sensor readings magazine – issue 3 (all pages)

SENSOR READINGS Issue 3

31 July 2015

The weekly magazine for the robotics and automation industry

Rendezvous with schema Robots are moving out of factories and into people’s homes

Interview: robot sculptorRobotics fabrication pioneer

Johannes Braumann

Clearpath clears the view Robotics company helps create 3D map of mine

Case studiesSome interesting robotics solutions

Honda unveils Apple car apps Robotics division develops for Android and Apple systems

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32 Sensor ReadingsSensor Readings Editorial

More than a few people, scientists and non-scientists alike, have predicted that machines will one day become

more intelligent than humans. Most famously, Vernor Vinge, retired professor of mathematics, articulated this fateful scenario in an article presented to NASA in 1993.

Professor Vinge, who invented the phrase “the singularity” to denote that particular time, said it would happen before 2030. Not many would doubt him, and some would argue that in some areas it’s already happened.

Sport is probably the most interesting scenario. Already, many major tournaments use computers to make crucial decisions. Professional football (soccer) is the only global sport that has resisted singularisation, only allowing computer-aided decision-making in the past few years.

But in tennis, the referee was many years ago usurped by a computer, which is connected to an array of cameras and sensors to help it make its decisons. Players generally accept the judgment of the computer over and above the human umpires and lines people. The way tennis is structured, a player appeals to the higher authority – the computer – if he or she is not happy with the human judgment on offer. The same is true for cricket, which while derided for its leisurely pace, has always been an enthusiastic adopter of technology. A similar appeals system exists there as well.

This decision-making hierarchy in tennis and in cricket is largely accepted by the fans and players in the assumption that the computer, being a machine, is fair. However, the average fan is not a programmer; neither is the average player – and neither am I. What if the computer is programmed to favour certain players and teams over others?

I’ve always thought the machines were fair. But without looking at and understanding the code, it’s impossible for me or any other human to make an accurate assessment. l

Abdul Montaqim Editor

Editorial & Production

Managing Editor Anna Schmidt Email [email protected]

Editor Abdul Montaqim Email [email protected]

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The singularity is already upon us

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Contents

Talking cloud, saying nothing In the future, humans will be able to connect their brains to computers 6

Interview: robot sculptorA talk with robotics fabrication pioneer Johannes Braumann 14

Rendezvous with schema Robots are increasingly moving out of the factories and into people’s homes10

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Mechanical data Information

SENSOR READINGS First issue

17 July 2015

The weekly news magazine for robotics

and automation industry

China’s robot revolution The world’s most populous nation now buys the most robots

From strength to strength Japan unveils the

‘world’s strongest robot’

Germany makes progress Robotics sector grows 11 per cent in first quarter of 2015

Off sideWe talk to the people behind RoboDK, the new offline

progamming tool

Rockwell CEO calls for youth ‘Manufacturing needs to teach and reach younger students’

Rethink Robotics opens its first office in Asia 4Tayzo Robotics signs deal with Verizon on drones 5There’s gold in them thar machines 6You can drone, but you can’t hide 10Branches of the same Redtree 14Automations case studies 16Marketplace 18



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https://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/vinge/misc/singularity.html



4 News Sensor Readings NewsSensor Readings

In Brief

Toyota is teaming up with a number of research institutes to found the Human Support Robot (HSR) Developers’ Community. This institute will put forth a cooperative effort to hasten the development and early practical adoption of the HSR.

HSR is Toyota’s answer to the ever-increasing demand for long-term elderly care in societies like Japan.

HSR can be operated remotely by family and friends, with the operator’s face and

ABB, the maker of the YuMi robot, is not a company immediately associated with data centre automation, but the company has teamed up with mobile telecommunications company Ericsson to provide an integrated automation platform to optimise data centre management.

ABB has something called the Decathlon data centre infrastructure management (DCIM) system. The company has agreed to put that together with the Ericsson Cloud System. The two companies will now offer an “end-to-end automation platform that

voice being relayed in real-time, allowing for real, human interaction while also being able to help with daily tasks. Since it was first announced in 2012, the HSR has undergone a number of improvements based on feedback from patients and healthcare workers.

Toyota will loan HSRs to partner organizations in Japan, who will then share their software development progress and newly gained knowhow throughout the community. Toyota will also aid research institutes in HSR testing by helping to find appropriate facilities for the tests along with other supportive efforts.

Initially, the HSR Developers’ Community will consist of Toyota and other institutions already testing the HSR. This will increase to 10 groups from 2016 as increasing numbers of applications are processed and approved.

optimizes physical and virtual resources for data centers and cloud operators”.

The two companies say they can offer “industrial-grade” controls and tools to manage and automate a range of power, cooling and IT systems.

“As the data center market matures, owners and operators are starting to demand the same control and automation capabilities common to other complex, mission-critical environments,” said Peter Terwiesch, president of ABB’s process automation division.

News

Toyota launches robot for long-term elderly care

ABB, Ericsson automate data centre

Toyota says its Human Support Robot is the answer to long-term care for the elderly

NewsIn Brief

Energid installs software on AIAEnergid Technologies has deployed software on the Articulated Inspection Arm robot developed by the Institute for Magnetic Fusion Research, of the French Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies Commission, and the Institute of Plasma Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The AIA robot can inspect the tokamak while it is still online. It is a complex snakelike robot that must navigate through tight quarters in an unfriendly environment. A tokamak is a plasma confinement device that holds great promise for generating thermonuclear fusion. It uses a magnetic field to contain plasma, which, due to its extreme temperature, cannot be contained by physical material.

Clearpath hires ex-Intutive exec Clearpath Robotics has appointed Mike Hanuschik as its new chief product officer. Hanuschik will lead product strategy, product management, design and branding. Clearpath says Hanuschik brings extensive experience from his 14-year tenure at Intuitive Surgical where he led the design and product management of the da Vinci Surgical System. “Mike has a proven track record of building world-class teams and developing complex robot systems that are well adopted,” said Matt Rendall, Clearpath’s CEO and co-founder.

Northrop awards UAV contract Northrop Grumman Corporation has awarded the first Australian supplier contract for the U.S. Navy’s MQ-4C Triton unmanned aircraft system (UAS) initial production lot to Ferra Engineering. Brisbane-based Ferra Engineering will manufacture mechanical sub-assemblies for the first four Triton air vehicles including structural components.

Honda marked the opening of its new Silicon Valley R&D facility, using the occasion to unveil a refreshed 2016 Accord featuring Honda’s first application of Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.

Honda also announced a new open innovation R&D initiative, Honda Xcelerator, which will pro-vide resources to breakthrough technology inno-vators to help rapidly develop prototypes with the potential to transform the automotive experience.

Honda’s Silicon Valley operation, es-tablished in 2000, is charged with re-

Hitachi has announced that it has developed a technology that analyzes huge volumes of text data on issues that are subject to debate, and pre-sents reasons and grounds for either affirmative or negative opinions on those issues in English.

Hitachi says the technology focuses on values such as health, economics and pub-lic safety, which are considered important to people and communities when expressing opinions, and uses correlations between those various values and relevant issues in the so-ciety to identify reasons and grounds with a

searching and prototyping innovations. Current areas of focus include connect-

ed mobility, novel human-machine inter-faces, supporting app developers through initiatives like Honda Developer Studio and com-puter science research for vehicle intelligence.

Silicon Valley engineers also spearhead the company’s working relationship with Sil-icon Valley-based technology companies.

