The
mid-level and small industries all over the word have a lot of mundane tasks
which do not require speed and precision. These tasks include jobs like
loading, unloading, sorting, etc. The industrial robots have a good deal of
speed and accuracy but for a specific task and hence not much desirable by
these industries. Also the high cost of industrial robots is one of the factors
which cannot be ignored. So, these tasks are to be automated. This gave birth
to the idea of “COBOTS” or collaborative bots. A collaborative bot is basically
a robot which aids or guides or learns to do a repetitive task alongside human
workers. These tasks which are performed repetitively by humans tend to make
them – as they say “robots”. The two main obstacles for use of robots in
industries are ease of use and cost. If these barriers are crossed, then the
entire manufacturing industries will be revolutionized. Manufacturers have been
trying for a long time but had little success in having a wide range of
cost-effective operations for jobs in production which are high mix and low
volume. If an industry integrates a cobot to their workforce, they will allow
the workers to improve the quality of their product and hence make them gain a
competitive advantage over others.
A cobot named BAXTER is the main theme
of this article. Baxter was designed and built by Rethink Robotics founder
Rodney Brooks and his group of mechanical and signal engineers. Five years of
secretive development and US $62 million in funding went into effort before
Baxter became a reality. The funding providers were Bezos Expeditions and
Charles River Ventures. Brooks’ vision is that robots would be so inexpensive
that every factory would be able to afford one.
Baxter
is designed to do repetitive stuff like picking something up, putting it down
somewhere else while at the same time adapting to changes in the environment.
The workers are not at risk when Baxter is at work alongside them and hence is
inherently safe. Baxter is neither particularly fast nor precise but speed and
precision is not required to that great an extent for a lot of jobs. It has a
limited speed and lower weight (79 kgs). It has an artificial intelligence or
AI computer which allows it to learn tasks from a person which need not be a
professional in robotics. Any person can program a new task simply by moving
Baxter’s arms and following the prompts on its LCD menu which also acts as its
face. As compared to industrial robots having the same features which will set
an industry aback for hundreds of dollars, the Baxter is available at just
$25000. But, how is this achieved? How is the cost so low as compared to the
other robots? The answer lies underneath. Thousands of Baxter’s parts were
ingeniously engineered and materials procured from local sources to keep the
cost of its building under check. The other way the cost was cut down was
through its software. The software allowed Baxter to autonomously compensate
for its own mechanical irregularities as well changes in the environment which
prevented use of costly components.
As per
Brooks, there are about 300,000 small and mid-level manufacturers who can
afford a Baxter or two. Also he pointed out during the release of Baxter that
outsourcing manufacturing to China was not sustainable as the cost of Chinese
labor
All in
all the Baxter has one key feature: compliance i.e., it is flexible and can
control the forces it applies to things. Robots like Baxter but not exactly
similar have been made by robotics industries like Redwood Robotics, Kawada
Industries, Adept Technology, Barrett Technology, etc. Rethink Robotics will
open the platform to third party software developers which will make Baxter do
a lot of tasks which are not envisioned yet. On doing so, the robot will become
more efficient and could very well replace costly human workers. A similar
version of Baxter could be seen at McDonalds flipping burgers, pouring coffees
in big coffee outlets, folding T-shirts at a big cloth store like Levi’s and
the list is endless.
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