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Robots and Automation Make Me Hot
irreverant take on robotics and automation
I'm in love with a robot
What happens when AI takes over Tinder?
📣 Topics of the Day 📣
Rocket Cutting Robots
Robot Magic
Meet The Real Ironman, It's Not Elon!
Tech of the Day: What the hell is a database?
⭐ Job Posting of the Day! ⭐
Infinite 3D Printing..WHHHAAAATTTT?????
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Rocket Cutting Robots
Back in the day if the government had unspent warheads we'd bury them and let mother Earth reabsorb those toxins over the next few million years. Things have changed and we actually care about what's in the water we drink! So what do you do if you have thousands, TENS of THOUSANDS of military warheads full of VX and sarin nerve agents? Well first you try not to scare off the people living in the area, but then you hire some of them to quite literally pick up these rockets and move them around, inspecting, draining, disassembling them. That's not a job for the faint of heart. Oh and you have to do this while wearing the highest level contamination suit which takes you about 30 minutes to put on. I feel sorry for those guys and gals!
But alas there's a hero here! The team at CRG Automation is called in to figure out how to remove as much risk to human life as possible from the disposal of these rockets. The president of CRG is a military veteran so he's no stranger to danger. The team created a custom solution that removes the toxic chemicals from the rockets, takes the rocket and places it into a container with a lid and crimps it shut, then loads it onto a pallet with other containers. Then that container is basically incinerated at over 1K degrees in what's called a Static Detonation Chamber. For some reason I want to call it an STD chamber but SDC is ok too.
CRG did such a great job reducing the time it took to process each warhead and the risk of contamination that not only did they get the first project but they also earned opportunities to solve several other problems related to the processing of these warheads.
Read more here:
Robot Magic
I love robot magic, especially impossible robot magic! This video caught my attention the other day and I thought dammmmnnnnn I know some people that might want to check this out. Fredrik Rydén from Olis Robotics took a cheapass webcam, mounted it to a cobot, did what has to be some pretty tough math and abracadabra we have robot magic. It's quite the bit. I just couldn't help myself. In this case Fredrik had his bot take some cables out of a container but really the applications for this are pretty endless. I don't see millions of dollars of R&D spend in this video but instead some dude that took what others claim to be incredibly difficult and simplified it. The automation industry needs more Fredriks. Smart guys finding ways to solve complex problems without having to write dissertations to make themselves seem smarter than everyone else. Cheers to you Fredrik, you sir are an Automation Junkie!
Tech of the Day: Databases
I first learned about databases in college. We learned how to create a Microsoft SQL database with some tables and then got really fancy by connecting it to an MS Access frontend. If you don't know what a database is all I've said in the past couple of sentences seems like nonsense but I'll break it down for you.
See this picture? That's what a database looks like. Another way to visualize a database is like this. You go buy a filing cabinet. That's your database. Then you go and put file folders in there. Those are your database tables. And within those file folders you put sheets of paper. In a database those would be records in your table. So now with your newly created database (filing cabinet) you can organize all kinds of records (papers of information) within those tables (file folders). The beauty of the database is that it can be structured AND you can run some pretty awesome searches(queries). So sticking to the filing cabinet example, say you walked up to the filing cabinet and said. Show me all the records in the blue folder that have the name Billy Bob. Then the filing cabinet gives you a nice neat pile of records to look through. This is really all a database is, a structured place to store data so it can become useful information presented through the results of a query.
Databases don't have to be hard but sometimes IT aliens people like to make them complex. For the average person they don't need to be. Now before I get all kinds of hate mail from you IT guys, more specifically you dbas (aka database admins aka damn boring ass smartasses), yes there are complexities to databases. They have to be set up right, there are little details to think about with how the data is indexed, etc. But we normal people don't need to worry about that because we have you dbas to make sure we don't screw these datasets up!
Weird Plug of the Day
I wasn't going to do an ad for these folks for a lot of reasons. But then I saw that they love the colors orange and blue probably as much if not more than I do! I like orange because it's a fantastic color, this company likes orange because they get excited seeing ABB robots. So we're kinda twins in a weird obscure sense.
Need a custom machine built? Sunshine Automation will do it. I'm pretty sure if you throw them a couple of bucks they'll build you whatever you want. The most interesting thing I saw on their website was an appliance leg bolt machine. What in the world does that do?? They're good people from the great state of Florida so give them a shout if you've been quoted a fortune on a project by the big guys and need someone with some sense to help you out!
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Meet The Real Ironman, It's Not Elon!
Elon Musk has been kinda sorta labeled as the Ironman, yes he built up Tesla and SpaceX. Both facilities I got to visit. I worked with those engineers and the stories are true. His people work their ass off. But he's not the real Ironman. Palmer Luckey is! Who the hell is this guy? Oh just the guy that created Oculus and then sold it to Facebook. You know the guy that made VR affordable. After selling Oculus he needed to do something with all his cash and time. Most people would take it easy for a bit, sip drinks on a beach, go date some models. Not this guy. He decides upend the beast that is the US military machine. How? Well normally the US government pays a select group of contractors to develop technology for the US military and it's allies. What this means is that a lot of our tax dollars are being wasted on ideas that don't work, pipe dreams of Congress. So what does a young guy with really deep pockets do? He decides to build the tech of the future and sells it to the government after it works. He can do it faster and better because his team maintains the creative control and they don't need the federal funding to make it happen. As taxpayers this means our dollar is much more effective at keeping our nation secure than in the past.
The core of what they do is bring autonomous tech to the battlefield. Freakin Awesome!
⭐JOB POSTING OF THE DAY⭐
Agilent Technologies, folks that make testing equipment used at airports, hospitals, etc are looking for a Lead Industrial Automation Engineer. The job sounds like it would be fun for the right Junkie. They're looking for someone with a bachelors degree or better that can think of, design, and execute the implementation of automation in their facilities. This position is onsite and located in Santa Clara, California. If you want a reason to move to Silicon Valley, this is it. Come join us..it'll be fun..
Have feedback or want to contribute a video, article or tacos? Maybe I'm interested maybe I'm not. If you have something constructive you can catch me on Twitter. @robotsrcoming or email us at [email protected]
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