Chinese scientists build factory robot that can read minds on the assembly line
- Trained robot monitored co-worker’s brain and muscle signals to predict needs, China Three Gorges University team says in domestic peer-reviewed paper
- China is in dire need of more powerful robotic technology to address its problems of a shrinking workforce and rising labour costs
The co-worker did not need to say or do anything when they needed a tool or a component, as the robot would recognise the intention almost instantly, picking up the object and putting it on the workstation, according to the developers.
“In modern industrial manufacturing, assembly work accounts for 45 per cent of the total workload, and 20-30 per cent of the total production cost,” project lead scientist Dong Yuanfa and his co-researchers said in a paper published in domestic peer-reviewed journal China Mechanical Engineering.
Collaborative robots, or “cobots”, could accelerate the pace of an assembly line, but their application remained limited because “their ability to recognise human intention is often inaccurate and unstable”, the paper said.
Humans and robots or autonomous machines have been working together in factories for decades, but are separated by fences in most places to avoid accidents.
In recent years, some advanced production plants such as car factories in Germany have introduced a fence-free work environment, with robots that swing into action only after a button is pressed. Such machines are equipped with safety sensors that stop them immediately if they come into physical contact with humans.
