And they shall rise to protect the Human Race...

Robots are able to traverse where humans dare not, into disaster areas, both natural and man-made. Governments, universities, and corporations across the globe have been investing significant resources in developing robots to deal with the repercussions of floods, mining collapses, oil spills, nuclear outbrakes, and other industrial and natural disasters since the 90's.

Robots, in essence, have no need of environmental comfort. Their chassis unite forged metallic alloys with synthesized polcarbonates that empower them to resist tremendous physical exposure to heat or steam (no air circulation), direct force or high frequency radiation, while being flexible enough to move around conveniently.

The limit of TID (total ionizing dose - deterioration of electric/electronic equipments because of temporally accumulated amount of radioactive exposure - absorbed dose [Gy]) for human workers is legally defined as 100 - 250 Milli-Sievert [mSv]. If the safety factor is set to 0.1 Gy, 50 [Gy] and 20 [Gy] (the admissible limit of a robot) are 20-50 times and 8-20 times larger the admissible limit of human workers respectively.

Robotic devices have been employed in response to multiple Radioactive disasters: Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and recently in Fukushima, Japan. In Fukushima, Packbots were used to measure radiation levels and take pictures safely (see video below). As for chemical and oil refinement disasters, robots have been vital in managing environmental damages. Clean-up robots, with huge, deployable arms, are able to analyze and collect chemical leakages within disaster areas.

Robots entering Fukushima Reactor Building for the very first time:

In the medical field, robots have been developed to identify, analyze, and combat terminal diseases, such as cancer. Nano-robots, robots scaled to 10^-9 meters, are being developed to access and cure malignant cells through magnetic field targeting. A big advantage of this robotic technology is that it targets only the infected cells, without damaging healthy tissue (like chemotherapy).

Robots are morevover used to explore active volcanos, which is just another example of how robots have extended humanity's learning horizons.

Robots exploring a Volcano: 

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/video/nbcnews.com/49552226#49552226

Below (left), a Hurt Locker-like bomb-disabling robot is pictured. Another example of how robotics has extended humanity's practical reach without endangering human lives. All of these robots have broken down environmental barriers, allowing humans to access realms previously inaccessible. Now just imagine what barriers robots will be able to overcome in the future.

This tactical hazardous operations robot, also know as THOR, is considered to be the robotic disaster response challenge (DRC) robot, par excellence. It not only facilitates the accomplishment of certain milestones in the prevention of disasters, but also pushes the entire field of robotic technology to its utter limits. At the end of the challenge, THOR should be able to perform the following tasks:

• Get into and drive a utility vehicle
• Walk across a rubble field
• Clear rubble blocking an entry
• Open doors and enter a building
• Climb a ship’s ladder
• Manipulate a power tool to break through a wall
• Locate and close a valve
• Carry and connect a fire hose

The business value of this technology manifests in the increasingly growing market and research & development found in this area. It seem that this technology not only provides a pruduct with respect to social responsibility or business ethics, but also from a pure return on investment point of view it seems to be beneficial.

Logist-O-botics

--> “The machine has no feelings, it feels no fear and no hope ... it operates according to the pure logic of probability. For this reason I assert that the robot perceives more accurately than man.” 

MAX FRISCH, Homo Faber: A Report

Stop and pause for a moment… now imagine a world where no time is wasted, where efficiency's boundary is a near-infinite horizon and where people are able to focus on and think about problems that really matter. The truth is that modern logistics is not far away from this reality! Robots are put in to action to optimize operations, adding real and measurable business value to companies across industries around the world.

But do robots really offer any business value through improved logistics? And if so, why?

Lets delve deeper into the differences between mankind (the “traditional” workforce) and robots in order to assess what might work best for this job.

Psychological theories and studies conclude that humans filter what they perceive with a distinct bias formed through their previous experiences. There is this great book called “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two” that basically deals with the boundaries of human perception and memory. It is often interpreted to argue that the number of objects an average human can hold in working memory at one particular point in time is 7 ± 2. Let me elucidate this through a practical example: Have a look around you (no matter where you currently are) and try to count all red objects in your surrounding (actually do it). When you’ve got your number, remember it. Now, without a single view, how many green objects have you noticed?

Exactly! 

As you probably noticed it is way harder to recall all green objects in such a situation, because you primed to remember only the red objects, creating a biased experience. So I believe that we can all agree on the fact that human perception and working memory is at least to some extent limited. It is moreover not always given that, even if a soundly “programmed” human perception filter is used, this perception concludes in an accurate measurement. Humans sometimes make errors. It’s just human (humans get also tired. And human make even more errors when they’re tired).

This might happen:

or this:

We already know that robots are synthesized by hard- and software, containing all sorts of interconnected sensors. Hence, it should not be too hard for us to understand that robots perceive and react a lot more accurately than humans. Robotic sensors are only limited by their specs, and their specs are programmed to eliminate human bias. They store the amount of data that is provided by the hard drive; as much as it shall be. Although they are bounded to certain circumstances (perceiving just a small part on which they are programmed for), they are capable of doing a really great job at it. Just take a look at the following clips:  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTDgrUT0J0U

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLRfsTPPAcU&list=PLF9121E5DF17AFA99

Amazons next big INNOVATION for its logistics: "Prime-Air" drone for 30-minute deliveries! Your future Amazon packages could be delivered by a flying robot. Isn´t that impressive?! Have a look at this short clip:

Innovative robotic logistics solutions are aslo applied in other business fields... for instance, in car park systems (video below):

However, machines and robots are also limited in thier capabilities. They lack capabilities including - for instance - the ability to synthesize qualitative information to one big picture, generate emotions, imagination or intuition. Hence, humans are more versatile in thier way of working, a fact that gives them an advantage; especially for conceptual and strategic thinking. A key robotics groth area and trend is Intelligent Assis Devices (IAD) - operators manipulate a robot as though it were a bionic extension of thier own limbs with increased capabilities. This is robotics technology - not replacement for humans or robots but rather a new class of ergonomic assist devices that help humans in a wide array of ways (e.g. power assist, motion guidance, ine tracking and process automation. This hybrid conjunction might apear as the most benificial solution with respect to effectivness, quality, risk and cost.

