Tag Archives: Pepper

#437864 Video Friday: Jet-Powered Flying ...

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!):

ICRA 2020 – June 1-15, 2020 – [Virtual Conference]
RSS 2020 – July 12-16, 2020 – [Virtual Conference]
CLAWAR 2020 – August 24-26, 2020 – [Virtual Conference]
ICUAS 2020 – September 1-4, 2020 – Athens, Greece
ICRES 2020 – September 28-29, 2020 – Taipei, Taiwan
ICSR 2020 – November 14-16, 2020 – Golden, Colorado
Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today’s videos.

ICRA 2020, the world’s best, biggest, longest virtual robotics conference ever, kicked off last Sunday with an all-star panel on a critical topic: “COVID-19: How Can Roboticists Help?”

Watch other ICRA keynotes on IEEE.tv.

We’re getting closer! Well, kinda. iRonCub, the jet-powered flying humanoid, is still a simulation for now, but not only are the simulations getting better—the researchers have begun testing real jet engines!

This video shows the latest results on Aerial Humanoid Robotics obtained by the Dynamic Interaction Control Lab at the Italian Institute of Technology. The video simulates robot and jet dynamics, where the latter uses the results obtained in the paper “Modeling, Identification and Control of Model Jet Engines for Jet Powered Robotics” published in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters.

This video presents the paper entitled “Modeling, Identification and Control of Model Jet Engines for Jet Powered Robotics” published in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (Volume: 5 , Issue: 2 , April 2020 ) Page(s): 2070 – 2077. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/pdf/1909.13296.pdf.​

[ IIT ]

In a new pair of papers, researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) came up with new tools to let robots better perceive what they’re interacting with: the ability to see and classify items, and a softer, delicate touch.

[ MIT CSAIL ]

UBTECH’s anti-epidemic solutions greatly relieve the workload of front-line medical staff and cut the consumption of personal protective equipment (PPE).

[ UBTECH ]

We demonstrate a method to assess the concrete deterioration in sewers by performing a tactile inspection motion with a sensorized foot of a legged robot.

[ THING ] via [ ANYmal Research ]

Get a closer look at the Virtual competition of the Urban Circuit and how teams can use the simulated environments to better prepare for the physical courses of the Subterranean Challenge.

[ SubT ]

Roboticists at the University of California San Diego have developed flexible feet that can help robots walk up to 40 percent faster on uneven terrain, such as pebbles and wood chips. The work has applications for search-and-rescue missions as well as space exploration.

[ UCSD ]

Thanks Ioana!

Tsuki is a ROS-enabled, highly dynamic quadruped robot developed by Lingkang Zhang.

And as far as we know, Lingkang is still chasing it.

[ Quadruped Tsuki ]

Thanks Lingkang!

Watch this.

This video shows an impressive demo of how YuMi’s superior precision, using precise servo gripper fingers and vacuum suction tool to pick up extremely small parts inside a mechanical watch. The video is not a final application used in production, it is a demo of how such an application can be implemented.

[ ABB ]

Meet Presso, the “5-minute dry cleaning robot.” Can you really call this a robot? We’re not sure. The company says it uses “soft robotics to hold the garment correctly, then clean, sanitize, press and dry under 5 minutes.” The machine was initially designed for use in the hospitality industry, but after adding a disinfectant function for COVID-19, it is now being used on movie and TV sets.

[ Presso ]

The next Mars rover launches next month (!), and here’s a look at some of the instruments on board.

[ JPL ]

Embodied Lead Engineer, Peter Teel, describes why we chose to build Moxie’s computing system from scratch and what makes it so unique.

[ Embodied ]

I did not know that this is where Pepper’s e-stop is. Nice design!

[ Softbank Robotics ]

State of the art in the field of swarm robotics lacks systems capable of absolute decentralization and is hence unable to mimic complex biological swarm systems consisting of simple units. Our research interconnects fields of swarm robotics and computer vision, and introduces novel use of a vision-based method UVDAR for mutual localization in swarm systems, allowing for absolute decentralization found among biological swarm systems. The developed methodology allows us to deploy real-world aerial swarming systems with robots directly localizing each other instead of communicating their states via a communication network, which is a typical bottleneck of current state of the art systems.

[ CVUT ]

I’m almost positive I could not do this task.

