What do pizza slices, sea slugs and one possible design for future soft-bodied robots have in common? They all have frilly surfaces, and new insights about the surprising geometry of frilly surfaces may help a future generation of energy-efficient and extremely flexible soft-body robots move.
The complex folds of a frilly surface like coral reefs or kale leaves is a surface mathematicians refer to as an “inflected nonsmooth surface.” It changes the direction in which it bends.
“People have looked at these hyperbolic surfaces for 200 years, but nobody has thought about the role of smoothness in relation to how these things move, their mechanics,” said University of Arizona mathematician Shankar Venkataramani. “Nobody saw a relevance to these things until now.”
Venkataramani will present his group’s research on nonsmooth surfaces, sea slugs and possible robotic applications at the 2019 American Physical Society March Meeting in Boston.
Until recently, Venkataramani said, physicists generally assumed that natural frills occur when the balanced forces between simultaneous bending and stretching of a sheet cause the surface to crumple. However, Venkataramani, in recent work with doctoral students John Gemmer and Toby Shearman and Hebrew University physicist Eran Sharon, showed that there can be nonsmooth surfaces that are simultaneously unstretched yet frilly.
“The idea that these frilly surfaces don’t have stretching in them, that was completely counterintuitive,” he said.
And, he noted, the research showed that changes from one form to another appear to require very little energy. This is key since the ability to change the geometry of surfaces has big implications for their strength and thus ability to act on the surroundings. Pick up a soggy slice of pizza and it creates a mess but “put a little curvature and it becomes stiff and you can eat it,” he said.
Having developed the mathematics to describe these surfaces, his group modeled nonsmooth thin films with six up-and-down portions and wondered how they would move.
“We realized that nature already solved the problem millions of years ago. Some sea slugs and marine worms use this geometry to get around,” Venkataramani said.
The challenge now, he said, is determining exactly how the distinctive swimming gait of these soft-bodied marine invertebrates, such as the Spanish dancer sea slug, is related to their nonsmooth geometry.
The answer may provide “a potential avenue for building soft robots that are energy-efficient and extremely flexible,” Venkataramani said.
Agriculture is a $5 trillion industry, and it’s ripe for automation. Cambridge Consultants today announced Mamut, an autonomous robot that explores crop fields, capturing data on health and yield at the level of individual plants and on a massive scale. By automating data capture, Mamut gives growers regular, precise and actionable information on their crops, enabling them to predict and optimize yields.
Agriculture is under pressure to increase efficiencies, producing greater yields with fewer inputs and less labor. To meet these demands, growers need precise information on crop growth and health throughout the growing season. Automation of the data collection process is essential to providing growers with information at scale.
Existing large-scale monitoring approaches use drones, which cannot capture information from beneath the crop canopy. Attempts to use ground-based monitoring have been limited by the requirement for additional infrastructure, such as cabling or radio beacons.
Mamut is an AI-powered autonomous robotic platform. Equipped with an array of sensors, Mamut maps and navigates its surroundings without the need for GPS or fixed radio infrastructure. As it travels the rows of a field, orchard or vineyard, cameras capture detailed crop data at the plant level, enabling accurate predictions of yield and crop health.
Mamut integrates stereo cameras, LIDAR, an inertial measurement unit (IMU), a compass, wheel odometers and an on-board AI system that fuses the multiple sensor data inputs. This sophisticated blend of technologies enables Mamut to know where it is and how to navigate through a new environment, in real time.
“Mamut is a practical application of AI, meeting a real and pressing need, particularly for growers of specialty crops where failure carries a high cost,” said Niall Mottram, Head of Agritech, Cambridge Consultants. “AI systems are already being used to understand crop conditions, yield predictions and to enable weed identification, but our autonomous robotic platform can collect valuable and granular data below the canopy, where drones cannot see.
“This data enables farmers to treat each plant in their vineyard, orchard or field individually, and on the scale of massive industrial farming, optimizing yields and producing more output with less input.”
Mamut’s capability to perform simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), enabling the robot to react and learn from unstructured routes in real time, was developed in navigation trials through the twists and turns of a 12-acre maize maze at Skylark Garden Centre, and at Mackleapple’s orchard, both in Cambridgeshire, UK.
