Display

Posted on July 17, 2015 by george

In the future hologram
displays will be commonplace

Indicator lights- The earliest computers borrowed from the machine control heritage and
included lots of indicator lights. These lights were mostly used to determine which vacuum tube had burned out and needed to be replaced. We are all familiar with the usefulness of indicator lights. The message displayed by these lights has become more sophisticated as we can afford more computing horsepower to embed decision logic behind the light

Indicator lights have been at the backbone of computers from the beginning
Univac Buffer by Travellerva
US Robotics Modem by Bortzmeyer

WYSIWYG- What you see is what you get- The first thing that you notice when you pick up a robot teach pendant is that there is no display screen. Once you are actually controlling the robot, there is no need to substitute a virtual display. Shigeo Shingo (Japanese manufacturing methods pioneer) would approve of the software that does use a screen display that allows preprogramming of robot tasks ahead of time without consuming robot operating time. Based on my experience, I can assure you that most pre-programmed routines will require touch up where the robot itself is the display.

The robot itself displays the command inputs

UX- user experience- Speedometers started as mechanical devices run by a rotating cable connecting to the drive shaft. A digital display was implemented when the dash was computerized. The automotive engineers wanted to advertise this conversion by creating a dash panel display that showed the speed as a digital number. This style of display was disliked by the buying public and a simulated bar style analog speed display emerged as the user preferred choice. Not every car design group has learned to utilize UX. You can make your own decision as to the sum of factors that resulted in the Fiat 500 flop in the marketplace. The digital speedometer shown is just one candidate. A joke applies. Two hikers in the woods hear a bear behind them. One opens his pack and puts on his tennis shoes. The other tells him “You can’t outrun a bear” He replies “I don’t have to. I only need to out run you” In true world class competitive fashion the pendulum will swing such that different auto manufacturers are the ones struggling to keep up. I remember when Lee Iacocca brought European front wheel drive back to America after test driving some Fiats.

Fiat 500X Speedometer
by Karlis Dambrans

Trends – The embedded computers can inform you with 100% certainty that your car is having a problem when you are stranded at the side of the road. Not very helpful. Those of us who spent a chunk of our lives inventing the advance warning systems, wanted to have the voice reminder system say “I told you so” when the car stopped because the user ignored the warnings we created. Not very helpful either. Our ability to predict impending failure is the combination of big data analysis of all 200,000,000 cars that have on board diagnostics and the ability to watch data trends within the ¼ petabyte of data each car generates in real time. At the other end of the big data spectrum is a one-of-a-kind control like I just finished installing. As a one-of-a-kind there is not a pool of experience to predict failures. However, this does not stop us from displaying the trends in graphic overlay format to maximize the visibility of impending issues. This allows the user to simultaneously digest data that would occupy many table pages.

The best HMI displays like the Visi-trak shown can overlay process data in real time

Context- Before we had modern CAD and Virtual reality, it was necessary to use sketches to communicate concepts. Having a better than average sketching ability, I occasionally got into trouble because I could make something that was impossible look like it would work. Many of the displays we use come to us from the game industry. Even though 3D CAD enables the average person to visualize the detail parts that we draw they lack the context of what they are used for. This is especially true for novel approaches. I use Carrara which is a video game software to combine my 3D equipment models with the surroundings so that it becomes possible to explain how they work.

Video game creation software can combine
3D model with a background to show context

Emerging displays. We are watching the evolution of even more powerful displays. Remote piloting of drones is even easier when the pilot has the same visual input as an on board pilot. This silicon valley driven technology will grow to even wider use when some of the flicker and headache causing instablity has been overcome by even more computing horsepower.

3D virtual reality glasses are an emerging display form.

OBD II – On Board Diagnostics

Posted on July 10, 2015 by george

Modern car repair is guided by IoT on board diagnostics

It is not surprising that the general public is unaware of the user invisible computers running their vehicles. It is a testament to the skill of the automotive engineering community that computer controls were adopted with the care and testing which enabled them to remain hidden in the background. On Board Diagnostics were included within these controls due to the magnanimous donation of thousands of hours to industry committees who hammered out the standards. Access to the “big data” is just the starting point. Many iterations of testing and development are needed to weed out the “false positive” alarms that shake our confidence in the “code”. We evolved from OBD 1 through OBD 1.5 to the OBD II standard that came into effect in 1996. The upgrade to the standardization of OBD II was the result of emission requirements but the industry implementation included useful features such as common connection hardware, standardized diagnostic trouble codes, and access to the computers.
Vehicle computer controls are very sophisticated these days. Artificial intelligence in the form of mapping is used to keep up with the vehicle processes in real time and adjust the response to accomplish better outcomes like lower emissions, better fuel economy, traction control, straight line stopping and smoother ride.

