Robots used cameras and lasers to assemble the 2013 Ford Escape with unprecedented precision.

Does anyone doubt that it really is just a matter of time before human assembly line workers are a thing of the past? And automakers are doing their best to gain a competitive edge by roboticizing their manufacturing plants. Here’s a glimpse of some of the robots that have recently stepped onto the assembly line floor.

When Ford’s 2013 Escape hits the road later this year, it’s a safe bet that no one will notice just how precisely it’s parts are put together, compared to past models. The improved assemblage is due to a group of robots which use lasers and cameras to fit windshields, door panels, and fenders together more closely. When installing a windshield, a robot deposits adhesive evenly around the glass border, then uses a suction cup to move and secure it. Gaps between pieces are smaller, which makes for a more aerodynamic and quieter ride due to decreased wind noise.

The 2013 Escape is their first US-manufactured car to benefit from the seeing-eye robots. Ford had already been using the robots at their manufacturing plants in Europe but only recently installed 700 of them at their Louisville, Kentucky plant. The robots raise the quality of assembly to “custom-like build,” Ford engineer Thomas Burns said in a press release. The robots also give a boost to the all important bottom line by saving energy and reducing the physical strain exerted by their human co-workers.

And if you have laser-vision robots, you might as well use them to inspect their own handiwork. Check out Ford’s incredible robots in the following video. You can almost sense an awareness behind their scrutinizing inspection.

Ford cars will also have nicer coats to show off their improved assembly. The company is bringing 88 new robots to apply paint and sealer to vehicles. By getting rid of all the humans in paint zones the plant saves money by minimizing the need for climate and air current control.

And Ford isn’t completely automation-centric with their robotic upgrades. Last year the company bought robotic arms that turn their assembly workers into ergonomic cyborgs. Made by Equipois Inc., the X-Ar arms are wearable exoskeletons that bear the weight of the workers’ arms as they repeatedly grab small objects and assemble them. The X-Ars not only reduce fatigue and risk of ergonomic injury, but they increase manual dexterity and, ultimately, productivity.

GM/NASA's Robo-Glove

GM is doing their part to keep up with their competitors by adopting their own robotic appendage. With the help of NASA, the carmaker developed a robotic glove that, like the X-Ar, reduces the stress of repetitive motions on the assembly line. The so-called Human Grasp Assist Device, or Robo-Glove, is still a prototype. The arm comes with sensors, actuators, and simulated nerves, muscles and tendons that give its wearers an additional 10 pounds of bionic grip force while using tools. Robo-Glove is a spinoff of NASA’s humanoid robot, Robonaut 2, that is a permanent member of the International Space Station crew lending a helping hand with dangerous or mundane tasks.

Always at the forefront of increased efficiency through technology, China opened an automotive plant last August in Tianjin that is perhaps the most advanced in the world. The plant, belonging to Chinese automaker Great Wall Motors, has 30 workstations occupied by 27 robots that perform more than 4,000 high-precision welding operations. The robots are so fast they can complete the welding of an entire Haval SUV in just 86 seconds.

The Great Wall Motors Robotic Assembly Line

On the assembly line, more than many other places, time is money.

The master welders are actually a team of two types of robot, the IRB 6640 and IRB 7600, made by Swiss robotics giant ABB Robotics. The IRB 7600 acts as the 6640’s assistant, holding panels and other equipment in place while IRB 6640 welds the parts together. The IRB 6640 is packing servo-driven welding guns which are 25 percent faster than traditional, pneumatic welding guns. What’s more, the robots are flexible enough to weld different car models.

Of course, automanufacturing plants aren’t the only ones being taken over by robots. Right now there are over 190,000 ABB robots in automotive factories worldwide, and last year ABB unveiled FRIDA, the two-armed, headless concept robot that’s meant to do what human assembly line workers can to, but do it better. FRIDA’s small size and 7 degrees-of-freedom arms makes for easy installation and flexibility to do whatever a particular manufacturing plant needs it to do.

Up 30 percent from 2010, robot sales exceeded all expectations last year, according to the International Federation of Robotics. Increased demand from places like China, where manufacturing is expanding, and lowered costs make it easier and more sensible for companies to replace their human workers with robotic ones. Maybe we should stop worrying about the robot apocalypse and start worrying about the human apocalypse that could result from so many factory workers out of the job.

[image credits: Motor Trend, Automobile, and PCMag]
[video credit: AutoMotoTV via YouTube]
images: Motor Trend, Automobile, and PCMag
video: AutoMotoTV

The SushiBot moulds rice mounds by the thousands so sushi chefs don't have to.

Talk about “fast food,” a Japanese company just unveiled its SushiBot at the World Food and Beverage Expo in Tokyo. The countertop-sized robot makes the chef’s job easier by balling rice up into the small elongated mounds upon which fish and other ingredients are placed. At 3,600 mounds of rice per hour, it’ll be all the chef can do to keep up.

The rice formations are taken from a large inner bowl with care so that not even a single grain of rice is damaged, according to Takeshi Kawamata, a representative of SushiBot maker Suzumo.

Watch the SushiBot serve ‘em up rapidly in the following video:

Tokyo-based Suzumo makes another machine that churns out nori sushi, the kind wrapped in a sheet of seaweed. As you’ll see in the next video, the seaweed is placed onto a folding platform which then slides into the machine and comes out with a flattened layer of rice. Ingredients are placed on top of the rice, then the platform rolls it into a single roll which is eventually sliced up.

Although sushi chefs can take solace in the fact that the ingredients as of yet still need to be added by humans, I’m guessing the new particular role might not be as fulfilling.

As stated on their website, their mission is “Spreading the Rice Eating Culture to the World.” Given their multitude of rice-centric devices – 70 in all! – it’s not hard to believe them.

Suzumo, has been in the business of making sushi robots since 1981 when they made the world’s first, according to the company. But they’re not the only ones trying to automate the centuries old Japanese and Chinese staple. Autec has its own series of sushi machines. Its nigiri maker is a tad slower than Suzumo’s, churning out 3,300 mounds of rice per hour.

But don’t book that sushi party just yet. Autec’s machine is about $17,000. Until they get a lot cheaper our options will pretty much remain going to the restaurant or taking a class. Obviously these machines are made for use in a high-throughput setting such as a hospital or school cafeteria. But now maybe we can have sushi at the stadium. Nothing says baseball like cold beer and a California roll. So that the sushi can have a longer shelf life, or so people can order carryout, Suzumo also has a robot that wraps the sushi pieces individually in plastic. Also, given the recent salmonella outbreak – highly-suspected to have been spread by sushi – automated sushi could be more sanitary as well as efficient.

The big question is, of course, do they taste the same. Maybe the sushi robots can have a sort of “Head Chef” meets “ROBO-ONE” roll-off where celebrity sushi chefs try to tell which ones were made by machine and which by caring, human hands. Sushi restaurants already have conveyor belts. Once SushiBots become entirely automated no one need show up to work.

But then, isn’t half the fun watching the chefs make our sushi anyway?

[image credits: alibaba and Gigazine]
[video credit: Gigazine via YouTube]
image 1: sushi
image 2: sushi
video 1: sushi
video 2: nori

Where did all the humans go? The new look of Amazon.com warehouses.

