Tag Archives: x
#439404 Walker X by UBTECH
Walker X, is the latest version by UBTECH Robotics of its groundbreaking bipedal humanoid robot.
#439475 Video Friday: Walker X
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We’ll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!):
RSS 2021 – July 12-16, 2021 – [Online Event]
Humanoids 2020 – July 19-21, 2021 – [Online Event]
RO-MAN 2021 – August 8-12, 2021 – [Online Event]
DARPA SubT Finals – September 21-23, 2021 – Louisville, KY, USA
WeRobot 2021 – September 23-25, 2021 – Coral Gables, FL, USA
IROS 2021 – September 27-1, 2021 – [Online Event]
ROSCon 2021 – October 21-23, 2021 – New Orleans, LA, USA
Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today’s videos.
UBTECH Robotics, a global leader in intelligent humanoid robotics and AI technologies, today unveiled Walker X, the latest version of its groundbreaking bipedal humanoid robot. With significant improvement in physical performance, autonomous intelligence and human to robot interactions, Walker X took another step closer to becoming the gold standard in humanoid robotics.
This looks like a solid upgrade, with a 3 km/h top speed, “complex terrain navigation,” 3 kg of payload per hand, and UBTECH’s promise that the robot is compliant and safe to be around. But we’re not entirely sure what it actually, um, does, you know?
[ UBTECH ]
Everyone should be able to get into the game. Luna’s story inspired us to build: CHAMP. A robot that will bring kids who otherwise could not participate onto the field with US Soccer players all year.
The robot is based on OhmniLabs' platform (which we reviewed a while back), in partnership with Volkswagen.
[ US Soccer ]
Thanks, Joseph!
This tail-less gecko robot from IBSS, NUAA in China dynamically adjusts its climbing gait depending on how steep of a slope it’s trying to climb up.
It can avoid obstacles while climbing, too:
[ Paper ]
Thanks, Poramate!
GE Research’s Robotics team successfully demonstrated the feasibility of its bio-inspired soft robot design for rapid and efficient tunnel digging through a year and a half, $2.5 million project funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Underminer program. The team built and demonstrated a prototype that autonomously and continuously tunneled underground at GE’s Research campus in Niskayuna NY at a comparable distance to existing, commercially available trenchless technologies.
[ GE Research ]
Personally I wouldn't have chosen tree trimming as an ideal example of the kinds of intricate and dangerous tasks that the Sarcos Guardian XT is good for, but here it is anyway.
[ Sarcos ]
This summer, students from ETH Zurich will test various technologies on the river Limmat for the automatic removal of waste. The Autonomous River Cleanup project is starting with rivers to tackle the global problem of marine pollution.
[ ETH Zurich ]
Thanks, Fan!
The robotic arm on the China Space Station (CSS) is designed to help astronauts perform extravehicular activities. The space station arm is attached to the Tianhe core module, the first and main component of the CSS.
[ CMS ]
Thanks, Fan!
Tencent is working on some stylish gaits for a simulated quadruped.
Looks like this'll be an IROS paper in the fall.
[ Tencent ]
Thanks, Fan!
Dipper is an aerial-aquatic hybrid vehicle, capable of controlled motion in air and underwater. Dipper is a lightweight fixed-wind UAV with actively swept wings that achieves dynamic transitions between the two media. The vehicle has only one main propulsion motor, and uses a novel clutch system to engage either the front tractor propeller for flight in air, or the rear ship's screw propeller for underwater propulsion.
[ Dipper ]
For when you need to pipette something suuuper toxic, I guess?
[ Shadow ]
Some robotics companies look for ways to integrate autonomous systems into warehouses with a minimal amount of infrastructure. Ocado is not one of those companies.
I’m not sure that the question of whether this is one robot or many robots is all that relevant, to be honest. It’s a robotic system, and you can define robotic systems to be whatever you feel like, more or less.
[ Ocado ]
The European Robotic Arm (ERA) will be launched to the International Space Station together with the Russian Multipurpose Laboratory Module, called “Nauka.” ERA is the first robot able to “walk” around the Russian segment of the Space Station.