Real time controls choose their actions using a map like this NASA map which shows where people live.

New values are continuously stored in a digital map which is used to avoid computing from scratch when the same conditions occur in the future.
The embedded On Board Diagnostics are able to spot failures which are above even my talent and vision. More important than that is that they continuously track simple failures
like disconnected wires. My college roomate electrical engineer, stated that there are no electrical failures. There are only mechanical failures. Electricity will flow if you give it a path. On Board Diagnostics is like having a mechanic who rides with you every mile of the way watching for even the simple failures. Nothing is more frustrating than having an intermittent problem that clears up every time you schedule an appointment with the mechanic.
As an automotive engineer and trained auto mechanic, I championed the display of the diagnostic trouble codes in addition to the “idiot light” on the dash panel. Now that I have seen this IoT application evolve, I realize that simply displaying the diagnostic trouble code number (some cars use the odometer display to do this currently) is of marginal usefulness compared to simultaneously providing the technical data and links like YouTube instructional video related to the indicated code. Applications such as my www.mileagetrakker.com grow in the marketplace because most car users also need lots of actionable related information, like the nearby location of appropriate repair shops.

Capture your full mileage deduction

The IoT has emerged into the marketplace in true “overnight success” fashion. Volkswagen brought out the first on board computer with scanning capability in 1968. The car repair industry was disrupted and gas stations with repair bays were replaced by convenience stores. In the 1940’s and 50’s tape driven digital servo motor controls were added to drive the motions of milling machines. CNC machining centers (and their intranet linked CAD and cutter path generation and management software) now dominate, displacing most Bridgeport milling machines. (And the Bridgeport company itself) In 1968 Bedford Associates brought out the first PLC (now Modicon) for GM. As a result, historic relay industrial controls have been replaced by PLC computer systems with their embedded intranet links.

Will we ever see the first disruptive Internet of Things success? Now that I have seen the security agencies complain that encryption is blocking interception of ISIS phone conversations, my prediction is that it will arrive as an extension of the Intranet of Things. Most IoT applications, like home security, require that any intranet extension onto the web includes the emerging communication encryption.

3D Niche

Posted on June 21, 2015 by george

Most 3D printed materials have porosity like swiss cheese
Emmentaler Switzerland PDO Cheese image by Dominik Hundhammer

The first successful applications for 3D printed materials tolerate the porosity in the part. Materials from nature such as quartz are essentially porosity free because they were formed over millions of years. This is why we like quartz for kitchen counter tops because bacteria does not have any place to hide. I suspect that man could create porosity free materials if we are willing to wait a million years or so. Given that our life span is a lot shorter than that, pretty much all man made materials contain porosity. With that as a preamble, I am not surprised that 3D printed materials have significant porosity. One of my active 3D printing projects is a two piece case for electric controls. Normally this would be made as an injection molded plastic which is reasonably water tight. I was hoping that the Stereolithography process which uses a photo catalyzed liquid plastic would also be liquid tight. It turn out that only one side has a water tight skin as my 3D printing service company discovered by making custom chocolate candy molds. This matches my experience with other materials. We all get frustrated if the porosity in the case of a transmission causes a big puddle on our driveway. Having made a multritude of transmission cases, I can report that only the skin of the case is liquid tight.

A Transmission + A Seive for a Case = A Driveway Puddle
Oil Stain picture by Christopher Sessums
Seive by DaveMontPhotography
Automatic Transmission by Vestman

When we actually need reasonably porosity free materials it is currently necessary to apply the 3D printing process to creating the mold. We successfully manufacture low volume metal parts by 3D printing a mold made from glued sand. The surface tension of the molten metal retains the metal even though the sand mold is 20% air. A similar strategy is used by Invisalign to make retainers where the high density sheet is vacuum formed over 3D printed molds.