The Robot Report named Augean Robotics one of its 10 robotics startups to watch in 2019. Augean Robotics makes Burro, an autonomous mobile robot that follows people on a farm, moving up to 500 lbs of cargo around to free up workers to perform more valuable tasks. Burro can learn the routes it takes and re-run them autonomously. Augean is currently working with fresh fruit farmers. In December 2018, Augean took home top honors at the FBNFarmers Startup Competition by winning the Judge’s Choice Award.
Artificial intelligence will shift jobs, not replace them. | Reuters/Issei Kato
Some good news: The robots aren’t coming for your job. Experts at the Conference on the Future of Work at Stanford University last month said that fears that rapid advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and automation will leave all of us unemployed are vastly overstated.
But concerns over growing inequality and the lack of opportunity for many in the labor force — serious matters linked to a variety of structural changes in the economy — are well-founded and need to be addressed, four scholars on artificial intelligence and the economy told an audience at Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB).
That’s not to say that AI isn’t having a profound effect on many areas of the economy. It is, of course. But understanding the link between the two trends is difficult, and it’s easy to make misleading assumptions about the kinds of jobs that are in danger of becoming obsolete.
Today’s workforce is sharply divided by levels of education, and those who have not gone beyond high school are affected the most by long-term changes in the economy, said David Autor, professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“It’s a great time to be young and educated. But there’s no clear land of opportunity” for adults who haven’t been to college, said Autor during his keynote presentation.
When predicting future labor market outcomes, it is important to consider both sides of the supply-and-demand equation, said Varian, founding dean of the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley. Most popular discussion around technology focuses on factors that decrease demand for labor by replacing workers with machines.
However, demographic trends that point to a substantial decrease in the supply of labor are potentially larger in magnitude, he said. Demographic trends are also easier to predict, since we already know, aside from immigration and catastrophes, how many 40-year-olds will live in a country 30 years from now.
Comparing the most aggressive expert estimates about the impact of automation on labor supply with demographic trends that point to a workforce reduction, Varian said he found that the demographic effect on the labor market is 53% larger than the automation effect. Thus, real wages are more likely to increase than to decrease when both factors are considered.
Automation’s slow crawl
Why hasn’t automation had a more significant effect on the economy to date? The answer isn’t simple, but there’s one key factor: Jobs are made up of a myriad of tasks, many of which are not easily automated.
“Automation doesn’t generally eliminate jobs,” Varian said. “Automation generally eliminates dull, tedious, and repetitive tasks. If you remove all the tasks, you remove the job. But that’s rare.”
Consider the job of a gardener. Gardeners have to mow and water a lawn, prune rose bushes, rake leaves, eradicate pests, and perform a variety of other chores. Mowing and watering are easy tasks to automate, but other chores would cost too much to automate or would be beyond the capabilities of machines — so gardeners are still in demand.
Automation doesn’t generally eliminate jobs. Automation generally eliminates dull, tedious, and repetitive tasks. If you remove all the tasks, you remove the job. But that’s rare. –Hal Varian, chief economist, Google
Some jobs, including within the service industry, seem ripe for automation. However, a hotel in Nagasaki, Japan, was the subject of amused news reports when it was forced to “fire” its incompetent robot receptionists and room attendants.
Jobs, unlike repetitive tasks, tend not to disappear. In 1950, the U.S. Census Bureau listed 250 separate jobs. Since then, the only one to be completely eliminated is that of elevator operator, Varian observed. But some of the tasks carried out by elevator operators, such as greeting visitors and guiding them to the right office, have been distributed to receptionists and security guards.
Even the automotive industry, which accounts for roughly half of all robots used by industry, has found that automation has its limits.
“Excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake. To be precise, my mistake. Humans are underrated,” Elon Musk, the founder and chief executive of Tesla Motors, said last year.
Technology has always changed rapidly, and that’s certainly the case today. However, there’s often a lag between the time a new machine or process is invented and when it reverberates in the workplace.
“The workplace isn’t evolving as fast as we thought it would,” Paul Oyer, a Stanford GSB professor of economics and senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, said during a panel discussion at the forum. “I thought the gig economy would take over, but it hasn’t. And I thought that by now people would find their ideal mates and jobs online, but that was wrong too.”
Consider the leap from steam power to electric power. When electricity first became available, some factories replaced single large steam engines on the factory floor with a single electric motor. That didn’t make a significant change to the nature of factory work, says Erik Brynjolfsson, director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy. But when machinery throughout the factory was electrified, work changed radically.
