reThink Robotics (Heartland Robotics) released

[Chris Elston 79]

So after nearly TWO YEARS or longer of media lock down, two days ago, reThink finally released their robot public for everyone to see. The biggest hype was that they had developed a robot that could work along side humans at a low cost. That published cost is $22,000. What do you guys think? Would you integrate or use Baxter on your production floor? Oh wait...there is no integration required. That means us Controls Engineers will soon be obsolete. http://www.heartlandrobotics.com/ See youtube video on front page.

[OkiePC 14]

I was excited to read about it, but reading the description and watching it move left me disappointed. Why is it not perfectly accurate and extremely fast? Or at least fast enough to do useful work. The most impressive robots I've seen lately are the Darpa llama and the other mules, along with those based on the same concept as the ABB Flexipicker. Edited 19 Sep 2012 by OkiePC

[Chris Elston 79]

That pretty much sums it up for me: "I was excited to read about it, but reading the description and watching it move left me disappointed. " As an automation guy, I was expecting a break through in robotics or something. I mean the human co-exist and trying to eliminate safety is break through, but the speed and accuracy is not impressive right now.

[OkiePC 14]

It almost seems they sacrifice accuracy for the sake of human contact way too sloppily up front. It seems totally uneccessary when tight torque controls and a little math could keep the precision and speed, just have "collision detection" which has been around for years in many forms at many levels of control from VFDs with shear pin faults to Fanuc palletizing robots with Payload registers and collision guard option. Slow it down when people are around, and the flat panel face is plain scarely looking...sorry, give me a Honda... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltPy3nc02pM

[OkiePC 14]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYCQpZcuRvU I wish I knew whether they were using pressure sensing in the fingers or if it was just a position map. the movements are very geometric, but appear to be vision registered. I guess I need to "Google it up"...download the user manual ;) check for a local distributor... I need a two handed robot to stack and pack patties of frozen meat in column fashion into a bag lined box. I think this one with the right grippers might be fast enough: Wow, ABB, huh? Nice. Put some pressure sensitive fingers on two of them and a nice vision system...and that video is three years ago?