Endurance Limit

Posted on August 7, 2015 by george

Going on forever has always been a dream of mankind

ENDURANCE LIMIT

In fatigue testing, the maximum stress which can be applied to a material for an infinite number of stress cycles without resulting in failure of the material

Mc Graw-Hill Dictionary of Architecture and Construction Copyright @ 2003

We reached a new milestone. The average age of registered cars in the US is now 11.5 years. This is probably the high water mark. There are a number of factors behind this assertion.
(1) The automakers are only required to stock service parts for 10 years. This means that it might not be possible to get repair parts for more than 1/2 the cars that are on the road in the portion of the vehicle life that they are needed.(Aftermarket repair parts are available for most high volume models- usually only about 2/3 of the cars made). Purchasing a used Smart car because it has an attractive price, may not look so smart after it is 10 years old and no service parts are available.
(2) The economy is slowly improving.
(3) Probably most significant is that the government imposed rapid fuel economy improvement targets. To meet those targets, the current crop of new cars is being built out of light weight materials that have not been in vehicle use for 10 years.

Today’s fuel efficient cars are made from lightweight materials that do not have a longevity history.
Picture by Joe Bain-Car Crash

As manufacturers we are attracted to the advantages of processing plastics. Most of the smoke and dirt associated with creating parts out of metal disappears. The lower processing temperatures of plastics opens the door for robotic “lights out” plants. The big disadvantage is that plastics do not have an endurance limit. When you wish to buy a car that has a 11.5 year average operating life, you hope that it is made out of materials that can withstand the millions of imposed stress cycles that it will see during that life. The cars that are on the road today have skeletons that are mostly made of steel. Steel has an endurance limit. It is possible to apply stresses infinitely below a certain value without damaging the part. Having just replaced a plastic rear door handle, I can report first hand that it is just a matter of time before the plastic car parts are operated beyond their life. Having started my career as a suspension design engineer, I suspect that the recent crop of record breaking recalls, such as the Jeep suspension recall, are just the the vanguard of the flood.

The average age of US owner occupied housing is 34 years. About one third of that housing is 40 to 70 years old. Fortunately, much of the pressurized plumbing in the oldest housing is steel. Aside from the tendency to rust, it will not fail due to the contained pressure. We have grown accustomed to the reliability of the copper plumbing in the majority of our housing. In my experience it is not 100% free of leaks, but they are rare. Plastic plumbing is the most common material for new construction today. In normal chicken and egg fashion we will not know which of the various plastics used in the latest plumbing will have the expected 70 year life until the time has past. Due to the fact that I am currently recovering from a complete separation of a plastic connection within a five year old sink faucet, I can confidently predict that some evolution of design and material is still required. (I witnessed a wide open pipe making a flood like this picture)

Water leaks can seriously damage a home

We normally shut off the main water valve to our house when we are out of town. This is a good thing in that the plastic ice maker feed line leaked upon re-pressurization the last time we returned. I wonder if there is an emerging market for an automatic water shut off valve to prevent leaks from going undetected while the home is unoccupied?

SaaS- Software as a Service

Posted on July 31, 2015 by george

You shall enjoy the fruit of your labor

We are migrating to an economy where more of our intellectual property is embodied in digital format. The practitioners who create this intellectual property are not second class people who are undeserving of the fruits of their labor. Even though the developers who created companies like Twitter were compensated, the venture capitalists who funded this style business model are running out of money. I am aware that many of these start-ups planned an advertising funded business model. However, the available total advertising dollars available means that less than 25% of them will survive. Since the first world nations elected to offshore their manufacturing, insuring that compensation is paid for intellectual property is even more important in reversing balance of trade deficits and eventual bankruptcy.

