Repair, Salvage Work : Robots Roll Where Man Fears to Go

The best thing about robots, say the people who employ them, is they don’t get bored.

Robots do as they’re told. Grinding away, they can repeat with flawless precision the same job 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with only a recharge break now and then. No pay raises or benefits, no strikes, no work stoppages, no walkouts.

Well, that may be fine for some. But another breed of machines, adventuresome and unsuited to factory life, is finding employment elsewhere--in dramatic and dangerous occupations. These machines are going into nuclear plants, under the world’s oceans, down mine shafts and up the sides of buildings. Impervious to hellish temperatures, radiation and deep-sea pressures, they guard, clean, salvage, repair and explore civilization’s farthest outposts.

Polishing Up Image

Along the way, they’re pushing out the limits of job opportunities for robots and robot-like machines, gaining a disproportionate share of attention and polishing up the robot’s lackluster image.

In the aftermath of the Challenger disaster, the Air-India crash and the Chernobyl nuclear plant accident, robots showed they can conquer environments that humans alone cannot. In the exploration earlier this year of the sunken Titanic, and in 1983 of the ghost ships Hamilton and Scourge, remote-controlled vessels did more than add to the world’s storehouse of knowledge. They helped to slake man’s curiosity and to revive a flagging romance with the sea.

These kinds of machines can tickle the human fancy the way no industrial robot droning away in the factory ever could. And they are bringing to life today some of the science-fiction fantasies of yesterday.

All this means a new segment is emerging in the robotics industry, one that will in time equal or eclipse the mighty industrial-robots business, some observers say.

‘Explosion Going On’

“The financial community doesn’t even recognize our existence, but there is an explosion going on. There’s lots of activity all over the place,” said Jack Wilson, president of Robotics Systems International.

RSI, based in Sidney, Canada, makes several robot-like machines, including a sub-sea manipulator arm that was used during the Challenger shuttle salvage operation to recover pieces of the booster rockets. Wilson believes that by the early 1990s, there will be more of such machines than factory robots.

Identifying areas in which technology can eliminate or minimize risks to humans is the linchpin for the crop of companies in this emerging business. So far, the efforts have been concentrated in marine environments, nuclear energy, space, bomb disposal and firefighting, mining and toxic-waste handling.

William (Red) Whittaker, senior researcher at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University, one of the premier robotics research institutions, uses a simple method to pinpoint areas ripe for these renegades from the automobile factories and paint shops.

“I look for the suits,” he said, referring to spacesuits, divers’ wetsuits and other forms of protective clothing worn by workers in adverse environments.

Whittaker is less sanguine than Wilson about the near-term prospects for non-industrial robots and telerobots--the name given to robot-like machines controlled via cables or tethers. The technology is still too expensive to be applied to just any obnoxious job.

No Market for Machines

Christopher Nicholson, president of Deep Sea Systems, a maker of vehicles for underwater work, said: “We could be building super-sophisticated (robots) but there’s not the market out there to buy them.”

Robots’ high development costs are reflected in their price tags. Deep Sea’s basic machine is the Mini Rover, which Nicholson calls “the Volkswagen or Model T” of remotely operated underwater vehicles. The machine, which sells for from $24,850 to $45,000, generally carries video equipment to help it on the job, be it underwater ship repair, offshore oil platform maintenance, deep sea salvage or any of a dozen other diving tasks. Other types of robotic machines are priced below $5,000, but sophisticated models can cost more than $2 million.

What’s needed to support such costs is a situation--such as in a nuclear plant accident--that cannot be ignored and yet would pose hazards to humans if confronted, Whittaker said.

“It is not a good business plan to enter into areas where robotics is optional,” he said. “Unless there are overwhelming motivations for utilization of these technologies, then it is not possible (for a company) to survive” the steep development costs.

Those rather restricted opportunities mean that, so far, sales have been puny compared to the industrial robotics market, whose leaders are such powerhouses as General Motors’ GMF unit and Westinghouse’s Unimation division. Last year, more than 20,000 industrial robots were in use in the United States alone, according to John Meyer of Tech Tran, a consulting firm that studies and forecasts robotics use.

Half a Million Robots

Some generous estimates say that by 1995, there will be more than half a million industrial robots in the United States. That’s a long way for telerobots to catch up.

Industry already has invested billions of dollars on robots. In 1985 alone, $1.64 billion more was spent for industrial robotics, according to Melinda Pyle, an analyst at market researcher Dataquest in San Jose. And within five years, she said, the annual spending pace may quicken to $4.7 billion.