In a move that makes so much sense one wonders why it didn’t happen sooner, Amazon has acquired Kiva Systems, makers of the warehouse robot. The acquisition, which took place on Monday, cost $775 million making it the second largest in Amazon’s history.

It makes so much sense because Amazon’s fulfillment centers are enormous warehouses where human “pickers” literally walk miles every day, retrieving books and t-shirts and coffee mugs. With more than 50 fulfillment centers around the world having about 20 million square feet, there’s a lot of room for improving efficiency and increasing profit margins.

When I attended the grand opening of their new headquarters in Reading, Massachusetts last year I got a chance to see the robots in action. Their demonstration floor was a veritable dance of scooting robots and merchandise pods that continually zipped within inches past each other. It was extremely impressive – and fun – to watch.

The Kiva robots do the walking – or rolling – instead of the pickers. They are low-riding, squarish robots that bring stacks of merchandise, or pods, to picker stations where their human coworkers grab the relevant items and transfer them to a rack where shippers then pick them up. Not only for order fulfillment, the robots do the heavy lifting for product replenishment as well. When inventory comes in a worker scans the product and immediately the proper pod is on its way to receive the goods. And the robots know that “to err is human.” So to minimize the errors a laser pointer system shows the pickers which box has the merchandise and which box it’s to be placed into. Keepin’ it simple for those easily fatigued humans.

Kiva's standard F-series robot can carry loads up to 1,000 lbs

The acquisition also makes sense because, in a way, Amazon was already using them. Two companies previously acquired by Amazon, shoe-retailer Zappos.com and baby products supplier Diapers.com, were already using the Kiva robots to fill their orders. At $894.6 million, the Zappos.com acquisition remains Amazon’s largest.

Other companies are also enjoying the efficiencies of robot run warehouses. Gap, Crate & Barrel, Staples, Saks 5th Avenue, and Walgreens are just some e-commerce giants that fill their orders with the sporty orange robots.

The cost of Kiva robots can range from a few million dollars up to around $20 million. The fleet of robots is versatile. Their standard F-series robot can lift 1,000 lbs, Larger models can carry up to 3,000 lbs.

Aside from making their ginormous warehouses even more efficient, Amazon’s acquisition makes sense for another reason. Not only will the robots tote around pretty much any product that fits in a box, the robots themselves are for sale. Other companies that want to bring the Kiva robots to their warehouses will now approach Amazon.

So what does this mean for the more than 51,300 Amazon employees around the world? Although I find it hard to believe, the company has stated that it will not be eliminating any jobs as a result of the acquisition.

Tuesday afternoon the company’s shares were up $7.69 to $193.21.

Kiva was founded in 2003 by Mick Mountz, who was trained at MIT in mechanical engineering. Later he received his MBA from Harvard. For a time he worked for Apple as a Product Marketing Manager, then for Webvan, an Internet-based company that delivered groceries to a customer’s front door. Begun during the dot com bubble, the company quickly went bust. They couldn’t solve the problem of how to fill orders efficiently. It was his experience with Webvan that prompted Mountz to think of the robots. “We decided products that could walk and talk on their own would be the best way to solve the problem,” he said in an interview with MIT.

It seems as though Jeff Bezos and Amazon would agree.

[image credits: Boston.com and Kiva Systems]
image 1: Kiva
image 2: Kiva
image 3: Kiva

Federico Pistono knows automation threatens jobs. To deal with it, he thinks we need to change our economic philosophies.

Growth is a good thing, right? It’s the buzzword on seemingly every politician’s lips, the answer to our economic woes. You know this if you watched President Obama’s latest State of the Union Address. Increase the production of goods and services and stimulate consumer spending, that’s how we get this downtrodden economy back on its feet. Makes sense to me.

To Federico Pistono, however, it does not. The 26-year-old, self-described computer scientist, author and social activist is currently working on a book with which he plans to poke gaping holes in the conventional wisdom of ‘growth is good.’ The book, titled “Robots will steal your job, but that’s OK – How to survive the economic collapse and be happy,” is part of a crowdfunding campaign and has received a lot of support. Multiple publishers have approached Pistono about the book, but when it’s finished he intends to distribute it freely to the public.

The Verona, Italy native questions those who pin the current recession on bad economic choices by CEOs and politicians and asks us to rethink what a healthy economy should – and could – look like. Yes, bad, damaging choices have been made. But human greed and short-sightedness, Pistono thinks, is secondary to limitations that are inherent to the global economy. He thinks that technological developments have finally driven us towards a choke point that will be reached within the next fifty years. Automation is taking jobs away faster than economic growth can replace them, and it’s only going to get worse. I recently spoke with Pistono about his book, robots, our economic future, and what it means to be happy.

How is our economy today different from the economy 100 years ago?

At the beginning of the 20th century we lived in an agrarian society that employed 98 percent of people. As technology progresses and old jobs are eliminated you kind of move through cycles of job elimination and job formation. At some point you run out of cycles where there are no more jobs to fill except for a very few highly specialized jobs, the kind of jobs that require many years of education.

But this is nothing new, new technologies have always driven demand for increasingly specialized workers to run those technologies

Now, it requires more time to be educated into these new sectors than it requires for the technological progress to advance. The thing is, we used to be able to keep up with the speed of technological progress because we were at the beginning of the exponential curve. At the beginning the doublings didn’t seem unsettling for the global economy because we could keep up with it. It’s within our mental capabilities to keep up with it. After some time when you reach a point in the curve when it becomes to fast.

What about future generations?

I don’t think education can be solved by governments or institutions of any sort because institutions by definition are institutionalized. They can’t make progress. But if you look at the Khan Academy, Udacity, open courseware, things like that can enable new generations to speed up the process of education and learn to be a biotechnologist, for example, in two years or three years for free at home.

So right now, if you don’t have a higher education already, it’s already too late?

I’m wondering about the millions of people who haven’t learned the most important thing: critical thinking and problem solving. They might have learned skills such as driving a truck or carpentry but they don’t know how to solve problems. In this type of economy I don’t know how you can educate these people to do these highly sophisticated, very challenging jobs that the new economy will require in five to ten years time. I just don’t see how a 50-year-old truck driver can reinvent himself in five to ten years.

What are the consequences of massive amounts of unemployed people around the world?

I think this whole thing is going eventually to collapse into an unsustainable social situation where you have riots. I mean, when people don’t have food, basic necessities and they don’t see a future for themselves or for their families they’re going to start to get really pissed off. They’re going to grab guns. I would like to avoid that.

What’s the solution?

The solution is to prepare for a change in the economic system. If we resist automation we are still going to see this problem. Companies need to be productive and in order to be productive you have to automate, that’s the only way to increase productivity. It’s been true for 200 years. The only way I can see out of this within this economic system is for the state to take over and just employ people for doing nothing or almost nothing. But states and governments are already broke, so I don’t see how that’s possible. Another way would be to just socialize. Many people have proposed a minimum wage just for living. So if you’re a citizen you get a thousand dollars a month. In Martin Ford’s book “The Lights In The Tunnel” he comes with very, very convoluted arguments like we’re going to pay people to read books because we want people to be smart and stay informed. I read that and I think, yeah, it makes sense within this type of culture, but I think it’s fundamentally corrupt and quite plainly insane. I think the only way out is to rethink the labor for income and income for survival cycle. And I think that the argument that it’s going to be either capitalism or socialism, I think those are 18th century ideas that are obsolete in world of interconnected, global information and economies where everything is instant and can be transferred. We have enabling technologies like 3D printing that makes the old way of thinking of manufacturing obsolete.

