Tag Archives: portable
#436234 Robot Gift Guide 2019
Welcome to the eighth edition of IEEE Spectrum’s Robot Gift Guide!
This year we’re featuring 15 robotic products that we think will make fantastic holiday gifts. As always, we tried to include a broad range of robot types and prices, focusing mostly on items released this year. (A reminder: While we provide links to places where you can buy these items, we’re not endorsing any in particular, and a little bit of research may result in better deals.)
If you need even more robot gift ideas, take a look at our past guides: 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, and 2012. Some of those robots are still great choices and might be way cheaper now than when we first posted about them. And if you have suggestions that you’d like to share, post a comment below to help the rest of us find the perfect robot gift.
Skydio 2
Image: Skydio
What makes robots so compelling is their autonomy, and the Skydio 2 is one of the most autonomous robots we’ve ever seen. It uses an array of cameras to map its environment and avoid obstacles in real-time, making flight safe and effortless and enabling the kinds of shots that would be impossible otherwise. Seriously, this thing is magical, and it’s amazing that you can actually buy one.
$1,000
Skydio
UBTECH Jimu MeeBot 2
Image: UBTECH
The Jimu MeeBot 2.0 from UBTECH is a STEM education robot designed to be easy to build and program. It includes six servo motors, a color sensor, and LED lights. An app for iPhone or iPad provides step-by-step 3D instructions, and helps you code different behaviors for the robot. It’s available exclusively from Apple.
$130
Apple
iRobot Roomba s9+
Image: iRobot
We know that $1,400 is a crazy amount of money to spend on a robot vacuum, but the Roomba s9+ is a crazy robot vacuum. As if all of its sensors and mapping intelligence wasn’t enough, it empties itself, which means that you can have your floors vacuumed every single day for a month and you don’t have to even think about it. This is what home robots are supposed to be.
$1,400
iRobot
PFF Gita
Photo: Piaggio Fast Forward
Nobody likes carrying things, which is why Gita is perfect for everyone with an extra $3,000 lying around. Developed by Piaggio Fast Forward, this autonomous robot will follow you around with a cargo hold full of your most important stuff, and do it in a way guaranteed to attract as much attention as possible.
$3,250
Gita
DJI Mavic Mini
Photo: DJI
It’s tiny, it’s cheap, and it takes good pictures—what more could you ask for from a drone? And for $400, this is an excellent drone to get if you’re on a budget and comfortable with manual flight. Keep in mind that while the Mavic Mini is small enough that you don’t need to register it with the FAA, you do still need to follow all the same rules and regulations.
$400
DJI
LEGO Star Wars Droid Commander
Image: LEGO
Designed for kids ages 8+, this LEGO set includes more than 1,000 pieces, enough to build three different droids: R2-D2, Gonk Droid, and Mouse Droid. Using a Bluetooth-controlled robotic brick called Move Hub, which connects to the LEGO BOOST Star Wars app, kids can change how the robots behave and solve challenges, learning basic robotics and coding skills.
$200
LEGO
Sony Aibo
Photo: Sony
Robot pets don’t get much more sophisticated (or expensive) than Sony’s Aibo. Strictly speaking, it’s one of the most complex consumer robots you can buy, and Sony continues to add to Aibo’s software. Recent new features include user programmability, and the ability to “feed” it.
$2,900 (free aibone and paw pads until 12/29/2019)
Sony
Neato Botvac D4 Connected
Photo: Neato
The Neato Botvac D4 may not have all of the features of its fancier and more expensive siblings, but it does have the features that you probably care the most about: The ability to make maps of its environment for intelligent cleaning (using lasers!), along with user-defined no-go lines that keep it where you want it. And it cleans quite well, too.
$530 $350 (sale)
Neato Robotics
Cubelets Curiosity Set
Photo: Modular Robotics
Cubelets are magnetic blocks that you can snap together to make an endless variety of robots with no programming and no wires. The newest set, called Curiosity, is designed for kids ages 4+ and comes with 10 robotic cubes. These include light and distance sensors, motors, and a Bluetooth module, which connects the robot constructions to the Cubelets app.
$250
Modular Robotics
Tertill
Photo: Franklin Robotics
Tertill does one simple job: It weeds your garden. It’s waterproof, dirt proof, solar powered, and fully autonomous, meaning that you can leave it out in your garden all summer and just enjoy eating your plants rather than taking care of them.
$350
Tertill
iRobot Root
Photo: iRobot
Root was originally developed by Harvard University as a tool to help kids progressively learn to code. iRobot has taken over Root and is now supporting the curriculum, which starts for kids before they even know how to read and should keep them busy for years afterwards.
