Source: The Guardian

Ethics guidelines for robots; $1m grant for cobot research; Lyft fleet to be autonomous in 5 years; self-driving car policy; Russian bot arrested, and more. Find out what’s happening in our robotics universe this week.

Do no Harm, don’t discriminate: Official guidance issued on robot ethics (The Guardian)

The British Standards Institute has released a set of guidelines for ethical robot design.

Believed to be first document of its kind, “BS8611 Robots and robotic devices” is intended for use by robot and robotics device designers and managers and is designed to help people in these roles to identify and avoid areas of potential ethical harm.

The BSI document begins with some broad ethical principles: “Robots should not be designed solely or primarily to kill or harm humans; humans, not robots, are the responsible agents; it should be possible to find out who is responsible for any robot and its behaviour.”

It goes on to highlight a range of more contentious issues, such as whether an emotional bond with a robot is desirable, particularly when the robot is designed to interact with children or the elderly.

Noel Sharkey, emeritus professor of robotics and AI at the University of Sheffield, said this was an example of where robots could unintentionally deceive us. “There was a recent study where little robots were embedded in a nursery school,” he said. “The children loved it and actually bonded with the robots. But when asked afterwards, the children clearly thought the robots were more cognitive than their family pet.”

University receives $1 million grant to improve collaborative robotics (Robotics and Automation News)

The National Science Foundation has granted US$1million to University of California San Diego engineers to research human-robot collaboration in US factories.

The goal of the project is to design an “intelligent material delivery system,” which collaborates closely with skilled human workers.

In the system, the researchers envision, robots would sense when skilled workers need materials and deliver them in advance. This would save companies, and consumers, about $1.7 million per hour—the cost of lost productivity when work stops to procure the needed materials.

The work will be translatable across a wide range of manufacturing sectors, including automotive, construction, health care, energy, and goods. This project will help the US manufacturing sector – 25 per cent of all domestic employment – dramatically improve their operations by using automation to directly support a talented, skilled workforce.

The project also involves collaboration with Steelcase, a Grand Rapids, Michigan-based furniture company, which produces made-to-order furniture, which will mean millions of unique material handling situations and processes for the robots to learn from.

Exec: Most Lyft rides will be in autonomous cars in 5 years (PhysOrg)

Lyft co-founder and President, John Zimmer made two bold predictions this week. First; that within five years, a majority of Lyft’s rides will be in self-driving cars. Second; that the era of personal car ownership is coming to an end because autonomous rides will be a cheaper way to travel.

In partnership with General Motors, Lyft is testing autonomous vehicles in San Francisco and Phoenix. Meanwhile, rival ride-hailing firm Uber is testing self-driving cars in Pittsburgh.

Zimmer said autonomous cars will start out giving rides at low speeds, around 25 miles per hour, in limited areas with a number of restrictions. The cars also won’t be able to operate in bad weather. “As technology improves, these cars will be able to drive themselves in more and more situations,” Zimmer said.

Autonomous cars and ride-hailing will be essential to helping cities handle an influx of residents in the coming years as the world becomes more urbanized, he said. Once that happens, there will be less need for parking, freeing up space for parks and other uses, Zimmer added.

What drones did for the sky, robot subs are about to do for the sea (Popular Mechanics)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjTh8ChlFss

Excellent article in Popular Mechanics this week about genesis of “the next drone revolution,” which is set to take place underwater iin the form of various remotely operated vehicles (ROVs).

The biggest application will be in aquaculture. While the offshore oil and gas industries have always had the money for ROVs, fish farmers work on a much tighter budget. A new generation of low-cost ROVs should give the industry greatly improved capability for monitoring beds of shellfish, fish populations, anchors and underwater infrastructure. Blue Robotics are already working with Catalina Sea Ranch which grows mussels, as well as farms in Ensenada, Mexico.

While the ROV market may not spawn million-sellers like the DJI Phantom drone did for flying drones, it is likely to attract plenty of business interest, and more than a few hobbyists and students. Some, like the OpenROV team, may be initially motivated by the lure of sunken treasure, and then get hooked on underwater exploration. Because, while aerial drones see things you have seen before from another angle, underwater ROVs can open up a whole new world.

