分类：robotnews

NASCAR performed a crash test with cars equipped with AB Dynamics’ technology. | Source: AB Dynamics

AB Dynamics and NASCAR have partnered to perform crash-test of NASCAR’s Next Gen race car using AB Dynamics’ robots. The car was equipped with steering, shifting and pedal (throttle, brake and clutch) robots, as well as sensors and a crash test dummy. 

The plan for the test crash was to send the race car into a Steel and Foam Energy Reduction (SAFER) barrier at 130 mph. The car needed to hit the barrier precisely at an angle of 24 degrees.

“The challenge was trying to get this extremely complex machine to do a very precise test without a human driver piloting the car,” Craig Hoyt, AB Dynamics Business Development Manager, said. “AB Dynamics robots allowed NASCAR to use a fully running race car and conduct the test at a real race track at real race speeds. There is no better data than replicating crash tests in a real environment and our robots enable us to do that accurately and repeatedly.”

NASCAR used AB Dynamics’ SR60 for steering, CBAR600 for pedals and its Gearshift Robot to drive the car. The company’s path following software ensured the robot was able to steer the car into the SAFER barrier at exactly 130.015 mph and within one degree of the determined angle. The vehicle hit the barrier within 2 cm of the desired impact point. 

“This is a truly innovative way to test the safety of vehicles in motorsport. The data we obtained from the test was extremely important and was not possible to get from any crash test facilities at the time,” John Patalak, the managing director of safety engineering at NASCAR, said. “The test provided valuable information for correlation with our computer crash simulations and confirmed that the predicted vehicle impact performance from the simulation was duplicated in this real-world crash test.”

AB Dynamics was founded in 1982 as a vehicle engineering consultancy. The company offers automotive test systems for a variety of applications, including highly-efficient durability testing to precision control for new areas of technology development. 

The post AB Dynamics’ robots at use crash testing NASCAR cars appeared first on The Robot Report.

Researchers at the Stevens Institute of Technology used a customized BlueROV2 robot to explore a busy harbor at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in New York. | Source: Stevens Institute of Technology

Underwater environments can be particularly challenging for autonomous robots. Things are constantly moving and changing, and robots need to figure out where they are without relying on GPS data. 

Researchers at the Stevens Institute of Technology have created a robot that is able to successfully navigate a crowded marina underwater. The robot is able to map its environment, track its own location and plan a safe route through a complex environment in real-time, simultaneously.

“Underwater mapping in an obstacle-filled environment is a very hard problem, because you don’t have the same situational awareness as with a flying or ground-based robot — and that makes sending a robot underwater an inherently risky process,” said Brendan Englot, project lead and interim director of the Stevens Institute for Artificial Intelligence.

The team was able to develop an algorithm that allowed the robot to monitor and manage its level of uncertainty about its location and environment, and make real-time decisions based on that uncertainty. The robot uses active SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping) algorithms.

“Essentially, the robot knows what it doesn’t know, which lets it make smarter decisions,” Englot said. “By creating a virtual map that accounts for the robot’s own confidence about where it is and what it’s seeing, the robot can quickly, safely, and accurately map a new environment.”

The robot, a customized BlueROV2 robot, operates at a depth of 1 meter, and uses sonar signals to detect objects around it. The robot was able to successfully explore a harbor at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in King’s Point, New York.

The robot has many potential applications, including in harbor repairs, building and maintaining offshore wind farms, aquaculture projects and drilling rigs. Moving forward, Englot’s team plans to ruggedize robotics platform to allow for longer-lasting undersea missions.

The post Researchers developing underwater map-making robot appeared first on The Robot Report.

ABB’s Robotic Depalletizer software uses the information gathered by the vision sensor to provide the robot with a suitable grasping point for each box. | Credit:ABB

ABB launches a new Robotic Depalletizer solution designed for handling complex depalletizing tasks in the logistics, e-commerce, healthcare, and consumer packaged goods industries.

The solution combines an ABB industrial robotic arm with vision guidance and a new, custom gripper design. The solution is optimized for mixed load pallets with a variety of box sizes and types.

The vision system can quickly and easily identify a new box type and then adjust the grip location and gripper orientation to optimally pickup the box from the pallet. This shortens the setup time and minimizes the engineering effort to deploy a new depalletizing workcell.

The vision sensor enables the robot to detect specific carton boxes on pallets, allowing reliable depalletizing of several different load types. | Credit: ABB

“Changes in consumer behavior are leading to a rise in new sales channels such as omni-channel, direct to consumer (D2C) and e-commerce. These, in turn, are driving the need for more flexible and efficient order fulfillment and distribution infrastructures,” says Marc Segura, ABB’s Robotics Division President. “With the ability to depalletize boxes stacked in a variety of configurations from single and mixed pallets, ABB´s Robotic Depalletizer helps to meet this need, allowing faster and more accurate handling of a wide range of goods ready for the next stage in the distribution process.”

The robot can efficiently process pallets of up to 2.8m (9.2 ft) high and boxes up to 30 kg (80 lbs). The robot can work at speeds up to 650 cycle per hour, and do this 24 hours a day.

The ABB Robotic Depalletizer can easily pick from pallets comprised of a single type of box in defined layers. Credit: ABB

A variety of ABB robots can be deployed into the Robotic Depalletizer solution. This includes a range of four to six axis robots. This enables the solution to be appropriately size for the expected operations, and can make the solution more affordable if lighter payloads, or less complex pallet configurations are expected.

The Robotic Palletizer can place boxes to an out feed conveyor or it can even interact with an autonomous mobile robot (AMR) for removal of boxes. ABB recently acquired AMR provider ASTI and has integrated ASTI into its product line.

The post ABB depalletizer replaces heavy lifting and improves efficiency appeared first on The Robot Report.