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56 SMT Magazine • September 2014 Robots cost less, work better and ensure higher quality. A robot does not have muscles to get tired, nor does it get distracted. The accu- racy and repeatability of operations are almost unlimited—millions and millions of cycles— and this leads to products of an extremely high standard, which stays constant over time. But there's more. If the finished product is constant- ly of high-quality, then waste and rework costs are reduced to a minimum. Lower costs equal higher revenue. Moreover, let's not forget that robots do not go on vacation, get the stomach flu, and, let's face it, they do not have families. So they work, work, work. Every shift, tirelessly and repeat- edly, leading to increased production and sky- high productivity. Production speed means responsiveness. You can work with a smaller warehouse, because the manufacturing precision and reduction of waste and rework allows you to reduce your in- ventory. It also means that you will always de- liver finished or semi-finished products to your customers with the maximum precision. Sched- ules are respected and guaranteed. Robots never complain; they're the most flexible workers you will ever have. Once the processes have been programmed, you can quickly switch from one program to another, us- ing the same machine to perform various tasks in various positions, environments and spaces. The robot system is set up very quickly every time, and it can start again almost immediately. The cost of technology conversion is close to zero, since the robot is reused in full. The pos- sibility of not having to change the layout of your departments may be an additional source of savings. Space is money. Let's not forget the soft variables either. Robots replace workers in the all the produc- tion phases of the most hostile, dangerous and harmful environments. Dust, acids, high tem- peratures, stress, fatigue, weight... let's leave them all to the robot. Staff members will be able to engage in other phases of work, thus further improving your products. They can retrain and increase their skills, learning to manage and program a robot cell (the complete system that includes the robot, controller, and other periph- erals), and perform more skilled tasks, becom- ing added value for the company. And, thanks to robots, the number of acci- dents and frequency of illness caused by repeti- tive or heavy work decrease. Furthermore, ro- bots eliminate the long time required to search for new personnel, as well as training. Leave it to robots. Smt Comau robotics is a division of Comau, a manufacturer of automated systems based in Italy. rObOtICS IN mANUFACtUrING: A prImer continues feATure ShorT A team of researchers from Tu Wien (vienna) the national Institute for Informatics (Tokyo), and nTT Basic research labs in Japan has now pro- posed a new architecture for quantum computing, based on microscopic defects in diamond. for decades, scientists have been trying to use quantum systems for logical calculations. each sys- tem—made up of mirrors, diamond, and a nitro- gen defect—can store one quantum bit of infor- mation: zero, one, or an arbitrary superposition of both. But usually such a quantum bit is very un- stable. error correction procedures are needed to build a quantum computer that works reliably. The researchers calculated how resonators, di- amonds and nitrogen atoms can be assembled to create an error resistant two dimensional quantum system, a so-called "topologically protected quan- tum computer." According to the calculations, about 4.5 billion such quantum systems would be sufficient to implement the algorithm "Shor- 2048," which is able to calculate prime factors of a 2048-bit-number. There may still be a long way to go before al- gorithms like Shor-2048 run on a quantum com- puter. But scientists believe that it should become possible to entangle quantum building blocks, cre- ating larger cluster cells, within the next few years. scientists Propose new Kind of Quantum Computer