| A | Robots have certainly changed the landscape of the manufacturing environment. These devices have aided in increasing quality, decreasing cycle times, and provide ergonomically safe environments. Tasks that laborers were burdened to do where consistency wavered and often industrial accidents happen, robots have taken over. But like other computer operated devices, robots can come in a number of configurations of controller and mechanisms. Thus, when manufacturers wanted to customize the environment to meet specific demands, special applications had to be written to integrate the compute environment. Really not much different then we hear about other manufacturing business environments integrating disparate and legacy computer environments together. What Microsoft has done is to create a middleware layer, tools essentially, that is a user-friendly environment for connecting controllers to the mechanisms. These controllers come in different configurations from coded control systems to manually activated control systems. As we mentioned, robots have taken over the manual efforts that exist in either redundant operations and or hazardous environments. In the case of hazardous environments, many times the motion of the robot needs to be manually controlled, say with a control stick. It is up to the operator to position and manipulate the actions of the robots based on its operating environment. Today, most manual control systems are based upon some sort of control stick type configuration. Voice activation, although an available technology, introduces a level of safety concerns in the manufacturing environment. With a wide variety of activities going on in the manufacturing environment, concern for the wrong command at the wrong time may activate a sequence of events that introduces danger to the laborers. Whether it be a grip device letting go, an AGV (Automated Guided Vehicle) turning the wrong way, etc. these are variables that are eliminated by not having voice activation. This is a primary concern for voice activation of even the simplest commands for robots in manufacturing although there are others like material flow, interfacing with other automation, etc. So although the skills requirements of the labors within the manufacturing environment have continued to escalate in complexity, voice control of robotics will not replace the need for current programming, teaching, and or manual control any time soon. |