Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Tools that Create

Continued from Page 3

“It's quite difficult to predict the material's springback—it depends on the strength and thickness of the material, on the friction between the part and the tool,” Prado continues. “All of this is so far an unresolved problem.” And it's one that the labs are working to solve. In addition to the modeling, another project involves using physical vapor deposition to apply extremely thin coatings that increase the hardness of tools. This research has led to a spinoff project investigating decorative applications, such as jewelry or home goods covered with a deposited layer of titanium that shines like gold.

In San Sebastian , renowned for its boulevards and Michelin-starred restaurants, the research center Fatronik focuses on technologies that will have industrial market applications, such as artificial-intelligence and communication systems that integrate a variety of sensors into machines. The center has paired with companies such as MTorres to increase flexibility in big machines. It's also developing robots to assist in the manufacturing process, including a crawling robot—along the lines of a giant spider—that could, for example, drill on complex surfaces such as aeronautic wings. Such robots could speed up some functions that now depend on significantly slower manual labor.

As a way to ease robots into a number of conservative sectors, Fatronik is also working on mobile robotic platforms, a technology geared toward keeping the robot moving and not bumping into objects. Instead of using sensors to detect obstacles, the robot uses lasers, ultrasound, and a ring of infrared lights to constantly search for open spaces that it can move into. This is a relatively low-cost solution that could be used in conjunction with other industrial applications—for example, to increase safety on forklifts.

A third industrial-robotics project at Fatronik involves Spain 's well-known food industry. Designed in cooperation with a research center in France , a new, patented system is one of the fastest in the world for what's known as pick-and-place tasks. The robot can stretch its long arms down to pick up a food product from one location and place it in a second at the rate of 240 cycles per minute. In one rather unusual application employed close to home in the Basque region, the robot is now being used to determine the sex of fish. The robot's arm inserts a needle into the stomach of a fish, shoots a light beam through the needle, and determines from the refraction of the light whether the fish is male or female. Females are then separated out for caviar.

Into the Kitchen

Fatronik joins other companies and research centers in taking advantage of Spain 's culinary acclaim. Spanish food machinery companies supply not only the Spanish market but the global one, garnering fans as they continue innovating to meet consumer needs.

One factor driving innovation has been the change in the way people eat. “Family meals have been reduced, at best, to once a day, and that's dinner,” says Josep Monfort, director of food technology at the Food and Agriculture Research and Technology Center (IRTA in Spanish). “And the average time dedicated by the whole family to that meal is about 20 to 35 minutes. Companies need to adapt to the new needs and attitudes of consumers. Ready-to-heat, ready-to-eat—those types of foods are growing in the market.”

IRTA, located in a rural area near Girona, opened in 1985 with funding from the government and local businesses. Its spare white halls and cavernous rooms house machinery and labs to test different aspects of food production. In one, a huge x-ray machine allows the center to perform noninvasive tests on animals for genetics companies. Another series of rooms provides the means to evaluate drying methods. The natural light flooding the space feels cold, and it is: heat is removed from the light so as not to affect any of the heat-sensitive research.

Monfort cooperates with food processing companies in the area to create new technologies. In a recent successful collaboration, researchers at the center worked with the local company Metalquimia, which produces machinery for meat processing, to develop a new system that could vastly increase productivity in meat curing.