In other marine robot news, an interdisciplinary team from MIT is set to begin a research collaboration with the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS) in the Netherlands MIT News reported this week. Dubbed “ROBOAT,” the project aims to develop a fleet of autonomous boats to investigate how urban waterways can be used to improve the city’s function and quality of life.

“This project imagines a fleet of autonomous boats for the transportation of goods and people that can also cooperate to produce temporary floating infrastructure, such as on-demand bridges or stages that can be assembled or disassembled in a matter of hours,” says Carlo Ratti, professor of the practice of urban technologies in the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP).

In addition to infrastructure and transport, ROBOAT will also deploy environmental sensing to monitor water quality and offer data for assessing and predicting issues related to public health, pollution, and the environment.

Marines launch competition to fund and build the next generation of battlefield robots (Digital Trends)

The U.S. Marine Corps has announced an internal competition to research and fund ways for robots to replace humans on a variety of tasks, particularly those of the “dull, dirty, and dangerous” variety.

One thing that robots will likely not do is the actual killing. The Pentagon has already all but announced its opposition to that, seemingly acknowledging its potentially controversial nature among politicians and ordinary Americans like.

According to a report in Breaking Defense this week, US Defense Sec. Carter has said the U.S. will never use lethal autonomous robots. Meanwhile, the International Committee of the Red Cross has released “Autonomous Weapon Systems: Implications of Increasing Autonomy in the Critical Functions of Weapons,” which examines some of the concerns around the use of robots in war.

The Department of Transportation just issued a comprehensive policy on self-driving cars (Vox)

The US Department of Transportation released “a surprisingly far-reaching” Federal Automated Vehicles Policy, this week.

The policy attempts to do all sorts of things […] but the overarching motivation is that DOT wants to accelerate the development and adoption of AVs.

DOT views AVs as a safety technology that could reduce some of the 38,000 traffic fatalities a year in the US, 95 percent of which are caused by human error. It also sees AVs as an accessibility technology that could provide personal transportation to whole populations (disabled, elderly, etc.) who have lacked it.

The robot that attempted to escape its human captors was recently arrested at a political rally (Quartz)

Remember the Russian robot that “escaped” from its handlers earlier this year and wandered onto the street?

Well, apparently the robot has taken up politics now as it turned up at a Russian political rally were it was “arrested” by police.

At a Sept. 15 rally for Russian parliamentary candidate Valery Kalachev in Moscow, authorities attempted to handcuff Promobot and whisk it away from the scene, according to the Mirror. The arrest reportedly occurred after someone at the event called the police because it was recording the opinions of voters for “processing and analysis.”

“Police asked to remove the robot away from the crowded area, and even tried to handcuff him,” a Promobot representative told Inverse magazine. “According to eyewitnesses, the robot did not put up any resistance.”

What’s it all about? Goodness knows. But somehow I sense that the robot’s name –“Promobot”– is a very strong clue.

And since the robot was all over the news this week, as “promotional robots” go, it’s doing a very, very good job indeed.

And Finally…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2Dk6kmec_s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znO1iM8dG1E

• Victor Scheinman, Assembly Line Robot Inventor, Dies at 73 (New York Times)
• In Singapore, service comes with a robotic smile (Today Online)
• China National Social Security Fund Joins $260M Investment Deal In Cogobuy (China Money Network)
• Safe Robot Works Well with Others … Humans to Be Exact (Design News)
• LiDAR sensor packs more channels for higher resolution (New Atlas)
• Print-a-Drink uses industrial robots to 3D print intricate patterns into your cocktail (3ders.org)
• Digitimes Research: Collaborative robots to drive Industry 4.0 smart manufacturing (DigiTimes)
• Central event of the European Robotics Week 2016 to take place in Amsterdam (EU Robotics)
• Drone operators seek permission to fly out of direct sight (CNBC)
• Strategic Capabilities Office Focused on Autonomy for USAF, Marines (Defense News)
• NTU’s new inspection robot to be tested in JTC’s industrial developments (Nanyang Technological University)

Credit: Lijin Aryananda

Automatica coverage; new sUAS rules; limiting cuteness in robot design; bots to become electronic persons?; European Robotics League launches, and more. Find out what’s happening in our robotics universe this week.

