AI robots are running for mayor! Saudi Arabia will be the first country in the world to grant citizenship to robots! Boston Dynamics releases new video ......
Every recent news in the robotics industry has caught everyone's attention and put the focus on robots. They have the ability to think independently, speak well, and perceive the outside world. For example, a Japanese robot, "Michihito Matsuda," has been nominated as a candidate for mayor of Tama City, promising to treat all citizens equally and impartially, with the campaign slogan, "Provide everyone with fair and equal opportunities.
The robot candidate, Michihito Matsuda, has launched his own official Twitter account, and has also given his campaign message: to make politics fairer.
"Michihito Matsuda also listed his major advantages in the election:
Robots have no emotions or desires, so they can handle political affairs without personal feelings and prevent corruption;
Robots don't need to take breaks and can work intensely for long periods of time;
Relative to human memory degradation with age, robots can always maintain a large amount of information storage ......
In the future, more and more robots will be put into all walks of life, such as Google Assistant, New Zealand "Sam" civil servant robot, Deloitte property finance robot, Hadrian X construction robot, Boston robot and so on.
Do you know what robots rely on to sense the external environment and interact with us? "Eyes", this is a very important "organ" of the robot, that is, sensors. In this article, we introduce the robot's "eyes" - obstacle avoidance sensors.
Obstacle avoidance is a basic requirement for robots to move and navigate in unknown or partially unknown environments. Whether it is an industrial robot or a service robot, its walking process requires the use of sensors to sense the surrounding objects that may impede its passage, and then avoid or bypass them according to a certain strategy, in order to avoid being blocked or collision. Information such as the position, size and shape of obstacles need to be collected by sensors, so obstacle avoidance sensors are the eyes of mobile robots.
The necessary condition to realize obstacle avoidance and navigation is environment perception, obstacle avoidance in an unknown or partially unknown environment needs to be acquired through sensors to obtain information about the surrounding environment, including the size, shape and location of obstacles and other information, so the sensor technology plays a very important role in the mobile robot obstacle avoidance. Obstacle avoidance using sensors are mainly ultrasonic sensors, vision sensors, infrared sensors, laser sensors and so on.
Mobile robot obstacle avoidance commonly used sensors
Ultrasonic sensors: using the ultrasonic measurement principle, according to the time difference between the emitted ultrasonic wave and the received ultrasonic wave, the distance between the object and the ultrasonic wave is calculated.
Infrared sensors: mostly based on the principle of triangulation, according to a certain angle to launch the infrared beam, after encountering the object, the beam reflects back and is detected by the CCD detector, to obtain an offset value, and then use the triangulation relationship to calculate the distance from the sensor to the object.
Vision sensor: there are a variety of vision solutions, the common ones are binocular vision, structured light depth camera and TOF depth camera. Among them, both structured light and TOF-based programs require the sensor to actively emit light, and in outdoor environments, the active light source is susceptible to the influence of other light sources such as sunlight.
Laser Sensor: The flight time of the laser from emission to reception is utilized to measure the distance of the reflector. The more commonly used measurement method is a pulsed laser by the pulse laser issued by a very short duration of the pulse laser, the target is reflected back by the photodetector to receive, can be based on the main wave signal and the return signal interval between the round-trip time of the laser pulse calculation. Another method is to emit a frequency-modulated continuous laser wave and measure the time by measuring the difference in frequency between the received reflected waves.
In principle, each sensor has its own defects. Therefore, in the process of real application, it is usually necessary to combine multiple sensors, a cross-validation of the data collected by different sensors, as well as the fusion of information to ensure that the robot can work stably and reliably. And future robots want to do more like people, to complete more complex tasks, multi-sensor fusion technology is critical, such as the Japanese Pepper robot is equipped with a 3D camera, two ultrasonic sensors, six laser sensors, three buffer sensors, five touch sensors and two gyroscopes. Therefore, when designing a sensor module, it is important to consider its ability to be easily integrated and fused.
Obstacle avoidance module applications and market situation
An important application area for ultrasonic obstacle avoidance modules is service robots.