[ ESA ]
Fotokite Sigma provides public safety teams with mission-critical situational awareness from elevated perspectives. Fotokite’s actively tethered UAS (unmanned aerial system) saves team resources by launching, flying, and landing with the single push of a button; no piloting necessary. Fotokite Sigma is authorized and recognized by aviation authorities as a safer alternative to traditional tethered drone and free-flying public safety drone systems.
[ Fotokite ]
I know this is jut an end effector for making gloves on a Kuka arm, but if you were designing a robot to slap people in the face, this is exactly what it would look like.
[ Kuka ]
Vector 2.0 is still in the works at Digital Dream Labs, the new owners of Anki.
[ Vector ]
Pepper may not be in production anymore, but it’s still in active use, is supported, and is available for purchase.
[ RobotLab ]
Black in Robotics advocates for more diversity and inclusion in robotics, and helps to boost the voices of under-represented minorities in our field. If you missed this series of three videos that were part of the IROS program, they’re now on YouTube, and we’ve got them here for you.
[ Black in Robotics ] Continue reading
#439394 Video Friday: Walker X
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We’ll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!):
RSS 2021 – July 12-16, 2021 – [Online Event]
Humanoids 2020 – July 19-21, 2021 – [Online Event]
RO-MAN 2021 – August 8-12, 2021 – [Online Event]
DARPA SubT Finals – September 21-23, 2021 – Louisville, KY, USA
WeRobot 2021 – September 23-25, 2021 – Coral Gables, FL, USA
IROS 2021 – September 27-1, 2021 – [Online Event]
ROSCon 2021 – October 21-23, 2021 – New Orleans, LA, USA
Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today’s videos.
UBTECH Robotics, a global leader in intelligent humanoid robotics and AI technologies, today unveiled Walker X, the latest version of its groundbreaking bipedal humanoid robot. With significant improvement in physical performance, autonomous intelligence and human to robot interactions, Walker X took another step closer to becoming the gold standard in humanoid robotics.
This looks like a solid upgrade, with a 3 km/h top speed, “complex terrain navigation,” 3 kg of payload per hand, and UBTECH’s promise that the robot is compliant and safe to be around. But we’re not entirely sure what it actually, um, does, you know?
[ UBTECH ]
Everyone should be able to get into the game. Luna’s story inspired us to build: CHAMP. A robot that will bring kids who otherwise could not participate onto the field with US Soccer players all year.
The robot is based on Ohmnilabs' platform (which we reviewed a while back), in partnership with Volkswagen.
[ US Soccer ]
Thanks, Joseph!
This tail-less gecko robot from VISTEC in Thailand dynamically adjusts its climbing gait depending on how steep of a slope it’s trying to climb up.
It can avoid obstacles while climbing, too:
[ Paper ]
Thanks, Poramate!
GE Research’s Robotics team successfully demonstrated the feasibility of its bio-inspired soft robot design for rapid and efficient tunnel digging through a year and a half, $2.5 million project funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Underminer program. The team built and demonstrated a prototype that autonomously and continuously tunneled underground at GE’s Research campus in Niskayuna NY at a comparable distance to existing, commercially available trenchless technologies.
[ GE Research ]
Personally I wouldn't have chosen tree trimming as an ideal example of the kinds of intricate and dangerous tasks that the Sarcos Guardian XT is good for, but here it is anyway.
[ Sarcos ]
This summer, students from ETH Zurich will test various technologies on the river Limmat for the automatic removal of waste. The Autonomous River Cleanup project is starting with rivers to tackle the global problem of marine pollution.
[ ETH Zurich ]
Thanks, Fan!
The robotic arm on the China Space Station (CSS) is designed to help astronauts perform extravehicular activities. The space station arm is attached to the Tianhe core module, the first and main component of the CSS.
[ CMS ]
Thanks, Fan!
Tencent is working on some stylish gaits for a simulated quadruped.
Looks like this'll be an IROS paper in the fall.
[ Tencent ]
Thanks, Fan!
