Tag Archives: possible

#437745 Video Friday: Japan’s Giant Gundam ...

Posted on November 27, 2020 by Android

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 – [Online 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 – [Online Conference]
IROS 2020 – October 25-29, 2020 – Las Vegas, Nev., USA
ICSR 2020 – November 14-16, 2020 – Golden, Co., USA
Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today’s videos.

It’s coming together—literally! Japan’s giant Gundam appears nearly finished and ready for its first steps. In a recent video, Gundam Factory Yokohama, which is constructing the 18-meter-tall, 25-ton walking robot, provided an update on the project. The video shows the Gundam getting its head attached—after being blessed by Shinto priests.

In the video update, they say the project is “steadily progressing” and further details will be announced around the end of September.

[ Gundam Factory Yokohama ]

Creating robots with emotional personalities will transform the usability of robots in the real-world. As previous emotive social robots are mostly based on statically stable robots whose mobility is limited, this work develops an animation to real-world pipeline that enables dynamic bipedal robots that can twist, wiggle, and walk to behave with emotions.

So that’s where Cassie’s eyes go.

[ Berkeley ]

Now that the DARPA SubT Cave Circuit is all virtual, here’s a good reminder of how it’ll work.

[ SubT ]

Since July 20, anyone 11+ years of age must wear a mask in closed public places in France. This measure also is highly recommended in many European, African and Persian Gulf countries. To support businesses and public places, SoftBank Robotics Europe unveils a new feature with Pepper: AI Face Mask Detection.

[ Softbank ]

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.

[ University of Michigan ]

Suzumori Endo Lab, Tokyo Tech has created various types of IPMC robots. Those robots are fabricated by novel 3D fabrication methods.

[ Suzimori Endo Lab ]

The most explode-y of drones manages not to explode this time.

[ SpaceX ]

At Amazon, we’re constantly innovating to support our employees, customers, and communities as effectively as possible. As our fulfillment and delivery teams have been hard at work supplying customers with items during the pandemic, Amazon’s robotics team has been working behind the scenes to re-engineer bots and processes to increase safety in our fulfillment centers.

While some folks are able to do their jobs at home with just a laptop and internet connection, it’s not that simple for other employees at Amazon, including those who spend their days building and testing robots. Some engineers have turned their homes into R&D labs to continue building these new technologies to better serve our customers and employees. Their creativity and resourcefulness to keep our important programs going is inspiring.

[ Amazon ]

Australian Army soldiers from 2nd/14th Light Horse Regiment (Queensland Mounted Infantry) demonstrated the PD-100 Black Hornet Nano unmanned aircraft vehicle during a training exercise at Shoalwater Bay Training Area, Queensland, on 4 May 2018.

This robot has been around for a long time—maybe 10 years or more? It makes you wonder what the next generation will look like, and if they can manage to make it even smaller.

[ FLIR ]

Event-based cameras are bio-inspired vision sensors whose pixels work independently from each other and respond asynchronously to brightness changes, with microsecond resolution. Their advantages make it possible to tackle challenging scenarios in robotics, such as high-speed and high dynamic range scenes. We present a solution to the problem of visual odometry from the data acquired by a stereo event-based camera rig.

[ Paper ] via [ HKUST ]

Emys can help keep kindergarteners sitting still for a long time, which is not small feat!

[ Emys ]

Introducing the RoboMaster EP Core, an advanced educational robot that was built to take learning to the next level and provides an all-in-one solution for STEAM-based classrooms everywhere, offering AI and programming projects for students of all ages and experience levels.

[ DJI ]

This Dutch food company Heemskerk uses ABB robots to automate their order picking. Their new solution reduces the amount of time the fresh produce spends in the supply chain, extending its shelf life, minimizing wastage, and creating a more sustainable solution for the fresh food industry.

[ ABB ]

This week’s episode of Pass the Torque features NASA’s Satellite Servicing Projects Division (NExIS) Robotics Engineer, Zakiya Tomlinson.

[ NASA ]

Massachusetts has been challenging Silicon Valley as the robotics capital of the United States. They’re not winning, yet. But they’re catching up.

