Monthly Archives: April 2021

Whats new for collaborative robotics systems, enabling technologies and applications? Whats next? Attend this online session on April 21st to find out.

By RBR Staff | April 16, 2021

Listen to this article

Wednesday, March 24, 20212 PM ET / 11AM PT

The introduction of collaborative robots, robotic systems that can work safely in close approximation with human co-workers, has increased task flexibility and expanded the number and types of applications for which robots can be used. Both large, existing robotics suppliers, as well as new, smaller firms, have rapidly introduced innovative collaborative robotics technologies into the market, and more are on their way. Unfortunately, this fast-moving sector makes for uncertainty for both end-users and developers of collaborative systems.

This webinar will act to increase clarity, providing a snapshot of the current state of the collaborative robotics sector, including emerging capabilities, new applications and business models, and powerful enabling technologies, as well as a description of what to expect in the future. Topics include:

Date / Time Wednesday, April 21, 2021 2 PM ET / 11 AM PT

Sponsored by:

Dan Kara, Vice President, Robotics, WTWH Media

Dan Kara is Vice President, Robotics at WTWH Media where he chartered with driving the companys robotics initiatives including the Robot Report and Robotics Business Review online portals and the Robotics Summit Conference and Exposition, Healthcare Robotics Engineering Forum, RoboBusiness Conference & Expo and the International Field Robotics Engineering Forum. Prior to joining WTWH, he was Practice Director, Robotics and Intelligent Systems at ABI Research and Chief Research Officer for Myria RAS, both research and advisory services firms focused on automation, robotics and intelligent systems. Dan was also President of Robotics Trends, an integrated media and research firm serving the personal, service and industrial robotics markets. Dan has also worked as Executive Vice President of Intermedia Group, and Director of Research at Ullo International.

The rest is here:

Webinar: Collaborative Robotics 2021 New Systems, Applications and Opportunities - April 21 - Robotics Business Review

Haichong (Kai) Zhang, assistant professor of Robotics Engineering and Biomedical Engineering, has received a $445,742, five-year grant to continue his ongoing research into creating robotic systems to use minimally invasive technologies to safely and accurately detect and monitor cancer.

Zhangs grant is part of a larger project funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and led by Martin Pomper, director of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging and professor of Radiology and Radiological Science at Johns Hopkins University. Pomper received a total of $2,266,703 for his work to create an innovative, targeted chemical compound that can be used during imaging to enable better detection and treatment of aggressive forms of cancer. Zhang, a co-investigator on the project and a subcontractor on the award, will focus on designing and creating a photoacoustic imaging apparatus, which will be part of his diagnostic imaging robot, to evaluate the chemical contrast agents that Pompers team synthesizes.

Creating a diagnostic imaging robot has been an ongoing project for Zhang. In 2019, he received a five-year $1,869,423 Director's Early Independence Award from the NIH to support his work to create a robotic system that will detect and analyze three different indicators of prostate cancer: a 3D image of any mass; high levels of a protein produced by cancer cells; and tissue with low-oxygen levels caused by cancer growth.

Zhang said the two grants synergize to enable him to advance his research into exploring the detection of aggressive prostate cancer using photoacoustic imaging, which uses the delivery of light energy to examine tissue to improve ultrasound imagery.

Excerpt from:

Biomedical Engineer Receives Grant to Further His Research into Using Robotics for Cancer Detection and Monitoring - WPI News

Snakebot takes a dive to go where other robots cant

A snake-like robot can now slither its way through water, allowing it to inspect ships, submarines, and underwater infrastructure for damage.

Researchers from the Biorobotics Lab in the School of Computer Sciences Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University tested the hardened underwater modular robot snake (HUMRS) last month in the pool, diving the robot through underwater hoops, showing off its precise and smooth swimming, and demonstrating its ease of control.

We can go places that other robots cannot, says Howie Choset, professor of computer science. It can snake around and squeeze into hard-to-reach underwater spaces. Choset and Matt Travers, co-directors of the Biorobotics Lab, led the work.

Thesubmersiblerobot snake project aims to assist the Department of Defense with inspecting ships, submarines, and other underwater infrastructure for damage or as part of routine maintenance, says Matt Fischer, the program manager at the Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing (ARM) Institute.

Snakebot could save time and money

The military has limited options for inspecting areas like a ships hull. To do so, theNavymust either send a team of divers to the ships location, wait until it returns to port to deploy the divers, or pull it into a dry dock -- all options that take time and money.

