PATRICK TUCKER
A new way to train factory robots could revolutionize how militaries make drones and other weapons, enabling high-volume manufacturing close to front lines. And beyond the battlefield, it shows a possible path forward in the next era of manufacturing, a topic central to the competition between the United States and China, which the National Defense Strategy calls the “pacing challenge.”
The paper, published in the January issue of the International Journal of Extreme Manufacturing, lays out a transformative vision of AI-driven additive manufacturing, or AAM.
Today’s factory robots only are capable of a set number of rigid movements, are difficult to adapt to new tasks, and require highly specialized places on production floors. They can’t see when they are lined up incorrectly, or when they make mistakes.
The new system—developed by an international team of researchers from California State University, Northridge; the National University of Singapore; NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory; and the University of Wisconsin-Madison—uses highly-skilled engineers to train robots in a much fuller range of human-like movements, enabling them to perceive and (on a basic level) understand what they are doing. When combined with 3D printing technology, the framework opens up the possibility of complete end-to-end manufacturing of electronics, like the small drones re-shaping the battlefield in Ukraine.
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