A complex interplay of various sensor systems ensures that the SCHUNK Co-act Gripper JL1 permanently records the data of its surrounding. Source: Schunk

Tactile sensing and force feedback are – and have been – problem areas for robot grasping. Humans could see, select and pick so much faster. Yet to handle the millions of different everyday items in our factories and warehouses, costly positioning and camera systems have been required. These systems made it easy for fast robots with simple grippers to pick items as they came along – but at great cost.

Chicago’s huge McCormick Place Conference Center was once again home to the Automate and ProMat trade shows. Automate for robotics; ProMat for material handling solutions. Over 900 exhibitors covered 350,000 sq ft at ProMat while 400+ companies exhibited at the Automate show.

Up until recently no vendor has been able to randomly grasp – at speed – all the different products needing to be handled. A major objective of improved grasping – in addition to supplementing or replacing human labor – is to reduce the high cost of fixtures, conveyors, sorting and positioning systems.

The challenge to low-cost effective grasping was described in the U.S. Robotics Roadmap:

“Challenges include fundamental 1st principles of physics in the development of actuation and sensing. Other challenges include 2 point discrimination, contact localization, extrinsic and intrinsic actuation, back-drivability vs. compliance, speed/strength/power, hand/glove coverings that do not attenuate sensors/motion but are rugged when handling rough and sharp objects.”

This year a few companies demonstrated smart gripper systems that can piece-pick random goods at speed – far ahead of the research schedule in the Roadmap. Here are two that were at the show:

• RightHand Robotics was demonstrating their piece-picking solution – a vacuum stick supported by 3-fingers, and 3D vision software that can handle 1000s of SKUs, operate at high speed, has sensor feedback to learn by trial and error and also to ensure accurate order fulfillment.
  • Many of RightHand’s piece-picking gripper and software solutions were the end-of-arm-tool of choice on robot arms in other vendor booths.
  • Emphasizing their software and systems, RightHand was promoting them to be integrated into warehouse workflows including goods-to-picker systems, picking to unit sorters, autobagger induction, and kitting.
• Kinema Systems demonstrated their Kinema Pick deep learning 3D vision system which speedily depalletizes multi-SKU, randomly arranged pallets of various sized boxes.

Also demonstrated were grippers with lights or other forms of HRI because studies have shown that human-robot collaboration needs communication – even from colored lights – to facilitate adoption.

• Rethink Robotics has been a leader in this type of HRI. Their Sawyer robot uses screen eyes and tower and wrist colored lights to indicate movement, training and problems.
• Schunk‘s new elegant Co-act WSG gripper has finger lights that change color to indicate different modes of activity: red for training and problems; blue for safe operation; etc. using LEDs and a corresponding color coding system.

End-of-arm-tooling (EAOT) /  gripper providers

EAOT is a moving target with multiple new vendors showing up frequently. The list below is of companies that actually produce and market grippers for industrial and collaborative robots now. Most did not have booths at the show. It is not, by any means, a complete list of gripper providers and doesn’t include the growing list of Chinese providers. Nor does the list include vision, tool-changer or sensor providers, or grippers made by industrial robot manufacturers. Follow the highlighted links to get technical specifications.

The IROS 2014 Industry Forum brought together entrepreneurs, researchers, venture capitalists and funding agencies from North America, Europe, Asia and Australia to shed perspective on the above questions and engage in open dialogue about some of the pitfalls of commercializing robotics technology. Here are the 10 best quotes from the event …

1. “Testing nothing and testing everything are equally lazy.”
– Ryan Gariepy, Clearpath Robotics

Gariepy refers to the extremes some startups take before launching a new product. He instead suggests evaluating the technologies, processes and people that can be reused efficiently, then taking a decisive step to engage your customer.

2. “Competition is not other companies or technologies, it’s the status quo.”
– Ryan Gariepy, Clearpath Robotics

Academics, consumed with dissecting the research of predecessors, colleagues and other institutions, then publishing novel work, naturally look to see what others of doing in the field to gauge their own progress. To academics looking to commercialize research, Gariepy says it’s important to know what’s out there but also to run your own race. When launching a new product, you need to focus on market first, then technology.

