ARM Institute
Assembly Line
Data Fuels Robotics Research
At Mill 19, the site of the Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing Institute and Carnegie Mellon University’s Manufacturing Futures Institute, robotics data provides the foundation for AI and digital twins.
The AI Data Foundry was started in March 2024 and is intended to be “a national center that collects and aggregates data for robots working in manufacturing settings in order to accelerate and develop AI and machine- learning algorithms that are relevant to various manufacturing tasks,” Fedder explains. This data will come from robots at ARM’s facility, as well as ARM’s members, performing all sorts of tasks: machine tending, welding, grinding, polishing, painting and more.
This data will provide the foundation for algorithms that will enable robots to work with challenging workpieces (such as flexible parts) or complete complex tasks (plugging cables into sockets or screwing nuts and bolts together). These tasks are more challenging to automate because they aren’t perfectly repetitive and therefore require so much data to program that gathering enough real-world data could be prohibitive. According to Fedder, synthetic, or computer-generated data could bridge this gap. Researchers can use synthetic data for tests and validate the results with real-world data.