Archive for the ‘Robotics’ tag
Prototyping with industrial robots
A shipping company must exercise patience whenever it needs a new a ship’s propeller: Its production is time consuming because a foundry workers must first fashion a model and a mold based on it. Industrial robots will support them in the future.
Ship’s propellers, parts for wind energy converters, turbine housings – such large-volume castings can only be produced with special molds. The procedure is elaborate and cost-intensive because foundry workers must still perform most of the work steps manually.
In the future, industrial robots will support skilled workers when they fabricate molds: Together with their partner firm Modell- und Formenbau GmbH Sachsen-Anhalt MFSA, researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Factory Operation and Automation IFF in Magdeburg have developed a procedure for this. “The robots produce large-volume models and molds faster and less expensively. Depending on the process, this can cut costs by up to a third.
Read more on: robot, Robotics, Robotics, shipRobotic repair system will fix ailing satellites
Researchers at Queen’s University are developing a new robotic system to service more than 8,000 satellites now orbiting the Earth, beyond the flight range of ground-based repair operations.
Currently, when the high-flying celestial objects malfunction – or simply run out of fuel – they become “space junk” cluttering the cosmos.
Read more on: Aerospace, Robotics, satellite, spaceDAQ robots designed to traverse volatile environments
To help scientists collect the more detailed data they need in order to find out why the world’s ice shelves are melting, without risking scientists’ safety, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, in conjunction with Pennsylvania State University, have created specially designed robots called SnoMotes to traverse these potentially dangerous ice environments.
The SnoMotes work as a team, autonomously collaborating among themselves to cover all the necessary ground to gather assigned scientific measurements. Data gathered by the Snomotes could give scientists a better understanding of the important dynamics that influence the stability of ice sheets.
Ayanna Howard, lead on the project and an associate professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech, explained: “In order to say with certainty how climate change affects the world’s ice, scientists need accurate data points to validate their climate models. Our goal was to create rovers that could gather more accurate data to help scientists create better climate models. It’s definitely science-driven robotics.”
Read more on: camera, DAQ, Robotics, Robotics, robots, sensors