Source: RoboBusiness

We’re back from our yearly sync with the robotics industry happening at RoboBusiness. As usual, there were great talks and great people to meet. To be honest, I felt less frenzy this year than in the previous 2-3 events. Are people becoming more realistic about the promise of robots or am I just becoming immune to the ambient buzz? There were a lot of local players not at the event. Maybe they’re just busy working at making their stuff work after a surge in investment, as shown in the Boston Consulting Group presentation.

Credit: Robotiq

 What’s different this year?

Last year’s trendy topic was logistics. There were still a decent amount of content about the topic this year. While connected robots and AI were touched upon in 2015, they were in every second session this year. In 2014, Jibo was announced and this year we saw various similar ideas from companies during the Pitchfire. In 2013, telepresence was a hot topic. This year, it was totally off the radar (no Beams were running around).

Theme of the year: IoT

Just like at Automatica last summer, it almost felt like the robotics event was morphing into an IT event. So much so that Michael Loughlin — Founder and CEO of Nelmia robotics insight — joked that it looked like manufacturers forgot that their job is to build stuff.

James Kuffner, from Toyota Research, started the show with his keynote on cloud robotics, how it’s enabled by pervasive broadband communication and the public cloud. FANUC drew a lot of interest with their Zero Down Time (ZDT) system that combines connected robots and business processes to make sure that all robots are repaired before they go down. Omron and Rethink were also there to present their vision of what it means to connect robots. It rose many interesting questions about data ownership, the role of the integration channel and the many ecosystems that might arise from connecting robots.

Close second: Artificial intelligence

Source: Robotiq

Kuffner also touched on the topic in his keynote explaining that now  there are plenty of powerful open source AI, what you need is good data. Sachin Chitta from Kinema Systems was on the realistic side explaining that deep learning in computer vision has a long way to go. We need to know where something is as much as what it is. The massive quantity of data required for applying deep-learning techniques is not easy to get (you can’t scrub it off the web). In the medical side, Verb Surgical explained how they plan on using sharing of data and AI to help doctors operate, perceive and decide. Again, will they be able to get the amount of data that the new deep learning algorithms require? If they can, they will be on their way to democratize medicine, transforming the art apprentices learn from experts into a science purely based on data.

2016 pitchfire

It definitely takes guts to get on stage pitch your startup idea in 2 minutes to a panel of VCs and a crowd of attendees. Kudos to the ones who’ve done it (Catalia health, Parihug, Genesis dimensions, Franklin robotics, Kobi, Cubit, Endurance robotics, Luxrobo, iris automation, qqqtech, Scanse, Rokid, Moti and Semio).

For the most part, the pitches were really well done. Kobi Company, the lawn mower, snow blower, leaves blower robot received first place. Coming from a place where we have a lot of snow, leaves and grass to mow, I was quite surprised by the winning idea, which to me did not seem realistic at all, both from a technology and a user standpoint. My bet would have been on Catalia Health. Let’s bet on who will be more successful in 3 years?

For other companies who wanted to meet VCs one-on-one (which might be wise), there were also VC hours where you could arrange meetings. The pitchfire was sponsored by Siemens who just launched their Next47 initiative, wanting to engage more with smaller innovative companies.

Robots in China, what’s the real deal?

China has been on everybody’s mind in the robotics industry for a few years now, even more recently with the acquisition of KUKA by Midea. There were two experts at the event to enlighten us about what’s really happening with robotics in China: Tom Green from Robotics Trends and Georg Stieler from STM China.

Bottom line: Yes, there are a lot of robots sold in China, but it’s not as easy as it seems and it’s not growing as fast as the rumors go (it’s actually growing at 33% CAGR according to STM). The market is different. The lack of integration know-how is slowing adoption. Companies are starting to understand that.

For instance, Bosh is conducting integration in China even though they don’t do it in all of their other markets around the world. Georg had great insight explaining that the local Chinese robot brands succeed in the simple use cases but foreign robots are more popular in demanding robotics tasks requiring high precision and speed.

Cobots are getting mature

Collaborative robots are now over the hype, entering the plateau of productivity. I was moderating a panel of three interesting speakers. We gathered our notes in this blog post.

