Daily Archives: May 6, 2017

Michele Lamkin knew at the start of the season that she was coachinga special group of talented kids.

Lamkin, who is one of two coaches for theLaurel Highlands Education and Robotics Team, Robotic Doges,said last week proved her right.

Robotic Doges competed in the2017 FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) World Championship in St. Louisand made it to the tournaments final four.

The Holsopple-based robotics team was among 128 teams competing to be crowned the tournaments champion.

The week at worlds was a phenomenal experience for the team, Lamkin said.

Beyond the robot competition, the team members had the chance to meet students from 19 different countries, witness technology demonstrations, learn about STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) career options and enjoy some fun together after a long season of hard work.

It was a fantastic way for students to broaden their horizons, she said.

After winning twoout of threesemi-final matches, Robotic Doges allied with teams from New York City and Bucharest, Romania, forthe division finals.Their alliance was defeated by the alliance thatultimately won the event.

It was very fun, and it was cool meeting all of the other teams there, said James Lamkin, a junior atConemaugh Township Area High School.

It was thrilling to see our robot progress through the week and win matches against some of the best teams in the world, he said.

It was verysurreal.

Our goal was to get to worlds, and we pulled it off, he said.

It was a lot of hard work, but we got there.

In addition to making it to the division finals, Robotic Doges was among six finalists nominated for the Rockwell Collins Innovate Award.

Theaward is given to the team that has the most innovative and creative robot design solution to any or all specific field elements or components in the FIRST Tech Challenge.

Elements consideredinclude elegant design, robustness and out of the box thinking related to design.

Lamkinsaid, Making it to the final four and being nominated for the Rockwell Collins Innovate Award reinforced to the students that they can attain high goals with hard work, even when they come from a rural community which might seem on the surface to not have as many opportunities that urban areas offer.

I am very proud of the team members for putting in long hours this season and for raising the standard of goals they wanted to attain, she said.

These are all skills that will be useful for life.

Ronald Fisher is a reporter for The Tribune-Democrat. Follow him on Twitter @FisherSince_82.

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Robotics team glows at world championship - TribDem.com

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TEMPERANCE Bedford High Schools robotics team added another notch to its belt at the FIRST Robotics World Championship in St. Louis.

Although the Express didnt repeat its 2015 success of capturing a world title, the team did go home with one of the most prestigious pieces of recognition up for grabs: the Engineering Inspiration Award.

The award recognizes outstanding success in advancing respect and appreciation for engineering within a teams school and community, and automatically qualifies them for next years world championship event in Detroit. NASA will also pick up the tab for next years $5,000 registration fee.

It was very surprising and probably one of the best feelings Ive ever had at a robotics competition, said senior Olivia Miller, who serves as electronics captain. I know the amount of effort we put into that award was all worth it. Its really exciting knowing our team is going to worlds next year because of our efforts.

Coach Debbie May said more than 120 teams were up for the award.

The Express made it out of the qualifying round at the tournament last weekend, finishing 16th. They teamed with the WildStangs from Arlington Heights, Ill., and Gompei and the HERD from Worcester, Mass., to form their alliance.

As the 8th-ranked alliance, Bedfords group had to face the top-ranked alliance in the first elimination round match.

The matches are three versus three, so its always a little dependent on luck and how good the other teams are that youre with, Ms. May said. We were not always partnered with teams who were able to perform the same [as us], so it made it a little tough.

Bedfords alliance won the first match in the best-of-three series, but dropped the final two. One of the teams on the opposing alliance from Greenville, Texas, has won multiple world championships.

A former member of the Express is interning there, and serves as a mentor to the team.

We were 16th in our division and beat one of the best teams in the world, senior and build captain Charlie Cook said. Overall, we performed very well. It was a fun match.

This years FIRST gameplay theme was steamworks. The object of each match was to make an airship take flight by retrieving gears with your robot.

Once 13 gears were placed, four rotors on top of the airship began to spin.

There was something that involved climbing a rope that was four or five feet high, said senior Sam Synowka, a member of the drive team. Sometimes robots would climb and it would either fail to stay up or the rope would break, so the robot would fall.

The Express had a 100 percent success rate in climbing the rope, which was the final step of this years matches.

Teams are given six weeks before the competition season begins to build their robots. During that time, most students log more than 200 hours perfecting their machine.

This coming weekend will be the first one theyve had free since January, Ms. May said. Its going to be hard to let go of this class. We always say its not just about the robot; the robot is the vehicle to get these kids inspired. Thats the type of thing that keeps me invested in this program.

