“We all see this as our future,” said Erik Nieves.
Nieves is technology director for Yaskawa Motoman Robotics, a global robotics manufacturer headquartered in Miamisburg that employs about 300 people locally.
The new market for robots that work in close proximity with people would expand beyond Motoman’s industrial robot business and could mean jobs for the Miami Valley.
“We expect the Dayton area to be a regional cluster for this technology,” Nieves said.
Nearly 5,100 robots valued at $343.8 million were ordered from North American robotics companies through March, representing increases of 27 percent in units and 30 percent in dollars over the same period in 2011, according to the Robotic Industries Association.
Motoman parent company Yaskawa Electric Corp., of Japan, remains focused on its core business of industrial robots, but is pressing ahead with the development of next-generation service robots, according to the company’s Vision 2015 statement.
“There is a big need around the world for assistance to the elderly,” and that is driving research on robots for that purpose, said Jeff Burnstein, president of the Robotic Industries Association.
Robots designed to co-exist with people present issues of safety, mobility, vision and ease-of-use. For example, a human-assist robot needs to be able to move through an unstructured environment, such as one with stairs, and requires sensors that can interpret environmental data to keep it from breaking things.
The confluence of technology and cost that will allow for a robot C-3PO from “Star Wars” is still at least 10 years away.
“Then Yaskawa Motoman as you know and appreciate it today in Miamisburg becomes, ‘This is what we do,’ and this is a much bigger part of our business than the industrial ever was,” Nieves said.
However, there will always be a need for industrial robots to perform certain tasks, he said.
Locally, Motoman researchers are developing multiple technologies needed for service robots.
The consumer electronics industry is leading advancements in vision sensors, which it can get to scale quicker to make them widely available at low cost.
Robot machine vision is a $5,000 option, but a motion sensing input device such as the popular Kinect for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 video game console makes 3-D vision sensors available at $150. “This is a very significant change that is driving robot adoption,” Nieves said.
An algorithm that allows robots to quickly interpret the sensor data into useful information is still needed, he said.
Motoman is working to encapsulate the technology so that robots in the home can work with on-off simplicity. Nieves used the example of Rosie from “The Jetsons,” who was mobile, safe to be around, worked with two hands, and could be operated with verbal commands. “All of that is what we need to get to,” he said.
Yaskawa intends to create a market for robots that are easier to use and function in domains more closely involved with people. Motoman is developing the technology to build that market.
“If you are supposed to reinvent your company every 10 or 15 years, that is the next reinvention of Motoman,” Nieves said.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2419 or dlarsen@DaytonDaily News.com.
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