3. “Cheaply eliminate bad business models fast.” 
– Lee Redden, Blue River Technology

Before building their first product, Redden and team hired five part-time interns to talk with potential customers, and eliminated five poor business models in less than a month.  CarrotBot, a weeder for carrot farms, came about after talking with an IT procurement manager at a carrot farm who had struggled with finding the right technology for their particular problem. Redden also notes that if you want honest feedback from potential customers, make them feel comfortable by sharing the flaws of your product upfront and don’t show up with a perfect prototype – most people are hard-wired to protect the feelings of those they interact with, so you have to disarm them to get honest answers. “Cheaply eliminate bad business models fast.” – Lee Redden, Blue River Technology 

4. “Sometimes what the company wants and what the community wants are not perfectly aligned.”  
– Brandon Basso, 3D Robotics

Balancing of the vision of the company with the wants of an open-source community can be tricky. The 3D Robotics (3DR) community wants breadth – more hardware, sensor and platform support – whereas the company wants depth to support the community while developing native system apps and more hardware solutions. Challenges arise when a growing company has to execute on set product and revenue objectives defined by management (and in 3DR’s case, venture capital stakeholders) while integrating the community’s feedback into their product suite. Long-term, this relationship creates a virtuous cycle. The community provides 3DR with an on-demand workforce, tech support via developer list, rapid exploration of new opportunities and a huge beta test group. 3DR gives back to the community through cheaper and faster hardware, expertise, capital, support and worldwide distribution.

5. “The robot revolution will be an evolution.”
– Christopher Parlitz, SCHUNK

According to Parlitz, the integration of components is the new challenge in robotics. Without standards in place for mechanical and electrical components or transfer of data, creating intelligent systems will take time. He talks of Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) and ROS as two solutions for integrating hardware components, each with its list of pros and cons. As new integrated intelligent solutions start working robustly, they will no longer be considered “robots”, making the progression much more of an evolution than a revolution. “The robot revolution will be an evolution.” – Christopher Parlitz, @SCHUNKInc 

6. “If I lose control of my startup, my invention won’t wind up at a fire sale.” 
– Michael Peshkin, Northwestern University

IP. IP. IP. Intellectual property dominated this year’s industry discussion. Each university’s tech transfer office has its own rules – some grant both faculty and student inventors full ownership, others to students but not to faculty, and then there are jointly-owned inventions between university and industry (Renaud Champion, a venture capital partner at Robolution warns researchers against these). Emotions and the perceived value of owning intellectual property can often outweigh its real monetary and practical benefits. Peshkin speaks to this point and outlines six key reasons why he prefers Northwestern University’s technology transfer office to own his patents:

• They pay the expenses, which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars
• If they don’t want to pay, they unambiguously turn the rights over
• Future investors shouldn’t worry about IP ownership
• They take a reasonable percent of royalties and/or equity
• They won’t ever sell a patent
• “If I lose control of my startup, my invention won’t end up at a fire sale” – Michael Peshkin, Northwestern University 

7. “If there are people with pitchforks at your door, you’re probably doing something right.” 
– Shahin Farshchi, Lux Capital

In addition to IP, regulations (or lack thereof) of certain robotics products create an uncertain environment for commercializing technology. Farshchi says focus on building a company with a clear value proposition that customers want. If regulatory bodies want to speak with you, it’s probably because you’ve taken enough market share to draw attention. And as a first mover, you’ll more likely have the opportunity to shape regulation which will put you in a favorable position going forward.

8. “Good research doesn’t necessarily mean a good product.”
– Ayanna Howard, Zyrobotics

People buy things that are useful to them and shifting focus from product specs to selling a value proposition can stumble some researchers. That’s why Howard says it’s important to be self-aware and know when it’s time to bring in outside expertise. She sees the quality of management as being just as important – if not more important – than the technology itself.

9. “If I have competition, there’s a market, if there’s a market, there’s an industry, and if there’s an industry, there’s liquidity.”
– Renaud Champion, Robolution Capital

Competition is not always a good thing, but in a nascent market for robotics products, it can be great. Competition means there’s enough market demand for several products to compete with one another and from a venture capitalist’s point of view that means there’s room for growth and potential exit opportunities.

10. “I have a dream. I have a vision. Why not me?” 
– Renaud Champion, Robolution Capital

At some point, starting a new business takes a leap of faith. Dreams can take a long time to manifest. Finding the right (or sometimes good-enough) answers to build a solid vision, a product, a team, a brand and convince customer and investors that your product can bring value to the community is tedious and was compared to a rollercoaster ride by many of entrepreneurs at the forum.  But this process, which almost always transforms the entrepreneur (and if they’re lucky, an entire industry), often starts with a simple question: “Why not me?” “I have a dream. I have a vision. Why not me?” – Renaud Champion, Robolution Capital 

Follow all of our IROS 2014 coverage here.

