PhoneDrone Ethos, Kickstarter campaign. Credit: xCraft/YouTube

JD Claridge’s story epitomizes the current state of the drone industry. Claridge, founder of xCraft, is best known for being the first contestant on Shark Tank to receive money from all the Sharks – even Kevin O’Leary! Walking the floor of Xponential 2017, the annual convention of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems Integration (AUVSI), Claridge remarked to me how the drone industry has grown up since his TV appearance.

Claridge has gone from pitching cellphone cases that turn into drones (aka phonedrone) to solving mission critical problems. The age of fully autonomous flight is near and the drone industry is finally recovering from the hangover of overhyped Kickstarter videos (see Lily drone’s $34 million fraud). xCraft’s pivot to lightweight, power efficient, enterprise drones is an example of this evolved marketplace. During the three days of Xponential 2017, several far-reaching announcements were made between stalwarts of the tech industry and aviation startups. Claridge introduced me to his new partner, Rajant, which is a leader in industrial wireless networks. xCraft’s latest models utilize Rajant’s mesh networks to launch swarms of drones with one controller. More drones flying simultaneously enables users to maximize the flight time limitations of lithium batteries by covering greater areas within a single mission.

Bob Schena, Rajant’s CEO, said, “Rajant’s network technology now makes it possible for one pilot to operate many aircrafts concurrently, with flight times of 45 minutes. We’re pleased to partner with xCraft and bring more intelligence, mobility and autonomy to UAV communication infrastructures covering greater aerial distances while supporting various drone payloads.”

The battery has been the Achilles heel of the small drone industry since inception. While large winged craft relies heavily on fossil fuels, multirotor battery-operated drones have been plagued with shorter missions of under 45 minutes. Innovators like Claridge are leading the way for a new wave of creative solutions:

Solar Powered Wings 

Solar Powered Wings

Airbus showcased its Zephyr drone products or HAPS (High Altitude Pseudo-Satellite) UAVs using solar-winged craft for power. Zephyr UAVs can fly for months at a time, saving thousands of tons of fuel. The HAPS also offers a number of lightweight payload options from voice communications to persistent internet to real-time surveillance. Airbus was not the only solar solution on display; there were a handful of Chinese upstarts and solar cell purveyors for retrofitting existing aircrafts.

Hybrid Fuel Solutions  

In the Startup Pavilion, William Fredericks of the Advanced Aircraft Company (AAC) demoed a novel technology using a hybrid of diesel fuel and lithium batteries with flexible fixed wings and multirotors, resulting in over 3 hours of flying time. AAC’s prototype, the Hercules (above) is remarkably lightweight and fast. Fredricks is an aircraft designer by trade with 12 designs flying in the air, including NASA’s Greased Lightning that looks remarkably similar to Boeing’s Osprey. The Hercules is available for sale on the company’s website for multiple use cases, including: agricultural, first responders, and package delivery. It is interesting to note that a few rows from Frederick’s booth was his former employer, NASA, promoting their new Autonomy Incubator for “intelligent flight systems” and its “autonomy innovation lab,” (definitely an incubator to watch).

Vertical Take Off & Landing

In addition to hybrid fuel strategies, entrepreneurs are also rethinking the launch procedures. AAC’s Hercules and XCraft’s commercial line of drones vertically takeoff to reduce wind resistance and maximize energy consumption. Australian Startup Iridium Dynamics takes this approach to a new level with astonishing results. Its winged craft, Halo, uses a patent-pending “hover thrust” of its entire craft so its wings actually create the vertical lift to hover with minimal power. The drone also has two rotors to fly horizontally. According to Dion Gonano, Control Systems Engineer, it can fly for over 2 hours. The Halo also lands vertically into a stationary mechanical arm. While the website lists a number of commercial applications for this technology, it was unclear in my discussions with Gonano if they have deployed this technology in real tests.