The rise of the service sector
Employment in some sectors in which employees tend to have less education is still strong, particularly the service sector. As well-paid professionals settle in cities, they create a demand for services and new types of jobs. MIT’s Autor called these occupations “wealth work jobs,” which include employment for everything from baristas to horse exercisers.
The 10 most common occupations in the U.S. include such jobs as retail salespersons, office clerks, nurses, waiters, and other service-focused work. Notably, traditional occupations, such as factory and other blue-collar work, no longer make the list.
Looming over all of the changes to the labor force is the stark fact that birth rates in the U.S. are at an all-time low, said Varian. As has been widely reported, the aging of the baby boom generation creates demand for service jobs but leaves fewer workers actively contributing labor to the economy.
Even so, the U.S. workforce is in much better shape than other industrialized countries. The so-called dependency ratio — the proportion of people over 65 compared with every 100 people of working age — will be much higher in Japan, Spain, South Korea, Germany, and Italy by 2050. And not coincidentally, said Varian, countries with high dependency ratios are looking the hardest at automating jobs.
As the country ages, society will have to find new, more efficient ways to train and expand the workforce, said the panelists. They will also have to better accommodate the growing number of women in the workforce, many of whom are still held back by family and household responsibilities.
The robots may not be taking over just yet, but advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning will eventually become more of a challenge to the workforce. Still, it’s heartening to be reminded that, for now, “humans are underrated.”
Editor’s note:This piece was originally published by Stanford Graduate School of Business.
OnRobot has launched a Digital I/O converter that enables its RG2, RG6, Gecko, and VG10 grippers to seamlessly integrate with a wider range of collaborative robot arms. The Digital I/O Converter enables the cobot arms to work with the OnRobot grippers with minimal need for programming, resulting in faster switch times between multiple tasks.
OnRobot said this leads to an increase in production as the cobots can get back to work faster. OnRobot said the Digital I/O Converter works with the following brands and cobot arms:
Of course, OnRobot also supports Universal Robots, the leading collaborative robotics company in the world. OnRobot’s RG2, RG6 and VG10 are part of the UR+ program. OnRobot’s HEX Force/Torque sensing package is also part of the UR+ program.
As different cobot arms understand I/O signals differently, OnRobot said the I/O Converter is able to convert NPN to PNP signals and vice versa. What does that mean for the robot operator? PNP sensors, sometimes known as “sourcing sensors” because they source positive power to the output, and NPN sensors, oftentimes called “sinking sensors” because they sink the ground to the output, are the technical terms for the type of transistor used to switch the output.
With the I/O converter, programmers don’t have to worry about the robots not understanding the signals received. The Digital I/O Converter also includes an adapter plate for converting the UR-type A flanges mechanically to other robot flanges.
The Digital I/O converter can be ordered at local sales offices. Additional information, datasheets, and manuals detailing mounting, cable routing, software configurations, and electrical connection can be downloaded here.
Established in 2015, OnRobot merged with Perception Robotics and OptoForce in 2018, followed by the acquisition of Purple Robotics. Purple Robotics was launched in 2017 by three former Universal Robots (UR) employees with 18-plus years experience working on the UR3, UR5, and UR10 cobots. Co-founders Lasse Kieffer, Henrik Tillitz Hansen, and Peter Nadolny Madsen, who describe themselves as “three Danish super-nerds,” found 40 partners in 25 countries just three months after launching the PR10.
OnRobot kicked off 2019 by shipping pre-orders of its Gecko Gripper that uses millions of micro-scaled fibrillar stalks that adhere to a surface using powerful van der Waals forces — the same way that geckos climb.
Navio robotic-assisted surgery system. (Credit: Smith & Nephew)
Smith & Nephew has acquired Brainlab‘s orthopedic joint reconstruction business and teased the unveiling of a next-generation surgical robotics platform for later in 2019.
The London-based company said that its acquisition of Brainlab’s orthopaedic joint reconstruction business included its associated salesforce, which it plans to fold into its surgical robotics division. It added that it will look to install Brainlab’s hip software onto its currently-in-development Navio 7.0 handheld surgical system, which it plans to release during the second half of this year.
Along with the acquisition, Smith & Nephew said that it inked a collaborative development deal with Brainlab to develop additional applications for its advanced automation platform.
