From Industry 4.0 to factories of the future, nations around the world are looking to automation to maintain their competitive edge in manufacturing. Although the U.S. does not have an explicit or centralized industrial policy, several initiatives are seeking to help innovators and businesses. The Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing, or ARM, Institute will discuss its technology and investment focus on Thursday, Sept. 3, 2020, as part of the RoboBusiness Direct series of free online presentations.
The ARM Institute is a public-private partnership of more than 250 member organizations that promotes collaborative robotics and workforce development. Since early 2017, the Pittsburgh-based consortium has supported more than 50 projects to identify, develop, and advance technology to increase the use of robotics by U.S. manufacturers of all sizes.
Keynote to share project considerations
In this keynote session, several members of the ARM Institute will review the strategies behind project selection, as well as the projects themselves. These projects involve all areas of manufacturing — from design through delivery — and are intended to drive increasing robotics adoption.
The organization has defined the following focus areas:
- Risk reduction to the factory floor
- Human-robot interaction
- Reconfigurable, agile, and flexible robotics solutions
- Intelligent robotics systems
The speakers (see below) will also discuss the progress against these strategic focus areas and share what innovations will have the most impact on advanced manufacturing. In addition, they will answer audience questions.
About RoboBusiness Direct
RoboBusiness Direct is an ongoing series of digital events delivered by brightest minds from the leading robotics and automation companies from around the world. The series complements continuing coverage and analysis in Robotics Business Review, a sibling site to The Robot Report.
RoboBusiness Direct is designed to impart to business and engineering professionals the information they need to identify market opportunities, successfully develop and deploy the next generation of commercial robotics systems, and accelerate their businesses.
You can find a listing of RoboBusiness Direct speakers and session topics, along with the dates and times of RoboBusiness Direct programs, HERE.
There is no charge to register for RoboBusiness Direct programs.
ARM Institute members to speak
Suzy Teele, head of marketing and communications at the ARM Institute, will moderate the session. She has more than 20 years of business strategy and marketing experience and was previously the chief operating officer of two technology startups.
The panelists will include Gregorio Balandran, engineer manager and initiative leader for the Research and Technology (R&T) group focused on engineered factory solutions at Sprint AeroSystems. He is a member of ARM’s Technical Advisor Committee and has over 12 years of experience in robotics, as well as more than 10 years of experience in the aerospace industry.
Also speaking will be Satyandra K. Gupta, a professor in the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering and the Department of Computer Science at the Viterbi School of Engineering at the University of Southern California. He also serves as the director of the Center for Advanced Manufacturing and has served as a program director for the National Robotics Initiative at the National Science Foundation. Gupta is a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME). He is the editor of the ASME Journal of Computing and Information Science in Engineering.
In addition, they will be joined in this RoboBusiness Direct keynote by Arnold Kravitz, chief technology officer of the ARM Institute. He has spent more than 37 years designing, developing, and manufacturing a large portfolio of products. They include aquatic robots, autonomous vehicles, augmented and virtual reality systems, self-learning inference engine-based systems, commercial consumer electronics, and cryptographic devices.
Finally, Elena Messina, group leader of manipulation and mobility at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will be part of the panel. Her current responsibilities include managing the Measurement Science for Manufacturing Program, which is focused on advancing the capabilities of agile and autonomous collaborative robots through the definition of performance requirements, metrics, test methods, tools, and testbeds.
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