News briefs for the week check out robotics at tradeshows FABTECH and PACK EXPO going down near-simultaneously this September 11 by means of 14; then a robotic staff that displays and maintains the world’s largest radio telescope, a flying and on-wire robotic for overhead energy traces that predicts wildfires, a robotic surgeon as a most cancers affected person’s solely hope for his inoperable tumor, and the way a younger, promising surgical robotic firm all of the sudden went out of enterprise.
Twin cities, twin robotic venues
Near concurrently, two cities will host tradeshows for a mixed 75,000-plus attendees, and each will likely be full of must-see robotics and automation.
FABTECH (Chicago, September 11-14); and PACK EXPO (Las Vegas, September 11-13). More and extra, no occasion or tradeshow can escape the pull of robotics, and these two exhibits are the epitome of “Hey, I really need to attend both!”
The touring, multi-city FABTECH is all about manufacturing merchandise by way of metallic forming, fabricating, welding, and ending…
together with 3D printing. Over 70% of the world’s manufactured items want the companies of forming, fabricating, welding, ending, or additive manufacturing, and FABTECH makes a speciality of delivering what’s new and what’s finest. Now, nonetheless, robotic automation is starting to dominate all of them. So a lot so, that in 2019 FABTECH realized the inevitability of it and opened its first Robot Pavilion.
For instance, as the worldwide scarcity of welders meets up with the near-perfection of robotic welding-cell expertise, FABTECH attendees will witness all method of automated welding robots. Exhibit after exhibit will present the inroads and necessity robotic automation.
PACK EXPO, one other multi-city traveler, is all about cutting-edge packaging expertise, processing tools, and provide chain 
sources. The tradeshow provides seven totally different pavilions, masking important healthcare packaging, meals and beverage and confectionary packaging and processing, logistics, warehousing and materials dealing with, containers and bundle printing, and even reusable packaging. And after all, extra so than in most tradeshows, robotics dominates each pavilion.
For instance, in line with Inbound Logistics, greater than 80% of warehouses in America should not automated, and over 56% of warehouse house owners say they’re scrambling to automate all or components of their operations. All seven of the pavilions have options that tackle these wants, nonetheless, the Logistics Pavilion covers all of the new-tech gear in warehousing, materials dealing with tools and programs, dock and warehouse tools, and suppliers of stock administration and management programs.
Robots monitor world’s largest radio telescope
China’s 1600-foot-diameter radio telescope (an space equal to 30 customary soccer fields), with its feed antenna, suspended 500 toes above the dish on a 1.8-million-pound metal platform, is held in place by large concrete towers and metal wires.
Five specifically designed, upkeep robots will monitor the large telescope for normal upgrades, normal repairs, in addition to for structural anomalies, like people who collapsed the 1000-foot-diameter radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico in 2020 (see video of collapse).
Costing $170 million to construct, China’s FAST telescope has 4,500 particular person panels, 2,200 winches, and miles of metal cabling that want fixed monitoring.
“The intelligent robots will be mainly used in testing of the supporting cables and pulleys of FAST’s feed, the automatic maintenance of its actuators and laser targets on the reflector, the disassembling and installation of feed receivers, the monitoring of radio interference, and the all-weather measurement of its 30-ton feed cabin.”
The 5 clever robots, designed by Chinese institutes will have the ability to clear and preserve the telescope’s spherical dish – made up of laser targets beneath reflective aluminum plates. “They will also be able to travel along the cables supporting the feed cabin to scan for defects.”
Robot to protect towards wildfire danger
We know from large forest fires in Maui and different fires in California that downed energy traces and dried vegetation are ignition factors for wildfires sparking in distant, inaccessible areas.
A beetle-like robotic that may predict energy outages and wildfires is in growth at Ontario-based Waterloo University’s startup incubator Velocity, at a beginner firm that calls itself Enerza.
Anson Maitland co-founder of Enerza says that North America has 6 million miles of overhead energy traces. “Once they come in contact with trees, the risk of forest fires increases. “With our robot, utilities can spot vegetation risks, corrosion or even birds’ nests near the line and send out a team to handle it.”
“The most common inspection method now is primarily done manually,” added Maitland. “People go out in rural areas, they have to go out in ATV trucks, and they’re basically inspecting the line visually.”
“[The robot] would be able to use its propellers to fly itself up to the line and would be able to attach to the line. Using a thermal camera, depth cameras, and then use a combination of other stereoscopic cameras in order to measure distances.”
With an elevated effectivity of no less than 200 % over handbook inspections, says the Enerza web site, its new robotic can detect failing infrastructure and potential future grid points earlier than they occur. “We enable utilities to not only cover the whole grid but also help them reduce costs.”
Best of all, says the beginner firm, all of the agency’s knowledge is available in real-time.
Robot takes on inoperable tumor
For a most cancers operation that might contain a affected person’s tonsils, tongue and throat, along with the prospect of getting to separate open the 
affected person’s jaw simply to get on the affected operation website, a cancerous tumor was written off as inoperable and any surgical process deemed too dangerous for any surgeon to aim.
It regarded like retired Canadian journalist, Glenn Deir, was out of choices aside from radiation and chemotherapy, which wouldn’t be sufficient. Without surgical procedure, Deir’s prognosis was dire.
Enter Sunnyvale, CA-based Intuitive Surgical’s DaVinci robotic for what the corporate’s web site calls “the point of possibility where ingenuity meets precision.” The chance of Deir’s life being saved by a surgical robotic turned his solely probability for survival.
He took the prospect.
“The operation took 2½ hours. It was more complicated than anticipated,” Deir wrote later. The earlier radiation remedy had made the tonsil stiff; it did not draw back simply. “The tumor on my tongue was the size of a large cherry. He [the surgeon] also had to rotate a muscle to close a gap in my throat. I woke up with a feeding tube up my nose and an incision that ran the full length of my neck. I was a cross between the Elephant Man and Frankenstein.”
He requested his surgeon what the operation would have been like with out the DaVinci robotic. “In the nice outdated days,” replied the physician, “we would have had to cut your jaw in two.” Plus, previous radiation treatment had made even a simple tooth extraction impossible. The jaw wouldn’t have healed properly. In short, said his doctor, “I had no surgical option.”
Not each surgical robotic is a winner
For each roaring success from the likes of Intuitive Surgical, there are different surgical robots that for both technical or enterprise 
causes don’t make the grade.
One latest instance is that this week’s announcement of XACT Robotics closing its doorways and shedding all of its 65 workers.
The firm’s ACE Robotic System is a completely autonomous radiological surgical robotic that, as XACT described it, is a “world’s first, cutting-edge, hands-free robotic tool for guiding the precise robotic insertion of various surgical instruments.”
Israel-based XACT had raised over $50 million in funding, had its ACE product authorised on the market within the U.S. by the FDA in 2019, and started gross sales in 2020, however “has failed to generate significant revenue.”
Hopefully, the expertise, in addition to the workers, will see higher days forward.