Talking to some people in the business sectors addressed by Motion Control and to some engineers there seems to be a school of thought that believes that there is nothing new to read or write about. Well, I beg to differ! This market place is where it is all at. It has one technology which is a potential point of convergence of wireless communications, web services, new programming paradigms, electric drives, mechanical drive elements, fluid drives and pneumatic systems. And that is robotics.
In an article by Bill Gates published late last year in Scientific American, he coined the phrase 'A robot in every home'. Far fetched? You may think so, but consider that 30 years or so ago this same person spoke about 'A computer in every home' and many scoffed at that.
Microsoft has been investigating robotics as a market since 2004 and in December 2006 it released Microsoft Robotics Studio. This is a very full suite of tools aimed at software development and modelling of robots. It addresses aspects such as the handling of many time-critical input signals through its concurrency and coordination runtime (CCR) and also the distribution of tasks across multiple processors using a decentralised systems services (DSS) model.
Gates sees the robotics industry of today at a similar place to that of computers in the mid-1970s. He draws parallels between the mainframes and hobbyist microcomputers that were available then and the large robots (typically employed in the automotive industry) and hobbyist robots available today.
He believes that by creating and supplying a comprehensive development platform, which will become a product around which standards will develop, the adoption of robotic technologies will be accelerated.
There are already more than 30 companies that have joined the Microsoft Robotics Studio Program, including iRobot, manufacturer of many military robots used by the US armed forces in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
In 2004 the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) introduced the Grand Challenge 2004. This offered a prize of $1m to the first autonomous vehicle capable of finishing a desert course of approximately 200 km in less than 10 hours. That year the best vehicle managed around 12 km.
The 2005 Grand Challenge upped the odds - $2m to the winner. And that year five teams completed the 212 km desert course. The vehicle of the winning team from Stanford University completed the course in just less than seven hours. That was concrete progress.
This year's event is scheduled for November and is an Urban Challenge with vehicles operating in a mock city and executing simulated military supply missions while merging into moving traffic, navigating traffic circles, negotiating busy intersections, and avoiding obstacles. Again $2m is on offer for the fastest qualifying vehicle.
We have to remember that no matter how clever the processors and software incorporated in robots, one of the essential elements that differentiates them from desktop computers is their mobility. And mobility means drives, hydraulics and pneumatics.
So my question is: 'Are you ready for this?'
Andrew Ashton
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