“As an industry, we are on the verge of some major transformational changes brought on by the convergence of what have been, to this point, large-ly disparate technology disciplines,” said Honda R&D Americas President, Frank Paluch. “Hon-da will embrace and help lead this convergence.

“Our operations in Silicon Valley are a tes-timony to our focus on this new direction in our product and technology development efforts.”

high degree of reliability from among large volumes of news articles. By using multiple viewpoints, it can present reasons and grounds without bias toward a single perspective.

“This is a basic technology that will contribute to artificial intelligence enabling logical dialogue be-tween humans and computers,” says the company.

The technology could be applied to future systems to analyze contents of company doc-uments, published reports or electronic med-ical records, in order to form opinions and generate data to support decision making.

Honda launches Apple CarPlay applications

Hitachi develops big data app for text

Honda has developed applications for Apple CarPlay and Android Auto systems for cars

“As an industry, we are on the verge of some major transformational changes”

Frank Paluch, Hitachi

“Toyota will loan Human Support Robots to partner organizations in Japan”

Toyota

5

FAA issues message on drones The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has responded to recent incidents in which unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) interfered with manned aircraft involved in wildland firefighting operations. The FAA says it has joined with other government departments to issue a simple message to drone operators: If you fly, we can’t. “Flying a drone near aerial firefighting aircraft doesn’t just pose a hazard to the pilots,” said US Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. “When aircraft are grounded because an unmanned aircraft is in the vicinity, lives are put at greater risk.”

Uber drones deliver ice cream Uber is using drones to deliver ice cream in Singapore, according to a report on tech website Cnet.com. Uber is a company known for the car-sharing app which has caused much controversy is gradually moving into the autonomous vehicles business. “The drones are restricted to a certain area near the marina,” said Karun Arya, Uber’s communication manager for South Asia and India. “This is because there are strict licenses and permits required for operating drones in and around Singapore.”

Autodesk makes space for robotics Autodesk, which has made a name for itself as an architectural design software company, has open a workshop and robotics lab in San Francisco. The workshop will feature a wood shop, metal shop and laboratory. The company design the space to be as a research and development facility for robot makers and other inventors. The centre can also be used to showcase prototypes. The workshop and the robotics lab were designed by Lundberg Design and is said to coverapproximately 5,000 sq ft.




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76 Sensor ReadingsSensor Readings FeaturesFeatures

Cloud robotics are enabling robots to access large amounts of computing power that their bodies do not have the physical space to accommodate. Hundreds

if not tens of thousands of servers are potentially at the service of small robots which can be in remote locations well away from the nearest supercomputer or data centre, only being connected by, for example, Wi-Fi or Ethernet.

This allows robots to call on powerful, cloud-based applications, such as speech recognition and language, when they are interacting with their users.

At the moment, most cloud robotics systems are linked to specific robots. So, for example, SoftBank’s Pepper robot is linked to the cloud robotics artificial intelligence system developed by Cocoro, another SoftBank company.

Pepper has about 25 onboard sensors to collect a wide range of information – sight, sound, touch and movement. That covers three of the five senses that human beings generally use, the two missing are taste and smell.

Pepper can be connected to the internet through Wi-Fi or Ethernet, both of which are incorporated into the robot.

The sensors collect information which travels through its connections to the cloud, where the data is processed, and answers on how to respond are given.

How much of the decision-making is done by Pepper itself and how much is done back at the data centre is an interesting question. Suffice to say that cloud-based artificial intelligence plays an important role in Pepper’s operation.

Talking cloud and saying nothing Cloud robotics In the future, humans will be able to connect their brains to computers and use the processing power of large clusters of servers in a form of hybrid thinking

It’s possible that only a fraction of the processing is done by Pepper itself. Most of it is probably done in the cloud, where Pepper’s applications can interrogate the databases and formulate answers that the application calculates are the most appropriate before suggesting a response to the end user. That is certainly the case with its speech recognition system.

Pepper could be seen as a messenger for the cloud computing system that it is connected to, an interface for the internet, although its makers would probably argue that the robot has plenty of onboard memory and processing power.

More is known about Watson, the artificially intelligent computer system built by IBM about 10 years ago. Watson is essentially a cluster of approximately 100 IBM computers, which collect information from a variety of sources on the Internet, including from databases such as DBpedia, WordNet and Yago.

Watson was not connected to the Internet when it appeared on the US game show Jeopardy!, where it scored higher than its human competitors. However, it had already downloaded the entire text content of Wikipedia before taking part, and had stored 200 million pages of data on 4 terabytes of space, arguably becoming a mini-cloud unto itself.

IBM says Watson uses cognitive computing systems to understand natural language and is not programmed – it learns. IBM has programmed Watson to perform the following steps in its operation:

l observe;l interpret;l evaluate; andl decide.One of the more impressive features of Watson,

according to IBM, is its ability to “spot patterns that humans had not known existed”.

Unlike Watson, Pepper does not seem to offer a developer programme which allows access to the powerful AI applications the robot uses. The closest thing to it is the developer programme being offered by Aldebaran, which

created Pepper in the first place. Aldebaran also develops the Nao humanoid

robot, which is what its developer

programme is intended for.

Aldebaran’s software development kit (SDK) for Nao is compatible with a number of languages and robotics

platforms, including C++, Python, Java, JavaScript, and others.

IBM’s Watson developer programme can be accessed through its Bluemix cloud platform

as a service, and supports a range of programming languages including Java, Node.js, Python, and Ruby on Rails. Bluemix is based on Cloud Foundry and SoftLayer technology and infrastructure.

What’s in a name?Watson is, of course, not the only artificial intelligence cloud service available on the Internet today. Nor indeed is it the only one with a human name.

Lucy is a cloud-based AI service from LetsMakeRobots.com, a free and volunteer-based initiative. That, too, is built around a specific robot, and is compatible with languages such as Python.

If custom AI is required, then companies like TinMan Systems can provide made-to-order artificial intelligence systems. The company also offers a PC-based integrated development environment (IDE), AI Builder, as well as a web-based platform.

Another company that creates custom AI solutions is LNL, which also offers AI as a cloud-based software as a service (SaaS) for robotics as well as a number of other areas, such as games and pattern recognition.

One cloud AI service that has received some press is Ersatz Labs, a “deep learning in the cloud” platform which provides software engineers a single web interface through which to upload data, train, test and apply models. It also offers an API which accomplishes similar things programmatically, as well as a physical piece of kit, the Ersatz Deep Learning Appliance, for those who want to keep their data away from the cloud.

They may be new and nimble, but small and medium-sized cloud AI businesses may have difficulty establishing themselves against the giant tech companies, a large number of which have launched, or are planning to launch, cloud AI services.

While IBM is currently offering the Watson AI through the cloud, what it could offer in the not-too-distant future is AI services running on computers built using a version of its TrueNorth “brain chip”.

The latest iteration of the “cognitive computing” chip was unveiled last year. IBM says the chip has 1 million programmable neurons, 256 million programmable synapses, and 4,096 neurosynaptic cores.

The average desktop computer has a processor with two cores.

IBM says its long-term goal is to build a chip system with 10 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses. The company is currently building an end-to-end ecosystem for developing applications on the chips that includes a simulator, a programming language, sample algorithms and applications, and a library.

It’s all about the brain While IBM develops the brain chip, the Brain Corporation offers cloud services for consumer robotics, built around its eyeRover two-wheeled small robot. The service is still in beta mode, so not much is known about it.