$200
iRobot
LOVOT
Image: Lovot
Let’s be honest: Nobody is really quite sure what LOVOT is. We can all agree that it’s kinda cute, though. And kinda weird. But cute. Created by Japanese robotics startup Groove X, LOVOT does have a whole bunch of tech packed into its bizarre little body and it will do its best to get you to love it.
$2,750 (¥300,000)
LOVOT
Sphero RVR
Photo: Sphero
RVR is a rugged, versatile, easy to program mobile robot. It’s a development platform designed to be a bridge between educational robots like Sphero and more sophisticated and expensive systems like Misty. It’s mostly affordable, very expandable, and comes from a company with a lot of experience making robots.
$250
Sphero
“How to Train Your Robot”
Image: Lawrence Hall of Science
Aimed at 4th and 5th graders, “How to Train Your Robot,” written by Blooma Goldberg, Ken Goldberg, and Ashley Chase, and illustrated by Dave Clegg, is a perfect introduction to robotics for kids who want to get started with designing and building robots. But the book isn’t just for beginners: It’s also a fun, inspiring read for kids who are already into robotics and want to go further—it even introduces concepts like computer simulations and deep learning. You can download a free digital copy or request hardcopies here.
Free
UC Berkeley
MIT Mini Cheetah
Photo: MIT
Yes, Boston Dynamics’ Spot, now available for lease, is probably the world’s most famous quadruped, but MIT is starting to pump out Mini Cheetahs en masse for researchers, and while we’re not exactly sure how you’d manage to get one of these things short of stealing one directly for MIT, a Mini Cheetah is our fantasy robotics gift this year. Mini Cheetah looks like a ton of fun—it’s portable, highly dynamic, super rugged, and easy to control. We want one!
Price N/A
MIT Biomimetic Robotics Lab
For more tech gift ideas, see also IEEE Spectrum’s annual Gift Guide. Continue reading
#436123 A Path Towards Reasonable Autonomous ...
Editor’s Note: The debate on autonomous weapons systems has been escalating over the past several years as the underlying technologies evolve to the point where their deployment in a military context seems inevitable. IEEE Spectrum has published a variety of perspectives on this issue. In summary, while there is a compelling argument to be made that autonomous weapons are inherently unethical and should be banned, there is also a compelling argument to be made that autonomous weapons could potentially make conflicts less harmful, especially to non-combatants. Despite an increasing amount of international attention (including from the United Nations), progress towards consensus, much less regulatory action, has been slow. The following workshop paper on autonomous weapons systems policy is remarkable because it was authored by a group of experts with very different (and in some cases divergent) views on the issue. Even so, they were able to reach consensus on a roadmap that all agreed was worth considering. It’s collaborations like this that could be the best way to establish a reasonable path forward on such a contentious issue, and with the permission of the authors, we’re excited to be able to share this paper (originally posted on Georgia Tech’s Mobile Robot Lab website) with you in its entirety.
Autonomous Weapon Systems: A Roadmapping Exercise
Over the past several years, there has been growing awareness and discussion surrounding the possibility of future lethal autonomous weapon systems that could fundamentally alter humanity’s relationship with violence in war. Lethal autonomous weapons present a host of legal, ethical, moral, and strategic challenges. At the same time, artificial intelligence (AI) technology could be used in ways that improve compliance with the laws of war and reduce non-combatant harm. Since 2014, states have come together annually at the United Nations to discuss lethal autonomous weapons systems1. Additionally, a growing number of individuals and non-governmental organizations have become active in discussions surrounding autonomous weapons, contributing to a rapidly expanding intellectual field working to better understand these issues. While a wide range of regulatory options have been proposed for dealing with the challenge of lethal autonomous weapons, ranging from a preemptive, legally binding international treaty to reinforcing compliance with existing laws of war, there is as yet no international consensus on a way forward.
The lack of an international policy consensus, whether codified in a formal document or otherwise, poses real risks. States could fall victim to a security dilemma in which they deploy untested or unsafe weapons that pose risks to civilians or international stability. Widespread proliferation could enable illicit uses by terrorists, criminals, or rogue states. Alternatively, a lack of guidance on which uses of autonomy are acceptable could stifle valuable research that could reduce the risk of non-combatant harm.
International debate thus far has predominantly centered around whether or not states should adopt a preemptive, legally-binding treaty that would ban lethal autonomous weapons before they can be built. Some of the authors of this document have called for such a treaty and would heartily support it, if states were to adopt it. Other authors of this document have argued an overly expansive treaty would foreclose the possibility of using AI to mitigate civilian harm. Options for international action are not binary, however, and there are a range of policy options that states should consider between adopting a comprehensive treaty or doing nothing.
