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Robotics technology trends
By : Jim Pinto,San Diego, CA.USA
When it comes to robots, reality still lags science fiction. But, just because robots have not lived up to their promise in past decades does not mean that they will not arrive sooner or later. Indeed, the confluence of several advanced technologies is bringing the age of robotics ever nearer-smaller, cheaper, more practical and cost-effective.
Brawn, Bone & Brain
There are 3 aspects of any robot:
· Brawn：strength relating to physical payload that a robot can move.
· Bone：the physical structure of a robot relative to the work it does; this determines the size and weight of the robot in relation to its physical payload.
· Brain：robotic intelligence; what it can think and do independently; how much manual interaction is required.
Because of the way robots have been pictured in science fiction, many people expect robots to be human-like in appearance. But in fact what a robot looks like is more related to the tasks or functions it performs. A lot of machines that look nothing like humans can clearly be classified as robots. And similarly, some human-looking robots are not much beyond mechanical mechanisms, or toys.
Many early robots were big machines, with significant brawn and little else. Old hydraulically powered robots were relegated to tasks in the 3-D category：dull, dirty and dangerous. The technological advances since the first industry implementation have completely revised the capability, performance and strategic benefits of robots. For example, by the 1980s robots transitioned from being hydraulically powered to become electrically driven units. Accuracy and performance improved.
Industrial robots already at work
The number of robots in the world today is approaching 1,000,000, with almost half that number in Japan and just 15% in the US. A couple of decades ago, 90% of robots were used in car manufacturing, typically on assembly lines doing a variety of repetitive tasks. Today only 50% are in automobile plants, with the other half spread out among other factories, laboratories, warehouses, energy plants, hospitals, and many other industries.
Robots are used for assembling products, handling dangerous materials, spray-painting, cutting and polishing, inspection of products. The number of robots used in tasks as diverse as cleaning sewers, detecting bombs and performing intricate surgery is increasing steadily, and will continue to grow in coming years.
Robot intelligence
Even with primitive intelligence, robots have demonstrated ability to generate good gains in factory productivity, efficiency and quality. Beyond that, some of the "smartest" robots are not in manufacturing; they are used as space explorers, remotely operated surgeons and even pets ，like Sony's AIBO mechanical dog. In some ways, some of these other applications show what might be possible on production floors if manufacturers realize that industrial robots don't have to be bolted to the floor, or constrained by the limitations of yesterday's machinery concepts.
With the rapidly increasing power of the microprocessor and artificial intelligence techniques, robots have dramatically increased their potential as flexible automation tools. The new surge of robotics is in applications demanding advanced intelligence. Robotic technology is converging with a wide variety of complementary technologies-machine vision, force sensing (touch), speech recognition and advanced mechanics. This results in exciting new levels of functionality for jobs that were never before considered practical for robots.
The introduction of robots with integrated vision and touch dramatically changes the speed and efficiency of new production and delivery systems. Robots have become so accurate that they can be applied where manual operations are no longer a viable option. Semiconductor manufacturing is one example, where a consistent high level of throughput and quality cannot be achieved with humans and simple mechanization. In addition, significant gains are achieved through enabling rapid product changeover and evolution that can't be matched with conventional hard tooling.
Boosting Competitiveness
As mentioned, robotic applications originated in the automotive industry. General Motors, with some 40-50,000 robots, continues to utilize and develop new approaches. The ability to bring more intelligence to robots is now providing significant new strategic options. Automobile prices have actually declined over the last two to three years, so the only way that manufacturers can continue to generate profits is to cut structural and production costs.
When plants are converted to new automobile models, hundreds of millions of dollars are typically put into the facility. The focus of robotic manufacturing technology is to minimize the capital investment by increasing flexibility. New robot applications are being found for operations that are already automated with dedicated equipment. Robot flexibility allows those same automated operations to be performed more consistently, with inexpensive equipment and with significant cost advantages.
Robotic Assistance
A key robotics growth arena is Intelligent Assist Devices (IAD).operators manipulate a robot as though it were a bionic extension of their own limbs with increased reach and strength. This is robotics technology not replacements for humans or robots, but rather a new class of ergonomic assist products that helps human partners in a wide variety of ways, including power assist, motion guidance, line tracking and process automation.
