NIST Contest Aims to Make Factory Robots Smarter, More Nimble
Photo: NIST/D. Russell.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology wants to make industrial robots smarter and more nimble, able to work in complex environments and adapt more easily to changes.
It has announced the Agile Robotics for Industrial Automation Competition, or ARIAC, a simulation-based challenge that aims to add the latest in artificial intelligence and other technologies to the decades-old world of robotic factory automation.
Currently, robotic arms have to be reprogrammed whenever a product design or process changes. That can take a long time and many resources. A recent NIST report said as much as 60 percent of the cost of deploying a robot is tied up in programming to integrate a robot into a manufacturing operation.
They’re also not good at finding parts that aren’t in predetermined locations or working closely with people.
“We want to make sure that the challenges in this competition are truly representative of those facing industry,” says Craig Schlenoff, who leads NIST’s Cognition and Collaboration Systems Group.
ARIAC is still in the planning stages, and organizations and individuals can help devise the challenges that will make up the competition, which is a joint effort with the IEEE Conference on Automation Science and Engineering.
Ultimately, the potential new technologies will be demonstrated in either a computer model or a real-world operation.
NIST plans to unveil the specific competition challenges at the IEEE conference on automation science and engineering, scheduled for Aug. 21-24 in Fort Worth, Texas.
