Yuki-taro - The Snow Removal Robot
At first we thought this autonomous snowplow robot was similar to a Roomba robot vacuum cleaner or its worthy competitor, the ROMI. Digging deeper, we realized that Yuki-taro is much more. The 800-pound robot is guided by GPS along with a couple of video cameras and gorges itself on the snow that's covering your driveway. As it moseys along, it packs all that snow together into two-foot-tall cube-shaped ice turds. The idea is that you'd store away those blocks of ice to cool down your brewskis in the summer, or something.
Yuki-taro is part of a Japanese research project right now, and its creators hope to reduce its size and weight, eventually offering it on the commercial market in five years for around $8,300. But by then, because of that global warming thing, there may not be any more snow in these parts. Hurry up, guys. Anyway, bring the price down to $500, and we'll be signing up for one right away. Oh, and maybe lose that ice turd idea. — Contributed by Charlie White.
Yuki-taro is an excellent example of a purpose built autonomous mobile robot designed to do a repetitive, mundane job. While this machine was built to demonstrate the potential for this type of technology and is mostly a fun toy, it is easy to see how it could be transformed into a powerful industrial tool.
Imagine that a traditional snowblower apparatus is attached to Yuki-taro's maw, making this an independent
mobile robot. Now, let us add a unit or two. A single person would be able to easily supervise two or three machines while they followed their pre-programmed paths to clear the snow from a relatively large area, all from the comfort and safety of a remote location. This scenario assumes a human controller who is on site and directly monitoring the robots activities, but this is not a necessary requirement.
In Canada a mining operation uses remotely controlled machines to load and transport ore. A single operator located over a mile away controls multiple large ore loaders from an indoor office environment. The ore loading robots know their job and their way to and from the transport trucks and operate autonomously until it is time to load or dump, when the operator helps guide them from about. This type of tele-mining system allows one human to do the equivalent labor of four or five men, without the physical hardship and hazards of working underground in the mine.
As companies continue to see the significant cost benefits of increased automation, we will see more investment in the development of automated robotic systems designed to replace human beings in boring and potentially dangerous jobs. The introduction of these new machines will allow employers to redeploy valuable labor and increase overall productivity, while experiencing significant cost savings. Go ROMI! — Owen R Matthews, Nipperbou Publisher.