Where do we go from here?

One must start to wonder if this growth paradigm is even possible, in the physical sense. So I made some calculations that were confirmed by Tom Murphy, a physics professor who writes the blog “Do The Math,” where he proves mathematically and physically that continuous growth on this finite planet, even with all the efficiency mechanisms of the market system is physically impossible. Plain and simple thermodynamics, it’s impossible to grow at the current rate for more than fifty or sixty years. So on one side you have the physical impossibility of growth, on the other you say, wait a minute, even if growth was possible did we ever even stop and think if it was desirable?

Huh?

For hundreds of years there was a correlation of growth and quality of life, because you needed to go from having nothing to having a good standard of living. And once you’ve reached a certain point where you have enough to live by this correlation no longer holds. This is because it wasn’t a causation it was just a correlation. One did not directly cause the other. Once some enabling factors come in you have this decoupling of growth and happiness and quality of life. In fact research shows that it is inversely correlated when you increase by a large factor the wealth that a person has. If you make eighty or a hundred thousand dollars a year that’s enough for you to live by without having to worry about money. But if you make millions and millions you accumulate more stress. The monetary inequalities within a state is a very good indicator of that state’s social health. The more unequal the country is the worse the situation is. You have high crime rates, suicide rates, depression, everything.

How can I be happy without a capitalist economy?

It’s atrocious to think that the highest peak of a person would be to barely survive in an economy where we can create an abundance for basically everyone on the planet. I think it’s not only myopic, it’s morally corrupt and intellectually corrupt. It’s not just a technological problem, it’s a sociological problem, an ecological problem because it’s physically unsustainable, and an economic problem. I know it’s hard because many people have been educated into believing in this kind of system and don’t think any other is possible. We first have to move away from thinking that growth will solve our problems. That’s not true, we’ve known that for forty years, but we have deluded ourselves into believing that. I think the countries should recognize that an indicator of the wealth of a nation is not the GDP, but maybe some other indicators that have been developed like the GNH, which is Gross National Happiness or the quality-of-life index. Those are the things we should be maximizing. I agree it’s a harder thing to quantify than profit, but to think that with our current AI algorithms, computational power, and data that it would be too difficult to estimate the quality of life of a nation, I think it’s highly irrational.

[image credits: Indigogo]
[video credits: federicopistono via YouTube]
images: Indigogo
video: federicopistono

Automation poses a real threat to the factory worker – two armed robots like Nextage can perform many of the same tasks as a human, but only take as much money to run as powering a hair dryer. AIST and Kawada, the developers of Nextage, want to assuage the fears of the working class. Their robot is designed not to eliminate human laborers, but to work side by side with them. The Nextage detects movement and won’t collide with people who enter its space. Without the need for safety barriers used with traditional industrial robots, the Nextage may be able to simply plug into spots previously occupied by human workers. In the video below taken in Tokyo, Kawada demonstrates the versatility of the two armed robots, and highlights how multiple Nextage bots can coordinate their movements to work on the same task at the same time. These robots clearly know the value of teamwork, and humans may actually be allowed to be part of that team.

It’s been two years since Kawada and AIST first started showing off the Nextage to the world. At first glance, the newest demonstrations below don’t seem particularly more advanced than those from 2009. Much of the physical stats of individual bots are the same: twelve degrees of freedom in the arm, stereoscopic vision, and sub-millimeter precision. Yet the newest Nextage demo showcases some key improvements in application. Nextage uses markers on tables to quickly orientate themselves, allowing a single robot to be moved from station to station (and job to job) as needed. Coordination between robots isn’t simply done in an assembly line fashion – the robots can manipulate the same objects at the same time to maximize their effect. This 2011 Nextage is flexible enough to work at one station and then be rolled into another station where it essentially becomes part of a larger robot – three bodies, six arms, but one goal.

Where will the humans fit in? It makes sense for most of the repetitive manual tasks to simply be given to robots like the Nextage. It costs ¥7-8 million (~$100,000 USD) but only requires about 1500 watts to run (about the same as a hair dryer). In the long run, robot labor is clearly cheaper. Yet the safety of the Nextage means that some manual tasks (especially those involving rapid decision making) may still rely on humans. That’s a combination already seen in other modern factories.

The ultimate balance between human labor and automation, however, is yet to be decided. Even the Nextage is still being developed. Kawada has a similar platform for researching human-robot interaction called HIRO. The HRP series, of which Nextage is a part, has more than 20 humanoid bots at major research institutions. Finding the most profitable, and sustainable, combination of natural and artificial labor is likely to take some time. However, the goals of Kawada and AIST are clear: with safe robots like the Nextage they will be able to place machines in the same environments, even side by side, with humans to create the future hybrid workforce.

[screen capture and video credit: DigInfo News]
[source: Kawada]

The new, heavily-armed ShadowHawk can track perpetrators using normal or infrared light.

Forget the idea that weaponized unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are only for military operations in wars fought in far off lands. Soon they’ll begin setting their sights on criminals within our borders. And they’ll be packing heat, not the long-range missiles of the X-47B, but with up close and personal stun guns, 12-gauge shotguns and, believe it or not, grenade launchers.

The ShadowHawk is the seven-foot, 50-lb copter that is the toy-sized dealer of destruction from Texas-based Vanguard Defense Industries. The copter is the result of three years of development. If being tased from above sounds frightening to you, I suggest you cease all criminal activities now (simply staying indoors is an option). There’s a good chance ShadowHawk’s spine tingling buzz could be heard approaching a city near you. As a sign of new law enforcement tactics to come, the Sheriff’s Office of Montgomery County, Texas was recently awarded a grant by the Department of Homeland Security for a squadron of ShadowHawks. Montgomery County’s Chief Deputy Randy McDaniel is psyched. “We are very excited about the funding and looking forward to placing the equipment into the field. Both my narcotics and SWAT units have been looking at numerous ways to deploy it and I absolutely believe it will become a critical component on all SWAT callouts and narcotics raids and emergency management operations.”

The Department of Homeland Security grant is just the latest indication that the US is taking the military’s lead – with over 7,000 drones in the skies of Iraq and Afghanistan – and using drones as a key tactical tool. In 2009 a surveillance drone called the Wasp was used during a SWAT raid in Austin, Texas. The Wasp climbed to 400 feet and beamed realtime video of a house in which an armed drug dealer was hiding. After the team had confirmed that there were no unforeseen dangers lurking in the backyard, they stormed the house and arrested the suspect. Drones are also helping the US to secure its borders against illegal immigration and drug trafficking. Just a few months ago the Obama administration began sending drones to Mexico to gather intelligence and help in the country’s war on drugs.

Not limited to our borders, ShadowHawk will soon be swooping down on bad guys off the shores of Africa. Vanguard Defense justwon a multi-million dollar contract for “several” ShadowHawks to patrol the east African coast against pirates. Hired by a “global leader in the oil and gas exploration and production industry,” the initial plan is to use the copter drones strictly for surveillance. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the local authorities get involved at some point and bring the heavy stuff. Pirates might respond better when looking down the nose of a 40mm grenade launcher.

