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#430556 Forget Flying Cars, the Future Is ...
Flying car concepts have been around nearly as long as their earthbound cousins, but no one has yet made them a commercial success. MIT engineers think we’ve been coming at the problem from the wrong direction; rather than putting wings on cars, we should be helping drones to drive.
The team from the university’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) added wheels to a fleet of eight mini-quadcopters and tested driving and flying them around a tiny toy town made out of cardboard and fabric.
Adding the ability to drive reduced the distance the drone could fly by 14 percent compared to a wheel-less version. But while driving was slower, the drone could travel 150 percent further than when flying. The result is a vehicle that combines the speed and mobility of flying with the energy-efficiency of driving.
CSAIL director Daniela Rus told MIT News their work suggested that when looking to create flying cars, it might make more sense to build on years of research into drones rather than trying to simply “put wings on cars.”
Historically, flying car concepts have looked like someone took apart a Cessna light aircraft and a family sedan, mixed all the parts up, and bolted them back together again. Not everyone has abandoned this approach—two of the most developed flying car designs from Terrafugia and AeroMobil are cars with folding wings that need an airstrip to take off.
But flying car concepts are looking increasingly drone-like these days, with multiple small rotors, electric propulsion and vertical take-off abilities. Take the eHang 184 autonomous aerial vehicle being developed in China, the Kitty Hawk all-electric aircraft backed by Google founder Larry Page, which is little more than a quadcopter with a seat, the AirQuadOne designed by UK consortium Neva Aerospace, or Lilium Aviation’s Jet.
The attraction is obvious. Electric-powered drones are more compact, maneuverable, and environmentally friendly, making them suitable for urban environments.
Most of these vehicles are not quite the same as those proposed by the MIT engineers, as they’re pure flying machines. But a recent Airbus concept builds on the same principle that the future of urban mobility is vehicles that can both fly and drive. Its Pop.Up design is a two-passenger pod that can either be clipped to a set of wheels or hang under a quadcopter.
Importantly, they envisage their creation being autonomous in both flight and driving modes. And they’re not the only ones who think the future of flying cars is driverless. Uber has committed to developing a network of autonomous air taxis within a decade. This spring, Dubai announced it would launch a pilotless passenger drone service using the Ehang 184 as early as next month (July).
While integrating fully-fledged autonomous flying cars into urban environments will be far more complex, the study by Rus and her colleagues provides a good starting point for the kind of 3D route-planning and collision avoidance capabilities this would require.
The team developed multi-robot path planning algorithms that were able to control all eight drones as they flew and drove around their mock up city, while also making sure they didn’t crash into each other and avoided no-fly zones.
“This work provides an algorithmic solution for large-scale, mixed-mode transportation and shows its applicability to real-world problems,” Jingjin Yu, a computer science professor at Rutgers University who was not involved in the research, told MIT News.
This vision of a driverless future for flying cars might be a bit of a disappointment for those who’d envisaged themselves one day piloting their own hover car just like George Jetson. But autonomy and Uber-like ride-hailing business models are likely to be attractive, as they offer potential solutions to three of the biggest hurdles drone-like passenger vehicles face.
Firstly, it makes the vehicles accessible to anyone by removing the need to learn how to safely pilot an aircraft. Secondly, battery life still limits most electric vehicles to flight times measured in minutes. For personal vehicles this could be frustrating, but if you’re just hopping in a driverless air taxi for a five minute trip across town it’s unlikely to become apparent to you.
Operators of the service simply need to make sure they have a big enough fleet to ensure a charged vehicle is never too far away, or they’ll need a way to swap out batteries easily, such as the one suggested by the makers of the Volocopter electric helicopter.
Finally, there has already been significant progress in developing technology and regulations needed to integrate autonomous drones into our airspace that future driverless flying cars can most likely piggyback off of.
Safety requirements will inevitably be more stringent, but adding more predictable and controllable autonomous drones to the skies is likely to be more attractive to regulators than trying to license and police thousands of new amateur pilots.
Image Credit: Lilium Continue reading →
Posted in Human Robots
#428831 The Brain Tech to Merge Humans and AI Is ...
Are you scared of artificial intelligence (AI)? Do you believe the warnings from folks like Prof. Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and others? Is AI the greatest tool humanity will ever create, or are we “summoning the demon”? To quote the head of AI at Singularity University, Neil Jacobstein, “It’s not artificial intelligence I’m worried about, it’s human stupidity.” In a recent Abundance 360 webinar, I interviewed Bryan Johnson, the founder of a new company called… read more Continue reading →
Posted in Human Robots
#428433 UK Robotics Week To Return – 24th June ...
