In 2016, the European Union co-funded 17 new robotics projects from the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme for research and innovation. 16 of these resulted from the robotics work programme, and 1 project resulted from the Societal Challenges part of Horizon 2020. The robotics work programme implements the robotics strategy developed by SPARC, the Public-Private Partnership for Robotics in Europe (see the Strategic Research Agenda).
EuRobotics regularly publishes video interviews with projects, so that you can find out more about their activities. You can also see many of these projects at the upcoming European Robotics Forum (ERF) in Tampere Finland March 13-15.
This week features RobMoSys : Composable Models and Software for Robotic Systems.
Objectives
RobMoSys will coordinate the whole community’s best and consorted efforts to realize a step-change towards an industry-grade software development ecosystem.
RobMoSys envisions a model-driven integration approach built around the current code-centric robotic platforms.
RobMoSys intends to establish software quality enabling model and software composability and improved tool support.
RobMoSys will elaborate a common open methodology for software development based on broad involvement of the robotic and software community via Open Calls.
Expected Impact
The major expected impacts of the project are:
Impacts are expected in both the global software and system modelling tool market and in robotic related market domains.
Partners
COMMISSARIAT A L’ENERGIE ATOMIQUE ET AUX ENERGIES ALTERNATIVES
FACHHOCHSCHULE ULM
KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT LEUVEN
TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITAET MUENCHEN
SIEMENS AKTIENGESELLSCHAFT
PAL ROBOTICS SL
COMAU SPA
ECLIPSE FOUNDATION EUROPE GMBH
EUNITED AISBL
Coordinator:
Coordinator: Sara Tucci
sara.tucci@cea.fr
Project website: robmosys.eu
If you enjoyed reading this article, you may also want to read:
See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.
In this episode of Robots in Depth, Per Sjöborg speaks with Daniel Pizzata about how his passion for modular robotics led him to start Modbot, a company building robotics platforms. The goal of Modbot is to bring robots out of the research labs and make them accessible to everyone.
Daniel started out in the defence sector in Australia using robotics to measure radio transmissions. He worked on many different projects, but felt that he wanted to work with technology that was more widely applicable in society.
Daniel also talks about how he met his co-founder Adam Ellison and how they had the idea of a platform and a community that could widen the range of people that are able to develop robotics and automation solutions. This turned out to be a life-changing journey with many intense moments and amazing experiences.
Daniel then shares how living on floor 7½ in the mezzanine corridor was one of the interesting aspects of moving to San Fransisco to pursue his dream of starting Modbot.
I have created a gallery in Google Photos with some of the more interesting items I saw at CES, with the bulk of them being related to robocars, robotic delivery and transportation.
Click on the CES 2018 Gallery to view it. Make sure to see the captions, which will either appear at the bottom of the screen, or if you clicke the “Info” button (“i” in circle) it will open up a side panel with the caption, and then you can go through the images with arrow keys or the arrow buttons.
In the gallery you will see commentary on 3 different flying car offerings, many LIDARs, 6 delivery robots and the silliest product of CES 2018.
It’s been reported that Pony.ai got a $112M series A which shows the valuation frenzy is continuing. Pony.ai was founded by veterans of Baido (and Google Chauffeur), but what is more surprising is that their plan is not very ambitious, at least for now — cars for restricted environments such as campuses and small towns. They will go after the Chinese market first.
The U.S. Dept. of Transport will make a 3rd round of robocar regulations this summer. The first round was much too detailed, the 2nd round fixed that but said almost nothing. The 3rd round will probably be a bit closer to the middle, and will also deal with trucks, which were left out of earlier rules.
The Financial Times reported earlier this year that one of the largest clothing manufacturers, Hong Kong-based Crystal Group, proclaimed robotics could not compete with the cost and quality of manual labor. Crystal’s Chief Executive, Andrew Lo, emphatically declared, “The handling of soft materials is really hard for robots.” Lo did leave the door open for future consideration by acknowledging such budding technologies as “interesting.”