But what the company does say, unsurprisingly, is that it applies neuroscience to robotics. “We are intrigued by the secrets of the brain and we use simulations to understand neural computations,” says the company.

Another company that is preparing to launch cloud robotics services is Neurala. With its “brains for bots” mantra, the company says its bio-inspired approach differs from traditional approaches by using deep learning to build robot brains that continuously observe and adapt to their environment, much like humans do.

Wolfram, whose online mathematics engine has helped many a student, is also developing AI-oriented services, integrated with its Wolfram Cloud. One of its interests is image identification.

Stephen Wolfram, founder of Wolfram, says: “With ImageIdentify built right into the Wolfram Language, it’s easy to create APIs, or apps, that use it. And with the Wolfram Cloud, it’s also easy to create websites—like the Wolfram Language Image Identification Project.”

HP claims to sell more server computers than any other company in the world. The company has a data analytics platform – Idol – which could be considered an artificial intelligence cloud of sorts, although it isn’t marketed as such.

And there’s Microsoft Azure, which offers sample data




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8 News Sensor Readings

sets in its Machine Learning Studio. A number of APIs are available, including facial recognition, text analytics and computer vision.

Amazon, which recently overtook Walmart as the largest retailer in the US and probably the world, has also been dominant in the cloud services market for a number of years.

The company recently launched its Amazon Machine Learning service, a cloud-based AI technology which enables customers to analyse large sets of data, identify patterns and make predictions.

Jeff Barr, chief evangelist, Amazon Web Services, wrote on the company’s blog: “You can build and fine-tune predictive models using large amounts of data, and then use Amazon Machine Learning to make predictions (in batch mode or in real-time) at scale.

“You can benefit from machine learning even if you don’t have an advanced degree in statistics or the desire to setup, run, and maintain your own processing and storage infrastructure.”

Amazon, which more or less invented the cloud concept, is estimated to have 28 per cent of the market, with Microsoft second on 10 per cent. The figures come from Synergy Research Group, which places IBM third, and Google fourth.

Google, which has been offering cloud services for around a decade, has a number of tools that provide developers access to the search giant’s machine learning software, the Google Prediction API.

Furthermore, Google looks to be developing a new, AI-specific cloud service. The company bought a startup company called DeepMind last year, and Google founder Larry Page says he is “really excited” about the company and its technology.

“What’s really amazing about Deep Mind is that it can actually – they're learning things in this unsupervised way,” said Page in an interview broadcast on the TED website. “They started with video games, and really just … playing video games, and learning how to do that automatically.”

He added that the AI system had not only learned to play games, but it had also learned the concept of cats and humans from watching videos on YouTube, to the extent that it can draw a reasonably accurate “sketch” of a cat or human, from its memory.

Solving intelligence, one mind at a time DeepMind’s stated objective is to “solve intelligence”. The company says it uses “the best techniques from machine learning systems and neuroscience to build powerful general-purpose learning algorithms”.

In an article in Nature magazine, Demis Cassabas, one of the three founders of DeepMind, says: “To advance AI, we need to better understand the brain’s workings at the algorithmic level — the representations and processes that the brain uses to portray the world around us.

“For example, if we knew how conceptual knowledge was formed from perceptual inputs, it would crucially allow for the meaning of symbols in an artificial language system to be grounded in sensory ‘reality’.”

Even if companies like DeepMind were able to “distil intelligence into an algorithmic construct”, as Hassabis puts it, the sheer scale of memory and computation required to mimic human processing power would still require vast numbers of computers.

Dharmendra Modha, IBM Fellow and one of the researchers into the brain chip, says: “To underscore this divergence between the brain and today’s computers, note that a ‘human-scale’ simulation with 100 trillion synapses required 96 Blue Gene/Q racks

of the Lawrence Livermore National Lab Sequoia supercomputer.”

IBM claims Blue Gene/Q is the fastest analytics computer system on the planet, and has a peak performance up to 100 petaflops – a petaflop being a unit of computing speed equal to one thousand million floating-point operations per second.

The human brain may be the undisputed champion of intelligent systems, but it didn’t get where it is today by resting on its laurels.

Having made huge evolutionary leaps to get from sponges to humans, via monkeys and the missing link, it now wants to make the transcendental leap to the Internet. The origins of the human brain may be a scientific mystery, but the next quantum leap in its evolutionary journey seems clear. Not content with the physical constraints of the human skull, the brain wants to connect to the cloud.

At least that’s the view of Ray Kurzweil, a computer scientist and director of engineering at Google.

Speaking on TED last year, Kurzweil said the human brain, specifically the neocortex, will in future be augmented using a hybrid combination of biological and non-biological thinking – meaning, cloud-connected human brains.

Kurzweil said: “Twenty years from now, we'll have nanobots, because another exponential trend is the shrinking of technology. They'll go into our brain through the capillaries and basically connect our neocortex to a synthetic neocortex in the cloud providing an extension of our neocortex.

“Now today, I mean, you have a computer in your phone, but if you need 10,000 computers for a few seconds to do a complex search, you can access that for a second or two in the cloud.

“In the 2030s, if you need some extra neocortex, you'll be able to connect to that in the cloud directly from your brain. So I'm walking along and I say, ‘Oh, there’s Chris Anderson. He’s coming my way. I’d better think of something clever to say. I’ve got three seconds. My 300 million modules in my neocortex isn't going to cut it. I need a billion more.’

“I’ll be able to access that in the cloud.“And our thinking, then, will be a hybrid of biological

and non-biological thinking, but the non-biological portion is subject to my law of accelerating returns. It will grow exponentially.

“And remember what happened the last time we expanded our neocortex. That was two million years ago when we became humanoids and developed these large foreheads. Other primates have a slanted brow. They don’t have the frontal cortex.

“But the frontal cortex is not really qualitatively different. It’s a quantitative expansion of neocortex, but that additional quantity of thinking was the enabling factor for us to take a qualitative leap and invent language and art and science and technology and TED conferences. No other species has done that.” l

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IBM’s Watson computer appeared on the US general knowledge game show and beat all the human contestants

“ In the 2030s, if you need some extra neocortex, you’ll be able to connect to that in the cloud directly from your brain”

Ray Kurzweil, director of

engineering, Google





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1110 Sensor ReadingsSensor Readings FeaturesFeatures

It’s often been referred to as “the robotics revolution”, and although not everyone would reach for such ominous epithets, it’s difficult to find anyone who disagrees with

the underlying idea that robotics is increasingly pervasive in society and will only become more so as time goes on.

It’s certainly not a passing fad. A short-lived infatuation with robotics would have been and gone a long time ago. But for many generations, the fascination for robots has found some kind of affirmation, and usually that affirmation can be measured in monetary terms, in that people have proved that there’s money in robotics. Even if it’s a non-commercial hobby, there’s no doubt that the so-called “maker community” of today are the inheritors of something profound and enduring, and all the signs are that robotics will keep growing as a stimulating leisure activity and as a profitable industry.

Next stop, space. With enough nuclear fuel available on Earth to power millions of space probes for eons of time; with the moon and the planets waiting to be explored; with many of the world’s rocket launch sites waiting to be commercialised and turned into spaceports; and before the predicted boom in space tourism, what may come is an expansion in space exploration by the millions of robotics tinkerers who want to see the surface of Mars with their own robot’s visual sensors.

Robotics, as many Hollywood movies have shown, is yet to reach its true zenith.