Service robots are devices that can independently and autonomously perform indoor and outdoor service work, generally referred to as domestic robots, which include vacuuming robots, lawn mowing robots, pool cleaning robots, robots used for social and edutainment purposes, and kitchen robots. With the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology, and driven by rigid demand such as labor shortage and population aging, the service robot industry and applications have gradually emerged, and are now widely used in a variety of industries, including housekeeping, healthcare, and catering. According to IHS, the domestic service robot market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 17%, with shipments increasing from 5 million units in 2015 to over 12 million units in 2020.
However, overall, the marketability of service robots is still in its infancy. This is mainly due to the fact that service robotics technology is a multidisciplinary cross-integration technology, in the context of diversity, randomness and complexity of the environment, its task complexity and real-time requirements for environment perception are higher, and there are still some technical bottlenecks to be broken. It is expected that the next 10 to 20 years service robots will usher in explosive growth, but the process needs to continue to accumulate technology and cultivate the market.
Unlike the service robot market, the market volume of industrial robots is smaller, but the technology is relatively mature and the demand is more concentrated, so it is also worth paying attention to.
The report of the International Federation of Robotics IFR shows that the global sales of industrial robots in 2016 were about 290,000 units, an increase of 14% year-on-year, of which 90,000 units of industrial robots were sold in China, an increase of 31% year-on-year. At present, the main production and sales countries of industrial robots are concentrated in Japan, South Korea and Germany, which are among the world's top three countries in terms of the number of robots retained and annual new additions.
China's industrial robots are in the national policy dividend, industrial transformation and upgrading demand release, demographic dividend weakening, market demand growth opportunities superposition period, in the past two years has been a smooth and rapid development. Many domestic robotics companies also through their own investment in research and development, joint research, there is a great technological improvement. At present, the country has formed a number of industrial robotics backbone enterprises such as Shenyang Xinsong, Guangzhou Qifan, Anhui Efte, Nanjing Exton.
Among them, with the e-commerce market expanding day by day, the development of warehousing and logistics robot AGV is particularly noteworthy. As we all know, 2014 is a turning point for warehouse robots, from Amazon's acquisition of Kiva to the beginning of this opened the curtain of warehouse robots, the market began to more and more robotics companies began to get involved in the field of intelligent logistics, such as the pole Zhijia, Hikvision, etc., showing an explosive growth trend. New Strategy Robotics Industry Research Institute data statistics: 2016 e-commerce warehousing robot market sales of about 2,000 units, to 2017 is expected to grow to about 5,000 units.
In 2016, three ministries and commissions jointly issued the Robot Industry Development Plan (2016-2020). The Plan specifies that in 2020, the annual output of industrial robots of independent brands will reach 100,000 units, and the average trouble-free time (MTBF) will reach 80,000 hours; the annual sales revenue of service robots will exceed 30 billion yuan, and the goal of small-scale production and application will be realized in the fields of assisting the elderly and the disabled, medical rehabilitation, and so on. Among them, the sensor is also listed as one of the five key components that need to be vigorously developed.
Ultrasonic sensors have been used for many years as a well-established range/obstacle avoidance solution in automotive parking assistance systems. Its application requirements in robotics and automotive applications have certain similarities, but there are differences:
1. The robot's obstacle avoidance system requires the sensor to be in working condition all the time, so the life span of the product is required to be higher;
2. According to the use of different scenarios and moving speeds, the sensor detection range requirements vary, some robots, such as AGV trolleys, require sensors to have a longer detection distance;
3. Must avoid mutual interference of ultrasonic waves when multiple machines meet.
Summarize
Robot obstacle avoidance sensors are mainly divided into ultrasonic, vision, infrared, laser four. Each of these sensors has its own advantages, and the practical application usually requires two or three sensors to work together to ensure the accuracy of detection. Therefore, sensor fusion will be the future trend.
The robotics market is mainly divided into two categories: service robots and industrial robots. Service robots need to deal with more complex scenarios, technology and market have a lot of room for development, but from the current market size and growth rate, has presented a very attractive market prospects. Industrial robots in Germany, Japan, the United States and other countries after many years of development, already has a relatively mature technical basis. In the past two years, coinciding with the rise of "intelligent manufacturing" and "Industry 4.0", many local enterprises are also making efforts, while with the development of China's manufacturing industry, China has also become the largest robotics market, so there are a lot of market opportunities. Although the overall use of industrial robots is not large, but the reliability of the product has certain requirements, so there are certain technical barriers to avoid falling into the low price competition.
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