One company mentioned by Lo was Georgia Tech spinout, Softwear Automation. Softwear made news last summer by announcing its contract with an Arkansas apparel factory to update 21 production lines with its Sewbot automated sewing machines. The factory is owned by Chinese manufacturer Tianyuan Garments, which produces over 20 million T-shirts a year for Adidas. The Chairman of Tianyuan, Tang Xinhong, boasted about his new investment, saying “Around the world, even the cheapest labor market can’t compete with us,” when Sewbot brings down the costs to $0.33 a shirt.
The challenge for automating cut & sew operations to date has been the handling of textiles which come in a seemingly infinite number of varieties that stretch, skew, flop and move with great fluidity. To solve this problem, Softwear uses computer vision to track each individual thread. According to its issued patents, Softwear developed a specialized camera which captures threads at 1,000 frames per second and tracks their movements using proprietary algorithms. Softwear embedded this camera around robot end effectors that manipulate the fabrics similar to human fingers. According to a description on IEEE Spectrum these “micromanipulators, powered by precise linear actuators, can guide a piece of cloth through a sewing machine with submillimeter precision, correcting for distortions of the material.” To further ensure the highest level of quality, Sewbot uses a four-axis robotic arm with a vacuum gripper that picks and places the textiles on a sewing table with a 360-degree conveyor system and spherical rollers to quickly move the fabric panels around.
Softwear’s CEO, Palaniswamy “Raj” Rajan, explained, “Our vision is that we should be able to manufacture clothing anywhere in the world and not rely on cheap labor and outsourcing.” Rajan appears to be working hard towards that goal, professing that his robots are already capable of reproducing more than 2 million products sold at Target and Walmart. According to IEEE Spectrum, Rajan further asserted in a press release that at the end of 2017, Sewbot will be on track to produce “30 million pieces a year.” It is unclear if that objective was ever met. Softwear did announce the closing of its $7.5 million financing round by CTW Venture Partners, a firm of which Rajan is also the managing partner.
Softwear Automation is not the only company focused on automating the trillion-dollar apparel industry. Sewbo has been turning heads with its innovative approach to fabric manipulation. Unlike Softwear, which is taking the more arduous route of revolutionizing machines, Sewbo turns textiles into hardened substances that are easy for off-the-shelf robots and existing sewing appliances to handle. Sewbo’s secret sauce, literally, is a water-soluble thermal plastic or stiffening solution that turns cloth into a cardboard-like material. Blown away by its creativity and simplicity, I sat down with its inventor Jonathan Zornow last week to learn more about the future of fashion automation.
After researching the best polymers to laminate safely onto fabrics using a patent-pending technique, Zornow explained that last year he was able to unveil the “world’s first and only robotically-sewn garment.” Since then, Zornow has been contacted by almost every apparel manufacturer (excluding Crystal) to explore automating their production lines. Zornow has hit a nerve with the industry, especially in Asia, that finds itself in the labor management business with monthly attrition rates of 10% and huge drop offs after Chinese New Year. Zornow shared that “many factory owners were in fact annoyed that they couldn’t buy the product today.”
Zornow believes that automation technologies could initially be a boom for bringing small-batch production back to the USA, prompting an industry of “mass customization” closer to the consumer. As reported in 2015, apparel brands have been moving manufacturing back from China with 3D-printing technologies for shoes and knit fabrics. Long-term, Zornow said, “I think that automation will be an important tool for the burgeoning reshoring movement by helping domestic factories compete with offshore factories’ lower labor costs. When automation becomes a competitive alternative, a big part of its appeal will be how many headaches it relieves for the industry.”
