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#435632 DARPA Subterranean Challenge: Tunnel ...
The Tunnel Circuit of the DARPA Subterranean Challenge starts later this week at the NIOSH research mine just outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. From 15-22 August, 11 teams will send robots into a mine that they've never seen before, with the goal of making maps and locating items. All DARPA SubT events involve tunnels of one sort or another, but in this case, the “Tunnel Circuit” refers to mines as opposed to urban underground areas or natural caves. This month’s challenge is the first of three discrete events leading up to a huge final event in August of 2021.
While the Tunnel Circuit competition will be closed to the public, and media are only allowed access for a single day (which we'll be at, of course), DARPA has provided a substantial amount of information about what teams will be able to expect. We also have details from the SubT Integration Exercise, called STIX, which was a completely closed event that took place back in April. STIX was aimed at giving some teams (and DARPA) a chance to practice in a real tunnel environment.
For more general background on SubT, here are some articles to get you all caught up:
SubT: The Next DARPA Challenge for Robotics
Q&A with DARPA Program Manager Tim Chung
Meet The First Nine Teams
It makes sense to take a closer look at what happened at April's STIX exercise, because it is (probably) very similar to what teams will experience in the upcoming Tunnel Circuit. STIX took place at Edgar Experimental Mine in Colorado, and while no two mines are the same (and many are very, very different), there are enough similarities for STIX to have been a valuable experience for teams. Here's an overview video of the exercise from DARPA:
DARPA has also put together a much more detailed walkthrough of the STIX mine exercise, which gives you a sense of just how vast, complicated, and (frankly) challenging for robots the mine environment is:
So, that's the kind of thing that teams had to deal with back in April. Since the event was an exercise, rather than a competition, DARPA didn't really keep score, and wouldn't comment on the performance of individual teams. We've been trolling YouTube for STIX footage, though, to get a sense of how things went, and we found a few interesting videos.
Here's a nice overview from Team CERBERUS, which used drones plus an ANYmal quadruped:
Team CTU-CRAS also used drones, along with a tracked robot:
Team Robotika was brave enough to post video of a “fatal failure” experienced by its wheeled robot; the poor little bot gets rescued at about 7:00 in case you get worried:
So that was STIX. But what about the Tunnel Circuit competition this week? Here's a course preview video from DARPA:
It sort of looks like the NIOSH mine might be a bit less dusty than the Edgar mine was, but it could also be wetter and muddier. It’s hard to tell, because we’re just getting a few snapshots of what’s probably an enormous area with kilometers of tunnels that the robots will have to explore. But DARPA has promised “constrained passages, sharp turns, large drops/climbs, inclines, steps, ladders, and mud, sand, and/or water.” Combine that with the serious challenge to communications imposed by the mine itself, and robots will have to be both physically capable, and almost entirely autonomous. Which is, of course, exactly what DARPA is looking to test with this challenge.
Lastly, we had a chance to catch up with Tim Chung, Program Manager for the Subterranean Challenge at DARPA, and ask him a few brief questions about STIX and what we have to look forward to this week.
IEEE Spectrum: How did STIX go?
Tim Chung: It was a lot of fun! I think it gave a lot of the teams a great opportunity to really get a taste of what these types of real world environments look like, and also what DARPA has in store for them in the SubT Challenge. STIX I saw as an experiment—a learning experience for all the teams involved (as well as the DARPA team) so that we can continue our calibration.
What do you think teams took away from STIX, and what do you think DARPA took away from STIX?
I think the thing that teams took away was that, when DARPA hosts a challenge, we have very audacious visions for what the art of the possible is. And that's what we want—in my mind, the purpose of a DARPA Grand Challenge is to provide that inspiration of, ‘Holy cow, someone thinks we can do this!’ So I do think the teams walked away with a better understanding of what DARPA's vision is for the capabilities we're seeking in the SubT Challenge, and hopefully walked away with a better understanding of the technical, physical, even maybe mental challenges of doing this in the wild— which will all roll back into how they think about the problem, and how they develop their systems.
This was a collaborative exercise, so the DARPA field team was out there interacting with the other engineers, figuring out what their strengths and weaknesses and needs might be, and even understanding how to handle the robots themselves. That will help [strengthen] connections between these university teams and DARPA going forward. Across the board, I think that collaborative spirit is something we really wish to encourage, and something that the DARPA folks were able to take away.
What do we have to look forward to during the Tunnel Circuit?
The vision here is that the Tunnel Circuit is representative of one of the three subterranean subdomains, along with urban and cave. Characteristics of all of these three subdomains will be mashed together in an epic final course, so that teams will have to face hints of tunnel once again in that final event.
Without giving too much away, the NIOSH mine will be similar to the Edgar mine in that it's a human-made environment that supports mining operations and research. But of course, every site is different, and these differences, I think, will provide good opportunities for the teams to shine.
