Industrial Robot Giant Interested in Robots for Consumers

  Yaskawa Electric - one of the world's largest industrial robot manufacturers - is interested in developing and selling more robots outside of the factory floors. Recently it's MOTOMAN robots were found playing the traditional Japanese drums at a large summer festival in southern Japan (you can read about the drum beating robots on NewScientist.com) but the company has other projects under works.

  One is the Robo Porter. I had a chance to see it at Yaskawa's headquarters in Kitakyushu in the end of July and below is a video that I took then.

  Yaskawa is just about to start using the Robo Porters inside its own factory where they will carry around the circuit boards that are used to make other robots. But the sophisticated wheels provide easy turns and smooth rides and it should be fit for other mobile robots - such as wheelchairs and airport porters - says Kazuhiko Yokoyama, Manager of the RT Technology Team at Yaskawa's R&D Center.

  Another project at Yaskawa is the SmartPal. Yaskawa initially developed this robot to prove that it can manufacture a robot from interchangeable units. Yaskawa currently sells industrial robots as a "system," but it is thinking of starting to make money from selling "units" and "components" as well. This strategy is better for the consumer/service robot market because unlike industrial robots, "each robot will need to be highly customized and one company can't possibly make a product from ground up" according to Yokoyama.

  Consumer robot manufacturers will have to buy units to build a product for a ceratin need and that's where Yaskawa would like to do its business. In other words, Yaskawa would like to sell the units that it developed to make SmartPal so that its customers can use it in their products.

  Yokoyama (shown below with SmartPal) predicts that his company's unit/component business will eventually exceed its system business.