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62 robot, which was designed specifically for working across 10-20 acres,” says Gaetan Severac, co-founder and CTO of Naio. “It’s popular with smaller growers, but larger agricultural businesses with hundreds to thousands of acres saw the Dino as limited in its speed, payload capacity, total weight and so on. “The Orio is basically the same robot from a technological perspective. It integrates the same navigation systems, safety systems and so on. It is just more powerful, faster and has a larger payload capacity, so a wider range of farming implements can be installed.” The Orio is about 390 cm long, 196 cm tall and between 178 and 218 cm wide. Its empty weight is about 1 t, and it can carry an additional tonne of lithium batteries and farming implements for tasks such as seeding, cultivating and in-row weeding. Running solely on electric power, its standard battery capacity typically enables 8 hours of endurance between charges or pack swaps, and coverage of 30 acres every 24 hours. It moves at up to 3 mph (4.8 kph) using four in- wheel motors for vectored propulsion, compared with 2 mph for the Dino UGV. Navigation is achieved primarily using GNSS with RTK processing for movement precision accurate to 2 cm – a critical requirement for agricultural work – and a hyperspectral IR camera is used to distinguish between the different crops it might encounter, and hence guide its tooling correctly. “We had a full season of tests for the Orio in 2021, including several with Strube D&S, a major German seed producer and distributor who particularly wanted to see how well the Orio worked in sugar beet farming,” Severac says. “They were very satisfied, especially since despite being a vegetable, the ability to farm sugar beets is considered an entry point for solutions in farming cereals. “The Orio is now commercially available, and we expect to deliver 20 units this year. That’s our maximum production rate, with orders being higher than we can currently achieve. “In the months ahead, we plan to do more tests to see first-hand how well the Orio can be adapted for farming cereals such as wheat, as well as vegetables such as potatoes.” Hospitality The routine and uncomplicated nature of housekeeping and hospitality work is such that a wide variety of UGV solutions for hotels and similar venues have been showcased around the world in recent months. For example, Keenon Robotics unveiled its next-generation T8 Delivery Robot for the first time at the 2022 Consumer Electronics Show. The company’s portfolio also includes the rest of its Delivery Robot series, as well as its Hotel Robot, Hospitality Robot and Disinfection Robot. Specifications of the T8 are yet to be released, but the Keenon Delivery Robot series consists largely of 52- 75 kg UGVs designed with a series of trays for restaurant-based tasks such as helping staff serve food and pick up used dishes and cups. They are equipped with AI technologies including SLAM for automatic positioning and navigation in new environments, allowing them to navigate through complex working areas. With staff shortages and high labour costs still being affected by the pandemic, Keenon’s other robotic solutions are similarly aimed at helping hotel operators and others to provide better services. The Hospitality Robot in particular is designed to escort visitors around designated venues and bring them to their seats. It measures 500 x 500 x 1000 mm, weighs 55 kg, and integrates a 48 V, 12 Ah battery pack for an active operating time of just over 8 hours (more if kept on standby periodically), with double-sided HD display screens for infotainment and advertising. Pudu Robotics has also expanded into hospitality UGVs with the unveiling of its new Afra C1 cleaning robot at CES 2022. It is Pudu’s first commercial cleaning robot, and is aimed at promoting efficient, cost-effective and non-contact cleaning. The Afra C1 is designed for a range of scenarios including scrubbing, sweeping, vacuuming, mopping, automatic water refilling and debris discharge. Naturally it also executes numerous intelligent navigation tasks, including autonomous driving as well as passage through e-gates and auto-gates. The system is equipped with a built-in April/May 2022 | Unmanned Systems Technology Ottonomy’s Ottobot UGVs are due to perform food delivery services in a US international airport (Courtesy of Ottonomy)