IEEE Robotics and Automation Society
Central New England Chapter
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Doors open: 6:00 PM
Presentation: 6:30 PM

ROBOTICS: COLLIDING INTO THE FUTURE

Presented by

William T. Townsend
President & CEO
Barrett Technology

The robotics market is only 1/3rd the size of the scented-candle market! Shocking – but true. Nothing against scented candles, but aren't robots supposed to be the quintessential icon of productivity? Fortunately for engineers, what is holding back the robot-arm market is insufficient technology, not insufficient market demand. Robot arms today, for example, are not portable. Instead, real commercial robot arms are tethered to a huge power-supply box and significant (often 3-phase) power demands. Also, real commercial robot arms can crush you (for a reason that may surprise you), which is why the RIA (Robot Industries Association) requires barriers between people and robots. Please come help us break some RIA rules and take the risk of touching, feeling, and interacting with a real commercial robot arm that is the first ever approved by the US FDA for active, physical, haptic human contact. Enforced separation has protected the safety of humans from the crushing forces of robots for decades. Collision-avoidance techniques extend this enforcement for mobile manipulation by allowing separation at closer proximity between robots and people. However this approach to safety is not adequate if physical contact is the objective. More-relevant tasks require intimate physical contact with people, other robots, or often-delicate nearby objects, both for task navigation and performing work; and these contacts are collisions. How can a robot provide rehabilitation therapy, complex surgeries, or help elderly patients out of bed without the ability to control delicate interactions with people? This talk will highlight two key elements in the design of hardware for physical Human-Robot Interaction (pHRI): 1. The importance of inherent (open-loop) back-drivability, and the hidden dangers of using force- and torque-sensor feedback as a back-drivability shortcut. 2. A new motion controller technology contained in a 43-gram module reduces the power requirement of human-scale robotic arms from several-hundred Watts (and often 3-phase power) to a few 10s of Watts of battery power. The modules enable a power-based safety layer and cut robot mass while improving system reliability.

Bill Townsend founded Barrett Technology in 1988, credited as maker of the world's "most advanced robotic arm" in the special Millennium Edition of the Guinness Book of World Records. Its products, the WAM arm and BarrettHand, operate in 15 countries around the globe today; and the WAM is the only arm approved by the FDA for force-controlled (haptic) surgery, having performed 100s of successful knee-implant surgeries across the US. Bill holds engineering PhD and MS degrees from MIT and a BS from Northeastern. He has coauthored many papers, been awarded 8 US patents, and won several professional awards including The Robotic Industries Association's Joseph Engelberger Award in 2003 for pioneering the first haptic robot in the 1980s and best-paper-of-the-year award from UK-journal, Industrial Robot, in 2005.

The IEEE Robotics and Automation Society will meet at its regular venue: Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, Olin Way, Needham, MA 02492, on Tuesday, March 11, 2008, for an informal discussion at 6:00 PM and the presentation at 6:30.

Directions to Olin College: Take Route 95/128 to exit 19B (Highland Avenue, Needham). Follow Highland Avenue for 1.5 miles to a three-way intersection with Chapel and May Streets; bear slight right onto Chapel Street (to the right of the gas station). Take a right at the first light onto Great Plain Avenue/Rte 135. Proceed on Great Plain Avenue for 1.5 miles and the Olin College campus will be on the right. Enter the campus at Olin Way and follow the road around to the left to parking lot A, which provides access to all campus buildings. From the parking lot take the walkway up to the Academic Center and follow instructions inside. For more detailed instructions, please refer to http://www.olin.edu/campus/getting_around.asp and follow the link to "Olin College Campus Map" in the left navigation bar.

After the meeting, at approx. 8:00 PM, the group will have a no-host dinner at Bertucci's, 1257 Highland Ave., Needham, MA 02492, where more conversations can take place with the guest speaker. Driving directions from Olin College to Bertucci's: Backtrack the previous route on Great Plain Avenue, Chapel St. to Highland Avenue. The restaurant will be located inside a plaza on the left, about 600 ft past the three-way intersection with Chapel and May Streets.

The meetings are open to the general public, and all are welcome at the dinner afterwards. For more information on IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, please contact Chapter Chair Peter Meyer at (781) 334-0052 or chair@robotics-boston.org, or visit http://www.robotics-boston.org/.