Tim Kelch from JR Automation, a large system integrator, presented his view of cobots. The team at JR benchmarked several cobots and installed about a dozen power and force limited robots and much more traditional roots in collaborative applications. Tim argued that their simplicity is oversold, showing several TED talks, articles and videos (including one from Robotiq) that were responsible for creating the hype and false expectations. Here are a few clarifications:

• Collaborative robots that are simple to program are URs and Rethink.
• KUKA, ABB and FANUC all have collaborative robots but are still programmed with the conventional programming tools targeted to skilled integrators.
• We never proclaimed that cobots were the most innovative robots, quite the opposite. As I mentioned in my presentation at 2013 RoboBusiness, cobots today are tools but not the most advanced autonomous robots that will become a reality in a few years.
• Another thing that we’re also pretty clear about is that the simple things are really simple with UR and Rethink, but the complex things are just as, and in some cases even more, complex than with traditional robots. That’s one of the things that we explain in our Getting started with cobots eBook and talks.
• One place where I do agree with Tim is that integrating the robots with different tooling and machines is where most of the challenge is today. That’s exactly why we work on making our products plug & play and why we created the DoF community.

Source: Robotiq

A new building block for industrial robots?

The harmonic drive is pervasive in industrial robotics. They make the component you can find in most of the industrial robots. Harmonic drives have a quasi-monopoly and represent a significant cost in most robots. That’s why everybody was intrigued to see a potential alternative developed by SRI, only to realize that it has been licensed to… Harmonic Drives.

Does the robot industry have an innovation problem?

Tony Melanson challenged the robotics industry in the audience explaining that robots are not the end of the story. It’s obvious that the industry is innovative technologically, making new things that were never possible in the past. But it’s also true that the industry must put the robot in perspective, it’s only one aspect of innovation and that innovation should cover other aspects of the business.

Silicon Valley and robotics

Source: Robotiq

I am always impressed with the robotics activity in the Valley. At the same time, I am doubtful of the big corporations who follow the herd and open an office there to invest in robotics. Yes the ecosystem has a lot to offer, but the demand is also really high. In other words, it’s really a red ocean of investors where a few good ones get the best companies and all the rest have lower quality ones. There are a lot of other untapped robotics clusters worldwide who offer great investment opportunities.

When I compare the environment, with where we are located in Quebec City, I estimate that it would have cost us 5x as much to operate Robotiq in Silicon Valley than in Canada. That means you need to get equivalent financing, growth and value increase to match it. We could definitely not have bootstrapped Robotiq there like we did here. Bootstrapping is not always the best way to go, but it should not be dismissed as a viable route if you’re in it to create a strong company in the long run. As discussed with an investor at RoboBusiness, last year’s most successful IPO was from a bootstrapped company.

RoboBusiness will stay in Silicon Valley next year, so save the date: Sep. 27-28, 2017.

The big players

Yaskawa HC10 — Motoman/Yaskawa unveiled a brand new robot, which seems to have the same principle as the Green Fanuc: it’s an OEM industrial robot covered with a rubber skin (blue this time) to eliminate pinch points and sharp edges. As I understand it, the difference between their concept and Fanuc’s is that the Yaskawa robot monitors force in each joint, whereas Fanuc measures it at the base of the robot. Yaskawa also showed its new YRC 1000 controller, which is used to control the new robot. the HC10 is due for release next year.

Other Green Fanucs — Talking about Fanuc, they released a complete line of collaborative robots: CR-4iA, CR-7iA and CR-7iA/L, in addition to the existing CR-35iA. What I understand is that they are using the exact same principle, but scaled down a bit for the different models. So a soft cover, force-torque sensor at the base of the robot and the regular programming method. I guess they had a good response with their first model and wanted to re-use it. In any case, it is a good concept and does not require a totally new robot… so why not use it again. All robots are offered with vision and force torque sensing.

ABB Roberta dressed in white — It has been a while since we saw Roberta. Do you remember the purchase of Gomtec by ABB? This was the first time we saw Roberta with its new look. In fact, the robot is now part of the YuMi family. The team has been working on porting the robot into the ABB architecture, so it would make sense that software and mechanical devices had to be adapted to run like an ABB unit, while keeping all the interesting stuff that Gomtec had developed in the past. To be honest it looks quite good (especially in white). The hardware of the robot is flawless and the sensor at its wrist makes control nice and easy. I don’t have any info on the official release date. ABB was also showing the original 2-armed YuMi. PS: No offence, but I am pretty stoked to see Roberta in a legit marketing campaign and not just as a flowery backdrop.

Kawasaki duAro — Kawasaki presented its new addition: the dual arm scara robot, duAro. The robot is a great fit for electronic assembly where most motions are planar. The robot is designed to be collaborative. In electronic assembly lines where a lot of dexterity (i.e. human workers) is needed, it is just normal to power- and force-limit these devices. The robot was announced last summer.