“The near-term commercial opportunities with the innovation of our robotics platform and the integration of the Brainlab hip software are very compelling. Not to mention, the strong collaboration on design and development of next generation technology that will bring our customers more differentiated advanced surgical capabilities. We’re excited to work together with Brainlab to bring the future of the digitally integrated O.R. to life and into the hands of surgeons world-wide,” Skip Kiil, President, Global Orthopeadics, Smith & Nephew said in a prepared statement.
In the same release, the company said that it expects to complete development of its next-generation surgical robotics platform some time later this year, with a full commercial release in 2020. It teased that the new platform will have a dramatically reduced footprint and be able to be incorporated into the company’s sports medicine tower, and that the system will be faster than its still-in-development Navio 7.0.
Smith & Nephew added that its research & development program is looking to add augmented reality, stand-alone robotic arms and machine learning to the platform, and that it plans to open a new R&D and education center focused on robotics in Pittsburgh.
“Smith & Nephew is making a long-term commitment to bring together advanced technologies in robotics, digital surgery, and machine learning as well as augmented reality to empower surgeons and improve clinical outcomes. Over time these digital surgery and robotic assets will be deployed across all surgical specialities and healthcare settings where Smith & Nephew’s operates, starting with orthopaedic reconstruction and sports medicine,” CEO Namal Nawana said in a press release.
Bionic SoftHand from Festo plays Rock-Paper-Scissors. Credit: Philipp Freudigmann
Whether it’s grabbing, holding or turning, touching, typing or pressing — in everyday life, we use our hands as a matter of course for the most diverse tasks. In that regard, the human hand, with its unique combination of power, dexterity, and fine motor skills, is a true miracle tool of nature. What could be more natural than equipping robots in collaborative workspaces with a gripper that is modeled after this example from nature and solves various tasks by learning with artificial intelligence? Festo’s Bionic series does just that.
Festo announced that it will show its BionicSoftHand pneumatic robot hand at Hannover Messe 2019. Combined with the BionicSoftArm, a pneumatic lightweight robot, these future concepts are suitable for human-robot collaboration.
The BionicSoftHand is pneumatically operated so that it can interact safely and directly with people. Unlike the human hand, the BionicSoftHand has no bones. Its fingers consist of flexible bellows structures with air chambers.
The bellows are enclosed in the fingers by a special 3D textile coat knitted from both, elastic, and high-strength threads. Thanks to this soft robotics material, it is possible to determine exactly where the structure expands and generates power and where it is prevented from expanding. This makes it light, flexible, adaptable, and sensitive, yet capable of exerting strong forces.
AI-guided Bionic grasping
The methods for machines to learn are comparable with those of humans. They require positive or negative feedback to their actions in order to classify and learn from them. BionicSoftHand uses this method of reinforcement learning.
This means instead of imitating a specific action, the hand is merely given a goal. It uses trial and error to achieve its goal. Based on received feedback, the Bionic gripper gradually optimizes its actions until the task is finally solved.
Specifically, the BionicSoftHand can rotate a 12-sided cube so that a previously defined side ends up on top. The necessary movement strategy is taught in a virtual environment with the aid of a digital twin, which is created with the help of data from a depth-sensing camera and computer vision algorithms.
Proportional piezo valves for precise control
To minimize the effects of tubing, Festo’s developers have specially designed a small, digitally controlled valve terminal, which is mounted directly on the BionicSoftHand. This means that the tubes for controlling the gripper fingers do not have to be pulled through the entire robot arm.
Thus, the BionicSoftHand can be quickly and easily connected and operated with only one tube each for supply air and exhaust air. With the proportional piezo valves used, the movements of the fingers can be precisely controlled.
The days of strict separation between factory workers and automation are passing, thanks to collaborative robots. As their workspaces converge, humans and machines will be able to work simultaneously on the same workpiece or component — without having to be shielded from each other for safety reasons.
The BionicSoftArm is a compact further development of Festo’s BionicMotionRobot, whose range of applications has been significantly expanded. Thanks to its modular design, the Bionic arm can be combined with up to seven pneumatic bellows segments and rotary drives. This guarantees maximum flexibility in terms of reach and mobility. The arm can work around obstacles even in the tightest of spaces if necessary.
At the same time, it is completely flexible and can work safely with people. Direct human-robot collaboration is possible with the BionicSoftArm, as well as its use in classic SCARA applications, such as pick-and-place tasks.
