| | Good morning. In today’s Sunday edition of The Daily Upside, we’re breaking down the state of play in robotics. But before we jump in, here’s a message from a company that’s making serious strides in an equally futuristic endeavor: wearable tech. Innovega is bringing to bear some of the most advanced technology available in augmented and virtual reality. The company’s two-pronged system — smart contact lenses paired with lightweight and stylish glasses — is poised to shatter the “art of the possible” in this booming space. Just how smart are we talking? - Their proprietary tech can simultaneously deliver a clear view of the real-world while overlaying rich media via micro-displays embedded in the glasses.
- As futuristic as it sounds — there are real-world implications here and now: Innovega expects to launch lenses and glasses that allow the visually impaired and legally blind to read print and distant signs that a person with 20/20, normal visual acuity achieves.
With that kind of practicality — not to mention a $97 billion addressable market and tens of millions of patients that could benefit from the tech — it’s no wonder investors have already poured over $16 million into the company. See the light and become an Innovega investor today. | |  | Are We Entering a Golden Age of Automation? If the visions of the future found in 20th-century science fiction are to be believed, one day the robotics industry will offer humanity a choice of sarcastic robot housekeepers ( The Jetsons) or terrifying deadpan assassins ( The Terminator). Indeed, would-be Nostradamuses have predicted an imminent invasion of job-killing robots for decades. That fear has had an extraordinary hold on the popular imagination, with many fretting for their livelihoods. More robots are working in light and heavy industry than ever before, yet employment rates across advanced economies are at all-time highs. Valued at $27.7 billion in 2020, the global robotics market is due to expand to $74.1 billion by 2026, an annual growth rate of 17%, according to consultancy Mordor Intelligence. Somehow, despite the worst fears of yesteryear, the revolution in robotics has not led human workers into planned obsolescence. Today, we’ll be looking at the state of robots in the workplace — what machines are doing in factories, how quickly they are joining the ranks of their human colleagues, and whether they really do pose a threat to jobs. Disclaimer: should you find that your interest in robots leads to relentless persecution by a taciturn cyborg having materialized from an electrical storm in the form of an Austrian bodybuilder, we can’t help. The Origin Story The dream of making industrial robots a cornerstone of the US labor market goes back to 1961, when Unimation, the world’s first-ever robot manufacturing company, sold its Unimate robotic arm to General Motors. The assembly-line robot completed tasks too dangerous for humans, but proved such a peach it even made a guest appearance on The Tonight Show to play golf and pour beer with Johnny Carson. |  | As we flash forward to the present, Terminator-style, we learn that the number of robots working in factories worldwide grew by 10% last year, to 3 million, according to the World Robotics 2021 Industrial Robots report. In the US, more robots joined the workforce in 2021 than ever in history: - North American companies shelled out over $2 billion for 40,000 machines to perform automated tasks last year, according to industry group the Association for Advancing Automation (A3).
- That was 28% more orders than in 2020, also beating the record set in 2017, when North American firms spent $1.9 billion on a total of 35,000 robots.
Ever since that very first Unimate robot model offered the world a vision of the assembly line of the future, the auto sector has provided the best staging ground for a robotic takeover of heavy industry. Now, a combination of record demand for goods and a pandemic-driven worker shortage in the last two years has accelerated the adoption of robots elsewhere. |  | From Cars to Warehouses: The Growth of Supply Chain Robotics In 2016, car manufacturers bought more than double the number of robots as every other industry combined, yet by 2020, the other sectors had topped automakers in combined purchases. One sector has been at the forefront of integrating robotics into its workflow, and that’s the rapidly expanding world of e-commerce. With US sales of $870 billion last year, per the Department of Commerce, e-commerce is an industry in need of workers. “With human labor, what they produce depends on if they’re hungry or are they tired or have they had their coffee,” Brian Tu, chief revenue officer of logistics and inventory firm DCL, told Reuters. The company installed robots alongside workers at its fulfillment centers during the pandemic and has already found lines with robots operate with fewer people and are 200% more productive. DCL isn’t the only firm buying into this new technology: - According to Research and Markets, the global warehouse automation market will grow 13.6% on average from 2021 to 2026, reaching a value of $30 billion by 2026.
- More than 4 million commercial robots will be installed in over 50,000 warehouses by 2025, according to ABI Research. In 2018, there were just 4,000.
Amazon, the world’s largest e-commerce retailer, bought robot maker Kiva Systems in 2012 for $775 million and has been using the technology that Kiva brought over to develop new efficiencies ever since. Amazon now counts more than 200,000 robotic vehicles at its warehouses, which work alongside humans in the delivery of 350 million available items, amounting to billions of orders. What About My Job? Naturally, some workers and economists have long fretted about what hordes of robots might ultimately do to the labor force, especially as they expand out of factories and warehouses and into covering tasks performed by front-line workers. In a 2019 CNBC survey, 27% of American workers said they worry their job could be eliminated within five years because of robots, new technology, or artificial intelligence. Last year, a paper published by the International Monetary Fund said “the concerns about the rise of the robots amid the COVID-19 pandemic seem justified,” and wondered whether jobs lost during lockdowns would ever “come back.” If ever there was a time for doomsayers to be proven right, the pandemic was it. And yet, we human workers are still here. St. Louis Fed President James Bullard crystal-balled earlier this year that the US unemployment rate could fall below 3% for the first time since the 1950s. The Labor Department said US employers had 11.3 million open jobs in February, just a smidge below the record 11.4 million in December. In short, robots don’t seem to have caused any dents in the human employment market. Expert studies have chimed in with other notes of optimism: - When Yale University researchers analyzed Japanese manufacturing from 1978 to 2017, they found that just one robot for every 1,000 workers increased a company’s employment by 2.2%.
