Industry discovers potential of robotics at SCHUNK Expert Days
10 June 2011
At the recent Expert Days on Service Robotics hosted by SCHUNK, 116 experts from 22 countries met to discuss service robotics applications that primarily focus on the issue of historical technology applications. This year’s topics were market develop-ment and efficiency. By means of numerous practical examples, it became clear that service robots have left the arena of university research and are increasingly used by industrial companies for specific applications.
Service robotics is gaining greater momentum from an economical point of view which was proven to be true at the Expert Days with nine of the 18 speakers coming directly from industry. Some of the speakers were from Polysius AG, a company that has a fully automatic laboratory automation system for controlling the quality of its cement production; Audi AG intensively researches service robots for picking up parts in the automotive industry; Harris Corp. uses service robots for bomb disposal and Infineon Technologies AG controls the air quality in cleanrooms with service robots.
Professor Dr. Henrik I. Christensen, holder of the “KUKA Chair of Robotics” at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, USA, said the developments so far, had been ignored the market. Solutions are technologically mature, but are too expen-sive for real-world applications. He urged for a change from technologically driven research to market and price-orientated developments. “If costs keep within a budget range, then service robots can open up to new markets,” said Christensen. Paying $200 to $300 for a household robot is realistic. In the healthcare industry, the price limit is about $10,000. User or consumer orientated interfaces are equally important, so robots can also be used to serve entry level applications. Moreover, he recom-mended the design of service robots for specialist applications. In the healthcare field, for example, the focus must be more on manipulation and navigation.
This event made clear that standardized platforms and components can contribute to economic and highly developed solutions. This applies for lightweight arms or flexibly applicable grippers, but also for mobile platforms or control units. Binding standards from ISO to the CE-marking, up to national standards should facilitate the market entry of service robots. According to Prof. Alois Knoll of the Technical University in Munich, specialized system integrators are required for individual fields of application. They should in future close the gap between manufacturer and user.
Even visionary approaches were introduced at the 4th annual SCHUNK ExpertDays. Dr. Amos Albert of Robert Bosch GmbH sees a considerable potential in semi-autonomous service robots. If you do not have your own solution strategy, you can be assisted by a central support. The so-called ‘Click-Worker’ may be organized like a call center. If needed, they can connect to the robot, solve the problem and return the robot to its autonomous tasks once again. A concept of Dr. Markus Waibel from the Federal Technical University in Zurich went a step further. He searched for a central knowledge store, in which countless data, models, applications and programs are stored that can be independently called for by the robot.
As a pioneer for modular robotics, SCHUNK has promoted the development of ser-vice robots from the very beginning. With its industry-proven, mechatronic modules and skillful polynominal grippers, the family-owned company offers a unique modular system for various applications in service robotics. It includes the LWA-4, a modular lightweight arm with the most compact performance on the international market. In almost 100 cooperations with universities, research institutions and highly specialized industrial companies, SCHUNK pushes the development of this new technology forward.
