Page 44 - Taiwan Hand Tools - 2021-03 Edition

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INDUSTRY HIGHLIGHTS

to accelerate the internal progress of introducing robotics to people willing to enter the industry. Huang said hand tool firms
bolster the manufacturing industry’s production, promoting could employ ITRI’s newest technologies to preserve the
robotic technologies, and developing smart automation knowledge through automation, software, and AI.
systems. The IFR estimates that between 2020 to 2022,
there will be approximately 40 thousand industrial-grade These new technologies were part of the 10 R&D
robots operating in factories around the world. project results presented by ITRI at the 2020 Taipei
Automation Intelligence and Robot Show. Among the
Taiwan’s hand tools industry began the first steps projects is the world’s first “AI Auto Annotation Application:
towards digitalization in 2005 with competitive-priced Robot Random Bin Picking” that accurately engages in
digital tools, said Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research bin picking; “RobotSmith: Advanced Robotic Grinding and
Institute (ITRI) Mechanical and Mechatronics Systems Polishing System,” that helps factories manufacture a
Research Laboratories Chief Huang Shu. He added that at range of products without having to halt the production line.
present, the pursuit of automation and digital transformation
aims to shorten the talent and labor gap to lessen the The current robotic arms on the market cannot learn
impact on hand tool firms. Taiwan’s firms are often SMEs what parts to select, making them unable to pick out
and lack the scale and resources that larger companies the necessary parts and materials quickly. The AI Auto
may have. Annotation Application can automatically collect and label
data and use a variety of AI recognition imagery to teach
The COVID-19 pandemic especially made the robots to access materials and collect the correct items.
aforementioned issues more apparent, Huang said, as What would typically take an hour with human labor to label
the sector has been losing talent, struggled to attract 25 images, using the system can boost that by 400 times
said talent, and with border restrictions in place, lack new with 10,000 images per hour. Also, the configuration time of
migrant workers coming in to fill the gap. traditional random bin picking machines usually requires 30
days to complete, while ITRI’s system would shorten that to
Still, firms can easily lose the wealth of knowledge and one day.
experience as hand tool craftspeople begin to retire, and fewer

The ITRI-designed RobotSmith: Advanced Robotic Grinding and Polishing System (Photo courtesy of ITRI)

Taiwan Hand Tools 2021 Issue