The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibility of a middle road. If a roadmap could garner sufficient stakeholder support to have significant beneficial impact, then what elements could it contain? The exercise whose results are presented below was not to identify recommendations that the authors each prefer individually (the authors hold a broad spectrum of views), but instead to identify those components of a roadmap that the authors are all willing to entertain2. We, the authors, invite policymakers to consider these components as they weigh possible actions to address concerns surrounding autonomous weapons3.
Summary of Issues Surrounding Autonomous Weapons
There are a variety of issues that autonomous weapons raise, which might lend themselves to different approaches. A non-exhaustive list of issues includes:
The potential for beneficial uses of AI and autonomy that could improve precision and reliability in the use of force and reduce non-combatant harm.
Uncertainty about the path of future technology and the likelihood of autonomous weapons being used in compliance with the laws of war, or international humanitarian law (IHL), in different settings and on various timelines.
A desire for some degree of human involvement in the use of force. This has been expressed repeatedly in UN discussions on lethal autonomous weapon systems in different ways.
Particular risks surrounding lethal autonomous weapons specifically targeting personnel as opposed to vehicles or materiel.
Risks regarding international stability.
Risk of proliferation to terrorists, criminals, or rogue states.
Risk that autonomous systems that have been verified to be acceptable can be made unacceptable through software changes.
The potential for autonomous weapons to be used as scalable weapons enabling a small number of individuals to inflict very large-scale casualties at low cost, either intentionally or accidentally.
Summary of Components
A time-limited moratorium on the development, deployment, transfer, and use of anti-personnel lethal autonomous weapon systems4. Such a moratorium could include exceptions for certain classes of weapons.
Define guiding principles for human involvement in the use of force.
Develop protocols and/or technological means to mitigate the risk of unintentional escalation due to autonomous systems.
Develop strategies for preventing proliferation to illicit uses, such as by criminals, terrorists, or rogue states.
Conduct research to improve technologies and human-machine systems to reduce non-combatant harm and ensure IHL compliance in the use of future weapons.
Component 1:
States should consider adopting a five-year, renewable moratorium on the development, deployment, transfer, and use of anti-personnel lethal autonomous weapon systems. Anti-personnel lethal autonomous weapon systems are defined as weapons systems that, once activated, can select and engage dismounted human targets without further intervention by a human operator, possibly excluding systems such as:
Fixed-point defensive systems with human supervisory control to defend human-occupied bases or installations
Limited, proportional, automated counter-fire systems that return fire in order to provide immediate, local defense of humans
Time-limited pursuit deterrent munitions or systems
Autonomous weapon systems with size above a specified explosive weight limit that select as targets hand-held weapons, such as rifles, machine guns, anti-tank weapons, or man-portable air defense systems, provided there is adequate protection for non-combatants and ensuring IHL compliance5
The moratorium would not apply to:
Anti-vehicle or anti-materiel weapons
Non-lethal anti-personnel weapons
Research on ways of improving autonomous weapon technology to reduce non-combatant harm in future anti-personnel lethal autonomous weapon systems
Weapons that find, track, and engage specific individuals whom a human has decided should be engaged within a limited predetermined period of time and geographic region
Motivation:
This moratorium would pause development and deployment of anti-personnel lethal autonomous weapons systems to allow states to better understand the systemic risks of their use and to perform research that improves their safety, understandability, and effectiveness. Particular objectives could be to:
ensure that, prior to deployment, anti-personnel lethal autonomous weapons can be used in ways that are equal to or outperform humans in their compliance with IHL (other conditions may also apply prior to deployment being acceptable);
lay the groundwork for a potentially legally binding diplomatic instrument; and
decrease the geopolitical pressure on countries to deploy anti-personnel lethal autonomous weapons before they are reliable and well-understood.
Compliance Verification:
As part of a moratorium, states could consider various approaches to compliance verification. Potential approaches include:
Developing an industry cooperation regime analogous to that mandated under the Chemical Weapons Convention, whereby manufacturers must know their customers and report suspicious purchases of significant quantities of items such as fixed-wing drones, quadcopters, and other weaponizable robots.
Encouraging states to declare inventories of autonomous weapons for the purposes of transparency and confidence-building.
Facilitating scientific exchanges and military-to-military contacts to increase trust, transparency, and mutual understanding on topics such as compliance verification and safe operation of autonomous systems.
Designing control systems to require operator identity authentication and unalterable records of operation; enabling post-hoc compliance checks in case of plausible evidence of non-compliant autonomous weapon attacks.
Relating the quantity of weapons to corresponding capacities for human-in-the-loop operation of those weapons.
Designing weapons with air-gapped firing authorization circuits that are connected to the remote human operator but not to the on-board automated control system.
