The weekly magazine for robotics and Welcome to SENSOR automation industry Sensor Readings magazine First issue READINGS 17 July 2015 Some notes about navigating this document A star is born If you’re on Mac, use multi-touch gestures to scroll up The robot road race is on and down. You may also want to use the space bar to Pepper the emotional robot From automatic transmission to proves popular with public scroll down page by page, and shift-space to scroll up. fully autonomous road vehicles If you’re on a Windows machine, using the mouse wheel is probably the best way to scroll. The space bar also works in the same way as the Mac. Clicking once or double-clicking will zoom into or zoom out of the page. Clicking on advertisements will take you to the advertiser’s website. Clicking on a website address will take you to that website. Clicking on an email address will open your email application, which will open a new email window with the address already written in. If you want to subscribe, advertise, or have any other queries, contact us by email on: [email protected] And visit our website at: Interview: Albert Nubiola Rethink raises $40m roboticsandautomationnews.com RoboDK chief talks about the Maker of Baxter and Sawyer popular OLP software robots to expand into Asia Case studies A closer look at some of the more interesting robotics solutions 2 Advertise Sensor Readings Sensor Readings Editorial 3 Advertise in Sensor Readings Contents The weekly news magazine for robotics Interview: Albert Nubiola SENSOR and automation industry Starter Brand Builder Corporate First issue We are living in READINGS 17 July 2015 RoboDK chief talks Rockwell CEO calls for youth China’s robot revolution ‘Manufacturing needs to teach The world’s most populous nation and reach younger students’ now buys the most robots about the popular offline interesting times programming software 14 From strength to strength Germany makes progress Japan unveils the Robotics sector grows 11 per ‘world’s strongest robot’ cent in first quarter of 2015 Off side We talk to the Abdul Montaqim his is the first issue of Sensor Readings people behind RoboDK, the new offline progamming tool Editor magazine. It’s connected to the Robotics A star is born Tand Automation News website, and aims Pepper the emotional robot to summarise some of the more interesting developments in the two sectors, which are proves popular with public directly linked, and often one and the same. 4, 10 In developing an editorial policy for this magazine, we decided to cover as many Directory Listing 12 issues 24 issues 48 issues aspects of robotics and automation as resources allow. However, we decided to give Quarter-page advertisement 6 issues 12 issues 24 issues priority to physical robotics and automation, Autonomous journey rather their virtual counterparts. The popularity of automatic Half-page advertisement 3 issues 6 issues 12 issues So, for example, Automator, which is a great little application that Apple Mac users transmission has led to fully Full-page advertisement 1 issue 12 issues 24 issues will be familiar with, may be considered a autonomous road vehicles robot, but given the choice between a story DPS Not available 6 issues 12 issues about Automator and another about a physical 6 robot, especially one in an automation setting, Back-page full-page Not available 3 issues 6 issues we will choose the latter story. However, that is not to say that we will Front-page full-page Not available 1 issue 3 issues ignore virtual robots and virtual automation. There are many interesting developments Advertisement design service Not available Not available Available in this area – developments that are saving companies millions of dollars and saving Copywriting service Not available Not available Available many thousands of working hours. Therefore, it would perhaps be remiss of us not to deal Video production service Not available Not available Available with the virtual world. Particularly when you consider that a lot of physical hardware is being virtualised, or digitised if you prefer. £399 £599 Contact us for As to the geographical perspective, we aim to be as international as we can, prioritising more details whichever country has the most activity. So, Pepper leads the way by ‘marrying’ couple 4 obviously China, the US, Germany, Japan Robotic bricklayer can build a house in two days 5 would be four countries to keep our eyes on. The robocar race is on 6 But they are by no means the only ones. I wandered lonely as a robot 10 And for you non-stop sub-editors and Offline programming for robots 14 Mechanical data Information proofreaders out there, it’s not that big of Robotics case studies 16 a deal whether it’s dollars or yen, color or Marketplace 