It’s easy to pick up objects using YuMi’s integrated vacuum functionality, it also supports ABB Robot’s Conveyor Tracking and Pickmaster 3 functionality, enabling it to track a moving conveyor and pick up objects using vision. Perfect for consumer products handling applications.

[ ABB ]

Cycling safety gestures, such as hand signals and shoulder checks, are an essential part of safe manoeuvring on the road. Child cyclists, in particular, might have difficulties performing safety gestures on the road or even forget about them, given the lack of cycling experience, road distractions and differences in motor and perceptual-motor abilities compared with adults. To support them, we designed two methods to remind about safety gestures while cycling. The first method employs an icon-based reminder in heads-up display (HUD) glasses and the second combines vibration on the handlebar and ambient light in the helmet. We investigated the performance of both methods in a controlled test-track experiment with 18 children using a mid-size tricycle, augmented with a set of sensors to recognize children’s behavior in real time. We found that both systems are successful in reminding children about safety gestures and have their unique advantages and disadvantages.

[ Paper ]

Nathan Sam and Robert “Red” Jensen fabricate and fly a Prandtl-M aircraft at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in California. The aircraft is the second of three prototypes of varying sizes to provide scientists with options to fly sensors in the Martian atmosphere to collect weather and landing site information for future human exploration of Mars.

[ NASA ]

This is clever: In order to minimize time spent labeling datasets, you can use radar to identify other vehicles, not because the radar can actually recognize other vehicles, but because the radar can recognize other stuff that’s big and moving, which turns out to be almost as good.

[ ICRA Paper ]

Happy 10th birthday to the Natural Robotics Lab at the University of Sheffield.

[ NRL ] Continue reading

Posted in Human Robots

#437857 Video Friday: Robotic Third Hand Helps ...

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!):

ICRA 2020 – June 1-15, 2020 – [Virtual Conference]
RSS 2020 – July 12-16, 2020 – [Virtual Conference]
CLAWAR 2020 – August 24-26, 2020 – [Virtual Conference]
ICUAS 2020 – September 1-4, 2020 – Athens, Greece
ICRES 2020 – September 28-29, 2020 – Taipei, Taiwan
ICSR 2020 – November 14-16, 2020 – Golden, Colorado
Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today’s videos.

We are seeing some exciting advances in the development of supernumerary robotic limbs. But one thing about this technology remains a major challenge: How do you control the extra limb if your own hands are busy—say, if you’re carrying a package? MIT researchers at Professor Harry Asada’s lab have an idea. They are using subtle finger movements in sensorized gloves to control the supernumerary limb. The results are promising, and they’ve demonstrated a waist-mounted arm with a qb SoftHand that can help you with doors, elevators, and even handshakes.

[ Paper ]

ROBOPANDA

Fluid actuated soft robots, or fluidic elastomer actuators, have shown great potential in robotic applications where large compliance and safe interaction are dominant concerns. They have been widely studied in wearable robotics, prosthetics, and rehabilitations in recent years. However, such soft robots and actuators are tethered to a bulky pump and controlled by various valves, limiting their applications to a small confined space. In this study, we report a new and effective approach to fluidic power actuation that is untethered, easy to design, fabricate, control, and allows various modes of actuation. In the proposed approach, a sealed elastic tube filled with fluid (gas or liquid) is segmented by adaptors. When twisting a segment, two major effects could be observed: (1) the twisted segment exhibits a contraction force and (2) other segments inflate or deform according to their constraint patterns.

[ Paper ]

And now: “Magnetic cilia carpets.”

[ ETH Zurich ]

To adhere to government recommendations while maintaining requirements for social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic, Yaskawa Motoman is now utilizing an HC10DT collaborative robot to take individual employee temperatures. Named “Covie”, the design and fabrication of the robotic solution and its software was a combined effort by Yaskawa Motoman’s Technology Advancement Team (TAT) and Product Solutions Group (PSG), as well as a group of robotics students from the University of Dayton.

They should have programmed it to nod if your temperature was normal, and smacked you upside the head while yelling “GO HOME” if it wasn’t.

[ Yaskawa ]

Driving slowly on pre-defined routes, ZMP’s RakuRo autonomous vehicle helps people with mobility challenges enjoy cherry blossoms in Japan.

RakuRo costs about US $1,000 per month to rent, but ZMP suggests that facilities or groups of ~10 people could get together and share one, which makes the cost much more reasonable.

