Universal Robotics Makes Robots Learn Faster

Universal Robotics, Inc. unveiled its flagship technology, Neocortex™, a revolutionary, patent-protected software that that allows machines to learn from their experiences in the physical world. Launched at the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals’ (CSCMP) Annual Global Conference in San Diego, California, Neocortex makes flexible automation in unstructured environments possible for the first time.
“With Neocortex, we’ve given industrial robots the ability to adapt and react to the world around them and execute tasks in an ever-changing environment, said David Peters, CEO of Universal Robotics. “With this ability to learn, machines will be implemented in revolutionary ways across industries.”
Neocortex has been in development since 2001. It was created at Vanderbilt University with funding from DARPA and NASA and developed using Robonaut, NASA’s humanoid robot.
Unlike traditional automation, in which machines are pre-programmed with movements and tasks to execute, Neocortex allows a robot to learn how to complete a task. Once the task is learned, the machine observes its environment through more than 50 channels of sensor data. Drawing on what it learned from previous experiences, the Neocortex-enabled robot changes its actions as necessary in real time to complete the task.
Universal Robotics partnered with Yaskawa / Motoman Robotics, the world leader in industrial robots, to provide a hardware/machine intelligence work cell solution that features Neocortex software, Motoman’s SDA-series robots, custom box moving end effectors and a suite of sensors, including Universal’s recently launched easy-to-use 3D vision system Spatial Vision.

Motoman takes the lead with 2 hands

Yaskawa Motoman SDA-10

In an interview with John P. Desmond of Online Newsletter Robotic Trends Craig Jennings CEO of Motoman, one of the worlds´s leading industrial robots manufacturer with nearly 200.000 robots worldwide, explained the innovative idea with a two hand industrial robot.

Motorman is targeting a new market for manual labor-intensive operations. Human tasks such as handling, manipulation and assembling can now be automated with two hand robots. The price for a dual-arm 15 axes, 20 kg payload robot is about $110.000. That price makes it very competitive with the total cost of labor i China according to Jennings. The advantages with robots are also no risk of intellectual property theft, having full flexibility to meet varying production needs, being very responsive to production changes. New applications for two hand robots are drug discovery robotics, clinical lab robotics, alternative energy production, such as solar reflector panels, humanoid robotics, aerospace.

If Jennings is right a new wave of industrial entrepreneurship and robocraft could hit local markets and revitalize local production all over the world from Kiruna to Cape Town. With one two hand intelligent robot in every workshop local production may become competitive again as an alternative to centralized mass production in low labor cost countries with all its negative consequences for humans, nature and climat.

Why not develop a tree, four, five hand robot that can do thing we never dreamed about. There is room for smarter robots in the future, be sure! Multi hand robot - a markets signal worth watching!

Read: Motoman Expands Into Humanoid Robotics: A Conversation with Craig Jennings Industrial Automation Robotics Trends