Flexible application possibilities
The modular robot arm can be used for a wide variety of applications, depending on the design and mounted gripper. Thanks to its flexible kinematics, the BionicSoftArm can interact directly and safely with humans.
At the same time, the kinematics make it easier for the Bionic arm to adapt to different tasks at various locations in production environments. The elimination of costly safety devices such as cages and light barriers shortens conversion times and thus enables flexible use – completely in accordance with adaptive and economical production.
BionicFinWave: Underwater robot with unique fin drive
Nature teaches us impressively, how optimal drive systems for certain swimming movements should look. To move forward, the marine planarian and sepia create a continuous wave with their fins, which advances along their entire length.
For the BionicFinWave, the bionics team was inspired by this undulating fin movement. The undulation pushes the water backwards, creating a forward thrust. This principle allows the BionicFinWave to maneuver forwards or backwards through an acrylic tube system.
The BionicFinWave’s two side fins are completely cast out of silicone and do not require struts or other supporting elements. The two fins are attached to the left and right of nine small lever arms, which in turn are powered by two servo motors. Two adjacent crankshafts transmit the force to the levers so that the two fins can be moved individually to generate different shaft patterns. They are particularly suitable for slow and precise locomotion and whirl up less water than, for example, a screw drive.
A cardan joint is located between each lever segment to ensure that the Bionic robot’s crankshafts are flexible. For this purpose, the crankshafts including the joints and the connecting rod are made of plastic in one piece using the 3D printing process.
Intelligent interaction of a wide variety of components
The remaining elements in the BionicFinWave’s body are also 3D-printed, which enables its complex geometries in the first place. With their cavities, they act as flotation units.
At the same time, the entire control and regulation technology are watertight, safely installed and synchronized in a very tight space. The Festo Bionic Learning Network has continued its innovative approach to robotics.
Companies in North America installed robots at a record pace in 2018, according the the Robotic Industries Association (RIA). The 35,880 units shipped in 2018 marked a 7 percent increase from 2017. And is the United States, specifically, robot shipments increased 15% to a record 28,478.
Most areas showed growth in robot shipments, including food and consumer goods (48%), plastics and rubber (37%), life sciences (31%), and electronics (22%). Overall robot shipments to non-automotive companies increased 41 percent to a record 16,702 units.
The only sector analyzed by the RIA that slowed was automotive, which dropped 12 percent to 19,178 units shipped in North America from the 21,732 units shipped in 2017. The automotive industry still accounted for 53 percent of total robot shipments in North America in 2018. But that is the lowest percentage share since 2010.
And many signs are pointing to a downshift in automotive sales, so automotive could continue to see a decline in overall robot shipments. After three straights years of growth – a record 17.6 million units were sold in 2016 – sales of new vehicles in the US have started to slide. The US is the second-largest automotive market in the world.
China, the world’s largest car market, saw annual automotive sales dip for the first time in nearly two decades in 2018. Auto sales in China fell 3 percent in 2018, but analysts don’t see things improving going forward. Automakers sold about 28 million vehicles in China in 2018.
“While the automotive industry has always led the way in implementing robotics here in North America, we are quite pleased to see other industries continuing to realize the benefits of automation,” Jeff Burnstein, President of the Association for Advancing Automation (A3) said. “And as we’ve heard from our members and at shows such as Automate, these sales and shipments aren’t just to large, multinational companies anymore. Small and medium-sized companies are using robots to solve real-world challenges, which is helping them be more competitive on a global scale.”
While the US installed more robots than ever, it still has a ways to go it in terms of being the most automated country in the world. That title belongs to the Republic of Korea, according to the latest robot density numbers from the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) that measures the number of robots per 10,000 workers in an industry. The Republic of Korea, also known as South Korea, had a robot density of 631, which was eight-times more than the global average.
The US ranked seventh, according to the IFR’s analysis, with a robot density of 189 in 2016. The main drivers of growth were the “Made in the US” and re-shoring initiatives.
Countries with the most automation in manufacturing industries. (Credit: International Federation of Robotics)
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a warning against the use of surgical robots in mastectomies and other surgeries for the treatment or prevention of cancer.
The FDA said the safety and effectiveness of surgical robots have not been established for use in mastectomies or for surgeries to prevent or treat breast and other cancers. The FDA said it “encourages health care providers who use robotically-assisted surgical devices to have specialized training and practice in their use.”
