New-Age GI Bill Meets Pittsburgh

by Henry Lenard
Pittsburgh’s transformation from dying steel town to a global robotics powerhouse has it positioned to help meet America’s greatest manufacturing challenges.

According to the Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing Institute (ARM), the three biggest obstacles for the U.S. in 2022 are the lack of a skilled labor force; incorporating robotics and automation; and supply chain issues.

The ARM Institute was started in January 2017 with the awarding of a U.S. Department of Defense contract to Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University as part of the Manufacturing USA network. ARM operates as a separate non-profit entity with more than 330 consortium members.

“It’s easy to understand why the DoD chose Pittsburgh as the home of a national institute for robotics,” ARM CEO Ira Moskowitz said. “Pittsburgh can claim itself of the birthplace of the robots that are in use today across the nation and the globe. Those robots that directly address dull, dirty and dangerous jobs, and automate industrial activities for all types of organizations. Having the ARM Institute in Pittsburgh amplifies the region as a leading worldwide center in robotics.”

ARM is one of nine Manufacturing Innovation Institutes funded by the Department of Defense, and part of the Manufacturing USA network, which encompasses a total of 16 such institutes, sponsored by either the U.S. Departments of Commerce, Defense or Energy.

These entities are public-private partnerships that each have distinct technology focus areas but work towards a common goal: To accelerate U.S. advanced manufacturing as a whole and secure America’s future through manufacturing innovation, education and collaboration.

ARM’s mission is to create and then deploy robotic technology by integrating the diverse collection of industry practices and institutional knowledge across many disciplines – sensor technologies, end-effector development, software and artificial intelligence, materials science, human and machine behavior modeling, and quality assurance – to realize the promises of a robust manufacturing innovation ecosystem.

Looking at American manufacturing’s top challenges in 2022, even pre-pandemic, the lack of a skilled workforce was one of the greatest obstacles facing American workers.

A 2021 study by Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute found that as many as 2.1 million American manufacturing jobs will be unfilled through 2030 and noted that nearly 500,000 manufacturing jobs are open today. The report warns the worker shortage could potentially cost the U.S. economy as much as $1 trillion by the end of the decade in lost revenue and production.

An increased use of robotics within an advanced manufacturing environment will be critical to the U.S. According to ARM, this will only occur if there is a concerted effort to develop the needed workforce.

To that end, ARM launched the federally-funded www.roboticscareer.org, a site that connects students and workers with leading U.S.-based robotics education programs for manufacturing careers. Introduced in April and updated daily, this no-cost resource lists approximately 12,000 programs from more than 1,800 educational organizations in the U.S.

The workforce issue also plays into the challenge of incorporating robotics and automation. Many American manufacturers, particularly smaller and medium-sized ones, struggle with finding both robotics expertise, beyond systems integrators, and robots that best meet their needs.

According to ARM, nearly half of all American manufacturers haven’t adopted any form of robotics technology.

Large manufacturers, such as those in the automotive and aerospace industries, have successfully deployed robots for years for vehicle assembly. These industrial robots have worked well because of the relatively repetitive nature of their tasks.

SMMs (small and medium manufacturers) usually don’t operate in an environment where they can dedicate a robot to a single task as many are contract manufacturers with changing product requirements. SMMs need robots that are highly flexible and easily re-programmable to perform multiple tasks. Also, SMMs don’t always have the factory floor space capacity to cage industrial robots, so collaborative robots are a better fit for these needs.

To address this challenge, ARM has worked on dozens of projects, funded by the Department of Defense, to address these issues, as well as others that increase worker safety.

One prime example is ARM’s ongoing “Systematic Robotics Application Assessment Method and Tools for Decision-Making” project. It addresses the issue of the lack of robotics technology by many SMMs. The project seeks to minimize the risk of adopting robots by improving the methods and assessment tools for evaluating readiness levels for robotic applications.

This project is expected to culminate in the creation of a software platform that will host a set of methods and tools for evaluating robotic solutions and empower American manufacturers to better implement the right solution for a given manufacturing process.

The results of this and the other projects (Projects – Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing (arminstitute.org) are available to be used by all members of the ARM Institute Consortium. 

ARM is also actively addressing the supply chain challenge confronting U.S. manufacturers.

In the summer of 2020, the DoD tasked ARM with finding robotic solutions to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic and create a critically needed technical foundation to respond to future similar crises.

Already this year, ARM has worked on 10 pandemic-related projects, including some directly targeting supply chain issues, such as domestic production of personal protection equipment (PPE). ARM formed numerous national teams, drawing from diverse industries and technologies, to address the myriad of supply chain shortages.

“Many of Pittsburgh’s robotics companies are members of ARM’s consortium. This provides them with unprecedented access to manufacturers across the U.S., allowing them to build relationships with both organizations and government entities that may have been challenging to form otherwise,” said Moskowitz of the importance of ARM to the city.

“In return, ARM consortium members and the federal government are exposed on a regular basis to the bounty of robotics innovation and organizations in Pittsburgh,” added Moskowitz.