Today marks official launch of the second UK Robotics Week; entries now open in Surgical Robot, Autonomous Driving and School Robot Challenges
London, UK, 7th November 2016. – UK Robotics Week 2017 officially launches today, with a range of robotics activities and challenges open to schools, academic institutions and industry sectors. These activities culminate in a national week of celebration being held 24th – 30th June 2017. The second annual UK Robotics Week is set to be even bigger and better, building on the huge success of the inaugural event. Any institutions or organisations planning to hold their own robotics events – either in the run-up to and during the UK Robotics Week – can also apply now to be included in the official Programme of Activities (please visit www.roboticsweek.uk for details of how to register).
The first ever UK Robotics Week proved a huge success, encompassing a host of events up and down the UK, including public lectures, open labs, hackathons, tech weekends, conferences, and a state-of-the-art robotics showcase held on the last day. The UK Robotics Week initiative is jointly spearheaded by founding supporters, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), The Royal Academy of Engineering, the Institution of Engineering and Technology, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and the UK-RAS Special Interest Group, and is being coordinated by the EPSRC UK-RAS network.
As part of the official launch, this year’s School Robot Challenge is now open for entries to all schools nationwide. The competition offers schoolchildren the opportunity to design their own virtual robot bug and teach it to move, with the option of printing their bug in 3D. The challenge aims to develop children’s interest and skills in digital technology, design, science, engineering and biology. This year’s competition has been split into two age group categories – 4-12 years and 13-18 years – with top prizes to be awarded in each. School are actively encouraged to register their interest on the website now to access the information packs and software at http://www.roboticsweek.uk/schoolrobotchallenge.htm
The first Surgical Robot Challenge attracted participation from the world’s leading institutions, with top robotics research teams travelling to the UK to demonstrate their outstanding innovations during last year’s competition finals. The 2017 competition is now open for entry, and any international researchers interested in participating in this prestigious challenge can download all the competition information at http://www.roboticsweek.uk/surgicalrobotchallenge.htm
The second Autonomous Driving Challenge is also launched today. This is an international competition to inspire the next generation of designers and engineers, and involves designing your own vehicle and teaching it to drive autonomously. The challenge is open to everyone: children and adults, amateurs and professionals.
Commenting on today’s official launch, Professor Guang-Zhong Yang PhD, FREng, Director and Co-founder of the Hamlyn Centre for Robotic Surgery, at Imperial College London and Chair of the UK-RAS Network, said: “We have been delighted with the response to UK Robotics Week, which looks set to become one of the key highlights in the science and technology calendar. This is a unique opportunity to celebrate the UK’s technology leadership in robotics and autonomous systems, and for individuals and institutions to get involved – hands-on – with robotics development.”
Professor Philip Nelson, Chief Executive of EPSRC, added: “From inspiring the nation’s budding engineers in STEM subjects to engaging people of all ages in a national debate about the contribution robotic technology can make to society and our economy, we’re looking forward to creating even more of a buzz with UK Robotics Week this year, and shining an even bigger spotlight on the fantastic robotics innovation being driven from the UK.”
For full information about all the activities planned for UK Robotics Week, please visit the website: www.roboticsweek.uk and follow UK Robotics Week on Twitter (@ukroboticsweek)
About the EPSRC UK-RAS Network (http://www.uk-ras.org) : The EPSRC UK Robotics and Autonomous Systems Network (UK-RAS Network) is dedicated to robotics innovation across the UK, with a mission to provide academic leadership in Robotics and Autonomous Systems (RAS), expand collaboration with industry, and integrate and coordinate activities at eight Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) funded RAS capital facilities and Centres for Doctoral Training (CDTs) across the country.
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Posted in Human Robots
#428357 UV Disinfection robot
Tech-Link Healthcare Systems partners with Blue Ocean Robotics Introducing UV-Disinfection Robot
Singapore, 1 November 2016 – The rise of robots have steered Tech-Link Healthcare Systems, a design and integrator of healthcare automation systems to offer solutions beyond automated storage and material handling systems. With a vision of providing holistic solutions for healthcare organisations, Tech-Link extends its capabilities by offering UV disinfection robot solutions via a strategic partnership with Danish robotics company, Blue Ocean Robotics to battle against Hospital Acquired Infections (HAIs).Singapore’s labour intensive healthcare environment and the unknown impact of HAIs in the developed city-state had beckoned Tech-Link Healthcare Systems to offer solutions in the area of disinfection. We recognised the rise in demand for robots to collaborate with humans and have identified this need for customers. Introducing robotic technologies as part of our suite of solutions is the company’s mission to innovate the way healthcare organisations work and enhance their customers’ experience.Tech-Link’s partnership with Blue Ocean Robotics affirms both companies’ efforts in reaching out to new markets with technology and solutions to ease manpower crunch, deliver greater value and improve the quality of healthcare services. As an official sales partner, we bring together Blue Ocean Robotics’ expertise in automating disinfection procedures to promote safer, efficient and more productive work environment.