One of the core challenges is to realize a sound human-technology-interaction (HTI), that narrows down to the design of hard- and software of robots. This demands a huge amount of psychological, proccess and organisational studies and therefore a lot of research & development.

Stay tuned for the next episode!

- Kimon Georgiou

A look into the past, the present and the future...

A look into the past, what the present is like and what the future has in store for us....

The world of Robots.... Its still the beginning of what we know.....

Robotic Beings Rule the World

Robotic Beings Rule the World

No. Don’t worry - the humans aren’t dead…. yet. While obviously satirical, the New Zealand band, Flight of the Concords, does shed some light on the growing reliance of robotics in our daily lives and in the world of business. During the coming weeks we will explore robotics through multiple lenses, eventually painting a clearer picture of just how prevalent robots have become in various sectors, what types of value they add, and the consequences that accompany these innovations. 

Robots have steadily infiltrated all types of businesses. From hospitals to military front lines to automotive production to the depths of the ocean – all these industries have implemented and realized the benefits of robotics. Surgeons are now able to perform life-saving operations from miles away, while reducing inpatient stays and unbearable levels of pain. Cars can now be assembled with accuracy and time efficiencies that near 99.999%. Drones have now replaced manned planes, allowing militaries to execute missions without leaving their bases. Undersea exploration has just begun to breach the extreme depths (over 10,000 meters) of the ocean using unmanned submarines, which are currently impossible to reach using crewed vessels. These are just a few brief examples of some of the contexts robots have been employed in, with great success. In most cases, robots have pushed the boundaries of what humans are capable of. Ultimately, robots have added value in uncountable ways, whether it is in business, scientific research, or in healthcare. 

While this seems all well and good, others like the MIT scholar Andrew McAfee have stated that we may ultimately lose the “race against the machine.” Will there come a day when manual labor is replaced by machinery or when robotic beings really do “rule the world”. This is a highly debated and speculative topic, which, in all honesty needs to take place lest we lose sight of where robotics is going and where that puts mankind – tomorrow and hundreds of years down the line. For now, let’s just say that this blog is going to be an amazing journey through robotic applications and innovations in a variety of field and from a mixture of perspectives – Now, Robo-Boogie!

-Brendan Cmolik

Robots - The basic building blocks

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“Aimless extension of knowledge, however, which is what I think you really mean by the term curiosity, is merely inefficiency. I am designed to avoid inefficiency.” -R. Daneel Olivaw 

To fire away here’s a video-clip of a much beloved movie.

Transformers - Yes these are Robots, very advanced Robots.

Robotics, for many of us, this is a funny term indeed. What comes to our mind if you think of a robot is an awkward looking creature; one who could do your day to day work, your most boring tasks or practically everything one can dream of. Is this image true or rather could it be true? Researchers have tried to answer this question and discussed it probably more than any other technical topic. Yet, we still haven’t reached our full expectations of the robotic future.

But what exactly are Robots?

There’s different ways of defining the concept. A theoretical description for example:
“A robot is a mechanical or virtual agent, usually an electro-mechanical machine that is guided by a computer program or electronic circuit.”[1] That’s a bit too theoretical, right? Let’s understand the concept of a Robot as a machine which simply reduces our work. So from ‘Can Openers’ to ‘Fans’ to even a ‘Locomotive’, these are all Robots, it’s only the function that varies.

Before we try to understand how the combination of mechanised parts, a chip and some algorithms are functioning together, let’s take a closer look at how the Robot is built and the basic nuances that will constitute that, what we actually call a "Robot".

The Robot is a machine that is characteristically defined by two major parts - the hardware and the software. Every business, when constructing a robot, have certain requirements for which the hardware and the software can be designed for. Let’s look at an example in this short video.

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[1] ‘Robot’, Sunday 06-10-2013 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot

In this Robowars International video, we see how robots specifically compete with each other, using their strengths and weaknesses, to win the title. If we were to project this on the organisational setting the goal is to destroy competition and to advance. To get a fair example of how this specific designing works, let’s think of Razer in the video above, and think of all the possible we could attribute to him or straight to the point which mechanical instruments would you require to break a slab of Concrete, his competitor. These instruments would be what we call the hardware. As in this case the Robots are controlled manually, there’s no specific software related.

So forming the robot hardware profile, is very simple and consist only of two steps: first we take into account the requirements, secondly we put all the different hardware parts, which fulfil the requirements, together on one base. The software part however is a bit more complicated. Between all of our different hardware parts, there is always a chip (similar to the ones used in our computers) that connects the hardware with the software. On this chip we can find the programming that produces the electric motor signals that drive the robot. This programming is set in several languages, most of the Low Level, a most basic type of language that is fundamental to machines. So the robots don’t need a translation, such as they would need when using a language we find understandable.

Friends, we welcome you to the world of Mobile Robotics. We will take you on a journey showing various examples of Robots in an organisational setting, we will make you realise what they are doing for us through automation, and teach you that robots can do things that are practically impossible for the humans to do.

Aishwarya Tiwari