Chris Kolb remembers the day his life changed.It was the day he fell in love with the science of robotics."I saw my first robot almost 30 years ago. I saw an ad in the paper and I went, made a phone call and walked into a building here in Huntsville, Alabama and they had a 40-foot-tall robot on a mobile platform with a 25-foot arm and a robot on the end of that arm," said Kolb, co-founder and vice-president of sales at Aerobotix."It was a monster robot, and I got blessed and got that job as a technician and just worked my way through the different positions," he said in an interview with The Western Standard."And of course, 30 years ago, robotics was so new that I really got in on the right timing, if you will, for a new technology.""I was extremely passionate about being part of anything to do with robotics and I really liked the military side of things. And so as I grew through those different positions, an opportunity came up where several of us could start up Aerobotix, and we went for it."That company, which now employs 70 highly-trained staff based in Huntsville, AL, specializes in the creation of cutting-edge automated robotic and measuring solutions for high-value, high-precision components, aircraft and vehicles. Aerobotix has more than 130 robotic systems installed in the US and abroad.Among its crowning achievements is developing robots that spray special coatings on fourth and fifth generation jet fighters, such as the F-18 and F-35 respectively and the B-2 bomber.That is just one of several classified military contracts, which also includes missiles and rockets."Just recently we got our 40th robotic system out there that is helping build different types of missiles that are being manufactured. We've surpassed that," he said."Now, I don't have an account in my head, but that's just on the missile side. There's that many that are working on the fighter jets and bombers."Why robots for specialized coatings? A lot of that is classified, but Kolb was able to give us a clear picture of what is involved.."These coatings are so, they're nasty. They're not healthy for you to be around and they're incredibly difficult to apply," he said."People often think, well, gosh, anybody can spray something. And when it's a regular colour that you might spray on a car, that's easy.""But when you're putting (an aircraft) coating on, it has to be applied very, very accurately or it doesn't work and it goes on in a lot of layers. It's not just one or two layers of paint.""There's times we put on a hundred layers of paint to get the coating to perform properly."Kolb said this is especially important in a hypersonic coating that's going to protect the missile from heat. If the thickness is not correct, the missile is going to start to melt on its way to the objective."And so by getting a robot in there, we get the human away from that nasty coating. We get them in a situation where they're clicking on the mouse, they're not wearing a suit and trying to spray these nasty coatings to these incredibly tight tolerances."While the US military is keen on unmanned weapons of all kinds, such as aircraft, ships and submarines, surprisingly they have been slow to adopt robotics in the manufacturing process.That is now shifting, of course, as the push to save taxpayer funds grows.It involves entanglements, says Kolb — which means, robotics in making weapons for the military is much more complex and involves a lot of "red tape."It isn't like making a washing machine, which is designed entirely for automation."The first thing us automation guys would say is, 'Hey, let's change that rocket just a little bit so that automation works better. Can we change this little piece here?' " said Kolb."Oh no, you can't change that because we'd have to revalidate that fin or we'd have to revalidate that connector. We'd have to revalidate how you assembled that component and we'd have to start all over with these military tests and validations and how long does it last in a salt fog environment."One can't play around and change these designs without a whole bunch of validation and testing to make sure you didn't make a mistake, he said.Nevertheless, the times are changing, says Kolb and the robot revolution in military circles is rapidly changing."Oh, absolutely, I think it is coming and it's going to come fast now with what we're seeing in Ukraine and because of the unmanned vehicles and the drones, this is my own opinion, but the robot wars are upon us."."You can just watch the Ukrainian drone videos and you're like, oh my gosh, that's robotic warfare. It's here (and) it is about to really take off.""There's so many completely new things that are going to get designed and built that I think they're going to take that design for automation approach, and they're going to have to crank 'em out," he said."Some of the discussions we're already having are, 'Hey, you're going to have to make thousands of these, not a hundred a year.' "Another specialized area for Aerobotix is space launch vehicles."The tanks that lift all these rockets are coated in a thermal protection foam that keeps them protected from the environment as they're flying, and also keeps their fuels chilled while they're in the tanks," said Kolb."And those, going back to the (space) shuttle disaster, where they determined the foam came loose and put a hole in the shuttle, as a young sales engineer, I got to go down to NASA and meet with them and sold them a robot to help put that foam on more in a way that would prevent the skinning layer.""When humans were doing it, the foam would cure too much and create a skin layer like you might have on pudding or something like that. And then when they put the next layer of foam, it didn't bite into the previous layer," he said."By automating the application of these foams, the robot can go really fast and can put it down just right to where the foam is a much stronger consistency through the layers.""So that's a place where robots, they're doing a process that's nasty for humans to do and the human just can't do it. It's impossible."What is the craziest request for a robot? This