The Welding Robot That Teaches Itself the Perfect Path
Path Robotics uses AI vision to guide welding torches in real time, and it's now sending robot dogs into shipyards. Here's what that means for the factory floor.
Key points
- Path Robotics, based in Columbus, Ohio, uses AI and real-time cameras to guide welding robots along the correct torch path automatically.
- The company is deploying Boston Dynamics' Spot quadruped robots into mobile welding jobs inside shipbuilding facilities.
- Andy Lonsberry, co-founder and CEO of Path Robotics, discussed the technology on Episode 252 of The Robot Report Podcast.
- Michael Yip, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC San Diego, is applying similar AI motion-planning ideas to surgical robots.
Welding a ship hull is brutal, skilled work. Hold the torch wrong for a second and the joint fails. Train a human welder for years and they might retire before you finish the drydock.
Path Robotics thinks AI can do it better, and faster.
The Columbus, Ohio company has built a system that watches a weld in real time using computer vision (cameras paired with software that interprets what the lens sees) and steers the robot arm along the best possible path. No pre-programmed route. The robot reads the metal and adjusts as it goes.
Andy Lonsberry, co-founder and CEO, explained the problem on Episode 252 of The Robot Report Podcast. Setting up a traditional welding robot is slow and brittle: change the part slightly and you're often reprogramming the whole sequence. Path's approach uses what Lonsberry calls "physical AI", software that reasons about the real, messy physical world rather than a tidy digital model of it.
Sheet metal warps. Welds have gaps. The robot sees both and compensates.
What does this mean for workers and factories?
For factory owners, it means shorter setup times and fewer rejected welds. For skilled welders, the picture is harder. Automating the repetitive, dangerous passes could free humans for inspection and finishing work, though it will also reduce demand for entry-level roles over time.
Path is now pushing into shipbuilding, one of the hardest manufacturing environments around. Ships are enormous, the work is dirty, and the geometry changes constantly. The company is using Boston Dynamics' Spot, the four-legged robot that can climb stairs and cross uneven ground, as a mobile platform to carry welding equipment across a shipyard floor. A wheeled robot would get stuck. Spot doesn't.
This is the second time we've reported on Boston Dynamics' Spot in the past 90 days, and the pattern is consistent: the platform keeps finding its way into environments where wheels simply can't follow.
Also on the podcast, Michael Yip, director of the Advanced Robotics and Controls Laboratory at UC San Diego, described applying deep learning (AI trained on large amounts of data) and reinforcement learning (AI that improves by trial and error) to surgical robots, working toward automating parts of surgical procedures.
Two very different settings, one shipyard and one operating theatre, driven by the same underlying bet: that an AI can learn to move precisely enough, in an unpredictable environment, to be trusted with high-stakes work. Path Robotics is already in the shipyard. The surgical side is further off. What's worth watching is how quickly "further off" keeps shrinking.