In the Arthur C Clarke book Rendezvous with Rama, a mysterious spaceship is observed travelling towards Earth, which sends a manned mission to study it. When they arrive on the alien vessel, the human astronauts see mechanical creatures, apparently performing maintenance tasks. Clarke’s implication seems to be that space exploration by advanced civilisations is most likely to involve robots. Which it already does. NASA sent its first robots into space in the 1970s, and its first humanoid robot in 2011.

Robots may have come a long way since their ancestors

Rendezvous with schema

“ I think we should be very careful about AI. If I had to guess at what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that. So we need to be very careful”

Elon Musk, CEO, Tesla, SpaceX

Robotics trendsRobots are increasingly involved in human activities, moving out of the factories and into people’s homes

were created thousands of years ago, but their progeny will reveal their true calling, and that may happen within the next decade or two, especially if the maker community and the robotics industry keeps growing at current rates.

You’re the first, the last The first recorded example of a robot is considered to be the mechanical bird made by Archytas, in Ancient Greece, about 2,400 years ago. Archytas’ “pigeon” was propelled by steam and, as well as being one of the first examples of automata, it is one of the earliest known experiments with flight.

Automated machines were of course prevalent in the first Industrial Revolution. But the modern era of robotics could be argued to have begun in earnest in the 1940s, with the invention of programmable computers and artificial intelligence.

In the early part of that decade, Isaac Asimov was formulating the Three Laws of Robotics, coining the phrase “robotics” in the process. A few years later, Norbert Weiner came up with the principles of cybernetics. But both of them were intellectuals who were not known to make things themselves; they just thought about them and articulated them.

By the end of the 1940s, however, William Grey Walter of the Burden Neurological Institute, in England, had built a couple of three-wheeled, tortoise-like robots which could follow light to find their own way to a charging point when they were low on battery power.

It would be almost another decade before the first useful, complex, programmable robot was built – the template for the robotic arm ubiquitous in all types of industries today. Invented by George Devol, the original robotic arm, the Unimate, initially found success in Japanese car factories, but the first recorded sale of a Unimate was to US car giant General Motors, in 1961.

Devol, along with his company president Joseph Engelberger, went on to sign deals with GM as well as Kawasaki Heavy Industries. Such deals saw the development of similar but more advanced robotic arms based on the Unimate.

The inventor of the two-armed robot seems somewhat lost in the fog of competition between robotics companies, as at least two companies claim to have developed the world’s first dual-armed robot.

Rethink Robotics probably would be the company that can rightfully make that claim. Its Baxter

dual-armed collaborative robot was launched in 2012. ABB claims its YuMi

robot (left) is the “world’s first truly collaborative robot”. However, YuMi

was launched in 2015, so ABB’s claim to be the first would depend on how they interpret the word “truly”.

Meanwhile, away from industry and semantics, all manner of

inventions and innovations have taken place since Devol’s the Unimate first

came into existence.In space exploration, NASA integrated

two robotic arms into Viking 1 and 2. Launched in 1975, the space probes

successfully landed on Mars a year later. NASA also launched a humanoid astronaut, the Robonaut,

into space in 2011, where it still operates on the International Space Station, and will soon be sent on its first space “float”, since it doesn’t appear to have legs – not that the expression

“space walk” makes much literal sense anyway.While Asimov is credited with inventing the word

“robotics”, the word “robot” was said to be first used by Czech writer Karel Čapek in a play called Rossum’s Universal Robots. Čapek said his brother had suggested the word “robota” to denote servitude.

The first automated human-like mechanical robot was said to be built by Friedrich Kauffman, of Germany. His humanoid soldier with a trumpet was constructed as far back as 1810. However, even with the cleverness of Honda’s Asimo and the many unnervingly human-like robots in existence today, no humanoid robot has convincingly and consistently been able to prove itself adept at tasks that the average human being could do with ease.

Therefore, it could be said that humanoid robots have a long, long way to go.

Far out, manOne of the main challenges in building a humanoid robot is not really the hardware – there are enough materials and gifted artists and engineers who can create a robot that appears life-like and build large computers that can number-crunch at blistering speeds eternally. The really difficult challenge is the software.

The mysteries of the human brain, or rather the human mind, will probably take centuries to fully deconstruct, if they are ever understood at all. But enough is known about the human operating system that a lot of computer software is already doing jobs previously done by humans.

From automated phone voices that can perform complex tasks in banking, to serving customers in Japanese department stores, artificial intelligence software and software-driven robots are in many places.

Robots like Pepper can also be used to serve drinks and snacks to parties at guests. Useful, and no doubt saves a lot of money for large organisations, especially the telephone automation systems, but it doesn’t pass that Turing Test threshold that would mean a robot can be considered to be human-like, and do much the same work as a human.

In the virtual world, it’s possible that computers could convincingly simulate humans. But in the physical world, ask a robot – humanoid or otherwise – to sew a button on your shirt, or do the ironing, then you’re effectively placing a very heavy burden on a whole world of programmers and their computing machines.

The computers may have caught up and be up to the task, but the software is still not quite there yet. Big data, powerful compute capabilities, massive storage capacity, and the schema that maps it all out, are all flourishing, but it’s difficult to say how long before a quantum leap is made and humanoid robots can be classed as androids, much less human-like.

The first working artificial intelligence programs were developed in the 1950s, but they were mainly designed to play chess and games with a relatively small number of clearly defined rules. It’s only now that humanoid robots are claimed by their makers to be able to engage in less formulaic, more fluid, complex conversation, for example, and understand – or compute – cues given by body language to perceive emotions.

These are among the claims made by Aldebaran, the developer of the Pepper and Nao robots. Many other companies are now making a similar case for their humanoid robots. And the exponential growth in intelligence – or computing power – required to reach a level which approaches the Turing standard is being provided by the cloud.

A scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which the computer that controls the spacecraft, HAL, is being shut down




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12 Sensor ReadingsFeatures

Companies such as the Brain Corporation and Neurala are creating cloud computing services for robotics. So are organisations such as Robo Brain, developed by Cornell University; and RoboEarth, funded by the European Union.

These initiatives will inevitably reach a point where it would indeed be difficult if not impossible to tell a human from a robot, the subtle differences in physiology notwithstanding. Even the physiology question could be answered by the scientists who have already created muscle tissue in a laboratory, but that’s another story.

The origins of the universe’s OSIBM is thought to have been the first company to have written a programming language designed with industrial robotics and automation in mind. Simply called “A Manufacturing Language”, or AML, it was an integrated solution – an IBM minicomputer with the language installed – that enabled programmers to create application programs.

Now, IBM has Watson, the AI computer used in a range of settings from game shows to the healthcare service. But perhaps more significantly, IBM has developed a “brain-inspired computer and ecosystem”. The second generation of the “cognitive computing” chip was unveiled last year. The company said the brain chip has 1 million programmable neurons, 256 million programmable synapses, and 4,096 neurosynaptic cores.

It says: “IBM's long-term goal is to build a neuro-synaptic chip system with ten billion neurons and one hundred trillion synapses, all while consuming only one kilowatt of power and occupying less than two liters of volume.”

IBM also launched the world’s first 7-nanometre chip last month. Moreover, the company owns SoftLayer, the cloud infrastructure company which hosted the first cloud based robotics challenge in 2013, organised by the Open Source Robotics Foundation. So IBM looks to be well placed for cloud robotics of the humanoid kind.

Then there’s Google Cloud. Already part of the networking infrastructure for its autonomous robotic cars, Google Cloud is trying to position itself as a leading company in the robotics market.