“Tech-Link looks forward to developing reliable healthcare solutions with hardware and latest technologies from Blue Ocean Robotics for our customers in Singapore and abroad.” said Director of Tech-Link Healthcare Systems, Tan Hock Seng. “Our similar beliefs in the Blue Ocean strategy synergise the collaboration to improve the quality of healthcare services through robotics.” he added.“We are very excited about our new sales partner Tech-Link Healthcare Systems, since it is of great importance for Blue Ocean Robotics to expand our sales of new technologies beyond Denmark’s borders. Blue Ocean Robotics focuses on creating new markets for robots. This includes both the development of new technologies and the creation of new markets for revolutionary robot solutions. We welcome Tech-Link Healthcare Systems with open arms and look forward to a fruitful collaboration in the years ahead.” said Claus Risager, Rune K. Larsen & John Erland Østergaard, Partners and Co-CEOs, Blue Ocean Robotics.
UV-Disinfection RobotThe UV-Disinfection Robot – also called UV-DR – is an autonomous disinfection robot for hospitals, production lines and pharmaceutical companies. The robot is used primarily in, but not limited to the cleaning cycle with the aim of reducing spread of HAIs, infectious diseases, viruses, bacteria and other types or harmful organic materials.UV-DR is a mobile robot that can drive autonomously while emitting concentrated UV-C light onto pre-defined infectious hotspots in patient rooms and other hospital environments, thus disinfecting and killing bacteria and virus on all exposed surfaces. An exposure time of ten minutes is estimated to kill up to 99% of bacteria such as Clostridium Difficile.
About Tech-Link Healthcare Systems Pte LtdTech-Link Healthcare Systems is a subsidiary of Tech-Link Storage Engineering established in Singapore since 2015. The company designs and provides innovative solutions for the healthcare sector, focusing on advanced and emerging solutions to support healthcare organisations in optimising available resources and services. Tech-Link Healthcare Systems design and implement automated material handling systems to enhance secured material transport and logistics storage management in hospitals and other healthcare facilities. As a complete solution provider, the company also provides consultancy in systems design to streamline and automate processes as well as integrated video solutions within healthcare facilities.About Tech-Link Storage Engineering Pte LtdTech-Link Storage Engineering is a group of companies established in Singapore with more than 25 years of principal activities in procurement, manufacturing and marketing of storage, distribution and materials handling products and systems. From its domain expertise in storage and racking systems, Tech-Link is also involved in R&D, system design, supply and implementation of logistics supply chain automation systems. The business expanded its global capabilities in the area of planning and consultancy to provide solutions for Built-to-Suit industrial developments and Healthcare logistics systems.
Tech-Link is an ISO 9001:2008 and OHSAS 18001:2007 certified company for Quality Management System and Occupational, Health and Safety System.Visit www.techlinkstorageengineering.comAbout Blue Ocean RoboticsBlue Ocean Robotics is an international company group with presence across the globe including America, Europe, Asia and Australia. The robotics company has its headquarter in the city of Odense (www.odenserobotics.dk) in Denmark. Blue Ocean Robotics applies robot technology to create solutions and innovation for end-users and new businesses in partnerships.Visit www.blue-ocean-robotics.com
Here is a video showing the robot in action:
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Posted in Human Robots
#428181 Adding social touch to robotics
A squeeze in the arm, a pat on the shoulder, or a slap in the face – touch is an important part of the social interaction between people. Social touch, however, is a relatively unknown field when it comes to robots, even though robots operate with increasing frequency in society at large, rather than just in the controlled environment of a factory. Merel Jung is conducting research at the University of Twente CTIT research institute into social touch interaction with robots. Using a relatively simple system – a mannequin's arm with pressure sensors, connected to a computer – she has succeeded in getting it to recognize sixty percent of all touches. The research is being published today in the Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces scientific journal. Continue reading →
Posted in Human Robots