The concept of robots being designed for a single task, with only trained specialists capable of modifying or fixing them, can seem restrictive and antiquated. In response to this issue, modular robots are being developed. Their users can quickly reconfigure a standard robot platform, adding sensors, tools and artificial intelligence capabilities, to allow them to perform a wide variety of dull, dirty or dangerous tasks.
British company Ross Robotics is positioning itself strongly in this field with its modular offering: Robosynthesis. Referred to as ‘big boys’ Lego,’ it is a flexible, robust and cost-effective modular robotic delivery platform that can be used remotely to carry out roles as complex and varied as that of some technicians, in environments often too dangerous or difficult for humans to work in.
Such environments include the radioactive and magnetic conditions found in the Large Hadron Collider at Cern – the European Organisation for Nuclear Research in Geneva – where the modular platform will be further developed under a partnership with Ross Robotics.
Artistic input
Robosynthesis is the brainchild of artist-turned-inventor Philip Norman. Having read English at Cambridge and then worked in various creative roles – including newspaper cartoonist and architectural and landscape designer – he may seem an unlikely candidate for developing robotic solutions. However, it appears that those artistic skills, rather than textbook technical know-how, enabled him to develop such an innovative solution.
While working on architectural projects in the south of France, Norman became interested in developing a construction toy for his children. He wanted it to be like Lego or Meccano, but requiring fewer parts. “I tried to think through a more minimalist type of modularity, where few parts would make many different constructions and assemblies that you could imagine,” he says.
Norman patented his idea and pitched it to the toy industry, but found that it was much more appreciated by those in the robotics sector.
“The real benefits lie in the availability of equipment, as you can keep it running 24/7 – any malfunction you can swap out modules – and because you’ve got this standardised system, the cost base is low,” he says. “You also need only a small workforce and little training to run and develop these systems.”
After years of development, Ross Robotics has created a highly reconfigurable robot platform which can be made up of various sensors, cameras, arms and tools, all plugged into sockets on a base system. These can theoretically make an infinite number of assemblies depending on the task and environment the end user has in mind, from carrying out lidar surveys of pipes to creating mesh communication networks in urban settings, such as metro stations.
Key features of the platform are a unique coaxial and repositionable power and data connector, passive adaptive biomimetic traction based on that of a cockroach, compliant resilient structures for shock absorbency, additive manufacturing processes that create three-dimensional power and data looms within the robot’s structure, and a suite of artificial intelligence (AI) functions ranging from autonomous operation through to topology recognition, where the robot recognises its configuration as it is assembled.
Cutting complexity
The robot comes in two sizes, the smaller weighing in at 10kg and the larger at 35kg. A standard model costing £45,000 will contain a set of wheels or tracks and an operator control unit which has a visual display, a pan/tilt and zoom camera, wireless communications, two lithium-ion batteries and a charger.
Power is fed through to the sensors and tools on the deck and can then be regulated to what the user requires locally. “This means that the third-party supplier of the sensors and tools doesn’t need to equip their systems with batteries. From the user’s point of view that’s great as there are fewer batteries to charge, less complexity and less to go wrong,”
says Norman.
Robosynthesis is built from polymers with a phosphor-nickel coating, making it fairly chemically resistant and able to handle substances such as brine and oils. It is also non-magnetic, so can operate in strong magnetic fields such as the four tesla fields in the Large Hadron Collider. The electronics are designed to handle strong magnetic fields and, to some extent, irradiated environments.
Robosynthesis has initially appealed to customers seeking cheap, robust and easy-to-fix robots capable of performing a range of tasks in unstructured and potentially hazardous environments. These include the police, the defence sector, water companies carrying out surveys of hard-to-reach infrastructure, as well as researchers at Cern.
Cern has developed a suite of sensors and tools that can be interfaced with the robot, and added more advanced AI capability including simultaneous localisation and mapping (Slam) and dynamic obstacle avoidance. An employee from Ross Robotics will be based at Cern to further develop Robosynthesis and add more tools such as robot arms and advanced functions, including the ability to use robots working in groups.
The requirement for the robots at Cern has come about because researchers have turned up the power levels in the Large Hadron Collider, and the background radiation has risen faster than anticipated.
“A lot of sophisticated equipment in the collider needs service and maintenance,” says Norman. “Certain parts of the 50km of tunnels can’t be worked in by engineers because of the radiation, or for only about 15 minutes in a whole year.”
Multiple Robosynthesis systems will be used to go into the tunnels and swap out equipment, repair faults, replace electrical cable fittings, and carry out mobile reconnaissance and monitoring of systems.
“We are going increasingly towards robots having to behave like people and perform multiple tasks, in the same way that a trained operative would,” he says.
While organisations such as Cern can see the long-term value of modular robots free from training issues, high repair costs or procurement problems for spare parts, not all sectors are so easy to convince of their merits. “The commercial proposition requires imagination and long-termism on the part of the customer, which tends to be in short supply generally,” says Norman.
However, he is confident that a wider market will open up once people realise
the limits and expenses involved with single-use robots.
Middle ground
Ultimately, Ross Robotics is seeking to provide a standard in the industry for users to configure ‘middle bandwidth robots’ that sit in between high-end humanoids and the lower-end vacuum cleaning or grass-mowing consumer robots.
Rather than become a mass manufacturer of the system, Norman says there is a possibility that Ross Robotics could license Robosynthesis so that manufacturers can sell to their existing clients. There could also be scope to create a more affordable and standardised version for the academic research market.
“No one else has gone down the road of exploring real modularity,” he says. “From a children’s construction toy, this has become a fully reconfigurable system that can go down pipes and operate as a wheeled platform, or with the addition of a magnetic crawling system could perform repairs climbing up and down offshore platforms.
“You can configure very different systems from the same set of generic parts. That is a unique selling point.”