Vacuformed orthodontics are shaped over 3D printed molds by Smikey lo

It is possible to post process a part with porosity. One of my clients makes aftermarket automotive air conditioning compressors. Freon is a gas and is very difficult to contain. Most car owners would be happy if they never had to refill freon in their car AC system. Even though zero leaks is impossible, as a manufacturer it is our goal. Freon is also used to prevent explosions in high voltages switch gear. When a switch in Downtown New York lost its freon and an killed a hundred or so people ABB enlisted my client to solve their leakage problems because the impregnation cell I set up for them is best in class. Even with that level of impregnation talent, I doubt that the anaerobic sealer we use, can fix 3D SLS (Selective Laser Sintered) metal parts because the pores are too big. Other techniques such as burnishing can be used to create a local skin.

The Burnishing process can increase density
and make a pressure tight skin
Burnished bearing race picture by Jean-Jacques Milan

Burnishing is a cold working process. We use other cold worked materials like cold rolled steel because this process closes the gaps between the grain boundaries to make them pressure tight. The CNC machining centers ability to burnish in addition to cutting is not widely known, but that does not stop me from using this very useful technique.
Invisalign, SpaceX, and GE have discovered that there are niche 3D printing applications. Engineering the product as match to 3D printing, combined with choosing an application that is not affected by material properties such as density, has enabled their marketplace success

Additive Manufacturing

Posted on June 19, 2015 by george

Your morning coffee delivered in a cup made using additive manufacturing

The value of additive manufacturing has long been known to the human race. Early civilization discovered the benefits of layering clay to create the pottery containers that we use for every day life. Most of us do not give a second thought to the pottery cups that deliver our morning coffee. Linking a coffee cup to additive manufacturing might not be obvious even if you work in the factory that makes coffee cups. A coffee cup factory is all about making an identical copy for everyone. After a coffee cup is designed using additive manufacturing, it is given to the pattern makers. Their precision wood patterns capture the shapes and serve to guide the creation of molds and tooling. This became the backbone of industrial manufacturing until the 1990s when the mathematics within the CAD and CAM programs evolved to replace wood patterns.

Wood patterns have been replaced by 3D CAD models.

Some of the bits of craftsmanship such as the “S” shaped gear spokes that keep the gear round during casting cooling have been lost from modern designs. The STEM skills required for the shape definition task are unchanged even though the practitioners are now called CAD modelers instead of pattern makers. The commercially useful shapes still require corner radii and fillets. Fits, blends, dimensional accuracy and finishes are even more important. As we evolve to a mass customization marketplace more people with this skill will be required.
Convergence is a term used to describe the effect that advancements in computer technology is having on the communications industry. The line between telephone, television broadcast, radio, paging, security, satellite, cable, and internet companies is blurring. The same is happening in additive manufacturing. A robot arc welder heats material fed as a wire and fuses it in a predetermined position controlled by a multiaxis CNC control. Interestingly enough, this is the exact description of what happens in filament style 3D printing.

ROBCAD Offline teaching welding
001 by KOMATSU Ltd
Airwolf 3D printer by Neon Tommy

As we evolve away from one size fits all, it will become possible to manufacture locally the items that we want. Computer controls will add the necessary flexibility to the production equipment that we own and recognize.

Battery Assault

Posted on June 19, 2015 by george

by Reynardo Detroit Electric 1917 taken in Maffra, Vic

“I sell here, Sir, what all the world desires to have – POWER”, Matthew Boulton. From the infancy of the industrial revolution where Matthew promoted his steam engine, we humans wanted to encapsulate power in our hands. In the early 1900s electric cars running on lead acid batteries vied with the early unreliable internal combustion engines. Now, 100 years later, we mostly use vehicles powered by internal combustion engines, but a few remaining vehicles, such as lift trucks and Kiva robots, are powered by lead acid batteries. Lead acid battery life is still an issue. For example, Kiva (now Amazon robotics) robots, require brand new batteries every year.
Modern electronics ratcheted up the demand for portable sources of electric power. When I used my HP45 calculator, the nickle cadmium cells in the battery pod drove most users nuts.

HP45 by Daniel Sancho

As an engineer, I replaced cells in the pods as they died from military surplus. Never figured out what caused this highly variable battery life. Some died the first week, others went for a year or longer. Market pain of this level spurred heavy development effort, which resulted in the NiMH (Nickel Metal Hydride) battery. The highly toxic cadmium electrode was replaced by an intermetallic electrode, which in the most effective versions includes rare earth elements. This improvement tripled battery storage capacity (almost equaling lithium ion) A few marketplace knee jerk reactions occurred. Chevron bought the patent and blocked NiMH battery use in electric vehicles. NiMH use in hybrid vehicles was approved, because they still run on gasoline. The driving range of a Prius in electric only is about 1 mile. The Tesla end run using lithium batteries, probably caused the NiMH patent sale to BASF in 2012. The Chinese leveraged their short term monopoly on rare earth supply for political purposes.