New Charging Efficiencies

Prior to Xponential, Seattle-based WiBotic announced the closing of its $2.5 seed round to fund its next generation of battery charging technologies. The company has created a novel approach to wireless inductive charging for robotics. Its wireless inductive charging platform includes a patent-pending auto detect feature that can begin recharging once the robot enters the proximity of the base station, even during flight. According to Dr. Ben Waters, (CEO), its charge is faster than traditional solutions presently on the market. Dr. Waters demonstrated for me its suite of software tools that monitor battery performance, providing clients with a complete power management analytics platform. WiBotic is already piloting its technology with leading commercial customers in the energy and security sectors. WiBotic is the first inductive charging platform; other companies have created innovating battery-swapping techniques. Airobotics unique drone storage box that is deployed currently at power plants in Israel, includes a robotic arm, housed inside, that services the robot post flight by switching out the payload and battery:

Reducing Payload Weight

In addition to aircraft design, payload weight is a big factor of battery drain. A growing trend within the industry is miniaturizing the size and cost of the components. Ultimately, the mission of a drone is directly related to the type of payload from cameras for collecting images to precise measurements using Light Detection and Ranging sensors (or Lidar). Lidar is typically deployed in autonomous vehicles to provide the most precise position for the robot in a crowded area, like a self-driving car on the road. However, Lidar is currently extremely expensive and large for many multirotor surveys. Chris Brown of Z-Senz, a former scientist with the The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), hopes to change the landscape of drones with his miniaturized Lidar sensor. Brown’s reduced sensor, SKY1, offers major advantages for size, weight, and power consumption without losing accuracy of high distance sensing. A recent study estimates the Lidar market is expected to exceed $5 billion by 2022, with Velodyne and Quanergy already gaining significant investment. Z-Senz is aiming to be commercially available by 2018.

Lidar is not the only measuring methodology, Global Positioning Solutions (GPS) have been deployed widely. Two of the finalists of the Xponetial Startup Showdown were startups focused on reducing GPS chip sizes and increasing functionality. Inertial Sense has produced a chip the size of a dime that is capable of housing an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), Attitude Heading Reference System (AHRS), and GPS-aided Inertial Navigation System (INS). Their website claims that their “advanced algorithms fuse output from MEMs inertial sensors, magnetometers, barometric pressure, and a high-sensitivity GPS (GNSS) receiver to deliver fast, accurate, and reliable attitude, velocity, and position even in the most dynamic environments.” The chips and micro navigation accessories are available on the company’s e-store.

The winner of the Showdown, uAvionix, is a leading developer of avionics for both manned and unmanned flight. Their new transceivers and transponders claim to be “the smallest, and lightest and most affordable on the market” (already GPS is a commodity). uAvionix presented its “Ping Network System that reduces weight on average by 40% as compared to the two-piece installations.” The Ping products also claim barometric altitude precision with accuracy beyond 80,000 ft.

Paul Beard, CEO of uAvionix, said, “our customers have asked for even smaller and lighter solutions; integrating the transceivers, GPS receivers, GPS antennas, and barometric pressure sensors into a single form factor facilitates easier installation and lowers weight and power draw requirements resulting in a longer usable flight time.”

As I rushed to the airport to catch my manned flight, I felt reenergized about the drone industry, although follies will persist. I mean who wouldn’t want a pool deckchair drone this summer?

This and all other autonomous subjects will be explored at RobotLabNYC’s next event with Dr. Howard Morgan (FirstRound Capital) and Tom Ryden (MassRobotics) – RSVP.

Robohub covered the Airbus Shopfloor Challenge that took place during #ICRA16 in Stockholm. Below, you can see an extensive photo gallery as part of our coverage. Check it out!

Team Naist

Team Naist, from Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Japan won first prize. They used a KUKA robot arm, an advanced head with stabilizing rods, and an advanced computer vision system that enabled them to drill holes efficiently and with great precision.

