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Tag Archives: Robot

A-Z of Digital – Z is for Zabeta

18 Wednesday Oct 2017

Posted by Max Hemingway in Cobotics, Digital, Robotics

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Cobot, Cobotics, Digital, Robot, Robotics

System Tax

Following on from my blog post outlining an A-Z of Digital, here is the final post in the series –  “Z for Zabeta”.

Zabeta is a noun meaning Tarrif or Tax.

“The Robots are Coming! So is the Tax!”

As we move towards an automated society with robots and automation playing a big part, there are ongoing discussions and debates at the moment around the position of taxing companies that use them to balance the loss of jobs they may cause.

Several key figures have raised the subject of a Robot Tax of some sort with Bill Gates being one of the key speakers on this subject:

Bill Gates 

“Right now if a human worker does you know, $50,000 worth of work in a factory, that income is taxed. If a robot comes in to do the same thing, you’d think we would tax the robot at a similar level.”

Bill Gates, in an interview with Quartz

Source: Marketwatch

Elon Musk

“There is a pretty good chance we end up with a universal basic income, or something like that, due to automation,” says Musk to CNBC. “Yeah, I am not sure what else one would do. I think that is what would happen.”

Source: CNBC

Stephen Hawking

Hawking replied: “The outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution.”

Source: The Independent

The debate has been discussed within the political landscape of the world with South Korea already making a move to introduce a Robot Tax:

In its recently announced tax law revision plan, the Moon Jae-in administration said it will downsize the tax deduction benefits that previous governments provided to enterprises for infrastructure investment aimed at boosting productivity.

Source: The Korea Times

In the US the state of California is considering a Robot Tax:

Included among those folks is San Francisco supervisor Jane Kim, who Wednesday launched a campaign called the Jobs of the Future Fund to study a statewide “payroll” tax on job-stealing machines. Proceeds from the tax would bankroll things like job retraining, free community college, or perhaps a universal basic income―countermeasures Kim thinks might make a robotic future more bearable for humans.

Source: wired.com

In the UK the political parties are discussing the subject with Labour wanting to introduce a tax in their policies

The Labour leader wants to use the money to create a fund to retrain staff who lose their jobs because of new technology. He said that “we should all get the benefits” from “greedy” global corporations such as Amazon which have “made a great deal of money out of incredibly advanced technology”.

Source: The Telegraph

where as the EU position is against the tax due to what has been seen in countries such as Germany where robots have been introduced, yet the unemployment figures are low.

Andrus Ansip, the European Commissioner in charge of the bloc’s push for a Digital Single Market (DSM), isn’t a fan of a robot tax. “No way. No way,” Ansip said when asked if he would support a robot tax.

Source: CNBC

The definition of what this is applied to is an important subject as well. When you mention the word Robot it conjures up images of a factory with robots producing cars, a humanoid type robot or something from a Sci-Fi movie. However should this include Cobots that are there to aid a worker to do their role or even RPA (Robotic Process Automation) which uses software to carry out a task.  Its easy to carry out a visual inspection of a site and see the big machine type robots, but less hard to spot the software variants.

What are the exceptions to the rule, such as Robots that enter a hazardous zone that is potentially dangerous or fatal to a human to carry out a task, such as mine clearance, clearing a nuclear site or diving to deep depths of the ocean. How far should such a tax system go?

This is one subject that will have the politicians and industries debating for some time to come.

What do you think -Should there be a tax of some sort?

Further Reading

  • A-Z of Digital – C is for Cobots
  • Rise of the Cobot
  • A-Z of Digital – R is for Robots
  • Robotic Process Automation: Statistics, business impact and future
  • Real or sci-fi: Robotic software automation
  • Beyond off-shoring: Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
  • A-Z of Digital – L is for Legal

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Building a Quadruped

07 Friday Apr 2017

Posted by Max Hemingway in Arduino, Open Source, Programming, Robotics, STEM

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Arduino, learning, Open Source, Programming, Robot, Robotics, STEM

Robot3I decided to have a go at building a robot for a STEM session last weekend, to show the power of code and how it can be used to control something.  A moving robot is a great visualisation to demonstrate this.

After some searching I settled on a quadruped shown on thingverse (a 3d printing site). This is a build based on a robot called Chopstick Junior by Lumi.

Parts being printed, I set about thinking about the controls and motors. The parts are compatible with an SG90 servo. I needed 8 of these, for the knee and hip joints of the quadruped.

The assembly of the parts was a bit of a challenge as in the instructions it said you needed 3mm x 6mm screw/nuts to connect the shoulders together. You really need 3mm x 8mm screw/nuts as I have to countersink the holes a bit more to get the nuts to attach to the 6mm screw length.

Inserting the servos into the holes in the hips and legs required the unscrewing of the 4 small screws in each servo and temporarily removing the gear top. Once inserted this can be replaced and screwed down.