Prius by JBleeker

When the Prius first came out the automotive engineering community believed that a short NiMH battery life would be its downfall. Slamming power in and out at variable ambient temperatures is exactly opposite to what is optimum for extending battery life. NiMH battery life proved better than our concern, but is still a factor. Smash and grab thieves currently target Prius battery packs, because they can get $1000 for a used pack when an owner is faced with a $2500 replacement after about five years of use.
We enthusiastically adopted the convenience of laptops when the intersection of lower power usage computer chips coincided with lighter weight lithium battery development.

Laptop Computer

Lithium batteries take advantage of the fact that lithium is the lightest metal. Unfortunately, all high density energy storage materials are a fire hazard. We have heard about lithium battery fires in laptops, planes and even Tesla cars. Our familiarity with normal cars causes us to forget that gasoline fires in cars are also very common. Most lithium battery makers are still focusing on electrode development in that battery life is still a frustration.
Based on a successful trial, Eos has just received third round funding for their grid scale zinc air battery. http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/eos-raising-25m-to-build-megawatts-of-low-cost-grid-batteries They are working with Con Edison to replace coal fired peaking power plants with batteries. It takes a whole lot of batteries.

Modular ZInc Air in Sea Land
picture of Big Bend Power Station by Wkniught94 talk
container picture by Marc Cromme, Denmark

In modern logistic fashion, they package their batteries with the control electronics in sea-land containers. A multitude of these containers equals a power plant. The Eos battery evolved from the zinc dry cell that every one knows. Hearing aid manufacturers needed an affordable light weight battery to create a comfortable unit. The design of the dry cell was evolved to gather one reaction agent from the air. Most people do not realize this is similar to a gasoline engine which burns 10 lbs of air for every one pound of gasoline. Gasoline engine cars would be heavy, like Tesla electrics (4000 lb vrs 2000 lb), if they also had to carry the air that is burned. Eos evolved the zinc air battery further to create a rechargeable battery with a long life. This innovation cut the cost of storing electrical energy in batteries by 50 percent. Most of the electrical vehicle manufactures have taken notice and it would not surprise me if all electric vehicle manufacturers use zinc air for some portion of their batteries.
Batteries are encapsulating power in our hands. The cordless drills, shavers, weed eaters, vacuums, lawn mowers, snow blowers that we enjoy, are just the spin off benefits.

Leaky Buckets

Posted on June 13, 2015 by george

It is hard to fetch water using a leaky bucket (bucket picture by Gregor Scheer www.gnu.org)

Most of us have been spared the chore of winding up water from a well. This task can be very tedious if most of the waterleaks from the bucket on the way up. This frustration gave us the word picture of a leaky bucket. Nature is a lot like a leaky bucket or herding cats. Every time we try to corral it into accomplishing a task, it dissipates our effort.
Sometimes our way of looking at a task clouds our vision as to how to measure efficiency. In the simple analysis, the hydraulic cylinders of an excavator efficiently deliver the applied engine horsepower to lifting the dirt out of the trench. Obviously the width of the boom sets the minimum width of trench that you can dig. The inventor of Ditch Witch wondered why you needed to dig a 12 inch wide trench to lay a 2 in diameter pipe. He invented a chain of buckets similar to a chain saw to slice a narrow trench. In my town they are adding in fiber internet using horizontal drilling. In true disrupting the disruptor fashion, efficiency is simply removing the dirt where the pipe goes saving all the restoration and inconvenience of trenching.

Ditch Witch picture USDA Photo by J M Villareal Horizontal Drill picture by FRAC

A light bulb is a much easier to understand efficiency example. Edison was extremely happy that his device generated light. The fact that it was a very leaky bucket changing 90% of the input energy into heat was of little concern at the time. Technology is all about corraling in nature. A 14 watt LED bulb can produce the same light as the original 60 watt incandescent bulb. Engineers notice technology details. The LED street lights that were just installed, no longer shine in my window affecting my sleep. Lean efficiency is all about concentrating the applied energy on the desired task.In this case the LED light is targeted at illuminating the street.

