Tag Archives: carnegie
#436482 50+ Reasons Our Favorite Emerging ...
For most of history, technology was about atoms, the manipulation of physical stuff to extend humankind’s reach. But in the last five or six decades, atoms have partnered with bits, the elemental “particles” of the digital world as we know it today. As computing has advanced at the accelerating pace described by Moore’s Law, technological progress has become increasingly digitized.
SpaceX lands and reuses rockets and self-driving cars do away with drivers thanks to automation, sensors, and software. Businesses find and hire talent from anywhere in the world, and for better and worse, a notable fraction of the world learns and socializes online. From the sequencing of DNA to artificial intelligence and from 3D printing to robotics, more and more new technologies are moving at a digital pace and quickly emerging to reshape the world around us.
In 2019, stories charting the advances of some of these digital technologies consistently made headlines. Below is, what is at best, an incomplete list of some of the big stories that caught our eye this year. With so much happening, it’s likely we’ve missed some notable headlines and advances—as well as some of your personal favorites. In either instance, share your thoughts and candidates for the biggest stories and breakthroughs on Facebook and Twitter.
With that said, let’s dive straight into the year.
Artificial Intelligence
No technology garnered as much attention as AI in 2019. With good reason. Intelligent computer systems are transitioning from research labs to everyday life. Healthcare, weather forecasting, business process automation, traffic congestion—you name it, and machine learning algorithms are likely beginning to work on it. Yet, AI has also been hyped up and overmarketed, and the latest round of AI technology, deep learning, is likely only one piece of the AI puzzle.
This year, Open AI’s game-playing algorithms beat some of the world’s best Dota 2 players, DeepMind notched impressive wins in Starcraft, and Carnegie Mellon University’s Libratus “crushed” pros at six-player Texas Hold‘em.
Speaking of games, AI’s mastery of the incredibly complex game of Go prompted a former world champion to quit, stating that AI ‘”cannot be defeated.”
But it isn’t just fun and games. Practical, powerful applications that make the best of AI’s pattern recognition abilities are on the way. Insilico Medicine, for example, used machine learning to help discover and design a new drug in just 46 days, and DeepMind is focused on using AI to crack protein folding.
Of course, AI can be a double-edged sword. When it comes to deepfakes and fake news, for example, AI makes both easier to create and detect, and early in the year, OpenAI created and announced a powerful AI text generator but delayed releasing it for fear of malicious use.
Recognizing AI’s power for good and ill, the OECD, EU, World Economic Forum, and China all took a stab at defining an ethical framework for the development and deployment of AI.
Computing Systems
Processors and chips kickstarted the digital boom and are still the bedrock of continued growth. While progress in traditional silicon-based chips continues, it’s slowing and getting more expensive. Some say we’re reaching the end of Moore’s Law. While that may be the case for traditional chips, specialized chips and entirely new kinds of computing are waiting in the wings.
In fall 2019, Google confirmed its quantum computer had achieved “quantum supremacy,” a term that means a quantum computer can perform a calculation a normal computer cannot. IBM pushed back on the claim, and it should be noted the calculation was highly specialized. But while it’s still early days, there does appear to be some real progress (and more to come).
Should quantum computing become truly practical, “the implications are staggering.” It could impact machine learning, medicine, chemistry, and materials science, just to name a few areas.
Specialized chips continue to take aim at machine learning—a giant new chip with over a trillion transistors, for example, may make machine learning algorithms significantly more efficient.
Cellular computers also saw advances in 2019 thanks to CRISPR. And the year witnessed the emergence of the first reprogrammable DNA computer and new chips inspired by the brain.
The development of hardware computing platforms is intrinsically linked to software. 2019 saw a continued move from big technology companies towards open sourcing (at least parts of) their software, potentially democratizing the use of advanced systems.
Networks
Increasing interconnectedness has, in many ways, defined the 21st century so far. Your phone is no longer just a phone. It’s access to the world’s population and accumulated knowledge—and it fits in your pocket. Pretty neat. This is all thanks to networks, which had some notable advances in 2019.
The biggest network development of the year may well be the arrival of the first 5G networks.
5G’s faster speeds promise advances across many emerging technologies.
Self-driving vehicles, for example, may become both smarter and safer thanks to 5G C-V2X networks. (Don’t worry with trying to remember that. If they catch on, they’ll hopefully get a better name.)
Wi-Fi may have heard the news and said “hold my beer,” as 2019 saw the introduction of Wi-Fi 6. Perhaps the most important upgrade, among others, is that Wi-Fi 6 ensures that the ever-growing number of network connected devices get higher data rates.
Networks also went to space in 2019, as SpaceX began launching its Starlink constellation of broadband satellites. In typical fashion, Elon Musk showed off the network’s ability to bounce data around the world by sending a Tweet.
Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality
Forget Pokemon Go (unless you want to add me as a friend in the game—in which case don’t forget Pokemon Go). 2019 saw AR and VR advance, even as Magic Leap, the most hyped of the lot, struggled to live up to outsized expectations and sell headsets.
Mixed reality AR and VR technologies, along with the explosive growth of sensor-based data about the world around us, is creating a one-to-one “Mirror World” of our physical reality—a digital world you can overlay on our own or dive into immersively thanks to AR and VR.
Facebook launched Replica, for example, which is a photorealistic virtual twin of the real world that, among other things, will help train AIs to better navigate their physical surroundings.
Our other senses (beyond eyes) may also become part of the Mirror World through the use of peripherals like a newly developed synthetic skin that aim to bring a sense of touch to VR.
AR and VR equipment is also becoming cheaper—with more producers entering the space—and more user-friendly. Instead of a wired headset requiring an expensive gaming PC, the new Oculus Quest is a wireless, self-contained step toward the mainstream.
Niche uses also continue to gain traction, from Google Glass’s Enterprise edition to the growth of AR and VR in professional education—including on-the-job-training and roleplaying emotionally difficult work encounters, like firing an employee.