To date, fulfilling the promise of “Made In America” has proven difficult, as Zornow explained we have forgotten how to make things here. In a recent report by the American Apparel & Footwear Association, US apparel manufacturing fell from 50% in 1994 to roughly 3% in 2015, meaning 97% of clothing today is imported. For example, Zornow shared with me how his competitor was born. In 2002, the US Congress passed the Berry Amendment requiring the armed services to make uniforms domestically, which led DARPA to grant $1.75 million to a Georgia Tech team to build a prototype of an automated sewing machine. As Rajan explains, “The Berry Amendment went into effect restricting the military from procuring clothing that was not made in the USA. Complying with the rule proved challenging due to a lack of skilled labour available in the US that only got worse as the current generation of seamstresses retired with no new talent to take their place. It was under these circumstances that the initial idea for Softwear was born and the company was launched in 2012.”
I first met Zornow at RoboBusiness last September when he demonstrated for a packed crowd how Sewbo is able to efficiently recreate the 10-20 steps to sew a T-shirt. However, producing a typical mens dress shirt can require up to 80 different steps. Zornow pragmatically explains the road ahead, “It will be a very long time, if ever, before things are 100% automated.” He points to examples of current automation in fabric production, such as dyeing, cutting and finishing which augment manual labor. Following this trend “they’re able to leverage machines to achieve incredible productivity, to the point where the labor cost to manufacture a yard of fabric is usually de minimis.” Zornow foresees a future where his technology is just another step in the production line as forward-thinking factories are planning two decades ahead, recognizing that in order “to stay competitive they need new technologies” like Sewbo.
In the past decade, countries and regions around the globe have developed strategic roadmaps to guide investment and development of robotic technology. Roadmaps from the US, South Korea, Japan and EU have been in place for some years and have had time to mature and evolve. Meanwhile roadmaps from other countries such as Australia and Singapore are just now being developed and launched. How did these strategic initiatives come to be? What do they hope to achieve? Have they been successful, and how do you measure success?
To explore these issues, former Robohub Editor Hallie Siegel and Open Roboethics Institute (ORi) Co-founder and Director AJung Moon invited researchers, policymakers, and industry members who have played a significant role in launching and shaping major strategic robotics initiatives in their regions to participate in an IROS 2017 workshop “Best practices in designing effective roadmaps for robotics innovation” to see what is working, what is not, and to uncover what best practices in roadmap development (if any) might be broadly applied to other regions.
Specifically, the workshop sought to examine the process of how these policy frameworks came to be created in the first place, how they have been tailored to local capabilities and strengths, and what performance indicators are being used to measure their success — so that participants could draw from international collective experience as they design and evaluate strategic robotics initiatives for their own regions.
The highlight of the workshop was a pair of panel discussions moderated by robotics ecosystem expert Andra Keay, Managing Director of the robotics industry cluster association Silicon Valley Robotics.
The first panel — featuring Peter Corke (QUT, Australia), Kyung-Hoon Kim (Ministry of Trade, Industry & Energy (MOTIE), South Korea), Rainer Bischoff (euRobotics AISBL, EU), Dario Floreano (NCCR Robotics, EPFL, Switzerland), Sue Keay (Queensland University of Technology, Australia), and Raj Madhavan (Humanitarian Robotics Technologies,LLC, USA) — was an in-depth discussion of regional differences in roadmap motivation, leadership, and strategy design from the perspectives of government, industry and academia.
The second panel — featuring Raja Chatila (IEEE Global Initiative for Ethical Considerations
in Artificial Intelligence & Autonomous Systems), AJung Moon (Open Roboethics Institute),
Alex Shikany (Robotic Industries Association), and Sabine Hauert (Robohub.org) — covered the ways in which issues such as roboethics, public perception and the fear of job loss due to automation are influencing robotics policy in different regions around the globe.
Lenka Pitonakova was part of the audience and provides her impressions below.
The workshop started with presentations on the process of designing roadmaps for robotics research and development. Individual speakers discussed best practises and problems encountered in their respective countries.