A submersible robot snake could allow the Navy to inspect the ship at sea, immediately alerting the crew to critical damage or sending information about issues that need attention back to port for use when the ship docks.

If they can get that information before the ship comes into a home port or a dry dock, that saves weeks or months of time in a maintenance schedule, says Fischer, who served in the Navy for three years. And in turn, that saves money.

Fischer, who crawled into the ballast tanks of asubmarineduring his service, says many sailors would gladly pass that difficult and tight duty to a robot.

Steve McKee, a co-lead of the Joint Robotics Organization for Building Organic Technologies (JROBOT), a Department of Defense task force interested in technology like the submersible robot snake, says the project will improve the readiness of equipment in the armed services.

The advancements being made hold great promise for helping not only the Department of Defense but also various industries around the world, McKee says.

Snake in the pool!

Outside the military, therobotscould inspect underwater pipes for damage or blockages, assess offshore oil rigs, or check the integrity of a tank while it is filled with liquid. The robot could be used to inspect and maintain any fluid-filled systems, says Nate Shoemaker-Trejo, a mechanical and mechatronics engineer in the Biorobotics Lab working on the submersible snakebot.

The distinguishing feature is the robots form factor and flexibility. The smallest versions of regular submersibles are usually blocky, one-piece arrangements. The robot snake is narrow and jointed, Shoemaker-Trejo says. The end result is that an underwater robot snake can squeeze around corners and into small spaces where regular submersibles cant go.

Versions of therobot snakeshave already proven useful in difficult situations. Travers led a team to Mexico City in 2017 to use robot snakes in a search-and-rescue mission after an earthquake. And a robot snake made a lasting impression on Jimmy Fallon when it climbed up his leg as a guest on NBCsThe Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.

The robots modular design allows it to adapt to different tasks, whether squeezing through tight spaces under rubble, climbing up a tree, or slithering around a corner underwater. For the underwater robot snake, the team used existing watertight modules that allow the robot to operate in bad conditions. They then added new modules containing the turbines and thrusters needed to maneuver the robot underwater.

Development progressed rapidly. The team started working on the underwater robot snake in July 2020 and by March 2021, had it swimming in the pool.

Im surprised that we made this robot work as fast as we did, Choset says.

A grant from the Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing Institute funded the work.

This article was posted from Futurity.

About the Author

Jason Maderer is the interim managing director of communications at Carnegie Mellon University.

Go here to read the rest:

'Snakebot' takes a dive to go where other robots can't - GCN.com

Robot vision systems are commonly referred to as machine vision. This vision tool is used in several industrial processes, including material inspection, object recognition, and pattern recognition. Each industry applies its particular values to machine vision. In healthcare, pattern recognition is critical. In electronics production component inspection is important. In banking, the recognition of signatures, optical characters, and currency matter.

We talked with machine vision company, Cognex to get an understanding of how vision systems work with robotics. There are two main applications for robot guidance. You take an image of the scene and you find something and input that things coordinates. This is the angle for 2D and 3D systems. The robot can see an object and will do something with it, Brian Benoit, senior manager of product marketing for Cognex, told Design News. Another application is inspecting an object. A robot holds a camera and the robot moves the camera around the part to get certain images.

Related: How Mobile Robots Deliver Efficiency to Your Packaging Line

KUKA offers a flexible 2D vision solution for its robots by integrating with Cognex VisionPro software. The vision tools locate, inspect and read codes on stationary or moving parts.

For Cognex, the vision system often goes to integrators who cobble together automation systems.Sometimes our customer is an integrator who is building a system with robots that need vision, said Benoit. The types of robots we work with are manipulating robots. They may lift a large payload in a cage. Those are fast and unsafe to be around.

Related: Artificial Brain Gives Robots Unprecedented Sensing Capabilities

In other cases, the customer is the end-user working with smaller, safer robots, We also work with collaborative robots that are designed to work side-by-side with people. Theyre not going to use as much force, said Benoit. They often do pick-and-place. He noted that the vision systems from Cognex are not the same as the guided systems used by mobile robots. We havent seen much traction with vision on warehouse robots. They use sensors that are integrated into their system, so they dont need an outside camera.