Digital Biology and Biotech
The digitization of biology is happening at an incredible rate. With wild new research coming to light every year and just about every tech giant pouring money into new solutions and startups, we’re likely to see amazing advances in 2020 added to those we saw in 2019.
None were, perhaps, more visible than the success of protein-rich, plant-based substitutes for various meats. This was the year Beyond Meat was the top IPO on the NASDAQ stock exchange and people stood in line for the plant-based Impossible Whopper and KFC’s Beyond Chicken.
In the healthcare space, a report about three people with HIV who became virus free thanks to a bone marrow transplants of stem cells caused a huge stir. The research is still in relatively early stages, and isn’t suitable for most people, but it does provides a glimmer of hope.
CRISPR technology, which almost deserves its own section, progressed by leaps and bounds. One tweak made CRISPR up to 50 times more accurate, while the latest new CRISPR-based system, CRISPR prime, was described as a “word processor” for gene editing.
Many areas of healthcare stand to gain from CRISPR. For instance, cancer treatment, were a first safety test showed ‘promising’ results.
CRISPR’s many potential uses, however, also include some weird/morally questionable areas, which was exemplified by one the year’s stranger CRISPR-related stories about a human-monkey hybrid embryo in China.
Incidentally, China could be poised to take the lead on CRISPR thanks to massive investments and research programs.
As a consequence of quick advances in gene editing, we are approaching a point where we will be able to design our own biology—but first we need to have a serious conversation as a society about the ethics of gene editing and what lines should be drawn.
3D Printing
3D printing has quietly been growing both market size and the objects the printers are capable of producing. While both are impressive, perhaps the biggest story of 2019 is their increased speed.
One example was a boat that was printed in just three days, which also set three new world records for 3D printing.
3D printing is also spreading in the construction industry. In Mexico, the technology is being used to construct 50 new homes with subsidized mortgages of just $20/month.
3D printers also took care of all parts of a 640 square-meter home in Dubai.
Generally speaking, the use of 3D printing to make parts for everything from rocket engines (even entire rockets) to trains to cars illustrates the sturdiness of the technology, anno 2019.
In healthcare, 3D printing is also advancing the cause of bio-printed organs and, in one example, was used to print vascularized parts of a human heart.
Robotics
Living in Japan, I get to see Pepper, Aibo, and other robots on pretty much a daily basis. The novelty of that experience is spreading to other countries, and robots are becoming a more visible addition to both our professional and private lives.
We can’t talk about robots and 2019 without mentioning Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot, which went on sale for the general public.
Meanwhile, Google, Boston Dynamics’ former owner, rebooted their robotics division with a more down-to-earth focus on everyday uses they hope to commercialize.
SoftBank’s Pepper robot is working as a concierge and receptionist in various countries. It is also being used as a home companion. Not satisfied, Pepper rounded off 2019 by heading to the gym—to coach runners.
Indeed, there’s a growing list of sports where robots perform as well—or better—than humans.
2019 also saw robots launch an assault on the kitchen, including the likes of Samsung’s robot chef, and invade the front yard, with iRobot’s Terra robotic lawnmower.
In the borderlands of robotics, full-body robotic exoskeletons got a bit more practical, as the (by all accounts) user-friendly, battery-powered Sarcos Robotics Guardian XO went commercial.
Autonomous Vehicles
Self-driving cars did not—if you will forgive the play on words—stay quite on track during 2019. The fallout from Uber’s 2018 fatal crash marred part of the year, while some big players ratcheted back expectations on a quick shift to the driverless future. Still, self-driving cars, trucks, and other autonomous systems did make progress this year.
Winner of my unofficial award for best name in self-driving goes to Optimus Ride. The company also illustrates that self-driving may not be about creating a one-size-fits-all solution but catering to specific markets.
Self-driving trucks had a good year, with tests across many countries and states. One of the year’s odder stories was a self-driving truck traversing the US with a delivery of butter.
A step above the competition may be the future slogan (or perhaps not) of Boeing’s self-piloted air taxi that saw its maiden test flight in 2019. It joins a growing list of companies looking to create autonomous, flying passenger vehicles.
2019 was also the year where companies seemed to go all in on last-mile autonomous vehicles. Who wins that particular competition could well emerge during 2020.
Blockchain and Digital Currencies
Bitcoin continues to be the cryptocurrency equivalent of a rollercoaster, but the underlying blockchain technology is progressing more steadily. Together, they may turn parts of our financial systems cashless and digital—though how and when remains a slightly open question.
One indication of this was Facebook’s hugely controversial announcement of Libra, its proposed cryptocurrency. The company faced immediate pushback and saw a host of partners jump ship. Still, it brought the tech into mainstream conversations as never before and is putting the pressure on governments and central banks to explore their own digital currencies.
Deloitte’s in-depth survey of the state of blockchain highlighted how the technology has moved from fintech into just about any industry you can think of.
One of the biggest issues facing the spread of many digital currencies—Bitcoin in particular, you could argue—is how much energy it consumes to mine them. 2019 saw the emergence of several new digital currencies with a much smaller energy footprint.
2019 was also a year where we saw a new kind of digital currency, stablecoins, rise to prominence. As the name indicates, stablecoins are a group of digital currencies whose price fluctuations are more stable than the likes of Bitcoin.
In a geopolitical sense, 2019 was a year of China playing catch-up. Having initially banned blockchain, the country turned 180 degrees and announced that it was “quite close” to releasing a digital currency and a wave of blockchain-programs.
Renewable Energy and Energy Storage
While not every government on the planet seems to be a fan of renewable energy, it keeps on outperforming fossil fuel after fossil fuel in places well suited to it—even without support from some of said governments.
One of the reasons for renewable energy’s continued growth is that energy efficiency levels keep on improving.
As a result, an increased number of coal plants are being forced to close due to an inability to compete, and the UK went coal-free for a record two weeks.
We are also seeing more and more financial institutions refusing to fund fossil fuel projects. One such example is the European Investment Bank.
Renewable energy’s advance is tied at the hip to the rise of energy storage, which also had a breakout 2019, in part thanks to investments from the likes of Bill Gates.
