Daily Archives: June 23, 2017

You might not have heard of Kuka, but youll almost certainly know its products. The German firm is one of the worlds top manufacturers of industrial robots, and its robot arms are instantly recognizable thanks to their signature orange livery. But in the future, Kukas robots might become an even more familiar sight, with the company saying its now exploring the world of consumer robotics.

together we want to do consumer robotics.

In an interview with the Financial Times, CEO Till Reuter said the change was being pushed by Kukas new parent company, Chinese home appliance maker Midea. Midea is not doing any robotics or automation, so Kuka is automation for Midea, Reuter told the FT. And they are very well connected to the consumer industry. So together we want to do consumer robotics.

Midea bought Kuka last year for 4.5 billion. The Chinese firm makes a wide range of products for the home, including air con systems, washing machines, ovens, fridges, and more. Its not clear what sort of product Midea is aiming to produce, but Kukas expertise in automating heavy-duty physical tasks suggests the companies would be looking beyond simple home-hub robots. Instead, they might set their sights on more complex robot assistants, able to help with tasks like looking after the elderly. Robots like these are under development in a number of countries, including Japan, which faces the challenge of looking after an aging population.

Building a robot designed to work closely with humans would fit Kukas evolving interests, which have moved from just static industrial robots, to smaller bots that work side by side with people. These include its iiwa range of bots (the name stands for intelligent industrial work assistant) which are designed to give factory workers a third hand. Kuka told the FT: We come from this direction to the consumer market; Midea comes from the other direction and we meet in the middle.

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Germany's biggest industrial robotics company is working on consumer robots - The Verge

Starting Friday, Long Beach City College will host a three-day international student water robotics competition during which over 60 teams will test underwater robots they designed and built in scenarios that this year focus on using technology for todays seaports, organizers announced.

The Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) Centers 16th annual International ROV Competition will feature hundreds of students from K-12, community colleges and universities representing teams from around the world.

Also known as remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), these robots are the vehicles the MATE Center uses to get students excited and engaged in science, technology, engineering and math while exposing them to related careers and how this technology is used in the real world, organizers said in a release.

As part of the competition, students are challenged to design and build underwater robots to complete workplace scenarios and are tasked with creating mock companies to get them to think like entrepreneurs and work together to manufacture, market and sell their productstheir ROVs, the release stated.

Not only do students develop technical skills as they engineer the robots, they also gain leadership, project management and communication skills as they prepare technical reports and poster displays and deliver presentations that are evaluated by judges from the professional marine technology world, officials stated.

The competition this year will focus on the role ROVs play in securing the health and safety of todays seaports and will encourage students to think about how this technology can help lay the groundwork for port cities of the future, according to organizers.

Students will act like port managers and operate their ROVs to handle tasks like finding cargo containers that fell overboard, constructing an underwater tunnel and cleaning up contaminated sediment. However, instead of piloting the vehicles in sometimes confined and precarious port conditions, they will safely work in LBCCs Viking Aquatics pool.

Many of the teams participated in 30 regional competitions that took place throughout the U.S. and in countries like the United Kingdom, Russia, Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and the Middle East to qualify for this event.

The competition is organized by MATE and supported by the Marine Technology Societys ROV Committee. The competition also receives support from the National Science Foundation and other technology and education related organizations.

For more information on the competition, which takes place June 23-25 at LBCC, located at 4901 East Carson Street, click here.

Above, left image courtesy of MATE.

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Seaport-Themed Underwater Robotics Competition Heads to Long Beach City College - Long Beach Post

Most of the robots around the world are shipped to factories, where the machines will be used to make other machines, like cars, laptops and dishwashers.

As more people buy more new gadgets, the market for the industrial robots that build devices is poised to grow 175 percent over the next nine years, according to data from the International Federation of Robotics and Loup Ventures.

But the driver of much of that growth isnt going to be from the room-sized metal industrial arms that have been piecing together cars for decades.

Rather, a new generation of manufacturing robots is emerging that is more collaborative, smaller and more perceptive than traditional machinery. Collaborative robots, which Loup projects will account for 34 percent of the industrial robots sold by 2025, are designed to work safely with and alongside people in factories.

In 2016, collaborative robots only represented 3 percent of industrial robots sold.

These robots are smaller and have more sensors, which help them react faster and with more intelligence when approaching another object or a human, so as not to apply too much force and stop operating when appropriate.

Collaborative robots are generally cheaper than traditional robots too, ranging from $25,000 to $45,000, whereas traditional factory floor robots can cost upward of $100,000 each.

That cheaper price tag, combined with the fact that the collaborative robotic arms are typically also smaller and have more nimble movements, could open the doors to more types of manufacturing plants to start to adopt robots on their production lines.