- In a paper published this year, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology studying Finnish manufacturing firms found that the adoption of advanced technologies, including the use of robots, increased employment, on average, by 23%.
“'The direct effect of automation may be to increase employment at the firm level, not to reduce it,” wrote economists Philippe Aghion, Celine Antonin, Simon Bunel, and Xavier Jaravel, in a paper for the Centre for Economic Policy Research (UK) published earlier this year. Their rationale for the effect is straightforward: automating some activities can make a company more profitable, giving it more room to hire. In the meantime, Amazon expects to hire over 1,000 new full-time workers at a robot-powered, 650,000-square-foot, $200 million fulfillment center in Shreveport, LA, set to open later this year. Sure, Amazon’s robots can move things around and take orders, but they’re simply not smart enough to intelligently select the countless products stored on the company’s shelves, meaning there will be plenty of work for people in the years ahead. |  | Down For Now This year’s technology sell-off, which has seen investors dump high-growth stocks in lieu of defensive positions or otherwise less risky gambles (greetings, gold; bonjour bonds; howdy, utilities) has, unsurprisingly, come at a cost to the robotics sector. While the upheaval in both supply and demand buoyed robotics sales during the pandemic, the inflation that followed has pummeled share prices across the sector. The Global X Robotics & Artificial Intelligence ETF (BOTZ), which invests in companies that stand to gain from greater adoption of robotics and artificial intelligence, is down 27% this year. Rockwell Automation, a manufacturer of industrial robotics, has beaten consensus revenue estimates in three of the last four quarters, but its share price is still down 21% for the year. FANUC, the Japanese automation giant with a strong presence in one of the world’s most advanced automation economies, is similarly down 20%. Nvidia, which makes the semiconductors that power many robots, has gone south to the tune of 27% in 2022. German multinational Siemens, boasting a large automation portfolio, is down by the same amount. And now for a message from the globally relevant, sector-spanning industrialist who at a mere half-a-century old has already outdone anything Ayn Rand’s imagination could have hoped for. “I think it has the potential to be more significant than the vehicle business over time,” Elon Musk said of Tesla’s planned Optimus robot. A master of organic PR via the honed humble brag, Musk — who, some sources allege, may be part hard-AI cyborg — was referring to a 5-foot-8-inch do-it-all humanoid robot that could arrive as soon as 2023. Pessimists — realists? — such as AI researcher and entrepreneur Gary Marcus, call the projection “preposterous.” Musk’s optimism, doubters be damned, is contagious, and has lately infected startups like Covariant, Osaro, and RightHand Robotics, which are developing artificial intelligence technologies that could allow machines to pick up a wider range of objects and make intelligent responses to what needs to be done in a warehouse, rather than blindly following a routine. This kind of technological transformation, if it materializes, could change the way we model human productivity forever. ****** A message from our sponsor: The metaverse megatrend, enabled by virtual and augmented reality, has untold potential to change millions of lives for the better. Historically, the problem has been the applications have only been accessible from heavy and bulky headsets that preclude any sort of social interaction. Effectively defeating the entire purpose. With its smart contact lenses and glasses solution, Innovega is flipping the script on the world of wearable tech. The company has already: - Earned $6 million on government contracts awarded by the National Science Foundation, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, U.S. Army, and the National Eye Institute of the National Institutes of Health.
- Built a massive portfolio of 56 US and International patent cases.
- Raised over $16 Million from more than 2,800 investors.
Don’t miss the opportunity to become an Innovega investor. Learn more today. | | | | | | Written by Sean Craig. | Disclaimer | | | You should read the Offering Circular and risks related to this offering before investing. This Reg A+ offering is made available through StartEngine Primary, LLC, member FINRA ( link)/SIPC ( link). This investment is speculative, illiquid, and involves a high degree of risk, including the possible loss of your entire investment. The preceding post was written and/or published as a collaboration between The Daily Upside’s in-house sponsored content team. Although the piece is not and should not be construed as editorial content, the sponsored content team works to ensure that any and all information contained within is true and accurate to the best of their knowledge and research. The Daily Upside may receive monetary compensation from the issuer, or its agency, for publicizing the offering of the issuer’s securities. This content is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be investing advice. This is a paid ad. Please see 17b disclosure linked in the campaign page for more information. | | | | | No longer want to receive these emails? Unsubscribe here. Copyright © 2022 The Daily Upside, LLC., All rights reserved. 1230 York Avenue, Box 154, New York, NY 10065 | | | | |