The size and capabilities of energy storage also grew in 2019. The best illustration came from Australia were Tesla’s mega-battery proved that energy storage has reached a stage where it can prop up entire energy grids.
Image Credit: Mathew Schwartz / Unsplash Continue reading →
Posted in Human Robots
#436186 Video Friday: Invasion of the Mini ...
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!):
DARPA SubT Urban Circuit – February 18-27, 2020 – Olympia, Wash., USA
Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today’s videos.
There will be a Mini-Cheetah Workshop (sponsored by Naver Labs) a year from now at IROS 2020 in Las Vegas. Mini-Cheetahs for everyone!
That’s just a rendering, of course, but this isn’t:
[ MCW ]
I was like 95 percent sure that the Urban Circuit of the DARPA SubT Challenge was going to be in something very subway station-y. Oops!
In the Subterranean (SubT) Challenge, teams deploy autonomous ground and aerial systems to attempt to map, identify, and report artifacts along competition courses in underground environments. The artifacts represent items a first responder or service member may encounter in unknown underground sites. This video provides a preview of the Urban Circuit event location. The Urban Circuit is scheduled for February 18-27, 2020, at Satsop Business Park west of Olympia, Washington.
[ SubT ]
Researchers at SEAS and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering have developed a resilient RoboBee powered by soft artificial muscles that can crash into walls, fall onto the floor, and collide with other RoboBees without being damaged. It is the first microrobot powered by soft actuators to achieve controlled flight.
To solve the problem of power density, the researchers built upon the electrically-driven soft actuators developed in the lab of David Clarke, the Extended Tarr Family Professor of Materials. These soft actuators are made using dielectric elastomers, soft materials with good insulating properties, that deform when an electric field is applied. By improving the electrode conductivity, the researchers were able to operate the actuator at 500 Hertz, on par with the rigid actuators used previously in similar robots.
Next, the researchers aim to increase the efficiency of the soft-powered robot, which still lags far behind more traditional flying robots.
[ Harvard ]
We present a system for fast and robust handovers with a robot character, together with a user study investigating the effect of robot speed and reaction time on perceived interaction quality. The system can match and exceed human speeds and confirms that users prefer human-level timing.
In a 3×3 user study, we vary the speed of the robot and add variable sensorimotor delays. We evaluate the social perception of the robot using the Robot Social Attribute Scale (RoSAS). Inclusion of a small delay, mimicking the delay of the human sensorimotor system, leads to an improvement in perceived qualities over both no delay and long delay conditions. Specifically, with no delay the robot is perceived as more discomforting and with a long delay, it is perceived as less warm.
[ Disney Research ]
When cars are autonomous, they’re not going to be able to pump themselves full of gas. Or, more likely, electrons. Kuka has the solution.
[ Kuka ]
This looks like fun, right?
[ Robocoaster ]
NASA is leading the way in the use of On-orbit Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing to enable large, persistent, upgradable, and maintainable spacecraft. This video was developed by the Advanced Concepts Lab (ACL) at NASA Langley Research Center.
[ NASA ]
The noisiest workshop by far at Humanoids last month (by far) was Musical Interactions With Humanoids, the end result of which was this:
[ Workshop ]
IROS is an IEEE event, and in furthering the IEEE mission to benefit humanity through technological innovation, IROS is doing a great job. But don’t take it from us – we are joined by IEEE President-Elect Professor Toshio Fukuda to find out a bit more about the impact events like IROS can have, as well as examine some of the issues around intelligent robotics and systems – from privacy to transparency of the systems at play.
[ IROS ]
Speaking of IROS, we hope you’ve been enjoying our coverage. We have already featured Harvard’s strange sea-urchin-inspired robot and a Japanese quadruped that can climb vertical ladders, with more stories to come over the next several weeks.
In the mean time, enjoy these 10 videos from the conference (as usual, we’re including the title, authors, and abstract for each—if you’d like more details about any of these projects, let us know and we’ll find out more for you).
“A Passive Closing, Tendon Driven, Adaptive Robot Hand for Ultra-Fast, Aerial Grasping and Perching,” by Andrew McLaren, Zak Fitzgerald, Geng Gao, and Minas Liarokapis from the University of Auckland, New Zealand.
Current grasping methods for aerial vehicles are slow, inaccurate and they cannot adapt to any target object. Thus, they do not allow for on-the-fly, ultra-fast grasping. In this paper, we present a passive closing, adaptive robot hand design that offers ultra-fast, aerial grasping for a wide range of everyday objects. We investigate alternative uses of structural compliance for the development of simple, adaptive robot grippers and hands and we propose an appropriate quick release mechanism that facilitates an instantaneous grasping execution. The quick release mechanism is triggered by a simple distance sensor. The proposed hand utilizes only two actuators to control multiple degrees of freedom over three fingers and it retains the superior grasping capabilities of adaptive grasping mechanisms, even under significant object pose or other environmental uncertainties. The hand achieves a grasping time of 96 ms, a maximum grasping force of 56 N and it is able to secure objects of various shapes at high speeds. The proposed hand can serve as the end-effector of grasping capable Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) platforms and it can offer perching capabilities, facilitating autonomous docking.
“Unstructured Terrain Navigation and Topographic Mapping With a Low-Cost Mobile Cuboid Robot,” by Andrew S. Morgan, Robert L. Baines, Hayley McClintock, and Brian Scassellati from Yale University, USA.
Current robotic terrain mapping techniques require expensive sensor suites to construct an environmental representation. In this work, we present a cube-shaped robot that can roll through unstructured terrain and construct a detailed topographic map of the surface that it traverses in real time with low computational and monetary expense. Our approach devolves many of the complexities of locomotion and mapping to passive mechanical features. Namely, rolling movement is achieved by sequentially inflating latex bladders that are located on four sides of the robot to destabilize and tip it. Sensing is achieved via arrays of fine plastic pins that passively conform to the geometry of underlying terrain, retracting into the cube. We developed a topography by shade algorithm to process images of the displaced pins to reconstruct terrain contours and elevation. We experimentally validated the efficacy of the proposed robot through object mapping and terrain locomotion tasks.
