SKA Robotics provides custom-made techniques for trade
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 resolution, one which had not been beforehand developed.
That is the place firms comparable to SKA Robotics are available. The Pittsburgh-based firm, which offered examples of its bespoke know-how on the Power Drone + Robotics convention in The Woodlands, Texas just lately, presents {hardware}, software program and techniques engineering companies for business and industrial robots.
One of many firm’s most up-to-date tasks includes working with a UAV firm to design a man-made intelligence (AI) system for drone operations, SKA President Spencer Krause stated in his presentation. He added that whereas it was too early to speak concerning the challenge intimately, the corporate possible would have the ability to launch extra data on its drone initiative within the fourth quarter of this yr.
“We attempt to create generalizable, repeatable options as a lot as potential. However we’re not attempting to promote you some widget off the shelf. We need to construct one thing that’s really designed for the issue you could have,” Krause stated on the sidelines of the convention.
Krause stated SKA’s purpose is to design robotic techniques that work with folks to lower the tough or harmful features 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 this planet,” he stated. “We’re speaking the highest 1% of expertise to unravel a number of the most tough {hardware}, software program and techniques engineering issues. We’re trusted by manufacturers like Siemens Power, 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 power.
One latest challenge, developed for the Sarcos Know-how and Robotics Company, referred to as for the event of a workflow resolution to automate the development of multi-square-mile photo voltaic fields utilizing a variety of several types 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 folks which might be prepared to work in 120 levels, lifting photo voltaic panels that weigh generally 70 kilos over their heads over and again and again,” Krause stated. “There’s lots of burnout within the job, however what you are able to do is use folks which might be prepared to do the advantageous 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 parts – and on the notion engineering facet – growing algorithms for the classification and siting of photo voltaic panels throughout a variety of lighting situations utilizing a number of sensing and data-processing modalities.
By changing a lot of the handbook labor of constructing the photo voltaic discipline with robotic staff, the challenge’s companions had been capable of enhance security situations and reduce down on labor prices, with one of many former work crew members being promoted to having oversight for your complete building program, Krause stated.
In one other noteworthy challenge, SKA developed a system that employed AI and non-lethal deterrents comparable to loud audio indicators and low-intensity lasers, to find and deter intruders attempting to interrupt into an influence plant.
“On this case, the best way that it really works is it begins with a warning,” Krause stated. “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 individual’s face to non permanent 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 really painful. By this level safety officers often 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 shopper firm’s workflow and saved the corporate cash. The challenge, executed in partnership with Siemens Power 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 while not having 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 stated. 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 stated the best way SKA likes to work is to assign a group of specialists to develop a robotic resolution to unravel a tough downside for a shopper. “We knock out the actually onerous components,” he stated. “So, firms have a tendency to come back to us with the toughest stuff, stuff that they’d by no means have the ability to 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 protecting technical and financial developments within the oil and fuel trade. After retiring in December 2019 as a senior editor with S&P World Platts, Jim started writing about rising applied sciences, comparable to synthetic intelligence, robots and drones, and the methods through which 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 Car Methods Worldwide.