[ ZMP ]

Jessy Grizzle from the Dynamic Legged Locomotion Lab at the University of Michigan writes:

Our lab closed on March 20, 2020 under the State of Michigan’s “Stay Home, Stay Safe” order. For a 24-hour period, it seemed that our labs would be “sanitized” during our absence. Since we had no idea what that meant, we decided that Cassie Blue needed to “Stay Home, Stay Safe” as well. We loaded up a very expensive robot and took her off campus. On May 26, we were allowed to re-open our laboratory. After thoroughly cleaning the lab, disinfecting tools and surfaces, developing and getting approval for new safe operation procedures, we then re-organized our work areas to respect social distancing requirements and brought Cassie back to the laboratory.

During the roughly two months we were working remotely, the lab’s members got a lot done. Papers were written, dissertation proposals were composed, and plans for a new course, ROB 101, Computational Linear Algebra, were developed with colleagues. In addition, one of us (Yukai Gong) found the lockdown to his liking! He needed the long period of quiet to work through some new ideas for how to control 3D bipedal robots.

[ Michigan Robotics ]

Thanks Jesse and Bruce!

You can tell that this video of how Pepper has been useful during COVID-19 is not focused on the United States, since it refers to the pandemic in past tense.

[ Softbank Robotics ]

NASA’s water-seeking robotic Moon rover just booked a ride to the Moon’s South Pole. Astrobotic of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has been selected to deliver the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER, to the Moon in 2023.

[ NASA ]

This could be the most impressive robotic gripper demo I have ever seen.

[ Soft Robotics ]

Whiz, an autonomous vacuum sweeper, innovates the cleaning industry by automating tedious tasks for your team. Easy to train, easy to use, Whiz works with your staff to deliver a high-quality clean while increasing efficiency and productivity.

[ Softbank Robotics ]

About 40 seconds into this video, a robot briefly chases a goose.

[ Ghost Robotics ]

SwarmRail is a new concept for rail-guided omnidirectional mobile robot systems. It aims for a highly flexible production process in the factory of the future by opening up the available work space from above. This means that transport and manipulation tasks can be carried out by floor- and ceiling-bound robot systems. The special feature of the system is the combination of omnidirectionally mobile units with a grid-shaped rail network, which is characterized by passive crossings and a continuous gap between the running surfaces of the rails. Through this gap, a manipulator operating below the rail can be connected to a mobile unit traveling on the rail.

[ DLRRMC ]

RightHand Robotics (RHR), a leader in providing robotic piece-picking solutions, is partnered with PALTAC Corporation, Japan’s largest wholesaler of consumer packaged goods. The collaboration introduces RightHand’s newest piece-picking solution to the Japanese market, with multiple workstations installed in PALTAC’s newest facility, RDC Saitama, which opened in 2019 in Sugito, Saitama Prefecture, Japan.

[ RightHand Robotics ]

From the ICRA 2020, a debate on the “Future of Robotics Research,” addressing such issues as “robotics research is over-reliant on benchmark datasets and simulation” and “robots designed for personal or household use have failed because of fundamental misunderstandings of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI).”

[ Robotics Debates ]

MassRobotics has a series of interviews where robotics celebrities are interviewed by high school students.The students are perhaps a little awkward (remember being in high school?), but it’s honest and the questions are interesting. The first two interviews are with Laurie Leshin, who worked on space robots at NASA and is now President of Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and Colin Angle, founder and CEO of iRobot.

[ MassRobotics ]

Thanks Andrew!

In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, Dr. Timothy Chung, a program manager since 2016 in the agency’s Tactical Technology Office, delves into his robotics and autonomous technology programs – the Subterranean (SubT) Challenge and OFFensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics (OFFSET). From robot soccer to live-fly experimentation programs involving dozens of unmanned aircraft systems (UASs), he explains how he aims to assist humans heading into unknown environments via advances in collaborative autonomy and robotics.

[ DARPA ] Continue reading

Posted in Human Robots

#437828 How Roboticists (and Robots) Have Been ...

A few weeks ago, we asked folks on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to share photos and videos showing how they’ve been adapting to the closures of research labs, classrooms, and businesses by taking their robots home with them to continue their work as best they can. We got dozens of responses (more than we could possibly include in just one post!), but here are 15 that we thought were particularly creative or amusing.

