Robots future

The use of complex scaimers and scatmers "tailormade" for scanning of special components will be increasingly important in the future. The system shall therefore support all scanner types, from simple X-Y scanners to multiaxes robots and have facilities to configure and... 

Laborelec s future realisations are vibration analysis, control of inspection robots, and all types of system monitoring. LabVIEW will be used as common tool for developers for the coming years. The synergy effect of a common language for everything concerning acquisition, analysis and processing of data will be beneficial for the whole company. 

Despite the progress outlined in this chapter, much work remains to be done in the metal surface preparation arena. For example, there is still no ideal surface preparation method that does for steel what anodization processes do for aluminum and titanium. The plasma spray process looks encouraging but because it is slow for large areas and requires rather expensive robot controlled plasma spray equipment, its use will probably be limited to some rather special applications. For more general use, the sol-gel process has potential if future studies confirm recently reported results. 

Oceans occupy 70.8% or 125 million square miles of the surface of the earth. Within or beneath this inner space are foods, fuels, and minerals. Thus interest in the sea is obvious. At least 4/5 of all life on earth exists in saltwater. It is predicted that of the oil and gas demand in future years will come from oil at 2,000 ft. depths operated by manned submarines and marine robots. All the equipment needed to collect and store oil or gas will be installed and operated on the sea floor. Underwater housing and decompression chambers will be required. The sea bottom is also reported to include trillions of tons of copper, nickel, cobalt, iron, and other important minerals. 

Analytical chemistry in the new millennium will continue to develop greater degrees of sophistication. The use of automation, especially involving robots, for routine work will increase and the role of ever more powerful computers and software, such as intelligent expert systems, will be a dominant factor. Extreme miniaturisation of techniques (the analytical laboratory on a chip ) and sensors designed for specific tasks will make a big impact. Despite such advances, the importance of, and the need for, trained analytical chemists is set to continue into the foreseeable future and it is vital that universities and colleges play a full part in the provision of relevant courses of study. 

A miniaturized MB spectrometer MIMOS II was developed for the robotic exploration of Mars, where it provided fundamental information about mineralogical composition and alteration processes, helped to classify rocks and soils, aided geologic mapping, was instrumental in assessing habitability of past and present environments, and identified potential construction resources for future human explorers. The applicability of the instrument as a process monitor for oxygen production and prospecting tool for lunar ISRU has been demonstrated. The characterization of air pollution sources and the study of mixed-valence materials as a function of depth in soil are examples of terrestrial in situ applications. MIMOS lla with additional XRF capability will open up new applications. 

Shell has found many cost-effective solutions using robots. The future requirements and trends for their systems are as follows (these, of course, apply to many organizations) ... 

In the 1970s the future looked particularly rosy for developers of robotic systems. With hindsight it is clear that this was because something new really stimulates the users of automation their enthusiasm has not been rewarded with the introduction of a vast number of robotic solutions to automatic problems. Indeed, the thinking now is away from the use of complicated robotic systems to more simple, uniformly usable systems. In this chapter a number of robotic systems will be reviewed and a path for future developments set out for the reader to ponder. 

As analysts become more aware of the fact that automation offers a variety of tools, such as robotics, computing, and statistics, to solve analytical problems, then future progress will be far quicker, allowing the installation of more successful and reliable automatic systems. 

Evaporites on Mars and Europa. The NASA s robotic explorers, Spirit and Opportunity, landed on at Mars and examined their landing sites for past environmental conditions. Kinds of minerals in a hot-spring environment and dried-up lake beds were photographed suggesting future use of ESR to date these evaporate with a portable ESR on the rover. Sulfate mineral precipitation, epsonite, MgS04 with 7 hydration water molecules in frozen ice, was studied by sampling the icy environment, especially icy fault on the surface of Europa, a satellite of Jupiter.61... 

Because of vibrations, power stability, and particularly corrosion, commercial laboratory robotic systems available today would have problems on ships. This problem provides an opportunity for research engineers to develop means to modify some sections of the ship to improve power and platform stability. Environmental constraints of a sea-based system were never factored into the design of today s laboratory robots, but the systems could be modified somewhat to reduce these problems. For now, robots would be most feasible for land-based measurements. In the future, however, robots could be important for at-sea measurements, because continuous or repeated measurements are often made over the course of many days. 

Mulhall. D.. Out Molecular Future How Nanotechnology, Robotics, Genetics, and Artificial Intelligence Will Transform Onr World, Amherst, NY, 2002. 

Takahashi, M., Uchikoshi, S., Midorikawa, M., Ishikawa, M., and Adachi, T., Development of a digital-analog robotic system for input solution and mixed oxide samples, in International Nuclear Safeguards 1994 Vision for the Future, Volume 1 of 2, IAEA-SM-333/53, International Atomic Energy Association, Vienna, 1994, 761-767. 

Babiak, X 1997. Transforming your robotics into an infrastructure for the future. /. Biomol. Screening,2,139-143. 

---