“Toward a Ballbot for Physically Leading People: A Human-Centered Approach,” by Zhongyu Li and Ralph Hollis from Carnegie Mellon University, USA.
This work presents a new human-centered method for indoor service robots to provide people with physical assistance and active guidance while traveling through congested and narrow spaces. As most previous work is robot-centered, this paper develops an end-to-end framework which includes a feedback path of the measured human positions. The framework combines a planning algorithm and a human-robot interaction module to guide the led person to a specified planned position. The approach is deployed on a person-size dynamically stable mobile robot, the CMU ballbot. Trials were conducted where the ballbot physically led a blindfolded person to safely navigate in a cluttered environment.
“Achievement of Online Agile Manipulation Task for Aerial Transformable Multilink Robot,” by Fan Shi, Moju Zhao, Tomoki Anzai, Keita Ito, Xiangyu Chen, Kei Okada, and Masayuki Inaba from the University of Tokyo, Japan.
Transformable aerial robots are favorable in aerial manipulation tasks for their flexible ability to change configuration during the flight. By assuming robot keeping in the mild motion, the previous researches sacrifice aerial agility to simplify the complex non-linear system into a single rigid body with a linear controller. In this paper, we present a framework towards agile swing motion for the transformable multi-links aerial robot. We introduce a computational-efficient non-linear model predictive controller and joints motion primitive frame-work to achieve agile transforming motions and validate with a novel robot named HYRURS-X. Finally, we implement our framework under a table tennis task to validate the online and agile performance.
“Small-Scale Compliant Dual Arm With Tail for Winged Aerial Robots,” by Alejandro Suarez, Manuel Perez, Guillermo Heredia, and Anibal Ollero from the University of Seville, Spain.
Winged aerial robots represent an evolution of aerial manipulation robots, replacing the multirotor vehicles by fixed or flapping wing platforms. The development of this morphology is motivated in terms of efficiency, endurance and safety in some inspection operations where multirotor platforms may not be suitable. This paper presents a first prototype of compliant dual arm as preliminary step towards the realization of a winged aerial robot capable of perching and manipulating with the wings folded. The dual arm provides 6 DOF (degrees of freedom) for end effector positioning in a human-like kinematic configuration, with a reach of 25 cm (half-scale w.r.t. the human arm), and 0.2 kg weight. The prototype is built with micro metal gear motors, measuring the joint angles and the deflection with small potentiometers. The paper covers the design, electronics, modeling and control of the arms. Experimental results in test-bench validate the developed prototype and its functionalities, including joint position and torque control, bimanual grasping, the dynamic equilibrium with the tail, and the generation of 3D maps with laser sensors attached at the arms.
“A Novel Small-Scale Turtle-inspired Amphibious Spherical Robot,” by Huiming Xing, Shuxiang Guo, Liwei Shi, Xihuan Hou, Yu Liu, Huikang Liu, Yao Hu, Debin Xia, and Zan Li from Beijing Institute of Technology, China.
This paper describes a novel small-scale turtle-inspired Amphibious Spherical Robot (ASRobot) to accomplish exploration tasks in the restricted environment, such as amphibious areas and narrow underwater cave. A Legged, Multi-Vectored Water-Jet Composite Propulsion Mechanism (LMVWCPM) is designed with four legs, one of which contains three connecting rod parts, one water-jet thruster and three joints driven by digital servos. Using this mechanism, the robot is able to walk like amphibious turtles on various terrains and swim flexibly in submarine environment. A simplified kinematic model is established to analyze crawling gaits. With simulation of the crawling gait, the driving torques of different joints contributed to the choice of servos and the size of links of legs. Then we also modeled the robot in water and proposed several underwater locomotion. In order to assess the performance of the proposed robot, a series of experiments were carried out in the lab pool and on flat ground using the prototype robot. Experiments results verified the effectiveness of LMVWCPM and the amphibious control approaches.
“Advanced Autonomy on a Low-Cost Educational Drone Platform,” by Luke Eller, Theo Guerin, Baichuan Huang, Garrett Warren, Sophie Yang, Josh Roy, and Stefanie Tellex from Brown University, USA.
PiDrone is a quadrotor platform created to accompany an introductory robotics course. Students build an autonomous flying robot from scratch and learn to program it through assignments and projects. Existing educational robots do not have significant autonomous capabilities, such as high-level planning and mapping. We present a hardware and software framework for an autonomous aerial robot, in which all software for autonomy can run onboard the drone, implemented in Python. We present an Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF) for accurate state estimation. Next, we present an implementation of Monte Carlo (MC) Localization and Fast-SLAM for Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM). The performance of UKF, localization, and SLAM is tested and compared to ground truth, provided by a motion-capture system. Our evaluation demonstrates that our autonomous educational framework runs quickly and accurately on a Raspberry Pi in Python, making it ideal for use in educational settings.
“FlightGoggles: Photorealistic Sensor Simulation for Perception-driven Robotics using Photogrammetry and Virtual Reality,” by Winter Guerra, Ezra Tal, Varun Murali, Gilhyun Ryou and Sertac Karaman from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA.
FlightGoggles is a photorealistic sensor simulator for perception-driven robotic vehicles. The key contributions of FlightGoggles are twofold. First, FlightGoggles provides photorealistic exteroceptive sensor simulation using graphics assets generated with photogrammetry. Second, it provides the ability to combine (i) synthetic exteroceptive measurements generated in silico in real time and (ii) vehicle dynamics and proprioceptive measurements generated in motio by vehicle(s) in flight in a motion-capture facility. FlightGoggles is capable of simulating a virtual-reality environment around autonomous vehicle(s) in flight. While a vehicle is in flight in the FlightGoggles virtual reality environment, exteroceptive sensors are rendered synthetically in real time while all complex dynamics are generated organically through natural interactions of the vehicle. The FlightGoggles framework allows for researchers to accelerate development by circumventing the need to estimate complex and hard-to-model interactions such as aerodynamics, motor mechanics, battery electrochemistry, and behavior of other agents. The ability to perform vehicle-in-the-loop experiments with photorealistic exteroceptive sensor simulation facilitates novel research directions involving, e.g., fast and agile autonomous flight in obstacle-rich environments, safe human interaction, and flexible sensor selection. FlightGoggles has been utilized as the main test for selecting nine teams that will advance in the AlphaPilot autonomous drone racing challenge. We survey approaches and results from the top AlphaPilot teams, which may be of independent interest. FlightGoggles is distributed as open-source software along with the photorealistic graphics assets for several simulation environments, under the MIT license at http://flightgoggles.mit.edu.