ShadowHawk is not nearly as agile as the acrobatic quad-copter from UPenn’s GRASP Lab. But it’s definitely more agile than a perpetrator fleeing on foot. All of the cameras can be used to track ground targets with amazing effectiveness. The following video demonstrates the ability of the CCD (1:40) and infrared cameras’ (2:00) ability to track vehicles and humans fleeing on foot. You can run, but ShadowHawk is going to stick to you like flies on…shady characters.

The ShadowHawk comes in four different flavors with different options for outfitting. Both turbine or piston engines are available and guidance systems include laser pointers, range finders, illuminators, CCD TV optics and a FLIR infrared camera. Take off, flying and landing can be fully automated or pilot assist, semi-autonomous. The military and law enforcement can opt to add an XREP taser, 37mm or 40mm grenade launchers or a meaty single shot or multiple shot 12 gauge shotgun. The final variety is for military use only and they don’t tell us what sorts of ballistics toys they get to pick from.
ShadowHawk can travel over land or sea for up to 3.5 hours in its hunt for perpetrators. Its maximum range is 35 miles with a top speed of 70 mph. The XREP taser sits on ShadowHawk’s nose with four barbed electrodes that can be shot to a distance of 100 feet. After hitting the target they deliver ‘neuromuscular incapacitation’ for a hellish 20 seconds. The cameras are on continuously, which means, when they are inevitably leaked, we’re due for some of the craziest videos-gone-viral ever to hit YouTube.

A nice, cute copter for hobbyists – if your hobby happens to be going after bad guys with tasers and grenade launchers.

But you shouldn’t be worried about your neighbors getting their hands on a ShadowHawk. Hobbyists can have drones as long as they keep them from flying higher than 400 feet. And, of course, they won’t be armed with tasers or grenade launchers. But after that the FAA guidelines are pretty loose concerning ShadowHawks or any such “unmanned aircraft.” The FAA “encourages good judgment on the part of operators so that persons on the ground or other aircraft in flight will not be endangered.”

In its first flights the ShadowHawk’s job will probably be strictly surveillance. But as law enforcement such as Montgomery County’s gains experience and field tests the drone, perhaps they’ll decide when using that taser might be the best option. As more drones like ShadowHawk take to the sky over our cities and that high-pitched whine draws terribly closer, probably best to just lay down, hands on your head, feet spread apart.

[image credits: Vanguard Defense Industries]
[video credit: Vanguard Defense Industries via YouTube]
images: ShadowHawk
video: ShadowHawk

"Very nice, but the last taste was 0.0024% more buttery."

Robots get to have all the fun. In this case what I’m calling a robot is the electronic tongue created by Spanish scientists to taste test the country’s wine. Better than your snobby cousin, this ‘robot sommelier’ raises its electronic pinky in the air and accurately differentiates between three different types of wine.

The wine under study is Cava. Produced in the northeast corner of the country, it’s a sparkling wine that derives its name from the Catalan word for the cave-like cellars where the wine is stored during fermentation. Cava is an ideal wine with which to test the electronic tongue palette because types are categorized according to the amount of sugar added: ‘brut nature’ only has residual sugar while ‘sweet’ has at least 50 gL of sugar. ‘Extra brut,’ ‘brut,’ and ‘extra dry’ have intermediate and increasing amounts of sugar. That a single ingredient can be used to distinguish between the different types makes the task feasible.

The electronic tongue was created by the Group of Sensors and Biosensors at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Just as with a real tongue, the biologically-inspired electronic tongue is activated by binding to tastant molecules – in this case sugar molecules. It’s an array of voltammetric sensors that sends an electronic signal with a particular pattern that corresponds to the sugar concentration. Like the electrical signals passed on through neurons from the tongue to the brain, the signals generated by the electronic tongue have to be interpreted. For that the group used an artificial neural network that mathematically models biological neural network function. Just like real neuronal networks, the artificial network needs to learn to do its job correctly. The scientists, led by professor Manel del Valle, put the system through repeated training trials so it could correctly associate network patterns with sugar concentrations and type of wine. De Valle explains to the Daily Mail, “It’s a complex training system. You need to show it samples – teach it like you would a child and, once trained, it tells you what a new sample looks like or resembles. Then it can be trained for almost any situation.” At the time they published their paper the electronic tongue successfully discriminated three of the Cava wines. They plan to continue training until they can identify all types of Cava on the market.

So why the need for an electronic tongue? Their intention is not solely to threaten the job security of human sommeliers, but to improve winemaking by detecting defects during the wine elaboration process.

The UAB group aren’t the only ones using robotics to emulate human sensory function. Hossam Haick at the Israel Institute of Technology has created an electronic nose. But rather than assessing a Cava bouquet it acts as a breathalyser for detecting cancer. Because of the risk of deadly leaks aboard a space shuttle the Jet Propulsion Laboratory has developed ENose which detects the concentrations of select chemicals to which it has been trained. Both of these are great examples of bio-inspired design outperforming biology. Even though we don’t know what compounds are specifically produced by tumors, Haick’s electronic nose can still sniff the tumor out. This is due to the fact that the computer-processed chemical signature of a tumor-exposed breath will look different from the signature of a healthy individual’s breath. Human’s are incapable of detecting the tumor-specific odorants (dogs can, however). And JPL’s ENose has a dynamic range that’s far greater than that of a human nose.

Today’s humanoid robots are already equipped with some of the best available visual, auditory and tactile sensory capabilities. When electronic noses and tongues become more generalized no doubt they’ll be added to the robots’ sensory repertoire.

“Taste this. Tell me if it’s bad.”

The applications are endless for an efficient, high-throughput chemical analysis system. I know a lot of researchers who would love to never have to do another labor-intensive and inefficient mass spectrometry. I can also see a use for electronic tongues in materials manufacturing. From the detection of disease, air quality maintenance, and making a finer glass of wine, the young technology can only get better with age.

[image credits: RSC and UAB]
image 1: Nice Bouquet
image 2: Diagram

Foxconn announced it will be adding 1 million robots in the next three years. Is human labor on the way out?

Cheap labor isn’t cheap enough for the world’s largest electronics manufacturer. Terry Gou, the CEO of Foxconn recently told employees that they would be replacing human workers with one million robots over the next three years. These robots would handle many basic manufacturing tasks such as spraying, welding, and assembly. Foxconn is based in Taiwan and has nearly 1.2 million workers, the vast majority of which (~1M) live in China, but it’s unclear how many humans would be losing their positions during the switch. Even if robots are used to augment production rather than completely replace people, we’re looking at a major shift in the industry. Contracted with Apple (it’s rumored Foxconn makes the iPad2), HP, Dell, Nokia, Sony, and many other top brands, the electronics giant is singlehandedly responsible for nearly half of all such technological production in the world! If Foxconn switches from cheap Chinese labor to robots, can the rest of the world be far behind?

According to Xinhua News, Gou’s comment was made at a company dance party last week. (Way to kill the mood, Gou.) Without a formal press announcement, it’s unclear how drastic the cuts in human labor will be, though Gou said the move was intened to “replace some of its workers with 1 million robots in three years to cut rising labor expenses and improve efficiency.”

