Discover Benelux | Flemish Drone Industry, (Industrial) Robotics & Automation Technology | When Only The Best Will Do
As visionary as vision can be TEXT: ARNE ADRIAENSSENS | PHOTOS: PICK-IT
Industrial automation has already taken giant steps since the first robotic arms entered factories. Today, the Flemish start-up Pick-it, pushes the boundaries of the possible by giving these robots eyes, letting them look and anticipate on the situation. Billiondollar businesses like Apple and BMW are fans. Automation is inevitable. In production lines worldwide, human hands are replaced by the firm, metal grip of robots. Yet, we should not fear this evolution, but rather look at it as a step towards the future. The Flemish start-up Pick-it embraces this tendency and explores the many opportunities that come with it. By giving robotic arms eyes, they meta28 | Issue 61 | January 2019
morphose the production industry as we know it. “Half of the robots that are sold are used to pick up something and place it somewhere else,” Pick-it CEO Peter Soetens explains. “To do this with ‘blind robots’, the pieces must be on the exact same spot for the system to function. The moment you give a robot eyes, it can trace the object by itself, diminishing the chance of errors on the production line.”
“AI is not that scary” With its modest size, the Pick-it camera does not look like the powerful feat of engineering that it is. Yet, its compact design is one of its many strengths. “Our product is a plug-and-play device. You can easily attach it to any robot arm you prefer or already have. With it, comes a processor
on which all necessary software is preinstalled. It doesn’t take an engineer’s eye to get started.” For the machine to learn which items to pick up, it relies on two of the biggest technical innovations of the last decade: 3D cameras and artificial intelligence. The Pick-it need only see an object once before the artificial intelligence can recognise it out of a bunch of other objects. CAD-files and mathematical formulas are no longer required. This application of artificial intelligence is light years away from the popularly fictionalised doom scenarios of robots becoming autonomous and taking over the planet. “To everybody who fears artificial intelligence: it isn’t as scary as you might think,” Soetens stresses. “AI is a revolu-