“An Autonomous Quadrotor System for Robust High-Speed Flight Through Cluttered Environments Without GPS,” by Marc Rigter, Benjamin Morrell, Robert G. Reid, Gene B. Merewether, Theodore Tzanetos, Vinay Rajur, KC Wong, and Larry H. Matthies from University of Sydney, Australia; NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, USA; and Georgia Institute of Technology, USA.
Robust autonomous flight without GPS is key to many emerging drone applications, such as delivery, search and rescue, and warehouse inspection. These and other appli- cations require accurate trajectory tracking through cluttered static environments, where GPS can be unreliable, while high- speed, agile, flight can increase efficiency. We describe the hardware and software of a quadrotor system that meets these requirements with onboard processing: a custom 300 mm wide quadrotor that uses two wide-field-of-view cameras for visual- inertial motion tracking and relocalization to a prior map. Collision-free trajectories are planned offline and tracked online with a custom tracking controller. This controller includes compensation for drag and variability in propeller performance, enabling accurate trajectory tracking, even at high speeds where aerodynamic effects are significant. We describe a system identification approach that identifies quadrotor-specific parameters via maximum likelihood estimation from flight data. Results from flight experiments are presented, which 1) validate the system identification method, 2) show that our controller with aerodynamic compensation reduces tracking error by more than 50% in both horizontal flights at up to 8.5 m/s and vertical flights at up to 3.1 m/s compared to the state-of-the-art, and 3) demonstrate our system tracking complex, aggressive, trajectories.
“Morphing Structure for Changing Hydrodynamic Characteristics of a Soft Underwater Walking Robot,” by Michael Ishida, Dylan Drotman, Benjamin Shih, Mark Hermes, Mitul Luhar, and Michael T. Tolley from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and University of Southern California, USA.
Existing platforms for underwater exploration and inspection are often limited to traversing open water and must expend large amounts of energy to maintain a position in flow for long periods of time. Many benthic animals overcome these limitations using legged locomotion and have different hydrodynamic profiles dictated by different body morphologies. This work presents an underwater legged robot with soft legs and a soft inflatable morphing body that can change shape to influence its hydrodynamic characteristics. Flow over the morphing body separates behind the trailing edge of the inflated shape, so whether the protrusion is at the front, center, or back of the robot influences the amount of drag and lift. When the legged robot (2.87 N underwater weight) needs to remain stationary in flow, an asymmetrically inflated body resists sliding by reducing lift on the body by 40% (from 0.52 N to 0.31 N) at the highest flow rate tested while only increasing drag by 5.5% (from 1.75 N to 1.85 N). When the legged robot needs to walk with flow, a large inflated body is pushed along by the flow, causing the robot to walk 16% faster than it would with an uninflated body. The body shape significantly affects the ability of the robot to walk against flow as it is able to walk against 0.09 m/s flow with the uninflated body, but is pushed backwards with a large inflated body. We demonstrate that the robot can detect changes in flow velocity with a commercial force sensor and respond by morphing into a hydrodynamically preferable shape. Continue reading →
Posted in Human Robots
#435828 Video Friday: Boston Dynamics’ ...
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!):
RoboBusiness 2019 – October 1-3, 2019 – Santa Clara, Calif., USA
ISRR 2019 – October 6-10, 2019 – Hanoi, Vietnam
Ro-Man 2019 – October 14-18, 2019 – New Delhi, India
Humanoids 2019 – October 15-17, 2019 – Toronto, Canada
ARSO 2019 – October 31-1, 2019 – Beijing, China
ROSCon 2019 – October 31-1, 2019 – Macau
IROS 2019 – November 4-8, 2019 – Macau
Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today’s videos.
You’ve almost certainly seen the new Spot and Atlas videos from Boston Dynamics, if for no other reason than we posted about Spot’s commercial availability earlier this week. But what, are we supposed to NOT include them in Video Friday anyway? Psh! Here you go:
[ Boston Dynamics ]
Eight deadly-looking robots. One Giant Nut trophy. Tonight is the BattleBots season finale, airing on Discovery, 8 p.m. ET, or check your local channels.
[ BattleBots ]
Thanks Trey!
Speaking of battling robots… Having giant robots fight each other is one of those things that sounds really great in theory, but doesn’t work out so well in reality. And sadly, MegaBots is having to deal with reality, which means putting their giant fighting robot up on eBay.
As of Friday afternoon, the current bid is just over $100,000 with a week to go.
[ MegaBots ]
Michigan Engineering has figured out the secret formula to getting 150,000 views on YouTube: drone plus nail gun.
[ Michigan Engineering ]
Michael Burke from the University of Edinburgh writes:
We’ve been learning to scoop grapefruit segments using a PR2, by “feeling” the difference between peel and pulp. We use joint torque measurements to predict the probability that the knife is in the peel or pulp, and use this to apply feedback control to a nominal cutting trajectory learned from human demonstration, so that we remain in a position of maximum uncertainty about which medium we’re cutting. This means we slice along the boundary between the two mediums. It works pretty well!
[ Paper ] via [ Robust Autonomy and Decisions Group ]
Thanks Michael!
Hey look, it’s Jan with eight EMYS robot heads. Hi, Jan! Hi, EMYSes!