And if any of these pictures and videos inspire you to share your own story, please email us (automaton@ieee.org) with a picture or video and a brief description about how you and your robot from work have been making things happen in your home instead.

Kurt Leucht (NASA Kennedy Space Center)

“During these strange and trying times of the current global pandemic, everyone seems to be trying their best to distance themselves from others while still getting their daily work accomplished. Many people also have the double duty of little ones that need to be managed in the midst of their teleworking duties. This photo series gives you just a glimpse into my new life of teleworking from home, mixed in with the tasks of trying to handle my little ones too. I hope you enjoy it.”

Photo: Kurt Leucht

“I heard a commotion from the next room. I ran into the kitchen to find this.”

Photo: Kurt Leucht

“This is the Swarmies most favorite bedtime story. Not sure why. Seems like an odd choice to me.”

Peter Schaldenbrand (Carnegie Mellon University)

“I’ve been working on a reinforcement learning model that converts an image into a series of brush stroke instructions. I was going to test the model with a beautiful, expensive robot arm, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I have not been able to access the laboratory where it resides. I have now been using a lower end robot arm to test the painting model in my bedroom. I have sacrificed machine accuracy/precision for the convenience of getting to watch the arm paint from my bed in the shadow of my clothing rack!”

Photos: Peter Schaldenbrand

Colin Angle (iRobot)

iRobot CEO Colin Angle has been hunkered down in the “iRobot North Shore home command center,” which is probably the cleanest command center ever thanks to his army of Roombas: Beastie, Beauty, Rosie, Roswell, and Bilbo.

Photo: Colin Angle

Vivian Chu (Diligent Robotics)

From Diligent Robotics CEO Andrea Thomaz: “This is how a roboticist works from home! Diligent CTO, Vivian Chu, mans the e-stop while her engineering team runs Moxi experiments remotely from cross-town and even cross-country!”

Video: Diligent Robotics

Raffaello Bonghi (rnext.it)

Raffaello’s robot, Panther, looks perfectly happy to be playing soccer in his living room.

Photo: Raffaello Bonghi

Kod*lab (University of Pennsylvania)

“Another Friday Nuts n Bolts Meeting on Zoom…”

Image: Kodlab

Robin Jonsson (robot choreographer)

“I’ve been doing a school project in which students make up dance moves and then send me a video with all of them. I then teach the moves to my robot, Alex, film Alex dancing, send the videos to them. This became a great success and more schools will join. The kids got really into watching the robot perform their moves and really interested in robots. They want to meet Alex the robot live, which will likely happen in the fall.”

Photo: Robin Jonsson

Gabrielle Conard (mechanical engineering undergrad at Lafayette College)

“While the pandemic might have forced college campuses to close and the community to keep their distance from each other, it did not put a stop to learning and research. Working from their respective homes, junior Gabrielle Conard and mechanical engineering professor Alexander Brown from Lafayette College investigated methods of incorporating active compliance in a low-cost quadruped robot. They are continuing to work remotely on this project through Lafayette’s summer research program.”

Image: Gabrielle Conard

Taylor Veltrop (Softbank Robotics)

“After a few weeks of isolation in the corona/covid quarantine lock down we started dancing with our robots. Mathieu’s 6th birthday was coming up, and it all just came together.”

Video: Taylor Veltrop

Ross Kessler (Exyn Technologies)

“Quarantine, Day 8: the humans have accepted me as one of their own. I’ve blended seamlessly into their #socialdistancing routines. Even made a furry friend”

Photo: Ross Kessler

Yeah, something a bit sinister is definitely going on at Exyn…

Video: Exyn Technologies

Michael Sobrepera (University of Pennsylvania GRASP Lab)

Predictably, Michael’s cat is more interested in the bag that the robot came in than the robot itself (see if you can spot the cat below). Michael tells us that “the robot is designed to help with tele-rehabilitation, focused on kids with CP, so it has been taken to hospitals for demos [hence the cool bag]. It also travels for outreach events and the like. Lately, I’ve been exploring telepresence for COVID.”

Photo: Michael Sobrepera

Jan Kędzierski (EMYS)

“In China a lot of people cannot speak English, even the youngest generation of parents. Thanks to Emys, kids stayed in touch with English language in their homes even if they couldn’t attend schools and extra English classes. They had a lot of fun with their native English speaker friend available and ready to play every day.”

