Texas A&M University

Making Robots Smarter By Lesley V. Kriewald and Adam Dziedzic

Engineers say barcode’s big brother, RFIDs, may help humans put robots to work on Mars.

Dr. John Junkins
Distinguished Professor and holder of the George J. Eppright Chair in Engineering John Junkins and assistant professors John Hurtado and Tamás Kalmár-Nagy have teamed up with engineering technology professor Ben Zoghi to combine RFID and robotics for a new generation of autonomy for the future.
Dr. John Hurtado Dr. Tamás Kalmár-Nagy

Scene: We open on a close-up of a robot busily picking up parts and connecting them. Pull back to a wide shot of more robots assembling a base station on Mars.

Robotic construction crews may sound like something out of a sci-fi movie, but Texas A&M engineers are working to make them a reality.

Aerospace engineering assistant professors John Hurtado and Tamás Kalmár-Nagy and Distinguished Professor and Eppright Chair John Junkins are collaborating with engineering technology professor Ben Zoghi to combine radio frequency identification (RFID) technology with robotics for automated construction and repair.

RFID is a generic term for technologies that use radio waves to automatically identify items. There are many different methods of product identification using RFID, but the most commonly used is one in which a unique serial number identifying the product is stored on a microchip that is attached to an antenna. Together, the chip and the antenna are called an RFID transponder or RFID tag. The antenna enables the chip to transmit this unique identification number to a reader, which converts the radio waves returned from the RFID tag into a format that can be passed on to computers.

RFID itself isn’t new, but the technology is currently experiencing a revival because of Wal-Mart’s announcement in June 2003 that it was requiring its top 100 vendors to be RFID compliant. In World War II, for example, rudimentary RFID was used to distinguish between friendly and enemy aircraft. Today, RFID technology is used in everything from inventory control to product authentication; toll tags to speed passes at the gas pumps; runners in marathons to assets in the supply chain.

And, someday soon, automated robotic construction.

Robots are inherently dumb without the right software, the engineers say. Robots don’t perceive as humans do, so humans have to give the robots ways to recognize things — using vision and global positioning system (GPS) technologies, for example.

“RFID technologies will be fused together with other sensors and used by a new generation of robot control software to achieve a revolutionary degree of ‘situational awareness’ required for robotic systems to become more adaptive to unstructured and off-nominal conditions,” Junkins says.

RFID tags on each piece of the structure will tell robots exactly what goes where and how to connect the pieces. The robots will read the information stored in the tags as a computerized instruction manual to assemble whatever it is they are supposed to assemble.

“Robots are really good at picking stuff up and moving it around,” Zoghi says. “They’re not so good at putting things together. But with RFID tags, the robot can say, ‘I know this, this goes with that piece over here,’ and start building something.”

The tags can store all kinds of information, including compatibility with various joints and parts, and material properties, such as when to replace a part because of wear or aging.

This simple robotic arm is building a tower from RFID-labeled blocks. Junkins says this first experiment is almost a toy experiment, and though it didn’t cost a lot of money, there is a lot of interest in the idea. “It just requires imagination,” he says. This simple robotic arm is building a tower from RFID-labeled blocks. Junkins says this first experiment is almost a toy experiment, and though it didn’t cost a lot of money, there is a lot of interest in the idea. “It just requires imagination,” he says.

“The amount of information we can store on the tags is mind-numbingly incredible,” Junkins says. “There are good, bad and ugly uses for all that information, but the impact on automation is unambiguously good.”

Hurtado says one challenge with RFID technology is pushing it beyond its current capabilities to aid in construction — for precise positioning, for instance. Presently, RFID has to be coupled with other sensing technologies such as vision. But a concept Junkins calls “RFID radar” could give positioning information relative to other objects, not just data.

The researchers say one goal is repairable spacecraft. The recent missions to repair the Hubble Space Telescope and the space shuttle Discovery required humans to make the expensive and risky repairs.

“We hope to make a large fraction of assembly and repair amenable to robots,” Junkins says.

And this technology could really affect the next generation of spacecraft. If humans ever colonize the moon or Mars, human-supervised or autonomous robots will have a big role in assembling and repairing structures. In that case, everything must be simple enough to assemble and repair robotically.

Including the robots themselves, amusingly enough.

“Laser technology was driven by the barcode,” Junkins says. “It’s amazing that RFID — the same technology that is making for automated inventory control and will make for the automated store of the future — can be used for robotics. We just have to let our imaginations flow.”

“Robots could replace their own parts,” Kalmár-Nagy says. “If the left leg is malfunctioning, the robot can find a replacement leg in inventory and fix it.”

