SKA Robotics provides custom-made methods for business
By DRONELIFE Options Editor Jim Magill
As drone producers and different high-tech industries scale up their manufacturing capabilities, they have a tendency to search for tried-and-true technological gear and processes to allow them to mass produce their merchandise.
Nonetheless, generally they encounter a novel logistical or technological problem that requires a custom-made answer, one which had not been beforehand developed.
That is the place firms corresponding to SKA Robotics are available in. The Pittsburgh-based firm, which offered examples of its bespoke know-how on the Vitality Drone + Robotics convention in The Woodlands, Texas lately, gives {hardware}, software program and methods engineering providers for industrial and industrial robots.
One of many firm’s most up-to-date tasks includes working with a UAV firm to design a synthetic intelligence (AI) system for drone operations, SKA President Spencer Krause mentioned in his presentation. He added that whereas it was too early to speak in regards to the challenge intimately, the corporate possible would be capable of launch extra info on its drone initiative within the fourth quarter of this yr.
“We attempt to create generalizable, repeatable options as a lot as attainable. However we’re not making an attempt to promote you some widget off the shelf. We need to construct one thing that’s truly designed for the issue you could have,” Krause mentioned on the sidelines of the convention.
Krause mentioned SKA’s aim is to design robotic methods that work with individuals to lower the tough or harmful elements of their jobs and to allow the human staff to perform their duties quicker and extra effectively.
SKA Robotics’ employees consists of “100 of probably the most expert robotics engineers on the planet,” he mentioned. “We’re speaking the highest 1% of expertise to resolve a number of the most tough {hardware}, software program and methods engineering issues. We’re trusted by manufacturers like Siemens Vitality, Google, and Caterpillar as a result of we’re quick, deterministic and elite.”
SKA focuses a lot of its efforts towards growing gear and processes to facilitate the manufacturing of vitality.
One latest challenge, developed for the Sarcos Know-how and Robotics Company, referred to as for the event of a workflow answer to automate the development of multi-square-mile photo voltaic fields utilizing quite a few various kinds of robots. Earlier than the event of the system, the job of photo voltaic discipline building was tough and labor-intensive.
“You may’t discover individuals which are keen to work in 120 levels, lifting photo voltaic panels that weigh generally 70 kilos over their heads over and over and over,” Krause mentioned. “There’s a whole lot of burnout within the job, however what you are able to do is locate individuals which are keen to do the superb adjustment, higher-level duties.”
SKA labored on each the {hardware} facet of the job – growing a practical structure for the system and synthesizing its bodily elements – and on the notion engineering aspect – growing algorithms for the classification and siting of photo voltaic panels throughout a variety of lighting circumstances utilizing a number of sensing and data-processing modalities.
By changing a lot of the guide labor of constructing the photo voltaic discipline with robotic staff, the challenge’s companions have been capable of enhance security circumstances and lower down on labor prices, with one of many former work crew members being promoted to having oversight for your complete building program, Krause mentioned.
In one other noteworthy challenge, SKA developed a system that employed AI and non-lethal deterrents corresponding to loud audio alerts and low-intensity lasers, to find and deter intruders making an attempt to interrupt into an influence plant.
“On this case, the way in which that it really works is it begins with a warning,” Krause mentioned. “What the intruder sees is mainly simply an orange dot on the bottom that’s projected in entrance of them as they get nearer.”
If the intruder proceeds forward, there’s an audible warning broadcast from three directional audio system that lets her or him know, “Hey, you shouldn’t be right here. Please go away.” If the trespasser doesn’t heed the warning and continues to maneuver ahead, a system of beams of sunshine is directed on the particular person’s face to momentary blind them. A number of beams are unfold out in a sample, with the beams about 20 levels aside from each other, to have the ability to shine within the intruder’s eyes no matter whether or not he turns his head or tries to defend his eyes.
Then, if regardless of the disagreeable sensations attributable to the noise and the lights, the intrusion continues, the amount of the directional sound system is amped as much as the place it’s truly painful. By this level safety officers normally have had time to reach on the scene to subdue the disoriented however unhurt trespasser.
Krause cited a 3rd instance of how SKA’s know-how improved a consumer firm’s workflow and saved the corporate cash. The challenge, executed in partnership with Siemens Vitality final yr, co-developed and put in a custom-built robotic for Siemens’ generator upkeep group.
Siemens makes use of the robotic to tighten fasteners inside 1-gigawatt utility-scale turbines, whereas driving within the air hole between the generator’s rotor and the stator. This robotic system permits the corporate to carry out routine upkeep on 1,500 to 2,500 fasteners with no need to disassemble the generator.
“This will get a 10-day upkeep cycle all the way down to a seven-day cycle, which saves the asset proprietor. $1.7 million,” Krause mentioned. He added that SKA was capable of full the challenge inside 4 months, from design section to building to having a working robotic out on the job.
Krause mentioned the way in which SKA likes to work is to assign a group of consultants to develop a robotic answer to resolve a tough downside for a consumer. “We knock out the actually onerous elements,” he mentioned. “So, firms have a tendency to return to us with the toughest stuff, stuff that they might by no means be capable of get at as a result of it’s too unbound, it’s too unstructured, it’s too tough.”
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Jim Magill is a Houston-based author with nearly a quarter-century of expertise masking technical and financial developments within the oil and fuel business. After retiring in December 2019 as a senior editor with S&P World Platts, Jim started writing about rising applied sciences, corresponding to synthetic intelligence, robots and drones, and the methods wherein they’re contributing to our society. Along with DroneLife, Jim is a contributor to Forbes.com and his work has appeared within the Houston Chronicle, U.S. Information & World Report, and Unmanned Methods, a publication of the Affiliation for Unmanned Automobile Methods Worldwide.