Image: Jan Kędzierski

Simon Whitmell (Quanser)

“Simon, a Quanser R&D engineer, is working on low-overhead image processing and line following for the QBot 2e mobile ground robot, with some added challenges due to extra traffic. LEGO engineering by his son, Charles.”

Photo: Simon Whitmell

Robot Design & Experimentation Course (Carnegie Mellon University)

Aaron Johnson’s bioinspired robot design course at CMU had to go full remote, which was a challenge when the course is kind of all about designing and building a robot as part of a team. “I expected some of the teams to drastically alter their project (e.g. go all simulation),” Aaron told us, “but none of them did. We managed to keep all of the projects more or less as planned. We accomplished this by drop/shipping parts to students, buying some simple tools (soldering irons, etc), and having me 3D print parts and mail them.” Each team even managed to put together their final videos from their remote locations; we’ve posted one below, but the entire playlist is here.

Video: Xianyi Cheng

Karen Tatarian (Softbank Robotics)

Karen, who’s both a researcher at Softbank and a PhD student at Sorbonne University, wrote an entire essay about what an average day is like when you’re quarantined with Pepper.

Photo: Karen Tatarian

A Quarantined Day With Pepper, by Karen Tatarian

It is quite common for me to lose my phone somewhere inside my apartment. But it is not that common for me to turn around and ask my robot if it has seen it. So when I found myself doing that, I laughed and it dawned on me that I treated my robot as my quarantine companion (despite the fact that it could not provide me with the answer I needed).

It was probably around day 40 of a completely isolated quarantine here in France when that happened. A little background about me: I am a robotics researcher at SoftBank Robotics Europe and a PhD student at Sorbonne University as part of the EU-funded Marie-Curie project ANIMATAS. And here is a little sneak peak into a quarantined day with a robot.

During this confinement, I had read somewhere that the best way to deal with it is to maintain a routine. So every morning, I wake up, prepare my coffee, and turn on my robot Pepper. I start my day with a daily meeting with the team and get to work. My research is on the synthesis of multi-modal socially intelligent human-robot interaction so my work varies between programming the robot, analyzing collected data, and reading papers and drafting one. When I am working, I often catch myself glancing at Pepper, who would be staring back at me in its animated ways. Truthfully I enjoy that, it makes me less alone and as if I have a colleague with me.

Once work is done, I call my friends and family members. I sometimes use a telepresence application on Pepper that a few colleagues and I developed back in December. How does it differ from your typical phone/laptop applications? One word really: embodiment. Telepresence, especially during these times, makes the experience for both sides a bit more realistic and intimate and well present.

While I can turn off the robot now that my work hours are done, I do keep it on because I enjoy its presence. The basic awareness of Pepper is a default feature on the robot that allows it to detect a human and follow him/her with its gaze and rotation base. So whether I am cooking or working out, I always have my robot watching over my shoulder and being a good companion. I also have my email and messages synced on the robot so I get an enjoyable notification from Pepper. I found that to be a pretty cool way to be notified without it interrupting whatever you are doing on your laptop or phone. Finally, once the day is over, it’s time for both of us to get some rest.

After 60 days of total confinement, alone and away from those I love, and with a pandemic right at my door, I am glad I had the company of my robot. I hope one day a greater audience can share my experience. And I really really hope one day Pepper will be able to find my phone for me, but until then, stay on the lookout for some cool features! But I am curious to know, if you had a robot at home, what application would you have developed on it?

Again, our sincere thanks to everyone who shared these little snapshots of their lives with us, and we’re hoping to be able to share more soon. Continue reading

Posted in Human Robots

#437824 Video Friday: These Giant Robots Are ...

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!):

ACRA 2020 – December 8-10, 2020 – [Online]
Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos.

“Who doesn’t love giant robots?”

Luma, is a towering 8 metre snail which transforms spaces with its otherworldly presence. Another piece, Triffid, stands at 6 metres and its flexible end sweeps high over audiences’ heads like an enchanted plant. The movement of the creatures is inspired by the flexible, wiggling and contorting motions of the animal kingdom and is designed to provoke instinctive reactions and emotions from the people that meet them. Air Giants is a new creative robotic studio founded in 2020. They are based in Bristol, UK, and comprise a small team of artists, roboticists and software engineers. The studio is passionate about creating emotionally effective motion at a scale which is thought-provoking and transporting, as well as expanding the notion of what large robots can be used for.