What knocked our socks off today @Automatica (Robotiq)

The Automatica trade show taking place in Munich this week is one of the largest robotics events in history. It brings industry experts, academics, manufacturers, customers, and others together to showcase new products and ideas and form new relationships.

Robotiq is there too, of course, and we’re providing live-blogging coverage of the event from start to finish.  Stay tuned to this blog for all the latest news from Automatica, including the launch of a brand-new collaborative robot with a whopping 60kg payload:

At 12:30m, the curtain was pulled back to reveal…

.. an impressively huge collaborative robot! The AURA robot has a massive 60kg payload capacity, by far the highest for any current collaborative robot.

In his presentation, Comau’s CEO Mauro Fenzi, talked about the future of Comau. The company is 40 years old, he said “and getting younger and younger.”

FAA announcement for sUAS met with industry excitement (Robohub)

Quadrocopter drone flying in the sky

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) released a set of highly anticipated rules governing the operation of small UAS (sUAS) for commercial purposes this week.

Scheduled to take effect in late August, the new rules generally follow the proposals contained in the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that was issued by the FAA in February 2015. One of the most significant changes for industry is that commercial operations that fit within the framework of Part 107 will no longer require approval by exemption, which has typically taken months to secure. Undoubtedly, the new framework will mean increased efficiency for commercial operators who will also not be required to secure airworthiness certification for their sUAS.

One of the most significant changes for industry is that commercial operations that fit within the framework of Part 107 will no longer require approval by exemption, which has typically taken months to secure. Undoubtedly, the new framework will mean increased efficiency for commercial operators who will also not be required to secure airworthiness certification for their sUAS.

The fact that operators will no longer be required to hold a manned aircraft pilot’s license and can instead take a knowledge test to obtain a sUAS operator’s certificate is a significant win for the industry that will open up the skies to make more operators. Brendan Schulman, VP of Policy and Legal at DJI remarks:

“This is a global precedent. The most respected aviation authority in the world has concluded that drones may be operated safely for basic commercial operations without requiring airworthiness certification and without requiring pilots to pass a practical flight examination. This reflects how fundamentally safe and beneficial this technology is, and is a model that should be adopted worldwide.”

The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) welcomed the news in a statement: “Today’s release of the final small UAS rule by the FAA is a critical milestone in the integration process and a long-awaited victory for American businesses and innovators. It establishes a clear regulatory framework and helps to reduce many barriers to civil and commercial operations, allowing anyone who follows the rules to fly in the national airspace.

“Today’s release of the final small UAS rule by the FAA is a critical milestone in the integration process, and a long-awaited victory for American businesses and innovators. It establishes a clear regulatory framework and helps to reduce many barriers to civil and commercial operations, allowing anyone who follows the rules to fly in the national airspace.

“Accelerating civil and commercial UAS operations will not only help businesses harness tremendous potential of UAS, it will also help unlock the economic impact and job creation potential of the technology. Once UAS are fully integrated into the national airspace and become more widely used, the industry will continue to grow as a job creator and generate significant economic impact.

This is massive news for the commercial drone sector.. and long overdue.

Too cute for their own good, robots get self-defense instincts (Wall Street Journal)

Designers working on bots for use in public spaces have to thread a fine line between creating robots that are non-threatening so that people are comfortable engaging with them, but not so cute that people don’t take them seriously. The team behind Knightscope‘s security robot “K5” took on that challenge, going through hundreds of design permutations to find the sweet spot for K5’s sensors.

They also found that making some modifications to the robot’s behavior improved the efficacy and quality of human-robot interaction.

“The K5’s designers, along with the shriek, programmed it to stop moving if cornered. Being boring, they found, is an antidote to cuteness.

At Palo Alto’s Stanford Shopping Center, a group of young adults chased the robot past a Starbucks and Jamba Juice. When they surrounded the K5, it stopped moving. They lost interest, wandering away toward a California Pizza Kitchen.”

