Innovative cobot and IIoT solutions at Taiwan Smart Manufacturing conference

During a press conference called ‘Taiwan Smart Manufacturing’ at Hannover Messe in Germany the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) presented highly innovative solutions for topics such as Collaborative Robots (Cobots), 3D Machine Vision, Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), Robot Operating Systems as well as Embedded Systems and provided a general introduction to Taiwan’s smart manufacturing market.

“Our strong presence here shows the important impact on global manufacturing of Taiwanese companies,” stated Mr. Joe Chou, Director of the Taiwan Trade Center in Dusseldorf. He further explained: “Taiwan has the world’s No.1 machine tool cluster, known as the ‘Golden Valley’. Together with our powerful IC design capabilities, our knowledge in integration of technologies such as robots, 3D machine vision and Internet of Things as well as robot operation and embedded systems, Taiwan has become a much sought-after partner for applications along the entire supply chain of intelligent machines internationally.”

At the press conference, five outstanding Taiwan companies shared their achievements in smart manufacturing:

Collaborative robots (Cobot)

TECHMAN ROBOT, a global leader in collaborative robot and vision technologies presented the TM5, the world’s first collaborative robot featuring built-in visual recognition. It perfectly integrates hands, eyes and brains into one system, which impressively improves the easiness of using industrial robots and remarkably reduces the cost and deployment time. With the powerful built-in vision system, TM5 can see, think and work unitedly and smartly like a human. Users can also use hand-guiding function to teach the robot – everyone, even those without robotic programming experience, can achieve a visual pick and place task within five minutes. The TM5 complies with the ISO 10218 human-robot safety requirement and it can operate without safety fences in co-operation with machine operatives.

Machine Vision

SOLOMON Group was established in 1973. It provides robots and machines with human-like vision and recognition capabilities by blending advanced 3D vision and the latest deep learning technologies. SOLOMON AI Vision offers human-like, self-learning software to detect and inspect irregular patterns, defects and features, or object classifications. All that’s required is to provide samples for AI Vision to distinguish and learn; no code writing is necessary. SOLOMON 3D Random Bin Picking is an intelligent, friendly and versatile solution that quickly automates any 3D pick-and-place applications, including complex-shaped objects in a random three-dimensional setting. The software comes with a deep learning option that allows training time to be reduced by as much as 70%.

Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)

Gallant Precision Machining (GPM), a Taiwan based high-tech Company, has accumulated 40 years of experience in the manufacturing process and R&D field to provide semi-conductor, FPD and relevant industrial precision machinery process equipment with intelligent automation total solutions. Its ‘GPM Smart IoT Platform System’ is an analysis and preventive maintenance system that combines intelligent machine learning, real time capture and analysis to provide equipment health diagnosis. Giving an answer to the question on how to collect and analyze valuable Big Data and use it effectively, GPM has become the fastest growing manufacturer for precision equipment in Taiwan.

Robot Operating System

Robot Operating system (ROS) is the world’s largest robots open source platform and is widely used for mobile robots, industrial robots, probing robots, human-computer interaction robots, to autonomous cars and group robots. ADLINK Technology, Inc., a global provider of leading edge computing solutions that drives data-to-decision applications across industries, was the first member of the ROS-Industrial Consortium Asia Pacific. With ADLINK’s ROS controller, the integration of robotic arms, AGV, and monitoring the status of robots is easily achieved.

Embedded systems

DFI is a leading provider of high-performance computing technology across multiple embedded industries. The company presented the DFI’s EC500-SD series, a high-performance and compact embedded system equipped with 6th Generation Intel Core i7/i5/i3 processors and Intel Q170 chipset. It targets machine vision applications requiring high computing power and accurate real-time data transition with minimal footprint. The industrial computers also provide large numbers of I/O ports and multiple PCIe/PCI expansion to empower vision, graphic, or motion cards.