“We don’t have a magic solution, but we’ve improved a lot,” says Francesco Ferro, CEO of PAL Robotics, the Barcelona-based pioneer of humanoid robots. “When we made our first biped robot in 2004, we needed at least five engineers to use it. Now, a client can turn it on and control it themselves. In the future, we will only have to speak with the robot and it will complete a task.”

Their robots are already used for entertainment and in healthcare. The company is 18 months into a retail pilot with a robot that autonomously navigates aisles full of shoppers to provide an exhaustive, daily, 3D inventory. It’s something few retailers can currently achieve, but this kind of data is invaluable for optimized decision making, explains Ferro.

Retailers are also taking advantage of highly adaptable mobile robots to provide in-store guidance and information for customers. Equipped with a dazzling array of features, including multi-modal controls with reassuring feedback in the form of expressions, lights and sounds, the Care-o-Bot 4, is now marketed by Unity Robotics, a Fraunhofer IPA spin-off. The robot’s award-winning design can already be seen hard at work at the German electronics store, Saturn Ingolstadt, helping customers find products and summoning staff when human assistance is needed.

A core technology for industrial and service robotics

The European Commission’s Horizon 2020 (H2020) work programme identifies human-robot interaction (HRI) as one of four core robotics technologies, to which it is pledging project funding of EUR 66 million for 2018–20. “Human-machine interaction or HRI is considered key for both industrial and service robotics,” says Martin Haegele, Head of Robot and Assistive Systems at Fraunhofer IPA. “The robot is a part of a scenario operated by professional end-users and service companies, in agriculture, healthcare and rehabilitation, logistics, security and retail. Most of these applications share one common feature, they operate without a safety fence. Exposed to everyday environments, robots have to meet safety standards, they have to be operated safely and intuitively, so obviously HRI is the most important feature.”

For logistics, increasingly safe and effective interaction between robots and humans holds the promise of highly-flexible warehouses, the focus of H2020 funded project, SafeLog. With sensors embedded in their mandatory safety vests, human workers can be easily located by the system, while augmented reality assists them in a variety of roles, providing picking, navigating and maintenance information.

Improving capabilities for robots, empowering businesses

The drivers behind safe, dependable human-robot interaction are artificial intelligence, machine learning models and sensors, such as the illuminating artificial skin, developed by TUM’s Institute for Cognitive Systems to react to proximity. Europe leads innovation to embody intelligence into mechanical robots. The objective is to make machines that are sensitive enough to not only avoid potentially harmful contact, but so they can even be guided with a feather.

“An area that I find really exciting is how to simplify teaching tasks to robots,” says Samuel Bouchard, CEO of Robotiq, Canadian manufacturers of collaborative robot tools. “Right now, we’re still using very low-level instructions. It requires a lot of expertise. If robots can have a higher level of abstraction, it’s going to be much easier to collaborate. The challenge is to put more intelligence into the different components.” The company’s goal is to empower businesses by showing them how to install robots by themselves, thus helping them to overcome workforce challenges, including a shrinking labour pool. “Obviously, the real goal is that we need to collaborate seamlessly,” says Bouchard.

The service robotics area at Automatica 2018 boasts an unparalleled array of HRI technologies, being developed to provide safe, economical, flexible automation solutions; to safeguard the jobs of older employees and to allow controls and even emotional quality of experience to be tailored to the user, and leading to one of the most significant technical step changes in robotics.

Visit the Automatica website for more information

See all stories for Automatica

The topic spectrum will range from Cobot usage in logistics and distribution, to complex control and monitoring technology for complicated robot systems, to value creation with the help of data-supported methods, such as machine learning, visual perception or speech recognition.

Representatives will include Prof. Dr.-Ing. Sami Haddadin, director at the Institut für Regelungstechnik [Institute for Control Technology] at Leibniz University Hanover, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Sami Haddadin, director at the Institute for Control Systems at Leibniz University in Hanover, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Torsten Kröger from the Karlsruher Institut für Technologie KIT [Karlsruhe Institute of Technology] and Melonee Wise, CEO at Fetch Robotics from San Jose/USA. The expert’s meeting will take place at Schunk’s headquarters in Lauffen/Neckar, Germany.

Visit the Schunk website for more information

See all stories for Schunk

Increasingly, collaborative robots – or cobots – are now being used for product testing. This type of automation is maximizing the testing environment, improving employee productivity and happiness, benefiting the bottom line while allowing companies to bring products to market much faster than ever before. Take dishwashers: loading and operating a dishwasher is already a mind numbing job for a human to perform in our regular daily life –imagine trying to test how many times a dishwasher can be loaded before it wears out?

