DUBLIN

Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/lk6rvx/industrial) has announced the addition of the “Industrial Robotics Market in China 2012-2016″ report to their offering.

One of the key factors contributing to this market growth is the need for increased productivity in the manufacturing process. The Industrial Robotics market in China has also been witnessing the emergence of next-generation industrial robots. However, the continuous decline in vendors’ profit margin could pose a challenge to the growth of this market.

The key vendors dominating this space include ABB Ltd., Denso Wave Inc., Fanuc Corp., KUKA AG, Seiko Epson Corp., Toshiba Machine Co. Ltd., and Yaskawa Electric Corp.

The other vendors mentioned in this report are iRobot Corp., Kawasaki Robotics Inc., Omron Corp., RoboGroup TEK Ltd., Rockwell Automation Inc., Siasun Robot & Automation Co. Ltd., ST Robotics, STAUBLI Corp., Yamaha Robotics, and Mitsubishi Electric Automation Inc.

Commenting on the report, an analyst from the team said: One of the main trends witnessed in the Industrial Robotics market in China is the need for multipurpose robotic systems. Various end-users are looking for robotic systems that can perform numerous tasks efficiently. The multipurpose robots should be able to perform several functions such as assembly, dispensing, machine tending, material handling, material removing, and packaging. End-users are also investing in industrial robots that can perform inspection activities such as error proofing during the assembly process. The use of multipurpose robots will in turn reduce the total cost of ownership and enhance the productivity of manufacturers.

According to the report, one of the main factors driving the market is the need to reduce total cost of ownership. Robots help manufacturing companies develop and manufacture accurate and reliable products without defects. They also help companies reduce product failure costs and product wastage.

For more information visit: http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/lk6rvx/industrial

About Research and Markets

Research and Markets is the world’s leading source for international market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends.

Links:

http://www.fortmilltimes.com/2013/08/15/2892291/research-and-markets-the-industrial.html

http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/lk6rvx/industrial

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They may not yet have reached the startlingly lifelike capabilities of Sonny, the soft-spoken android in the movie I, Robot, but they’re getting closer.

This week it has been reported that robots are moving ever nearer to acquiring human abilities – to smell, feel and see their surroundings, allowing them to operate more independently and perform some of the messy, and dangerous, jobs that people don’t want to do.

Machines are being created that can “smell” gas leaks, carry out underwater surveillance, and sort packages by shape and colour – and advances in sensor technology enable them to make decisions without human beings overseeing them.

On Friday, Kirobo, the world’s first talking humanoid space robot, is due to arrive at the International Space Station, where it will patiently await the arrival of the next astronaut there, Koichi Wakata from Japan. It has been programmed to recognise his face – and greet him warmly in his native tongue.

What is the future for robots ?

and could they, as they did in the Will Smith film, try to take over the world?

Three senior figures at Cambridge University have been exploring that topic this week in an online question-and-answer session for the university’s Department of Engineering: Lord Martin Rees, Emeritus Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics; Kathleen Richardson, who did her PhD at Cambridge and is writing a book about robots as potential friends or enemies; and Daniel Wolpert, from the Department of Engineering, an expert in bioengineering.

In answer to the question, what can robots do for us? Lord Rees said: “Robots have two very different roles.

-The first is to operate in locations that humans can’t reach, such as the aftermaths of accidents in mines, oil rigs and nuclear power stations.

-The second, also deeply unglamorous, is to help elderly or disabled people with everyday life: tying shoelaces, cutting toenails and suchlike.

Moreover, if robots can be miniaturised, they can perhaps be used inside our bodies for monitoring our health, undertaking surgery, and so forth.”

Prof Wolpert said: “While computers can now beat grandmasters at chess, there is currently no robot that can match the dexterity of a five-year-old child. The field of robotics is similar to where computers were in the 1960s – expensive machines used in simple, repetitive industrial processes. But modern day robotics is changing that. Robots are likely to become as ubiquitous as the smartphone computers we all carry – from microscopic robotics for healthcare and fabrication to human-size robots to take on our everyday tasks or even act as companions.”

How soon will machine intelligence outstrip human intelligence?

Lord Rees said: “Up till now, the advances have been patchy. For at least the last 30 years, we’ve been able to buy for a few pounds a machine that can do arithmetic faster than our brains can. Back in the 1990s IBM’s ‘Deep Blue’ beat Kasparov, the world chess champion. But robots are still limited in their ability to sense their environment: they can’t yet recognise and move the pieces on a real chessboard as cleverly as a child can.