Dipper is an aerial-aquatic hybrid vehicle, capable of controlled motion in air and underwater. Dipper is a lightweight fixed-wind UAV with actively swept wings that achieves dynamic transitions between the two media. The vehicle has only one main propulsion motor, and uses a novel clutch system to engage either the front tractor propeller for flight in air, or the rear ship's screw propeller for underwater propulsion.
[ Dipper ]
For when you need to pipette something suuuper toxic, I guess?
[ Shadow ]
Some robotics companies look for ways to integrate autonomous systems into warehouses with a minimal amount of infrastructure. Ocado is not one of those companies.
I’m not sure that the question of whether this is one robot or many robots is all that relevant, to be honest. It’s a robotic system, and you can define robotic systems to be whatever you feel like, more or less.
[ Ocado ]
The European Robotic Arm (ERA) will be launched to the International Space Station together with the Russian Multipurpose Laboratory Module, called “Nauka.” ERA is the first robot able to “walk” around the Russian segment of the Space Station.
[ ESA ]
Fotokite Sigma provides public safety teams with mission-critical situational awareness from elevated perspectives. Fotokite’s actively tethered UAS (unmanned aerial system) saves team resources by launching, flying, and landing with the single push of a button; no piloting necessary. Fotokite Sigma is authorized and recognized by aviation authorities as a safer alternative to traditional tethered drone and free-flying public safety drone systems.
[ Fotokite ]
I know this is jut an end effector for making gloves on a Kuka arm, but if you were designing a robot to slap people in the face, this is exactly what it would look like.
[ Kuka ]
Vector 2.0 is still in the works at Digital Dream Labs, the new owners of Anki.
[ Vector ]
Pepper may not be in production anymore, but it’s still in active use, is supported, and is available for purchase.
[ RobotLab ]
Black in Robotics advocates for more diversity and inclusion in robotics, and helps to boost the voices of under-represented minorities in our field. If you missed this series of three videos that were part of the IROS program, they’re now on YouTube, and we’ve got them here for you.
[ Black in Robotics ] Continue reading
#438613 Video Friday: Digit Takes a Hike
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We’ll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!):
HRI 2021 – March 8-11, 2021 – [Online Conference]
RoboSoft 2021 – April 12-16, 2021 – [Online Conference]
ICRA 2021 – May 30-5, 2021 – Xi'an, China
Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos.
It's winter in Oregon, so everything is damp, all the time. No problem for Digit!
Also the case for summer in Oregon.
[ Agility Robotics ]
While other organisms form collective flocks, schools, or swarms for such purposes as mating, predation, and protection, the Lumbriculus variegatus worms are unusual in their ability to braid themselves together to accomplish tasks that unconnected individuals cannot. A new study reported by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology describes how the worms self-organize to act as entangled “active matter,” creating surprising collective behaviors whose principles have been applied to help blobs of simple robots evolve their own locomotion.
No, this doesn't squick me out at all, why would it.
[ Georgia Tech ]
A few years ago, we wrote about Zhifeng Huang's jet-foot equipped bipedal robot, and he's been continuing to work on it to the point where it can now step over gaps that are an absolutely astonishing 147% of its leg length.
[ Paper ]
Thanks Zhifeng!
The Inception Drive is a novel, ultra-compact design for an Infinitely Variable Transmission (IVT) that uses nested-pulleys to adjust the gear ratio between input and output shafts. This video shows the first proof-of-concept prototype for a “Fully Balanced” design, where the spinning masses within the drive are completely balanced to reduce vibration, thereby allowing the drive to operate more efficiently and at higher speeds than achievable on an unbalanced design.
As shown in this video, the Inception Drive can change both the speed and direction of rotation of the output shaft while keeping the direction and speed of the input shaft constant. This ability to adjust speed and direction within such a compact package makes the Inception Drive a compelling choice for machine designers in a wide variety of fields, including robotics, automotive, and renewable-energy generation.
[ SRI ]
Robots with kinematic loops are known to have superior mechanical performance. However, due to these loops, their modeling and control is challenging, and prevents a more widespread use. In this paper, we describe a versatile Inverse Kinematics (IK) formulation for the retargeting of expressive motions onto mechanical systems with loops.