[ EMYS ]
We’re putting the KRAKEN Arm through its paces, demonstrating that it can unfold from an Express Rack locker on the International Space Station and access neighboring lockers in NASA’s FabLab system to enable transfer of materials and parts between manufacturing, inspection, and storage stations. The KRAKEN arm will be able to change between multiple ’end effector’ tools such as grippers and inspection sensors – those are in development so they’re not shown in this video.
[ Tethers Unlimited ]
UBTECH’s Alpha Mini Robot with Smart Robot’s “Maatje” software is offering healthcare service to children at Praktijk Intraverte Multidisciplinary Institution in Netherlands.
This institution is using Alpha Mini in counseling children’s behavior. Alpha Mini can move and talk to children and offers games and activities to stimulate and interact with them. Alpha Mini talks, helps and motivates children thereby becoming more flexible in society.
[ UBTECH ]
Some impressive work here from Anusha Nagabandi, Kurt Konoglie, Sergey Levine, Vikash Kumar at Google Brain, training a dexterous multi-fingered hand to do that thing with two balls that I’m really bad at.
Dexterous multi-fingered hands can provide robots with the ability to flexibly perform a wide range of manipulation skills. However, many of the more complex behaviors are also notoriously difficult to control: Performing in-hand object manipulation, executing finger gaits to move objects, and exhibiting precise fine motor skills such as writing, all require finely balancing contact forces, breaking and reestablishing contacts repeatedly, and maintaining control of unactuated objects. In this work, we demonstrate that our method of online planning with deep dynamics models (PDDM) addresses both of these limitations; we show that improvements in learned dynamics models, together with improvements in online model-predictive control, can indeed enable efficient and effective learning of flexible contact-rich dexterous manipulation skills — and that too, on a 24-DoF anthropomorphic hand in the real world, using just 2-4 hours of purely real-world data to learn to simultaneously coordinate multiple free-floating objects.
[ PDDM ]
Thanks Vikash!
CMU’s Ballbot has a deceptively light touch that’s ideal for leading people around.
A paper on this has been submitted to IROS 2019.
[ CMU ]
The Autonomous Robots Lab at the University of Nevada is sharing some of the work they’ve done on path planning and exploration for aerial robots during the DARPA SubT Challenge.
[ Autonomous Robots Lab ]
More proof that anything can be a drone if you staple some motors to it. Even 32 feet of styrofoam insulation.
[ YouTube ]
Whatever you think of military drones, we can all agree that they look cool.
[ Boeing ]
I appreciate the fact that iCub has eyelids, I really do, but sometimes, it ends up looking kinda sleepy in research videos.
[ EPFL LASA ]
Video shows autonomous flight of a lightweight aerial vehicle outdoors and indoors on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University. The vehicle is equipped with limited onboard sensing from a front-facing camera and a proximity sensor. The aerial autonomy is enabled by utilizing a 3D prior map built in Step 1.
[ CMU ]
The Stanford Space Robotics Facility allows researchers to test innovative guidance and navigation algorithms on a realistic frictionless, underactuated system.
[ Stanford ASL ]
In this video, Ian and CP discuss Misty’s many capabilities including robust locomotion, obstacle avoidance, 3D mapping/SLAM, face detection and recognition, sound localization, hardware extensibility, photo and video capture, and programmable personality. They also talk about some of the skills he’s built using these capabilities (and others) and how those skills can be expanded upon by you.
[ Misty Robotics ]
This week’s CMU RI Seminar comes from Aaron Parness at Caltech and NASA JPL, on “Robotic Grippers for Planetary Applications.”
The previous generation of NASA missions to the outer solar system discovered salt water oceans on Europa and Enceladus, each with more liquid water than Earth – compelling targets to look for extraterrestrial life. Closer to home, JAXA and NASA have imaged sky-light entrances to lava tube caves on the Moon more than 100 m in diameter and ESA has characterized the incredibly varied and complex terrain of Comet 67P. While JPL has successfully landed and operated four rovers on the surface of Mars using a 6-wheeled rocker-bogie architecture, future missions will require new mobility architectures for these extreme environments. Unfortunately, the highest value science targets often lie in the terrain that is hardest to access. This talk will explore robotic grippers that enable missions to these extreme terrains through their ability to grip a wide variety of surfaces (shapes, sizes, and geotechnical properties). To prepare for use in space where repair or replacement is not possible, we field-test these grippers and robots in analog extreme terrain on Earth. Many of these systems are enabled by advances in autonomy. The talk will present a rapid overview of my work and a detailed case study of an underactuated rock gripper for deflecting asteroids.
[ CMU ]
Rod Brooks gives some of the best robotics talks ever. He gave this one earlier this week at UC Berkeley, on “Steps Toward Super Intelligence and the Search for a New Path.”
[ UC Berkeley ] Continue reading →
Posted in Human Robots
#435731 Video Friday: NASA Is Sending This ...
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!):
MARSS 2019 – July 1-5, 2019 – Helsinki, Finland
ICRES 2019 – July 29-30, 2019 – London, UK
DARPA SubT Tunnel Circuit – August 15-22, 2019 – Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today’s videos.
The big news today is that NASA is sending a robot to Saturn’s moon Titan. A flying robot. The Dragonfly mission will launch in 2026 and arrive in 2034, but you knew that already, because last January, we posted a detailed article about the concept from the Applied Physics Lab at Johns Hopkins University. And now it’s not a concept anymore, yay!
Again, read all the details plus an interview in 2018 article.
[ NASA ]
A robotic gripping arm that uses engineered bacteria to “taste” for a specific chemical has been developed by engineers at the University of California, Davis, and Carnegie Mellon University. The gripper is a proof-of-concept for biologically-based soft robotics.
The new device uses a biosensing module based on E. coli bacteria engineered to respond to the chemical IPTG by producing a fluorescent protein. The bacterial cells reside in wells with a flexible, porous membrane that allows chemicals to enter but keeps the cells inside. This biosensing module is built into the surface of a flexible gripper on a robotic arm, so the gripper can “taste” the environment through its fingers.
When IPTG crosses the membrane into the chamber, the cells fluoresce and electronic circuits inside the module detect the light. The electrical signal travels to the gripper’s control unit, which can decide whether to pick something up or release it.