IAD use robotics technology to help production people to handle parts and payloads, more, heavier, better, faster, with less strain. Using a human-machine interface, the operator and IAD work in tandem to optimize lifting, guiding and positioning movements. Sensors, computer power and control algorithms translate the operator's hand movements into super human lifting power.
New robot configurations
As the technology and economic implications of Moore's law continue to shift computing power and price, we should expect more innovations, more cost-effective robot configurations, more applications beyond the traditional service emphasis.
The biggest change in industrial robots is that they will evolve into a broader variety of structures and mechanisms. In many cases, configurations that evolve into new automation systems won't be immediately recognizable as robots. For example, robots that automate semiconductor manufacturing already look quite different from those used in automotive plants.
We will see the day when there are more of these programmable tooling kinds of robots than all of the traditional robots that exist in the world today. There is an enormous sea change coming; the potential is significant because soon robots will offer not only improved cost-effectiveness, but also advantages and operations that have never been possible before.
Envisioning Vision
Despite the wishes of robot researchers to emulate human appearance and intelligence, that simply hasn't happened. Most robots still can't see，versatile and rapid object recognition is still not quite attainable. And there are very few examples of bipedal, upright walking robots such as Honda P3, mostly used for research or sample demonstrations.
A relatively small number of industrial robots are integrated with machine vision systems，which is why it's called machine vision rather than robot vision. The early machine vision adopters paid very high prices, because of the technical expertise needed to such systems. For example, in the mid-1980s, a flexible manufacturing system from Cincinnati Milacron included a $900,000 vision guidance system. By 1998 average prices had fallen to $40,000, and prices continued to decline.
Today, simple pattern matching vision sensors can be purchased for under $2,000 from Cognex, Omron and others. The price reductions reflect today's reduced computing costs, and the focused development of vision systems for specific jobs such as inspection.
Robots already in use everywhere
Sales of industrial robots have risen to record levels and they have huge, untapped potential for domestic chores like mowing the lawn and vacuuming the carpet. Last year 3,000 underwater robots, 2,300 demolition robots and 1,600 surgical robots were in operation. A big increase is predicted for domestic robots for vacuum cleaning and lawn mowing, increasing from 12,500 in 2000 to almost 500,000 by the end of 2004. IBot Roomba floor cleaning robot is now available at under $200.00.
In the wake of recent anthrax scares, robots are increasingly used in postal sorting applications. Indeed, there is huge potential to mechanize the US postal service. Some 1,000 robots were installed last year to sort parcels and the US postal service has estimated that it has the potential to use up to 80,000 robots for sorting.
Look around at the robots around us today: automated gas pumps, bank ATMs, self-service checkout lanes，machines that are already replacing many service jobs.
Fast-forward another few decades. It doesn't require a great leap of faith to envision how advances in image processing, microprocessor speed and human-simulation could lead to the automation of most boring, low-intelligence, low-paying jobs.
Marshall Brain (yes, that's his name) founder of HowStuffWorks.com has written a couple of interesting essays about robotics in the future, well worth reading. He feels that it is quite plausible that over the next 40 years robots will displace most human jobs. According to Brain's projections, in his essay "Robotic Nation", humanoid robots will be widely available by 2030. They will replace jobs currently filled by people for work such as fast-food service, housecleaning and retail sales. Unless ways are found to compensate for these lost jobs, Brain estimates that more than 50% of Americans could be unemployed by 2055 replaced by robots.
Intelligent robots will be everywhere
The world of HAL and Data, of sentient machines, is fast approaching. Indeed, in some ways it has already arrived as humanlike machines increasingly take on the work of humans. As processing power increases exponentially, and as MEMS technology brings smaller and smarter sensors and actuators, robots are the breeding ground for future-generation products with new, varied and exciting applications.
