Take agriculture, where 2018 saw orders of robotic What’s more, businesses are thinking beyond devices to food and consumer product companies applications that involve moving or manipulating 9 grow by 48 percent. In the fields, FarmWise is looking physical items, to applications that explore human to deploy autonomous robots to handle everything interaction as well. Swedish company Furhat Robotics from seeding, to weeding and harvesting. The California is working with TNG, a Swedish recruitment firm, 12 startup, which raised $14 million in 2019, makes devices to deploy Tengai, a robot interviewer. TNG believes that combine computer vision, a host of sensors and that a typical job interview can be filled with chances learning algorithms to gather and act on data specific for unconscious bias—based on age, gender or other 10 to each individual plant. And in Denmark, Rosborg Food factors—that influence both the job seeker and the hiring is using robots from OnRobot with advanced gripping manager. Many companies have developed algorithms technology and computer vision to handle delicate that attempt to eliminate this kind of bias, but Furhat’s greenhouse plants. These capabilities allow OnRobot’s solution goes a step further: Tengai has a physical devices to account for variances like misshaped or heavier presence. She sits at eye level to the interviewee and materials—challenges that would have prevented robotics performs some human-like behaviors (such as smiling applications in greenhouse agriculture in the past. As these and blinking) to give job seekers a somewhat familiar robots demonstrate, flexible and reprogrammable devices setting for an interview. But Tengai delivers an interview can be applied to a variety of material-handling tasks found experience that’s aimed at eliminating human bias, across industries, making their potential for impact that giving recruiters a more objective assessment of the 11 much greater. candidate on which to base further decisions.