one, you will not believe, but they were actually able to get it done.It was a request by aircraft manufacturers, to place masking tape — a job that takes time and everybody hates!It takes days and days to put on tape, they said, and automating it would be a God-send.."And I thought, well, that's just crazy. There's no way we'll ever be able to put tape down," said Kolb."And so during COVID, we got a little money from the (US) Air Force. They said, what's something that the industry needs? We said, we need to put down tape.""And they were like, what? So we explained the story to them and they were like, well, here's a little bit of money. Go try.""We got playing around with it and didn't do very well internally because we're an integrator more than we are an inventor of things we don't know anything about.""And we got connected with a group out of Austria and we showed them the problem because they had a forced sensor. They had a device where the robot could feel exactly how much it was touching a surface.""And these guys just crushed it ... they built prototype after prototype because they were all trapped (by COVID) and they were bored. And so now we have this incredible tape laying device.""Everybody's looking at it," he added, of the Active Taping Kit (ATK)."People are grabbing them up for all kinds of things we never thought of. It's great for the fighters because if the robot knows where the aircraft is in space, which it has to, or it can't work on it.""We can go out and we can put down pieces of tape where the human would have to get out there with a big Mylar template or a tape measure or lasers ..."I asked Kolb what was next on the horizon for robotics and without hesitation he said "collaborating robots.""You've seen the collaborative arms where people can work near the robotic arm — if we can just start that evolution by them doing quality checks, precision measurements, if they can give us data while we're making things so that we can quickly catch an issue and go back upstream and clean up that problem ..."In other words, mobile robots using LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) remote sensing and doing these types of complicated processes."It's a low-hanging fruit where we can go and get quality data, do good things with it, feed your AI, feed your machine, learning with accurate data, then we can start to do harder and harder types of automation."And rather than taking jobs away, it is actually creating jobs, says Kolb, fed by local schools such as KTECH that feature new programs in advanced manufacturing over 16 weeks, rather than a multi-year degree that leaves students with massive debts and grim prospects.Kolb said the students coming out of that program are very well trained.According to figures provided by Aerobotix, the intelligent automation market in aerospace and defense was worth US$860.3 million in 2020, but is expected to rapidly grow to US$41.85 billion by 2030.Asia is the world’s largest industrial robot market, accounting for 73% of all newly deployed robots in 2022.
Chris Kolb remembers the day his life changed.It was the day he fell in love with the science of robotics."I saw my first robot almost 30 years ago. I saw an ad in the paper and I went, made a phone call and walked into a building here in Huntsville, Alabama and they had a 40-foot-tall robot on a mobile platform with a 25-foot arm and a robot on the end of that arm," said Kolb, co-founder and vice-president of sales at Aerobotix."It was a monster robot, and I got blessed and got that job as a technician and just worked my way through the different positions," he said in an interview with The Western Standard."And of course, 30 years ago, robotics was so new that I really got in on the right timing, if you will, for a new technology.""I was extremely passionate about being part of anything to do with robotics and I really liked the military side of things. And so as I grew through those different positions, an opportunity came up where several of us could start up Aerobotix, and we went for it."That company, which now employs 70 highly-trained staff based in Huntsville, AL, specializes in the creation of cutting-edge automated robotic and measuring solutions for high-value, high-precision components, aircraft and vehicles. Aerobotix has more than 130 robotic systems installed in the US and abroad.Among its crowning achievements is developing robots that spray special coatings on fourth and fifth generation jet fighters, such as the F-18 and F-35 respectively and the B-2 bomber.That is just one of several classified military contracts, which also includes missiles and rockets."Just recently we got our 40th robotic system out there that is helping build different types of missiles that are being manufactured. We've surpassed that," he said."Now, I don't have an account in my head, but that's just on the missile side. There's that many that are working on the fighter jets and bombers."Why robots for specialized coatings? A lot of that is classified, but Kolb was able to give us a clear picture of what is involved.."These coatings are so, they're nasty. They're not healthy for you to be around and they're incredibly difficult to apply," he said."People often think, well, gosh, anybody can spray something. And when it's a regular colour that you might spray on a car, that's easy.""But when you're putting (an aircraft) coating on, it has to be applied very, very accurately or it doesn't work and it goes on in a lot of layers. It's not just one or two layers of paint.""There's times we put on a hundred layers of paint to get the coating to perform properly."Kolb said this is especially important in a hypersonic coating that's going to protect the missile from heat. If the thickness is not correct, the missile is going to start to melt on its way to the objective."And so by getting a robot in there, we get the human away from that nasty coating. We get them in a situation where they're clicking on the mouse, they're not wearing a suit and trying to spray these nasty coatings to these incredibly tight tolerances."While the US