![]() Separately, JPL aims to use bulk metallic glass gears to operate in temperatures below minus 290 degrees Fahrenheit without needing a heating source.īut amorphous metals have another property that makes them attractive for gears on Earth: “These alloys are designed to have low melting temperatures, because to make a metallic glass, you have to cool the alloy faster than it can crystallize,” Hofmann said. “That’s, of course, really important to NASA, because you can run your gearboxes without lubricating them.” Most compositions also form a hard, smooth ceramic oxide surface, Hofmann explained, noting that these properties together afford gears made of some amorphous metals a long lifetime with no lubrication. Instead, the atoms are randomly arranged like those of glass, giving the materials properties of both glass and metal.ĭepending on their constituent elements – often including zirconium, titanium, and copper – they can be very strong, and because they aren’t crystalline, they’re elastic. These are metal alloys that can be rapidly cooled from liquid to solid before their atoms form the crystalline lattice structure that is common to all other metals. NASA funded a new metallurgy facility at JPL to explore alternatives for gears and develop new metal alloys.įrom his days at Caltech, which manages JPL, Hofmann was familiar with an emerging class of specially engineered materials called bulk metallic glass, also known as amorphous metals. With an eye toward solving this and other materials-related issues, in 2010, JPL hired Hofmann, then a research scientist at Caltech with a background in materials science and engineering. “High-precision gears are at least half the cost of robotic arms.” Instead, he said, it often comes down to some of the most rudimentary machine components: gears. ![]() #3d coat glass softwareThe biggest cost drivers, however, aren’t always the advanced software and sensors. “But if it costs $40,000, it’s out of reach for non-industrial applications.” “That’s where the robotics industry is going,” Garrett said, noting that a handful of cobots are already making lattes and sandwiches, for example. In the years since, leaps in artificial intelligence and sensors have made these “friendlier” robots a reality but cost still prevents their widespread adoption. Collaborative robots, designed to cooperate with humans, would be smaller, smarter, more responsive, and more aware, with tighter self-control and better manners all around. In the mid-1990s, two Northwestern University professors patented an alternative concept under a new term: cobots. And while robots take up more and more of the factory floor, they’re generally segregated from their human colleagues due to safety concerns – largely oblivious to their surroundings, they’re strong and dangerously clumsy. Most automated machinery is still only affordable to large manufacturers that can make major investments and expect long-term savings. There are two main reasons for this, according to Glenn Garrett, chief technology officer of a NASA spinoff company, Amorphology Inc.: cost and safety. Where are the robot assistants we were promised?įor all the space that robots have occupied in the popular imagination for the last hundred years – and although the number of real-world automatons has been growing for decades – most people’s interactions with them remain limited to a hands-free vacuum or a child’s smart toy. ![]()
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