This press release just released today looked interesting, but it also hit some of my anti-hype hot buttons. First, most automation news coming my way lately concerns robotics and more specifically cobots—collaborative robots. The collaborative may be interpreted in one of several ways. Today’s news concerns a collaboration (ahem) of Xaba, developers of xCognition, the first AI-driven robotics and CNC machine controller, and Rolleri Holding SpA focused on the development of a cognitive, autonomous collaborative robot (cobot) workcell for welding operations in manufacturing. The collaboration enables the integration of xCognition with Rolleri Robotic cobots.
So, I had to tackle “first” AI-driven robotics and CNC machine controller, and then “cognitive”. I asked for some technical back up. This from Massimiliano Moruzzi, CEO of Xaba.
Yes, we had AI , ML and neural nets for many years but 95% of the AI in manufacturing belongs to two classes: Predictive Analytics to mainly support maintenance and Object Detection & Recognition in essence Vision System. What we have developed at Xaba is not another AI predictive analytics or Computer Vision application that have flooded the manufacturing industry in the last few years.
Our xCognition technology is composed of two critical and unique AI-powered modules:
- A proprietary Physic-Informed Machine Learning model to truly model the real physics of any robotics system, in essence its elasto-mechanical-dynamic behaviour.
- A proprietary Large Language Model to enable any robotics system to auto-generate its own programs and tasks. Our LLM model is unique compared to other LLM models because of our patent pending technology that enables the creation of the “Manufacturing Domain experts data Corpus”, that is absolutely needed to train any LLM models about manufacturing processes (welding, assembling, drilling, polishing, cutting…) and how to automate programming generation.
That is why our xCognition is considered a cognitive brain for robotics, because has both critical component of any brains: a) The deep side of the brain, in essence the one that controls the body motion and task execution and b) the Cortex side of the brain in essence the capacity to receive instruction from humans or sensors and auto-generating the program for any desired task to be executed.
From the press release:
With Xaba’s xCognition any industrial robot can be empowered with both deep and cortex intelligence, enabling it to fully control its body and understand its environment using sensor data such as images, sounds, temperatures, and accelerations.
Xaba and Rolleri recently completed ISO 9283 tests in Xaba’s robotic lab. A FARO Vantage Laser Tracker System was used to acquire all data needed to train the xCognition machine learning model and to validate trajectory accuracy improvements. The successfully completed tests showed 10 times performance improvements in absolute positioning and trajectory accuracy, and five times improvements in relative positioning and trajectory accuracy.
As a follow up to the initial tests, Xaba and Rolleri will be undertaking Tig and Laser welding tests to further validate welding quality improvements such as improved accuracy and repeatability.
