iREX 2017 part 1: Kineo robotics simulation and control software
I just spent a fascinating week in Tokyo at the International Robot Exhibition (iREX), the world’s largest robot exhibition. This year 130,480 visitors came to see more than 600 companies exhibit solutions for industrial manufacturing, health care, disaster management and many other automated services.
Themes at this year’s event included human-robot collaboration and the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in industrial robots, with major robot OEMs demonstrating the use of deep-learning by robots to master multi-task manufacturing operations.
Siemens and its partners had a notable presence with their porfolio of Digital Factory solutions for virtual commissioning and plant simulation. I joined my Siemens colleagues to present the latest releases of Kineo software components for robotics simulation and control. Robot OEMs and System Integrators alike were especially interested to see new developments in automated path-planning for industrial robots, as well as the progress we’ve made in simulating flexible cables to predict the behaviour of electrical cables and pneumatic hoses in robot systems. The video collage below illustrates the range of solutions we presented at the show.
In support of the human-robot collaboration theme, we also prepared a special demonstration of our R&D progress in reactive path-planning, a field of research that aims to prevent collisions between humans and industrial robots in their operating environment. This demonstration is the subject of part 2 in this blog series.