The company is said to be developing an open source cloud robotics operating system which aims to be the ubiquitous platform for robots and robotic systems everywhere, allowing developers to create applications that can run on many different robots.

The now well-known Robot Operating System (ROS) came out of Stanford University, so it shares the same roots as Google, which also grew out of Stanford. They are inextricably linked. Not only that, Google is said to have developed ROS in the first place, and has made its Android smartphone operating system fully compatible with ROS.

The beautiful – or the beastly – thing about cloud robotics is that when one robot on a network learns something, all the other robots on the same network can simultaneously acquire the same knowledge.

Provided it’s correct information and not used for evil, that may well be a good thing. That it’s technically amazing is beyond question, but such power in the increasingly human-like hands of robots could potentially be a threat to humans and humankind itself.

We come in peace, probablyElon Musk, he of Tesla and SpaceX fame, declared artificial intelligence to be humanity’s greatest existential threat, probably. “I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I had to guess at what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that. So we need to be very careful,” said Musk. “I’m increasingly inclined to think that there

should be some regulatory oversight, maybe at the national and international level, just to make sure that we don’t do something very foolish.”

And he’s not alone. No less a mind than Stephen Hawking, the scientist celebrated for coming up with the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe, has expressed trepidation about mankind’s inevitably shared future with artificial intelligence.

Writing in The Independent newspaper, Professor Hawking said: “Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history. Unfortunately, it might also be the last, unless we learn how to avoid the risks. In the near term, world militaries are considering autonomous-weapon systems that can choose and eliminate targets; the UN and Human Rights Watch have advocated a treaty banning such weapons.

“Looking further ahead, there are no fundamental limits to what can be achieved: there is no physical law precluding particles from being organised in ways that perform even more advanced computations than the arrangements of particles in human brains.

“An explosive transition is possible, although it might play out differently from in the movie [Transcendence]: as Irving Good realised in 1965, machines with superhuman intelligence could repeatedly improve their design even further, triggering what Vernor Vinge called a ‘singularity’ and Johnny Depp’s movie character calls ‘transcendence’.”

In the movie Transcendence, Johnny Depp plays a tech genius who builds an artificially intelligent, sentient computer, with devastating consequences. And Irving Good was a colleague of Alan Turing, the British computer scientist after whom the Turing Test – to see if a computer can pass for a human – is named. Vernor Vinge is a computer scientist and author who invented the concept of “the singularity”, outlined in his 1993 article “The Coming Technological Singularity”, the hypothetical point at which the human era ends and super-human artificial intelligence takes over, which he apparently estimated to be 30 years away. So that leaves humans with about eight years before they become full-time pets for robots.

As well as Hawking et al, there are others joining the chorus of disapproval of the indifference that lawmakers and other regulators are apparently showing towards artificial intelligence.

Ryan Calo, an assistant professor at the School of Law at University of Washington, said: “Technology has not stood still. The same private institutions that developed the Internet, from the armed forces to search engines, have initiated a significant shift toward robotics and artificial intelligence. The widespread distribution of robotics in society will, like the internet, create deep social, cultural, economic, and of course legal tensions.”

All powerful technologies have challenged society down the ages, but making like Luddites – who smashed the machinery that took their jobs during the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century – clearly would not work. But making like the maker community just might. l

“ Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history … it might also be the last”

Professor Stephen Hawking

Artwork by Rafael Vallaperde from Lightfarm Studio. The image is titled The Verge and was inspired by the book Rendezvous with Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke



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14 Sensor ReadingsInterviews

Offline programming Offline programming has never been easier thanks to RoboDK. You don’t need to learn brand-specific languages anymore. RoboDK handles the robot controller syntax and outputs the right program for your robot. Try a basic Pick and Place example.

CNC friendly Use your robot like a CNC. Convert CAM files into robot programs, your robot can be used like a 5-axis CNC. Easily simulate the result with RoboDK and avoid collisions, robot singularities and joint limits. Download and try our robot milling example.

Multiplatform RoboDK is the first multiplatform robot offline programming software. It works on Windows, Mac, Linux and Android devices. It even works on your phone or tablet! Check the download section.

Robot accuracyCertificate robots. Check the accuracy of your robots with a ballbar test. Obtain a PDF report describing the accuracy and repeatability of your robots. RoboDK allows you to calibrate your robots and improve production results. Contact us for more information.

Python powered RoboDK is a robot development kit that allows you to program any robot from any brand through Python. Python is easy to learn yet powerful and flexible. Robot offline programming has no limits with RoboDK’s Python API.

Extended library The RoboDK Library has many robots, external axes and tools from different brands. We are constantly adding new robots to RoboDK. The library can be directly accessed from our desktop app.

On July 5, an creative outdoor sculpture displayed at the exhibition hall of Tongji Architecture and Urban Planning College drew a lot of attention from

students and faculty members. The “Swarm Fabrication”, one of many digital fabrication projects on display at the DADA “Digital Factory” Workshop Exhibition, was not fabricated by human hands but completed by two collaborative Kuka robots.

More than 120 students spent 9 days at the week-long workshop to deliver a series of creative digital projects, covering robotics ceramic printing, robotics wood tectonics and robot team fabrication.

Professor Johannes Braumann, co-founder of Robot in Architecture Association and Doctor Yuan Feng from Architecture and Urban Planning College, Tongji University at the exhibition shared their insights on the potential of industrial robots in creative industry. (Johannes Braumann referred as “J ” and Yuan Feng as “Yuan” in the interview.

Q: Can you tell us more about the current development in using robots in architecture and creative industry?J: The application of robots in creative industry is still quite recent. But In the past ten years, we have seen quite rapid development in using industrial robots in architecture and design. Many companies in the creative industry

began to show increasing interests in robotics. As to the academic world, at the very beginning most activities were of experimental nature but now we see more and more serious projects involving industrial robots.

Q: In architecture and creative, will robots play a different role compared to their application in manufacturing?J: In creative industry, designers are always trying new things and working on new projects, which means we need to provide them with flexible software that allows them to realize ideas in a very quick way. This also applies to academia and universities because they only have students there for a couple of hours each week so they have to be more efficient with time.

Q: You led the development of Kuka|prc, a plugin that enables robot control from within architectural software. Can you tell us more about your cooperation with Kuka? Why choose Kuka robots to work with?J: I started the cooperation with Kuka Austria many years ago. They have seen potential and value of robots application in architecture and have been quite supportive for my research.

For me, Kuka robots are well designed and I like the way they work. This may just be my personal opinion but I do think the design of Kuka robot has a large appeal to people in the design world. In terms of the interface, Kuka’s control panel is also nicely designed so even for those outside the engineering world, it is still accessible.

Q: Rob|Arch conference next year will be held in Australia. Will it be possible for the conference to come to China?J: Robots in architecture is an industry association fund by me together with Sigrid Brell-Cokcan. In 2012 and 2014, we held conferences in Vienna and Michigan respectively. Next year, we will hold the third conference in Melbourne, which will be the first time we have this event in Asia. We have gain a lot of support from local universities like Sydney Universities and RMIT. I certainly think it is possible for us to hold this conference in China. This is why I wanted to work more with Kuka China to know local projects and companies.

Q : Do you see yourself as engineer, architect, programmer or mentor?J: In fact I’m not coming from engineering or computer science. I’m from an architect. I think my architecture background is quite beneficially as I won’t be confined by certain rules and I understand the unique needs of architecture. As to my role, I really this it is a mix of educator and engineer.

