AI collaboration will let robots think for themselves - Drives and Controls Magazine

The Japanese robot-maker Fanuc has teamed up with the computer technology specialist Nvidia to apply artificial intelligence (AI) to robotics to boost productivity and to bring new capabilities to automated factories. The partners will use AI to give robots the ability to teach themselves to perform tasks faster and more efficiently, and to work together, so that a task that would previously have taken one robot eight hours to complete, could now be done by eight robots in an hour. The robots will be able to learn on their own, instead of being programmed painstakingly--for each function they need to perform. The technology is based on --deep learning"--software, accelerated using Nvidia GPUs (graphics processing units), which will support AI in the cloud, in data centres and embedded in devices. The AI will be implemented on Fanuc--s Field (Fanuc Intelligent Edge Link and Drive) platform, which combines AI with edge computing to process --edge-heavy-- sensor data from machines to allow them to collaborate intelligently and flexibly.