Precision performer

RethinkRobotics, the company behind the Baxter manufacturing robot, has released a one-armed version, Called Sawyer. Sawyer is smaller and more dexterous than Baxter, and is designed to execute machine tending, circuit board testing and other precise tasks that are impractical to automate with conventional robots.

Sawyer weights 19kg and features seven degrees of freedom with a 1260mm reach that is said to be able to manoeuvre into tight spaces designed for humans. Its motion control allows it to ‘feel’ its way into fixtures or machines, even when the position varies slightly, with ±1mm accuracy.

The robot also features an embedded vision system, with a head camera for wide view applications and a Cognex camera in its wrist that enables the robotic positioning system and allows it to work alongside human workers.

This ability is aided by its Intera 3 platform that provides a graphical user interface, but also an expressive ‘face’ that can communicate its movements to workers around it. Instead of using coordinates to program the robots movements, the Intera 3 platform allows it to be trained by demonstration, allowing non-technical personnel to create and modify programs as needed by scanning context markers with the wrist cameras to show the robot how, what and where it needs to move.