General, Research, Technology

Robots replaced workers in factories during a pandemic

In the production of smartphones, cars and otherIt is important for the technician that every detail is strictly in its place. It doesn’t matter who builds the structure - both people and industrial robots can make mistakes. Therefore, at each plant there should be a person or even a group of people who monitor all production processes and quickly detect problems. As a rule, such specialists come to factories from other regions, but they cannot travel to other cities during the coronavirus pandemic - many borders are closed, and indeed, it is very risky. Instead, special robots now work, which know exactly what each part of the device looks like and where it should be. If assembly robots or simple workers make a mistake, controller robots sound the alarm. It seems that such a scheme works perfectly - is it really that robots will take away another profession from us?

A robot will appear at Toyota factories that will not make mistakes when assembling cars

Defective parts

About how technology manufacturers userobots to check the quality of their products, told reporters of the publication Wired. Today, many smartphones are well protected from moisture and, in most cases, the British company P2i should be thanked for this. It is she who produces water-repellent coatings for electronics, and her employees independently go to the factories of manufacturers and monitor the introduction of moisture protection technology. However, during the period of the coronavirus pandemic, the company had to refuse to send its employees on business trips. Instead of real people, a system of cameras with artificial intelligence is engaged in quality control.

P2i develops a coating that protects smartphones from water

So what? Researchers from different countries have long been trying to create a technology that can independently detect errors in production and does not wait for help from people. In one of the materials, I already told how scientists from the US state of Ohio found a way to quickly find defective parts printed on a 3D printer. They used sound waves to identify defects and this method gave excellent results. Can you imagine how much you can increase the accuracy of problem detection if you use artificial intelligence? Indeed, at the moment, computers are able to recognize even human emotions, so they should not have any problems finding defective parts at all.

See also: What happens when the AI ​​learns to recognize emotions?

Industrial robots with AI

P2i probably already in the knowartificial intelligence skills. To monitor the quality of incorporation of a water-repellent coating into partner devices, it uses a system provided by Instrumental. Quality control technology was developed by former Apple employees and consists of several cameras that transmit information to a computer. Artificial intelligence knows in advance exactly how the P2i protective coating should be installed, therefore, when errors occur, it immediately sounds an alarm.

This is how Instrumental's defect detection system looks

Quality control robots will even appear soonat the factories of Toyota, which produces hundreds of cars per day. If you make a mistake in the production of transport, you can not just say "well, yes, the car turned out to be defective." If any part is improperly installed, the entire plant runs the risk of stopping operation. Therefore, company employees carefully check every detail according to special designations on their surface and independently monitor their proper installation. But soon the robots provided by Elementary Robotics will be involved in this work.

It is such a robot that will be installed in Toyota factories to check whether the correct parts are used in the manufacture of cars

The main element of these robots is alsocamera. It is located on a structure in the shape of the letter “H” and is capable of inspecting from every side each object that is placed on a special platform. The artificial intelligence introduced into the system recognizes the details, and then the production line of people and robots places them in the right parts of the cars. It is believed that in this way the number of errors in production will be minimized.

In general, everything is simple: a man put the part on a “tray”, the robot checked it for quality and the need for assembly at a certain stage and answered whether the part could be used or not.

The most interesting thing is that systems with cameras andartificial intelligence are not as expensive as it might seem. According to Arye Barnehama, CEO of Over Zoom, such technologies cost about $ 1,000. Learning artificial intelligence to recognize details does not take much time and effort - any worker can do this. And yes, Over Zoom is also developing similar robots, but they are designed to check the quality of packages and the labels applied to them.

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The coronavirus pandemic seems to be reallygreatly affects our lives. From now on, many people who stayed at offices for at least 6 hours a day are used to working at home. Workers who often went on business trips are now replaced by robots. What next? Time will tell, but for now I recommend reading the article by the founder of Hi-News.ru Mikhail Korolev about when robotic couriers will replace real people.