Buddy Bots: These Robots Will Guard Workers From Dull, Dirty and Dangerous Labor
He’s a coworker unlike any other — not afraid to wade into dangerous situations, take on boring tasks for hours on end or answer obscure maintenance questions you may have. “He” is really an it, a robot called the Guardian, which is part of a system of airborne, sea- and land-based robots being developed by GE to autonomously check assets like locomotives for damage, probe for abnormalities like unusually high temperatures and alert maintenance crews when it finds something amiss.
The Guardians and machines like it will be the newest in a growing fleet of smart technology taking on tasks classified as the “three D’s”: dirty, dull and dangerous. Some of their ilk are built like snakes to crawl through pipelines and machinery of all types to inspect their insides. Others are built to swim through irradiated nuclear reactor pools to look for damage and keep surfaces clean. Another variety is taking to the air, flying around refineries to inspect flare stacks.
Top image: GE’s is developing robotic perception software that will extend to a variety of robotic systems such as the one pictured up top. Image credit: GE Global Research Above: Stinger, which is a bit taller than an average human, is a steerable unmanned underwater vehicle that inspects nuclear reactor vessels. GIF credit: GE Hitachi Energy
A number of automation experts believe the world is now entering into a new era of industrial robotics. According to them, smart, mobile, collaborative machines are about to change the face of work. They see a future at hand where technicians, miners, plant workers, first responders, scientists and others are standing shoulder to shoulder with machines built to learn from human colleagues how to complete a new task, ask for help when they encounter a problem and perform assignments on their own or with teammates.
An Early prototype of GE Guardian Rail Robot — GE is developing a new platform to optimize the management and inspection of railroad assets. This will help increase reliability and the speed at which rail cars move through the rail network. Image credit: GE Global Research
“Robots are the next great industrial tool, and the human-robot collaborative team is where we’re heading,” says John Lizzi, who heads GE’s research lab on distributed intelligent systems. “The technology is already disruptive today, and it will become more transformational in the next five to 10 years as machine perception improves.”
This week, Lizzi and his team convened a meeting of the world’s leading roboticists at GE’s Global Research Center in Niskayuna, New York. Among those speaking were Rodney Brooks, the founder, chairman and CTO of Rethink Robotics; Chia-Peng Day, Foxconn’s robotics chief; and Red Whittaker, a prominent Carnegie Mellon University researcher who has been instrumental in putting robots to work in space, mines and automobiles. The summit’s goal was to focus engineers and thinkers on where industrial automation is going.
The term “industrial robots” conjures images of big and powerful arms installing windshields on automotive lines. These are mechanical brutes that found work because of their unwavering strength and ability to pick something up and put it back down in precisely the right spot every time. “For 40 years we’ve been making robot arms based on those of humans — just better, faster and stronger,” says Erik Nieves, the founder and CEO of startup PlusOne Robotics, who spoke at the summit. “But robots can be more than just better versions of the human arm.”
“Typically, robots are intimidating to people,” says GE’s Roland Menassa. “But people love these new collaborative robots because they can get close to them — the robot becomes a tool in their toolbox.”
These powerful machines are still integral to today’s manufacturing plants. But engineers see plenty of room for improvement. Robots are precise but limited, completing a very specific and narrow set of programmed actions to perform their work and demanding reprogramming from an expert if they need to do something new. They’re strong and quick, but blind to the world around them and bolted to the floor to remain stationary. They improve productivity, but are a danger to nearby humans so they must be penned in. Experts say the world needs a bit more brains to go along with robot brawn.
But advances in artificial intelligence and the decreasing cost and size of powerful processors and sensors are opening new horizons for robot capabilities.
The robotics team at GE Global Research are developing multi-robot teams that work together on various industrial tasks. Here, two robots work in tandem to perform field inspections. Image credit: GE Global Research
Roland Menassa, the leader of GE’s Advanced Manufacturing and Software Technology Center, says the revolution really got off the ground in 2011, when Rethink Robotics’ Baxter, the first commercially available collaborative robot, started working. Baxter was a machine with a friendly face whose swinging arms stopped as soon as they hit something unexpected. To reprogram it didn’t require a specialist, just a nearby employee who could show Baxter what to do by moving its arms along the path that they needed to go.
Menassa played a part in building Robonaut, the NASA humanoid robot that is currently vacuuming and pressing buttons aboard the International Space Station. He says Robots like Baxter are ushering in a new robotic future. “Typically, robots are intimidating to people,” he says. “But people love these new collaborative robots because they can get close to them — the robot becomes a tool in their toolbox.”
Originally published at www.gereports.com on December 9, 2015.