[ UC Davis ]
The Toyota Research Institute (TRI) is taking on the hard problems in manipulation research toward making human-assist robots reliable and robust. Dr. Russ Tedrake, TRI Vice President of Robotics Research, explains how we are exploring the challenges and addressing the reliability gap by using a robot loading dishes in a dishwasher as an example task.
[ TRI ]
The Tactile Telerobot is the world’s first haptic telerobotic system that transmits realistic touch feedback to an operator located anywhere in the world. It is the product of joint collaboration between Shadow Robot Company, HaptX, and SynTouch. All Nippon Airways funded the project’s initial research and development.
What’s really unique about this is the HaptX tactile feedback system, which is something we’ve been following for several years now. It’s one of the most magical tech experiences I’ve ever had, and you can read about it here and here.
[ HaptX ]
Thanks Andrew!
I love how snake robots can emulate some of the fanciest moves of real snakes, and then also do bonkers things that real snakes never do.
[ Matsuno Lab ]
Here are a couple interesting videos from the Human-Robot Interaction Lab at Tufts.
A robot is instructed to perform an action and cannot do it due to lack of sensors. But when another robot is placed nearby, it can execute the instruction by tacitly tapping into the other robot’s mind and using that robot’s sensors for its own actions. Yes, it’s automatic, and yes, it’s the BORG!
Two Nao robots are instructed to perform a dance and are able to do it right after instruction. Moreover, they can switch roles immediately, and even a third different PR2 robot can perform the dance right away, demonstrating the ability of our DIARC architecture to learn quickly and share the knowledge with any type of robot running the architecture.
Compared to Nao, PR2 just sounds… depressed.
[ HRI Lab ]
This work explores the problem of robot tool construction – creating tools from parts available in the environment. We advance the state-of-the-art in robotic tool construction by introducing an approach that enables the robot to construct a wider range of tools with greater computational efficiency. Specifically, given an action that the robot wishes to accomplish and a set of building parts available to the robot, our approach reasons about the shape of the parts and potential ways of attaching them, generating a ranking of part combinations that the robot then uses to construct and test the target tool. We validate our approach on the construction of five tools using a physical 7-DOF robot arm.
[ RAIL Lab ] via [ RSS ]
We like Magazino’s approach to warehouse picking- constrain the problem to something you can reliably solve, like shoeboxes.
Magazino has announced a new pricing model for their robots. You pay 55k euros for the robot itself, and then after that, all you pay to keep the robot working is 6 cents per pick, so the robot is only costing you money for the work that it actually does.
[ Magazino ]
Thanks Florin!
Human-Robot Collaborations are happening across factories worldwide, yet very few are using it for smaller businesses, due to high costs or the difficulty of customization. Elephant Robotics, a new player from Shenzhen, the Silicon Valley of Asia, has set its sight on helping smaller businesses gain access to smart robotics. They created a Catbot (a collaborative robotic arm) that will offer high efficiency and flexibility to various industries.
The Catbot is set to help from education projects, photography, massaging, to being a personal barista or co-playing a table game. The customizations are endless. To increase the flexibility of usage, the Catbot is extremely easy to program from a high precision task up to covering hefty ground projects.
[ Elephant Robotics ]
Thanks Johnson!
Dronistics, an EPFL spin-off, has been testing out their enclosed delivery drone in the Dominican Republic through a partnership with WeRobotics.
[ WeRobotics ]
QTrobot is an expressive humanoid robot designed to help children with autism spectrum disorder and children with special educational needs in learning new skills. QTrobot uses simple and exaggerated facial expressions combined by interactive games and stories, to help children improve their emotional skills. QTrobot helps children to learn about and better understand the emotions and teach them strategies to handle their emotions more effectively.
[ LuxAI ]
Here’s a typical day in the life of a Tertill solar-powered autonomous weed-destroying robot.
$300, now shipping from Franklin Robotics.
[ Tertill ]
PAL Robotics is excited to announce a new TIAGo with two arms, TIAGo++! After carefully listening to the robotics community needs, we used TIAGo’s modularity to integrate two 7-DoF arms to our mobile manipulator. TIAGo++ can help you swiftly accomplish your research goals, opening endless possibilities in mobile manipulation.
[ PAL Robotics ]
Thanks Jack!
You’ve definitely already met the Cobalt security robot, but Toyota AI Ventures just threw a pile of money at them and would therefore like you to experience this re-introduction:
[ Cobalt Robotics ] via [ Toyota AI ]
ROSIE is a mobile manipulator kit from HEBI Robotics. And if you don’t like ROSIE, the modular nature of HEBI’s hardware means that you can take her apart and make something more interesting.
[ HEBI Robotics ]
Learn about Kawasaki Robotics’ second addition to their line of duAro dual-arm collaborative robots, duAro2. This model offers an extended vertical reach (550 mm) and an increased payload capacity (3 kg/arm).
[ Kawasaki Robotics ]
Drone Delivery Canada has partnered with Peel Region Paramedics to pilot its proprietary drone delivery platform to enable rapid first responder technology via drone with the goal to reduce response time and potentially save lives.
[ Drone Delivery Canada ]
In this week’s episode of Robots in Depth, Per speaks with Harri Ketamo, from Headai.
Harri Ketamo talks about AI and how he aims to mimic human decision making with algorithms. Harri has done a lot of AI for computer games to create opponents that are entertaining to play against. It is easy to develop a very bad or a very good opponent, but designing an opponent that behaves like a human, is entertaining to play against and that you can beat is quite hard. He talks about how AI in computer games is a very important story telling tool and an important part of making a game entertaining to play.
This work led him into other parts of the AI field. Harri thinks that we sometimes have a problem separating what is real from what is the type of story telling he knows from gaming AI. He calls for critical analysis of AI and says that data has to be used to verify AI decisions and results.
[ Robots in Depth ]
Thanks Per! Continue reading →
Posted in Human Robots
#435658 Video Friday: A Two-Armed Robot That ...
