Is Velo3D Plotting a 3-D Printed Robot Revolution?
Tekla S. Perry for IEEE Spectrum: Velo3D, based in Santa Clara, Calif., has $22.1 million in venture investment to do something in 3-D printing: That makes it fourth among 2015’s best-funded stealth-mode tech companies in the United States, according to CB Insights. This dollar number is about all the hard news that has come out of this startup, founded in 2014 by Benyamin Butler and Erel Milshtein. But job postings, talks at conferences, and other breadcrumbs left along Velo3D's development trail—has created a sketchy outline of this company’s plans.
Consider which 3-D printing technology is ready for disruption: metal. 3-D printing of plastics took off after 2009, when a key patent that covered the deposition technology expired; we now have desktop printers for 3-D plastic objects as cheap as $350. Printing of metal objects—done regularly in industry, particularly aerospace—uses a different, and, to date, far more expensive technology: selective laser sintering. This technology melts metal powders into solid shapes; it requires high temperatures, and far more complicated equipment than what’s found in the layering sort of printers used for plastic. The patent for this technology expired in early 2014—just before the formation of Velo3D. At the time, industry experts indicated that there wouldn’t be cheap metal printers coming anytime soon, but rather, would only come after “a significant breakthrough on the materials side,” OpenSLS’s Andreas Bastian told GigaOm in 2014. Could Velo3D’s founders have that breakthrough figured out? Cont'd...
A problem-solving approach IT workers should learn from robotics engineers
Greg Nichols for ZDNet: Google-owned Boston Dynamics got some bad news in the final days of 2015. After years of development and intensive field trials, the Massachusetts-based robotics company learned that the U.S. Marines had decided to reject its four-legged robotic mule, Big Dog. The reason? The thing is too damn noisy for combat, where close quarters and the occasional need for stealth make excess machine noise a liability.
The setback reminded me of a story another group of robotics engineers told me about the development of their breakthrough machine, a robotic exoskeleton that enables paraplegics to walk and soldiers to hump heavy packs without wearing down. It also reminded me of a powerful approach to solving problems and dealing with setbacks that I've encountered again and again reporting on robotics.
Ekso Bionics, which went public in 2015, invented the first viable untethered exoskeleton, one that doesn't need to be plugged into an external power source. Their achievement rests on one engineering breakthrough in particular, and to arrive at it Ekso's engineers had to do something that's surprisingly difficult but incredibly instructive for non-engineers--they had to change the way they thought about their problem. Cont'd...
New Product - P-Rob 2 Second Generation of the Collaborative Robot
P-Rob 2 is an all-in-one robotic solution combining robot arm, sensor technologies and software including an embedded PC as control unit. So all that needs to be done is plug-in and run.
Factory Automation Will Speed Forward with A.I., Says Bernstein
By Tiernan Ray for Barron's: Bernstein Research’s Alberto Moel, who follows tech-industrial companies such as Corning(GLW) and AU Optronics (AUO), this afternoon offered up a thinks piece on robotics andfactory automation, arguing that some of the costs of automation beyond the basic cost of the robot are about to get dramatically cheaper, thanks in large part to artificial intelligence akin to what Alphabet (GOOGL) and others are doing.
Moel notes that the basic components of factory robots are only falling by perhaps 6% per year, their cost reduction bounded by things such as casings and servomotors and reduction gears that don’t rapidly fall in cost.
But, writes Moel, the cost to install and adjust these machines on a factory floor is ten times their component cost and that stuff can be reduced more dramatically:
How much this integration costs varies widely. An often-cited rule of thumb is that a $50,000 robot will need $500,000 of integration costs before it is all said and done. Of course, these integration costs can be amortized over many robots, so perhaps a better estimate would be 3-5x the robot cost [...] But I do believe we are at an inflection pointthat will materially increase the capability of automation systems and substantially reduce programming, setup, and fixturing costs which are the largest cost element in most automation efforts. So instead of a measly 6% YoY cost reduction , we get 25-30% YoY declines, and automation Nirvana. Cont'd...
Most Popular Articles for 2015 - Did some of them predict the future?
Smart Homes, Robotics, Automation, Unmanned Vehicles, Solar and Wind Energy. Regardless of where you work or what you do, these topics are affecting your life and will continue to do so in the future.
Robotics, reshoring, and American jobs
By Charles Orlowek for The Hill: Good news? Boston Consulting Group foresees more large manufacturers boosting production for the American market by adding capacity in the U.S. itself, compared with any other country. It cites “decreasing costs and improved capabilities of advanced manufacturing technologies such as robotics." Under this optimistic scenario, how much value would American workers add? When robotics and other automation gets built for, and installed in American workplaces, where are jobs created?
Increasingly, these jobs are being created and sustained outside the United States, even for domestic factories.
The first industrial robots were developed and manufactured by Americans, and General Motors became the first user, in 1961. Over recent decades, however, the domestic robot industry has declined. A Commerce Department national security assessment from 1991 asserted that American robot manufacturers lost market share throughout the 1980s, with shipments of U.S.-manufactured robots falling by 33 percent between 1984 and 1989, despite robust domestic demand and a weak dollar. Cont'd...
