Field and Service Robotics
Weeding Robots: The Cost per Hectare That Decides It
Weeding robots do not compete with one thing, they compete with two, and the gap between them is enormous. Chemical weeding costs roughly...
Section 11
Field and Service Robotics
Robots that leave the factory: operating theatres, fields, building sites and reactor halls.
Field and Service Robotics
Cleaning Robots: The Cost per Square Metre
An autonomous scrubber costs 25,000 to 60,000 euro and covers 1,000 to 2,500 square metres per hour against 400 to 900 for a person with a...
Field and Service Robotics
Construction Robots: What Actually Works on Site
Four construction robots earn money today: layout marking, rebar tying, ceiling drilling and site scanning. What they share is that each...
Field and Service Robotics
Hospital Transport Robots: Where the Saving Comes From
The business case is misread almost every time. A transport robot costs 60,000 to 180,000 euro and does not replace porters, who are among...
Field and Service Robotics
Drones vs Crawlers for Asset Inspection
One question settles it: does the measurement require contact. Visual inspection, thermography and gas detection are non-contact, and a...
Field and Service Robotics
Milking Robots: The Payback Almost Nobody Disputes
Automatic milking is the oldest genuinely successful agricultural robot, with more than 25,000 units in operation. A box costs 165,000 to...
Field and Service Robotics
Robots in Nuclear Decommissioning: The Oldest Hard Case
Nuclear had remote manipulation before industry had robots, and it is still the sector where teleoperation beats autonomy. The reason is...
Field and Service Robotics
Why Fruit Picking Robots Are Still Not Good Enough
A skilled picker takes a fruit every 1 to 3 seconds and leaves almost nothing behind. Published harvesting robots detect 60 % to 90 % of...
Field and Service Robotics
What a Surgical Robot Costs, Instruments Included
The system is the smallest of the three costs over a working life. A current-generation platform lists at 1.8 to 2.5 million US dollars,...
Field and Service Robotics
ROV vs AUV: Which Underwater Robot for Which Job
The tether decides it. An ROV takes power and commands down a cable, so it has unlimited endurance, full video bandwidth and an arm that...