In recent, the global economy has decline influenced by the pandemic and geopolitical risks. The robotics and intelligent automobile-related industries, however, are growing against the trend. These emerging industries have driven the development of various upstream and downstream industries, and the force-control market is an area that has benefited from this.
*SRI new logo
|Brand upgrade--SRI has become the cross-border darling of robot and automobile industry
Autonomous driving has become the most cutting-edge technology in the automotive industry. It is also a popular research topic and a main application of artificial intelligence. North America, Europe, and Asia are the main driving forces for this revolution. Traditional and emerging auto companies, as well as big tech companies are accelerating the investment into the autonomous driving industry.
Under this trend, SRI is aiming at the autonomous driving testing market. Thanks to more than 30 years of experience in the automotive safety testing, SRI has established deep cooperation with GM(China), SAIC, Pan Asia, Volkswagen (China) and other companies in the field of automotive testing. Now on top of that, the experience of robot force-control in the past 15 years will help SRI achieve bigger success in the future autonomous driving testing industry.
Dr. Huang, President of SRI, said in an interview with the Robot Lecture Hall: "Since 2021, SRI has successfully migrated the technology in robot force sensing and force control to autonomous driving test equipment. With these two key business layouts, SRI will provide services to customers in the robot industry as well as those in the automotive industry at the same time.”As a leading six-axis force sensor manufacturer, SRI is rapidly expanding its product line under the huge market demand for robots and automobiles. The products variety and production capacity grow explosively. SRI is becoming the cross-border darling of the robot and automobile industry.
"SRI has comprehensively improved its plant, facility, equipment, workforce and internal management system. At the same time, it has also upgraded its brand image, products lines, applications, business and etc., released the new slogan SENSE AND CREATE, and completed the transformation from SRI to SRI-X.”
* SRI released new logo
|Intelligent driving: Migration of SRI’s robotic force control technology
From "SRI" to "SRI-X" undoubtedly means the expansion of the technology accumulated by SRI in the field of robot force control. "The expansion of technology promotes the upgrade of the brand" Dr. Huang said.
There are many similarities between robot force control and automotive testing force sensing requirements. Both have high requirements on the accuracy, reliability, and ease of use of sensors. SRI is precisely aligned with these market needs. Firstly, SRI has a wide range of six axis force sensors and joint torque sensors, which can be adapted to applications in various industries. Besides, the technical routes in the field of robotics and the field of automobiles have similarities. For example, in polishing and grinding projects, most of the robot control will involve sensors, servo motors, underlying circuit boards, real-time control systems, underlying software, PC control software and etc. In the field of automotive testing equipment, these technologies are similar, SRI only needs to do the technology migration.
In addition to customers of industrial robots, SRI is also deeply loved by customers in the medical rehabilitation industry. With the breakthrough progress in medical robotic applications, many of SRI's high accuracy sensors with compact size are also used in surgical robots, rehabilitation robots and intelligent prosthetics.
*SRI force/torque sensors family
SRI's rich product lines, more than 30 years of experience and unique technical accumulation makes it outstanding in the industry for collaboration. In the automotive field, in addition to the well-known crash dummy, there are also many scenarios that requires a large number of six-dimensional force sensors. Such as automotive parts durability testing, automotive passive safety testing equipment, and automotive active safety testing equipment.
In the field of automotive, SRI has the only production line of multi-axis force sensors for car crash dummies in China. In the field of robotics, from force sensing, signal transmission, signal analysis and processing, to control algorithms, SRI has a complete engineering team and years of technical experience. Coupled with a complete product system and excellent product performance, SRI has become an ideal cooperation for car companies on the road to intelligence.
*SRI made substantial progress in the automotive crash force wall industry
As of 2022, SRI has more than ten years of in-depth cooperation with Pan-Asia Technical Automotive Center and SAIC Technology Center. During the discussion with SAIC Group's automotive active safety testing team, Dr. Huang found that the technology accumulated by SRI for many years can help car companies develop better smart assisting driving functions (such as lane changing and deceleration) and help the automotive industry to formulate a better evaluation system for autonomous driving functions, so that the possibility of vehicle accidents will be greatly reduced.
* Intellegent driving test equipment project. SRI's collabration with SAIC
In 2021, SRI and SAIC set up the "SRI & iTest Joint Innovation Laboratory" to jointly develop intelligent test equipment and apply six-axis force/torque sensors and multi-axis force sensors to automobile crash safety and durability testing.
In 2022, SRI has developed the latest Thor-5 dummy sensor and has also made substantial progress in the automotive crash force wall industry. SRI has also developed a set of active safety testing system with neural model predictive control algorithm as the core. The system includes test software, intelligent driving robot and target flat car, which can simulate real driving road conditions, realize automatic driving on electric vehicles and traditional gasoline vehicles, accurately track the path, control the movement of the target flat car, and complete task of regulatory testing and self-driving system development.
Although SRI has achieved great success in the field of robotics, it is not a one-shot effort to cover the 6-axis force sensor across the automotive field. In the automotive testing industry, whether it is passive or active safety, SRI is striving to do its own thing well. The vision of "making human travel safer" also makes the connotation of SRI-X fuller.
|The challenge in the future
In the cooperative research and development with many customers, SRI has formed an innovation-driven corporate style and an “extreme management system". The author believes that this is what enables SRI to seize and realize the current upgrade opportunity. It is the continuous improvement of products, and the hard study of end users’ needs that promote the upgrading of SRI's brand, products, and the management system.
For example, in the cooperation with Medtronic, the abdominal surgery medical robot requires thinner and lighter sensors, a better integrated management system and certifications for medical equipment. Projects like this push SRI to improve its sensors design capabilities and bring the production quality to the medical equipment level.
*SRI torque sensors were used in medical surgery robot
In a durability test, the iGrinder was placed in an experimental environment with air, water and oil to accomplish the floating force-control impact test for 1 million cycles. For another example, in order to improve the radial floating and axial floating accuracy of an independent force control system, SRI tested many different motors with different loads to finally successfully achieved the accuracy level of +/- 1 N.
This ultimate pursuit of meeting user needs has allowed SRI to develop many unique sensors beyond standard products. It also inspires SRI to develop various research directions in actual practical applications. In the future, in the field of intelligent driving, products born under the "extreme management system" of SRI will also meet challenging road condition requirements for highly reliable sensors during driving.
|Conclusion and the future
Looking into the future, SRI will not only adjust it’s future planning, but also complete a brand upgrade. To keep innovating based on existing technology and products will be the key for SRI to make a differentiated market positioning and rejuvenate the brand’s new vitality.
When asked about the new connotation from "SRI" to "SRI-X", Dr. Huang said: "X represents the unknown and infinity, the goal and the direction. X also represents SRI’ R&D process from the unknown to the known and will extend infinitely to many fields.”
Now Dr. Huang has set a new mission of "make robot force control easier and make human travel safer", which will lead SRI-X to a new start, to multi-dimensional exploration in the future, to allow more "Unknown" becomes "known", creating infinite possibilities!