Team CriGroup

Team CriGroup is based at the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, within Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. They used ready made parts and a Denso arm with a special focus on software. Their method produced an innovative drilling pattern that minimized robot motion. They came in second place.

Team Sirado

Team Sirado brings together 6 researchers from the graduate School of Engineering, Arts et Métiers Lille campus, and 3 experienced industrial representatives from KUKA Systems Aerospace France, and KUKA Automatisme Robotique SAS. They also used a KUKA arm and a specially designed drill unit. Sirado took third place in the competition.

Team R3

R3 is a robotics collective based out of Ryerson University in Ontario, Canada. Their custom-made XY platform used 7 drill bits in one unit to drill many holes at once. They performed two rounds and competed on the final round.

Team Vayu

Team Vayu from India brings together five undergraduate students who share a passion for aerospace. They had the simplest approach with a compact 3 axis robot that performed well throughout the challenge.

Team Akita Prefectural University

Japanese team Akita Prefectural University implemented a unique solution for the challenge. Their robot used a delta-based solution to place the drill bit accurately. The arms themselves used rolled metallic tape under restrictors to extend and contract. They were able to demonstrate their setup, but weren’t able to compete.

Team Bug Eaters

The Bug Eaters team from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA is made up of four undergraduate Mechanical and Materials Engineering students. Their robot is an innovative version of the delta robot, but issues with their motors didn’t allow them to perform.

The Airbus Shopfloor challengers gearing up for the main event.

Seven teams from around the world go head-to-head in the Airbus Shopfloor Challenge in Stockholm. The challenge is one of the main highlights at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) this week.

With a backlog of almost 7000 aircraft on order, Airbus issued a pressing challenge for the robotics community: how can they improve their manufacturing processes by integrating emerging robotics technologies into their production lines? This week, we’ll see 7 teams present their best solutions and battle it out at the Airbus Shopfloor Challenge. It’s an opportunity for robotics teams to share their innovative ideas with leaders in the field and potentially develop them further with Airbus. Top performing teams will be going home with a cash prize of up to 20,000 euros.

To win, robots attempt to drill 245 holes in a 70cm x 70cm aluminium panel representing an aircraft part. A set of 10 additional points are in a separate area of the panel which is harder to reach. Overall, points will be awarded for each successfully drilled hole, and subtracted for non-compliant holes as well as collisions causing damages to the panel. Solution should also be fully autonomous, lightweight, modular, and open source.

Drilling pattern. Source: Airbus

“We’re drilling over 120 million holes per year for the production of our aircrafts. This still involves a high level of manual drilling.” says Curtis Carson, Head of Research and Technology in the Industrial Strategy and Systems Centre of Competence at Airbus.

And drilling in aircrafts is by no-means easy, due to constraints on space. You basically need to get in there to access hard-to-reach areas. This means much of the drilling happens in non-ergonomic conditions for the workers.

Ideally, the solution is a human-robot collaboration with the robots doing most of the uncomfortable tasks. For the robots to be usable, they will need to be light, and mobile so they can easily access the different parts of the aircraft and interact safely with workers. They will also need to be easy to integrate into the existing production cycle. The way planes are built today relies on decades of legacy work. Drastically disrupting this pipeline could result in years of delay in production.

The modularity and open source requirements enforced in the challenge will further allow solutions to go beyond drilling. If you can easily replace an end effector, or reconfigure a mission, you’re then able to tackle other tasks such as fastening or painting.

How does the competition run?

Each team will compete in a series of 60-minute rounds on Tuesday and Wednesday, with the final confrontation between the top two teams happening on Wednesday. A jury of experts from industry and academia will be judging the competition.

The teams had full reign over the design decisions, with solutions ranging from off-the-shelf robot arms, to custom-made XY platforms. What makes the challenge particularly tricky is the integration of all the components required for the robot to operate robustly. They will need to see drilling locations, plan a trajectory, move in a precise way, and compensate for the extreme vibrations caused by drilling. Each team played to their strengths, with some focussing on control, and others designing hardware.