While the large caged robots have a decades-long history, collaborative robots are a relatively new addition to the automation world. The cage robot market is stable. The most common customer is in automotive. The need for a vision system with caged robots isnt great because there isnt as much variability, said Benoit With collaborative robots, you have a more unstructured environment so there are a lot more vision applications. Its a developing market, so our strategy is to work well with any robot manufacturer. We develop software interfaces for the robot manufacturer so they can easily work with our system. With each robot, we have to develop an interface.

ABB Integrated Vision interfaces with Cognex.

The human eye is a sensor. Its our brain that understands the visual feed from our eyes. Same with robots. The robots software interprets the visual data. Software is the brain behind everything. We have two types of vision. One set of algorithms is rules-based. It looks for patterns and edges. The other algorithm is in the deep-learning space where the software is trained by example. Were seeing traction in both, said Benoit. The goal of the software is a good handshake between the robot and the vision system. We train the robot and the vision system to know where they are together. When the camera sees something, the robot knows where to go in response.

The vision software includes a plug-and-play connection for each robot maker. We try to make the integration as simple as possible. We have the right hooks in our software to send signals back and forth, said Benoit. We also rely on integrators for help on that. We work directly with some robot companies, such as Universal Robots. They have vision software thats maintained by Cognex and works directly on their robots.

Part of what sets collaborative robots apart from traditional, caged robots is they are designed to be trained by users rather than programmed by integrators. Universal Robots business model is to skip the integrators. They have a point-and-click driver, said Benoit. Its important that when they work with peripherals, they can just plug it in. They do it with our vision system and with different end effectors.

The vision system that allows the robot to identify a part and pick it up is not different from the vision system that allows the robot to check to do a quality check on a part. When the robot has a vision system whether its on a conveyor or the end of a robot arm it works the same. The vision system is mounted on a robot arm, and the arm moves around, said Benoit. The software analyzes the feed from the vision. In many cases, the software engages in deep learning. We integrated a system, all of the analysis exists inside the vision platform. We use a neural network inside the camera.

The software for the vision system may be programmed to identify a specific object, or it may be designed to learn about what its seeing. The deep-earning is different from conventional programming. Its like teaching a child what a house is. You dont normally tell the child the coordinates of a house. You say. Thats a house, thats a house, and thats an office building. Our software is designed to do that in manufacturing.

Rob Spiegel has covered manufacturing for 19 years, 17 of them for Design News. Other topics he has covered include automation, supply chain technology, alternative energy, and cybersecurity. For 10 years, he was the owner and publisher of the food magazine Chile Pepper.

Read the original:

How Vision Systems Work in Robotics - DesignNews

Carbon Robotics Autonomous Weeder uses artificial intelligence to identify and zap weeds growing in fields of vegetables. (Carbon Robotics Photo)

Carbon Robotics, a Seattle company led by Isilon Systems co-founder Paul Mikesell, is unveiling its self-driving robot that uses artificial intelligence to identify weeds growing in fields of vegetables, then zaps them with precision thermal bursts from lasers.

The startup, previously known as Maka Autonomous Robots, was in stealth mode since 2018. Mikesell sold Isilon for $2.25 billion in 2010, helped Uber open its Seattle engineering office in 2015, then moved to Facebooks Seattle Oculus lab before taking the startup plunge again.

Carbons tech holds the promise of reducing the cost of growing organic vegetables so that they no longer cost a whole paycheck.

We have all of this technology that allows, for the first time, computers to see things and understand what theyre looking at, Mikesell said. For him, the question was: how do we apply this to real physical world work? He turned to food production.

Scientists have been experimenting with laser weed-control for more than a decade after finding that the heat of lasers vaporizes water inside plant cells, destroying the cells and killing the plant. In 2013, a German company announced plans to use a laser-armed drone to zap weeds from the air.

But what farmers need is less a revolution in farming methods than a revolutionary tool that fits into their current farming patterns, Mikesell said.

Carbon worked closely with farmers in eastern Oregon and southern Idaho, he said. As a result, Carbons robot system the Autonomous Weeder was built about the size of a medium tractor so it would fit in the furrows between rows of common crops like onions and sweet potatoes.

It can cover up to 16 acres of cropland a day, zapping as many as 100,000 weeds an hour, Mikesell said. And since its self-driving, all a farmer has to do is take it to the field in the morning and turn it on.

Were really intent on not making farmers have to change how theyre doing things, Mikesell said. Thats been a key to our success. We fit right into their operations.