Q: Tongji University is a leading institution in architecture and engineering education in China. What is your view on robot’s application in this area?Yuan: In recent years, we have seen the trend of use of robots in cross-industry applications increasing. People in the creative industry start to see possibilities brought by this technology. In creative sectors, industrial robots can be seen as a new media or platform. They are “empowered” by human brains and they can do lot of work that can’t be done by human hands.

Q: How do you see China in terms of robots application in design and architecture? Will there be more cooperation with Robots in Architecture ?Yuan: In China, only three architecture and design institutions have industrial robots. Our Rob Team of two Kuka robots have done many creative projects in the past three years. l

Kuka robots used to create sculpture Robotics in art Interview with robotics fabrication pioneer Johannes Braumann

Sculpture created using Kuka robots

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1716 Sensor ReadingsSensor Readings Case studies

When robots take over fish packing, employees win with a better working

environment, free from heavy and lifting that could cause injury.

Modern fish factoryIf you think that a visit to a fish packing plant means dealing with a lot of slippery rubbish and an unpleasant and overpowering smell, you’d be wrong. At least if you were visiting the fish packing plant at Sæby on the northern tip of Jutland in Denmark. Instead of garbage and stink, there is a large, attractive modern factory, with no special fishy smell.

Already in the reception lobby, it’s easy to see that the company is run on modern lines, with a good mixture of the friendliness and business sense that people in the Vendsyssel area of Denmark are known for. The company has spent money on art, and the buildings are beautiful and pleasant to walk around. Any pre-conceived notions are quickly dispelled.

Inside the plant, some 11 ABB robots - three cells of one IRB 4400 and two IRB140 robots, plus one IRB 6650 and one IRB 640 robot supplied by SCA

Pakkesystemer in collaboration with ABB, pack, stack and handle the many hundreds of thousands of boxes of mackerel, which is what Sæby Fiskindustri specializes in.

Those who like packaged mackerel might be envious to see all the different varieties that are produced and sent off to customers with different requirements in different countries. The packaging is brightly colored, the products range from the “three for ten crowns” cheap cans to very tasty and more luxurious delicacies.

SCA's unique presence at Saeby Henrik Sørensen is the sales manager and Ulrik Bendtsen is the technical manager at SCA Pakkesystemer, which develops and sells modern automation equipment and packing systems. At first glance, it would be hard to determine that the two men are not Sæby Fiskeindustri employees, since they are on a first-name basis with many and are free to come and go in the buildings.

But it was Sørensen and Bendtsen who installed a hyper-modern, new packing unit at

The University of Chile is one of the oldest and largest institutions of higher

education in Chile, attracting world-renowned researchers such as Dr Martin Adams, Professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering, and Principle Investigator at the Advanced Mining Technology Center (AMTC), led by project collaborator Prof. Javier Ruizdel-Solar.

Together, the organizations are working to further develop mining and ensure the welfare of mine employees in Chile and around the world. Before Clearpath Robotics In an effort to minimize manpower in Chile’s challenging open pit mines, complex sensing and automation solutions are necessary to complete tasks such as shovel-loading and transportation.

Therefore, reliable interpretation of sensor data is critical, particularly for 3D rock surface profile estimation and 3D mapping. Within the mines, however, combining data from different sensors and systems can lead to issues with data interpretation and systems planning. The processing of such data, and its algorithmic combination with vehicle motion

estimates, is paramount to correctly model surface profiles in the mapping of mines.

As such, these elements are of direct relevance to improving the safety and efficiency of tele-operated, and ultimately autonomous,mining activities. “Existing technologies are in early-stage development and require refinement.”

Acknowledging a growing demand in autonomous mining technology and accurate data collection for improved safety, Dr Martin Adams and his team developed a project called Autonomous Rock Surface Modelling and Mapping in Mines.

“Existing technologies are in early-stage development and require refinement,” explains Adams. “Our project will develop those technologies so that terrain surface profile and mine mapping information can be extracted from noisy sensor data.”

Requiring a robotic platform

the factory. SCA has supplied automatic packing systems for over twenty years to Sæby Fiskeindustri, and the trusting collaboration is obvious.

SCA supplies everything from manual packing machinery to complete, fully-automated packing system installations, and has handled everything from brake discs to packets of cheese spread. SCA has had a presence at Sæby Fiske industri for many years.

Why automation?“The purchase of the new robots was brought about, first and foremost, by wanting to get rid of heavy, monotonous, repetitious work,”says Bendtsen, who along with Sørensen has gained exceptional expertise in developing packing systems that can manage particularly complicated tasks.

The goal here was to get the mackerel sorted from the autoclave trolley, shrink wrapped, packed in paper bags or on several different types of pallet, palletized and then foil wrapped, to suit customer requirements.

But several different packing patterns are used. And there

that could handle the conditions of mines and a dynamic payload, Dr Adams reached out to Clearpath Robotics to use Husky UGV for the project.

The Clearpath advantage The team’s project was designed to collect motion characteristics (from Husky) and noise characteristics from radar, laser, and vision-based sensors to model open pit and underground mines. Data fusion from different vehicle positions was then carried out for consistent surface profile and mine map estimation.

“The Husky mobile platform was a very strong fit for our project in terms of payload capacity and ability to handle harsh terrain,” explains Adams.

A millimeter wave radar was used for its unique ability to penetrate dust and other accruing atmospheric substances, providing valuable information missed by other sensors.

are ¼, ½ and 1/1 pallets, several different types of paper bags, and several different requirements for foil wrapping, among other needs.

“This requires a very flexible installation, and SCA succeeded in developing it, even if there were a number of difficult situations from time to time,” says Bendtsen.

“Development used to mean that we had to spend many hours in analysing the movements to be copied, and what the robots really would have to be re-programmed to do,” says Bendtsen.

“The requirement was that it should be a flexible system, and that it should be easy to serve. After this, we prepared the layout and came up with a design proposal. After many small adjustments, we were able to create the final design and design specifications. One of the most difficult things was to find space and include the new requirements that naturally occur during the development phase. But we succeeded and we have now succeeded in achieving a capacity boost of 60-70 percent for the same production time.”

Project forming a new companySCA Pakkesystemer acquired two of its former collaboration partners during 2005, so it is a new experience for Bendtsen to work in such a large company as SCA. SCA wanted to concentrate competence and know-how so they could offer to take on larger jobs, and it appears that they will succeed with the new company, SCA Pakkesystemer.

“All in all, we have 50-60 robots out there working, and we have 25 currently on order at SCA. So we will soon pass 100 robots. And we always have to be able to offer flexible, turn-key solutions. Progress is rapid. Five years ago, an installation like this would have looked very different, with a lot more traditional mechanical components,” says Bendtsen.

“We have our own service department and have signed a partnership contract with ABB for personnel training, so that we can offer the necessary maintenance and service. This is because these high technology installations have to run at high efficiency levels and capacity all year round. For this reason, we have to be prepared to provide round the clock service for the installations,” Sørensen concludes. l

Meanwhile, the team analyzed the robustness of laser-based feature detection by collecting data to determine a comparison of detection probabilities and false alarms in rugged environments.

Visual-based feature detection algorithms such as the Speeded-Up Robust Feature (SURF) detection were also analyzed to determine the applicability of information extraction for mapping and surface profiling in mines.

The Husky platform was chosen for the sensor-based experiments within the project because of its robustness, payload capability and open-source compatibility.