Industrial robots
The vast majority of robots are used by the manufacturing industry, for repetitive tasks such as painting auto-bodies and simple assembly. Some 100,000 new robots were installed worldwide in 2000, nearly half of them in Japan, the biggest user. There were nearly 800,000 industrial robots in existence at the end of 2002 and this is likely to rise to almost 1 million by the end of 2004.
In the last decade the performance of robots has increased radically while at the same time prices have been plummeting. Today, manufacturing robots have a payback period as short as 1-2 years. In N. America, the price of robots relative to labor costs have fallen to 26, and as low as 12 if quality improvements are taken into consideration.
Sales of industrial robots have risen to record levels and there is huge, untapped potential for domestic chores like mowing lawns and vacuuming carpets.
New robot applications abound
As robot intelligence increases, and as sensors, actuators and operating mechanisms become more sophisticated, other applications are now multiplying. There are now thousands of underwater robots, demolition robots and even robots used in long-distance surgery.
Dozens of experimental search-and-rescue robots scoured the wreckage of the World Trade Center's collapsed twin towers. Teams of robotics experts were at Ground Zero operating experimental robots to probe the rubble and locate bodies. During the war in Afghanistan, robots were being used by the US military as tools for combat. They were sent into caves, buildings or other dark areas ahead of troops to help prevent casualties.
After the recent anthrax scares, work has been ongoing to replace postal workers with robots. Indeed, there is huge potential to mechanize the U.S. postal service and some 1,000 robots were installed last year to sort parcels. The U.S. postal service has estimated that it has the potential to use up to 80,000 robots for sorting work, although existing models are not suitable for sorting letters.
A giant walking robot is used to harvests forests, moving on six articulated legs, advancing forward and backward, sideways and diagonally. It can also turn in place and step over obstacles.
At UC Berkeley, a tiny robot called Micromechanical Flying Insect has wings that flap with a rhythm and precision matched only by natural equivalents. The goal is to develop tiny, nimble devices that can, for example, surreptitiously spy on enemy troops, explore the surface of Mars or safely monitor dangerous chemical spills.
A big increase is predicted for domestic robots for vacuum cleaning and lawn mowing. Robots to do these chores are practical today. An inexpensive house-cleaning robot was recently introduced a little battery-powered vacuum cleaner that scurries around the floor, sweeping up dust and dirt as it travels. Called Roomba, it costs just $199 and, by all accounts, is selling very well.
Rodney Brooks ?iRobot
Roomba is made by Massachusetts-based iRobot, one of many companies planning to launch a host of new robots over the next few years. New robotics products that will soon be introduced include autonomous floor cleaners and industrial tools built to do boring, dirty and dangerous work like inspecting oil wells. Of course, autonomous oil well inspectors aren't as thrilling as the robotic servants that some visionaries have predicted. But robotics and artificial intelligence are working their way into everyday life, albeit in less dramatic ways.
Rodney Brooks, Director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and Chairman of iRobot Corporation, has been involved in this transformation for decades. His latest book "Flesh & Machines" explores many themes related to life with robots. The book centers on Brooks' own passion for creating what he calls "situated creatures" which we can eventually regard as our teachers and companions.
Brooks' MIT A.I. Lab is filled with robotic machines, from mechanical legs to humanoids that use human-like expressions and gestures as intuitive human-robot interfaces ?something Brooks believes will be critical to people accepting robots in their lives. The first generation of relatively mundane versions of these machines is already marching out of the lab.
Rodney Brooks has a vision of a post-PC future in which sensors and microprocessors are wired into cars, offices and homes and carried in shirt pockets to retrieve information, communicate and do various tasks through speech and gesture interfaces. He insists that the age of smart, mobile machines is already beginning. You just have to know where to find them in oil wells, medical labs, financial services and construction companies.
Military & defense applications
Now iRobot has a US Defense contract to build a robot, about the size of a suitcase, which can climb stairs, crawl over ditches, survive three-story falls. Instead of carrying bombs, this robot has eyes and ears, transmitting what it sees and hears over a wireless link. This is a "Packbot" which can be thrown into a vehicle and then hurled through windows of buildings where the enemy may have hostages.
