focused on releasing commercial products, which became our core focus by the time Hyundai purchased a majority stake in the company. Hyundai’s expansive manufacturing and global sales expertise is particularly valuable for us as we continue to grow.
Read more at strategy+business
Capital Investment
Major factory investments and line commissions. Tracked in the Atlas.
🏭🇺🇸 Inside the $220bn American cleantech project boom
📅 Date: August 16, 2023
✍️ Authors: Amanda Chu, Oliver Roeder, Alex Irwin-Hunt
At least $224bn in cleantech and semiconductor manufacturing projects have been announced in the US since the passage of the IRA and the Chips Act. In total, they promise to create 100,000 jobs. The FT tallied company announcements of at least $100mn, from August 2022 to this week.
Read more at Financial Times
Business Transactions
This week's top funding events, acquisitions, and partnerships across industrial value chains
🔋 Mitra Chem Announces First Close of $60 Million Series B Round Led by GM
📅 Date: August 16, 2023
🔖 Topics: Funding Event, Partnership
🏢 Organizations: Mitra Chem, General Motors
As part of the partnership with GM, Mitra Chem will develop iron-based cathode active materials (CAM) like lithium manganese iron phosphate (LMFP) to power affordable and accessible EV batteries compatible with GM’s EV propulsion architecture, the Ultium Platform. GM’s funding will enable Mitra Chem to scale its current R&D and pilot operations to expedite bringing their battery materials to market.
Read more at PR Newswire
🦾 Novarc Technologies Completes Series A Fundraising Round With Caterpillar Venture Capital
📅 Date: August 14, 2023
🏢 Organizations: Novarc Technologies, Caterpillar
Novarc Technologies Inc., a leading provider of advanced robotics solutions, announced today the company has successfully completed a Series A fundraising round with Caterpillar Venture Capital Inc. Novarc plans to leverage this strategic relationship to further enhance disruptive technology and expand its global reach.
Read more at Business Wire
bp Leads $12.5 Million Series A Investment In Low-Cost Hydrogen Electrolyzer Innovator, Advanced Ionics
📅 Date: August 15, 2023
🏢 Organizations: bp, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries
Advanced Ionics, the developer of a new category of hydrogen electrolyzers useful for expanding green hydrogen production, closed a $12.5 million Series A financing led by bp ventures, with additional investors including Clean Energy Ventures, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and GVP Climate.
The new capital will help catalyze Advanced Ionics’ growth and facilitate the initial deployment of its Symbion™ water vapor electrolyzer technology for heavy industry. Water vapor electrolyzers address two of the biggest obstacles to expanding green hydrogen production: cost and electricity requirements.
Read more at bp Press Release
🦾 Olis Robotics Secures $4M Funding to Meet Surging Demand for Remote Robot Management
📅 Date: August 11, 2023
Olis Robotics, specialists in remote monitoring, control, and error recovery technology for industrial robots, today announced that it has raised $4.1 million funding in a round led by PSL Ventures. Additional investors include Tectonic Ventures, Ubiquity Ventures, as well as several prominent strategic angel investors, including robotics pioneer Daniel Theobald, the President and Cofounder of MassRobotics and Founder and Chairman of Vecna Robotics.
By safely enabling remote monitoring, control, and troubleshooting of industrial robots, Olis Robotics’ unique ‘Olis Connect’ system significantly improves Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), effectively addressing costly robot downtime.
Read more at Business Wire
🦾 Emerson Accelerates Factory Automation Capabilities With Agreement to Acquire Afag
📅 Date: August 17, 2023
🔖 Topics: Acquisition
🏢 Organizations: Emerson
Emerson (NYSE: EMR) announced a definitive agreement to acquire Afag Holding AG (“Afag”), an innovative leader in electric linear motion, feeding and handling automation solutions. The transaction will enhance Emerson’s capabilities in factory automation, one of the Company’s four priority adjacencies, and create a leading motion portfolio combining Afag’s electric linear motion solutions with Emerson’s pneumatic motion technology.
Read more at PR Newswire
✈️ Ball Announces Agreement to Sell Aerospace Business to BAE Systems for $5.6 Billion
📅 Date: August 17, 2023
🏢 Organizations: BAE Systems, Ball
Ball Corporation (NYSE: BALL) the world’s leading producer of circular aluminum packaging for global beverage and household brands, announced that it has reached an agreement to sell its aerospace business to BAE Systems for gross proceeds of $5.6 billion in cash. The transaction is projected to close in the first half of 2024.
BAE’s existing strong presence in the US allowed it to use a tax benefit to bring down the actual economic cost of the business, in effect reducing the price to $4.8bn.
Read more at PR Newswire