RoboBusiness Leadership Summit 2012

RoboBusiness Leadership Summit 2012

Article Type: News From: Industrial Robot: An International Journal, Volume 40, Issue 2

The RoboBusiness Leadership Summit, produced by Robotics Trends, a division of EH Publishing, Inc., hosted over 400 global robot industry experts in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, on October 22-24, 2012.

The Conference speakers represented the “Who’s Who” of those driving the robot industry forward, while exhibits included the unveiling, for the first time anywhere in the world, of several new products.

One of the several conference workshops held on October 22, focused on “Rethinking Manufacturing with Robotics”. The four and a half hour session featured ten different CEOs and executives from leading international industrial robot companies.

Part of the discussion was centered on overcoming the stigma, especially in the USA, that “robots take jobs away”. As John Dulchinos, CEO and President of Adept Technologies pointed out, “It’s about increasing productivity. In 1900, 1 farmer fed 2.5 persons; in 1960, 1 farmer fed 26 people. Today, thanks to the growth of automation, 1 farmer can feed 155 people.” “This translates to Americans spending less than 10% of their income today on food, while in 1960, they spent nearly 20%.” Dulchinos added, “Robots replace functions, but not jobs”, and highlighted that on average a hospital nurse walks about seven miles a day. One hospital, before using Adept’s autonomous mobile robot, got 75 percent of specimens from collection to reporting within 75 min. After the robot installation, collection to reporting times dropped to 50 min 90 percent of the time. Dulchinos also emphasized a recent study which shows that as smart manufacturing advances, the employment multiplier significantly increases, by indirectly creating jobs that supply, support, and service smart manufacturers. For Intel Corp. in Oregon, USA, that translated to a 4.1 job multiplier, meaning that every ten jobs at Intel supported another 30 in other sectors of Oregon’s economy, and at above average wages.

Other robot manufacturers agreed. Michael Cicco, General Manager of Fanuc Robotics America, said that typically robotic automation yields 30 percent more productivity than a human who takes breaks and is not always productive. David Askey, Chief Business Development Officer of Energid Technologies, cited a customer contract that was won due to having a lesser cost. This was obtained by adding a low-cost robot to the line, which freed up 30 percent of the highly skilled engineer’s time for more proficient tasks.

The next two days of the conference program featured nine different keynotes and more than 20 breakout sessions organized into three tracks: Applications and Markets Track, Business Development and Investment Track, and Technology and Product Development Track.

RoboBusiness Leadership Summit 2012 also premiered several new robot systems:

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  Bossa Nova Robotics’ mObi, a research and development robotics platform based on Professor Ralph Hollis of Carnegie Mellon University’s “Ballbot” patented technology. The dynamically-stable mobile robot balances on a single spherical wheel and moves seamlessly with a single point of contact on the ground, enabling natural omni-directional movement and exceptional agility, maneuverability, and superior navigation in human environments. mObi will be available for researchers and developers in 2013 for a broad range of robotics research and Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) applications (Figure 2).

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  Rethink Robotics’ Baxter, a first-of-its kind robot which made its first public appearance at RoboBusiness. Baxter is a low-cost, easy-to-implement, robot solution capable of applying common sense behavior to manufacturing environments while safely working shoulder-to-shoulder with people. This new line of industrial humanoid robots in a manufacturing setting redefines how automation is used to compete with manufacturers in low-cost regions of the world (Figure 3).

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  Rolled out to give a live, remote presentation from Dr Yulan Wang, Chairman and CEO of InTouch Technologies, Inc. in Santa Barbara, California, was the new RP-VITA (Remote Presence Virtual + Independent Telemedicine Assistant). The RP-VITA is the first remote presence solution for patient care that combines the latest in telemedicine technology from InTouch Health with the latest in autonomous navigation and mobility developed for the iRobot Ava mobile robotics platform.

Figure 2 Bossa Nova Robotics debuts Project mObi, a first step for a personal robotics platform for everyday consumers

Figure 3 Industrial Robot Journal’s Assistant Editor, Joanne Pransky, trains Rethink Robotics’ two-armed, seven degrees-of-freedom Baxter at one of its first jobs: to pick and place candy bars by just manually moving the cuff of its weightless, fluid arm, in a matter of seconds

The next RoboBusiness Leadership Summit will take place in Santa Clara, California, USA, October 23-25, 2013. Further information can be found at: www.robobusiness.com/

The success of the USA based RoboBusiness Leadership Summit is now being extended to Europe with the first RoboBusiness Europe to be held in Genoa, Italy on April 11-12, 2013.