“Later this century, however, their more advanced successors may relate to their surroundings (and to people) as adeptly as we do. Moral questions then arise. We accept an obligation to ensure that other human beings, and indeed some animal species, can fulfil their ‘natural’ potential. So what’s our obligation towards sophisticated robots? Should we feel guilty about exploiting them? Should we fret if they are underemployed, frustrated, or bored?”

Dr Richardson said: “The human fear of robots and machines arguably has much more to say about human fear of each other rather than anything inherently technical in the machines. However, one of the consequences of thinking that the problem lies with machines is that as a culture we tend to imagine they are greater and more powerful than they really are – and subsequently they become so.”

Should we be scared by advances in artificial intelligence?

Lord Rees said: “Those who should be worried are the futurologists who believe in the so-called ‘singularity’, when robots take over and themselves create even more sophisticated progeny. And another worry is that we are increasingly dependent on computer networks, and that these could behave like a single ‘brain’ with a mind of its own, and with goals that may be contrary to human welfare. I think we should ensure that robots remain as no more than ‘idiot savants’ – lacking the capacity to outwit us, even though they may greatly surpass us in the ability to calculate and process information.”

Should robots be used to colonise other planets?

Lord Rees believes that by the end of the century, the entire solar system – planets, moons and asteroids – will be explored and mapped by “flotillas of tiny robotic craft.”

He said: “The next step would be mining of asteroids, enabling fabrication of large structures in space without having to bring all the raw materials from Earth. It would be possible to develop huge artefacts: giant telescopes with gossamer-thin mirrors assembled under zero gravity, collectors of solar energy, and so forth. I think this is more realistic and benign than the so-called ‘terraforming’ of planets.”

Prof Wolpert added: “I don’t see a pressing need to colonise other planets unless we can bring resources back to Earth. The vast majority of Earth is currently inaccessible to us. Using robots to gather resources nearer to home would seem to be a better use of our robotic tools.”

Resource Links:
More about the Cambridge experts’ views on robots can be found on the engineering department’s website, at

http://www.eng.cam.ac.uk/news/stories/2013/robot_world/

http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/News/Could-robots-every-take-over-the-world-20130807060000.htm

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They can “smell” gas leaks, conduct underwater surveillance and even sort boxes by shape and colour and toss them into the appropriate warehouse bin. Advances in sensor technology and software allow these machines to make split-second decisions without human masters overseeing them about how to follow a scent trail or where to go to next.

“They are gaining human capabilities, whether it’s smell, or touch or recognising our voices,”

said Daniel H. Wilson, a PhD in robotics and the author of Robopocalypse, a techno-thriller about what happens when robots go wrong. “If they are going to solve human problems, they will have to have human abilities. Those are things that robots will have to understand if they play a role in our lives.”

Until now, robots have had to navigate with small infrared sensors that keep them from bumping into things. Some have relied on video cameras that send images to human operators. But a new generation of robots is gaining the ability to understand voices, see objects with the same depth perception as humans and use grasping arms that have dexterity close to that of humans.

Of course, none of them is yet as lifelike as “Sonny,” the android of Isaac Asimov’s novel (and the subsequent movie) “I, Robot,” who feels, can think for himself, move on his own and, in a limited way, emotes. Most robots with advanced sensing abilities are still in the experimental stage. More than toys but not yet tools, they work well in the laboratory but can’t yet handle real-world situations.

Take, for example, the robots that are sorting boxes, picking them up and tossing them into the right bin. This robot uses two-dimensional and three-dimensional video cameras and software to “look” at the size and shape of the box and then decide where it should go.

The robot works pretty well — as long as the boxes are pretty much rectangular and aren’t moving, says Stanford University computer science professor Gary Bradski, co-founder of Industrial Perception, the start-up that invented the robot. But it isn’t quite ready to replace human workers in the mailroom or on the factory floor.

“It’s easy to get 80 or 90 percent of the way there,” he said. ” But it’s getting the speed and reliability to make it economic. You can’t fail very often; otherwise, you’re not saving any labour.”

Getting robots to smell is one of the bigger challenges. A recent project out of the University of Tokyo takes a step in that direction. Scientists there recently unveiled a tiny robot that is driven by a male silkworm moth responding to a female moth’s seductive pheromone aroma.

The researchers built a motorised wheeled car that moves when a moth, spurred by the smell, launches into a mating dance of repeated zigzags on top of a trackball, similar to the ones used inside a computer mouse. As the moth does its dance, sensors transmit its motions to the robot’s motors, allowing it to follow the path chosen by the male.