US trade balance

Enter the SaaS- Software as a Service business model. We are aware that most of the creation cost of intellectual property in digital form is spent making the first copy. Our modern communication and computer technology has reduced the cost of making duplicate copies to almost nothing. This has resulted in an elimination of more than 1/2 of the revenue stream in fields like music, motion pictures and pharmaceuticals. Having seen the fruits of the efforts to create intellectual property siphoned away, prudent planners choose to insure that they will retain the fruits of their effort. “Sometimes the questions are COMPLICATED and the answers are SIMPLE” Dr Seuss Geisel. People who need food on their table and roofs over their heads cannot afford to give away the effort that funds their life. New software will only be sold as SaaS. The development effort to create the first copy will be shared by all users because it will be the only copy. Unfortunately, SaaS is too late for Windows 95, Android, Office that already have generic copies in the marketplace. It is too late to close the barn door after the horses have left. Some of the first SaaS offerings will be in Internet Security. The current system of maintaining defenses on everyone’s computer will fade. The embedded back doors in the basic computer operating systems are the problem. Once the intruders use the back doors to gain control, the first action they perform disables the defenses. Users who wish to enjoy the benefits of secure data and reliable computer operation will discover that SaaS can deliver a service that isolates them from the web hackers and dangers using encrypted links. All communication to the unprotected web will be routed through the proxy server with a resident up to the date SaaS protection program. It is very possible that it will be necessary in the short term to add Wifi or internet dongles to circumvent the unsecured communication hardware that came with the users device. I can picture the entire industry migrating back to a new variation of its roots. In the very beginning, computer users used dumb telex machines to interact with time-sharing computers that housed all of the programs and data.

A Teletype Model ASR_32 by Jamie-Flickr

Industrial Demilitarized Zone

Posted on July 24, 2015 by george

Korean DMZ -picture by Lim Yeongsik search operation Korean armed forces

Just like the north Koreans are continuously trying to penetrate the demilitarized zone, there are hostile elements who use the world wide web as a corridor to attack. Since many historic IoT (Internet of Things) devices have very little protection, a browser program like Shodan can crawl the web and create map of connected devices. “Shodan’s been used to find webcams with security so low that you only needed to type an IP address into your browser to peer into people’s homes, security offices, hospital operating rooms, child care centers and drug dealer operations.”Kashmir Hill September 23, 2013 issue of Forbes. The real question is what do you do to protect your castle. it takes thinking in military terms to protect yourself from attack. I am not surprised that this picture of a turnstile was taken within a communist country. Their society has a lot more military control. It is curious that they think youth hostels are where the control is needed.

PERCo Turnstile Territory of student’s hotel St Petersburg by Bestar

Camouflage is a great military tactic. After you progress past having wide open door to your industrial control by implementing a second 10/100 gate with a guard post, it is helpful to hide your new entrance in plain sight. In programming terms it is called spoofing. The hackers who are using programs like Shodan ignore you if you appear to be an uninteresting application. A USB to 10/100 converter costs less than US $50. The USB driver programs can be configured such that the echo seen by the search engines looks like a baby monitor for example. The only other major requirement is to invent a quick staged authentication so that a DOS (denial of service) attack does not block the legitimate users from logging onto the system.

A simple USB to 10/100 converter can be programmed as a gate keeper

I can picture a time in the very near future when “lights out” manufacturing is IoT enabled. Current impediments such power outages can be remotely corrected if we can trust the remote access.

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.

Kludge

Posted on July 4, 2015 by george

Treasure is camouflaged in the digital jungle

kludge
[klooj]
noun – Computer Slang
1. a software or hardware configuration that, while inelegant, inefficient, clumsy, or patched together, succeeds in solving a specific problem or performing a particular task.

*definition from Dictionary.com

Whoever came up with this term must have been assigned to marry legacy IoT (Internet of Things) digital controls. Lots of ones and zeros show on the logic analyzer, with obscure or forgotten protocols for interpreting what they mean. In the arms race to stay ahead of the newest start-up, many of the companies who built the previous generation equipment with embedded internet communication no longer exist. However, even the first internet connected device is still a part of our IoT infrastructure. At the blinding communication speed of two bits per week, the transmitter shuts off the water feed pump every Sunday when the water tower is full.