Contact Jay Skebba at:jskebba@theblade.com,419-376-9414, or on Twitter @JaySkebbaBlade.

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Bedford High robotics team inspires - Toledo Blade

In the Errol Morris documentaryFast, Cheap &Out of Control,robotic scientist Rodney Brooks predicted a future where sensors and robots would be pervasive, and people could simply tell a door to open. That was 1997.

Brooks prognostication has now come to pass. Voice control and the Internet of Things are here. Robots, or artificial creatures as he sometimes has called them, are growing ever more intelligent.

Thanks to Brooks and the companies hes founded, robots go to work on a daily basis alongside people in our homes and on our factory floors. If you care about robots, at all, Brooks the entrepreneur, MIT professor and author is no doubt a familiar name to you.If not, heres a recap of some of his more commercial achievements: He co-founded a company called iRobot that created the vacuum-cleaning Roomba robot and military robots used to disarm explosives; he also started Rethink Robotics, whose newest Sawyer robots are used to do dull, dirty and dangerous tasksin manufacturing, leaving people to more interesting workthats less likely to physically hurt them.

Brooks companies arent the only ones focusing on making robots smarter, safer and more collaborative with people and each other. But his work has inspired generations of robotics engineers, and helped themfind a path to success outside of academia and defense.

Brooks will be joining us onstage at Disrupt NY. Well ask him what it will take tomake the robots of science fiction into reality, howhe thinks robotics will make the greatest impact on humanity in his lifetime and more.

Check out the agenda here.

You can still get tickets to Disrupt NY, which takes place at Manhattans Pier 36 May 15-17. See you there!

Sponsors make TechCrunch events possible. If youre interested in learning more about sponsorships with TechCrunch, send a message to our sponsor team here.

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Rethink Robotics and iRobot founder Rod Brooks is coming to Disrupt NY - TechCrunch

Jewish students recently enjoyed working with their classmates in teams while participating in the first Miami Jewish Day School Robotics Festival at Scheck Hillel Community School in North Miami Beach.

This festival was hosted by the Center for the Advancement of Jewish Education in Miami in collaboration with the Yerucham Science Center in Israel and showcased the technological creations of students from Scheck Hillel and the Hebrew Academy (RASG) and Lehrman Community Day School, both in Miami Beach. All three schools are first-year participants in the Miami Jewish Day School Robotics Program, an innovative approach to STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education that combines mathematics and science with Lego education and enables participating third- and fourth-grade students to grasp robotics principles and work collaboratively to solve problems.

This program is funded through a $40,000 grant from the Miami/Yerucham Partnership, a collaboration between the Greater Miami Jewish Federation and its Israeli partnership city of Yerucham, and facilitated by CAJE, a subsidiary agency of the Federation.

Valerie Mitrani, CAJE's director of day school strategy and initiatives, said the recent festival was exciting.

"It was really the culmination of a year with lots of exciting learning in the schools and it was our first attempt to do something like this and we were very pleased with the results."

Mitrani noted that the students were engaged and excited. She mentioned that CAJE and the Miami/Yerucham Partnership are working to expand this program to all Federation-supported Jewish day schools in Miami-Dade County.

Asaf Shalev, deputy manager of Yerucham Science Center, was impressed with the local students' level of understanding.

"They reached a really high level of building the robots and understanding the way to create the code, so I was quite happy and impressed with the work that was done."

Eli Fischbach, third grade student at Scheck Hillel, said about the program and festival, "I learned how to code at school and loved practicing for the festival with all my friends and with the team from Yerucham who helped with the program."

Samantha Cedrati, a fourth grade student at Scheck Hillel who was one of five students from her grade who volunteered her time to come after school to learn this and help out, said about the festival, "It was really fun, and I think working as a team is better than working on your own because if you make a mistake, your team can help you figure it out and maybe help you build something even better than what you would build on your own."

Scheck Hillel educators Nancy Penchev, I Lab instructor, and Nilam Patel, lower school science teacher, thought the students were able to gain the value of teamwork through this program and festival.

"They were working together and helping one another," Patel said.

Penchev said, "One of the things I try to instill in our students is that failure is just temporary."

"We're learning from our failures and they demonstrated that tremendously. I told them over and over how proud I was of them because nobody gave up."

Craig Carpentieri, the school's chief academic officer, said that the program is "an opportunity for our children to really explore their passions."

Several third grade students from Hebrew Academy expressed their festival excitement.

"We thought we were a very good team and while we were there we were so welcomed," said Hebrew Academy third grade student Caleb Gdanski.

Genie Bensimon, Hebrew Academy's third grade general studies teacher, said, "The students were very dedicated and worked very well."