[ Disney Research ]
Watch Engineered Arts put together one of its Mesmer robots in a not at all uncanny way.
[ Engineered Arts ]
There's been a bunch of interesting research into vision-based tactile sensing recently; here's some from Van Ho at JAIST:
[ Paper ]
Thanks Van!
This is really more of an automated system than a robot, but these little levitating pucks are very very slick.
ACOPOS 6D is based on the principle of magnetic levitation: Shuttles with integrated permanent magnets float over the surface of electromagnetic motor segments. The modular motor segments are 240 x 240 millimeters in size and can be arranged freely in any shape. A variety of shuttle sizes carry payloads of 0.6 to 14 kilograms and reach speeds of up to 2 meters per second. They can move freely in two-dimensional space, rotate and tilt along three axes and offer precise control over the height of levitation. All together, that gives them six degrees of motion control freedom.
[ ACOPOS ]
Navigation and motion control of a robot to a destination are tasks that have historically been performed with the assumption that contact with the environment is harmful. This makes sense for rigid-bodied robots where obstacle collisions are fundamentally dangerous. However, because many soft robots have bodies that are low-inertia and compliant, obstacle contact is inherently safe. We find that a planner that takes into account and capitalizes on environmental contact produces paths that are more robust to uncertainty than a planner that avoids all obstacle contact.
[ CHARM Lab ]
The quadrotor experts at UZH have been really cranking it up recently.
Aerodynamic forces render accurate high-speed trajectory tracking with quadrotors extremely challenging. These complex aerodynamic effects become a significant disturbance at high speeds, introducing large positional tracking errors, and are extremely difficult to model. To fly at high speeds, feedback control must be able to account for these aerodynamic effects in real-time. This necessitates a modelling procedure that is both accurate and efficient to evaluate. Therefore, we present an approach to model aerodynamic effects using Gaussian Processes, which we incorporate into a Model Predictive Controller to achieve efficient and precise real-time feedback control, leading to up to 70% reduction in trajectory tracking error at high speeds. We verify our method by extensive comparison to a state-of-the-art linear drag model in synthetic and real-world experiments at speeds of up to 14m/s and accelerations beyond 4g.
[ Paper ]
I have not heard much from Harvest Automation over the last couple years and their website was last updated in 2016, but I guess they're selling robots in France, so that's good?
[ Harvest Automation ]
Last year, Clearpath Robotics introduced a ROS package for Spot which enables robotics developers to leverage ROS capabilities out-of-the-box. Here at OTTO Motors, we thought it would be a compelling test case to see just how easy it would be to integrate Spot into our test fleet of OTTO materials handling robots.
[ OTTO Motors ]
Video showcasing recent robotics activities at PRISMA Lab, coordinated by Prof. Bruno Siciliano, at Università di Napoli Federico II.
[ PRISMA Lab ]
Thanks Fan!
State estimation framework developed by the team CoSTAR for the DARPA Subterranean Challenge, where the team achieved 2nd and 1st places in the Tunnel and Urban circuits.
[ Paper ]
Highlights from the 2020 ROS Industrial conference.
[ ROS Industrial ]
Thanks Thilo!
Not robotics, but entertaining anyway. From the CHI 1995 Technical Video Program, “The Tablet Newspaper: a Vision for the Future.”
[ CHI 1995 ]
This week's GRASP on Robotics seminar comes from Allison Okamura at Stanford, on “Wearable Haptic Devices for Ubiquitous Communication.”
Haptic devices allow touch-based information transfer between humans and intelligent systems, enabling communication in a salient but private manner that frees other sensory channels. For such devices to become ubiquitous, their physical and computational aspects must be intuitive and unobtrusive. We explore the design of a wide array of haptic feedback mechanisms, ranging from devices that can be actively touched by the fingertips to multi-modal haptic actuation mounted on the arm. We demonstrate how these devices are effective in virtual reality, human-machine communication, and human-human communication.
[ UPenn ] Continue reading