Once the servos were in place I centered the servos the best I could to allow backwards and forwards movement in each joint. I knew that later adjustment may be needed! This can easily be achieved removing the servo arm and hip/leg, then re-positioning and attaching the arm again.

The power is provided by 4 x AA batteries in a square battery holder. This was glued down onto the frame and fitted well into the build.

The power bus is provided by a small piece of circuit board. I used two lines for -v and +v. Each servo was then wired into the lines and the control wire to an Arduino Nano which is used as the brains of the robot.

The following pins were used on the Digital I/O on the Arduino Nano:

  • D2 – Hip 1
  • D3 – Knee1
  • D4 – Hip 2
  • D5 – Knee 2
  • D6 – Hip 3
  • D7 – Knee 3
  • D8 – Hip 4
  • D9 – Knee 4

I also wired in a sensor on the front of the robot to D10 and D11.

Wiring is grouped together to allow movement, but cut to a length that reduces excess that could get in the way of the legs.

A toggle switch provides an on/off for the power fixed to the rear of the robot. Remember to break the lines on the circuit board so it does not join any of the lines.

Once assembled I then got round to coding. I decided to use the opensource code for the Chopstick Junior as a base and make alterations. The quadruped responded well to the code and several physical servo adjustments were needed. Its now in a reasonable state, however balance is an issue in terms of walking steadily, so need to work more on this.  I have not yet coded movement to respond to the sensors yet, this will be done later.

The code is available via my Github:  https://github.com/Cloudmage/Robots

The robot went down well at the STEM session. Now to tweek that code……

Top view

Robot2

Side View

Robot3

Front View

Robot1

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Rise of the Cobot

17 Friday Mar 2017

Posted by Max Hemingway in Cobotics, Digital, Robotics

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

AI, Cobot, Cobotics, Digital, Robot, Robotics

CobotRobotics have been around for many years, with the idea of robots helping humans being depicted in Science Fiction in early books, comics and films.  Robots have been evolving with design and use as we have been working with them to carry out various tasks.

So what is a cobot? Wikipedia defines Cobots as:

A cobot or co-robot (from collaborative robot) is a robot intended to physically interact with humans in a shared workspace. This is in contrast with other robots, designed to operate autonomously or with limited guidance, which is what most industrial robots were up until the decade of the 2010s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobot

Robots have often been seen as a replacement for humans in many roles, however cobots are not, instead working with and interacting with humans in various tasks and levels. Cobots have been around for the past few years, mainly in industrial workplaces such as manufacturing , automotive and supply chains. Their evolution is now bringing cobots into many other workplaces and use cases.

The Automotive industry is probably the best example of using robots that then move to cobots in the workplace, working with humans in assembling cars. The future of the automated car is turning the vehicle into a cobot and will probably be one of the cobots people with interact with the most in the future.

Advancements in cobots are coming from the universities and private companies developing new ways of interacting and enhancing tasks/jobs such as:

  • Automotive
  • Manufacturing
  • Healthcare
  • Prosthetics
  • Workplace

Imagine your working buddy is a cobot that can perform tasks hand in hand with you, take over if you need to do something else, increase its speed of completing the tasks, then sense your return and slow to the speed your working at.

The increase of cobots in the workplace does have an impact on legalities in the workplace and many questions still remain unanswered. There are discussions on robot/cobot rights and should they pay taxes (the companies that use them).

There is a growing place for cobots within the workplace and we will be working with them more and more as new cobots and ways of working are produced, however  it may be a while until we get to a fully AI/Cobotic Workplace.

 

References / Further Reading

Classification of “Cobotic Systems” for “Industrial Applications”

Meet the cobots: humans and robots together on the factory floor

High Performance Cobotics

Man and machine: The new collaborative workplace of the future

The robots are coming: legalities in the workplace

http://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/hr-most-influential/profile/the-robots-are-coming-legalities-in-the-workplace

Boston Dymanics Robots

 

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Robots and Drones – Runaway

21 Friday Oct 2016

Posted by Max Hemingway in Digital, Drone, Robotics, Uncategorized

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Tags

Digital, Drone, Robot, Robotics

MachineThere have been lots of comparisons to TV Programmes and Films made years ago showing technology of the future and where we are today. The prime example of this is Star Trek and communicators, Holodecks vs Hololens. Terminator and AI, etc..

Whilst looking at the latest drone technology I recalled a film I watched in my youth in 1984 called “Runaway” directed by Michael Crichton and stared Tom Selleck about a Police Officer that specialises in malfunctioning robots.

In the film he uses a drone to enter a house and search for people before the drone is shot by another robot. It depicts a near future where a lot of robots are used for everday tasks in farming, construction, housework etc. Most of which are in use today.

The interesting factor in the film though is a law enforcement agent with a specific purpose of dealing with malfunctioning robots, (with the added bad guy in programming them of course). We are not that far away from such an agency in reality with current agencies investigating drones causing issues. Drones being developed for search and rescue and technology that can knock them out of the sky. As the technology grows we may well see such specialised officers in the future.

 

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