Company says new system can be used to fine-tune industrial bots using voice

Mitsubishi Electric Corp. has unveiled a system that enables robots to perform industrial tasks in environments they have had difficulty working in before, such as food-processing plants.

In these settings, items change frequently and thus humans are faster in sorting and arrangement. Now, Mitsubishi has introduced a robotics system to work as fast as humans – and that can be instructed using voice commands.

The new system incorporates Mitsubishi Electric's Maisart AI technologies -- including high-precision speech recognition -- to initiate work tasks and then operators can fine-tune robot movements as required.

The Japanese company said the robotic training method would allow units to perform routine roles without having to be taught by specialists. Mitsubishi said the new system could reduce hours needed for a sample task from 60 hours to 5 hours.

Mitsubishi Electric plans to commercialize the technology in 2023 or later as “further performance enhancements and extensive verifications” are needed.