In general, robotic systems are of great interest to the Department of Defense because they offer the ability to perform military actions at greater stand-off distances, allow dangerous missions to be performed with minimal risk to people.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is the central research and development organization for the Dept. of Defense. The DARPA "Distributed Robotics Program" seeks to work with qualified companies to develop tiny, biologically-inspired robot designs and new methods of robot control for military applications. DARPA is particularly interested in micro-miniature robots because they can be produced at relatively low unit cost and offer unique mission advantages. They can be carried and deployed by individuals and small teams to augment human capability, perform hazardous missions, and accomplish tasks that previously could not be unimagined.
Potential applications include surveillance, reconnaissance, path finding, deception, weapon delivery, and small-scale actuation. For minefield detection, small sensors are mounted on hopping robots. Small robots can be sent into city pipelines for intelligence gathering. Robots used in large numbers can be used as decoys. Extremely small robots might be injected into small spaces to pick door locks.
Because micro robots are similar to small animals and insects, biologically inspired designs (jumping, climbing, crawling, slithering, etc.) coupled with the use of MEMS and smart materials offer possibilities for novel and unique locomotion mechanisms. MEMS technology enables the integration of mechanical and electronic functions on a single silicon chip. Advanced microelectronic packaging using multi-chip modules and incorporating mixed signal electronics allows development of new ideas, integrating robotic form and function.
Robots for military applications can either be fully controlled by humans, semi-autonomously controlled, or operate autonomously. To allow miniature robots to perform for extended periods of time in varied environments, innovative methods are needed to reduce power requirements, regulate energy use and provide rapid recharging.
Robotics ?an exciting new development arena
The typical Automation techie has knowledge and experience in instruments, PLCs, computers, displays, controls, sensors, valves, actuators, data-transmission, wireless, networking, etc. These are exactly the key requirements for development of robots and robotic systems. During this time of economic recession, Robotics can surely be a new arena of exciting and rewarding business development.