The researchers said the “odour-tracking behaviours of animals” could eventually be “applied to other autonomous robots so they can track down smells, and subsequent sources, of environmental spills and leaks when fitted with highly sensitive sensors.”

Noriyasu Ando, an associate professor at the University of Tokyo Research Centre for Advanced Science and Technology, who worked on the moth robot, said in an e-mail that the challenge was to develop a robot that could “behave alone, free from external wired connections because the silk moth turns quickly and rotates very often.”

Ando said the ultimate goal is to develop a robot with its own smelling capabilities, one that can follow a trail just like the moth on the trackball.

The team is now trying to build an artificial brain they’ve named Kei; the motor-moth using its sense of smell is one step toward that goal, he said.

Achim Lilienthal, who directs the mobile robotics and olfaction lab at Orebro University in Sweden, said smell is more complicated for robots than vision. Cameras can see an object as long as there is enough light, while odours exist as plumes and patches in the air and are not consistent in strength, which makes finding the source difficult.

Lilienthal gives the example of methane emanating from an old landfill. The town managing the landfill had set up devices to capture the gas produced by the landfill’s decay and burn it to heat the local hospital. But over time, as the plastic lining beneath the landfill developed cracks, more than half of the methane was evading the capture technology. The town hired someone to walk around the landfill and sniff for leaks, but that didn’t work very well because the human nose is not very efficient.

Enter Lilienthal’s “gasbot,”which looks like a lawnmower with a big metal eyeball perched on top of a metal pole. This mini all-terrain vehicle picks up smells using two laser beams: One absorbs the chemical signature of the methane and determines its concentration in the air. The second helps provide a three-dimensional map of the gas plume. The advantage of the gasbot is that the lasers detect the gas remotely, without machine or human having direct contact with the plume.

“For most gas sensors [such as smoke detectors], you need to [physically] encounter the smell,” whereas the gasbot uses its lasers to detect gas at a distance, Lilienthal said.

Scientists are working as well to create effective underwater robots. This task is very challenging because there is often not enough light for cameras to work well, while swirling currents and eddies play havoc with smells and chemical plumes.

To deal with this, a European group has built a robot that uses something called lateral line sensing. The lateral line is a series of nerve cells in fish that runs from just below the head to the tail and allows them to sense the speed and direction of currents, helping them catch food and swim in schools without bumping into each other.

More than 30,000 fish species use lateral line sensing, according to Maarja Kruusmaa, professor of biorobotics at the Tallinn University of Technology in Estonia. She and colleagues set out to create an electronic equivalent that would allow underwater robots to navigate more efficiently through currents. After four years of work they came up with FILOSE (Robotic FIsh LOcomotion and SEnsing), a robot that’s shaped like a rainbow trout. The researchers developed tiny sensors to monitor pressure differences in the water flowing around the robot. This allows the robot to follow in the wake of an object to cut energy use, according to Kruusmaa.

“It is similar to reducing your effort in the tailwind of another cyclist or reducing the fuel consumption of your car by driving behind a truck,” she said.

The robot is driven by a small electric motor and can be outfitted with a video camera for surveillance or with chemical sensors to detect pollution. The next step is to take FILOSE for a swim outside the lab to see how it does in the real world.

Meanwhile, Kanna Rajan, principal researcher for autonomy at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, is designing underwater robots that are programmed to make their own decisions.

They use sensors to determine where to hunt for oil spills, for example, or to swim toward a place in the ocean that scientists want to study, such as a feeding ground for fish or a range of underwater volcanoes that might erupt.

Rajan, a former Nasa researcher who helped develop the rovers that landed on Mars almost 10 years ago, says it’s harder to build smart robots that work underwater than ones that function in outer space.

That’s because communications for the latter travel through the relatively quiet vacuum of space. Underwater communications, however, are often blocked by layers of warm and cold water, slow-moving underwater storms and the sounds of passing ships and wildlife.

The ocean’s salinity also tends to degrade robots much more than the cold temperatures of space, Rajan said.

“The ocean is a lot more harsh,” he said. “If you go in deep space, there’s not much going on, you are very careful as to what you do. Even on Mars you can talk to your robot.”

So what are the prospects for a seeing, smelling, sensing robot that works in the real world? That probably won’t materialise anytime soon, said Jelle Atema, a professor of biology at Boston University and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

“When it comes to a broad, robust exposure in the natural environment and still being able to perform the task,” Atema said, “animals have it all over human engineering.”

-Washington Post

Resource Links:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/gadgets/9013693/Robots-Not-human-but-getting-closer

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