Energy efficiency is emerging in our lives

Computers are an even more dramatic example of how technology advance changes efficiency. Most of us have seen room size Univac Computers shrink into credit card size raspberry pi.

Univac by Matthias Kirschner at German Wikipedia
Raspberry Pi by cowjuice

Unlimited wants apply, we would like Dick Tracy style smart watches with one week battery life. The heroics of open heart surgery will disappear because stent are more effective. The operation was a success but the patient died from complications during the recovery.

Stent picture by Frank C. Miller

As we endeavor to support more people on a finite size planet, lean efficiency will be a controlling feature of our lives. We will learn that all losses from our leaking buckets are opportunities to improve.

Cobots

Posted on June 7, 2015 by george

C3P0 Model at Comic-Con by Ewen Roberts

Science fiction writers have given us a glimpse into the future. I can picture a time beyond my lifetime where we have advanced our robot technology to the point where a robot can be created in human form and work along side us. Certainly Star Wars caught all of our imaginations. The starting point for Collaborative Robots (COBOTS) was a lot more mundane. Early robots, like Unimate, were prone to deviate occasionally or drift from their programmed path. Our safety standards evolved to compensate for this short coming by enclosing them in locked bullet proof cages. Like wayward children, we had them play in their own sandbox. We were content to avoid joining the robots in their sandbox because most of the earliest robot applications were chosen because the robot was in a dirty and dangerous sandbox. The 6 axis electric robots that replaced the first hydraulic Unimates were more reliable, but still were less than perfectly safe. This history colored our vision of what a robot should look like. Innovation usually comes at us from the fringe, tearing up the “rule book” in the process. The Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner is a good example

First generation Roomba (Roomba is a trademark of iRobot) by Larry D. Moore

It doesn’t look like a robot. It doesn’t even look like a vacuum. As one of the early Cobots it could safely work side by side with humans without danger. Cats — We are less sure about them, based on some funny Youtube video showing how they react to Roomba vacuums. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mk4XB2wZqF4 This early cobot spawned a few commercial derivatives to tackle what my wife’s grandmother called uphill work. This is work like laundry that you finish this week, just in time to start again at the beginning next week. As a teenager I did some of that running an industrial floor scrubber for my aunt’s janitorial business. No matter how good a job you did cleaning the floor one night, the floor started just as dirty the next night.

T5 walk-behind floor scrubber by Tennant (left) and HydroBot floor scrubbing robot by Intellibot Robotics picture by Z22

The robotic scrubber does not consider this task a dead end job like I did. A new template for robots emerged. AGVs (Autonomous Guided Vehicles) sprouted into wide spread use. Their slow speeds and limited range of motions enabled co habitation of working space with humans.

Packmobile with trailer AGV, Egemin Automation picture by AGVExpertJS

It could be argued that the first versions of AGVs were not full robots because they simply tracked a wire buried in the floor. Evolved AGVs such as the Kiva robots that Amazon uses to accomplish same day delivery are full Cobots. Even though Amazon got a jump on the rest of the industry by the strategic purchase of Kiva, competition is beginning to emerge http://netonomy.net/2015/04/29/three-robots-that-will-change-ecommerce/. In much the same fashion that Roomba came in at the fringe, the need for a robot that could work side by side with a human ushered in the gantry style robot. The gantry has predictable X Y Z motions with hard end stops which eliminates the need for the bullet proof cage. The space advantage of a Cobot makes it my favorite choice when implementing an automotive cell. I am particularly proud of a jet engine turbine blade inspection machine that uses ultrasonics to detect cracked blades before they fail.

New Automation Ultrasonic Jet Engine blade
inspection machine

Honda thinks the same way and I was not surprised when I saw a gantry robot carrying cylinder heads between machining stations at their Alabama assembly plant. The electronics industry is faced with the same issues of mixing automated and human assembly. They also have adopted gantry style cobots for their surface mount technology

Internals of a Juki KE2010L 4 head pick and place surface mount machine. the machine is used to place electronic components that are soldered to the face of a printed circuit board rather than having leads go through holes in the board. The machine is loaded with standard 8″ reels on mechanical feeders (front right) and a tray of QFP microprocessors (rear center) Picture by Peripitus

Technology will advance to the point where we can build a C3P0 Cobot. It will happen as a step by step evolution. We are on our way. Currently in the lab are vision, tactile and capacitive skin collision sensors which will become affordable.