Weed control is an essential part of successful farming and is perhaps the essential factor for organic farmers, said Doug Collins, a soils scientist with Washington State Universitys Cooperative Extension research center in Puyallup, Wash., who serves on the Organic Advisory Board for the states Agriculture Department.

Its frequently the No. 1-cited problem, he said. Weeds can get out of hand and you can lose a crop pretty easily. The competition from the weeds can make it so the crop is not worth harvesting.

For organic farmers in particular, the cost of weed control can be high. Collins said his research on larger organic farms in the Columbia Basin showed that farmers can spend $1,200 to $1,600 an acre hiring workers to eradicate weeds by hand with hoes. Even non-organic farmers will hire hand crews to supplement the weed-killing sprays they use.

Its hard, physically demanding work, Collins said. Its not fun.

There are other alternatives for weed control like covering the space between rows with tarps or black plastic, to block weeds from getting the sunlight they need but theyre not always practical for large operations, Collins said.

One key for Carbon has been its Northwest location, Mikesell said. The region is unique in that it has a deep depth of knowledge in AI and computer visioning; an established advanced manufacturing sector; a diverse agricultural industry; and a strong venture capital community all in close proximity.

Theres not a lot of places in the world where you have all those things coming together, he said.

The 21-person startup has raised $8.9 million to date from Fuse and Bolt.

Carbon has sold out all the robots it built for the 2021 planting season, and is looking for an industrial partner who could help it build more units for 2022, Mikesell said.

The company is looking to get into the hundreds of units built and shipped for next year, he said. Theres a demand for a lot more than that, tens or hundreds of thousands of them.

Visit link:

Isilon founder lifts the hood on farming startup Carbon Robotics and its weed zapping machine - GeekWire

High-tech supermarket and logistics group Ocado is pushing toward a future where, from warehouse to doorstep, groceries will be handled by robots.

The British group, a grocery delivery rival to online retail giant Amazon AMZN, +0.60% in the U.K. and joined with grocer Kroger KR, -0.22% in the U.S., will invest 10 million ($13.8 million) in a commercial partnership with Oxbotica, an autonomous vehicle software company, the company said on Friday.

Shares in Ocado OCDO, +1.87% climbed near 2% on the day, helping Londons blue-chip FTSE 100 UKX, +0.52% index top 7,000 for the first time in more than a year.

The partnership will involve collaborating on hardware and software interfaces for autonomous vehicles, Ocado said, integrating Oxford, U.K.-based Oxboticas software platform on Ocados vehicles.

Plus: Tesla self-driving truck rival TuSimple raises $1 billion in IPO valuing it at $8.5 billion

The next steps are for Ocado to fit out its delivery vans and warehouse vehicles with data capture capabilities to help Oxbotica to test its technologies. The vision is to automate the entire grocery delivery process: from vehicles that operate inside and out of Ocado warehouses, to last-mile delivery vehicles and curb-to-kitchen robots.

We are excited about the opportunity to work with Oxbotica to develop a wide range of autonomous solutions that truly have the potential to transform both our and our partners [customer fulfillment center] and service delivery operations, while also giving all end customers the widest range of options and flexibility, said Alex Harvey, Ocados head of advanced technology.

Founded by former Goldman Sachs GS, +1.11% bankers in 2000, Ocados business is built on its roots as a high-tech grocery delivery company and it is a competitive player in the cutthroat British supermarket sector. But one of its key areas for growth is creating custom logistics and warehousing solutions using its proprietary robotics technology.

Read more: Kroger and Ocado bring bots to new high-tech facility as digital competition among grocers heats up

In that vein, it has a partnership with U.S. retail giant Kroger dating back to 2018. Earlier this week, Kroger launched its first Ocado warehouse combining robotics and machine learning for fast fresh food delivery located in Monroe, Ohio, north of Cincinnati.

Ocado said the ultimate ambition of its multiyear collaboration with Oxbotica is to enable partners like Kroger to reduce the costs of both last-mile delivery and logistics operations.

The 10 million investment in Oxbotica came as part of the companys Series B equity funding round, led by the venture arm of energy giant BP BP, -0.18%, which has tested autonomous vehicles using Oxboticas technology at a refinery in Germany. Chinese tech giant Tencent 700, +1.94% and safety equipment group Halma HLMA, +0.16% were among the other investors.

Read the original:

Kroger partner Ocado is on the road to robotic grocery delivery with autonomous-vehicle investment - MarketWatch