INTERVIEW WITH A ROBOTICS ENGINEER

INTERVIEW WITH A ROBOTICS ENGINEER

Here is an interview with an expert in the field of robotics engineering. He was asked 6 questions. Which ones, in your opinion?

Hi, my name is Eric Nieves, I am a technical manager and a senior support engineer for robotics company. And what we have here is a demonstration of two robots working together to race against me and tracing out their pattern.

Let’s see how we do. I lost again! I love robots. Robots are a lot of fun. Every day I enjoy coming to work because robots are always new. Nobody buys a robot to just be plant stand. They are always taking this arm and doing some function with it. So I get to see how other people apply robot technology, and that’s different every single day.

Today, after 15 years I consider myself to be a robotics engineer. Not an electrical engineer, or a mechanical engineer, but a robotics engineer.

What I mean by that is: “robotics engineer” is a bit more general. It starts with the problem the customer or the user needs to solve. They need to make a hundred and fifty thousand of these widgets per year. And as a robotics engineer I can look at that and say: “O.K. that’s gonna require that a mechanical engineer do this form for the system and the electrical engineer’s gonna solve this problem to tie it into the factory’s network”. Now, I mean I’ll be able to design the intricacies of the particular gripper, but as a robotics engineer I can say, functionally, what this group is gonna need to do.

Now answer the questions:

1. What kind of company does the narrator work for?

2. What position does he hold ?

3. Has he got some work experience?

Robotics is used in industry today to take over work that we classify as the “3 Ds” of robotics: dirty, dangerous or degrading to the human spirit. We wanna be able to implement robots and automation technology to take over those tasks that people don’t want to or really shouldn’t do. Some of the things that robots are used for today – arc welding is a big part of robotics and that’s work that’s dirty, and its dangerous: there’s a lot of arc flash that’s hard on your eyes, there’s a lot of fumes (it’s not good for you lungs), so it’s important to try to have automation take over some of that work. And robotics is a big part of that.

Another is grinding, sanding, buffing. That’s dirty work, powder gets in your face and everywhere, you breathe it.

And the other is palletizing. There is a lot of robots being used to stack boxes where before folks had to stack one box on top of another on top of another. We all know about back injuries and corporal tunnel syndrome. And also are real hazards but the biggest one is just… it’s degrading. It has to be a better way to make a living than just stacking boxes on top of each other.

So let’s use robots to do those kinds of task and free up people to do work where they can use their mind and creativity.

Now answer the questions:

1. What kinds of production operations are called “the 3Ds of robotics”?

2. Could you give at least 3 examples of “the 3Ds” operations handed over to robots? Which of them do you think are the most unpleasant/ harmful for human health?