So without further ado, let’s meet the challengers:

Team CriGroup

Source: Airbus

Team CriGroup is based at the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, within Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. They are enthusiastic researchers and engineers from Vietnam, Colombia, Thailand, Singapore and China. Their objective is to build robotic systems that benefit workers around the world.

Their solution is a 6 degrees of freedom robot arm produced by Denso and fit with a 3D camera and off-the-shelf driller. “Control was easier for us because it’s our area of expertise. The most challenging aspect was the vision. We were quite new to this and needed to design a custom image processing algorithm to increase the precision of our vision system.

Team Akita Prefectural University

Source: Airbus

Japanese team Akita Prefectural University brings together Associate Professor Takashi Sait, grad student Takahiro Hashi, and undergraduate student Taiki Kudo from the hybrid bio-robotics laboratory. They will be using their experience competing in Robot Battles back at home to build their robot for the Airbus challenge.

Team Sirado

Source: Airbus

Team Sirado brings together 6 researchers from the graduate School of Engineering, Arts et Métiers Lille campus, and 3 experienced industrial representatives from KUKA Systems Aerospace France, and KUKA Automatisme Robotique SAS.

“We developed a solution using the collaborative robot LBR iiwa from KUKA. The robot was chosen for its versatility and to illustrate the potential of lightweight collaborative robotic cells. The electrical drilling effector was specifically designed by KUKA Systems Aerospace France to meet the challenge requirements. A monocular high-resolution camera is used for the detection and localization of the reference hole. During drilling operations, the configuration of the 7-axis robot (1 kinematic redundancy) is optimized to reach a compromise between the rigidity of the robot arm along the drilling axis, and the reachability of the target point.

Team R3

Source: Airbus

R3 is a robotics collective based out of Ryerson University in Ontario, Canada. The team has 20 members from various engineering disciplines including Mechatronics, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, and Biomedical Sciences.

“Our robotic solution for the Airbus Shopfloor Challenge mechanically aligns a housing to the panel by using a 2-dimensional gantry powered by stepper motors. The housing incorporates a gang drilling technique (7 drill bits) so it is able to drill the pattern quickly and accurately.”

Team Vayu

Source: Airbus

Team Vayu brings together five bachelor students who share their passion for Aerospace. Akash (Team Leader) and Akul are the mechanical experts, Shraddha is the technical writer and finance leader, Siddharth and Sudarshan are coding, microprocessor and sensing experts.

“Our robot is a simple mechanical solution that uses independent linear motion along 3 axes. The coordinates for the drilling are entered into the system beforehand to perform the desired pattern.”

Team Naist

Source: Airbus

Team Naist, from Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Japan includes undergraduate and PhD students, and postdocs from many different countries including Germany, Belgium, Equador, and Mexico. They propose an innovative end effector that stabilizes the workpiece and drill without heavy load-bearing structures, using instead three points of contact that minimize high-frequency vibrations. The solution uses a vision system for precise calibration, and a sensitive robot arm that can operate safely alongside human workers, all while achieving high precision with a low payload.

“Our solution replaces heavy, rigid support structures with a flexible, sensing robot arm. We took inspiration from the way humans stabilize their hands during delicate manipulation tasks, and developed an end effector that connects to the workpiece.” said Felix von Drigalski

Team Bug Eaters

Source: Airbus

The Bug Eaters team from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA is made up of four undergraduate Mechanical and Materials Engineering students. They have all worked in robotics, either as part of classes, research, or work.

“To solve the problem given by Airbus, we wanted to bring new solutions to the table while also demonstrating their viability. To do this, we decided on a planar delta robot, that is, a delta platform with position actuators arranged in a plane to one side of the end effector, rather than the standard triangular arrangement. The delta was chosen because of its ability to remain cost-effective while maintaining the necessary accuracy, as well as its lack of extra unused degrees of freedom. A rotating drill motor was added to the end effector to compactly achieve the additional degree of freedom necessary for the rotating plane of the target panel.” said Alex Drozda.

