At the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals' (CSCMP) Annual Global Conference in San Diego, California, Universal Robotics unveiled its flagship technology, Neocortex.
Neocortex is patent-protected software that allows machines to learn from their experiences in the physical world. The software was developed in association with Yaskawa / Motoman Robotics, a specialist in industrial robots.
It including a hardware/machine intelligence work cell solution that features Neocortex software, Motoman's SDA-series robots, custom box moving end effectors and a suite of sensors, including Universal's recently launched easy-to-use 3D vision system Spatial Vision.
"With Neocortex, we've given industrial robots the ability to adapt and react to the world around them and execute tasks in an ever-changing environment," David Peters, chief executive officer at Universal Robotics said.
"With this ability to learn, machines will be implemented in revolutionary ways across industries," Peters added.
Universal Robotics’ software are designed to enable machines to react and adapt to their surroundings, and perform tasks that are costly, dangerous or difficult for humans to undertake. The company initiated Neocortex development since 2001. It was created at Vanderbilt University with funding from DARPA and NASA and developed using Robonaut, NASA's humanoid robot.
Company believes that Neocortex is not like any traditional automation, in which machines are pre-programmed with movements and tasks to execute, instead, it allows a robot to learn how to complete a task. Once the task is learned, the machine observes its environment through more than 50 channels of sensor data. Drawing on what it learned from previous experiences, the Neocortex-enabled robot changes its actions as necessary in real time to complete the task.
"Neocortex is modeled on how we all learn. We sense our environment, act to change it and learn from the process," Alan Peters, co-founder and chief technical officer Universal Robotics said.
"Neocortex allows machines to perform tasks that are beyond the capabilities of standard industrial robots. From materials handling to underwater mining, Neocortex creates robots that can operate in very dynamic environments and learn to carry out many tasks that are unsafe or impossible for people to perform," Peters added.
As stated, Neocortex will be initially launched in the materials handling industry as an automated mixed-size box handler.
Jai C.S. is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Jai's articles, please visit his columnist page.Edited by
Erin Monda
