Haters Going To Hate

What made our day and what ticked us off the week ending Sept. 8th

Sep 08, 2023

Get, that, dirt off your shoulder
You gotta get that dirt off your shoulder
-Jay-Z

Every week I am so thankful for being part of an industry that I love with all my heart. It is no secret that I am 110% on board the robotics train and will till the day I leave this planet. There are bad days and there are good days. The good days have always out shined the bad ones though. The community of fellow “robotheads” is so great that they help getting through those bad days. We all have each others’ back, because we all have those days.

This shortened Labor Day week had a ton of amazing (and some sad) news drops which you can read below. However, it was an article published in The Atlantic that sucked all the air out of the room. Wednesday morning when the article dropped, my phone started blowing up with texts and DMs with the same tone - “Are you reading this crap?!”

Titled “Robots Are Already Killing People,” it screamed clickbait, but I expected a bit more from The Atlantic. Boy was I wrong. Not only was it a bunch of BS, it was intellectually dishonest to the point that I had to question what on earth is going on at the editor’s office of The Atlantic to allow such garbage to be printed.

The online magazine has a soft paywall, so many of you may not be able to access it. So I present a screen grab of the opening paragraph.

This opening set the temperature and dishonesty of this article. Many of us are very aware of the Robert Williams Case. It has been discussed in numerous studies and is cited as why there are safety standards, warning signs, and training programs to keep people safe. However, to say the robot “malfunctioned” is completely WRONG! Williams was told to enter a cell where a massive metallic robot was operating. When it hit Williams it was following the programming it was given by humans. If the robot was “going too slow” then do something to address that. Don’t put a person into a situation where they are at risk of injury or death.

The article goes on to list other incidents and the writers blame them all on the robot when it was actually the human (or other humans) putting themselves in the dangerous positions. If I decide to do some electrical work in my house, fail to kill the main power and then kill myself through an electric surge, no one is going to say my house killed me. No, they are going to blame it on me as they should. This is why we hear about Lock Out / Tag Out when it comes to ensuring there is no power coming into a cell when we work on the robot.

The authors also seemed to poo-poo the work of those of us that work on robot safety standards like R15.06 and ISO 10218. They even make the sickening claim of “AI and robotics companies don’t want this to happen” when discussing how the robotics industry approaches safety. As they claim “…workplace safety demonstrate that accidents are preventable when they are openly discussed and subjected to proper expert scrutiny.” - hmmm what do you think we do at annual conferences such as the International Robot Safety Conference which is coming up this October in Pittsburgh. Or what about the regular meetings that take place in the A3-OSHA-NIOSH alliance which is helping OSHA inspectors better identify robot safety issues and concerns. This is with the help of the very people the writers claimed don’t want the government involved in robot safety. I will remember that the next time I sit down to educate the next group of OSHA inspectors I work with.

These authors are quite frankly a bunch of hacks that clearly have another agenda. Shame on The Atlantic for publishing such a dishonest article that only will keep people stupid about their own role in robot safety and could get more people hurt. Good luck having a constructive conversation with the industry now. When you allow people like this to openly mislead the general public on the real hard work that is taking place so people are safe around robots. I guess haters are just going to keep on hating. Have fun with that. We will continuing doing the right thing to strive for the best in robot safety.

Robot News Of The Week

Rockwell Automation Agrees to Acquire Clearpath Robotics, OTTO Motors (Robotics 24/7)

Consolidation continues in the Robotics Industry and this move by Rockwell Automation to acquire Clearpath Robotics and OTTO Motors is going to have impacts across numerous sectors. Now many will focus on how Rockwell will be now able to offer their manufacturing and logistics customers mobile solutions and that is a big part of this deal. It is very similar to why Zebra Technologies bought Fetch Robotics back in 2021.

However, Clearpath is a major player in education and research robotics. So many schools and universities use the Turtlebot and robots like the Husky and Jackal. This will be an interest pathway for Rockwell to use to further their growing presence in education. How they weave other Rockwell products into Clearpath could have major impacts in workforce development over time.

Mujin secures $85 million in Series C funding (Modern Materials Handling)

How fast Mujin has grown over the years has been fascinating to watch, but when you have a technology everyone wants and needs then no one should be surprised. The MujinController hit the market at the time the market needed it. Being brand agnostic allowed end user to go with the robotics and automation brands they wanted to with the MujinController as the “eye in the sky.”

This brings Mujin’s total funding to $150 Million and I know this will only continue to grow the reach of this Tokyo- and Atlanta-based startup.

Robot Solutions For Logistics Automation: Piece-picking | MUJINspire

Cobot arm maker Franka Emika files for insolvency (The Robot Report)

This was a big downer for many. Hopefully they find a pathway through the insolvency process and can come out the other side still producing robots. The number of universities and researchers that use the Panda arm from Franka Emika is mind blowing. I can count the number of labs where I DID NOT SEE a Panda arm on one hand. Hundreds of robot research papers show Panda arms being used to prove their work. If anything, hopefully a larger firm will buy them up. Maybe someone that already bought another large educational robot provider (hint hint wink wink).

Robot Research In The News

Sequential Dexterity: Chaining Dexterous Policies for Long-Horizon Manipulation (Stanford University)

The human hand is the greatest grasper and manipulator there is. So how do you get robot grasping to be just a great?

Researchers at Stanford University broke down the entire process of grasping and placing a Lego piece into a series of smaller tasks, because that is how a human would do the same task. The results are promising.

USC develops origami-inspired sensors for soft robotics (U. of Southern California)

Researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) have developed a design for a sensor inspired by the folding patterns of origami that uses 3D electrodes to track deformation in robots.

Per the researchers: “We integrate the 3D origami-inspired electrodes with a soft, stretchable substrate through covalent bonding. This unique combination allows us to measure a very large deformation, as much as 200 percent strain, with an ultra-low hysteresis of around 1.2 percent. There’s also a very fast response, within 22 milliseconds.”

While these sensors were designed for controlling soft robotics, they can also be suited for innovations in biomedicine.

Robot Workforce Stories Of The Week

Yaskawa’s robotics training academy cultivates automation skills in South Africa

Great to see more robot training programs opening in emerging markets like South Africa. These types of centers are so important for having local training programs that are meeting the needs of the local ecosystem of users.

Industrial robotics taught in new course

Shout out to Central Carolina Community College on the launch of their first Customized Training Industrial Robotics Technician program.

Seven employees from Bharat Forge are participating in the initial 40-hour class. Bharat Forge currently uses over 20 robots in their processes — and this class allows company personnel to train on a similar robot without interrupting critical production demands.

Robot Video Of The Week

At the Education Expo that is taking place in South Korea this week, this robot from GAMEI is patrolling the park to give guests an easy and convenient way to recycle. This seems similar to a recent test with robotic trash cans in New York City.