Again, we'll be visiting the NIOSH mine in Pennsylvania during the Tunnel Circuit and will post as much as we can from there. But if you’re an actual participant in the Subterranean Challenge, please tweet me @BotJunkie so that I can follow and help share live updates.
[ DARPA Subterranean Challenge ] Continue reading
Posted in Human Robots
#435628 Soft Exosuit Makes Walking and Running ...
Researchers at Harvard’s Wyss Institute have been testing a flexible, lightweight exosuit that can improve your metabolic efficiency by 4 to 10 percent while walking and running. This is very important because, according to a press release from Harvard, the suit can help you be faster and more efficient, whether you’re “walking at a leisurely pace,” or “running for your life.” Great!
Making humans better at running for their lives is something that we don’t put nearly enough research effort into, I think. The problem may not come up very often, but when it does, it’s super important (because, bears). So, sign me up for anything that we can do to make our desperate flights faster or more efficient—especially if it’s a lightweight, wearable exosuit that’s soft, flexible, and comfortable to wear.
This is the same sort of exosuit that was part of a DARPA program that we wrote about a few years ago, which was designed to make it easier for soldiers to carry heavy loads for long distances.
Photos: Wyss Institute at Harvard University
The system uses two waist-mounted electrical motors connected with cables to thigh straps that run down around your butt. The motors pull on the cables at the same time that your muscles actuate, helping them out and reducing the amount of work that your muscles put in without decreasing the amount of force they exert on your legs. The entire suit (batteries included) weighs 5 kilograms (11 pounds).
In order for the cables to actuate at the right time, the suit tracks your gait with two inertial measurement units (IMUs) on the thighs and one on the waist, and then adjusts its actuation profile accordingly. It works well, too, with measurable increases in performance:
We show that a portable exosuit that assists hip extension can reduce the metabolic rate of treadmill walking at 1.5 meters per second by 9.3 percent and that of running at 2.5 meters per second by 4.0 percent compared with locomotion without the exosuit. These reduction magnitudes are comparable to the effects of taking off 7.4 and 5.7 kilograms during walking and running, respectively, and are in a range that has shown meaningful athletic performance changes.
By increasing your efficiency, you can think of the suit as being able to make you walk or run faster, or farther, or carry a heavier load, all while spending the same amount of energy (or less), which could be just enough to outrun the bear that’s chasing you. Plus, it doesn’t appear to be uncomfortable to wear, and doesn’t require the user to do anything differently, which means that (unlike most robotics things) it’s maybe actually somewhat practical for real-world use—whether you’re indoors or outdoors, or walking or running, or being chased by a bear or not.
Sadly, I have no idea when you might be able to buy one of these things. But the researchers are looking for ways to make the suit even easier to use, while also reducing the weight and making the efficiency increase more pronounced. Harvard’s Conor Walsh says they’re “excited to continue to apply it to a range of applications, including assisting those with gait impairments, industry workers at risk of injury performing physically strenuous tasks, or recreational weekend warriors.” As a weekend warrior who is not entirely sure whether he can outrun a bear, I’m excited for this.
Reducing the metabolic rate of walking and running with a versatile, portable exosuit, by Jinsoo Kim, Giuk Lee, Roman Heimgartner, Dheepak Arumukhom Revi, Nikos Karavas, Danielle Nathanson, Ignacio Galiana, Asa Eckert-Erdheim, Patrick Murphy, David Perry, Nicolas Menard, Dabin Kim Choe, Philippe Malcolm, and Conor J. Walsh from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, appears in the current issue of Science. Continue reading
Posted in Human Robots
#435601 New Double 3 Robot Makes Telepresence ...
Today, Double Robotics is announcing Double 3, the latest major upgrade to its line of consumer(ish) telepresence robots. We had a (mostly) fantastic time testing out Double 2 back in 2016. One of the things that we found out back then was that it takes a lot of practice to remotely drive the robot around. Double 3 solves this problem by leveraging the substantial advances in 3D sensing and computing that have taken place over the past few years, giving their new robot a level of intelligence that promises to make telepresence more accessible for everyone.
Double 2’s iPad has been replaced by “a fully integrated solution”—which is a fancy way of saying a dedicated 9.7-inch touchscreen and a whole bunch of other stuff. That other stuff includes an NVIDIA Jetson TX2 AI computing module, a beamforming six-microphone array, an 8-watt speaker, a pair of 13-megapixel cameras (wide angle and zoom) on a tilting mount, five ultrasonic rangefinders, and most excitingly, a pair of Intel RealSense D430 depth sensors.
It’s those new depth sensors that really make Double 3 special. The D430 modules each uses a pair of stereo cameras with a pattern projector to generate 1280 x 720 depth data with a range of between 0.2 and 10 meters away. The Double 3 robot uses all of this high quality depth data to locate obstacles, but at this point, it still doesn’t drive completely autonomously. Instead, it presents the remote operator with a slick, augmented reality view of drivable areas in the form of a grid of dots. You just click where you want the robot to go, and it will skillfully take itself there while avoiding obstacles (including dynamic obstacles) and related mishaps along the way.
