Robotics reaching for the ripest fruit

Lightweight exoskeletons are as close to a real Superman outfit as we’ve got.

The Robotics Club’s Michael Harries in Sydney this week. Picture: Michele Mossop

They mightn’t get you moving faster than a speeding bullet, but lightweight exoskeletons are as close to a real Superman outfit as we’ve got. This powered and programmable clothing makes it easier for an elderly person to sit up, or in farming, can transform a fruit picker into a super picker. It depends how it’s configured.

Leading robotics investor Michael Harries, partner AI & technologies at The Robotics Club, refers to them as lightweight exoskeletons with the nous to identify when you want to stand up, giving you a nudge to make it easier. They are at the forefront of robotics and artificial intelligence, he told The Australian.

Mr Harries chaired a discussion on robotics at the UBS Australia investment conference in Sydney on Monday.

A producer of this apparel, Seismic, describes the programmable clothing as working in collaboration with your body to give you strength, stability, and power. “We start by keeping it simple, like getting dressed in the morning, but with a powerful processor and an integrated sensor matrix, our Powered Clothing is programmable, tailored to your body and your lifestyle,” says Seismic on its website.

Seismic powered clothing. Picture: Seismic

Mr Harries said robots continued to be developed for manufacturing, for performing surgical procedures, and increasingly for self-driving cars.

“I can look at the numbers for those things and for the bankers in the room and that’s what they’re going to be doing,” he said.

“We’re an early stage VC (venture capitalist), almost a studio model VC, which means we identify what the opportunity is, do a deep dive on the technology and do a deep dive on how it can be commercialised,” he said.

“We’re seeing an enormous flood of things using robotic technologies, ranging from bipedal walking robots that operate at low power to robotics in warehouse-scale farming.

“There’s an enormous number of agricultural robots being built, and applied now for tomato picking, strawberry picking and such like. The challenge for farming is that they have to change the farming culture, as well as bring these robots in.”

He said the robots used robotic vision to select the items suitable for picking.

Seismic powered, programmable clothing . Picture: Seismic

“Robotics is driven by all these advances in AI, advances in computer vision and planning,” he said. The robots learned to emulate the way a human would pick that item in that location.

He said the development of robotics on farms was being driven by the shortage of farm workers in the US. “Certainly in California, they’re struggling to get enough farm workers to the level they, within the next five years, need to run their farms with half the number of labourers.”

He said that as an investor he was confident farmers would invest in the new robotics.

But this new-age robotics is not just about machines. “We are seeing a huge amount of interest from people in using exoskeletons, whether they’re hard exoskeletons or soft, to basically make the field work less hard, so when people get to the end of a shift, they don’t go: ‘My gosh, I’m completely wiped out’.”

He said exoskeletons made it easier for farm workers to move and had wider applications. Seismic for example had developed a lightweight exoskeleton for older people so they can be more active for five or 10 years longer than they would otherwise be.

“This thing understands that if I’m trying to sit up or stand up and as I lean forward, it’s going to reinforce your muscles. It just gives you that extra little bit,’’ he said.

Two-legged Agility robots go where humans can go. Picture: Agility Robots

“You have the ones (exoskeletons) that say you have no motor skills whatsoever and this thing is going to walk you around. Then you have the ones that are saying: ‘Look, my muscles are a bit attenuated or I’ve gone through childbirth, or whatever else it is, so there’s a need to do rehabilitation.

“It’s a lightweight bodysuit. It’s wearable strength. People have been injured and they put these things on and suddenly they’re out there playing tennis again.”

He said these suits are about to be trialed in US retirement homes.

Mr Harries said other areas of robotics were developing quickly. Robots that autonomously take items from one section of a hospital to another are in market. Two-legged robots can now operate in hospital environments, he said, adding that one robot can go up and down stairs.

Some social robots had proved disappointing, but some specific-purpose ones were succeeding, such as a robot that could monitor and support people taking medication at home after a serious health incident.