Automate 2024: Showcasing AI-Driven Innovations

The InOrbit.AI team had an incredible time at Automate, marking our busiest and most exciting year at the event yet. The show was filled with engaging conversations, insightful presentations, and impressive demos that highlighted the growing demand for advanced robotic operations solutions. Here’s a recap of our fantastic journey at Automate 2024. Yes, it involves lots of pizza.🍕

Setting the Stage

Automate 2024 took place at McCormick Center in the heart of Chicago. While we had a fantastic time in the Motor City last year, it's great to get a chance to visit another bustling hub for manufacturing, and the access to deep dish kept everyone content. The show, run by the Association for Advancing Automation (A3), is North America’s largest robotics and automation event. All of the biggest robotics companies exhibited and there was new hardware from companies like MiR, and ABB alongside innovative upstarts like Snowbotix who won the startup challenge this year for their self-driving snow removal robot (side note - great idea). The show is a great place to connect with industry peers, and customers looking for robotics solutions. As long-standing A3 members, InOrbit was excited to once again exhibit at Automate.

For our booth this year, we decided to lean into the brick-building aesthetic. If you’ll recall from our set-up last year we’ve uncovered something of a hack for trade shows. All too often companies block out a small 10x10 booth and have their robot on hand that has literally no room to do anything, so they're left with a sad inanimate prop that can only ‘imply’ what might set them apart. InOrbit comes to the table with solutions though. Leveraging the InOrbit Robot Space, our live remote demos have quickly become the talk of the trade show floor. With that in mind, we assembled our booth, one brick at a time.

Perhaps inspired by The Bear, we made our way to Piquod’s pizzeria for a slice to kick off the show in style.

An Unforgettable Start

InOrbit had some big news at Automate, as we debuted the AI-powered InOrbit RobOps Copilot. While we know it’s been commonplace for high-tech companies to come out with AI products recently, one of the things that sets us apart is that InOrbit has always been focused on the practical application of RobOps tools. Copilot is truly useful, right out of the box. For those unfamiliar Robops Copilot aims to make the review and analysis of often complex robot data more accessible, through a conversational natural-language-driven approach.

Learn more about InOrbit RobOps Copilot right here.

On the show floor, our team took the opportunity to connect with industry friends, the press, and a ton of companies looking for the right robotics orchestration solutions.

The InOrbit live demo at the show gave attendees something pretty special. Exploring how growing, heterogeneous robot fleets can work together has always been our specialty. This year we’ve pushed it further than  ever with some amazing robot orchestration. One of our latest additions at the InOrbit Robot Space is Instock's flexible goods-to-person Automated Storage and Retrieval System. While this gave us a great opportunity to showcase how InOrbit helps users coordinate robots in a warehouse setting, we also integrated a novel collaboration with OTTO by Rockwell Automation's AMR for what we think is possibly the first completely hands-free example of robot decanting. 

#TechtoRemember

While activity at the booth continued at an unprecedented pace, our team also connected with some companies offering unique solutions on the show floor. One of the great joys of attending a show like Automate is getting an opportunity to see cutting edge robotics tech up close and personal.

The Neura team was on hand with their robots, including the 4NE-1 humanoid robot, although that was unfortunately just for display purposes. 🤖

Building Momentum

Collaboration was an ongoing theme for us at Automate as InOrbit CEO and Co-founder Florian Pestoni took the stage to share a talk on the value of working together to address systemic industry fragmentation. That means robotics companies need to work in harmony with each other, something InOrbit has long stood for. We show this to industry peers through our work on interoperability, including our recent induction to the OSRA, and to the community with our outreach at the InOrbit Robot Space. This philosophy of connection is what drives our vision: to build a world where humans, robots and AI in the cloud work together to drive radical productivity improvements and empower people to reach new heights. A video of the presentation is now available to view here.

Truth be told, it's the people that make any event worthwhile, and connecting with them is what brings us all together.

Those deep connections were nowhere more evident than at the much-anticipated exclusive InOrbit deep-dish pizza party, held at Lou Malnatis. A huge shout out to everyone who joined us for this great, now annual, tradition. 🍕🍕🍕

In the end

As we wrapped our time at Automate 2024, the final day was as usual dedicated to students, and it’s one of our favorite days at the show. It’s genuinely inspiring to see the next generation of robotics enthusiasts engaging with our technology. As usual, we took part in the NextGen student programming and we’re happy to educate attendees on the value of RobOps.

In conclusion, we offer a heartfelt thanks to everyone who visited our booth, attended our events, and supported us throughout the show. Even those who shared or liked our content on social media help us know that our message is spreading.

Our team made one final pit stop before leaving town, a quick detour out to Little Italy led us to the one and only Al's Italian Beef. (yes we got it wet)

Thank you for joining us on this journey. We look back thrilled with the connections we made and the excitement generated around our AI-powered solutions. Stay tuned for more innovations, and we hope to see everyone at Automate 2025 back in Detroit!