Rabbi Avi Bossewitch, the school's dean of academic affairs, noted that through the program, he's seen a "surge of energy, momentum and excitement" at the Hebrew Academy.

Fourth grade students from Lehrman were also interviewed about their festival experiences, but the school asked that their last names not be disclosed.

Ethan said, "It was fun and exciting to work in a team."

Liza said, "I like having team members because whenever I needed help, some people helped me."

Julian said, "My favorite part was when you're on a table, and you have a little amount of time, you may get all stressed out, but at the end, you do it well."

Leah said, "It's so exciting because you don't know what the judges are going to think of what you programmed and everything, so you try to do your best."

Ilana Traub, Lehrman's media and technology specialist, said regarding the festival, "I think it was a great culmination for what they have learned throughout the year."

Jodi Bruce, head of school, noted that one of the nice qualities of the program is that Yerucham "brought all of their expertise, trained their teachers for a week and even gave more of their time as they came down."

Read more here:

Teamwork demonstrated at robotics festival - Sun Sentinel

Layer by metal layer, a complex component began to take shape with the help of an additive manufacturing machine known as a 3-D printer to most people and a clutch of USC engineering students at the regions newest center devoted to building better stuff and creating jobs.

The part was being made for a Southern California company that was trying out an improved design but didnt have the machinery to produce something involving complicated shapes and angles.

We looked at the geometry and said we should be able to, and we printed it for them, said Satyandra K. Gupta, a USC professor and director of the Center for Advanced Manufacturing.

The collaboration with the company, which had asked Gupta for complete secrecy to avoid tipping off competitors, was one of the first for the Center for Advanced Manufacturing.

The facility opened in February as part of a $253-million Defense Department-sponsored consortium of dozens of corporations, schools, nonprofits and local governments around the country.

The Defense Department initiative aims to revitalize U.S. manufacturing by making robotics, 3-D printers and other advanced devices plus a workforce trained to operate them available to small and mid-sized businesses that have been slow to embrace such innovation. The idea is to bolster research, spur business investment, create jobs and boost worker productivity.

The initiative, in turn, is part of Manufacturing USA, the federal governments 5-year-old effort to build a national manufacturing research infrastructure that will develop new products and markets and help reduce the shortage of technically trained manufacturing workers.

U.S. manufacturers have added 800,000 jobs since the recession ended in 2009, reaching 12.3 million jobs in March. But that still lags behind the 13.7 million manufacturing jobs in December 2007, as the recession was starting.

At the USC center, aerospace and biomedical industries will be getting particular attention to help support the fast-growing technological ecosystem in Silicon Beach, said Yannis C. Yortsos, dean of the Viterbi School of Engineering, which houses the manufacturing facility.

The center has access to USC faculty with expertise beyond advanced manufacturing technology to include augmented and virtual reality, machine learning and the continuing evolution of Internet-connected devices. Gupta speaks of a golden age of data and technology-enhanced manufacturing in which the U.S. doesnt have a disadvantage because labor costs are lower in many foreign countries.

We just dont do things here because they are interesting, Gupta said. There should be a practical application. Is this something a business can use? If the answer is yes, that makes it worth doing.

The center has been funded by the Defense Department, the National Science Foundation and National Institute of Standards and Technologies. USC is contributing faculty, equipment and space, and Jabil Circuit Inc. donated five robots. Companies will be charged for their projects.

On most days, the center is a busy place. In one part of the 6,000-square-foot center, 3-D printers are making parts from metal powder and other materials. Students are trained in the printers programming, operation and maintenance.

Industrial robots dominate another section of the lab. One is being taught to polish all the nooks and crannies of a geometrically complex part.

Were basically building a smart assistant, said Brual Shah, a 27-year-old native of Mumbai, India, who is a post doctoral research associate.

Northrop Grumman Corp. is among the companies involved with the Defense Department initiative and the USC center.

The reason: We want to be able to share lessons learned, best practices, said Frank Flores, vice president of engineering product development at Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems, which is based in Redondo Beach. We want to learn from each other.

At the other end of the size spectrum is Morf3D, a 2-year-old El Segundo start-up that built an engine mount for the SpaceIL project, one of the five finalist entries in the Google Lunar X-Prize competition, which will award $20 million to the first team landing a privately funded rover on the moon.

During a recent visit to the manufacturing center, Morf3D Chief Technology Officer Melissa Orme said she and Chief Executive Ivan J. Madera want to develop lighter and stronger metal alloys with USCs help. Theyre also looking for future employees.