We take running water out of our taps for granted

I used to worry about terrorists gaining control of our infrastructure using the internet. It is theoretically possible to inflict some serious damage and injury. My concern was based on the fact that early IoT devices have very little access protection. Now that I have integrated some legacy systems I realize the lack of standardization will be our saving grace. It is next to impossible to apply experimentally the right combination of ones and zeros without a guide.
I was discussing the evolution of CNC position encoders with the technician who was upgrading the control on one of our CNC machining centers. In mold making, the cutter path software that converts 3D models (3D printing) into physical shapes, originally used a layer by layer contour line approach. We would like to use the more modern climb milling software because it eliminates the contour lines. (and the hours of hand draw polishing to remove them) The upgraded control will position X Y and Z at high speed instead of just X and Y which is all the contour line method requires. The embedded computer in each axis position encoder sends a high speed serial data stream including error correcting bits back to the control. This is a far cry from the first GE (now Fanuc) CNC control retrofitted to a Buffalo milling machine that I first programmed – yes, there is still a lot of legacy stuff in operation out there. This control also had position encoders without the local embedded computer. It only lost about 2500 count per shift (about 1/4 inch of position) and it came with a switch to shut off the Z axis so that you did not mill too deep. We evolved through resolvers and glass scales and back to a smart encoder. Don’t expect to do “big data” analysis of this type of IoT real time data stream. Bad things happen if the transmission of position is interrupted.

Who will bridge the genetation gap?

On the hardware side it is very convenient to connect the 10/100 port of my laptop to the ethernet switch. In my latest control I added ethernet cables so that it can be used in convenient locations without exposing it to the open internet. The generation gap became painfully obvious on the software side. The desire of the Windows operating system coders to download daily changes exceeds the ability of any custom low volume application software creator to keep up. We are finding that the latest version of custom application software is obsolete before it is sold. In the short term we will keep the systems synchronized by isolating them from the internet once we solve the inter-connectivity issues. This solution does not work for every IoT software mismatch issue. In my mileage trakker www.mileagetrakker.com IoT connected car application, it is necessary to have a staff who continuously monitors the functionality of the links and keeps up with interfacing with each model and car maker as they evolve. This becomes part of the monthly charge which enables our trakkers to obtain a couple thousand dollars in annual savings. Many of my mileage trakker competitors have gone out of business because they got caught continuously rewriting their cell phone based code in order to keep up with a rapidly changing software platform.
The IoT is evolving like the power grid. New IoT applications emerge based on the cost and performance drivers. Each implementer chooses a variation that matches the application without regard for the broader inter-connectivity issues. This will generate employment for the people with the STEM skills to link users to the vast data pool.

Modern Boar Hunting

Posted on June 27, 2015 by george

“Catch Dogs (boar hunting)” by Tacosunday

The hunting of wild boar is an activity that comes to us from the middle ages. Wild Boar and their domesticated offspring hogs have been a staple human food. Animals were released into the forest and left to fend for themselves such that they could be hunted during the winter. Europeans moving to the new world brought this practice with them. Feral pigs were released into the wild in the US. Like many invasive species they thrived because they have no natural enemies. In US states such as Florida and Texas the feral pig population is growing in spite of our best efforts to cull a few hundred thousand animals per year. The intelligence of the animals is thwarting our efforts. Pigs travel in groups of about 15 called sounders. Due to the cooperation within the groups, traditional control methods such as trapping only catch a subset of the group leaving the rest to repopulate with their high birth rate. It is not about how many animals we cull. It is about
how many we miss and allow to go free.
Every problem is also an opportunity. Just as the buffalo were hunted to near extinction to feed the workers building the transcontinental railroads, the feral pigs could be harvested to feed the hungry in America. It just takes the technology to do it. Enter a commercial use for a drone.

A sentry needs a birds eye view

Unlike humans, sentry drones on solar powered charging platforms guarding the perimeter of our farms do not have gaps in their vigilance. Infrared cameras extend their surveillance to the night. As we are able to add more embedded computer intelligence to drones, it should be possible to emulate the ability of hunt dogs and herd the animals into traps or pens. In the overpopulated regions only trapping results in animals that can be used in our food chain due to rapid spoilage.
I am a firm believer that new technology will be adopted in a somewhat disruptive fashion. Technology like electric drones will open the door to new uses like sentry duty that historically were unaffordable.

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.

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.

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Category Archives: robotics