The choice between robots and pizza is a tough one for anybody to make, especially a kid. Of course with Pepper appearing in pizza restaurants and development of pizza-making humanoid RoDyMan well underway, future generations of children will not be faced with such a difficult existential choice.

Europe’s robots to become ‘Electronic Persons’ under draft plan (Reuters)

A draft European Union plan could see robot workers being classed as “electronic persons” with all the legal rights that would entail, including social security payments.

The draft motion called on the European Commission to consider “that at least the most sophisticated autonomous robots could be established as having the status of electronic persons with specific rights and obligations”.

It also suggested the creation of a register for smart autonomous robots, which would link each one to funds established to cover its legal liabilities.

The reaction from some industry leaders has been less than enthusiastic.

Patrick Schwarzkopf, managing director of the VDMA’s robotic and automation department, said: “That we would create a legal framework with electronic persons – that’s something that could happen in 50 years but not in 10 years.”

“We think it would be very bureaucratic and would stunt the development of robotics,” he told reporters at the Automatica robotics trade fair robotics trade fair in Munich, while acknowledging that a legal framework for self-driving cars would be needed soon.

Schwarzkopf may well be correct about the timescales involved, but it’s great to see policymakers taking robotics seriously enough to raise and debate these issues.

European Robotics League to launch at RoboCup 2016 in Leipzig (SPARC)

Set to launch June 30th, the European Robotics League (ERL) will pit international teams against each other in three robotics categories: industrial, service and emergency robotics. Local matches and regional tournaments will take place around Europe over the course of the next year.

“The European Robotics League will spur innovation and entrepreneurship and both maintain and extend European leadership in robotics”, says Dr. Rainer Bischoff, Vice-President Industry of euRobotics aisbl and Head of Corporate Research at KUKA. “It is a unique opportunity to break down real-world challenges into a competition format, similar to the UEFA Champions League in football, which is exciting for robotics scientists, the robotics industry and the general public alike.”

The industrial robotics segment of the competition will focus on manipulation, handling, assembly, and transport of work pieces. The league will use “scaled-down factory environment and desktop-size robots” for mobile manipulation. Challenges for the teams will include “performing a variety of work steps at different locations on the shop floor and automating high-mix low-volume production using a limited number of, but flexible production equipment.”

And Finally…

Robots, swarming drones and ‘Iron Man’: Welcome to the new arms race (Washington Post)

Google Gets Practical about the Dangers of AI (MIT technology Review)

Kiwi workers don’t fear ‘robot redundancy’ (Otago Daily Times)

Watch Out Humans – Robots Have Mastered Motion Planning (Factor Tech)

Tend.ai trains your robot to operate dozens of 3D printers and laser cutters at a time (TechCrunch)

Artificially Intelligent Russian Robot Makes a Run for It … Again (LiveScience)

The wrench 3D-printed by the Additive Manufacturing Facility (AMF) aboard the International Space Station has the name of toolmaker Kobalt emblazoned on its side — the result of a partnership between Made In Space, which built the AMF, and home-improvement store Lowe’s.
Credit: NASA/Made In Space/Lowe’s

Investing in robots; China’s robotics acquisitions; robot designed to hurt; exoskeleton for kids; Russian bot escapes testing ground; 3-DP in space and more. Find out what’s happening in our robotics universe this week.

Want to invest in the robot uprising? Here’s how (WIRED)

An interesting new option for those thinking about investing in robotics was revealed this week.

Dubbed Motif, it’s “a concept-driven trading platform that creates intelligently weighted baskets of up to 30 stocks or exchange-traded funds — called ‘motifs’ — that you can buy into for $9.95.”

Motif’s major innovation is letting individuals own fractions of shares in company, something that’s typically not possible when buying stocks on the open market. Users can invest, say, $300 in a motif containing a weighted basket of 30 different company stocks, each of whose share prices could be tens or hundreds of dollars, and constantly fluctuating. Motif’s technology makes it possible for individuals to immediately own the underlying fractions of shares contained in the basket at the point of purchase.

