Why we eliminated programming from robotics (and what happened next)

President, Productive Robotics

Simple to say. Not so simple to do. Where do we even start to think about this? So here was our approach:

As a human you know instinctively how to do it: Pick something up. Put it somewhere. Activate the machine. Wait till it’s done. Pick it back up again. Put it somewhere else.

Got it. Now how do we teach a robot to do that, and without creating a “program” (even if it’s so-called “easy”). Actually the concept turned out to be simple. Let the human, who already knows what to do the job, show the robot how to do it. Like you teach a child how to swing a baseball bat, just grab onto the robot and “guide” it through the motions.  Anyone can do that.  As you guide the robot, it learns where to go, how to get there, what to pick up and when to let it go.  

What’s next? We needed to tackle the complexity of installations.  These can take days or weeks and that’s really not acceptable. If a person can just walk into the job and start doing it (with minimal training) how can we make the robot do that? Again, make the robot act like a person. When the person pushes the start button, why can’t the robot do that? (Hint: It can) So instead of wiring a complicated interface to a machine we’ll just have the cobot push the button. And like a person, once you;ve taught it to push the button (by guiding it to the button one time) it knows that forever.  

Of course there can sometimes be more complexity involved.  Sometimes you might plug the robot into your network to talk to another machine. And yes, you’ll need to tell the robot what to say to another machine or what it will say back. Or you might want to hook it up to a signal from another machine.  Both are fast and simple (and you only ever do them once). 

We’d love to show you how it’s done (although it’s so simple you might find it boring). What do you want to automate? And why haven’t you done it already?