-Manufacturing & Cobot Roundup
-DARPA's Subterranean Challenge 
-Panasonic Unveils Tomato-Harvesting Bot 
-Pharmacy Bot Combats Opiod Misuse 
...and much more! 

 Manufacturing & Cobot Roundup

 KUKA's CEO Till Reuter is hoping to focus the firm's resources on smaller, nimbler robots to counteract the effect of shrinking growth in the automotive sector, according to reports this week. 

Caption: German industrial giant Kuka is the world's largest producer of robots used to make automobiles. Photo: Bloomberg.

Business Times reports: 

Growth in robots for all industries other than automotive is up more than 10 per cent; that compares to just three-five per cent for the car industry, he says. Kuka's auto business has fallen from 80 per cent of robot revenues, when he took over the company in 2009, to around 50 per cent today, Mr Reuter notes. 

Reuter also predicted that Kuka's revenue in China, currently at EUR500 million will reach "way above" EUR1 billion by 2020. 

A collaborative initiative between Kuka and Makino has resulted in the 'iAssist,' which is being billed as a "first of its kind autonomous and collaborative robot designed especially for the machine-tool industry"... 

Aircraft Tooling, Inc., an aviation component repair center, has been using a Universal Robots UR10 cobot in thermal spray and plasma spray coating processes.

Engineering.com reports: 

The UR10 performed with such durability, the cobot only required a wipe down of dust in-between applications, said Juan Puente, thermal spray supervisor at ATI.

“I actually thought the robot wouldn’t stand it,” Puente added. “Some of these powder coatings are tungsten carbide which is a hard metal coating. If it seeps into the bearings of the robot, we were afraid it would destroy them. There were no particles in there, three years of operation, it doesn’t show.”

Plastics Today talked with Melonee Wise under a headline that asked whether cobots are the worker's "friend or foe?"  Meanwhile, Gulf Times says that robots will "shake up jobs, but won't kill them." 

A new, US$500,000 mobile training lab for local manufatcuring workers has opened in Ohio, the Marion Star reported. 

FANUC's P-40iA paint robot is a dab hand at painting motorcycle fuel tanks... 

"2018 looks set to be the year when collaborative robots (aka cobots) will truly move into the mainstream," says AllWork. China's government has announced plans "to dominate robot, smart car and railway industries by 2020"; South China Morning Post has more. 

Boston-area companies ended up pushing for robot workers in warehouses during the holiday crunch, according to WBUR: 

Caption: A fleet of autonomous mobile robot at the testing facility of 6 River Systems in Waltham. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)

The new generation of robots being designed around Boston focus on human-robot collaboration. They're smaller, more flexible and cheaper. For $250,000, [Jerome] Dubois, [co-CEO of 6 River Systems] said a company can get eight robots up and running in a month. 

The speed and price, he insisted, is game-changing in an industry that's used to bulky equipment and conveyor belts bolted to the ground. 

Swedish workers feel prepared for the robot revolution, Axios reported: 

The big picture: As Swedish companies have profited from the efficiency of robots, wages have also gone up, as opposed to the U.S., where wages have stagnated for years. "The jobs disappear, and then we train people for new jobs. We won't protect jobs. But we will protect workers," Swedish minister for employment and integration, Ylva Johansson, told the [New York] Times.

Human brains need to adapt to a future robot workforce, unleashing a wave of creativite opportunities, says Deep Science Ventures' Inma Martinez. 

Via Silicon Republic: 

Martinez said that when AI and machines become commonplace in the workforce, their role will essentially be to pick up the slack of the monotonous admin work many of us dread. As a result, humans will be encouraged to be more creative and ‘right-brained’.

Schmalz Vietnam showcased gripping systems originally displayed at Expomafe 2017...

The European Union-funded FourByThree project which proposed "the development of a new generation of modular industrial robotic solutions that are suitable for efficient task execution in collaboration with humans in a safe way and are easy to use and program by the factory workers" came to a successful close... 

Asian Robotics Review looked at smart factories, asking "Why Is My Factory Smarter Than Yours?" in a fascinating article that explores several aspects of smart factories from predictive maintenance to the rise of IoT and AI technologies: 

Factory Owner One smiles contentedly looking out over his hundreds of industrial robots and cobots— all humming away tirelessly and efficiently at their jobs; he’s also pleased that his worker payroll has been reduced from 250 to 75. Life is good. In his small corner of the manufacturing world the promise of automation has been realized. 

DARPA's Subterranean Challenge

 The U.S. military's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has announced The Subterranean (or "SubT") Challenge --a global competition where entrants try to develop hardware and software that can help humans navigate, map and search in underground locations that are normally too dangerous for humans to visit. 

The Final, planned for 2021, will put teams to the test in tunnel, urban and cave environments. The prize for the 'Systems' track is US$2 million, while the winner of the 'Virtual' track will receive US$750,000. 

Via DARPA: 

The DARPA Subterranean or “SubT” Challenge aims to explore new approaches to rapidly map, navigate, and search underground environments. Teams from around the world will be invited to propose novel methods for tackling time-critical scenarios through unknown courses in mapping subsurface networks and unpredictable conditions, which are too hazardous for human first responders.

The deadline for applications is Jan. 18, 2018. 

Panasonic Unveils Tomato-Harvesting Bot 

Panasonic has developed a robot than can automatically harvest tomatoes while running on a rail, Nikkei Technology reported: 

Using a camera, range image sensor and AI (artificial intelligence), it determines the position, color and shape of tomatoes and harvests only edible tomatoes by using a special end effector. 

Via PC Mag: 

In terms of speed, Panasonic claims it can match a human worker by harvesting 10 tomatoes every minute. If you also factor in the robot never needs a break, you can see the efficiency gains possible. However, as the video above also shows, the robot isn't perfect and can drop the tomatoes it cuts from the vine.

Separately, a new report predicts that the global agricultural robots market (valued at US$1,994 million in 2014) is likely to increase to US$15,341 million by 2025, at a CAGR of 20.95%. 

The Pharmacy Bot Helping To Combat Opiod Misuse  

Omnicell's VBM 200 F is an experimental, 7-foot robot that's being used to curb the misuse of opioid analgesics at a pharmacy in San Joaquin County, CA. The Omnicell bot can accurately fill and check a patient's prescribed medications and can produce 500 patient blister cards in per day. 

CBS Local Sacramento reports: 

The machine, pharmacists say is a new tool that can be used to help with the on-going fight against the country’s opioid epidemic.

“We put them in a single dose packing with similar to the one that this machine does, and we monitor alongside with the doctor to make sure the patient is not getting too many and following exactly what the doctor wants. We don’t want anyone having any overdoses,” she [Jeannie Duckworth, regional long-term care sales director, BJRX] said.

I'll be back sometime next year with more news from the ever-changing world of robotics. 

Until then, please enjoy these videos and links and have a wonderful New Year!  

Xiaoshan Robot Expo Center opens to public in E China (Global Times) 
New Source & Capabilities For Collaborative Robots (Plastics Technology) 
Robots are All Around Us (Money Show) 
Ancient Urn Discovered By Robot At Bottom of Japan's Biggest Lake Mystifies Archaeologists (Newsweek) 
Human or robot? Google’s speech generator makes it hard to tell (New Scientist) 
21st-Century Repairman: The Robot in the Gas Main (New York Times) 
Building Smarter Sensors for Robot Cars (GovTech) 
Robotic Snakes going into Fukushima power plant after previous probes ‘died’ (Daily Mirror) 
‘Betty' the robot helps Orlando Health Cancer Center patients (WFTV9) 
The year of AI (Economic Times)