Summer 2012 - Robert Morris University
Summer 2012 - Robert Morris University
Summer 2012 - Robert Morris University
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EY<br />
They can perform surgery at a hospital,<br />
conduct enemy surveillance on a<br />
battlefield, or beat the smartest of<br />
competitors on a TV game show. No,<br />
we're not talking about Rhodes Scholars<br />
– this is a story about robots, and how<br />
one RMU alumna is part of a<br />
pioneering enterprise employing<br />
robots to perform manual labor in a<br />
futuristic way.<br />
Sana Ali M'10 is an applications engineer at<br />
Pittsburgh-based Seegrid, a nine-year-old spinoff<br />
of Carnegie Mellon <strong>University</strong>'s mobile robot lab.<br />
The company's robotic industrial trucks are<br />
revolutionizing how inventory moves across floors<br />
at manufacturing and distribution sites.<br />
The typical unmanned industrial vehicle requires floor<br />
magnets, buried wires, or costly lasers to pick up and<br />
move materials in a warehouse. But Seegrid's two robotic<br />
stars – a pallet truck that lifts 8,000 pounds and a tow<br />
tractor that hauls 10,000 pounds – incorporate state-of-the<br />
art vision technology that saves businesses time and money.<br />
Here's how it works: Cameras mounted on a robot take<br />
pictures of the environment. The images are recorded in the<br />
robot's memory, and converted into maps made up of 3-D<br />
grids. The robot is able to see the grid – hence the company's<br />
name – and understand where it is at all times as it lugs heavy<br />
loads from one place to another autonomously. If someone or<br />
something gets in its way, the robot stops or slows down<br />
until the obstacle moves away.<br />
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