The author of the piece seems to confuse robotics for industry automation and for academia and research. Most high-end research/service robots have some form of

The author of the piece seems to confuse robotics for industry automation and for academia and research. Most high-end research/service robots have some form of Deep Learning baked in to them, the vast majority of them being Computer Vision related object/feature detection & classification. The purpose of the CV part might vary, but for mobile robots (delivery, drone etc) it is usually to enhance localization & mapping (SLAM)by detecting features in the environment. For static robots (arms, P&P) usually object detection for pick, and segmentation+classification for placing/stacking it correctly. Covariant.ai, Osaro and other CV in robotics start ups are simply trying to sell this as a module to existing arms, to make then slightly more flexible.