So stay tuned for two days of competition. You can follow the event live on twitter at #AirbusShopfloorChallenge or below.

#AirbusShopfloorChallenge Tweets

Airbus assembly floor. Source: Airbus Group

Transcript below

In this episode, Andrew Vaziri speaks with Curtis Carson, Head of Research and Technology in Industrial Strategy and Systems at Airbus. They speak about the Airbus Shopfloor Challenge to be held at ICRA 2016, and discuss the need for a new generation of industrial robots for aircraft manufacturing.

More information can be found on the competition website.

Curtis Carson

Curtis Carson is the Head of Research and Technology in the Industrial Strategy and Systems Centre of Competence at Airbus, a leading aircraft manufacturer headquartered in Toulouse, France. Holder of an engineering degree from Ryerson Polytechnic University in Canada, Curtis has extensive international experience in both the aerospace and automotive industries. Curtis’ current role includes developing new and innovative aircraft production processes through the application of emerging technologies. This role spans a host of technologies in the framework of the future factory, from augmented reality to collaborative robotics to digitalization to name a few examples.

Links:

• Download mp3 (12.9 MB)
• Subscribe to Robots using iTunes
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• ICRA Shopfloor Challenge

Transcript

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Andrew:  Hello, welcome to Robots Podcast! Can you introduce yourself and describe what you do?

Curtis:  I’m Curtis Carson and I’m responsible for the research and technology on the industrial system side with Airbus in France. My role encompasses everything you can imagine around the production of a commercial aircraft from jigs machinery equipment to robotics automation to new innovative techniques, enhancing and optimizing through IOT and connected objects.

Andrew:  What is IOT?

Curtis:  Internet of things, so connectedness and bridging multiple sensors and systems around our worker or automation on our shop floor.

Andrew: For people who aren’t familiar with Airbus, could you describe your products?

Curtis: There’s a high likelihood if you’ve travelled anywhere, it was one of our Airbus products. We develop commercial aircrafts from a smaller range, which we call single aisle aircraft A320, to the world’s largest passenger aircraft, the A380.

Andrew: What are the challenges in manufacturing aircraft?

Curtis: It might be hard to imagine from an outside perspective, but some of crafts have been developed years ago and we’ve been producing them for many, many years. Our new and innovative products, like our A350, have just gone to our first customers and the industrial system that we built behind to produce all this is quite large. But also expansive in terms of footprint and age and the diversity, is quite significant. We’re not building a factory every year and we’re not designing new aircraft each year. This makes it challenging to find ways to innovate.

Andrew: You said that the lifetime can be significant. What is the average time one aircraft design might be in production?

Curtis:  It is quite typical for an aircraft design to be in production for 20, 30 years or more. The time frames are large to very long, the more successful the program the longer the production.

Andrew:  How many aircraft does Airbus produce in a year?

Curtis:  It was over 630+ aircraft produced last year. This might seem like a small number versus an automotive domain – where you’re producing thousands and thousands of cars – but this is some of the largest quantities of commercial aircrafts ever produced in a given period, or a given year.

Andrew:  How many aircraft are currently in the backlog to be purchased from Airbus?

Curtis: I think it’s close to 7,000 aircrafts in backlog for production time-frame, don’t quote me on that. If you take the numbers per year, the backlog is over quite a number of years.

Andrew: To address the large number of aircraft currently in the backlog, what are some initiatives Airbus is undertaking for its manufacturing processes?

Curtis: We’re looking to innovate assembly process in the building of aircraft that are part of that building process and it might be difficult to see this without looking at really what’s inside a production system. As well as looking into automation to help people, or robotics and automation that we can use to assemble and fabricate parts of the aircraft.

