SKA Robotics provides custom-made programs 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 tools 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 firms resembling SKA Robotics are available. The Pittsburgh-based firm, which offered examples of its bespoke expertise on the Power Drone + Robotics convention in The Woodlands, Texas lately, affords {hardware}, software program and programs 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 undertaking intimately, the corporate probably would be capable to launch extra data on its drone initiative within the fourth quarter of this 12 months.
“We attempt to create generalizable, repeatable options as a lot as potential. However we’re not making an attempt to promote you some widget off the shelf. We wish to construct one thing that’s really designed for the issue you could have,” Krause mentioned on the sidelines of the convention.
Krause mentioned SKA’s purpose is to design robotic programs that work with individuals to lower the tough or harmful facets 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 the earth,” he mentioned. “We’re speaking the highest 1% of expertise to unravel a few of the most tough {hardware}, software program and programs 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 tools and processes to facilitate the manufacturing of power.
One latest undertaking, developed for the Sarcos Expertise and Robotics Company, known as for the event of a workflow answer 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 development was tough and labor-intensive.
“You possibly can’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 quite a lot of burnout within the job, however what you are able to do is use individuals which are keen to do the high-quality adjustment, higher-level duties.”
SKA labored on each the {hardware} side 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 situations 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 undertaking’s companions had been in a position to enhance security situations and lower down on labor prices, with one of many former work crew members being promoted to having oversight for the complete development program, Krause mentioned.
In one other noteworthy undertaking, SKA developed a system that employed AI and non-lethal deterrents resembling 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 best way 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 short-term 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 protect 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 expertise improved a shopper firm’s workflow and saved the corporate cash. The undertaking, executed in partnership with Siemens Power final 12 months, co-developed and put in a custom-built robotic for Siemens’ generator upkeep workforce.
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 without having to disassemble the generator.
“This will get a 10-day upkeep cycle right down to a seven-day cycle, which saves the asset proprietor. $1.7 million,” Krause mentioned. He added that SKA was in a position to full the undertaking inside 4 months, from design section to development to having a working robotic out on the job.
Krause mentioned the best way SKA likes to work is to assign a workforce of consultants to develop a robotic answer to unravel a tough downside for a shopper. “We knock out the actually exhausting components,” he mentioned. “So, firms have a tendency to return 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 tough.”
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Jim Magill is a Houston-based author with virtually a quarter-century of expertise overlaying technical and financial developments within the oil and fuel business. After retiring in December 2019 as a senior editor with S&P International Platts, Jim started writing about rising applied sciences, resembling 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 Programs, a publication of the Affiliation for Unmanned Automobile Programs Worldwide.
