Digit, made by Oregon-based Agility Robotics, is the kind of technology that people have worried about for generations: a machine with the strength to rival our own. The robots we were afraid of are already here:
A Fanuc robot demonstrates its reach and dexterity by handling a basketball at the Automate Show in Detroit on May 24, 2023. A humanoid warehouse worker, Digit walked upright on goatlike legs and grabbed bins off a shelf with muscular arms made from aerospace-grade aluminum. It then placed the boxes on an assembly line and walked back to the shelf to search for more.
“I don’t think people really understand where we are,” he told me. “We’re just scratching the surface.” Over the last few years, significant resources have been thrown at making robots profitable — and this is paying off. More companies are competing to solve the problems that have traditionally come with automation, and many are succeeding.
The United States has its own problems with aging workers, however, especially in heavy industries like manufacturing, where baby boomers form an outsize part of the workforce. ProMat’s 51,000 attendees — a glad-handing throng of well-groomed, middle-aged white male faces attached to monogrammed backpacks and fancy sneakers — ambled from one exhibit to the next like visitors at a zoo. The crowd included buyers from major retailers and consumer goods companies, as well as venture capitalists and engineers.
Kyslinger, who grew up in western Pennsylvania and was a curveball-throwing right-hander for the University of Pittsburgh, majored in computer science in college. Practice was at 5 a.m., so he got up at 3:30 and went to the computer lab. For Kyslinger, who today lives near Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, working for a Japanese car company was a formative experience. He admired what he saw as Japanese culture’s disciplined approach to complex problems and wrote a master’s thesis on the different working environments at Honda and Ford.
Nevertheless, somewhat begrudgingly, he pointed out some highlights: A robotic arm with a kind of gripper that approached the versatility of human fingers. A visual sensor that had made progress in discerning the glare on a plastic wrapper from an object it contained. A sorter that excelled at finding the ideal geometry inside a cardboard box for items of different shapes, whether “toothpaste, tuna fish or a teddy bear.
Its writhing octopus-like appendages were hypnotic, but as soon as we started watching it, one of its “end effectors” failed to grip a box of Q-Tips and dropped it on the floor, where the autonomous mobile robot ran over it. “That catches my eye,” he said. It was a Shelby Cobra, made in 1967 and retrofitted for racing. A car.One of Kyslinger’s many consulting clients wandering the ProMat floor was Samuel Reeves, a roboticist from Philadelphia. Reeves, now 40, began working on a company he called Humanistic Robotics in the mid-2000s, shortly after he graduated from college. It was devoted to land mine removal, the kind of extreme task that robots have long been assigned.
“Human error causes problems, not robot error,” Kyslinger said, noting that airplane crashes have declined sharply since autopilot was introduced. “The robot does what it’s told to do — no more, no less.”
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Austin weather: 'Cooler' Friday, but triple-digit temps continueThe extreme heat is easing, but the triple-digit streak continues here in Central Texas. Zack Shields has details in his full forecast.
Read more »
Beam Us Up: Wireless Power Energizes Accessories, Lunar Rover RobotsNew wireless power solution from Yank Technologies has attracted a NASA Artemis Mission contract to beam power to robots from its lunar rover.
Read more »
NASA astronaut controls Earth robots while flying 17,150 mph aboard ISSThe test is part of NASA and ESA's future plans for controlling robots on the Moon's surface from the lunar Gateway station.
Read more »
Google's building A.I. into robots to teach them to throw out the trashThe Robotics Transformer 2 (RT-2) is a vision-language-action model trained on information on the web that can be translated into actions for the robot.
Read more »
Underwater robots could usher in a high-tech future for deep sea miningAn underwater robot prototype might eventually help pluck important metals from the ocean floor.
Read more »
Hermès Again Outpaces Luxury Pack With Q2 Sales Leaping 28 PercentLoyalty, quiet luxury and a multi-local mix helped Hermès International gallop ahead of the pack with a sales jump of 28 percent at constant currency against the backdrop of a U.S. slowdown for luxury.
Read more »