We’re looking from across different facets of innovation: from smart tools, that know where they are in the aircraft; to autonomous robotics systems, that can manage and move themselves around in our production environment; to innovative technologies, like 3D printing and what it can bring to production efficiency and performance in the building of our aircraft. We’re looking across a large spectrum of technologies and see how we can effectively boost our productivity and our performance in building our aircraft.

Andrew:  What robotics initiatives has Airbus undertaken in the past?

Curtis:  In the area of robotics we’re using industrial robots and systems you may see if you were in an automotive environment for specific tasks – like drilling holes on a panel or a skin structure to assemble frames on the aircraft – we have big machines that we use today for building large scale composite parts up to the size of wings. We have a number of different automated systems we use. These are the typical industrial automations that we’re applying. With those typical industrial automations we can target a small percentage of the production activities to the large quantity of parts you can have in an aircraft, and the large diversity of the types of parts.

That’s what exists today. What we’re moving towards is where we can have more light-weight robotic systems that are flexible and agile. Systems that can move in and around our structures versus designing from the ground up a fixed and rigid system… instead you have a robot from within. Once you realize the size and the scale of the aircraft, you’ll see it’s not something that’s readily set up to bring the product to the robot or for the robot to do the work, and then move the product along. We have to be more agile and flexible in our building process.

Andrew:  Airbus is sponsoring this year’s challenge at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation. Can you tell us about that?

Curtis: The competition we are proposing this year is drilling. Why would we target something like drilling? The simple answer is by looking at the production in Airbus in assembling the aircraft I mentioned earlier. We’re drilling over 120 million holes per year. Of those 120 million holes I would say we’re only able to automate a small percentage in terms of production tasks. There’s a high level of manual drilling we still do in the production of our aircraft today. Drilling is an interesting aspect. If we can combine what I said earlier – a lightweight and mobile robotic system – and combine with lightweight tools, then we have an opportunity to move into a new arena, and potential. We could implement an automated system without changing our infrastructure or our production lines to accommodate such a system.

A lot of these holes are drilled today by people. It’s not that a large industrial robot wouldn’t work doing that job, but it is not very mobile. And if you make the robot mobile, well it’s still heavy! If you’re drilling holes inside an aircraft structure barrel, it becomes difficult to put the robot inside without rebuilding your industrial infrastructure. This is what we’re interested to see: how can we push the boundaries of robotics capabilities today in this lightweight mobile module and solve these activities? Drilling is just the start. If we can do it with drilling, we can look to other aspects in production operations.

Andrew:  In the competition itself, what are you asking teams to do?

Curtis:  What we setup might look very simple, but the technical complexities come if we have a metal template. We’re asking them to produce a specific drilling pattern. In this drilling pattern we are asking to produce an automated system with bounding frame or restrictions with regards to size, mass, points for modularity. Then, looking at how quickly they can manipulate the system towards the task. If I have a pattern of holes to drill, how fast can they drill? What’s the level of quality? We’re very, very interested not only to have high speed, but quality.

We need precision. If we adjust the environment and the positions of these templates how can they master their robotic system to accommodate these different positions? How would they simulate the complexities of the geometry and the environment that we’re drilling on? I think for us and during the activities, we’re looking for a robotics system not doing just one task in a repeated mode, over and over, in one position. The types of automation we need, especially when it comes to drilling, are having high volume of repeated drilling tasks over a wide range of different positions.

Andrew:  I understand that the robots are to be modular in their end effectors and weigh less than 100kg and you’ve mentioned reasons for both. I did want to ask: why are you asking people to provide open source software to actually control these robots?

Curtis:  I would say the simple approach is there in the production context we have today and you see it in a number of industries. With this approach we can look at getting the best of the best. You mentioned end effector. Instead of thinking about a closed complete system that we would go buy and maybe the company we’re buying from is advanced in the modular robotic arm system. However, they don’t develop end effectors. The standard approach in most industries would mean we go buy from a supplier and package. It’s not that it doesn’t work, it can work.  But what happens when better end effectors comes along? Or we have another company that’s able to do end effectors better than the company that is integrating the robot and end effectors of the 1^st system?