Modern Moats

Posted on May 25, 2015 by george

Herstmonceux Castle and Moat for TO6410 cc Dave Croker

Planners who were trying to safeguard valuables back in the middle ages discovered that it takes more than fortifications to succeed. This is especially true when the fortifications have secret doors that were installed by the builder. I suspect that the fortress defenders discovered that the addition of a moat also flooded the tunnels under the walls. In this digital age, the task of defending a company’s digital fortress is daunting. The magnitude of this task will only increase as more of our foreign-built devices become internet connected.

by Stan Schneider Real Time Devices

As revelations by Edward Snowden and others have demonstrated, the fortress walls of these IoT (Internet of Things) devices come with pre-installed secret doors. This fact has not escaped the thieves that exploit these weaknesses. In much the same way that Google crawls the web looking for home pages, a search engine named Shodan crawls the web looking for the hidden back doors http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/09/04/shodan-terrifying-search-engine/. Using this search engine to help them, I am not surprised that the thieves find that some of these doors are unlocked. So how do you go about installing a moat before the thieves make off with the crown jewels? What does a modern moat look like? The first moat of the electrical age was related to the high voltage wires needed to transmit power for long distance. Nickolai Tesla working for George Westinghouse developed the high voltage power system we use today. Glass insulators kept the high voltage from shorting to ground.

Sophisticated insulators stop the loss of high voltage power

It is very exciting when the salt we use on the road causes massive fires in the substations melting the conductors. Obviously the fuses blow, but most of us have also lost a TV, radio or computer because the high voltage finds its way into our electronics. The fragile electronics in our computer chips died regularly, until we discovered how to use light in the form of opto isolators to build a non-conducting moat around the processor.

light waves protect microprocessors from voltage spikes by Inductiveload

Light can also be used to protect the program running the computer from hacking and malware. Early in the development of microelectronics a type of memory called UVprom was invented. Bright ultraviolet light bathed on the chip erases the memory.

Ultraviolet light erases this chip CC by SA 2.5 ST Microelectronics M27C2568-12FI

The convenience of the electrically erasable chip has led to its wider use. In general, it is not convenient if spyware and malware are remotely added using the electrically erasable chip to steal the crown jewels. I suspect that the vandals of the middle ages would have liked conducting their raids without ever having to leave home. I believe that we will go back to locking in the operating program. It is promising to hear that Google is unveiling their Vault micro SIM card for a mobile phones. We will all be watching to see whether it actually improves security or is just to keep out every one but Google (and the NSA by hidden deal) http://www.cnet.com/news/googles-project-vault-is-a-security-chip-disguised-as-an-micro-sd-card/ This is probably why so many users cling to Windows XP (also named Windows NT) Daily web updates to fix the bugs in incomplete operating systems are a big gap in the moat we are trying to build around our data fortress.
In the early days of computing, many of us used time sharing. The derivative virtual machine adds one more level of security but it does not protect against back doors that were embedded in the parent operating system.

Virtual Marble Machine CC by Torley

I like playing video games, but if I am interested in data security I will go back to build and maintaining the moat. Windows NT is very stable and bug free operating system if is isolated from the web. Thinking in military terms it is better to have a mine field between you and the theives. We have all played minesweeper.

Memory with embedded “mines” can be built into the cables that connect to the internet

Remote probing is a lot more difficult if only a small amount of data is availaible at one time in a two directional buffer memory and random memory addressed are mined.
Currently 40% of the cost of new vehicles is software. Companies who wish to remain in business must take building a moat against the “Great Cannon of China” more seriously

Robot Vision

Posted on May 17, 2015 by george

Vision – The holy grail of robotics

We would like to have robots perform the tasks that we as humans do not want to do. Many of these fall into the heavy, dangerous, repetitive, precise, finicky categories. As humans we learned to accomplish these types of actions as little children, so we do not have a step by step roadmap on how to get this type of task done

The blind leading the blind
By UR INC Motoman SDA10 at Smith Springs Lab

Most of us who have implemented robots find that blind repetition of actions, however well conceived leads to less than desired results. Real processes are not perfectly consistent and real parts have tolerances. As engineers we normally try to compensate for the fliers that we have experienced, but new types of defects emerge in the global race to the bottom. For example it was only recently that I had to fight with bolts where the hex head was partially formed. This totally jams the automatic feeding and installation equipment. Dumb and happy. The robotic automation cannot cull out the defective parts which is a simple task for the humans that they replaced. Fortunately in this case, I included a proximity switch in my arm end that could be used for sorting.

