From Singularity Hub, 5 Axis Robot Carves Metal Like Butter:

Industrial robots are getting precise enough that they’re less like dumb machines and more like automated sculptors producing artwork. Case in point: Daishin’s Seki5-axis mill. The Japanese company celebrated its 50th anniversary last year by using this machine to carve out a full scale motorcycle helmet out of one piece of aluminum. No breaks, no joints, the 5-Axis mill simply pivots and rotates to carve metal at some absurd angles. Every cut is guided by sophisticated 3D design software (Openmind’s HyperMill). While the Daishin helmet made a nice showpiece for a biannual meeting of machiningcompanies (EMO), this level of production is becoming the new standard. Your average industrial company got hi-tech in a hurry and now we have machines that can transform computer designs into the highest quality professional metal objects, seemingly at a push of a button.

More like science fiction every year!  —Chris Peterson

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 15th, 2010 at 11:26 AM and is filed under Complexity, Machine Intelligence, Robotics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.