機(jī)器人技術(shù)發(fā)展趨勢
作者:JimPinto, 圣地亞哥,美國中部.美國
談到機(jī)器人,就如同科幻一般。 但是,僅僅因為機(jī)器人在過去幾十年里沒有辜負(fù)自己的承諾,并不表示它們不會早到或者遲到。 事實上,一些先進(jìn)技術(shù)導(dǎo)致的機(jī)器人的時代更近更小、更便宜、更實用、更具成本效益。
肌肉,骨骼與大腦
任何機(jī)器人都有三方面:
· 肌肉：有效聯(lián)系物理載荷以便機(jī)器人運動。
· 骨骼：機(jī)器人的物理結(jié)構(gòu)與決定于其所從事的工作; 考慮到有效載荷這就決定了機(jī)器人的大小和重量。
· 大腦：機(jī)器人智能; 它可以獨立思考和做什么; 需要多少人工互動。
由于機(jī)器人已經(jīng)被描繪于科幻世界,許多人期望機(jī)器人的外表更人性化。其實機(jī)器人的外表決定于它的功能和任務(wù)。不少機(jī)器,一點也不像人也明確地列為機(jī)器人。同樣,有些像人的機(jī)器人也脫離不了機(jī)械結(jié)構(gòu)或者玩具。
起初的機(jī)器人是又大，又只有很小的力。 老水流動力機(jī)器人被用于三D環(huán)境：陰暗、骯臟、危險。 由于第一產(chǎn)業(yè)的技術(shù)進(jìn)步,已經(jīng)完全改進(jìn)了機(jī)器人的能力、業(yè)績和戰(zhàn)略利益。 例如,80年代機(jī)器人由水流驅(qū)動過渡成為電力驅(qū)動單位。 改進(jìn)了性能和準(zhǔn)確性。
工業(yè)機(jī)器人已在工作
在當(dāng)今世界機(jī)器人數(shù)量已接近100萬,有將近一半的在日本,僅有15%在美國。數(shù)十年前,90%的機(jī)器人用于汽車制造業(yè),通常用于做大量重復(fù)的工作。 今天只有50%用于汽車廠,而另一半分布于工廠、實驗室、倉庫、發(fā)電廠、醫(yī)院和其他許多行業(yè)。
機(jī)器人用于產(chǎn)品裝配、危險物品處理、油漆噴霧、切割、拋光、產(chǎn)品的檢驗。 那些被用于各式各樣的任務(wù)的機(jī)器人數(shù)量,例如下水道清理,查找炸彈和操作日趨復(fù)雜的手術(shù),在將來將持續(xù)上漲。
機(jī)器人智能
即使原始的智力，機(jī)器人已經(jīng)被證明在生產(chǎn)力、效率和質(zhì)量方面能夠創(chuàng)造良好收益。除此之外,一些"聰明"機(jī)器人沒有用于制造業(yè); 他們被用于太空探險、 外科遙控，甚至寵物，就像索尼的Aibo機(jī)械狗。 從某種意義上說,一些其他應(yīng)用表明機(jī)器人可能的用途，如果生產(chǎn)廠家認(rèn)識到,工業(yè)機(jī)器人并不是要局限于一個方面,或者受限制昨日機(jī)械概念。
伴隨著迅速增長的電力微處理器和人工智能技術(shù),大大提高了機(jī)器人其潛在的彈性的自動化工具。新增加的智能機(jī)器人的應(yīng)用要求先進(jìn)的智能。機(jī)器人技術(shù)融入各種輔助技術(shù)—機(jī)器視覺、傳感器(接觸),高級技工及語音識別。 這一令人振奮的成果代表了新水平的工作應(yīng)用,比以往任何時候都認(rèn)為是實際的機(jī)器人。
實行綜合的機(jī)器人視覺和觸覺急劇地改變了新的產(chǎn)品和生產(chǎn)體系的速度和效率。機(jī)器人變得如此精確,以至于機(jī)器人可以應(yīng)用于所有手工的場所不再是一個不可能的觀點。半導(dǎo)體制造業(yè)是一個例子,高度一致的吞吐量和質(zhì)量,不能靠手工或簡單現(xiàn)機(jī)械就能實現(xiàn)。此外,通過使那些快速產(chǎn)品與傳統(tǒng)硬質(zhì)工具不相匹配部分的轉(zhuǎn)換和革新，取得了顯著成果。
增強(qiáng)競爭力
如上所述, 機(jī)器人的應(yīng)用起源于汽車制造業(yè)。通用汽車已擁有四至五萬的機(jī)器人，但仍然能夠繼續(xù)發(fā)展并運用新方法。 為了能使機(jī)器人更加智能化，現(xiàn)在已運用了大量新的戰(zhàn)略選擇。 在過去的兩三年里，汽車價格已經(jīng)下降,為了不斷創(chuàng)造利潤，制造商降低生產(chǎn)和結(jié)構(gòu)成本。這是唯一途徑。
汽車廠改建新模式,通常需要投入數(shù)以億計美元以購買設(shè)備。 機(jī)器人制造技術(shù)的重點是通過減少資本投資的方式以增加適用性。新的遙控應(yīng)用已被發(fā)現(xiàn)用在以專用設(shè)備自動作業(yè)的操作上了。它的靈活性能作業(yè)自動化發(fā)揮得更協(xié)調(diào),并且有重大的成本優(yōu)勢。
機(jī)器人協(xié)助
其主要增長領(lǐng)域是智能機(jī)器人協(xié)助裝置(IAD)。操作員熟練地操作著機(jī)器人，就好像是自己的手和腳變長,且更有力了。 這就是遙控技術(shù)，沒有人或機(jī)器人可以替代，它是有助于改造人類環(huán)境產(chǎn)品的一個新版本，多方面地幫助人類伙伴，包括動力供應(yīng)、運動導(dǎo)向、線路跟蹤以及程序自動化。
智能機(jī)器人協(xié)助裝置運用遙控技術(shù)幫助人們以較少的壓力，更多、大、好、快地操作零部件和有效載荷。利用人類機(jī)器界面,操作員和智能機(jī)器人協(xié)助裝置攜手合作以優(yōu)化開放性、指導(dǎo)性和定位移動。傳感器、計算