We see the usefulness in the students, having a workforce thats trained in additive manufacturing, Orme said. So that will be a really nice pipeline for us.

Among those students are Jordi Sim and Cady Gooding, who were at the USC center working on a drone called Robo Raven, which flaps its mylar-and-carbon-fiber wings as a bird would. The drone is meant to help farmers reduce crop losses.

Pest birds are the problem, said Sim, an aerospace and computer engineering student. They tried scarecrows. Nothing was as good as a falconer with his bird, but that cost a couple of hundred dollars a day.

Gooding figures the project, which has a wing span of 3 feet, is not only practical, its helping with her goal of working in commercial aerospace.

Ive been working a lot on the wing fabrication, she said. Its hands-on experience actually building it and seeing how different factors affect how well it flies.

Peter Zierhut, vice president of the Haas Technical Education Center for Haas Automation Inc. in Oxnard, said that the development of another university-led center on manufacturing is good to see, especially in California where manufacturing I don't think has gotten its due attention.

Hass Automation bills itself as the largest machine tool builder in the Western world, and a look at its outdoor lot, which is larger than a football field, shows products bound for locations all over the globe.

Zierhut hopes that the USC manufacturing center will help dispel the old image of manufacturing as a dirty, environmentally unfriendly business and will help prepare the next generation of modern manufacturing workers.

I think a lot of people still have visions of the factories maybe their grandparents might have worked at with the smokestacks, and the dirty smoky air, and the dirty floors, and the noisy factory. Its not like that anymore, Zierhut said.

Weve made some headway in changing that image, he said. Hopefully USC can help us continue working on that.

ron.white@latimes.com

For more business news, follow Ronald D. White on Twitter: @RonWLATimes

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Here's where small companies can access robotics, 3-D printers and a sharp workforce - Los Angeles Times

ANN ARBOR, MI North American robotics companies posted the strongest ever first-quarter results, according to the Robotic Industries Association, the industrys trade group. Both robot orders and shipments achieved record levels.

An all-time high total of 9,773 robots valued at approximately $516 million were ordered from North American robotics companies during the first quarter of 2017. This represents growth of 32 percent in units over the same period in 2016, which held the previous record. Order revenue grew 28 percent over the first quarter of last year. Robot shipments also reached new heights, with 8,824 robots valued at $494 million shipped to North American customers in the opening quarter of the year. This represents growth of 24 percent in units and five percent in dollars over the same period in 2016.

The automation industry continues to grow robustly as companies invest to increase productivity and boost competitiveness while also providing opportunities for workers, said Jeff Burnstein, president of RIA. We are excited to hear about the new jobs being created and how companies such as Amazon, GM, and others are training and retraining their workforce to enable them to embrace these higher skilled jobs.

Growth in Automotive Soars

Growth in automotive related industries soared in the first quarter of 2017. Robots ordered by automotive component suppliers were up 53 percent while orders by automotive OEMs increased 32 percent. Another good sign for the future of robotics was the continued growth in non-automotive industries like metals (54 percent), semiconductors/electronics (22 percent), and food and consumer goods (15 percent).

The biggest increases were in arc welding (102 percent), coating and dispensing (64 percent), and spot welding (36 percent) applications. RIA estimates that 250,000 robots are now in use in the United States, the third highest in the world behind Japan and China.

Market Growth Reflected in Automate Attendance

RIA and its parent group, the Association for Advancing Automation (A3), see the impact of the growth in demand for robotics and related automation at industry events such as Automate 2017, recently held in Chicago. This years show featured more than 400 exhibitors displaying their latest technologies and services, including global suppliers of robotics, motion control, motors, vision systems, metrology, software and system integration services for enterprises large and small. Over 20,000 people attended Automate 2017, including over 1,000 participants in the 120+ Automate conference sessions held at the event.

All of our statistics increased significantly from the last Automate show in 2015, added Burnstein. Total number of show attendees jumped 37 percent and conference participation grew by over 90 percent compared to 2015. This growth demonstrates that there is an increasing need for an event like Automate that provides practical, real-world solutions for companies currently automating or considering automation.

Collaborative Robots andAdvanced Vision Conference Set

RIA and its sister group, AIA Advancing Vision + Imaging, are teaming up to bring more content on leading-edge robot and machine vision trends in 2017. The Collaborative Robots & Advanced Vision Conference will take place November 15-16 in San Jose, CA, and will feature presentations from market leaders in robotics, vision, and imaging. For more information, visit http://www.robotics.organd http://www.visiononline.org.

Originally posted here:

North American Robotics Market Surges 32 Percent - Quality Magazine