Scientists from Fraunhofer IPA in Stuttgart, Germany have now developed a mobile cobot system for Bosch Siemens Hausgeräte taking over this tedious task: Universal Robots are programmed to load and operate dishwashers for endurance testing. From putting detergent into the machine to testing the internal baskets, the process is now automated and has delivered many benefits; employees have been relieved of repetitive tasks and the application allows for a standardized and controlled 24/7 operation.

Moving into the lab

The easy assembly, integration, flexibility and precision of cobots means they can be deployed to do intricate tasks including laboratory testing and analysis.

In laboratories, cobots are being used to automate demanding research projects where precision is critical. A robot can consistently and repeatedly follow exact processes and pre-defined workflows with miniscule deviation, providing optimum conditions for study and analysis. This gives scientists and researchers more time to spend on other areas of their project.

Canadian manufacturer of robotic grippers, Robotiq, demonstrates just how efficient it is to deploy a product testing solution with their 2-Finger Adaptive Gripper 85 application. From the installation of the robot and the gripper to programming trajectories, product testing and data collection, the application is easily deployed with little to no downtime in production.

Winning against Chinese competitors

Scott Fetzer Electrical Group in Tennessee uses a Universal Robots UR10 for data collection and life cycle testing of new designs. The cobot is programed to test small motors manufactured by the company, inside customer products. The robot is set to turn the product’s switch on and off, running the motor for a minute, turning it off for 30 seconds and continuing for a period of 400-hours.

During this process the cobot collects relevant data about the quality and performance of the product and the information is transmitted to data storage where it can be analysed. This is an extremely demanding task for employees to undertake and repeat for hours on end with the same level of consistency and precision.

Director of Operations at Scott Fetzer Electrical Group, Matthew Bush said using cobots in the testing process has been a major benefit for the business. “It’s enabled us to actually engage our customer in the testing as well; they’re excited to see us use new technology to push our design faster into production. It gives us an advantage over our competitors thousands of miles away in low-cost source countries. We’re now winning orders against Chinese competitors and bringing back work that used to be sourced in China as well.”

Imagine the competitive advantage and opportunities that can be created by automating product testing.

Visit the Universal Robots website for more information

See all stories for Universal Robots

The emerging market for professional service robots is forecast to increase very quickly, with a unit-shipment compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 46 percent, from 2015 to 2020, the report says. After 2020, the global market for professional service robot markets will grow even faster, with more robots moving from prototype to commercialization in various applications.

“The various demands on the professional service applications are multi-billion dollar opportunity for the professional service robot markets,” said Wilmer Zhou, senior analyst, manufacturing technology, IHS Markit. “The agriculture industry, logistics, medical and care, and domestic help are the early adoption industries for professional service robots.”

According to the latest IHS Markit Service Robots and Drones Report, automated agricultural machinery is gradually replacing the work formerly handled by farmers. Demand for service robots has increased considerably, especially for agricultural processes like seeding, planting, harvesting, pruning, weeding, picking, sorting, spraying and materials handling.

In the logistics sector, service robots have been largely deployed in automatic warehouses. Exemplified by Amazon’s recent acquisition of Kiva Robotics, large companies are very active in investing in logistics and automated warehouse applications, to reduce the number of workers and increase efficiency.

The medical and healthcare industries are making great progress in service robot deployment. With surgical robot prices falling, and their use in medical operation tasks growing, the medical industry will continue to be one of the fastest growth sectors for robots. As the global population ages – especially in Japan, Germany and other developed countries — demand for domestic help robots is also growing.

Regional differences

In 2015, unit shipments of professional service robots in North America reached 35 percent, and revenue reached 37 percent of the total global market, the report says.

“North America will continue to lead the medical and care, agriculture, logistics, transportation, and space sectors of the service robot market, because of the country’s abundant innovation resources, including talented people from around the world, large capital funds, leading universities and huge consumer and commercial markets,” Zhou said.

Demand for robots is also strong in Europe, especially in energy, government, civil defence and rescue, maritime, shipping and ports and docks. In these industries, service robots are more expensive and more specialized. “These applications need the service robot companies to cooperate with their customers very closely for customized solutions for dedicated applications,” Zhou said. “Europe has had abundant industry knowledge and specialized professionals for a long time.”

Thanks to their huge consumer markets, professional service robot unit shipments in Asia-Pacific will grow the fastest, at a CAGR of 50 percent from 2015 to 2020. Japan and Korea will lead in both domestic-help applications and entertainment and education robot applications. China will soon catch up and be the future industry powerhouse, thanks to strong support of the Chinese government.