The warning follows the publication of a study in the New England Journal of Medicine that said robot-assisted cervical cancer surgeries had reduced survival than open abdominal radical hysterectomies among women with early-stage cervical cancer. The journal article noted that other researchers have reported no statistically significant difference in long-term survival when these types of surgical procedures are compared.
Separately, a New Jersey hospital suspended robot-assisted mastectomy after it publicized two such procedures performed by one of its surgeons, concluding the surgery needs further review, according to a report in the Asbury Park Press. Long Island, N.Y.-based Northwell Health also touted the robot-assisted double mastectomy performed on a woman who carried the BRCA gene, which is associated with developing breast cancer.
Advocates of such robot-assisted surgery say it’s less invasive and causes less pain and fewer scars for patients. Critics such as Hooman Noorchashm, a Philadelphia-area surgeon-turned-patient-advocate, say that robot-assisted procedures are very different from standard surgery.
“If you’re dramatically changing existing standards of care… you better demonstrate that it’s not inferior to existing standards before you advertise it,” Noorchashm said in an interview with Medical Design & Outsourcing, a sister website of The Robot Report.
Demonstrating non-inferiority would traditionally require clinical trials comparing the outcomes of robotic-assisted versus standard surgery. Such studies on breast cancer patients are underway in France and Italy, but none have occurred in the United States. French investigators are comparing outcomes using traditional surgery and Intuitive Surgical’s da Vinci Robot Xi, according to the trial’s listing on clinicaltrials.gov.
“To date, the FDA’s evaluation of robotically assisted surgical devices has generally focused on determining whether the complication rate at 30 days is clinically comparable to other surgical techniques,” the agency’s warning says. “To evaluate robotically-assisted surgical devices for use in the prevention or treatment of cancer, including breast cancer, the FDA anticipates these uses would be supported by specific clinical outcomes, such as local cancer recurrence, disease-free survival, or overall survival at time periods much longer than 30 days.”
The agency has not granted marketing authorization for any robot-assisted surgical device for use in the United States for the prevention or treatment of cancer, including breast cancer. The labeling for robotic surgical devices that are legally marketed in the United States includes statements that cancer treatment outcomes using the device have not been evaluated by FDA.
“Health care providers and patients should consider the benefits, risks and alternatives to robotically assisted surgical procedures and consider this information to make informed treatment decisions,” the agency’s warning said.
The industry leader in robot-assisted surgery, Intuitive promotes the use of its robots for hysterectomies, both benign and cancer-related, on its website. The company does not list mastectomy among da Vinci’s recommended procedures and FDA did not mention Intuitive or any other surgical robotics company in its warning.
“Minimally invasive surgical devices, including robotic-assisted surgical systems and laparoscopic surgical tools, are cleared by the FDA for specific procedures, such as prostatectomy and hysterectomy, not specifically for cancer prevention or treatment,” Intuitive Surgical said in an email. “To date, there are more than 15,000 peer-reviewed articles that, in aggregate, support the safety and effectiveness of robotic-assisted surgery. We value the FDA’s role in protecting and promoting public health, and will continue to look to the agency for guidance as we develop innovative solutions for surgeons and their patients.”
A Danish study published this week in JAMA Surgery said that the risk of severe complications among early-stage endometrial cancer patients who underwent surgery after the national introduction of minimally invasive robotic surgery was significantly reduced. The patients with better outcomes included those whose procedures were minimally invasive laparoscopic surgeries and those who underwent robot-assisted surgeries. Patients were followed for 90 days post-procedure.
Intuitive Surgical recommended that surgeons discuss all treatment options with their patients and that patients ask surgeons about their training, experience, and patient outcomes.
Noorchashm’s wife, Dr. Amy Reed, died in 2017, four years after a myomectomy of fibroid tumors using a power morcellator. The tumors turned out to be a malignant form of cancer called uterine sarcoma that’s difficult to distinguish from benign tumors.
Noorchashm said he’s not anti-innovation but wants surgeons to proceed with caution. “They should slow the hell down,” he said.
KAST researchers exploring the human brain as a model for robots, from left: Ph.D. candidate Su Jin An, Dr. Jee Hang Lee, and Prof. Sang Wan Lee. Source: KAIST
Researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), the University of Cambridge, Japan’s National Institute for Information and Communications Technology (NICT), and Google DeepMind have argued that our understanding of how humans make intelligent decisions has now reached a critical point. Robot intelligence can be significantly enhanced by mimicking strategies that the human brain uses when we make decisions in our everyday lives, they said last week.
