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- 🔥 Fire Up The PLCs And Let's Roast Some Cobots 🌰
🔥 Fire Up The PLCs And Let's Roast Some Cobots 🌰
irreverant take on robotics and automation
Welcome to school bits and bytes! We've got some good stuff for you today about exoskeletons, RaaS, battlebots, and explosion proof stuff. Grab a drink, relax, and most importantly watch out for the cats!
It's Brutal Out There
📣 Topics of the Day 📣
Superhuman Strength!
Buy Now Pay Later...For My Robot?
HAI Robotics Has A BattleBot!!!!!
Tech of the Day: Explosion Proof Your Work!
Todays Newsletter Brought To You By
Industrial Control
What a sweet ass name for a company that sells industrial controls! In the next 5-10 years the domain name may be worth more than their company! Check out their work at their website and hit up Niklas Zimmick to get started on your next project!
Hey AutomationJunkie.com has a job board, post a job or find one!
Superhuman Strength!
If you love industrial tech like I do you'll really be interested in robotic exoskeletons! These are just freaking sweet and absolutely needed! Next time you're in a factory observe how the bodies of the more veteran employees look. A person's body will absolutely become conditioned to do a job over time. I've spent a lot of time at CAT plants and boy do some of those gents and ladies look the part. One robotic project I worked on we replaced an operator lifting heavy parts, like 40lb-60lbs each. The man that was working that cell prior to implementation had huge arms..and tiny little legs, just from doing his job. An industrial exoskeleton makes a ton of sense for jobs like this one. When I searched to see who's making them I found a company called Sarcos. Looks like they're still a young company but with some industrial grade exoskeletons. I predict that before we go full robotic and full ai in manufacturing we're going to have semi autonomous robo exoskeletons that help humans bridge that gap that exists between where we are today and full automation. Know what would be even cooler? How about adding some wheels to these things and adding forks to pick up pallets. That'd be an interesting concept to explore.
Buy Now Pay Later... For My Robot?
The biggest obstacle to the adoption of automation is money. It's as simple as that. If robots and automated systems were free almost everyone would have them. But that's not the real world. In the real world engineers have to justify every nut and bolt. We have to find problems, create solutions, calculate costs, and then try to manipulate persuade our bosses into giving us the funds to move forward. It's a sad game that many of us have to play to help make our world a better place but there is an emerging idea that's starting to take hold. RaaS.... Robots As A Service Here's the short version of what RaaS is. You, the end user, pay a monthly fee for a designated period of time and in return you get a robot that does a job.
This is an interesting business model because it does 2 things which really are game changing differentiators in our space. Forces hardware manufacturers to provide quality, reliable tech AND requires the implementors of the tech to be extremely efficient. In our current CAPEX heavy space manufacturers can put out less than stellar equipment that is finicky and intrinsically complex to implement. You know automation clients rarely buy the hardware because of the hardware, they're actually buying the performance of the system so paying for the use of the robots as a service makes total sense if you're on the client side!
One company that's making a big push into the RaaS is ARO. ARO stands for Administrative Resource Options but they do a lot more than admin work robotics customers. They're making a push to deliver RaaS solutions with a network of partner companies like H3 Dynamics, a drone manufacturer, Clean Robotics, and many more. Read the press release HERE I came across ARO on The Robot Report and started digging a little. These guys have built a company around managed services and recently got into the implementation and lifecycle services of robotics. They've put themselves at the forefront of what the robotics and automation industry need most..IMPLEMENTATION and SERVICE!
Tech of the Day: Explosion Proof Your Work!
The first time I was asked to provide an explosion proof system I asked them why they would want to blow up this equipment. I was really naive! No they didn't want to blow it up, instead they wanted to keep it from blowing up in the facility. See there are lots of production facilities that have environments which could cause an explosion. Let's review what it takes to make fire. Fuel, Oxygen, Heat.
Well did you know that dust is combustible? Or your perfume? Or some of your cooking ingredients? Unfortunately companies have learned the hard way that the right combination of obscure elements and compounds can create just the right mix to be catastrophic. So how do you get work done if there's a looming fear of explosion? Well first you have to identify that you have an explosive environment.
Next is to ensure the best air flow and gas/dust mixture to bring levels below a harmful level. Then, you have to utilize equipment made to be safe for use in your environments. In my past I utilized the European classification system so I'm really familiar with ATEX Zone0, Zone1, and Zone2. When you go to buy a piece of equipment for an EX application you need to cross all your T's and dot all your I's, and then for added safety bring in a 3rd party safety company to double check everyone's work.
Now don't let all this EX talk scare you off. Often all you need to do is provide sealed enclosures of all your electrical components and or positive airflow to those enclosures. See what you're doing is making it so that if there is a spark, there's no air (sealed enclosure) or if there is air then it's fresh air that's monitored. There's a whole industry around ex equipment so if you have a need you can easily search the world wide web for a company to take lots of your money, lots of it! EX equipment is not cheap, like normally 3X the cost of a standard system.
I know that there are different EX solutions with asrs, agvs, forklifts, etc but did run across this post on Linkedin about EX Cobots..
Hey we've got a guy for that! Check out our vendor list and if you're not on it pony up and get with the program!
HAI Robotics Has A BattleBot!!!
Oh boy ladies and gentlemen hold onto your suspenders! I just found out that HAI Robotics has a battlebot! Some of you might be like, "eh, what's the big deal". I'll tell you what's the big deal, finally someone in the industrial automation space has gotten the hint that us techies like to see robots tear each other apart, more so than watching UFC. I think this is an awesome development and it'd be nice if some of the other big names in robotics and industrial automation followed suit. At least a few will because there are alot of "follower types" in this space that weren't courageous enough to be bold like HAI Robotics.
Kudos to you brave marketing team at HAI! 🍻
Have feedback or want to contribute a video, article or tacos? Maybe I'm interested maybe I'm not sure that I'm looking for it. If you have something constructive you can catch me on Twitter. @robotsrcoming or email us at [email protected]
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