What’s New in Robotics?

With AI-driven cobots firmly ensconced in pharma and bio labs, it wasn’t long until the duo showed up in chemistry and materials World’s first data-driven, AI-chemist cobotscience labs. China’s Xiaolai is the first! Co-developers: University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in Hefei, Anhui province; the School of Chemistry and Materials Science; and the School of Information Science and Technology.
One such project for Xiaolai, say the developers, is “to find the best recipe for catalysts to improve the efficiency of electrochemical energy storage…as with hydrogen batteries;” another, inventing materials for materials science. In one such case, “Xiaolai chose manganese, copper, cobalt, nickel and zinc as candidate elements from 118,000 possible combinations.” What would take “a hundred years to perform,” the AI-driven cobot did in five weeks.To get more news about Robotics as a Service, you can visit glprobotics.com official website.

So, just how does Xiaolai mash its AI and cobot skills together to be so revolutionary in laboratory discovery? Xiaolai’s artificial intelligence consists of three modules:

The cobot was designed to move freely in a lab, going from workstation to workstation, with an arm that can hold test tubes or handle instruments of various types.
Well-maintained wind turbines can offer 20 years of power generation. With an ROI of three years, say the experts, well-maintained wind turbines can also offer decades of profit.

Robots that inspect, clean, and repair wind turbinesAerones, a startup (2015) in Riga, Latvia, already has its service robots maintaining thousands of wind turbines for such mega-clients as Siemens, Gamesa, Enel, GE, and Vestas. Aerones inspects, cleans, washes, paints, rust coats, and repairs exterior blades but also services the interior tunnels in each blade.

In the U.S. with 70k installed wind turbines, and with China and the EU more than double that figure, Aerones looks to have a compelling business case for many years. The company, according to its website, “has serviced 5,000 onshore wind turbines and 12,000 blades in 19 countries to date.” Seems investors agree: Aerones just raised $38.9 million in new funding (December 2022).

Robots that inspect, clean, and repair wind turbinesThe company claims patents on its robotic tech, claiming that it is compact and highly portable, can be “transported in a single van,” and takes only three technicians to operate. In most cases, there’s no longer any need for workers to dangle on ropes high above.

The company says it “inspects and maintains turbines up to six times faster and up to 40% more cost-efficiently than humans.”

In addition, the robotic system allows the industry to replace the need for humans to perform blade maintenance while hanging on the ropes at high altitudes.

Plus, in taking the human out of the equation, the robot operates much faster than a worker, which shortens downtime, extra costs, and carbon footprint during the services.