In our rapidly changing world, both humans and autonomous robots constantly need to learn and adapt to new environments. But the difference is that humans are capable of making decisions according to the unique situations, whereas robots still rely on predetermined data to make decisions.
Rapid progress has been made in strengthening the physical capability of robots. However, their central control systems, which govern how robots decide what to do at any one time, are still inferior to those of humans. In particular, they often rely on pre-programmed instructions to direct their behavior, and lack the hallmark of human behavior, that is, the flexibility and capacity to quickly learn and adapt.
Applying neuroscience to the robot brain
Applying neuroscience in robotics, Prof. Sang Wan Lee from the Department of Bio and Brain Engineering at KAIST and Prof. Ben Seymour from the University of Cambridge and NICT proposed a case in which robots should be designed based on the principles of the human brain. They argue that robot intelligence can be significantly enhanced by mimicking strategies that the human brain uses during decision-making processes in everyday life.
The problem with importing human-like intelligence into robots has always been a difficult task without knowing the computational principles for how the human brain makes decisions — in other words, how to translate brain activity into computer code for the robots’ “brains.”
Brain-inspired solutions to robot learning. Neuroscientific views on various aspects of learning and cognition converge and create a new idea called “prefrontal metacontrol,” which can inspire researchers to design learning agents for key challenges in robotics such as performance-efficiency-speed, cooperation-competition, and exploration-exploitation trade-offs (Science Robotics)
However, researchers now argue that, following a series of recent discoveries in the field of computational neuroscience, there is enough of this code to effectively write it into robots. One of the examples discovered is the human brain’s “meta-controller.” It is a mechanism by which the brain decides how to switch between different subsystems to carry out complex tasks.
Another example is the human pain system, which allows them to protect themselves in potentially hazardous environments.
“Copying the brain’s code for these could greatly enhance the flexibility, efficiency, and safety of robots,” said Prof. Lee.
An interdisciplinary approach
The team argued that this inter-disciplinary approach will provide just as many benefits to neuroscience as to robotics. The recent explosion of interest in what lies behind psychiatric disorders such as anxiety, depression, and addiction has given rise to a set of sophisticated theories that are complex and difficult to test without some sort of advanced situation platform.
Overview of neuroscience-robotics approach for decision-making. The figure details key areas for interdisciplinary study (Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences)
“We need a way of modeling the human brain to find how it interacts with the world in real-life to test whether and how different abnormalities in these models give rise to certain disorders,” explained Prof. Seymour. “For instance, if we could reproduce anxiety behavior or obsessive-compulsive disorder in a robot, we could then predict what we need to do to treat it in humans.”
The team expects that producing robot models of different psychiatric disorders, in a similar way to how researchers use animal models now, will become a key future technology in clinical research.
Sympathy for the robot
The team also stated that there may also be other benefits to humans and intelligent robots learning, acting, and behaving in the same way. In future societies in which humans and robots live and work amongst each other, the ability to cooperate and empathize with robots might be much greater if we feel they think like us.
“We might think that having robots with the human traits of being a bit impulsive or overcautious would be a detriment, but these traits are an unavoidable by-product of human-like intelligence,” said Prof. Seymour. “And it turns out that this is helping us to understand human behavior as human.”
What makes a robotics cluster successful? Proximity to university research and talent, government support of entrepreneurship, and a focus on industry end users are all important. Around the world, regions have proclaimed initiatives to become “the next Silicon Valley.” However, there have been relatively few metrics to describe robotics hubs — until now.
This week, Odense Robotics in Denmark released a report on the economic returns generated by its member companies. Both the amount of exports and the number of employees have increased by about 50 percent, according to Mikkel Christoffersen, business manager at Odense Robotics.
At the same time, the report is realistic about the ongoing challenges facing every robotics cluster, including finding qualified job candidates. As locales from India to Israel and Canada to China look to stimulate innovation, they should look at their own mixes of people, partnerships, and economic performance.
Membership and money
The Odense robotics cluster currently has 129 member companies and more than 10 research and educational institutions. That’s up from 85 in 2015 and comparable with Massachusetts, which is home to more than 150 robotics companies. The Massachusetts Robotics Cluster said it had 122 members as of 2016.
