ROBOT REVOLUTION THE DAWNS

As the region’s universities and manufacturers focus on robotics, life on the prairie may never be the same

UND mechanical engineering student Tristan Plante smiles as he stands next to the program’s “Mars rover” robot. UND routinely enters the robot in NASA’s robotic mining competition.

IMAGE: NICK NELSON/FORUM NEWS SERVICE

By Tom Dennis

Let’s think short term, medium term and long term.

Short term, industrial robots today play only a modest role in manufacturing in Prairie Business magazine’s readership area, as the nearby chart from the Brookings Institution suggests.

Our region’s metros have only a few robots per thousand workers, compared to the Chicago and Detroit areas and the upper South, where such robots are two to 10 times more common.

Medium term, the region’s K-12 schools, colleges and key workplaces basically are ignoring that short term, as this story will show. They’re gearing up to meet what’s sure to be a big demand.

And long term …

Long-term, robotics and automation promise to absolutely transform our lives,

- Jeremiah Neubert ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR IN MECHANICAL ENGINEERING UNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA

altering the way we drive, fly, work, eat, clean, mow lawns, shovel snow and do almost everything else.

The first diodes indicating the arrival of this new world are flashing green. Roombas are one. So are the systems that let tractor operators read books as their machines drive themselves across fields.

So are the drones that are buzzing above local towns, and the automatic braking systems that soon will be standard on every new car.

But there’s more, much more, in store.

And across the Dakotas and western Minnesota, people are gearing up to take advantage of it.

“My excitement for autonomous systems is huge,” said Jeremiah Neubert, associate professor in mechanical engineering at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, N.D.

“I really want to climb into a vehicle, give it an address, go to sleep and then wake up, and there you are.” And thanks to recent advances in robotics technology – advances that now fuel research at UND and other colleges in the region – that day is not far off.

Neural networks

Consider the coffee cup. More precisely, consider how you’d tell a robot to pick up a coffee cup.

“Up until a few years ago, everything was model-based,” Neubert said.

A digital model of the cup would be coded into the robot’s computer. Then the robot could spot, grasp and manipulate the object.

Such models still guide countless industrial robots, which are tireless at picking things up and putting them down.

“Problem is, what happens when we use a different cup?” Neubert asked.

“The robot would be completely baffled, and the system wouldn’t work.”

Enter deep neural networks, the basis of artificial intelligence and of the profound technological changes that are coming our way.

Deep neural networks electronically mimic the multiple layers of neurons that operate in the human brain.

Using these networks, we can show robots pictures of thousands of different cups, and by doing so, teach the machines to generalize. “Eventually, it will pick up all kinds of coffee cups, even cups that is hasn’t seen before,” Neubert said.

“That’s a very cool thing. We could teach a robot about a chair, but it couldn’t recognize ‘chairs’ to the level of a 3-year old.”

Now it can. As well as recognizing faces, voices, roads, flight parameters, cancerous cells – the SkinVision app already can assess a smartphone picture of a mole for possible melanoma – and just about everything else.

“This is the game-changer, and it’s what’s making all of these autonomous systems possible,” Neubert said.

Linear algebra

For robots, of course, perception is just Step 1. Step 2 is moving –something humans do effortlessly, but for robots involves a whole lot of math.

Inside North Dakota State University’s Dolve Hall, mathematical equations cover an entire whiteboard, which in turn covers an entire classroom wall. “And that’s just 1/50th of the actual equations of motion that govern the movement of the robot,” said Karl Klindworth, an NDSU graduate student in mechanical engineering.

Like many robots in college engineering labs, Klindworth’s gets better every year, as new students build on the work that previous students have done. In this case, the robot that was the subject of several masters’ theses now is the subject of Klindworth’s own.

What keeps the students coming back for more?

The challenge of four-wheel independent steering, Klindworth said.

Each wheel on Klindworth’s robot steers on its own and drives on its own. Picture a true four-wheel-drive vehicle that could motor up next to a parallel-parking place, then slip sideways into it.

“It’s a very powerful and maneuverable system,” he said, squatting beside his machine.

“The problem is, it’s extremely difficult to model.” Coupling the speed and the steering angle of each wheel with the effects of different loads have put Klindworth’s calculus and linear-algebra classes to the test.

But the net result may one day be a self-driving consumer appliance that could mow a lawn, till a garden and plow snow. That’s still a few master’s theses away. Meanwhile, though, Klindworth will be taking his training and graduating into one of the highest-demand fields in industry.

100 Percent Placement

There are many other examples in our region of robotics training and use. There are the robotics clubs in middle schools as well as universities; UND takes its mining robot to the Kennedy Space Center each year, while in July, NDSU was the first North Dakota school to enter the International Aerial Robotics competition.

There are the robots that Com-Del Innovation in Wahpeton, N.D., uses to make and package plastic products, and that Dakota Growers Pasta Co. in Carrington, N.D., uses to spot, sort out and reprocess broken lasagna noodles.

There’s the extraordinary level of automation in farming, one of America’s most automated industries.

But the takeaway is twofold: First, that autonomous systems are selfdriving out of the factory and into the neighborhood and home. Forget Roombas, we’re talking flying cars: “Even as he sets the pace in the race to autonomous cars, Larry Page, the chief executive of Alphabet and a founder of Google, is backing Kitty Hawk, a start-up that wants to move commuting into the air,” The New York Times reported in November.

Second, that designing, building and maintaining these systems is generating lots of great-paying work. “Historically, we have 12 to 16 job opportunities per student,” said Steve Johnson, department chair, speaking about the two-year robotics, automation and mechatronics technician program at the North Dakota College of Science in Wahpeton, N.D.

“Every year, we have 100 percent placement. This year, I had three students who hit $30 an hour, right out of school.”

For engineers, the prospects are even brighter.

“The offers that my students get are by far the highest of any undergraduate students on campus,” said Neubert of UND, describing his robotics- and computer-savvy mechanical engineers.

“Some are taking jobs that pay well in excess of $100,000 a year. It’s just a huge area of growth, and it’s not slowing down.” PB

First Western Bank & Trust, the only locally owned hometown bank in Minot, N.D., has been a household name in that city since 1964. In recent years, the bank has expanded, and a four-story building now being built by Northwest Contracting in downtown Bismarck will replace the bank’s temporary location there.

When it opens next fall, the 35,000 square-foot building at the corner of 3rd Street and Front Avenue will feature “large expanses of glass and an open floor plan,” allowing “natural light to penetrate through the entire building,” reports JLG Architects, architect for the project.

“A glass two-story conferencing center on the second and third floors will reach out over the public plaza and define the main entry. The roof above the fourth story will be accessible and able to support large gatherings; the views from the high roof deck over downtown Bismarck will be spectacular in all directions.”

“The exterior building materials include natural slate cladding and blackened steel panels. … These materials will help define the brand of First Western Bank & Trust as the company continues to build relationships in the Bismarck area for years to come.”

For a 3-D panoramic image of the project, visit explore. jlgarchitects.com/fwb2-pano/. PB