Industrial Automation, Robots and Unmanned Vehicles Industry Newsletter - Nov 2013

Harvest Automation Robots Space Over 40,000 Poinsettia Plants in Four Days 
11/15/13, Contributed by, Harvest Automation
Harvest Automation robots are designed to work around the clock, they never need a break, and can handle the most tedious and repetitive work on a Nursery or Greenhouse operation with consistent accuracy and on-time performance.

Air Force Research Lab Uses TORC’s Robotic Conversion Kits for Robotic Assault-Zone Survey Vehicle
11/15/13, Contributed by, TORC Robotics
TORC’s unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) conversion kits, which maintain the ability for optionally manned operation, offer the proven capabilities and modularity necessary for AFRL to scale from one prototype to production quantity.

Highspeed Frame Capture Interface With MatLab
11/15/13, Donal Waide, BitFlow
CoaXpress and MatLab integration offer options where previously none existed. The ability to have a controllable high speed camera at distances greater than 7m wasn't a possibility before, without the use of extenders and other potential hardware failures.

The Future of Flying Robots
11/01/13, Len Calderone for, RoboticsTomorrow
The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International projects that the integration of UAVs would have an $82 billion economic impact on the economy by adding 100,000 jobs from 2015 to 2025.

The Savior Aerial Robot (Pars)
11/01/13, Contributed by, RTS Research Group
The Savior Aerial robot is designed in a way that it can quickly move towards drowning people by user guidance and activates its savior system. This system releases life tubes for the drowning ones.

Triquad

IEEE Spectrum:

As cool as quadrotors are, in most cases they're simply not as good as helicopters. Because of the way they're designed (with four small rotors instead of one big one), they're less powerful, less efficient, and less maneuverable. The power and efficiency issues come from the fact that one big rotor generates more lift per aircraft footprint than four small rotors, and as for maneuverability, a helicopter that can alter rotor pitch instantly will always outmaneuver a quadrotor that can only control blade speed. Seriously, try doing this with a quadrotor.

So, the thing that quadrotors have going for them is that they're simple. Helicopters have complex main rotor heads, with shafts and bearings and linkages all over the place, while quadrotors just have four motors and that's it. The University of Queensland researchers came up with a "Y4" configuration that aims to take all the good bits of helicopters and make them as simple as quadrotors. I'm just going to start calling this new design a triquad. Keep in mind that this is still a quadrotor: it just had things shifted around a little bit.

Almost all of the triquad's lift comes from its big main fixed-pitch rotor, located at the center of the "Y" (pictured below). The three little fixed-pitch rotors in the "Y" configuration are angled (at a fixed 45 degrees) to provide counter-torque (which they do slightly more efficiently than a helicopter tail rotor) along with pitch and roll control. Here's how the control works... cont'd at IEEE Spectrum

Follow up discussions:

1. DIY Drones post and discussion.
2. Hackernews post.

KEBA Corp. - Active contact flange (End-of-arm-tool)

The active contact flange made by FerRobotics powered by KEBA is a revolutionary, combined actor and sensor element, which can be employed between robots and their tools as well as in machines. A specific force-adjustment is possible for the first time. The standardized mounting flange of this unique tool offers universal use in a wide field of applications. The active contact flange makes automation touch-sensitive. Material tolerances of the workpiece and of the tool are compensated autonomously. This opens up new horizons for a multitude of applications which before were unthinkable with inelastic devices.

Learn More About KEBA Corp.

Universal Robots USA

Universal Robots is an innovative and globally successful Danish manufacturer of industrial robots. Since the first UR robot entered the market in 2009, the company has seen substantial growth and is now in global distribution through more than 100 partners spanning over 40 countries.

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Bob Hetherington bobh@roboticstomorrow.com

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