Silicon Valley Robotics says it has supported 325 robot startups, and “Roboburgh” in Pittsburgh includes more than 50 organizations..
In terms of economic performance, the Odense robotics cluster had 763 million euros ($866.3 million U.S.) in turnover, or revenue, in 2017. It expects another 20 percent increase by 2021.
Odense has been friendly to startups, with 64 founded since 2010. The Odense Robotics StartUp Hub has helped to launch 15 companies. Seventy companies, or 54 percent, of those in the Odense area have fewer than 10 employees.
Total investments in the Danish robotics cluster have risen from 322 million euros ($365.6 million) in 2015 to 750 million euros ($851.7 million) last year, with 42 percent coming from investors rather than public funding or loans.
Source: Odense Robotics
In addition, 71 local companies were robotics producers, up from 58 in 2017. The next largest category was integrators at 23. The region also boasted 509 million euros ($577.9 million) in exports in 2017, and 66 percent of its members expect to begin exports.
Market focus
The Odense Robotics report notes that a third of its member companies work with collaborative and mobile robots, representing its focus on manufacturing and supply chain customers. Those are both areas of especially rapid growth in the wider robotics ecosystem.
The global collaborative robotics market will experience a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 49.8 percent between 2016 and 2025, compared with a CAGR of 12.1 percent for industrial robots, predicts ABI Research. Demand from small and midsize enterprises will lead revenues to exceed $1.23 billion in 2025, said ABI.
Both Universal Robots and MiR have broadened their international reach, thanks to ownership by Teradyne Inc. in North Reading, Mass.
Robotics cluster must address talent shortage
Odense Robotics said that its robotics cluster employs 3,600 people today and expects that figure to rise to 4,900 by next year. In comparison, the Massachusetts robotics cluster employed about 4,700 people in 2016.
The Danish robotics cluster is a significant employer. Source: Odense Robotics
Even as the numbers of people grow at larger robotics companies (with 50 or more employees) or abroad, businesses in southern Denmark have to look far afield to meet their staffing needs. More than a third, or 39 percent, said they expect to hire from outside of Denmark, and 78 percent said that finding qualified recruits is the biggest barrier to growth.
The average age of employees in the Odense robotics cluster reflects experience, as well as difficulty recruiting. Fifty-five percent of them are age 40 to 60, while only 18 percent are under 30.
This reflects a larger problem for robotics developers and vendors. Even with STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) programs and attention paid to education, the demand for hardware and software engineers worldwide outstrips the available pool.
The University of Southern Denmark (SDU) is working to address this. It has increased admissions for its bachelor’s degrees in engineering and science and master’s of science programs from 930 in 2015 to 1,235 last year. The university also launched a bachelor’s in engineering for robot systems, admitting 150 students since 2017.
The Danish Technological Institute is expanding its facilities in Odense this year. Source: DTI
Another positive development that other robotics clusters can learn from Odense is that 41 percent of workers at robotics firms there went to vocational schools rather than universities.
Partnerships and prospects
Close collaboration with research institutions, fellow robotics cluster members, and international companies has helped the Odense hub grow. Seventy eight percent of cluster members collaborate among themselves, according to the report. Also, 38 percent collaborate with more than 10 companies.
The Odense robotics cluster grew out of a partnership between shipping giant Maersk A/S and SDU. The Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller Institute at SDU continues to conduct research into robotics, artificial intelligence, and systems for healthcare and the energy industry. It recently added aerial drones, soft robotics, and virtual reality to its portfolio.
Last year, the institute invested 13.4 million euros ($15.22 million) in an Industry 4.0 laboratory, and an SDU team won in the industrial robot category at the World Robot Summit Challenge in Japan.
Examples such as Universal Robots and MiR, as well as Denmark’s central position in Northern Europe, are encouraging companies to look for partners. Collaborating with companies inside and outside the Odense robotics cluster is a top priority of members, with 98 percent planning to make it a strategic focus in the next three years.
It’s only through collective action around robotics clusters that smart regions, large and small, can find their niches, build talent, and maximize the returns on their investments.
Editor’s note: A panel at the Robotics Summit & Expo in Boston on June 5 and 6, 2019, will feature speakers from different robotics clusters. Register now to attend.
Keynotes | Agenda | Speakers | Exhibitors | Register
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