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Sawyer Robot By Rethink Robotics Progresses Manufacturing Through Automation

Rethinks Robotics Sawyer Robot

Rethink Robotics, the Boston-based robotics company behind the Baxter robot which DARPA programmed to teach itself how to cook by watching instructional cooking videos on YouTube, has debut their latest robot, Sawyer, which seeks to revolutionize manufacturing by automating precision tasks previously too intricate for industrial robots to perform.

Sawyer’s capabilities include the ability to automate tasks such as testing circuit boards to executing machine tending and other precision tasks, which have historically proven impractical to automate with prior industrial robots.

Rethink Robotics describes the new bot, one of two that company has created thus far, as a single-arm, high performance, collaborative robot designed to execute an array of precise tasks.

The new bot weighs just 41.9 pounds and stands only 3.3 feet tall, making it smaller than its predecessor, the Baxter robot which debut back in 2012.

The Boston-based robotics company’s CMO Jim Lawton was quoted by TIME as having related Baxter to the “need to build commercially viable products as stepping stones”.

Both bots have been used in field-tests to perform low-level factory jobs; in particular, those deemed menial, dangerous or undesirable.

A report on Spectrum IEEE quoted the company’s founder as having said that it “became clear” that a “different sort of (robotic) arm” would allow them to accomplish “some things a lot better”.

In other robotics coverage recently reported here on Immortal News, the DARPA-funded ATRIAS bipedal robot is training to become the fastest robot in the world. Researchers recently pummeled it with dodgeballs in an attempt to test its stability ahead of the upcoming DARPA robotics challenged scheduled for June of this year.

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