18 Directory Listing 40 mm X 50 mm All measurements given in millimetres, width X height. colour, as long as you know what we mean. l Quarter-page advertisement 100 mm X 150 mm No bleed necessary. All artwork to be PDFs. RGB or CMYK. Half-page advertisement 225 mm X 150 mm We can produce the artwork for you as an optional extra. Sensor Readings magazine Full-page advertisement 225 mm X 300 mm Copy deadline: Wednesdays Monsoon Media, Editorial & Production London, United Kingdom Managing Editor Anna Schmidt Email [email protected] DPS 450 mm X 300 mm Publication day: Fridays Editor Abdul Montaqim Email [email protected] Subscriptions: Art Editor Mark Allinson Email [email protected] £10 per year (digital only) Marketing & Advertising Single issue: Advertising Manager Maria Santiago Email [email protected] Book now by emailing us at £1 (digital version) Advertising Executive Sam Francis Email [email protected] Marketing Director David Edwards Email [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] www.roboticsandautomationnews.com www.roboticsandautomationnews.com [email protected] 4 News Sensor Readings Sensor Readings News News In Brief In Brief Giant robots prepare to fight China biggest buyer of robots Makers of giant robot in the US China is now the world’s largest have challenged their counterparts buyer of robots, overtaking the in Japan to a mechanised duel. US. Sales of robots in China grew MegaBots, a US company, said 54 per cent last year, according it has built a giant robot to fight to the International Federation Kuratas, another giant robot of Robotics (IFR). The IFR is built by Japanese company forecasting the China market will Suidobashi Heavy Industries. In a grow again in 2015. IFR chairman, good-natured challenge, rocket Arturo Baroncelli, said China is launchers would be filled with “the most dynamic robot market paintball and the whole spectacle in the world”. According to the will be designed for entertainment, IFR, approximately 225,000 robots on television and online. In an were sold worldwide in 2014, an interview with qz.com, MegaBots Two humanoid robots were ‘married’ in Japan, at a ceremony conducted by Pepper the robot increase of 27 per cent from 2013. The bricklaying robot which marks the beginning of a new era in the construction industry founder Gui Cavalcani said: “I All major markets saw growth, definitely need to see this in a with Asia growing the fastest, sport. “We’re children trapped largely because of China, which in engineers’ bodies. We wanted Pepper leads the way bought 56,000 robots in 2014. Robotic bricklayer can video games to come to life.” Rethink raises $40m Gone in sixty seconds Rethink Robotics has raised $40m It took just one minute for by ‘marrying’ robots to expand operations worldwide, build a house in two days Japanese telecom giant and launch its latest robot, Sawyer, SoftBank Corporation to sell which can perform precise tasks 1,000 of its newly launched They make not be as useful around the house “With this emotion function, Pepper’s emotions that robots have not previously been The world’s first bricklaying robot, named industrial revolution, they have tried to automate humanoid Pepper robots when as some people might expect or want them are influenced by people’s facial expressions able to do. Rodney Brooks, who Hadrian, has been unveiled in Australia. the bricklaying process,” Pivac told PerthNow. it went on sale on June to be, but humanoid robots are massively and words, as well as his surroundings, which runs Rethink, said: “So The machine uses a 28 metre articulated robotic “We’re at a technological nexus where a few 20. SoftBank is working popular regardless. The first batch of 1,000 in turn affects Pepper’s words and actions,” far manufacturing robots arm to lay bricks, and works by first eating a 4D different technologies have got to the level where it’s with Hon Hai Precision Pepper robots sold out in one minute, said SoftBank Robotics in a press release. have only been sold in image of the house, then calculates where each now possible to do it, and that’s what we’ve done.” Industry (Foxconn) to according to its makers, SoftBank and Foxconn. “For example, Pepper is at ease when the US … but the Sawyer brick needs to be located, and develops a sequence While Hadrian is claimed to be the first of build the humanoid Pepper’s developer, Aldebaran, claims he is around people he knows, happy when will be a worldwide to lay those bricks, all from a single location. its kind, there are other similar machines that Pepper, which has a it designed the robot to be able to able he is praised, and gets scared when the robot and it will have The man who invented the machine, Mark have been used in construction for some time.