SKA Robotics provides custom-made techniques for business
By DRONELIFE Options Editor Jim Magill
As drone producers and different high-tech industries scale up their manufacturing capabilities, they have an inclination to search for tried-and-true technological gear and processes to allow them to mass produce their merchandise.
Nevertheless, generally they encounter a singular logistical or technological problem that requires a custom-made answer, one which had not been beforehand developed.
That is the place corporations comparable to SKA Robotics are available in. The Pittsburgh-based firm, which introduced examples of its bespoke expertise on the Power Drone + Robotics convention in The Woodlands, Texas not too long ago, affords {hardware}, software program and techniques engineering companies for business and industrial robots.
One of many firm’s most up-to-date initiatives includes working with a UAV firm to design a synthetic intelligence (AI) system for drone operations, SKA President Spencer Krause stated in his presentation. He added that whereas it was too early to speak in regards to the mission intimately, the corporate doubtless would be capable 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 truly designed for the issue you will 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 troublesome or harmful points of their jobs and to allow the human staff to perform their duties sooner and extra effectively.
SKA Robotics’ workers consists of “100 of essentially 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 troublesome {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 creating gear and processes to facilitate the manufacturing of vitality.
One latest mission, developed for the Sarcos Know-how and Robotics Company, known as for the event of a workflow answer to automate the development of multi-square-mile photo voltaic fields utilizing numerous various kinds of robots. Earlier than the event of the system, the job of photo voltaic area building was troublesome and labor-intensive.
“You possibly can’t discover folks which might be keen 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 numerous burnout within the job, however what you are able to do is use folks which might be keen to do the high-quality adjustment, higher-level duties.”
SKA labored on each the {hardware} side of the job – creating a purposeful structure for the system and synthesizing its bodily elements – and on the notion engineering aspect – creating 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 handbook labor of constructing the photo voltaic area with robotic staff, the mission’s companions had 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 all the building program, Krause stated.
In one other noteworthy mission, SKA developed a system that employed AI and non-lethal deterrents comparable to loud audio alerts and low-intensity lasers, to find and deter intruders attempting to interrupt into an influence plant.
“On this case, the way in which 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 other than 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 brought on by the noise and the lights, the intrusion continues, the quantity 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 expertise improved a consumer firm’s workflow and saved the corporate cash. The mission, executed in partnership with Siemens Power final yr, co-developed and put in a custom-built robotic for Siemens’ generator upkeep crew.
Siemens makes use of the robotic to tighten fasteners inside 1-gigawatt utility-scale mills, 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 mission inside 4 months, from design section to building to having a working robotic out on the job.
Krause stated the way in which SKA likes to work is to assign a crew of specialists to develop a robotic answer to unravel a troublesome drawback for a consumer. “We knock out the actually exhausting components,” he stated. “So, corporations have a tendency to come back to us with the toughest stuff, stuff that they’d by no means be capable to get at as a result of it’s too unbound, it’s too unstructured, it’s too troublesome.”
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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 gasoline business. 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 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.