Heres an example of a collaborative robot named Baxter made by Rethink Robotics, a U.S.-based robot manufacturer.

In another example, a medical device manufacturer that runs a smaller factory might be able to start automating some of its assembly line using smaller, less-expensive collaborative robots; traditional industrial robots were typically too big, dangerous or expensive to install to be worth the investment.

Robots for automotive manufacturing currently make up the bulk of the industrial robots sold in the world. But as robots get smaller, cheaper and become better at working alongside humans, Loup predicts robots in electronics manufacturing will match the demand of robots in automotive factories by 2025.

This year, the market value of industrial robots worldwide is estimated to hit $14 billion, up 13 percent from last year, according to the data from the International Federation of Robotics and Loup, with more than 20 percent more units sold than in 2016.

And by 2025, the market for industrial robots is projected to balloon to $33.8 billion. To put that in perspective, in 2016 the global industrial robot market was valued at $12.3 billion. So in less than 10 years, the market value of industrial robots could nearly triple.

Growth is already under way. Factories are actually buying a lot more robots now than they have in previous years. In North America alone there were 32 percent more robots bought in the first quarter of 2017 than at the same time last year. But more robots sold doesnt mean the market value of the industry will rise at the same rate, since the uptick in sales, in part, is due to the price of robots going down.

Additional reporting by Rani Molla.

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The industrial robotics market will nearly triple in less than 10 years - Recode

Image: NASA/GSFC The most efficient way to exploring other planets may be sending humans to orbit, and letting robots do everything else.

As we start looking towards more comprehensive exploration of the Moon and of Mars, the assumption is that were working on sending humans to the surface of those worlds. Its going to be exponentially more difficult and dangerous than sending robots, but thats what exploration is all about, right?

Theres an article in the current issue of Science Robotics that discusses an alternative approacha kind of compromise between sending only humans or only robots. The idea isusing robotictelepresence for planetary exploration. From orbit, the authors argue, a small team of humans would remote operate rovers and other robotic systems and as a result they could do more exploration while keeping the overall mission safer and cheaper.

We already use telerobotics for planetary explorationweve got robots all over the solar system sending us data and then patiently doing what we tell them to do. This is different than telepresence, because of the latency involved: It takes long enough (minutes to hours) for a signal traveling at the speed of light to make it from Earth to Mars or Saturn and back again. That means that theres no way for us to have a real presence experience.

In theScience Robotics article, Dan F. Lester, Kip V. Hodges, and Robert C. Anderson from Exinetics, in Austin, Texas, Arizona State University, in Tempe, and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, inPasadena, Calif.,arguefor sending humans into space specifically to reduce latency to something tolerable (better than 0.5 second), for example going into orbit around Mars (but not to the surface) just to make it so that humans can control robots on the surface through telepresence in near real-timewith the robots also doing things on their own when needed.

The European Space Agency (ESA)tried this kind of thing out recently, with an astronaut on the International Space Station (ISS) directly controlling a robot on Earth. We wrote about it here, and theres an article from ESA here. NASA has been trying it in the other direction as well, controlling Robonaut 2 on the ISS from the ground.

There are lots of reasons why space agencies are working on orbital telepresence, many of which are illustrated in the NASA artwork at the top of this article. Using relatively simple assistive autonomy, a horde of robots can spend most of their time wandering around on their own, while a few humans jump between them via telepresence from orbit to provide guidance.

The robot horde can consists of all kinds of different platforms, like driving robots, flying robots, robots that can scale cliffs, robots with arms, robots with drills, robots with lasers, or anything else you want. If some of the robots get stuck or break, its not a big deal, youve got more. Some robots could even collect samples on the surface, and then send them up to you inside little rockets. And, as autonomy improves and robots get better at autonomous navigation and even doing autonomous science, humans will be able to control more and more of them at once, only stepping in when necessary.

As I see it, there are two fundamental questions about using telepresence robots for exploration:

As robots and telepresence get more capable and more reliable, NASA isnt the only one who will have to make decisions like these. Already, you can rent telepresence robots for conferences and to tour museums (or zoos), getting some significant percentage of the value of being there in person without having to spend time and money on travel.

Its certainly better than nothing right now, but at some point, it might be almost as good as the real thing in some ways, and even better than the real thing in others. For those of us who dont have the option for travel, telepresence will be a valuable tool, and for those of us who do have the option for travel, well have to decide whether its really worth it, for destinations around this world, or to another.

[ Science Robotics ]

IEEE Spectrums award-winning robotics blog, featuring news, articles, and videos on robots, humanoids, drones, automation, artificial intelligence, and more. Contact us:e.guizzo@ieee.org

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Are Telepresence Robots the Best Way to Explore Other Worlds? - IEEE Spectrum