Ready Robotics Democratizes Automation

Automation is key to the U.S. competing on a global manufacturing stage, but the nation must train its workforce to be fluent in advanced skills such as robot programming. To enable broader deployment of the automation that will power the future of manufacturing, it is incredibly important that developers make it easier to deploy in any scenario.  That being said, user-friendly technology is usually not enough on its own.   Workers need to be trained quickly in the skills that are needed to implement automation in their respective businesses. The future of manufacturing in the US requires the democratization of automation, with a combination of technology and worker training/upskilling.  

This study from Ready Robotics takes place at Eastern Kentucky Advanced Manufacturing Institute, where they are reskilling some of the region's people for jobs in advanced manufacturing.  Here they learned how to program multiple robot brands in a very short period of time.

READY Robotics brings Forge/OS to the curriculum

Forge/OS came to market for a few reasons, one of which is that robot programming is generally difficult.  The difficulty of deploying these robotic solutions is acting as a barrier to implementing them, despite them becoming more attainable to all businesses from a pricing standpoint.   

Creating a reasonable path for workers to learn the skills necessary to design, program, deploy, manage, and troubleshoot automation is critical to the health of manufacturing in America. The skilled labor shortage requires the industry to make better use of the existing workforce by re-skilling workers and training the next generation with the skills that are in demand. Factories need workers who can program a CNC machine, and then design, program, and deploy the tools necessary to automate that workcell.

READY Robotics said that its three-week add-on to eKAMI’s 16-week CNC course teaches these needed skills. The detailed course goes beyond just programming the robot, though.  It also includes cell design, robot and hardware evaluation, parts presentation, machine tool operation, programming peripherals, and more.

Using Forge/OS, the students were able to program Yaskawa Motoman robots on day one.  By learning a single platform that enabled them to quickly program multiple brands of robots, the students were able to spend the bulk of their three-week curriculum learning about the details of automation and getting robots and machine tools to work seamlessly together. This allowed all the students to program a lights-out manufacturing task in just 2.5 weeks — when none had ever touched a robot before.