“Self-repairing robots will happen, and RFID tags will be there,” Hurtado predicts.

It may be sooner than you think. Texas A&M is leading a new 40-member consortium, the Consortium for Autonomous Space Systems (CASS), for a new generation of autonomy. Junkins and Hurtado visited Sandia National Laboratory in June to gauge interest in partnering with Texas A&M on RFID and robotics for space construction.

“If we could bring the RFID technology and they could help bring robots up to speed, we could really kick-start this thing,” Hurtado says.

Look to the past to see the future

In 1973, a grocery store in Ohio sold the first-ever item with a barcode, a pack of chewing gum. More than 30 years later, almost everything sold has a barcode, and the laser technology that was developed to read the barcode now reads our CDs, DVDs and our computer disk drives. In fact, the laser led to an incredible acceleration of the computer industry.

The Texas A&M engineers say RFID technology is at that point to have a tremendous impact.

“RFID is a barcode on steroids,” Junkins says. “Eventually, when you do your grocery shopping, you’ll steer your cart full of stuff through the door and swipe your credit or debit card on your way out. The RFID reader at the door charges everything in your basket to your card on your way out.”

And takes the items you’ve just bought out of the store’s inventory automatically, Kalmár-Nagy adds.

The researchers say this technology is feeding back into engineering and robotics research in a revolutionary way.

“Laser technology was driven by the barcode,” Junkins says. “It’s amazing that RFID — the same technology that is making for automated inventory control and will make for the automated store of the future — can be used for robotics. We just have to let our imaginations flow.” end of story

The power of the internet

Junkins says a simple search for “RFID” in a popular search engine brought up Zoghi’s RFID and Sensor Convergence Laboratory.

“It’s funny how things come together,” Junkins says. “I’ve known Ben Zoghi for years, but I didn’t know he was working in RFID.”

In fact, Zoghi’s been working in the area of RFID since 2003, first using the technology for supply-chain management when he headed the Industrial Distribution Program. Now he is pursuing using RFID sensors, combining them with GPS and Wi-Fi technologies for applications outside the supply chain.

His extensive work, conducted through his RFID and Sensor Convergence Laboratory, focuses on designing systems and sensor networks for security, tracking, location and automation.

Don’t be late!

Photo of a clock

Students thinking about skipping that 8 a.m. intro to engineering class should probably think twice. Zoghi and students designed the Automatic Attendance System, a practical way to monitor class attendance. An RFID system picks up the transponders in the students’ possession when they walk into the classroom — say, ID badges clipped to their backpacks or pinned to their shirts. The information in the RFID tags is transmitted to the professor’s database, recording the students’ attendance.

Protecting the Hartford Library one book at a time

Photo of books

Zoghi says RFID sensors can be used to tag just about anything for tracking purposes. The Hartford Public Library in Connecticut approached Zoghi to develop a system to eliminate theft of CDs, DVDs and books. As books are moved around, they are easily found with the tracking sensors, and decreasing theft means more funds are available to increase library inventory.

The real deal

Photo of pills

Nobody likes a fake, especially when it comes to prescription drugs. Zoghi says RFID can now monitor counterfeit drugs through an RFID-based drug pedigree information system. The pharmacy Life Station is an innovative self-starting device with an RFID reader that is deployed at each stage of the supply chain, from inception to your local pharmacy. At each shipment point, information is sent to a central subscription agency that maintains all records about a particular box of drugs.

Warehousing for the chemical industry

Photo of chemical barrels

In a project for a Dallas company that supplies chemicals for the semiconductor and photo industries, Zoghi designed a zoning system in the company’s warehouse so management could better track where their chemicals are going for insurance purposes. The system also monitors temperature in real time in the barrels used to store the chemicals, alerting management when the temperature changes.

Smart superstore: Or, who moved my cheese?

Photo of cheese

RFID tags are used in a grocery store to monitor products’ location and temperature as soon as they come off the trucks. Shelves are also fitted with RFID readers so that as soon as an item runs out, an alert is sent to a central computer.

In stores, RFID tags can also be used for theft detection and to ease congestion in the checkout lane. The tags on all items automatically transmit information to the checker, thus removing the need for tedious item-by-item scanning. Also, if someone doesn’t pay for an item, readers at the store’s entrance will sound, alerting security personnel.

Dr. Behbood “Ben” Zoghi
Electronics engineering technology professor Ben Zoghi says RFID can be used in everything from tracking inventory in a library, warehouse or grocery store to taking class attendance and making sure prescription drugs aren’t fakes.