A Robotic Arm So Advanced It Helps To Build Copies Of Itself

Behold the novel UR3 automatonlike branch . Smaller , lighter , and more nimble than its predecessor , the Universal Robot - make arm can be program for a wide variety of project — including the building of its own parts .

Based out of Odense , Denmark , Universal Robots has added UR3 to its telling phone line of industrial automatic arms , which includes the larger UR5 and UR10 . The company is hoping to attract small- and average - sized businesses to its new offer , which will betray in the U.S. for $ 23,000 .

Asreportedin IEEE Spectrum , the highly flexible UR3 is a six - axis vertebra articulate branch that can do a emcee of tasks , including pick - and - position , screwing , soldering , gluing , and picture . It does so in close collaboration with human worker , but it features some impressive autonomous capabilities , such as being able to “ find ” its way across a surface , instead of get to be explicitly programme to accredit the target topology .

out of doors of this lineament , UR3 can be programmed by grabbing it , move it around , and tapping on a touchscreen to register the desire positions and actions ( as demo’d in the video below ):

And as Eric Guizzo notes in his IEEE Spectrum article , this arm is by all odds taking us a step closer to self-directed and complete ego - replicating robotics :

The troupe say the UR3 is particularly suit for “ light assembly tasks and automatise workbench scenarios ” in a variety of industries . In fact , there ’s one diligence the new robot is already helping with : making copies of itself . Universal Robots has provided machinelike arms to several of its provider , with the arms helping human actor assemble constituent that will go into other arms , [ Universal Robots CTO and co - founding father Esben ] Østergaard says .

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