military is keen on unmanned weapons of all kinds, such as aircraft, ships and submarines, surprisingly they have been slow to adopt robotics in the manufacturing process.That is now shifting, of course, as the push to save taxpayer funds grows.It involves entanglements, says Kolb — which means, robotics in making weapons for the military is much more complex and involves a lot of "red tape."It isn't like making a washing machine, which is designed entirely for automation."The first thing us automation guys would say is, 'Hey, let's change that rocket just a little bit so that automation works better. Can we change this little piece here?' " said Kolb."Oh no, you can't change that because we'd have to revalidate that fin or we'd have to revalidate that connector. We'd have to revalidate how you assembled that component and we'd have to start all over with these military tests and validations and how long does it last in a salt fog environment."One can't play around and change these designs without a whole bunch of validation and testing to make sure you didn't make a mistake, he said.Nevertheless, the times are changing, says Kolb and the robot revolution in military circles is rapidly changing."Oh, absolutely, I think it is coming and it's going to come fast now with what we're seeing in Ukraine and because of the unmanned vehicles and the drones, this is my own opinion, but the robot wars are upon us."."You can just watch the Ukrainian drone videos and you're like, oh my gosh, that's robotic warfare. It's here (and) it is about to really take off.""There's so many completely new things that are going to get designed and built that I think they're going to take that design for automation approach, and they're going to have to crank 'em out," he said."Some of the discussions we're already having are, 'Hey, you're going to have to make thousands of these, not a hundred a year.' "Another specialized area for Aerobotix is space launch vehicles."The tanks that lift all these rockets are coated in a thermal protection foam that keeps them protected from the environment as they're flying, and also keeps their fuels chilled while they're in the tanks," said Kolb."And those, going back to the (space) shuttle disaster, where they determined the foam came loose and put a hole in the shuttle, as a young sales engineer, I got to go down to NASA and meet with them and sold them a robot to help put that foam on more in a way that would prevent the skinning layer.""When humans were doing it, the foam would cure too much and create a skin layer like you might have on pudding or something like that. And then when they put the next layer of foam, it didn't bite into the previous layer," he said."By automating the application of these foams, the robot can go really fast and can put it down just right to where the foam is a much stronger consistency through the layers.""So that's a place where robots, they're doing a process that's nasty for humans to do and the human just can't do it. It's impossible."What is the craziest request for a robot? This one, you will not believe, but they were actually able to get it done.It was a request by aircraft manufacturers, to place masking tape — a job that takes time and everybody hates!It takes days and days to put on tape, they said, and automating it would be a God-send.."And I thought, well, that's just crazy. There's no way we'll ever be able to put tape down," said Kolb."And so during COVID, we got a little money from the (US) Air Force. They said, what's something that the industry needs? We said, we need to put down tape.""And they were like, what? So we explained the story to them and they were like, well, here's a little bit of money. Go try.""We got playing around with it and didn't do very well internally because we're an integrator more than we are an inventor of things we don't know anything about.""And we got connected with a group out of Austria and we showed them the problem because they had a forced sensor. They had a device where the robot could feel exactly how much it was touching a surface.""And these guys just crushed it ... they built prototype after prototype because they were all trapped (by COVID) and they were bored. And so now we have this incredible tape laying device.""Everybody's looking at it," he added, of the Active Taping Kit (ATK)."People are grabbing them up for all kinds of things we never thought of. It's great for the fighters because if the robot knows where the aircraft is in space, which it has to, or it can't work on it.""We can go out and we can put down pieces of tape where the human would have to get out there with a big Mylar template or a tape measure or lasers ..."I asked Kolb what was next on the horizon for robotics and without hesitation he said "collaborating robots.""You've seen the collaborative arms where people can work near the robotic arm — if we can just start that evolution by them doing quality checks, precision measurements, if they can give us data while we're making things so that we can quickly catch an issue and go back upstream and clean up that problem ..."In other words, mobile robots using LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) remote sensing and doing these types of complicated processes."It's a low-hanging fruit where we can go and get quality data, do good things with it, feed your AI, feed your machine, learning with accurate data, then we can start to do harder and harder types of automation."And rather than taking jobs away, it is actually creating jobs, says Kolb, fed by local schools such as KTECH that feature new programs in advanced manufacturing over 16 weeks, rather than a multi-year degree that leaves students with massive debts and grim prospects.Kolb said the students coming out of that program are very well trained.According to figures provided by Aerobotix, the intelligent automation market in aerospace and defense was worth US$860.3 million in 2020, but is expected to rapidly grow to US$41.85 billion by 2030.Asia is the world’s largest industrial robot market, accounting for 73% of all newly deployed robots in 2022.