More generally, avoiding weapon designs that enable conversion from compliant to non-compliant categories or missions solely by software updates.
Designing weapons with formal proofs of relevant properties—e.g., the property that the weapon is unable to initiate an attack without human authorization. Proofs can, in principle, be provided using cryptographic techniques that allow the proofs to be checked by a third party without revealing any details of the underlying software.
Facilitate access to (non-classified) AI resources (software, data, methods for ensuring safe operation) to all states that remain in compliance and participate in transparency activities.
Component 2:
Define and universalize guiding principles for human involvement in the use of force.
Humans, not machines, are legal and moral agents in military operations.
It is a human responsibility to ensure that any attack, including one involving autonomous weapons, complies with the laws of war.
Humans responsible for initiating an attack must have sufficient understanding of the weapons, the targets, the environment and the context for use to determine whether that particular attack is lawful.
The attack must be bounded in space, time, target class, and means of attack in order for the determination about the lawfulness of that attack to be meaningful.
Militaries must invest in training, education, doctrine, policies, system design, and human-machine interfaces to ensure that humans remain responsible for attacks.
Component 3:
Develop protocols and/or technological means to mitigate the risk of unintentional escalation due to autonomous systems.
Specific potential measures include:
Developing safe rules for autonomous system behavior when in proximity to adversarial forces to avoid unintentional escalation or signaling. Examples include:
No-first-fire policy, so that autonomous weapons do not initiate hostilities without explicit human authorization.
A human must always be responsible for providing the mission for an autonomous system.
Taking steps to clearly distinguish exercises, patrols, reconnaissance, or other peacetime military operations from attacks in order to limit the possibility of reactions from adversary autonomous systems, such as autonomous air or coastal defenses.
Developing resilient communications links to ensure recallability of autonomous systems. Additionally, militaries should refrain from jamming others’ ability to recall their autonomous systems in order to afford the possibility of human correction in the event of unauthorized behavior.
Component 4:
Develop strategies for preventing proliferation to illicit uses, such as by criminals, terrorists, or rogue states:
Targeted multilateral controls to prevent large-scale sale and transfer of weaponizable robots and related military-specific components for illicit use.
Employ measures to render weaponizable robots less harmful (e.g., geofencing; hard-wired kill switch; onboard control systems largely implemented in unalterable, non-reprogrammable hardware such as application-specific integrated circuits).
Component 5:
Conduct research to improve technologies and human-machine systems to reduce non-combatant harm and ensure IHL-compliance in the use of future weapons, including:
Strategies to promote human moral engagement in decisions about the use of force
Risk assessment for autonomous weapon systems, including the potential for large-scale effects, geopolitical destabilization, accidental escalation, increased instability due to uncertainty about the relative military balance of power, and lowering thresholds to initiating conflict and for violence within conflict
Methodologies for ensuring the reliability and security of autonomous weapon systems
New techniques for verification, validation, explainability, characterization of failure conditions, and behavioral specifications.
About the Authors (in alphabetical order)
Ronald Arkin directs the Mobile Robot Laboratory at Georgia Tech.
Leslie Kaelbling is co-director of the Learning and Intelligent Systems Group at MIT.
Stuart Russell is a professor of computer science and engineering at UC Berkeley.
Dorsa Sadigh is an assistant professor of computer science and of electrical engineering at Stanford.
Paul Scharre directs the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS).
Bart Selman is a professor of computer science at Cornell.
Toby Walsh is a professor of artificial intelligence at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney.
The authors would like to thank Max Tegmark for organizing the three-day meeting from which this document was produced.
1 Autonomous Weapons System (AWS): A weapon system that, once activated, can select and engage targets without further intervention by a human operator. BACK TO TEXT↑
2 There is no implication that some authors would not personally support stronger recommendations. BACK TO TEXT↑
3 For ease of use, this working paper will frequently shorten “autonomous weapon system” to “autonomous weapon.” The terms should be treated as synonymous, with the understanding that “weapon” refers to the entire system: sensor, decision-making element, and munition. BACK TO TEXT↑
4 Anti-personnel lethal autonomous weapon system: A weapon system that, once activated, can select and engage dismounted human targets with lethal force and without further intervention by a human operator. BACK TO TEXT↑
5 The authors are not unanimous about this item because of concerns about ease of repurposing for mass-casualty missions targeting unarmed humans. The purpose of the lower limit on explosive payload weight would be to minimize the risk of such repurposing. There is precedent for using explosive weight limit as a mechanism of delineating between anti-personnel and anti-materiel weapons, such as the 1868 St. Petersburg Declaration Renouncing the Use, in Time of War, of Explosive Projectiles Under 400 Grammes Weight. BACK TO TEXT↑ Continue reading
#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