Those rising labor expenses come in the form of bad press as well as actual financial costs. Since 2010, the world news outlets have been reporting on a ‘rash’ of suicides among Foxconn’s Chinese workers, supposedly due to harsh conditions, long hours, and low pay. Last year, Gou announced that the number of suicides (roughly 18 in 2010 alone) were well within the statistical expectations for the company (as compared to general rates among the Chinese populace). Continued tragedies surrounding Foxconn’s factories in China, however, continue to link the electronics giant to poor labor practices, as this more recent IDG news clip attests:

Terry Gou’s recent announcement, then, may be a political statement as much as a business plan. Tell us our working conditions are too harsh on people…well then we’ll just remove the people. Howda you like dem Apple(iPad2)s?

No matter their rationale, the shift in workers is a gargantuan overhaul. Currently Foxconn only has around 10,000 factory robots in use, but somehow plans to increase that figure to 300,000 during 2012 and up to 1 million in 2014. That seems like a herculean task, though not impossible. Foxconn has also already announced plans to increase mainland China workers to about 1.3 million by year’s end. If both projections are correct, it looks like Foxconn will be growing in both human and robot workers, or perhaps using traditional labor as they continue to increase their automation. Either way, the company clearly means to stay at the top of the global electronics market.

As their yearly revenue shows, Foxconn is the biggest name in the game, with a reputation for increasing their production rates at incredible speeds. Their compound annual growth rate has been over 50% for a decade. If they think increased automation is the way to maintain that growth, you can bet others will want (even need) to follow suit.

Finding the cheapest and most efficient labor has always been one of the key ingredients of success in manufacturing, so if Foxconn is aiming to replace or augment its workforce with a roughly equivalent number of machines in just three years, it’s a good indicator that the world as a whole may be moving in that direction. We’ve certainly seen many examples of modern factories where automation has removed a great majority of human workers from the floor, and even cheap labor markets will often see machines and humans working side by side to increase efficiency. As Foxconn follows through on their three year plan, they’ll give the world insight into the best ratio of man to machine to optimize production. Foxconn may add 1 million robots, but still keep the majority of its large human workforce and use the massive increase in output to keep up with the equally massive global demand for cheap electronics.

Yet whatever ratio of human/robot labor Foxconn adopts, you can bet that in the long run the percentage of people in production is only going to decline. As machines become more sophisticated, and associated costs of humans (medical expenses, lawsuits, etc) continue to rise, robots will make more sense for a great many repetitive tasks. In essence, the world’s largest electronics manufacturer may have essentially declared the beginning of the end for human labor in the factory.

What will that mean in the years ahead? It’s possible, as US robot makers have maintained recently, that the shift towards automation will bring employment back to post-industrial nations in the form of higher-end jobs. It’s also possible (perhaps likely) that citizens may struggle during the transition from human to robot labor even as economies thrive, leading us to more “jobless recoveries”. Martin Ford, in his book The Lights in the Tunnel, argues that the move to a robot based economy will ultimately require enormous shifts in government and economics as the majority of humanity no longer performs what could be traditionally called ‘work’.

All of that, however, is purely speculation. What is certain is that Foxconn will do everything in its power to keep providing cheaper electronics to the world’s leading brands. In the near term, that just means more inexpensive computers and mobile phones. Hopefully, however, this announcement will fuel a more public and substantive debate on the importance of automation. Media coverage in traditional news outlets has been disappointingly short sighted and uninspiring when it comes to facing the (possible) crisis that global adoption of automation may create. This is a topic that effects us all. While factories were among the first to become automated, law firms, news agencies, call centers, and dozens of other industries will soon be replacing/augmenting human labor with AI software. We need to be asking ourselves tough questions: How do we make that transition as painless as possible? What can we do now to lay down the foundation for future generations where the majority of work is automated? Where should we invest our capital to ensure the best returns when robots finally rule the world?

…if you have an answer to the last one, let me know.

[video credit: IDG News]
[source: Xinhua Net]

The speedy Stepper 3D is sure to test the field at RoboCup 2011 this July.

If you’re going to get past the Christiano Ronaldos of the world, you’re going to have to run fast. In all probability the developers of the Stepper 3D humanoid robot at Tsinghua University aren’t setting their sights quite so high, but the new robot’s walking speed should have its fellow competitors at this year’s RoboCup shaking in their aluminum alloy footplates.

The video below was released by Tsinghua University’s Robotics and Automation Laboratory and shows off Stepper 3D, the latest from their Robot Walking Group that they plan to enter in this year’s Robotic World Cup Initiative. The Initiative–or RoboCup–is an annual conference that pits internationally-grown robot competitors against each other in a soccer tournament. Everyone knows you need speed on the soccer field, and that’s what Stepper 3D has along with agility and balance. As you’ll see in the omnidirectional walking demonstration, Stepper 3D’s ability to change directions on the fly is impressive and it’s a major improvement over RoboCup competitors of the past.

The powerful gait is generated by a parallel double crank mechanism with 10 degrees of freedom for each lower limb. The technology for Stepper 3D was developed with a torso-less version called Stepper Senior. Showing off its omnidirectional skills in the next two videos, Stepper Senior can clock speeds of 0.65 meters per second. The first time I saw the video I was struck by how human the motions appeared. The smoothness of the gait is a–pardon me–big step forward from the stilted jerks of most bipedal robots. The robots of the future will need to walk as they help us at home and at work, and as they help the disabled and the elderly. The smooth, human-like gait tells me that progress is being made at least on flat surfaces.

I can just picture one of the Steppers 3D getting the ball on mid-stride and dashing down the sideline past his opponent who–walks slower.

Okay, the action’s not going to be blazing fast. For now humans are still faster. But Team Tsinghua is definitely going to need to step up their game as they didn’t fare so well the last time they showed at RoboCup 2009. Their band of TH-MOS robots got destroyed 10-0 by the German-built FUmanoids. The FUmanoids, of course, are nothing to sneeze at as they’ve placed second in the last two RoboCups. I wonder if the FUmanoids or other competitors have similarly been infused with a sudden pep in their step. Maybe they haven’t and Team Tsinghua released the videos to send a message as a form of robot developer trash talking but instead of something like Kevin Garnett shooting off at the mouth it’s a video of robots walking really fast.

I love the idea behind RoboCup: using the game of soccer to develop robotics and promote science and technology. The robots operate autonomously during play, utilizing programs that determine how they will find the ball, control the ball, and score a goal. The games are also fun to watch. This year’s contest takes place in Istanbul between July 5 and July 11. The great thing is that RoboCup is just one of several ongoing competitions that use competitive soccer as an arena for robotics development. They’re great systems to competitively tap the creativity and genius of developers.

RoboCup’s ultimate mission is to generate robots that can beat humans at a soccer match by the year 2050. I agree with fellow Hub writer Aaron Saenz, however, that by the time the robot footballers are capable of beating humans, soccer play will be the least interesting of their skills. Although, getting past Chrinstiano Ronaldo for the first time would definitely make headlines. Heck, it may very well impress his girlfriend. That, undoubtedly, would be another first for robotics developers.

[video credits: HelloMac720 via youtube]
video 1: Stepper 3D
video 2: Senior Stepper 1
video 3: Senior Stepper 2

One click and it appears on your doorstep, brought to you by the logistical marvels that are Amazon.com's fulfillment centers.

What do you do when the CEO wants you to build a delivery system for pretty much anything that will fit in a box–a really big box?  It has to be accurate and deliver in a timely fashion–and you’re going to do next day deliveries.