All of the data collection and software processing algorithms used throughout the project were based on the Robot Operating System (ROS).

“Husky’s compatibility with ROS made experiments run smoothly in terms of communicating between processes, sensors and the Husky itself,” says Adams.

Results Since initiating the project, Dr Adams’ team has discovered the registration problems associated with combining data from different sensors in a challenging environment.

To do so, they have applied a variety of scan matching techniques and analyzed the acquired laser and radar data to improve the automatic detection of useful mine-based features.

The 3D Riegl scanning laser range finder and an Acumine 2D scanning millimeter wave radar were transported on Husky and used to record video footage and densely sampled data sets.

The data is being submitted to the International Journal of Robotics Research to ensure that information is available to the international robotics community, providing insight for ongoing research in the field.

As a result of this work, a leading mining company in Chile has expressed interest in acquiring similar robotic systems to enable staff to control vehicles and therefore acquire 3D maps within their mines.

Discussions with this company are under way.

“Our Husky-based sensing system will contribute significantly to the success and efficiency in which future mining operations take place,” says Adams. l

There’s something fishy about this case study

Clearpath robot creates 3D map of Chilean mine

ABB supplies robotic and automation equipment to a fish packing plant at Sæby, in DenmarkClearpath Robotics of Canada teams up with the University of Chile on mine-mapping project

“The Husky mobile platform was a very strong fit for our project in terms of payload capacity and ability to handle harsh terrain”

Dr Martin Adams, Professor, AMTC

Case studies

Sæby Fiskeindustri use three cells of one IRB 4400 and two IRB 140 robots, plus one IRB 6650 and one IRB 640, which provide:l Flexibility to handle a wide range of

packages means less downtimel A capacity boost of about

0-70 per centl Employees avoid monotonous and

heavy workClearpath’s robots map their way through Chile’s dangerous mines




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1918 Sensor ReadingsSensor Readings Marketplace

Wittenstein From machine tools or woodworking and packaging machines through robotics and handling equipment to food processing, pharmaceutical and medical technology or intralogistics, Wittenstein actuators keep you one step ahead of the competition.wittenstein-us.com

British Automation & Robot Association bara.org.uk

The aim of the BARA is to promote the use of, and assist in the development of Industrial Robots and Automation in British industry. In 2009 BARA joined forces with the PPMA (Processing & Packaging Machinery Association) to become a special interest focus group.

PHD PHD is a leading manufacturer of industrial automation actuators, designed to help companies across all industries optimize their manufacturing processes. phdinc.com

Robotics Society of Japan rsj.or.jp

The Robotics Society of Japan promotes progress in academic fields and provides specialists with a venue for announcing their research and exchanging technical information.

International Federation of Robotics ifr.org

The purpose of IFR shall be to promote and strengthen the robotics industry worldwide, to protect its business interests, to cause public awareness about robotics technologies and to deal with other matters of relevance to its members.

ATC The Actuator Technology Company operates independently and is located close to Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. We are acclaimed and appreciated for offering vital design support during FEED and detailed design stage (EPC). atc-actuators.com

euRobotics AISBL eu-robotics.net

euRobotics AISBL is a Brussels based international non-profit association for all stakeholders in European robotics. euRobotics builds upon the success of the European Robotics Technology Platform and the academic network of EURON, and will continue the cooperation abetween members of these two community driven organisations.

IEEE Robotics and Automation Society ieee-ras.org

Our Mission is to foster the development and facilitate the exchange of scientific and technological knowledge in Robotics and Automation that benefits members, the profession and humanity. Our Vision is to be the most recognized and respected global organization in Robotics and Automation.

Ham-Let More than half a century of excellence servicing the high purity and process industries with designing, developing, producing and marketing of fluid system components.ham-let.com

The Valve and Actuator Co We realise there is an urgent need to provide experienced technical support with competitive pricing. We carry an extensive stock of electric and pneumatic actuators and general valves. valveandactuatorcompany.co.uk

Robotic Industries Association robotics.org

The Robotic Industries Association (RIA) drives innovation, growth, and safety in manufacturing and service industries through education, promotion, and advancement of robotics, related automation technologies, and companies delivering integrated solutions.

China Robot Industry Alliance cria.mei.net.cn

CRIA is a non-profit organization composed of enterprises, manufacturers, universities, research institutes, regional or local robotic associations, related organizations as well as organizations in the fields of R&D, manufacturing, application and services of the robot industry.

Rethink Robotics

Our patented SEA technology uses springs to advance the robot’s motion control solution from one of rigid positioning to one of force control. rethinkrobotics.com

Parker Parker actuators come in a wide range of construction types, ranging from compact light duty aluminum air actuators, motorized electric actuators, to heavy duty hydraulic designs.parker.com

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4D Technology

4D Technology designs and manufactures laser interferometers, surface roughness profilers and interferometry accessories. 4dtechnology.com

Ranesas

Renesas Electronics Corporation, the world’s number one supplier of microcontrollers, is a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions including microcontrollers, SoC solutions and a broad range of analog and power devices. renesas.com

Alphasense Alphasense has established a reputation as a reliable source for a wide range of gas sensor technologies. We supply high-quality Oxygen,CO2, toxic and flammable Gas sensors to many of the world’s leading industrial OEMs.alphasense.com

Freescale

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STMicroelectronics

A world leader in providing the semiconductor solutions that make a positive contribution to people’s lives, both today and in the future. st.com

Sensiron Sensirion is a leading sensor manufacturer, providing relative humidity sensors and flow sensor solutions with unique performance. sensirion.com

Atmel

Atmel Corporation is a worldwide leader in the design and manufacture of microcontrollers, capacitive touch solutions, advanced logic, mixed-signal, nonvolatile memory and radio frequency components. atmel.com

Infineon

We provide semiconductor and system solutions, focusing on three central needs of our modern society: Energy Efficiency, Mobility and Security.infineon.com

Sano

Sano is a biometric sensor and software company with a patented, breakthrough sensor that will help people understand what’s happening inside their bodies through continuously monitoring important markers in their bodies’ chemistry.sano.co

Hansford Sensors At Hansford Sensors, we design, develop and manufacture a wide range of high performance industrial accelerometers, vibration transmitters (loop powered sensors) and ancillary equipment. hansfordsensors.com

Silicon Labs

Silicon Labs is a team of hardware and software innovators dedicated to solving our customer’s toughest embedded design challenges. silabs.com

Texas Instruments

TI’s microcontroller platform offers innovative devices with integrated on-chip architectures, unique intellectual property, system expertise in key markets, and a comprehensive ecosystem of software, tools and support.ti.com

Synaptics

Synaptics is a world leader in capacitive touch sensing technology. This patented technology is at the heart of our industry-standard TouchPad products and other solutions. synaptics.com

EMX

EMX is one of the world’s leading innovators of specialty sensors in the factory and process automation markets. Our sensors are used in automotive, packaging, labeling, metal stamping, paper and wood processing, plastics, electronics and pharmaceutical manufacturing.emxinc.com

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Cognex

No matter what the machine vision application, Cognex offers a complete family of vision products—from standalone vision systems to 3D vision software—that provide unparalleled accuracy and repeatability.cognex.com

Arduino

Arduino is an open-source computer hardware and software company, project and user community that designs and manufactures kits for building digital devices and interactive objects that can sense and control the physical world.arduino.cc

Rockwell Automation

Preferred integration starts with using plug-and-play technology, which means robots connect through Ethernet/IP with software and service interfaces that simplify design, operation and maintenance efforts to improve machine and overall line OEE.rockwellautomation.com