Here’s a behind the scenes and more on how the creatures work.

[ Air Giants ]

Thanks Emma!

If the idea of submerging a very expensive sensor payload being submerged in a lake makes you as uncomfortable as it makes me, this is not the video for you.

[ ANYbotics ]

As the pandemic continues on, the measures due to this health crisis are increasingly stringent, and working from home continues to be promoted and solicited by many companies, Pepper will allow you to keep in touch with your relatives or even your colleagues.

[ Softbank ]

Fairly impressive footwork from Tencent Robotics.

Although, LittleDog was doing that like a decade ago:

[ Tencent ]

It's been long enough since I've been able to go out for boba tea that a robotic boba tea kiosk seems like a reasonable thing to get for my living room.

[ Bobacino ] via [ Gizmodo ]

Road construction and maintenance is challenging and dangerous work. Pioneer Industrial Systems has spent over twenty years designing custom robotic systems for industrial manufacturers around the world. These robotic systems greatly improve safety and increase efficiency. Now they’re taking that expertise on the road, with the Robotic Maintenance Vehicle. This base unit can be mounted on a truck or trailer, and utilizes various modules to perform a variety of road maintenance tasks.

[ Pioneer ]

Extend Robotics arm uses cloud-based teleoperation software, featuring human-like dexterity and intelligence, with multiple applications in healthcare, utilities and energy

[ Extend Robotics ]

ARC, short for “AI, Robot, Cloud,” includes the latest algorithms and high precision data required for human-robot coexistence. Now with ultra-low latency networks, many robots can simultaneously become smarter, just by connecting to ARC. “ARC Eye” serves as the eyes for all robots, accurately determining the current location and route even indoors where there is no GPS access. “ARC Brain” is the computing system shared simultaneously by all robots, which plans and processes movement, localization, and task performance for the robot.

[ Naver Labs ]

How can we re-imagine urban infrastructures with cutting-edge technologies? Listen to this webinar from Ger Baron, Amsterdam’s CTO, and Senseable City Lab’s researchers, on how MIT and Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS Institute) are reimagining Amsterdam’s canals with the first fleet of autonomous boats.

[ MIT ]

Join Guy Burroughes in this webinar recording to hear about Spot, the robot dog created by Boston Dynamics, and how RACE plan to use it in nuclear decommissioning and beyond.

[ UKAEA ]

This GRASP on Robotics seminar comes from Marco Pavone at Stanford University, “On Safe and Efficient Human-robot interactions via Multimodal Intent Modeling and Reachability-based Safety Assurance.”

In this talk I will present a decision-making and control stack for human-robot interactions by using autonomous driving as a motivating example. Specifically, I will first discuss a data-driven approach for learning multimodal interaction dynamics between robot-driven and human-driven vehicles based on recent advances in deep generative modeling. Then, I will discuss how to incorporate such a learned interaction model into a real-time, interaction-aware decision-making framework. The framework is designed to be minimally interventional; in particular, by leveraging backward reachability analysis, it ensures safety even when other cars defy the robot's expectations without unduly sacrificing performance. I will present recent results from experiments on a full-scale steer-by-wire platform, validating the framework and providing practical insights. I will conclude the talk by providing an overview of related efforts from my group on infusing safety assurances in robot autonomy stacks equipped with learning-based components, with an emphasis on adding structure within robot learning via control-theoretical and formal methods.

[ UPenn ]

Autonomous Systems Failures: Who is Legally and Morally Responsible? Sponsored by Northwestern University’s Law and Technology Initiative and AI@NU, the event was moderated by Dan Linna and included Northwestern Engineering's Todd Murphey, University of Washington Law Professor Ryan Calo, and Google Senior Research Scientist Madeleine Clare Elish.

[ Northwestern ] Continue reading

Posted in Human Robots

#437749 Video Friday: NASA Launches Its Most ...