To millions of customers.

That’s the challenge faced by the engineers of Amazon.com’s warehouses or, as Amazon calls them, fulfillment centers. With 47 fulfillment centers and nearly 18 million square feet of warehouse space worldwide, Amazon is the world’s largest online retailer. The following are a few videos that offer a peek into the fulfillment centers behind the website.

The first video takes us nicely through the different stages of a day in the life of an Amazon product. Hundreds of thousands of products come in and go out every day–millions per week. Upon arrival, the products are scanned into a computer which automatically updates the inventory reflected on the website. They’re then placed in the warehouse, waiting to be dispatched when they’re ordered. The “pickers” receive their orders electronically then push carts down literally miles and miles of aisles, locate the items and scan them. Following scanning, the item is taken to a packing area where the items are rechecked and then finally packed. Once the orders are packed into those boxes with the little smiley faces on them, they’re placed onto one of a multitude of conveyor belts snaking through the center and whisked away to the dispatching area.

As you see in the video, the conveyor system “knows” exactly what specific area/truck the packages are to be sent to–they magically veer off at just the right moment. From looking at the video, it seems as though they’re placed on different pieces of cardboard somehow marked according to their destination. The platform tilts at just the right moment, dumping its cargo down a slide. From there the boxes are loaded into trucks and on their way to a front door near you.

It’s a logistical tour du force. The Denver Airport baggage handling system would be jealous.

Amazon has their own teams of software developers that work constantly to find faster and more efficient ways to get that iPod off the shelf and to your front doorstep. The proprietary software tells the company what it needs to order, where it should be stored, and what the price should be set at.

Watch the Today Show’s look into an Amazon fulfillment center in Phoenix, Arizona, which is 600,000 square feet. Like a group of marathon runners the employees are run through a calisthenics program before starting their day’s work. That’s not such a crazy analogy. Amazon workers are on their feet 8-10 hours and walk 10-15 miles per shift.

This next one’s my favorite. Compared to the first two videos, the warehouse–excuse me–fulfillment center in the UK is super high tech. And it’s a pretty awesome video put together by David Levene of The Guardian.

Internetretailer.com reports that Amazon will increase its total warehouse space by 40% in 2011, bringing it to 24.5 million square feet across 53 centers around the world. That’s a far cry from the small home-run business in Seattle that started it all. Back in 1994 there were no fulfillment centers, just three Sun workstations run from a garage.

There’s one last (surprisingly popular) video. Apparently not all Amazon employees are in such a hurry. This one found time to videotape (for three full minutes!) a box that just…couldn’t…quite…make it up the conveyer belt.

I hope it wasn’t your package.

[video credits: thdathy, theFrontguy, TheGuardian and bobodacortesurrealis via youtube]

video 1: thdathy
video 2: theFrontguy
video 3: TheGuardian
video 4: bobodacortesurrealis

Two 510 PackBots enter one of the Fukushima Daiichi reactors damaged by the March 11 earthquake to find radiation levels were too high for humans.

The trend to put robots in harm’s way, instead of humans, continues. On April 17th a pair of robots entered two reactor buildings of Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi power plant–the plant most severely damaged by the March 11th earthquake. Their job was to determine whether or not the plant was safe for reentry by human repair crews. The robots confirmed what Japanese officials feared: radiation levels were way too high for humans.

The robots used by the Japanese officials were a pair of 510 PackBots. Built by iRobot, the Bedford, Mass. company that makes the Roomba vacuum cleaner, PackBots are already being used by U.S. forces to carry out dangerous operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. PackBots have helped save soldiers lives by neutralizing roadside bombs, car bombs, and other improvised explosive devices (IEDs); they screen vehicles, buildings and people, and they search through high-risk structures such as buildings and sewers.

Upon request by Japanese officials, iRobot sent over a pair of PackBots to help in the “war zones” of crippled nuclear factories. The company modified its 510 PackBots to better investigate the ruined factories, outfitting it with the company’s full hazmat gear: an array of sensors able to detect air oxygen levels, temperature, gamma radiation, as well as hazardous materials and chemicals. The PackBots’ lightweight frames–between 48 and 60 pounds–allow them to nimbly navigate factory debris. Precise control of the manipulator arms enable controllers to adjust equipment or objects inside the plant. The robots are also fitted with a camera that sees in either visible light or infrared and streams the images through a fiber optic cable to a control team safely located hundreds of feet away. In addition to the radiation readings, the video data will allow repair teams to map out salvage strategies for other, heavy-lifting robots as well as for human crews.

After pushing their way through the outer doors of reactor buildings Unit 1 and Unit 3 the PackBot pair collected and analyzed air samples. The news was not good. Radiation levels were 49 millisieverts per hour in unit 1; in Unit 3 they reached 57 millisieverts per hour. To put that into perspective, workers in the U.S. can legally be exposed to 50 millisieverts per year and radiation sickness occurs at 1,000 millisieverts, according the associated press. Prior to the earthquake the radiation limit for Japanese workers was 125 millisieverts. Japanese authorities doubled the limit after the earthquake to 250 millisieverts per year. But even at the increased limit workers at Fukushima Daiichi would absorb their year’s worth of exposure in just 5 hours. The video below shows some great footage from the PackBots as they maneuver inside one of the debris-strewn reactors.

With more than 3,000 PackBots in military and civil service around the world, the 510 PackBot is one of the world’s most successful battle-tested robots. Behind its versatility is its capacity to accommodate a wide range of payloads and sensors, including manipulators, all of which are controlled by iRobot’s Aware 2 intelligence software that allows for modular, mission-specific configuration.

The PackBots are joined at Fukushima Daiichi by two other types of robots: two 710 Warriors–also made by iRobot–and a more rugged robot called Talon, created by a British defense firm called QinetiQ (QinetiQ’s American group, QinetiQ North America sent the robots to Japan). Like the PackBots, both the Warriors and Talons specialize in high-risk reconnaissance and the disposal of explosives and hazardous materials–they just do it with more muscle. The Talon weighs about twice as much as a PackBot and its not-so-delicate platform can be outfitted with ordinance from rifles to anti-tank missiles in combat theaters. The Warrior, also much larger and stronger than the PackBot, is able to carry payloads up to 68 kilograms (150 pounds). iRobot engineers attached an arm to the Warriors that is capable of dragging a fire hose and potentially positioning it to cool off the hot reactors. A Warrior can also carry a PackBot, which comes in handy if the PackBot needs to be placed through a raised target such as a window.

Even with the brawn of the Warrior and Talon robots, the capacity to move objects inside the factories without human help is extremely limited. Nevertheless, given the high levels of radiation any amount of removal is precious. Japanese safety officials are hopeful that the robots can get rid of some of the contaminated water and other debris before having to send in their crews.

The Fukushima Daiichi robots are the most recent examples of the ever-increasing reach of robotic helping hands. As was the case for the PackBot, Warrior, and Talon, modern warfare has been the main proving grounds for removing humans from danger and replacing them with robots. The most extraordinary example as of late is the U.S. Navy’s X-47B, an unmanned aerial vehicle with strike capabilities. Northrop Grumman’s Global Hawk drone is being used to take crucial video in the radioactive skies above Fukushima Daiichi.