Well, it becomes difficult and complicated to figure out how to benefit from such an innovative change on the current system. We see the same thing in terms of the software, the control, the algorithms, whatever goes inside. Imagine also we have a huge IT infrastructure on our side across many different aspects of the production lifecycle and this is another level of complexity when it’s closed. We’re then in a mode where we develop each time we have a new system or solution we have to develop a very specific interface for such a solution.

There are a number of different reasons, but I would say 1^st and foremost we want to capture the best capability from the best in the world, wherever they are, for what they’re good at. It’s not common to find somebody that’s good at every single aspect being on all those aspects.

Andrew:  It sounds like a large part of this is foreign partnerships. Are you looking more so towards academia or industry, of a mix of both?

Curtis:  I would say if we’re really good at it, it will be both. Sometimes you can discover innovative things coming out of industry but you can discover interesting things coming out of academia. I don’t think that’s by surprise; academia and industry are linked in a number of different ways and means. A lot of the new businesses you see in today’s start-up world are from academia. What we’re looking for out there is how can we help stimulate towards academia and/or the outside world?

Where are our challenges, what are we looking to resolve and help that makes it feasible? This is also a good reason for the open approach. The more we are open in accessibility to the outside world, whether academia or businesses, the more opportunities and people that could potentially propose ideas that, perhaps, we didn’t think of in resolving. It creates a level playing field for small start-ups to be just as powerful and effective at proposing something valuable versus the big business and industry we’re used to working with today. It creates opportunity.

Andrew:  Beyond just the drilling task that’s been selected for this competition, what are some places where you might see innovation being needed? Or a new approach beyond just making something that’s practical and useful in an industrial setting, but a whole new capability entirely?

Curtis:  I guess it depends on what you mean by a whole new capability. What we look for today is predominantly driven by what we’ve already designed and producing. The aspect that we’re not deeply looking from this type of competition is okay. We’re talking about optimizing the current state of our product based upon how it designed. The design may have been a number of years ago, or 5 years ago. How do you combine those new capabilities and products, materials, or techniques? You use the capabilities in the design of the product that you’re doing and optimize both at the same time.

Andrew:  As you think about your current production process, what are some examples of other low hanging fruit processes that could be adapted to use these technologies we’ve discussed?

Curtis:  The minute we talk about drilling, the next thing is fastening. We have millions of fasteners we’re replacing. We do a lot of surface treatments or ceilings or applying ceilings joints. Painting requires a high demand in terms of manual effort and activity. If you’re painting, then have sanding and abrasion processes. Due to the size and the structure there are confined spaces and restricted access spaces. There are a number of non-ergonomic conditions the workers are in today. This is the whole domain and area of potential when we talk about robotics, especially light weight or new generations of robotics where you see lightweight in modular and adaptable types of systems. We have a huge playing field in terms of opportunity.

Andrew:  How would you see the robots and the people interacting as they assemble an aircraft?

Curtis: The approach we focus on is that we don’t believe, at least today, in having a factory full of robots, and that’s it. We’re looking at worker-robot collaboration. We start from our worker, the person doing the work. How can we enable him to be more effective, better, efficient in his day to day job? It’s like a partner. Any difficult and non-human friendly tasks we can pass to the robot. We can ease the non-ergonomic conditions and reduce the repetitive and straining activities from workers. It’s a combination and collaboration.

We know that as robotics systems evolve they’ll be able to do a little bit more. At the same time, like what I mentioned at the beginning, it’s not just about a robot with a worker, it’s also how we can use the new connectivity of internet of things and connected objects and advanced communication to enable the worker to be more efficient and have the right information in a more dynamic way. Whether it’s through Google Glasses or wearable computing, or sensors in the manual drillers showing the quality of the hole they drilled. These types of automated systems allow a new feedback process for the operator to do the job the best he can.

