BEIJING, CHINA – Jul. 14, 2020 – ForwardX Robotics, a key player in the development of Autonomous Mobile Robots, today announced it has joined Intel IoT Solutions Alliance as an Intel IoT Market Ready Solutions (IMRS) partner. Joining a vast network of over 6,000 solutions and more than 500 IoT leaders, ForwardX’s Matrix platform will now benefit from Intel’s worldwide reach as the company continues to deliver its FLEX and MAX solutions to supply chain environments across the globe. The partnership reinforces ForwardX’s ability to address customer pain points and deliver robust solutions across increasingly competitive industries.

“A giant in the world of innovation, Intel has the expertise, experience, and means to deliver success far and wide. With our ambitions to reach any and every company that may benefit from our innovative solutions, a partnership with Intel is an exciting opportunity for ForwardX to explore,” said Shuo Zhang, Project Management Officer at ForwardX. “As part of Intel’s IoT Solutions Alliance, we will benefit on both the technological and commercial sides of our business.”

Intel’s IoT Solutions Alliance is one of six partnership programs currently offered and consists of a network of global partners and members working together to accelerate IoT adoption across a wide range of industries. Intel forecasts 55% of all data will be generated by IoT by 2025 and 43% of AI tasks will happen on edge devices by 2023. Given the disruptive potential of IoT, Intel’s IoT Solutions Alliance offers companies an abundance of scalable, interoperable solutions in order to accelerate the deployment of intelligent devices and end-to-end analytics. According to Intel’s website, the IoT Solutions Alliance aims to “enable a more intelligent Internet of Things (IoT), supporting enterprises that are moving to the edge so they can capture more data, analyze it faster, and act on it sooner.” While Intel’s IoT Solutions Alliance contains more than 6000 solutions, only 135 have been recognized as IoT Market Ready Solutions; solutions granted this status must clearly demonstrate scalability, adaptability, and immediate implementation opportunities across multiple industries.

With the partnership now formalized, ForwardX will work with Intel on innovative initiatives as well as the continued delivery of cutting-edge robotics solutions to logistics and manufacturing functions across electronics, automotive, general merchandise, and apparel industries. As part of the partnership, ForwardX will also benefit from the network’s collective know-how in innovative technology development and sales enablement allowing it to accelerate new market opportunities.

ForwardX’s FLEX and MAX solutions utilize 8th Generation Intel Core i7 Processors for onboard processing as well as Intel’s RealSense technology as part of the perception capabilities of ForwardX’s visual Autonomous Mobile Robots. Employing Intel’s leading technology allows ForwardX robots to gather and process a richer understanding of their environment resulting in more robust solutions. Intel technology can be found in the following ForwardX products:

– ForwardX FLEX Standard
– ForwardX FLEX RFID
– ForwardX FLEX Double-Deck
– ForwardX MAX 200 Lift
– ForwardX MAX 500 Standard
– ForwardX MAX 500 Lift

“As an innovative startup, our focus is on developing and delivering disruptive technologies to solve problems in traditional industries. In these long-established, complex industries, the ability to utilize the expertise and experience of a leader like Intel is truly invaluable,” said Nicolas Chee, founder and CEO at ForwardX Robotics. “Moving forward, we are hopeful that this partnership will demonstrate ForwardX’s willingness to create win-win partnerships with likeminded leaders.”

About ForwardX Robotics
ForwardX Robotics is a global technology leader in the fields of AI and Robotics, possessing over 160 patents pending and a team of over 180, including 120 engineers of which 10 hold PhDs. With team members hailing from top universities and leading companies, ForwardX is comprised of the world’s top computer vision scientists and robotics experts as shown by its award-winning work, such as 2 1st-Place Prizes at TRECVID and 1st Place Prize for IEEE’s VOT-RT.

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BEIJING, CHINA – June. 23, 2020 – ForwardX Robotics, a Beijing-based provider of AI and Robotics solutions, today announced it will offer Robots-as-a-Service (RaaS) options for its collaborative mobile robots. Whilst also offering outright sale and renting options, the RaaS subscription-based model aims to encourage supply chain operations to invest in innovation by allowing them to upgrade their facilities without the large upfront investment usually associated with automation projects.

“The pressure on supply chains to deliver is growing with every day that passes and we know how much of an impact our solutions can have on facilities and their processes,” said Paul Qian, VP of Sales at ForwardX Robotics. “With our mission to empower operations to be at their best, introducing Robots-as-a-Service as an option is a no-brainer. Organizations have been going out of their way to keep the public satisfied during this time, so we want to make sure they have access to the best tools available.”

So far, the journey to widespread adoption of robotics automation has been rather bumpy. In a survey last year, the Economist Intelligence Unit found that 56% of high-level decision makers considered hard automation, such as physical robots, to be a high or essential priority. Since the pandemic began, two main predictions on how supply chain investment plans might be affected have emerged among supply chain and automation experts. The first follows the intuitive idea that cashflow problems will limit a company’s ability to invest and, therefore, adoption should be expected to slow down significantly. However, the second and more fascinating prediction forecasts that, while cashflow may pose problems, innovation will simply move higher up the priority list leading to continual growth in adoption. In either case, the RaaS subscription-based model offers a number of benefits over outright purchase or even leasing. For cash-strapped operations, RaaS lowers the investment cost necessary to begin a project by moving the cost from capital expenditure to operational expenditure budgets and allows for almost instant ROI; whereas, for companies prioritizing innovation, RaaS represents a lower risk option, and a far easier implementation process.

“The OPEX versus CapEx tradeoff is now relatively common amongst RaaS providers but the market now expects more than a simple financial twist,” declared Remy Glaisner, Research Director at IDC and lead for the Worldwide Robotics and Drones Strategies practice. “RaaS is primarily a transaction-based model for which each ‘transaction’ should reflect the creation of tangible business value for the user,” he added. “ForwardX is an excellent illustration of that new generation of robotic solution providers eager to innovate by balancing deep technological expertise with an open market mindset. It perfectly aligns with the rapid evolution of demand throughout sectors: enterprise users are not abandoning continuous improvement efforts but will almost exclusively sustain their spending only if solutions can immediately support their business’s ability to cope with highly volatile market conditions,” Glaisner noted.

ForwardX Robotics RaaS model will offer logistics and manufacturing facilities a number of automated material handling solutions aimed at improving core processes. The ForwardX FLEX and MAX solutions are designed to optimize goods movement across the receiving, putaway, replenishment, picking, packing, and shipping processes in warehouses, as well as raw material delivery, WIP movement, and finished goods movement in manufacturing plants. Customers, such as SF DHL China, ITOCHU Logistics, and TCL, have seen wide-ranging benefits from 200%-300% increases in productivity to 50% labor cost reductions.

“We know that the role of automation will continue to grow across the supply chain but investing upwards of $5 million on a system with limited flexibility just won’t cut it in a post-pandemic environment,” said Nicolas Chee, founder and CEO of ForwardX Robotics. “Our customers come to us looking for something better suited to their business and operational goals and we’re determined to help them meet those goals. RaaS is the next logical step to better align us with the needs of the market.”

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