Dawn of a Robot Revolution as Army of Machines Escape the Factory

Posted: June 7, 2014 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Robotics, Science & Technology | Tags: Alin Albu-Schaeffer, Chris Bryant, German Aerospace Center, International Federation of Robotics, Munich, Robotics, Sydney Harbour Bridge |2 Comments

Thunder-Robots

For FT.com, Chris Bryant writes: Cleaning the Sydney Harbour Bridge used to be a dangerous, dirty and laborious job. As soon as a team of workers, operating a sandblaster, reached one end of the iconic structure they had to start again to keep 485,000 square metres of steel pristine.

“Ten years ago it took five minutes for a robot just to recognise the object in front of it was a table…”

Now two robots called Rosie and Sandy, built by SABRE Autonomous Solutions, blast away paint and corrosion all day long without a break. They determine which area needs most attention via a laser scan and move about on rails.

Agility: rapid advances in technology, including machine vision, tactile sensors and autonomous navigation, make today’s robots, such as this model from DLR, increasingly useful

“A sand blaster can slice through flesh. Automating jobs like that is a good thing, it helps improve the quality of human work,” says Roko Tschakarow, head of the Mobile Gripper Systems Division at Schunk, which supplies the lightweight robot arm for the Sydney robots.

“Many aspects of robotics are now reaching a critical mass . . . service robotics is coming.”

— Alin Albu-Schaeffer

Rosie and Sandy are at the forefront of a wave of new autonomous robots that have broken out of the factory and could be coming to your workplace soon.

Coming online: some 95,000 new professional service robots, worth some $17.1bn, are set to be installed for professional use between 2013 and 2015

At the Automatica robot and automation fair in Munich this week the organisers devoted a whole section to so-called “service robots” for the first time.

Scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for manufacturing, engineering and automation demonstrated a Care-O-Bot that sweeps office floors and empties waste paper bins. Pal Robotics showed Stockbot, which walks the aisles in a shop or warehouse to check inventory at night.

Efficient worker: Pal Robotics models on show at the Automatica expo. Some of the group’s models are designed to walk shop or warehouse aisles to check inventory at night

Oppent’s autonomous vehicles ferry laundry or waste around hospitals, Yaskawa Motoman’s dual arm robot prepares laboratory samples and OC Robotics, a Bristol-based company, supplies snake-arm robots to inspect hazardous or confined spaces such as nuclear power plants and inside aircraft wings.

Compared to the size of the industrial robotics market, service robot applications are still somewhat niche. Robot researchers are also wary of overpromising after several false technological dawns in the past.

Still, rapid advances in a range of technologies, including machine vision, tactile sensors and autonomous navigation, make these robots much more useful and, crucially, ensure they avoid collisions with humans.

“Ten years ago it took five minutes for a robot just to recognise the object in front of it was a table,” says Alin Albu-Schaeffer, director of the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics at the German Aerospace Centre (DLR). “Many aspects of robotics are now reaching a critical mass . . . service robotics is coming.”

Approximately 95,000 new professional service robots, worth some $17.1bn, are set to be installed for professional use between 2013 and 2015, according to the International Federation of Robotics. That excludes an estimated 22m domestic service robots – the autonomous vacuum cleaners and lawnmowers that are already becoming a familiar sight to consumers…(read more)

FT.com

This is the second part of a four-part series on robots in the workplace.