Andrew:  Could you give us a story or an illustration of what you imagine a worker in this future factory might to on a daily basis that would utilize these technologies, like, internet of things and the general ability to have more information?

Curtis:  I would say the easiest way is just to give you a glimpse of what we’re preparing today. We have tests in preparation for one of our production environments where we will have electronically controlled smart tools. For example, a torqueing wrench for finishing the fastener or a manual drilling pistol for making the hole, with wearable devices. We will equip to three stations or more in one of our production lines and allow them to experience what tomorrow could look like.

The reason I like to focus on the aspect of tomorrow is because it’s not 5 years from now. We have the potential to incrementally put something in place today. What we’re preparing and doing now is the first production trials to see how it would be implemented in day to day for business for our workers.

Andrew:  What do you see as the timeline? If tomorrow is the system you’ve just described what is 5 years from now, 10 years, or 30 years?

Curtis:  It’s difficult for me to project that far ahead. But five years from I don’t think it’s too far-fetched to imagine that connected objects and types of automation will be a prevalent, common thing in any of our production facilities. It could be that tools you might see today like working from paper or drawings, you won’t see. I imagine you’d see a much cleaner environment. You’d see what we consider a high-tech environment in terms of tools, equipment, digital displays, progress tracking interfaces they’re using to prepare job flow of parts to the job that they’re doing.

I would imagine it’s hard to describe it in words unless you visualize and see what a production facility looks like today. I would imagine the proliferation of such devices is not on a linear scale.  You would see it more in an expediential implementation and growth. This is one of the good reasons to consider the open approach. We must have a way, if we want to be fast. It has to be designed in a way that can allow this evolution to happen easily and quickly for robotics systems or connected objects and digital thread that we could use with our workers.

Andrew:  In order to keep pace with that expediential rate of improvement, how serious is Airbus in investing in these opportunities? What would you guess would be the activity in the next few years?

Curtis:  We’re serious about it, and the challenge is just a glimpse into why we’re motivated in this domain. The challenges are real, it’s a real challenge. It’s a real problem that we face today. It’s not something just made up to make a contest for the ICRA event. It’s a real potential application for our shuffler. When it comes to the digitization and the production efficiency and connectivity, we’re very serious about it and we have a number of initiatives running.

Andrew:  On an economic scale people could also be interested, like how much has been spent or planned to be spent. Professors or companies look to the future and will think about possibly partnering with Airbus.

Curtis:  I don’t know if I can put a figure to it, but I would say the best way to see how committed we are to it is to open up a dialogue; ask us! As us in your domain area! It really depends on the value we can potentially get, or bring from it.

We have significant portfolios of research and development activity running on platforms and cooperation with universities, technology centers, businesses. There is a significant amount of activity happening. I can’t really quote to the figures to be honest.

Andrew:  ICRA is the 15 – 21 May in Stockholm, Sweden. When will you be accepting submissions to be part of this competition?

Curtis:  Our submission window for ICRA is open today through March 15^th when we’ll close the submission process.

Andrew:  For these teams, what kind of support is available from the competition?

Curtis:  We’re offering, in certain circumstances, the possibility to any registered team to apply for help with travel, equipment, materials or tools. It depends on the potential and ideas by the teams. We judge it on the case-by-case basis with the teams who register. There is potential for support, but it requires registering and then talking with us.

Andrew:  Where can people find registration forms and more information about the event?

Curtis:  They can go directly to the ICRA 2016 homepage to find the link to the Airbus group webpage. The webpage provides details and process for registering, a general description about the contest, prizes and scoring. The best place is directly on the ICRA webpage.

Andrew:  Thank you for joining us and putting together the Airbus Shop Floor Challenge! We look forward to seeing the results at this year’s ICRA!

Curtis:  Thank you for having me! I’m excited to see the final results from our competitors.