Motif also gives individual investors fractional ownership on single shares, allowing a user with only $300 to still buy a piece of Alphabet (formerly known as Google) even though a single share is currently trading at more than $700.

Walia wouldn’t go into details about how exactly this works as he says there are several other startups interested in cloning his technology. What he will say is that Motif doesn’t aggregate trades. “We have a lot of patents”, he adds.

China continues to invest in European Industrial Automation (Robotics Business Review)

With so many Chinese firms investing in Western robotics companies, this article offers a timely breakdown of the most important recent acquisitions and offers.

AGIC Capital is spending €100 million ($113 million) to acquire a majority stake in Gimatic SRL, which makes end-of-arm tools for robotic arms.

Italy-based Gimatic supplies actuators, grippers, sensors, and plastic injection-molding equipment to the automotive, electronics, food, and pharmaceuticals industries. It has more than 100 patents and facilities worldwide, and its revenue has grown by more than 20 percent over the past three years.

This robot intentionally hurts people—and makes them bleed (Fast Company)

Alexander Reben, a Berkeley, California-based roboticists and artist, has created a tabletop robot that’s designed to hurt people –and generate a conversation among roboticists, ethicists, lawyers, and other stakeholders about the challenges robotics could present in the future.

Before you bar your doors and windows, let’s define the terms: The harm caused by Reben’s robot is nothing more than a pinprick, albeit one delivered at high speed, causing the maximum amount of pain a small needle can inflict on a fingertip.

And interestingly, he designed the machine so that injury is inflicted randomly. Sometimes the robot strikes. Sometimes it doesn’t. Even Reben, when he exposes his fingertip to danger, has no idea if he’ll end up shedding blood or not.

“No one has actually made a robot that was built to intentionally hurt and injure someone,” Reben claims in a giant room on the top floor of the beautiful Victorian mansion where he lives and works as a member of Stochastic Labs, a Berkeley arts, technology, and science events incubator. “I wanted to make a robot that does this that actually exists… It was important to take it out of the thought experiment realm into reality, because once something exists in the world, you have to confront it. It becomes more urgent. You can’t just pontificate about it.”

The headline on this story is slightly misleading, inasmuch as robots do not possess ‘intentionality’ in any human sense. Robots act in accordance with their design and they follow instructions.

If you’ve been following our ISO/TS 15066 coverage, you’ll have noticed that the new ISO document incorporates the results of a University of Mainz study that developed force and pressure limits for 29 body areas. Designed to minimize harm should any contact occur between a human and a robot in a collaborative environment, the study helps designers and integrators to perform risk assessments for collaborative robot systems.

ISO/TS 15066 was six years in the making and received input from leading robotics experts from all over the world. So, while the artist’s project is interesting and cool, the conversation around safety issues has been going on for quite some time among roboticists.

Spanish researchers design child exoskeleton (R&D)

Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is a genetic condition defined by muscle weakness, which often makes locomotion difficult for sufferers.

The good news is that the Spanish National Research Council and spin-off company Marsi Bionics have created an exoskeleton for children with SMA aged between ages three and 14. Marsi’s intelligent exoskeleton is currently in the preclinical phase, but if it’s successful, researchers hope that as well as helping with locomotion, the device could stave off secondary effects from the condition, such as scoliosis.

The exoskeleton fits around the child’s legs and torso, and consists of five motors in each leg that act as muscles, providing strength for the child to stand upright and walk.

“Our model includes intelligent joints which alter the brace’s rigidity automatically and adapt to the symptoms of each individual child … whenever required,” said Elena Garcia, part of the research council’s Automatics and Robotics Centre, in a statement.

Additionally, the apparatus is highly sensitive to a child’s intended movement and acts accordingly. It’s powered by a battery with a five-hour lifespan.

“The number one drawback in developing this type of pediatric exoskeleton is that the symptoms of neuromuscular illnesses—such as spinal muscular atrophy—change over time, as much in the articulation as in the body,” Garcia said in a statement. “That’s why it’s fundamental to have an exoskeleton capable of independently adapting to these changes.”

