Something Like a QR Code Can Keep Your Robot Out of Trouble

Rethink Robotics found that a QR-code-like sticker can eliminate many headaches when something changes a manufacturing robot's location.

Chris Newmarker

It turns out QR codes aren't just for marketing. Something very much like a QR can help a manufacturing robot quickly find its position--something that is especially crucial in the ultraprecise world of medical device manufacturing, says Eric Foellmer, marketing manager at Rethink Robotics (Boston).

Watch the video below of Foellmer discussing the stickers, called "landmarks," during MD&M East, which is taking place this week in New York. (Rethink is at Booth 2713.) The technology, only about six months old, means that if something in the manufacturing robot's environment moves, its operators can instruct it to reposition itself by sensing where a landmark is.

Rethink has also had other important innovations to announce in the past years, including software that makes its robots more powerful and ways to make robots work better with humans.

Chris Newmarker is senior editor of Qmed and MPMN. Follow him on Twitter at @newmarker.

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