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!):
ICRES 2019 – July 29-30, 2019 – London, U.K.
DARPA SubT Tunnel Circuit – August 15-22, 2019 – Pittsburgh, Pa., USA
IEEE Africon 2019 – September 25-27, 2019 – Accra, Ghana
ISRR 2019 – October 6-10, 2019 – Hanoi, Vietnam
Ro-Man 2019 – October 14-18, 2019 – New Delhi, India
Humanoids 2019 – October 15-17, 2019 – Toronto, Canada
Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today’s videos.
I’m sure you’ve seen this video already because you read this blog every day, but if you somehow missed it because you were skiing across Antarctica (the only valid excuse we’re accepting today), here’s our video introducing HMI’s Aquanaut transforming robot submarine.
And after you recover from all that frostbite, make sure and read our in-depth feature article here.
[ Aquanaut ]
Last week we complained about not having seen a ballbot with a manipulator, so Roberto from CMU shared a new video of their ballbot, featuring a pair of 7-DoF arms.
We should learn more at Humanoids 2019.
[ CMU ]
Thanks Roberto!
The FAA is making it easier for recreational drone pilots to get near-realtime approval to fly in lightly controlled airspace.
[ LAANC ]
Self-reconfigurable modular robots are usually composed of multiple modules with uniform docking interfaces that can be transformed into different configurations by themselves. The reconfiguration planning problem is finding what sequence of reconfiguration actions are required for one arrangement of modules to transform into another. We present a novel reconfiguration planning algorithm for modular robots. The algorithm compares the initial configuration with the goal configuration efficiently. The reconfiguration actions can be executed in a distributed manner so that each module can efficiently finish its reconfiguration task which results in a global reconfiguration for the system. In the end, the algorithm is demonstrated on real modular robots and some example reconfiguration tasks are provided.
[ CKbot ]
A nice design of a gripper that uses a passive thumb of sorts to pick up flat objects from flat surfaces.
[ Paper ] via [ Laval University ]
I like this video of a palletizing robot from Kawasaki because in the background you can see a human doing the exact same job and obviously not enjoying it.
[ Kawasaki ]
This robot cleans and “brings joy and laughter.” What else do we need?
I do appreciate that all the robots are named Leo, and that they’re also all female.
[ LionsBot ]
This is less of a dishwashing robot and more of a dishsorting robot, but we’ll forgive it because it doesn’t drop a single dish.
[ TechMagic ]
Thanks Ryosuke!
A slight warning here that the robot in the following video (which costs something like $180,000) appears “naked” in some scenes, none of which are strictly objectionable, we hope.
Beautifully slim and delicate motion life-size motion figures are ideal avatars for expressing emotions to customers in various arts, content and businesses. We can provide a system that integrates not only motion figures but all moving devices.
[ Speecys ]
The best way to operate a Husky with a pair of manipulators on it is to become the robot.
[ UT Austin ]
The FlyJacket drone control system from EPFL has been upgraded so that it can yank you around a little bit.
In several fields of human-machine interaction, haptic guidance has proven to be an effective training tool for enhancing user performance. This work presents the results of psychophysical and motor learning studies that were carried out with human participant to assess the effect of cable-driven haptic guidance for a task involving aerial robotic teleoperation. The guidance system was integrated into an exosuit, called the FlyJacket, that was developed to control drones with torso movements. Results for the Just Noticeable Difference (JND) and from the Stevens Power Law suggest that the perception of force on the users’ torso scales linearly with the amplitude of the force exerted through the cables and the perceived force is close to the magnitude of the stimulus. Motor learning studies reveal that this form of haptic guidance improves user performance in training, but this improvement is not retained when participants are evaluated without guidance.
[ EPFL ]
The SAND Challenge is an opportunity for small businesses to compete in an autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) competition to help NASA address safety-critical risks associated with flying UAVs in the national airspace. Set in a post-natural disaster scenario, SAND will push the envelope of aviation.
[ NASA ]
Legged robots have the potential to traverse diverse and rugged terrain. To find a safe and efficient navigation path and to carefully select individual footholds, it is useful to predict properties of the terrain ahead of the robot. In this work, we propose a method to collect data from robot-terrain interaction and associate it to images, to then train a neural network to predict terrain properties from images.
[ RSL ]
Misty wants to be your new receptionist.
[ Misty Robotics ]
For years, we’ve been pointing out that while new Roombas have lots of great features, older Roombas still do a totally decent job of cleaning your floors. This video is a performance comparison between the newest Roomba (the S9+) and the original 2002 Roomba (!), and the results will surprise you. Or maybe they won’t.
[ Vacuum Wars ]
Lex Fridman from MIT interviews Chris Urmson, who was involved in some of the earliest autonomous vehicle projects, Google’s original self-driving car among them, and is currently CEO of Aurora Innovation.
Chris Urmson was the CTO of the Google Self-Driving Car team, a key engineer and leader behind the Carnegie Mellon autonomous vehicle entries in the DARPA grand challenges and the winner of the DARPA urban challenge. Today he is the CEO of Aurora Innovation, an autonomous vehicle software company he started with Sterling Anderson, who was the former director of Tesla Autopilot, and Drew Bagnell, Uber’s former autonomy and perception lead.
[ AI Podcast ]
In this week’s episode of Robots in Depth, Per speaks with Lael Odhner from RightHand Robotics.
Lael Odhner is a co-founder of RightHand Robotics, that is developing a gripper based on the combination of control and soft, compliant parts to get better grasping of objects. Their work focuses on grasping and manipulating everyday human objects in everyday environments.This mimics how human hands combine control and flexibility to grasp objects with great dexterity.
The combination of control and compliance makes the RightHand robotics gripper very light-weight and affordable. The compliance makes it easier to grasp objects of unknown shape and differs from the way industrial robots usually grip. The compliance also helps in a more unstructured environment where contact with the object and its surroundings cannot be exactly predicted.
[ RightHand Robotics ] via [ Robots in Depth ] Continue reading →
Posted in Human Robots