Robot escapes testing grounds in Russia (Sputnik)

Oh boy.

Robots be rolling. I think somebody’s trolling.

Reports emerged this week of a Russian robot ‘escaping’ testing grounds and finding its way onto the street, where its batteries went flat and the robot held up traffic until the police arrived. What do you think? Real or a publicity stunt?

The escape occurred due to a gate left open by an engineer, local media said. The robot had moved some 50 meters (160 feet) by the time its charge ran out, according to reports.

The loss was noticed almost an hour later, by which time the robot caused a minor traffic jam and gathered a crowd, with the police eventually arriving.

Space Station’s commercial 3D printer makes its 1st tool (Space.com)

The machine, known as the Additive Manufacturing Facility (AMF), was installed aboard the International Space Station (ISS) in late April. And last week, it printed out its first tool — a wrench that astronauts can use to do maintenance work aboard the orbiting lab.

The wrench was made with a special off-Earth feature — a fastening clip that should help astronauts keep track of the tool in zero g.

The AMF was built by California-based company Made In Space, which also constructed the only other 3D printer ever sent to space.

And Finally…

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imvL5bsk87M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMzVJ8g6fMI

Infographic: The making of a collaborative robot (Robohub via National Science Foundation)

How will bots make money? Here are 7 business models (Venture Beat)
How To Buy A Drone [Infographic] (Drone360)
First Surgical Robot from Secretive Startup Auris Cleared for Use (IEEE Spectrum)
Jibo “social” robot to ship in October (Liliputing)
Pepper the robot begins work in Belgian hospitals (Daily Mail)
British, Indian scientists to use underwater robots in study of subcontinent’s monsoon (Japan Times) 

Musk for Mars; Mexican robotics revolution; Russia “battle bot”; MIT student’s robot kitchen; Integrating automation; and more. Find out what’s happening in our robotics universe this week.

Mars landing by 2018 says SpaceX’s Elon Musk (BBC)

Elon Musk has announced plans to send the Dragon spacecraft to Mars as early as 2018.

Mr Musk has long targeted a trip to Mars and has previously said he can get humans to the red planet by 2026. His company, SpaceX, is planning “Red Dragon” missions to Mars to test technology for bigger missions. SpaceX has been developing rockets and has a $1.6bn (£1.08bn; €1.47bn) contract with Nasa to supply the International Space Station.

In a tweet, Mr Musk said that its Dragon 2 spacecraft is “designed to be able to land anywhere in the solar system”. But Mr Musk “wouldn’t recommend transporting astronauts beyond Earth-moon region” as the internal area of the spacecraft is only the size of a large car.

“Wouldn’t be fun for longer journeys,” he said.

SpaceX hasn’t said how many spacecraft it intends to send to the red planet, but has hinted at plans to conduct a series of Mars missions. More details are expected to be released soon. The capsules are expected to fly on SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket, a bigger version of its Falcon 9. The rocket is expected to launch the capsules to Mars in order to test out how to land heavy payloads on the planet. If successful, SpaceX would become the first private spaceflight company to land a vehicle on another planet.

MIT students invented a robotic kitchen that could revolutionize fast food (Business Insider)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kx2d27AqKg

A fully-automated mini-restaurant featuring a refrigerator, dishwasher, stovetop, and robot chef that can cook and serve meals with fresh ingredients in under five minutes has been developed by a group of students at MIT.

First, you order a meal using a smartphone app or the touch screen next to the machine. The bot currently features five meals: shrimp andouille jambalaya, chicken-bacon sweet potato hash, winter veggie mac and cheese, chili-lime beef with sesame rice, and chickpea coconut curry on couscous. Two meals can be made at once.

You can customize the ingredients, sauce, and quantity. Then, you grab a bowl from the side and place it under one of the cooking pots.

Ingredients, which are stocked by the Spyce staff daily, are automatically measured and dispensed on a conveyor belt. They’re then transported to one of four automated pots that mix and cook the ingredients all-in-one.

Once that’s done, the system dispenses the meal on a plate, and the pot rotates to the sink and cleans itself. The kitchen uses an array of sensors that track the food’s temperature and quality.

