On October 4, 2023, a conference on the development of robotics, its integration into education and industry took place at Plekhanov Russian University of Economics (PRUoE).

The main speakers were representatives of Technored, a company specializing in the development of industrial automation systems. Presentations from Meridian-Automation representatives were also featured[1].

Given the dominance of the capitalist formation and the competition among manufacturers, it is not surprising that the presentations had a partially promotional character aimed at promoting Technored's own technical solutions.

However, despite the aforementioned, a number of materials were presented to the participants that held a certain value for us – focusing on the prospects of robotics development, standardization of technological complexes in enterprises, and the impact on the workforce. Let's examine each of them.

Introduction

Robots have become an integral part of modern production, contributing to the automation and increased efficiency of enterprises. The integration of robotics into industry promotes the development of sectors such as automotive manufacturing, machinery, energy, medicine, and so on.

In recent years, developed industrial countries have witnessed highly successful technical retooling of production based on the latest advancements in high-tech technologies. This has a significant impact on changing the role of engineers in high-tech industries and society as a whole.

Robot Operator

An operator is a specialist responsible for the integration and maintenance of industrial equipment. They perform setup, define control algorithms, and monitor the execution of technological processes.

Currently, there is a problem with the training of new operators, attributed to the lack of corresponding educational profiles in institutes and the absence of specialized robotics departments in enterprises.

Education plays a key role in the development of robotics. It is essential to ensure the training of highly skilled professionals capable of designing, programming, and managing robotic systems.
The introduction of robotics into education should enable students to acquire both theoretical knowledge and practical skills in working with modern equipment.

Education also includes the process of upgrading the skills of existing operators. The implementation of new industrial equipment involves retraining workers, allowing them to transition to a more intellectual and creative level of activity.

The automation of any production process leads to cost reduction. The required skill level decreases, and the number of workers needed decreases. This, in turn, implies that a worker who does not grow professionally becomes a mere appendage to the machine. When automation allows complete elimination of a worker's role, they are consequently dismissed.

Reducing the qualification of a worker allows offering them a lower salary and spending less on their training. The decrease in the number of positions in the enterprise also enables owners to impose lower wages.

All of this negatively affects the societal development level, leading to production stagnation focused on benefiting its owners.

Representatives of Technored claim that the implementation of their advanced equipment has not resulted in a reduction in the number of workers or a decrease in their salaries. All existing workers transitioned to more qualified positions in the example provided by the company. Thus, Technored aims to create a positive impression among workers and eliminate resistance to new equipment[2].

In the described conditions, a robot operator becomes a robotics complex operator – a full-fledged controller. Consequently, the worker moves to a new, more intellectual level of activity. The question of raising awareness among workers is determined by their professional growth.

This leads to an increase in the worker's consciousness. Simplification in the organization and management of production results in the unnecessary role of individual managers and owners.

«Capitalist culture has created large-scale production, factories, railways, mail, telephones, and so on. Based on this foundation, the majority of functions of the old "state power" have been simplified and can be reduced to such basic operations as registration, recording, and verification. These functions will become fully accessible to all competent people, and they can be performed for a regular "worker's wage," removing any shadow of privilege or "bossiness" from these functions»[3].

Thus, the company Technored's pursuit of profit through providing automation solutions, and the owners' aim to reduce production costs, leads to the decline of the existing formation.

As an example of creating conditions that increase profits but ultimately undermine capitalism, the practice of capital export can be mentioned. Here, the drive to lower production costs leads to its socialization and internationalization. Capitalism creates conditions for its own decline and subsequent replacement by a new formation.

One should not rely on the wisdom of business owners. In addition to implementing more advanced solutions, workers must strive for complete mastery of them. This is essential for the ability to use these technologies independently, without top-down management, and for further self-development and modernization of the enterprise.

Programming Methods

One of the significant directions in the modernization of production facilities involves improving methods for managing industrial equipment. This includes the preparation of unified, user-friendly, and adaptive design and algorithmization tools.

Advancements in design tools have led to the emergence of collaborative robots (cobots) capable of flexible interaction with operators. The programming of cobots involves abstracting from the hardware. Instead of programming individual hardware components, such as servo motors, like other CNC machines, cobot programs are represented as sequences of blocks. These blocks are interpreted by the embedded software into sets of commands executed on the equipment. For instance, a block specifying movement to a target position is transformed into a set of commands rotating the manipulator's servo motors to achieve the desired position in rectangular coordinates.

Modern industrial robot manufacturers provide proprietary software that allows writing control programs and designing production but only with their proprietary hardware. The problem lies in the mutual incompatibility of software solutions despite similarities in equipment and interaction principles. Manipulators from different manufacturers may have the same kinematics – portal, 6-axis, delta, and so on. Movement is specified as a set of target positions in a given rectangular or angular coordinate system[2].

The concept of cobots also implies an open architecture. The software is available for study at the source code level, allowing adaptation for different tasks through modification and supplementation with various plugins, such as palletizing, welding, and machine loading.

A similar collaborative approach is applicable to machines that are not robot manipulators but have their own computer control systems.

Specialized software complicates the organization and reconfiguration of equipment for new technological processes. Unified software with an open architecture would simplify both production design and move away from the limitations of a single manufacturer. The selection of cobots and collaborative equipment is influenced by their physical properties – from kinematics to payload capacity.