In contrast, last year’s sales of remotely operated vehicles like the Mini Rover--the biggest category of non-industrial robots--were about $30 million. In another rapidly growing area, nuclear energy, sales activity is just beginning. It is a finite market, though, limited by the number of such plants in operation--about 100 in the United States.

Much of the ongoing robotics research is under the auspices of the military. As in aerospace and other technologies, the Defense Department is seen as one of the biggest potential customers for telerobots and autonomous machines.

But companies looking to commercialize the technology now would do well to remember Whittaker’s maxim about the suits. For when they build machines that take humans out of the suits, they also lay the foundation for their products’ acceptance in the workplace, and increase demand. There’s nothing quite like having a machine spare injury, or even death to induce respect and, well, affection.

‘Kind of Like a Pet’

Take Tom Belcher, head of a marine contracting firm in San Francisco called Underwater Resources. He owns a Mini Rover.

“This is kind of like a pet,” Belcher said of the machine that can dive, swim and take a look around the insides of a dam or the underbelly of a ship. Belcher calls it Sea Ferret, explaining that it reminds him of a “weaselly little animal . . . it can go anywhere that nobody else can.”

Last year, Sea Ferret dove into the chilly waters of a Sierra lake to find and help recover a murder victim. And it is used to inspect dams--a dangerous job because of the suction forces a leak can create. Belcher said: “I wouldn’t want to get sucked into (a leak), but I’d gladly send this down.”

It’s often the case that the people who make them, and especially the people who use them, endow these robots with names--rather than mere model numbers--and speak of them in anthropomorphic terms.

Jason Jr. was the name given the low-slung guy on a leash who was the first to view the eerie inside of the sunken Titanic. He was the companion to Alvin, the submarine from which the Titanic explorers operated Jason Jr.

Close Working Conditions

In most cases, it’s the close and difficult working conditions that engender such personalizations. Certainly machines like Jason Jr. and Sea Ferret do not gain affection based on their looks.

They’re not like C3PO of “Star Wars” fame and other science-fiction robots that mimic human appearance and mannerisms. Today’s models may hum a bit, but they usually don’t talk. Most often they’re bulky, gawky looking or spindly; they’re dully colored and, well, just plain disappointing looking.

In comparison, their factory cousins are sleek and handsome. Even those, however, “do not look like humans and they do not behave like humans,” wrote the authors of “Industrial Robotics,” a book published earlier this year by McGraw Hill.

“Future robots,” continued the book’s authors, Mikell P. Groover, Mitchell Weiss, Roger N. Nagel and Nicholas G. Odrey, “are likely to have a greater number of attributes similar to the attributes of humans. They are likely to have greater sensor capabilities, more intelligence, a higher level of manual dexterity and a limited degree of mobility. There is no denying that the technology of robotics is moving in a direction to provide these machines with more and more capabilities like those of humans.”

Sea Ferret and Jason Jr. aren’t true robots, but rather telerobots. True robots, according to the Robotics Industries Assn., carry their own intelligence with them. That is, they have their own brains--computers that, once programmed, enable them to do a job on their own, even making their own “decisions” about how to respond to what they see, touch and hear. Humans are more overseers than co-workers to industrial robots. But telerobots, to use the scientists’ term, still require “a human in the loop” to make decisions.

On Land, Air and Sea

Telerobots used in underwater environments have become known as remotely operated vehicles, or ROVs. If used in the air, they’re called remotely piloted vehicles, or RPVs; and on land, they’re tele-operated mobile vehicles.

Telerobots have sensing equipment that allows them to “see” and sometimes “touch” or “hear.” The data is sent back to the human operator, via the cable, often to a computer screen. Working from a safe distance--on the water’s surface or outside a radioactive nuclear area--the teleoperator then interprets the sensory data and makes decisions.

“Operators work really long hours,” said Jim Snow of Ametek Straza in El Cajon, Calif., one of the world’s leading makers of ROVs. “A lot of tasks you could do really simply require considerably longer” with an ROV, he said.

Snow said that after working closely with the machines, the operators “become attached (to them) and they’re real proud of their systems.”

Even though some machines can do some things better than humans--such as “seeing” in dimly lit, murky water--they are being welcomed into the workplace. RSI’s Wilson said: “I have run into zero worker resistance. It’s not an issue now, although it could be. The aspect of the industry is in saving lives, not replacing jobs.” Often, the same skilled, professional person who formerly did the job is needed to operate the machine.

