Using robotic systems to advance manufacturing

LEMONT, Illinois: This summer, the US Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory educated a group of college interns on how to use robotic systems to advance manufacturing.

Prior to this, the closest Syed Saahir Ahmed, a senior at Penn State University, got to working with robots was through a student club.

There, he designed simple machines to perform elementary tasks, such as navigating through a maze. But the aspiring electrical engineer had always hoped to work on more complex machines, and thanks to the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internship (SULI) programme, he got his wish.

Ahmed works with three other college seniors — Anibal Morales, Matthew Krebs and Kevin Wandke, also a SULI intern — as a robotics intern at DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory. The experience gives him and his peers a deep dive into the field of robotics and its wide-ranging applications in manufacturing.

“Our goal is to create and demonstrate a robotic digital prototyping system that can enable more collaborative, more autonomous and more intelligent manufacturing.” — Young Soo Park, Argonne mechanical engineer

“The things we’re working on now are the things we’ll see being implemented in manufacturing within the next five or 10 years, so in many ways we’re ahead of the curve,” said Wandke, who is from the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign and also a SULI intern. “What better place to prepare for the future?”— Newswise

Argonne intern Anibal Morales exercises control over Argonne’s demonstration robot Baxter using a haptic device and augmented display. — Photo courtesy of Argonne National Laboratory