Robotics at the Distributed Intelligent Systems Lab at GE Global Research
At GEs Global Research Center, were also looking at the next generation of robotics - drones for aerial-based surveillance and inspection, small scale crawlers for in-situ inspection, and mobile collaborative robotics for things like machine tending in our factories.
Upcoming Tradeshow, Conference & Exhibition Summary - Feb, Mar, April & May 2016
Here is a summary of what Tradeshows, Conferences & Exhibitions to look forward to in the coming months.
Getting Started with Collaborative Robots - Part 4 - Assess Your Potential Applications
Documenting the actual process will allow you to evaluate if the process can be automated. This will also give you a starting point on cell performance and improvement opportunities.
Special Tradeshow Coverage for Advanced Manufacturing Conference & Expo 2016
Advanced Manufacturing Conference & Expo 2016 will be held from February 9th - 11th in Anaheim, California. This RoboticsTomorrow.com Special Tradeshow report aims to bring you news, articles and products from this years event.
Looking for a few good robots
By Adam Zewe for Harvard News: If you have a soft spot for robotics, this competition is right up your alley.
The 2016 Soft Robotics Competitions offer anyone with an interest in robotics the chance to design and build their own soft robot using the resources available in the open-source Soft Robotics Toolkit.
Now in its second year, the competition was developed by Conor Walsh, assistant professor of mechanical and biomedical engineering at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and Dónal Holland, visiting lecturer in engineering sciences, as a way to encourage individuals to take advantage of the resources provided in the Soft Robotics Toolkit.
The toolkit, which incorporates contributions from researchers from Harvard and other institutions, provides a set of intellectual tools that one can use to design and construct a robot using soft, flexible materials. It includes resources such as step-by-step instructions on building actuators and sensors, lists of suggested materials, and how-to fabrication videos.
The ultimate goal of the competition is to encourage others to find innovative applications for soft robotics technology and continue expanding interest in this relatively new field. Cont'd...
Robotics 2016: Doubling Throughput in Distribution and Factory Operations
Two existing bakery facilities were successfully integrated into one and finished goods capacity nearly doubled from 6,500 lbs. /hour to 12,000 lbs. /hour.
Space Bots & Android Waste Collectors: What's Ahead for Robotics
By Elizabeth Palermo for LiveScience: It was a good year to be a robot.
In 2015, researchers in Korea unveiled a robotic exoskeleton that users can control with their minds, a four-legged bot in China set a new world record by walking 83.28 miles (134.03 km) without stopping and 3D-printing robots in Amsterdam started work on a new steel footbridge.
But these smart machines are capable of so much more. Researchers around the world are now designing and building bots that will complete more noteworthy tasks in 2016 and beyond. From exploring other planets to fighting fires at sea, here are a few skills that bots could pick up in the new year. Full Article:
What Robots and AI Learned in 2015
By Will Knight for MIT Technology Review: The robots didn’t really take over in 2015, but at times it felt as if that might be where we’re headed.
There were signs that machines will soon take over manual work that currently requires human skill. Early in the year details emerged of a contest organized by Amazon to help robots do more work inside its vast product fulfillment centers.
The Amazon Picking challenge, as the event was called, was held at a prominent robotics conference later in the year. Teams competed for a $25,000 prize by designing a robot to identify and grasp items from one of Amazon’s storage shelves as quickly as possible (the winner picked and packed 10 items in 20 minutes). This might seem a trivial task for human workers, but figuring out how to grasp different objects arranged haphazardly on shelves in a real warehouse is still a formidable challenge for robot-kind. Cont'd...
Watch these robotic 'reindeer' from Boston Dynamics pull Santa's sleigh
By Lulu Chang for Digital Trends: We’re going to rewrite Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, because now, it’s robotic dogs that are pulling Santa’s sleigh. In a rather frightening video, Google-owned robotics design firm Boston Dynamics has shown us the future of Christmas, and it’s plenty progressive, complete with machines and female Santas. I can get behind that sort of holiday, I think.
Of course, the Internet wasn’t so sure. And to be fair, the dog-like robots are a bit frightening. Large and, well, headless, these machines seem to hearken more to the Thestrals (the skeletal winged horses visible only to those who’ve witnessed death) of Harry Potter’s universe than the adorable reindeer that are supposed to transport jolly Saint Nick to and from the North Pole.
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Industrial Robotics - Featured Product
PI USA - Gantry Stages for Laser Machining and Additive Manufacturing
High performance gantry systems, from PI, are used in precision assembly, laser machining, and additive manufacturing. Complete with software and state-of-the-art EtherCat® motion controllers. Easy to program, easy synchronization with lasers and dispensers. Standard and custom, compact systems and large, granite-based units.
Robotics and Automation - Featured Company
ResinDek / Cornerstone Specialty Wood Products
As the manufacturer of ResinDek® panels, we have been at the forefront of testing and innovating flooring panels for the Material Handling Industry since 1994. In 2007, we began providing ResinDek panels for automated warehouse distribution robots. Much of our initial research and development occurred with Automated Guided Vehicles. In the last decade, we have provided a variety of ResinDek engineered flooring products to numerous Automated Guided Vehicles (AGV) and Autonomous Mobile Robot (AMR) manufacturers for their testing labs. As a result, millions of square feet of ResinDek panels are in service worldwide with robotic traffic in distribution centers, warehouses, microfulfillment centers, and retail environments.