Capacitive proximity switches detect objects before they are hit

It is possible to use a proximity switch to measure to an accuracy down to .001 inch. (high accuracy measurements have a significant time penalty due to multiple probe motions) I recommend including extra vision catagory features when implementing new robot installations. In this fast changing business environment it is highly likely that your robots will need to be taught new tricks before they are taken out of service. Small investments in sensors like $100 proximity switches can be very useful in shortening the reaction time to unforeseen process challenges. The Fraunhoffer institute is pioneering in the implementation of capacitive “vision” In the linked article by Dr. techn. Norbert Elkmann the usefulness of advanced sensing is explored. “Manufacturing has great need of robots with high load carrying capacity for human-robot collaboration. Since the potential risk for humans in the event of a collision is naturally greater than when robots are smaller, the use of robots with high load carrying capacity in the direct vicinity of humans requires smart sensor systems such as capacitive sensors that detect proximity.” http://www.iff.fraunhofer.de/en/business-units/robotic-systems/capacitive-sensors.html
As we continue to use robots to replace humans, It will be necessary to create robots that incorporate human sensory capability. Touch will be one of the first areas that changes. Since material handling is one of the primary robot uses, controlling the applied force is a requirement. We have all been frustrated with the robot gripper in the arcade game. It drops the prize at every opportunity. If we wish to use a robot to replace humans the gripper needs tactile sensors. This mimics human touch using a strategy similar the human it replaces. Nerve endings, concentrated in our finger tips, transmit a whole bunch of data down the arm

Grippers have evolved from the arcade version to the state of the art Tactilus Multi-vector Sensor – Sensor Products Inc

Just force sensors by themselves may not be enough. It may also be necessary to have individual finger motion control. Other tasks arer even more sophisticated. Simply having force sensors may not be enough to prevent impact damage. The Lexus like most modern passenger cars has a ring of impact sensors around the body. Even though rush hour feels like bumper cars some days, it is not very effective to wait until the sensor detects contact as a strategy for safe following in traffic.

by METRO66 Wheeler Dealer Bumper Cars
by Mariordo Driving Google Self-driving Car

As we look into the future of robotics, we will see a massive increase in the amount of data that is processed to accomplish the robot tasks. The current individual wires down the arm will be replaced by arm end processors and fiber optic links. Full vision control will occur in high volume premier applications, but cost limitations will result in selected use for other industrial tasks.

KISS

Posted on May 4, 2015 by george

KISS also applies to automation

KISS — Keep It Simple Stupid
Early in my career I was assigned the task of commissioning an $70,000 electric paint robot. Unfortunately at that stage of robot evolution, the seal design at the robot joints prevented it from painting more than the first part. The vapors shorted it out. What I learned is that it is more effective to tackle automating the simplest tasks first. Simple tasks take less investment to automate. Even though modern 6 axis robots can now handle painting tasks, combining them with required sophisticated guard enclosures places them far from the KISS category in my mind.
I was watching a 2 axis gantry “robot” carry engine cylinder heads at a Honda assembly plant in Alabama. Reminded me of a dog playing fetch with a stick. The jaws of the gripper opened and the human at the end was presented with the retrieved cylinder head. I install gantry robot transport systems for the same benefit, their simple motion and guards allow humans to safely work along side them. These robots do not care that I am comparing them to a dog. As Ada Lovelace wrote as her work began the digital age “The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform”

A Spaniel fetches a stick by Kleuske

Kiva robots are even simpler. They race to the other end of the warehouse and wait like puppy dogs for us to collect the item they have retrieved. All of this without the clutter of the rails and guards of gantry retrieval systems.
Moore’s law marches on. The cost of computers has dropped to the point where we can afford to automate even simple tasks. It is easy to write down date, starting odometer, location, finishing odometer and purpose for one business trip. You get pissed off enough to invent a better way when you spend a chunk of every Christmas vacation inputting a list of a thousand or so business trips so that you qualify to keep the $8000 to $9000 dollar business mileage deduction. I want to use the KISS principle to fix all the aggravations in my life.