Cool!
KMel Robotics – the spinoff from the GRASP Labs of the U of Penn – and Kurtis Films, have a new video of a squadron of KMel’s super-quiet flying robots creating music in ways never seen before. KMel is also providing flying entertainment robots for concerts and shows of all types.

Future cool
SRI has released a video showing a swarm of ant-sized robots manufacturing an intricate glued carbon rod structure. Using magnetically actuated micro-robots, SRI foresees a near-term future in small components manufacturing.

Yes … but
American milk producers, faced with choices regarding improving their milking methods and labor practices, and deteriorarting equipment, are beginning to choose robotic milking platforms – as this video from the NY Times attests. The affordability metrics, described here by a writer for DairyLogix, are slightly different in the EU where smaller dairies have long been using these robotic milkers.

Long-term planning
For the last 7 years, Schunk – the robot gripper manufacturer – has hosted (at their factory in Hausen, Germany) the International ExpertDays Service Robotics conference and exhibition. This video gives you a flavor of the event and, for me at least, a desire to attend their 8th annual 2015 conference.

Scary
The dialogue about arming robots – whether on the ground, in the air, or armed with tazers or Hellfire missiles – has focused on the West. But this training video shows Russian soldiers working alongside an unmanned armed mobile robot. Psst: Campaign to Stop Killer Robots: you should watch it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hj98jcEeOJM

If you liked this article, you may also be interested in:

• VIDEO UPDATE Quadrocopter failsafe algorithm: Recovery after propeller loss
• Chess, Jeopardy and now… Ping Pong? Kuka robot goes up against table tennis champion Timo Boll
• No drone experts were harmed in the making of this video … Or were they?
• Show us your AI – AAAI Video Competition

See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Link to audio file (27:49)

In this episode Per Sjoborg speaks with Henrik Schunk about his company’s work in gripping technology, modular robotics and dexterous manipulation. They then look at service robotics, which was the focus of the SCHUNK Expert Days in Hausen, Germany.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Om5bPgsKT8

Henrik A. Schunk
After his studies at the Technical Universities in Kaiserslautern and Dresden, Henrik A. Schunk joined the company SCHUNK GmbH & Co. As Managing Partner since 2001, he was initially responsible for the German Sales area, and then became the Head of the Business Developments worldwide.

Today, he is responsible in the management for the business area gripping systems, auto-mated solutions, and mobile gripping systems. Since July 2010, he is also the chairman of the European Robotics Association EUnited Robotics.

Links:

• Download mp3 (14.8 MB)
• Subscribe to Robots using iTunes
• Subscribe to Robots using RSS
• SCHUNK homepage

Henrik A. Schunk, Managing Partner of SCHUNK GmbH & Co. KG, and Chairman of EUnited Robotics – European Robotics Association

The continuing interest of Google in robotics over the last years and its newest activities in this regard confirms what all players active in robotics will confirm: service robotics is on the threshold of entering a new maturity level. Service robotics conquers new, commercial fields of application and is just becoming an independent industrial sector. Where in the past the focus has often been on research, now new companies and applications are emerging. Research projects have been taken out of the labs and turned into real companies and solutions, new companies and players have entered the game with Google being among them.

Considering that robotics is still a relatively young industry (in 1962, General Motors installed the world’s first robot in a production line!), we have certainly come a long way. According to the latest available IFR information, about 168,000 industrial robots were sold in 2013. In the service robotics segments, the sales figures are significantly higher, at least in units: three million service robotics for personal and domestic use and 16,100 service robots for professional use were sold worldwide. Growth rates of 10% per annum on average since 2006 added to the turnover of professional service robotics, which reached €2.5 billion in 2012.

And much more is yet to come. The International Federation of Robotics (IFR) assumes that between 2013 and 2016 at least 95,000 new professional service robots will be sold worldwide, worth €12.3 billion. Service robotics is definitely a market of the future. So, it seems that what Bill Gates predicted in 2007 is becoming true: the next “hot field” will be robotics. Though it is not yet clear when we will have, in Gates’ words, “A Robot in Every Home” or even a robot in every factory (including in SMEs!), it is definitely apparent that robotics has gained momentum over the years.

To Google and all the other new players and investors in the robotics field, I would like to say, “Welcome to an exciting world and a growing market!” But to all stakeholders in robotics – be it old or new players, investors or enthusiasts alike – I would add: be patient and don’t expect too much too soon. It is not yet clear when robots will become part of our every day lives – but we are on our way!

Greetings from Europe!