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Manufacturers of aerospace parts, heavy machinery, and other industrial equipment require large automated systems for painting, surface finishing, inspection, and more. These systems often employ a gantry outfitted with an industrial manipulator to extend the work envelope over many meters. Due to their sheer size and associated costs, such automation must perform multiple operations to provide an adequate return on investment.

Automating such large, multi-process-systems poses challenges including motion planning for redundant kinematics, calibration of 3D scanning sensors, and managing the environment. Robotics developers and users must also pay attention to the user interface and collision monitoring for safety.

In his RoboBusiness Direct session at 2:00 p.m. EST on Thursday, Dec. 3, 2020, Matthew Robinson will share recent experiences with several complex automation systems for large-scale manufacturing that have recently been placed into production. Robinson, who is ROS-Americas program manager at the Southwest Research Institute, will explain how the Robot Operating System was used to enable and support new capabilities.

Learn how 3D vision applies to disinfection

The use of ultraviolet light for disinfection has been a growing application for robotics during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, UV light can be dangerous to humans, which is one reason why room disinfection is a good task to automate.

In this breakout session at 3:00 p.m. on Dec. 3, Mark Davidson, a robotics expert at DreamVu Inc., will explain how omnidirectional 3D vision systems can be used not only to identify the presence of people, but also to identify how far away people are from the radiation based on accurate depth information.

He will also explore additional functions such as determining how long UV light hits certain surfaces and from what distance so cleaning efficacy can be computed. In addition, Davidson will review camera-mounting options to take greatest advantage of the field of view around a UV disinfection robot.

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About RoboBusiness Direct

RoboBusiness Direct is an ongoing series of digital events delivered by brightest minds from the leading robotics and automation organizations around the world. The series complements continuing coverage and analysis in Robotics Business Review, a sibling site to The Robot Report.

RoboBusiness Direct is designed to impart to business and engineering professionals the information they need to identify market opportunities, successfully develop and deploy the next generation of commercial robotics systems, and accelerate their businesses.

You can find a listing of RoboBusiness Direct speakers and session topics, along with the dates and times of RoboBusiness Direct programs, HERE.

There is no charge to register for RoboBusiness Direct programs.

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About the automation experts

Matt Robinson is the program manager for the ROS-Industrial Consortium – Americas, an industry-driven, open-source program bringing advanced manufacturing solutions for the industrial robotics community. Prior to his current role at the Southwest Research Institute, Robinson was team leader for Caterpillar’s Manufacturing Technology Automation Research, where he led development and deployment of automation tools to improve the performance and productivity of Caterpillar manufacturing facilities around the globe. Robinson also led manufacturing value-stream design initiatives that led to the deployment of more than 50 automated manufacturing systems around the world. He holds a Master’s Degree from Ohio State University.

Mark Davidson has spent more than 25 years working in technology businesses across many industries, but he has always gravitated towards robotics and embedded systems. He said he joined DreamVu in early 2020 because of the brilliance of its technology and the impact it is having on accelerating robotics use cases and deployments. Davidson earned a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Penn State University and is chief revenue officer at Philadelphia-based DreamVu.