Entertainment Engineering Magazine is based on the concept of technology transfer where an engineer reading an article about one industry will instantly transfer that information to whatever project or projects they might be involved with in other industries. We’ve also heard this called cross-industry innovation. Well, Festo has been doing something similar only using nature as the crossover point and then cross-industry innovation. It’s pretty cool and we thought we’d bring some of their thinking to you. 

In a talk given by Dr. Elias Knubben, Head of corporate bionic projects at Festo, we learn some important elements about how creativity is being used to advance automation. EE pulled some of the key points from a video produced by Wired UK. Here’s what we got from the talk: Festo has a small team that explores technology through the window of nature. They’ve created butterflies and dragonflies, but also ants that work together as a team, and have recreated what resembles the tongue of a lizard. Many of the capabilities designed using nature as a model have seen their way into industrial products including control systems and robot end effectors.

To create innovative products, the small team that works with Dr. Knubben goes for concept first. They look for something innovative, fascinating, educational, and inspiring. These elements are necessary so that the project gets everyone’s attention, gets everyone involved. Each member must bring confidence and the courage to fail to the project even as early prototypes are created, even when they are requesting funding. Ultimately, though, the risk is shared. 

From this point, the whole team can come together. By working in interdisciplinary teams that literally work side by side, each person can come at a possible solution from a different angle. Using biological role models for inspiration, the team gets started as quickly and easily as possible. Once started they are able to incubate their ideas and then put several methods into place at the same time.

During the project phase, Dr. Knubben’s team constantly zooms in and out to come up with iterations and variants on a particular project. To do this, Festo incorporates generalists to keep an eye on the big picture and specialists to dive deeply into the technical details such as creating the circuit boards, writing code etc. Together, the team has the freedom and the playground to work on any project. 

In the end, the results are not simply to mimic nature, like an ant or kangaroo but the algorithms used to get there, the principles of operation that are now available for other industrial automation devices. Because Festo is involved with a wide variety of industries such as electronics, automotive, life sciences, process control, food processing, and others, the company is continually employing cross-industry innovation to move their products into the future. Much of the innovation for this forward motion comes from nature.

Something Fun

A fun display created by Festo for a recent tradeshow uses a Rube Goldberg approach to take viewers through the history of automation. Rube Goldberg takes a simple process and represents it using a complex and convoluted series of chain reactions. Called the Incredible Machine, the Festo display starts with moving the wings of a butterfly as a metaphor for the butterfly effect: the concept in chaos theory where a small change in conditions leads to vastly different outcomes in a complex system. Watch the video below and see just how significant one small event can become by moving through a variety of technologies in various industries only to end similar to how it began.

*All photos courtesy of Festo. 

For information: 

Festo: https://www.festo.com/us/en/ 

Adaptive Shape Gripper: https://www.festo.com/us/en/p/adaptive-shape-gripper-id_DHEF/?q=robotic%20grippers~:festoSortOrderScored