Representatives of Technored refer to this as digitization. They propose their development – the robotic operator REDLOAD. It is designed for controlling CNC machines, allowing abstraction from the specifics of equipment interaction. However, questions remain about the openness of the robotic operator itself. Moreover, such a configuration may be inefficient, as opposed to using an external control overlay specific to the CNC device.

In reality, what we need is a unified software structure available as open-source software. This structure should:
  • Generalize methods for connecting and controlling individual devices to enable the development of control modules for various industrial devices.
  • Standardize principles for describing control algorithms for both robots and machines.
  • Represent the technological complex as a digital document, making production development similar to software development using IDE tools.
The hardware implementation of control modules should not be limited to a single manufacturer. Solutions and instructions for interacting with equipment must be entirely open to freely reproduce these control overlay modules.

Modular Robotic Complexes

The presentation introduced the concept of constructing and organizing industrial production as a set of robotic technological cells forming a technological complex.

Each cell is standardized. It is asserted that any technological process can be broken down into a set of small processes for which the proposed cell configurations can be selected and adapted.

In essence, they offer a universal platform for consolidating diverse equipment in a single robotic cell. They take on tasks such as equipment selection, integration with their control system, and software preparation.

The universal cell kit, in addition to robots, also includes a set of universal tools. An example is standard grippers, which, according to Technored representatives, can cover up to 80-90 percent of operations on machines, such as turning-milling groups.

During the presentation, it was emphasized that an individual robot, by itself, is as useless as an engine separated from a car.

Speakers avoid giving a direct answer to questions about the use of specific third-party components in their cells, appealing to the uselessness of such components individually. At the conference, questions were asked about robots and which manufacturers provide them for Technored's "out-of-the-box" solutions. One of the respondents pointed to additional hardware, drew an analogy with a car, and noted that an individual robot, by itself, is useless, similar to how an engine is useless separately from a car, whose value lies only in its assembled form.

Perhaps it would be more honest for representatives of the company to directly acknowledge Technored's lack of expertise in relation to component suppliers. Just like Apple doesn't manufacture System-on-Chip (SoC), RAM, screens, and so on. They focus on designing components to some extent. Similarly, Technored is also more of a development company, influencing production layout and delegating orders to external manufacturers.

Despite this evasion from a direct answer, the speakers outlined a position that involves abstraction from the manufacturer of components for the robotic cell, abstracting from the specifics of their configuration.

For us, the question of developing an automated synthesis system for such production "out-of-the-box" cells is already relevant. The task also includes generalizing the organization of module (or plugin) development for integrating various industrial equipment into the cell.

Celadon's priority is in developing software for synthesizing standard robotic technological cells and the industrial production they create. The final product should be free, have an open architecture, provide multi-level abstraction for developers and consumers. It should prepare all the necessary configuration data for creating a complex and, if possible, directly connect to the equipment, ensuring the highest level of automation in production synthesis.

This can be seen as a move away from monopolizing the production of universal robotic cells, despite Technored's attempts to restrict this through methods such as patenting. We will certainly make efforts to bypass this without harming our free developments.

Application of AI

In addition to abstraction, changes in the role of operators, and modular composition of technological processes, representatives of the company also considered other promising directions in the synthesis of industrial productions.

One of them is the application of artificial intelligence. Referring to the efficiency of AI, also driven by a large database, they provided an example using therapeutic analyses.

AI is intended to be used for optimizing production processes. The compilation of the database will occur through the collection of data on the functioning of robots and machines.

It is worth noting that AI successfully handles tasks such as writing programs in various languages and designing basic architectures. Considering the representation of production systems as unified virtual abstractions, there is a potential application of AI for the overall design of production.

Conclusion

We can conclude that there is progress in the development of tools for designing, creating, and managing industrial production. Despite companies pursuing self-interest, they inadvertently lay the foundation for the future formation of means of production and, consequently, societal formation.

The accessibility of means of production, the growth in the level of professionalism and consciousness among workers, the cost reduction of industrial plant deployment, and the variability of production complex volumes will all contribute to the transition of means from private ownership to communal ownership, along with a better understanding of the nature of productive forces.

A systematic shift from routine and hazardous activities to more advanced ones leads to the comprehensive development of individuals, gradually making labor a primary necessity. A thoughtful approach to education and the creation of necessary tools generates interest in work, particularly in an industrial robotic setting.

Digital twins, integration with ERP systems, interdepartmental logistics — these are all promising directions opening up in the new phase of industrial production.
This brings us to the consideration of the main solved problems:
  • Overcoming the mutual incompatibility of solutions from different robot and machine manufacturers, creating a universal platform for designing, building, and managing industrial production.
  • Increasing the intelligence of workers through the introduction of a developed abstraction and documentation system.
  • Developing tools for constructing industrial production in the direction of simplification and cost reduction while maintaining quality.
  • Countering the creation of a reserve army of workers — actively transitioning to a new professional level and displacing "owners."
Celadon pays special attention to the modular representation of production and focuses on developing universal tools for designing production complexes capable of supporting any technological process. These tools aim to ensure communal ownership of the means of production and individual ownership of consumer goods produced by these means.