Cogniteam is an Israel-based company that operates in the Internet of Things (IoT), robotics, and AI industries, delivering cloud-based platforms to enhance robotic management, deployment, and control with a US office based in Boston. The company’s flagship product, the Cogniteam Platform, allows development, management, and control of robots, IoT devices, and fleets from anywhere in the world.
According to the CEO of Cogniteam, Dr. Yehuda Elmaliah, the company focuses on delivering an off-the-shelf solution to accelerate the process of managing, deploying, and controlling autonomous robots and IoT devices. The platform allows companies to reduce the time it takes them to market their robots or devices drastically, which can take up to six years.
Dr. Elmaliah emphasized that their platform is not about creating software but providing a channel to distribute and monitor updates to robotics systems. This focus allows companies to focus on developing unique aspects of their robots while leveraging existing technologies and platforms, like the Robot Operations System (ROS). This approach can reduce the time taken to build and deploy advanced robotic systems from six to just two years.
The CEO also pointed out the decreasing cost of robotic equipment over the years, which combined with robot management platforms like Cogniteam’s, has considerably lowered the threshold for developing robotic systems. He cited the example of LIDAR sensors, which have dropped in price from $50,000-$60,000 seven years ago to around $2,000 today, which has made 3D LIDAR more affordable. In addition, advances in edge devices now allow data to be processed locally rather than sent to the cloud, increasing the capacity for machine-learning tasks at the device level.
Cogniteam is also involved in various initiatives aimed at enabling more natural interactions between people and robots. One such project is the HRI Consortium (Human-Robot Interaction), which aims to develop algorithms and behaviors for robots to interact with the environment and process information from various sensors, including vision and audio. This involvement has led to the exploration of large language models (LLMs) that have proved effective in enabling this natural interaction.
Dr. Elmaliah predicts that we will not see humanoid robots deployed in industry for at least 15 years, and the future of robotics will see single-purpose robots performing repetitive, dangerous, or physically impossible tasks for humans to carry out. He believes many new companies will enter the field, and the demand for robotics will increase ten-fold in the next decade, thanks to cheaper hardware, open-source operating systems, off-the-shelf algorithms, and innovative management platforms like Cogniteam’s platform.