Deep Sea Systems’ Nicholson said: “This is the thing that drives all of the industry: Teleoperated machines keep humans in the loop but reduce loss of human life, and they make feasible things that can’t be built economically otherwise. It’s driven by the bottom line.”

ROVs have sold well into dozens of industries. Frank Busby, who heads an underwater vehicles consulting firm based in Arlington, Va., said that almost 50 different models make up the 800 ROVs produced since 1964 by 35 different manufacturing firms.

Ametek Straza has built two Scarab ROVs to find and uncover damaged underwater utility cable. One of the Scarabs (short for Submersible Craft Assisting Repair and Burial) was on duty for Bell Labs in the Atlantic when an Air-India jet exploded over the ocean June 23, 1985. The Scarab was enlisted in the search for the shattered pieces of the aircraft and recovered the voice recorder and cockpit tapes.

Ametek Straza’s Gemini system, now leased to AT&T;, was used to recover pieces of the Challenger booster rockets. The attached robotic arm made by RSI drilled holes in the pieces, attached special lines, cleared surrounding debris and conveyed the lines back to the surface for use in lifting the heavy pieces.

Nuclear energy has become another of the most active niches in the industry, spurred by funding from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Agency.

Listens for Leaks

The Browns Ferry nuclear reactor in Alabama is trying out 600-pound Surbot, made by Remotec in Oak Ridge, Tenn. Surbot can be used in surveillance of working plants, performing visual inspection, “listening” for drips, steam leaks or squeaky bearings. It can measure radiation level, temperatures and humidity.

Some companies, including Odetics of Anaheim, have developed legged-motion machines that would be able to climb stairs and surmount obstacles to get to their work.

In the continuing cleanup of Three Mile Island, several “nukebots” are used to measure radiation levels, pick up sludge from the bottom of the reactor and remove it for analysis. They also can drill holes in concrete walls and flooring to determine the amount of radiation contamination.

At Chernobyl, most U.S. experts believe, the Soviets have put to work three West German robots and one of their own. Discussions are under way with U.S. companies for an additional six robots, said industry consultant Harvey Meieran.

Robotics also have played a major role in space exploration, performing difficult jobs on the Earth and in outer space. In fact, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said last week that remotely operated robots may do even more of the in-orbit work of assembling the $8-billion space station. Engineers feared that the estimated 700 hours of space walking required would be too strenuous for the astronauts.

Much of what has been learned in the space program is now utilized in more down-to-earth projects, said consultant Busby. And, in a technological irony, such transfer of technology has helped restore to sea expeditions some of the public interest siphoned off in this century by aeronautics and space exploration.

Renews Interest in Sea

The “lovely thing” about the Titanic exploration--with Jason Jr.’s candid view of the sunken ship--was that it turned so many eyes back to the sea, he said.

Other uses for remote technology range from the exotic to the prosaic.

In Japan, at RSI in British Columbia, and in the timber-rich areas of the northwestern United States, for instance, robots are being designed to scale trees, chopping off branches as they go. Then they would shinny back down the tree, topple it and cut the wood into logs.

Like Odetics, International Robotics Technologies in Marina del Rey, Calif., is building a lightweight, legged-motion robot that could be used in nuclear power plants. But another version of IRT’s machine is targeted for a more Spiderman-like occupation: It would be able to climb up the side of a building, wash the windows, monitor the building’s energy systems and act as a sentry.

It also would be “smart” enough to come out of the rain, or climb down if a nasty wind whips up, said Norman Baker, president and chief executive of the company.

Robots are particularly suited to sterile workplaces, such as hospitals or “clean rooms” where semiconductors are made.

Even after going through double air-showers and putting on a “spacesuit” to work in chip-making clean rooms, humans are still 5,000 times dirtier than a robot, said John Foggiato, director of technical marketing at Flexible Manufacturing Systems of Los Gatos, Calif.

Flexible’s clean room machine, the Model 4020, silently rolls on its three wheels from one machine to the next, loading the delicate materials and simultaneously keeping perfect track of the operations and materials.

As it moves about, the 4020 can sense obstacles in its path and sound a warning. For all its mobility, though, it is reminiscent of its bolted-down industrial cousins in more than the clean lines of its neutrally colored plastic outer body.

Its best attribute, said Foggiato, is that “it doesn’t get bored.”