Adept

Adept has cultivated and maintained key partnerships with industry-leading integrators, OEMs, and machine builders across the globe and throughout numerous application segments. adept.com

Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry Pi is a series of credit card-sized single-board computers developed in the UK by the Raspberry Pi Foundation with the intention of promoting the teaching of basic computer science in schools. raspberrypi.org

Evana Automation

Evana specializes in designing and implementing robotics automation solutions that fit your specific manufacturing needs. Let our robotics engineering and robotics manufacturing experts develop a custom robotics automation solution that meets your requirements.evanaautomation.com

NewBotic Corporation

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Dassault Systemes

Robotics Programmer provides a 3D environment where robot programmers can create, program, simulate and validate an entire robot workcell.3ds.com

KUKA.WorkVisual

Programming. Configuration. Loading. Testing. Diagnosis. Modifying. Archiving. KUKA.WorkVisual groups all the steps of a project together in a homogenous offline development, online diagnosis and maintenance environment. kuka-robotics.com

Genesis Systems

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Aldebaran by Softbank

Aldebaran enables both novices and experts to use its robots with ease. To do this, an SDK has been developed to support creation in the best way possible: 3D simulator, simple and intuitive programming software, C++ libraries, Python, .Net.aldebaran.com

ABB RobotStudio

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RoboDK

Offline programming has never been easier thanks to RoboDK. You don’t need to learn brand-specific languages anymore. RoboDK handles the robot controller syntax and outputs the right program for your robot.robodk.com

FANUC Authorized Integrators

An Authorized FANUC Integrator is ready to analyze your system requirements and provide a robotic solution that will improve quality, throughput, and productivity to give you the return on investment you are looking for.fanucamerica.com




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DMG Mori Ellison

DMG Mori Ellison Technologies is a provider of advanced machining solutions to North American metal-cutting manufacturers and their global affiliates. ellisontechnologies.com

Brain Corporation

Brain Corporation develops software, hardware, and cloud services for consumer robotics.Our goal is to make intelligent and useful machines a part of everyday life with the world’s first training-based operating system for robots – BrainOS. braincorporation.com

Energid

Energid Technologies develops advanced software and robotic systems for the aerospace, agriculture, manufacturing, transportation, defense, and medical industries. energid.com

Aurotek

Aurotek delivers high value-added services and solutions, and helping customers achieve greater value through its introduction of advanced and quality components, acquirement of new technology concepts. robot.com.tw

Stäubli Stäubli is a mechatronics solutions provider with three dedicated divisions: textile, connectors and robotics, serving customers who want to increase their productivity in many industrial sectors. staubli.com

Ekso Bionics

Ekso Bionics helps survivors of stroke, spinal cord injury and other forms of lower extremity weakness to walk again. intl.eksobionics.com

Bosch Robotics

We are working on Personal Robotics and the enabling technologies. Our interdisciplinary team conducts research on topics such as mobile manipulation, navigation, perception and semantic analysis of 3D data.bosch.us

Apex Automation and Robotics

Apex Automation and Robotics is an Australian company specialising in the design and manufacture of custom-built automation machines and robotic systems. apexautomation.com.au

Dyson

Dyson recently invested in a joint robotics lab with Imperial College London to investigate vision systems and engineer a generation of household robots. dyson.co.uk

ASI

Autonomous Solutions is a world leader in vendor independent vehicle automation systems. From our HQ in Utah, we serve clients in the mining, agriculture, automotive, government, and manufacturing industries with remote control, teleoperation, and fully automated solutions.asirobots.com

DAIHEN

The DAIHEN Group makes it our mission to provide products and services indispensable to primary industries around the world, including first and foremost the power industry or so-called “lifeline” of society. daihen.co.jp

Adept

Adept systems provide unmatched performance and economic value throughout the production lifecycle, enabling customers to achieve precision, quality and productivity in their assembly, handling and packaging processes. adept.com

Clearpath Robotics

We build the world’s best unmanned vehicles for research and development. Our products will save time, money and headaches on your next project.clearpathrobotics.com

Aethon

Aethon is best known for its TUG autonomous mobile delivery robot which transports medications, meals and materials through hospitals. aethon.com

Axium

Axium designs, manufactures and installs a complete range of automated solutions for robotic material handling (palletizing, depalletizing, case packing, and peripheral equipments) and transformation of plastic products.axiumsolutions.com

Reis Experts know REIS as creative pacemaker for process-oriented system solutions. Since 1957 our way has been going dynamically up. The fundamentals: Inventive genius, competence, innovative power, and reliability. reisrobotics.de

Marketplace

Kawasaki

For over 40 years, Kawasaki has been improving technology to meet the high demand of assembly applications. Kawasaki’s innovative hardware and software can help you solve your complex assembly challenges.kawasaki.com

3D Robotics

3DR helps people see their world from above. As North America’s largest personal drone company, 3DR is a pioneer in making advanced, easy-to-use drone technology. 3dr.com

SynTouch

SynTouch LLC developed and makes the only sensor technology in the world that endows robots with the ability to replicate - and sometimes exceed - the human sense of touch.syntouchllc.com

Kawada

”Serving society through technology,” has been Kawada’s mission since its inception in 1922. Our mission has been accomplished through technological innovations in a vast range of operations, including projects involving transportation, energy, and information, all basic necessities of society. global.kawada.jp

Yaskawa

Yaskawa Motoman offers a wide range of industrial robotic arm models for high-speed precision assembly and small part handling including high-performance six-axis robots; flexible seven-axis manipulators; dual-arm robots with 15 axes; and more. motoman.com

DENSO Robotics

Cutting edge technology, class leading products and groundbreaking systems are only part of what you can expect when you choose DENSO Robotics.densorobotics.com

Honda Robotics Honda has further advanced intelligence technologies enabling its advanced humanoid robot ASIMO to act autonomously and perform uninterrupted service to office guests. honda.com

Universal Robots

Universal Robots is a result of many years of intensive research in robotics. The product portfolio includes the collaborative UR3, UR5 and UR10 robot arms named after their payloads in kilos. universal-robots.com

Epson

With over 45,000 robots installed in factories throughout the world, many of the top manufacturing companies rely on Epson Robots every day to reduce production costs, improve product quality, increase yields and help increase their bottom line.epson.com

Robotiq

Our goal is to enable all manufacturers to take full advantage of robotics. We work with robot manufacturers, system integrators and end-users to automate applications that require fexibility. robotiq.com

iRobot iRobot’s home robots are revolutionizing the way people clean – inside and out. More than 10 million home robots have been sold worldwide.www.irobot.com

Vecna

Vecna’s robotic logistics solutions are a family of autonomous mobile robots, built to operate within human-centric environments.vecna.com

TEUN

TEUN is a comprehensive concept, based on a smart unmanned machine, the PIQR. The concept has been developed to offer a solution for the frequently complex labor-intensive and expensive way of unloading containers. teun.com

Honeybee Robotics

Since 1983, Honeybee has completed over 300 projects for NASA, the US Department of Defense, academia, industry and artists. honeybeerobotics.com

Future Robot

We, Future Robot, aim to create an exemplary service robot market. We deal with Coupon Advertising Robot, Mobile Infotainment Service, Robot Event Service, and many more.

Marketplace: companies

SCHUNK

SCHUNK is one of the largest manufacturer for automation components, toolholders and workholding equipment. schunk.com




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24 Sensor Readings

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