Sitting on the rim of the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, Japan’s high risk for earthquakes and volcanic eruptions has given rise to a country with an emphasis for natural disaster rescue technologies. On the other side of the Ring, California too is developing technologies to prepare for the inevitable. In natural disaster as in war, robots are already rapidly stepping up to the front lines so we don’t have to. In the future we’ll see them grow even more integral, and we’ll see even more human lives be saved.

[video credit: IDG Communications via youtube]
video: IDG Communications

FRIDA may not have a head, but otherwise it's a good stand in for human workers.

If a human worker can do it, why not a robot? Swiss robotics giant ABB recently unveiled a new concept robot that showcases how the company is aiming to have humanoid machines work side by side with people in manufacturing environments. FRIDA is a headless torso with two arms, each with seven degrees of freedom and a wide range of motion. Roughly the size of a small human, FRIDA can perform many of the same tasks as a two-armed person, yet its servos are gentle enough, and its sensors smart enough, to keep it from causing injury to any biological coworkers that run into it. Check out the robot’s capabilities in the demo video below, followed by some great pics. While it’s still only a concept piece, there’s little doubt that robots like FRIDA could replace many of the remaining human workers in factories. The only question is if/when these robots will be available and cheap enough to be purchased by small scale manufacturers around the world.

FRIDA, which stands for Friendly Robot for Industrial Dual-arm Assembly, represents what most industrial robots aren’t: light weight, padded, adaptable to multiple assembly lines, human-safe, human-sized, human-shaped, and (supposedly) inexpensive. ABB’s strategy seems to be to make FRIDA as human as possible. It has the same basic shape and range as a small adult, the same number of degrees of freedom in its arms, and can be connected to vision cameras to give it optical awareness as well. This theme continues into aesthetics. Most ABB arm robots are big and orange to signal their danger to passing humans. FRIDA was purposefully designed to be light colored and approachable.

Rather than custom installations, each FRIDA would be able to fit into new situations as your business required. Sort of the industrial robotics equivalent of a wild card. ABB claims that, “normally, no safeguarding or enclosing of any kind is required, which allows for very fast installation, commissioning and relocation.” According to ABB’s concept, you could pick FRIDA up, move it to a station, get it to perform a task and then move it to a different station to complete other work. A single robot with multiple applications around the factory, or a fleet of such robots at your disposal – it’s up to you. And because it can operate alongside humans without injury, factory owners can find ways of combining human and robot labor in the same workspace – dropping in machines as human replacements where possible without having to convert the entire line.

This new approach is suited to the areas where traditional industrial robotics have yet to infiltrate: low-capital small scale manufacturers whose products are labor intensive and not easily automated at every stage. (There’s also possibilities in large capital endeavors that still require human labor – like memory card assembly.) If FRIDA can successfully conquer this niche it will be opening up a huge number of new businesses (or parts of businesses) to automation, which is why it’s so understandable that ABB is pursuing this avenue of research. As we’ve discussed before, it seems like Rodney Brooks is aiming for the same niche with his new company, Heartland Robotics.

Of course, it’s still not clear which company will be the first to move beyond concepts and promises to an actual robot that any business can buy. FRIDA is a great concept, but hasn’t gone beyond the pilot phase. In these trials ABB admits that “tray handling and bin picking remain challenging operations for the robot.” In other words, it’s not a one-to-one replacement for humans even in stereotypical repetitive tasks. While ABB claims FRIDA will be easily programmable and adaptable to new situations, they haven’t given any details as to how that programming will actually work. Will it require a laptop, or could you simply show the robot what to do? We also have no idea about what the final price for FRIDA will be. Until ABB clears up these questions there’s no telling if FRIDA will be a new industry defining standard or a flop.

Yet I’m very certain that robots will continue to infiltrate all levels of manufacturing. Human labor is relatively expensive compared to the long term costs of automation, even in historically cheap labor markets like Asia and South America. Any task that is repetitive is essentially up for grabs, and it’s only a matter of time until robots get cheap and smart enough to take up those tasks. While ABB, and the robotics industry as a whole, sees this progress as job creating and economically positive (by increasing productivity and keeping manufacturing local), the debate over automation rages on. Rightfully so. Take a good look at FRIDA in the pictures below. No head, just a pair of smart arms that can do things over and over again without stopping. To many businesses that’s the perfect assembly line worker.

FRIDA can work in groups...

...or with humans.

It's easy to lift...

...and install.

It can handle delicate work...

...over a wide range of motion.

[image credits: ABB]
[video credit: ABB via TheRobotCity]
[sources: ABB]

Human pharmacists can only watch as their robotic replacements steal their beloved pill sorting tasks.

A new pharmacy supplying medicine to the UCSF Medical Center is currently under the control of a handful of Swiss and Canadian robots that won’t let the pharmacists handle the medications directly. Housed within a highly secure and sterile environment, the robots unashamedly dispense oral and injectible medications free from meddling humans and their contaminants. To date, they have prepared and processed more than 350,000 dosages without error rendering the pharmacy staff’s counting skills useless. As the following SmartPlanet video shows, these robots are full of pill-counting machismo:

Snarkiness aside, the UCSF Automated Pharmacy is chock full of awesomeness, providing numerous benefits to pharmacists, doctors, nurses, and, of course, patients. It is truly a state-of-the-art facility churning out 10,000 doses a day that has raised the bar for incorporating robotic systems into an environment that has been long overdue for automation. What has prevented full automation in the past is the high stakes of patient meds. A pharmacist’s job is clearly much more intellectually tasking than just bean counting, but medication management, including sorting and counting, has been one of the unmistakable signs of the pharmacy trade. While it makes for a nice picture to teach five-year-olds about people in their community, the unfortunate reality is that it is also a source of human error. Medication errors across the board are believed to cause over 7,000 deaths, injure millions, and cost $3.5 billion annually. Somewhere hidden in those numbers is the pharmacy factor, including inadvertent mixups, wrong dosages, contamination, and other unfortunate events caused by the error-prone human. As more and more hospitals are realizing, automating pharmacies is consistent with the goals of saving lives and money.

Organizing all medications into easily accessible bins allows the robot to fill prescriptions rapidly.

The new facility, located south of San Francisco, has been partially in operation since last October and was built to support the UCSF Medical Center and two area hospitals along with a new women’s, children’s and cancer specialty hospital that is planned to open in 2014. Though renovation of the old pharmacy was considered, it would actually cost $24 million to upgrade the old pharmacy, a whopping $9 million more than the new facility, and that doesn’t even include the cost of automation. The planners at UCSF wisely saw this as an opportunity to design the facility around the automation, which starts with finding the right robots for the job. They needed a system that would receive prescriptions for both oral and injectible meds, fill them, and deliver them to patients while minimizing the potential for mixups.

Now, over the last few years, multiple hospital pharmacies have been incorporating robots, so it is no surprise that the candidates for the facility were Swisslog’s $1.5 million PillPick and BoxPicker Systems and three Canadian RIVA robots from Intelligent Hospital Systems, each one costing about $1 million. These are veteran systems in the automata world. The PillPick robot that handles packaging and dispensing of doses is already installed at over 40 sites in the US, and the BoxPicker bot, which takes care of inventory control, has been used at hospitals like the Loyola University Medical Center since 2006. The RIVA robots, which stands for Robotic IV Automation, are increasingly finding their way into hospital pharmacies that have need of automated systems for intravenous dosages, especially cancer drugs that can be toxic or radioactive. Together, these robots remove pharmacists out of the mechanical aspects of the pharmacy, allowing them to use their brainpower on the patient side of their jobs.