New kids on the block

Life Robotics CORO — This is a new Japanese company that expects to begin selling robots next year. What’s innovative is that the robot seems to have one retractable segment to increase its reach. Initially, the robots will only be sold in Japan. Original use of prismatics makes this robot’s footprint very compact. They have been pretty secretive about pricing, which makes me suspect they will offer it at a really affordable price.

TM Robotics (subdivision of Quanta Storage, maker of the Apple mac book) — A company that comes from the IT industry will certainly give you an easy-to-use, totally integrated solution, and this is what is happening here. The robot is smart, simple and safe, and it has integrated vision, integrated wifi and uses a tablet as its teach pendant. The Taiwanese robot is supposed to be released next year. This is going to be an interesting one to follow.

The usual suspects

• Kawada had an impressive demonstration integrating several robots. The Nextage being their industrial robot, it seems to work well and have great capability, but as far as I know, it is only available in Japan. Kawada was also showing its HRP-2 and HRP-3.
• Universal Robots was showing applications with some local partners using Robotiq Grippers. Notice that the UR product line remains untouched with the UR3, UR5 and UR10.
• Rethink Robotics was showing Sawyer with Sumimoto, a local partner in Japan.
• KUKA was focusing completely on LBR iiwa in their booth, showing assembly tasks.

As you can see, the offerings for collaborative robots are increasing rapidly. All the big robot manufacturers are coming up with not just one collaborative robot, but entire product lines of them. This could be a game changer for collaborative robotics, and help move it from a niche, innovative market space into the mainstream for manufacturing companies.

I wonder how the new ISO TS 15066 standard for collaborative robot safety will affect the growth and evolution of these new products? Will we all have to go back to the drawing board and adjust our product design, or have we built enough safety into collaborative robots already?

And lastly, how will these new product lines affect the market for end effectors? Pneumatics are not often seen on collaborative robots — will this stimulate demand for electric end effectors or other technologies?

https://youtu.be/EYu3–oYi10

More information on them in an upcoming post, stay tuned!

#iREX2015 Tweets

As usual, safety was one of the main topics in every talk. Once again, everybody agrees: safety is about the application, and you must do a risk assessment. But how? … That’s the big fuzzy open question.

Millennials, manufacturing and collaborative robots

Henrik Christensen from Georgia Tech made the point again that young people entering the workforce have played more than three full years of video games and we should try to leverage this skill set. We should also check which type of console people use nowadays to play; it’s not only about the game controller.

Jim Lawton from Rethink Robotics also mentioned the disinterest of millennials in traditional manufacturing. Easy-to-use and productive robots have the potential to interest younger people with the maker mentality. They could even be interested enough to want to use robots to build stuff as a job.

Collaborative Robots – Vendor Roundup

RIA invited many robot suppliers to present their take on the technology, its applications and market.

Rethink Robotics – The Software Company

Jim Lawton, Technology Executive – Rethink Robotics

Jim Lawton surprised the audience by stating that he works for a software company that makes robots. He explained the usual impetus behind the cobot wave: demography, cost of labor, enabling technologies. Now that we (almost) have safe, cheap and easy-to-use robots, what is coming up? First, Jim underlined the low price or fast ROI of the collaborative robots. He also agrees with the fact that millennials are not interested in manual tasks, and that bringing robots to the manufacturing chain is stimulating for them. Robots such as Baxter and Sawyer work like people do: they can carry human sized parts and do pretty much what a human can do. Finally, he said that robots can adapt to variability through machine learning and that they can be repurposed to a different application quickly.

UR – The Robots of the People

Scott Mabie, General Manager – Americas – Universal Robots

I was wondering about the number of Universal Robots on the market, and Scott Mabie told us that more than 5,000 Universal Robots have been sold so far. It is quite impressive to see how fast collaborative robots are growing. Some major manufacturers such as Maytag even feature the robot in their commercial.

https://youtu.be/zr-BUV8ORTY

ABB – The Volvo of Collaborative Robots

Phil Crowther, Global Product Manager Small Robots – ABB Robotics

If a 3-point safety belt could exist in robotics, ABB would invent it. Crowther presented their rigorous (and complex) approach to safety, which they obviously take very seriously. I could finally play with YuMi in the exhibition area. The booth personnel seemed a little stressed by everybody touching the robot, as if something might go wrong. That is the joy of robots for non-experts! From the little that I saw, it worked perfectly well.

