The pandemic is accelerating the digitalization of industry and the move to smarter factories and warehouses. Surging e-commerce is driving a need for optimized manufacturing processes and reduced supply-chain lead times.

The behavioural changes caused by the COVID-19 crisis are here to stay and digitalization is speeding up in every aspect of our lives. More importantly, we are taking giant leap towards “industry 4.0”, defined by hyper connectivity, hyper mobility, and hyper intelligence.

In this paper, we look at how the pandemic is accelerating the already bright landscape of robotics and automation in production and logistics. We explore the main technological trends such as autonomous mobile robots, collaborative robots, 5G and “untact” technologies. We highlight how the requirements and challenges of a full IoT environment go beyond hardware, demanding more interoperability and integration so operational and information technologies can be seamless.

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