The device only takes up 20 square feet of space and can produce half the amount of food as the average full-sized fast food restaurant, the students say.

Developed as part of the $10,000 “Eat it!” Lemelson-MIT undergraduate prize (an award for the U.S.’s top two collegiate inventors in food technology), the student’s “Spyce Kitchen” is being used to serve students in an MIT dining hall. The inventors have plans to pilot the mini-restaurant in dining halls at a handful of other Boston universities once it receives USDA and FDA approval.

Integrating Industrial Automation: What You Need to Know (Engineering.com)

One UR10 robot arm is deployed in a kitting application. The robot uses a vacuum gripper to pick and place sterile wipes and saline solutions into a plastic box, which it then loads onto a conveyor.

Before purchasing the UR10, this application required six to seven employees all working at once.

“Now, we’re able to run it with as few as two people,” McGillivray said. “Having this type of success right out of the gate was phenomenal and totally unexpected. Our time to value was less than two months.”

Thanks to the simple programming requirements of UR’s collaborative robots, Dynamic Group was able to perform much of the integration process in-house.

Mexico, Land of Automatización Opportunity (RIA)

The robotics sector in Mexico is on fire, buoyed by rising industrialization and increasing levels of foreign direct investment, according to the Robotics Industry Association.

In 2015, robot sales in Mexico smashed all previous records. At 6,320 units, sales were almost three times the previous year, amounting to more than $243 million. This is no surprise as unit sales for all of North America were up 14 percent, making 2015 another record-breaking year for robot sales.

Mexico has been growing leaps and bounds in the automotive industry, and then followed by the aerospace industry. It’s what we refer to as the next China, where there’s so much potential here,” says Evan Haley, Director of International Sales & Business Development for ATI Industrial Automation, headquartered in Apex, North Carolina.

In fact, Mexico is moving up the ranks among the world’s industrial powerhouses with auto production leading the way.

Meet the ‘Mechanical Mule’: First Photos of Russia’s Battle Robot Revealed (Sputnik)

Pictures of a 400 k.g. Russian “battle bot” that looks a bit like like an early BigDog prototype (but with machine guns attached) emerged this week.

The alleged first-ever photos of Russia’s advanced biomorphic combat robot, which will move like a four-legged animal and be equipped with a machine gun and guided antitank missiles, have emerged on Twitter.

Igor Korotchenko, editor-in-chief of the Russian magazine Natsionalnaya Oborona (National Defense) has published the first-ever photos of Russia’s advanced biomorphic combat robot on his Twitter page; it looks something like a mule.

The reports said at the time that such a robotic system is designed to be used as a reconnaissance device, a platform for the transportation of armaments and ammunition, as well as for the detection of minefields and even weapons. Additionally, this robot, which the initial reports said resembled to a lynx, will be capable of evacuating the dead and wounded from battlefields.

The world’s smartest robot can’t outsmart college students (SF Chronicle)

Celebrity robot BINA48 chatted with some college ethics students recently, producing some interesting results:

Things began to go downhill when student Halemah Shuman, 18, asked BINA48 what her biggest fear was.

“Fear is a complex emotion,” the robot replied.

Pressed to explain what she meant, and whether she was fearless, BINA48 thought it over.

“Why not?” she replied.

Similar “answers” were given when BINA48 was asked if she wanted to be alive ( “I don’t want to do anything”), was asked for her purpose in life (“That’s interesting”) and asked what she would do if her questioner decided to punch someone in the nose (“You will be the first to know”).

And Finally…

(via Futuristech Info)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1kqt0VryvA

(via Popular Science)

No, Self-Driving Cars Won’t Kill the Insurance Industry (Forbes)

TU Graz launches Christian Doppler-Lab for Semantic 3D Computer Vision (TU Graz)

Drone believed to have hit British Airways flight ‘may have been a plastic bag’ (Telegraph)

China targets 2020 Mars mission launch: official (PhysOrg)

China accelerates bid for global dominance in robotics (Inquisitr)

Rise of the Robots – and Donald Trump (BBC)