It was the first time I got a look at their clean, user-friendly interface to program the YuMi. Other large end-users who tried it also liked the idea of leveraging the existing know-how of the more powerful and proven ABB tools if they needed to do more complex tasks. Just like Volvo cars, it is a very nice piece of engineering designed with the human in mind. As a gripper manufacturer, I can really appreciate the tight combination of the technology in their arm, the compact packaging of power, air and even embedded vision in the end effector. Crowther also talked a bit about the future of robot teach pendants, where smart phones and cloud computing would take the place of industrial PCs and large pendants. We have an interesting article on this subject by the way.

FANUC – The Lord of Robots

Paul Santi, General Manager – Powertain Systems Group – FANUC America Corporation

FANUC has been a reigning industrial robotics company in North America for years, winning the battle for market share by leveraging solid technology and top system integrators. You can clearly see that the FANUC presentation was colored by their history with their most important customer base: the automotive industry.

I agree with Santi that some things don’t change. You still need reliability and productivity increases. If I take the point of view of most automakers, I also agree that you still need integration for interfacing with machines and controlling the process. Their high payload, full featured, integration heavy approach for their new CR-35iA makes complete sense for the automotive industry. It makes no sense for SMEs who don’t need all the features and can’t get a competitive ROI if they can’t do most of the integration themselves.

Precise Automation – The Underdog

Brian Carlisle, CEO – Precise Automation

I was quite impressed by Precise’s presentation and I really think that they have a great, underestimated potential in the market. One reason is probably because we don’t know them as well as the other players. Carlisle presented the general idea that they are used to making safe robots, and leveraging the intimate knowledge of the physics of robots and software. They now have a very interesting lineup of Linear, SCARA and 6-axis robots. With targeted applications for a low payload (<3 kg), their robots are well suited for parts handling, laboratory automation and other lightweight applications. We have recently featured them in our eBook on Collaborative Robots.

Collaborative Robot User Panel

RIA invited three different collaborative robot users to share their experience in choosing, implementing and leveraging collaborative robots.

GM – The Expert User

Marty Linn, Robotic Principal Engineer – General Motors

Since General Motors was an early adopter of industrial robots (let’s say they almost invented them), you would think that such company would have bunch of collaborative robots working alongside humans to cover all the difficult or redundant tasks. We’re not there yet. In fact, with applications requiring a big payload, it is hard to incorporate a robot with a 5 kg payload to do a heavy task. Another disadvantage of collaborative robots is their relatively small reach. With the new Fanuc CR-35iA, GM is getting one step closer to the introduction of collaborative robots in the automotive industry. They have been testing the CR-35iA for almost a year now in 2 different applications. The fact that the robot can carry heavy parts (up to 35 kg) and has a long reach makes the robot pretty interesting. Compared to SMEs, GM does not need the intuitive programming platform that most collaborative robots are promoting, as they have the in-house knowledge and the repeatability volume to program the robot with standard programming methods. This is why the Green Fanuc is great for them; they are a traditional user.

Glidewell Laboratories – The High Mix / Low Volume Process

Daniel Phee, Mechanical Design Engineer – Glidewell Laboratories

Glidewell Laboratories also shared their experience of using a collaborative robot. Glidewell is manufacturing custom dental crowns in California. With a production of 3,000 to 3,500 crowns per day, they decided to introduce Universal Robots into their process to do the machine tending. Using nine UR robot arms, the company is saving 150 human hours per week. Watch the video to have a better idea of their installation.

Sepcoe Erie – The Job Shop

Chris Pedersen, Operations Manager and Mechanical Engineer, Sepcoe Erie

Chris and his team installed a Universal Robots in a month and a half, got an ROI within 6 months, doubled capacity and reduced scrap by half. Moreover, they improved the workers morale by eliminating a station that was stressful, dirty and highly redundant. That is a great success story on how collaborative robots can increase the productivity of SMEs.

This panel included a wide spectrum of users that illustrated the differences between large and small companies with respect to collaborative robots. GM stuck to their preferred supplier to keep the same programming and interface to resolve ergonomic issues, and smaller companies deployed new platforms on their floors to enhance productivity. Between all these factors the deployment time should also be considered: a few months for the smaller companies; a few years for GM, which needed to do a lot of up front work. For all of them, one concern was employees’ perceptions of the new robots before installation. All agreed that after installation and training, the employees loved the robots that did redundant jobs. That is what collaborative robots are all about.