This effectively offloads the most stressful part of telepresence—not running into stuff—from the remote user to the robot itself, which is the way it should be. That makes it that much easier to encourage people to utilize telepresence for the first time. The way the system is implemented through augmented reality is particularly impressive, I think. It looks like it’s intuitive enough for an inexperienced user without being restrictive, and is a clever way of mitigating even significant amounts of lag.
Otherwise, Double 3’s mobility system is exactly the same as the one featured on Double 2. In fact, that you can stick a Double 3 head on a Double 2 body and it instantly becomes a Double 3. Double Robotics is thoughtfully offering this to current Double 2 owners as a significantly more affordable upgrade option than buying a whole new robot.
For more details on all of Double 3's new features, we spoke with the co-founders of Double Robotics, Marc DeVidts and David Cann.
IEEE Spectrum: Why use this augmented reality system instead of just letting the user click on a regular camera image? Why make things more visually complicated, especially for new users?
Marc DeVidts and David Cann: One of the things that we realized about nine months ago when we got this whole thing working was that without the mixed reality for driving, it was really too magical of an experience for the customer. Even us—we had a hard time understanding whether the robot could really see obstacles and understand where the floor is and that kind of thing. So, we said “What would be the best way of communicating this information to the user?” And the right way to do it ended up drawing the graphics directly onto the scene. It’s really awesome—we have a full, real time 3D scene with the depth information drawn on top of it. We’re starting with some relatively simple graphics, and we’ll be adding more graphics in the future to help the user understand what the robot is seeing.
How robust is the vision system when it comes to obstacle detection and avoidance? Does it work with featureless surfaces, IR absorbent surfaces, in low light, in direct sunlight, etc?
We’ve looked at all of those cases, and one of the reasons that we’re going with the RealSense is the projector that helps us to see blank walls. We also found that having two sensors—one facing the floor and one facing forward—gives us a great coverage area. Having ultrasonic sensors in there as well helps us to detect anything that we can't see with the cameras. They're sort of a last safety measure, especially useful for detecting glass.
It seems like there’s a lot more that you could do with this sensing and mapping capability. What else are you working on?
We're starting with this semi-autonomous driving variant, and we're doing a private beta of full mapping. So, we’re going to do full SLAM of your environment that will be mapped by multiple robots at the same time while you're driving, and then you'll be able to zoom out to a map and click anywhere and it will drive there. That's where we're going with it, but we want to take baby steps to get there. It's the obvious next step, I think, and there are a lot more possibilities there.
Do you expect developers to be excited for this new mapping capability?
We're using a very powerful computer in the robot, a NVIDIA Jetson TX2 running Ubuntu. There's room to grow. It’s actually really exciting to be able to see, in real time, the 3D pose of the robot along with all of the depth data that gets transformed in real time into one view that gives you a full map. Having all of that data and just putting those pieces together and getting everything to work has been a huge feat in of itself.
We have an extensive API for developers to do custom implementations, either for telepresence or other kinds of robotics research. Our system isn't running ROS, but we're going to be adding ROS adapters for all of our hardware components.
Telepresence robots depend heavily on wireless connectivity, which is usually not something that telepresence robotics companies like Double have direct control over. Have you found that connectivity has been getting significantly better since you first introduced Double?
When we started in 2013, we had a lot of customers that didn’t have WiFi in their hallways, just in the conference rooms. We very rarely hear about customers having WiFi connectivity issues these days. The bigger issue we see is when people are calling into the robot from home, where they don't have proper traffic management on their home network. The robot doesn't need a ton of bandwidth, but it does need consistent, low latency bandwidth. And so, if someone else in the house is watching Netflix or something like that, it’s going to saturate your connection. But for the most part, it’s gotten a lot better over the last few years, and it’s no longer a big problem for us.
Do you think 5G will make a significant difference to telepresence robots?
We’ll see. We like the low latency possibilities and the better bandwidth, but it's all going to be a matter of what kind of reception you get. LTE can be great, if you have good reception; it’s all about where the tower is. I’m pretty sure that WiFi is going to be the primary thing for at least the next few years.
DeVidts also mentioned that an unfortunate side effect of the new depth sensors is that hanging a t-shirt on your Double to give it some personality will likely render it partially blind, so that's just something to keep in mind. To make up for this, you can switch around the colorful trim surrounding the screen, which is nowhere near as fun.
When the Double 3 is ready for shipping in late September, US $2,000 will get you the new head with all the sensors and stuff, which seamlessly integrates with your Double 2 base. Buying Double 3 straight up (with the included charging dock) will run you $4,ooo. This is by no means an inexpensive robot, and my impression is that it’s not really designed for individual consumers. But for commercial, corporate, healthcare, or education applications, $4k for a robot as capable as the Double 3 is really quite a good deal—especially considering the kinds of use cases for which it’s ideal.
[ Double Robotics ] Continue reading
Posted in Human Robots