While the installation of the robots will go a long way toward making the system more efficient and presumably lowering patient risk, the UCSF pharmacy planners wanted to really make the most out of the automated system. That means thinking about utilizing the ability of the robots to use barcodes. When a pharmacist enters the prescription into the computer, medications are selected and packaged into patient-specific bundles that are on a ring with all the meds tagged with barcodes. The bundle is then delivered to the hospital where it gets to the nurses attending the patient. The barcodes allow for nurses to track patient medications at the bedside. The medication on the ring are in sequence so that the nurse can follow the medication order to know when and how much of each to administer. The system is dependable, predictable and marginalizes human error.

As you can tell from the figure showing the automated process, the system will become even more streamlined once the pharmacy’s system is brought online in the hospitals they service. This will allow the treating doctor to enter the prescription into the system directly, eliminating much of the paper pushing and record keeping that clogs up offices and pharmacies.

The UCSF Medical Center’s vision for a 21^st century pharmacy, like the Forth Valley Royal Hospital in Scotland, is bold but they have accomplished something monumental in bringing together various robots to streamline the process from prescription to patient. The fact that no known dosing errors have occurred is a testament to how automated systems can handle mechanical tasks much more accurately and efficiently than humans. But the real transformation that is occurring is shifting pharmacists, doctors, nurses, and other supporting healthcare professionals away from the mechanical aspects of their jobs and enabling them to focus more on the more intellectually demanding, socially engaging and emotionally rewarding parts of their jobs: providing patient care. Let’s hope that the cutting-edge facility becomes mainstream in the not-too-distant future.

[IMAGES: SmartPlanet, UCSF]

[SOURCES: Intelligent Hospital Systems, San Francisco Business Times, SmartPlanet, Swisslog, UCSF]

The fully-automated X-47B touches down following its third test flight. It is hoped that the new age fighter jet will be touching down on aircraft carriers in 2013.

At first glance the X-47B might look like the portly little brother of the B2 Stealth Bomber, but among unmanned aerial vehicles it’s the new badass on the block your mom warned you about.

Built by Northrop Grumman, the X-47B is the Navy’s newest UAV, and the first true robotic fighter in existence. Unlike the Predator and Reaper drones currently in operation in the skies of Iraq and Afghanistan that are controlled by pilots on the ground, the X-47B is fully automated–it flies itself. From takeoff, to making turns, to landing, no human is involved–the entire flight is completely handled by the aircraft autonomously.

Watch the X-47B featured on the Military Channel in the following video.

We covered its historic maiden test flight on February 4th of this year. On March 1st it flew a second time–on March 4th a third. The second and third flights are impressive achievements for the Navy and attest to the robustness of the new jet. The tests bring the fighter closer to the goal of achieving aircraft carrier deployment and retrieval by 2013. Assuming it passes all the required testing the X-47B will represent a major achievement for U.S. aerial combat operations by coupling an intelligent, automated strike aircraft with the reach of their aircraft carrier fleet.

Modeled after the B2, its tailless design makes it more difficult to detect by radar. It has a ceiling of 40,000 ft, a 4,500 lb weapon load capacity, and it can travel at supersonic speeds. It also has a range of 2,100 nautical miles, approximately the distance between Washington D.C. and San Francisco and superior to that of the F-18 Hornet.

The initial test flight took the X-47B to a maximum altitude of 5,000 feet and a maximum speed of 180 knots. They also tested its ability to land at a precise point to simulate the requirements of hooking a wire on the deck of an aircraft carrier, albeit a completely still one­–it nailed its target perfectly. The second and third flights were meant to push the envelope, bringing the X-47B up to 7,500 feet and 200 knots on the second flight lasting 39 minutes, and 7,500 feet and 180 knots on the third flight lasting 41 minutes. They also tested the robotic aircraft’s ability to maintain a steady course in the face of turbulence and changing crosswinds–something its going to need to do very well if its going to be landing on the not-so-steady decks of aircraft carriers.

When the X-47B joins the ranks of U.S. military combat operations it will be joining a mechanized army of 7,000+ UAVs and 2,000+ ground robots already on the battlefield. Seen from a broad perspective, the X-47B represents just one step in the inevitable march towards automating war. With the advent of long-range missiles soldiers are already receding from the front. Soon they will be replaced with tireless, fearless soldiers who don’t need to eat or sleep and have absolute loyalty–unless they malfunction or get hacked by some computer whiz for which video games just don’t cut it anymore. War could be waged nonstop. How this tips the balance of power between “haves” and “have-nots” will be something for the whole world to watch.

[image credit: Northrup Grumman]
[video credit: Military Channel via YouTube]
image: NorthrupGrumman
video: MilitaryChannel

Thanks to SignDancer, waving signs on the road is now robot's work.

You’ve surely seen them: the men and women standing alongside a highway holding a sign that entreats you to “Act Now” and “Save 50%” at some local venue. Well, those people might lose their jobs to a robot…and they might be happy to do so. Karl Wondra is a California entrepreneur who has built simple robots that stand and wave signs on the side of the road. He calls them SignDancers. For those used to seeing the human version, these advertising mannequins can be quite attention grabbing – they’ve been discussed all over the internet. Watch one in action in the videos below. I was able to talk with Wondra about the SignDancers and his plans for the future. What I heard surprised me: he built them to save lives, he’s selling them as fast as he can make them, and he’s going international. Not bad for a simple robot with a simple job.

Here’s a quick video of the SignDancer in the back of a truck, ready to be deployed.

Here’s a different model in its natural habitat in Sacramento.

For those curious as to how the robot works, here’s a behind the scenes look. It’s little more than a basic motor and a mechanical guidance system.

According to Wondra, SignDancers will cost you about $1000 per month to rent. That’s roughly a third the cost of a human worker doing the same job (including things like liability insurance). Yet the savings are only part of the advantage of using the robot. The bigger issue is saving lives. Wondra, who owns an automotive glass company, was himself hit by a car. That tragedy was the inspiration for him building the SignDancer. Why risk a human life, especially in a low paying job, when a robot can do the same work?

A SignDancer man. Taking jobs and saving lives...a strange combination to be sure.

Humanitarian considerations aside, there’s little doubt that SignDancers could become a thriving business. Wondra is renting and selling the devices as quickly as he can make them. He has patents on their construction, and formed domestic and international companies around their rental/sales (SignDancer Pro LLC and Interglobe Advertising and Motion, respectively). Karl is also working on revamping the design so that it can fold, detach, or otherwise disassemble for easier (and cheaper) shipping around the world.

You wouldn’t guess just by looking at it, but SignDancers could be a (relatively) big business. Undoubtedly part of that is due to Wondra’s ingenuity, but I think these devices are another example of how the merest application of automation can transform even the simplest industries. I mean, c’mon, these are mannequins that wiggle signs, right? How big of an idea can that be? Well, big enough to put people out of work, save lives, and make some serious money.

Robots – never doubt them.

[image credits: Claycord.com, Rob Cockerham]
[video credits: SignDancerPro/Karl Wondra, Rob Cockerham]
[source: SignDancerPro/Karl Wondra]