Dr. Rainer Bischoff (euRobotics, EU)
Robotics research is in a very mature stage in the EU. A network of robotics researchers and companies closely cooperate on issues such as using robots in healthcare, logistics, as well as for maintenance and inspection of infrastructure. The partnership between the European Commission, and European industry and academia is called SPARC. Decisions about relevant research areas to fund in the European Commission’s H2020 programme are made in a bottom-up fashion – meaning stakeholders get to influence priority areas for funding. This is done through topic groups in robotics established throughout the EU, which help shape the Robotics Multi-annual Roadmap which in turn shapes the work programme of the European Commission. Public outreach is also very important in the EU. Not only are all funding decisions openly available to the public, researchers are encouraged to perform outreach activities.
Dr. Dario Floreano (NCCR Robotics and EPFL, Switzerland)
One main source of funding in Switzerland currently comes from the NCCR scheme, which is a 12-year programme that started in 2010 and has four target areas: research, technology transfer (especially when it comes to creating start-ups), education and outreach. A part of this programme is also structural change in the research institutions of Switzerland. Since 2010, new robotics centres have been created and many new professors have been appointed. Switzerland takes a very pro-active approach to applied research, and technology transfer is as important for them as research itself. The most important areas of interest include wearable robots, mobile robots for search and rescue, human-robot interaction and teleoperation, as well as educational robots that can teach computational thinking.
Sue Keay (Australian Centre for Robotic Vision, Australia)
Australia is currently behind the Western countries when it comes to automation. This is mostly because there is no overreaching body that could unify different research groups and provide substantial research funding. A plan towards creating a centralised institution to support research is currently being formed and efforts are underway to persuade the government about the importance of investing into robotics. To this end, the ICRA 2018 conference, which will take place in Brisbane, Australia, is an important event for the Australian robotics community. Among the focus areas for future research, mining, manufacturing, defence and healthcare have been identified as the most important.
Dr. Kyung-Hoon Kim (Ministry of Trade, Industry & Energy, South Korea)
The government of South Korea has controlled the robotics research focus via the Intelligent Robots Development and Promotion Act since 2008. Every five years, the roadmap for research is re-visited by government experts and new funding areas are identified. The areas of interest include machine learning and big data analysis, human-robot collaboration, development of hardware parts and software platforms, as well as application of robotics in smart factories.
Dr. Raj Madhavan (Humanitarian Robotics Technologies, USA and India)
Researchers in India currently do not get much support from the government when it comes to robotics research, although some work on a research roadmap for robotics started in early 2017. However, the lack of government support is not the only problem that India faces. There also seems to be a lack of interest and commitment from individual researchers to unite their efforts and collaborate on a national level.
In a panel discussion that followed the presentations, the following stakeholders in research and innovation were identified:
A crucial factor that influences the interest from government and industry was idenfied: The ability of researchers to provide estimates about the economic impact of their work. Especially in the EU, robotics started growing as a research field when industry became more involved in funding and roadmap creation.
Secondly, it was mentioned that engaging the government and the public is also very important. Because of the ability of government regulations to stop technology from being developed and used, politicians should be engaged with new ideas and with how they will shape the society. On the other hand, end-users, i.e., the public, also need to understand the impact of new technology on their lives, both to encourage the use of new technology and to mitigate fears of its negative impacts. However, engaging all stakeholders and making research and development relevant to all of them is often very difficult because of differences in opinions and long-term goals.
The second panel discussion focused on challenges for adoption of robotic technologies.
Public acceptance and uncertainty about the impact of technology on well-being of people and society as a whole, as well as the fear of loosing control of autonomous systems, were identified as the most important topics to address. To mitigate these fears, it is useful to provide the public with statistics on how technology impacted jobs in the recent past, as well as to provide well-informed projections for the near future.
It is crucial for scientists to be trained in and to apply best practice in Public communication, especially as the commentary on new technology often comes from the media, where non-experts (consciously or not) misinform the public about the impacts and capabilities of new technology.