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!):

AWS Cloud Robotics Summit – August 18-19, 2020 – [Virtual Conference]
CLAWAR 2020 – August 24-26, 2020 – [Virtual Conference]
ICUAS 2020 – September 1-4, 2020 – Athens, Greece
ICRES 2020 – September 28-29, 2020 – Taipei, Taiwan
AUVSI EXPONENTIAL 2020 – October 5-8, 2020 – [Virtual Conference]
IROS 2020 – October 25-29, 2020 – Las Vegas, Nevada
ICSR 2020 – November 14-16, 2020 – Golden, Colorado
Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today’s videos.

Yesterday was a big day for what was quite possibly the most expensive robot on Earth up until it wasn’t on Earth anymore.

Perseverance and the Ingenuity helicopter are expected to arrive on Mars early next year.

[ JPL ]

ICYMI, our most popular post this week featured Northeastern University roboticist John Peter Whitney literally putting his neck on the line for science! He was testing a remotely operated straight razor shaving robotic system powered by fluidic actuators. The cutting-edge (sorry!) device transmits forces from a primary stage, operated by a barber, to a secondary stage, with the razor attached.

[ John Peter Whitney ]

Together with Boston Dynamics, Ford is introducing a pilot program into our Van Dyke Transmission Plant. Say hello to Fluffy the Robot Dog, who creates fast and accurate 3D scans that helps Ford engineers when we’re retooling our plants.

Not shown in the video: “At times, Fluffy sits on its robotic haunches and rides on the back of a small, round Autonomous Mobile Robot, known informally as Scouter. Scouter glides smoothly up and down the aisles of the plant, allowing Fluffy to conserve battery power until it’s time to get to work. Scouter can autonomously navigate facilities while scanning and capturing 3-D point clouds to generate a CAD of the facility. If an area is too tight for Scouter, Fluffy comes to the rescue.”

[ Ford ]

There is a thing that happens at 0:28 in this video that I have questions about.

[ Ghost Robotics ]

Pepper is far more polite about touching than most humans.

[ Paper ]

We don’t usually post pure simulation videos unless they give us something to get really, really excited about. So here’s a pure simulation video.

[ Hybrid Robotics ]

University of Michigan researchers are developing new origami inspired methods for designing, fabricating and actuating micro-robots using heat.These improvements will expand the mechanical capabilities of the tiny bots, allowing them to fold into more complex shapes.

[ DRSL ]

HMI is making beastly electric arms work underwater, even if they’re not stapled to a robotic submarine.

[ HMI ]

Here’s some interesting work in progress from MIT’s Biomimetics Robotics Lab. The limb is acting as a “virtual magnet” using a bimodal force and direction sensor.

Thanks Peter!

[ MIT Biomimetics Lab ]

This is adorable but as a former rabbit custodian I can assure you that approximately 3 seconds after this video ended, all of the wires on that robot were chewed to bits.

[ Lingkang Zhang ]

During the ARCHE 2020 integration week, TNO and the ETH Robot System Lab (RSL) collaborated to integrate their research and development process using the Articulated Locomotion and MAnipulation (ALMA) robot. Next to the integration of software, we tested software to confirm proper implementation and development. We also captured visual and auditory data for future software development. This all resulted in the creation of multiple demo’s to show the capabilities of the teleoperation framework using the ALMA robot.

[ RSL ]

When we talk about practical applications quadrupedal robots with foot wheels, we don’t usually think about them on this scale, although we should.

[ RSL ]

Juan wrote in to share a DIY quadruped that he’s been working on, named CHAMP.

Juan says that the demo robot can be built in less than US $1000 with easily accessible parts. “I hope that my project can provide a more accessible platform for students, researchers, and enthusiasts who are interested to learn more about quadrupedal robot development and its underlying technology.”

[ CHAMP ]

Thanks Juan!

Here’s a New Zealand TV report about a study on robot abuse from Christoph Bartneck at the University of Canterbury.

[ Paper ]

Our Robotics Studio is a hands on class exposing students to practical aspects of the design, fabrication, and programming of physical robotic systems. So what happens when the class goes virtual due to the covid-19 virus? Things get physical — all @ home.

[ Columbia ]

A few videos from the Supernumerary Robotic Devices Workshop, held online earlier this month.

“Handheld Robots: Bridging the Gap between Fully External and Wearable Robots,” presented by Walterio Mayol-Cuevas, University of Bristol.

“Playing the Piano with 11 Fingers: The Neurobehavioural Constraints of Human Robot Augmentation,” presented by Aldo Faisal, Imperial College London.

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