[ MassTech ]

San Francisco-based Formant is letting anyone remotely take its Spot robot for a walk. Watch The Robot Report editors, based in Boston, take Spot for a walk around Golden Gate Park.

You can apply for this experience through Formant at the link below.

[ Formant ] via [ TRR ]

Thanks Steve!

An Institute for Advanced Study Seminar on “Theoretical Machine Learning,” featuring Peter Stone from UT Austin.

For autonomous robots to operate in the open, dynamically changing world, they will need to be able to learn a robust set of skills from relatively little experience. This talk begins by introducing Grounded Simulation Learning as a way to bridge the so-called reality gap between simulators and the real world in order to enable transfer learning from simulation to a real robot. It then introduces two new algorithms for imitation learning from observation that enable a robot to mimic demonstrated skills from state-only trajectories, without any knowledge of the actions selected by the demonstrator. Connections to theoretical advances in off-policy reinforcement learning will be highlighted throughout.

[ IAS ] Continue reading →

Posted in Human Robots

#437723 Minuscule RoBeetle Turns Liquid Methanol ...

Posted on November 26, 2020 by Android

It’s no secret that one of the most significant constraints on robots is power. Most robots need lots of it, and it has to come from somewhere, with that somewhere usually being a battery because there simply aren’t many other good options. Batteries, however, are famous for having poor energy density, and the smaller your robot is, the more of a problem this becomes. And the issue with batteries goes beyond the battery itself, but also carries over into all the other components that it takes to turn the stored energy into useful work, which again is a particular problem for small-scale robots.

In a paper published this week in Science Robotics, researchers from the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, demonstrate RoBeetle, an 88-milligram four legged robot that runs entirely on methanol, a power-dense liquid fuel. Without any electronics at all, it uses an exceptionally clever bit of mechanical autonomy to convert methanol vapor directly into forward motion, one millimeter-long step at a time.

It’s not entirely clear from the video how the robot actually works, so let’s go through how it’s put together, and then look at the actuation cycle.

Image: Science Robotics

RoBeetle (A) uses a methanol-based actuation mechanism (B). The robot’s body (C) includes the fuel tank subassembly (D), a tank lid, transmission, and sliding shutter (E), bottom side of the sliding shutter (F), nickel-titanium-platinum composite wire and leaf spring (G), and front legs and hind legs with bioinspired backward-oriented claws (H).

The body of RoBeetle is a boxy fuel tank that you can fill with methanol by poking a syringe through a fuel inlet hole. It’s a quadruped, more or less, with fixed hind legs and two front legs attached to a single transmission that moves them both at once in a sort of rocking forward and up followed by backward and down motion. The transmission is hooked up to a leaf spring that’s tensioned to always pull the legs backward, such that when the robot isn’t being actuated, the spring and transmission keep its front legs more or less vertical and allow the robot to stand. Those horns are primarily there to hold the leaf spring in place, but they’ve got little hooks that can carry stuff, too.

The actuator itself is a nickel-titanium (NiTi) shape-memory alloy (SMA), which is just a wire that gets longer when it heats up and then shrinks back down when it cools. SMAs are fairly common and used for all kinds of things, but what makes this particular SMA a little different is that it’s been messily coated with platinum. The “messily” part is important for a reason that we’ll get to in just a second.

The way that the sliding vent is attached to the transmission is the really clever bit about this robot, because it means that the motion of the wire itself is used to modulate the flow of fuel through a purely mechanical system. Essentially, it’s an actuator and a sensor at the same time.

One end of the SMA wire is attached to the middle of the leaf spring, while the other end runs above the back of the robot where it’s stapled to an anchor block on the robot’s rear end. With the SMA wire hooked up but not actuated (i.e., cold rather than warm), it’s short enough that the leaf spring gets pulled back, rocking the legs forward and up. The last component is embedded in the robot’s back, right along the spine and directly underneath the SMA actuator. It’s a sliding vent attached to the transmission, so that the vent is open when the SMA wire is cold and the leaf spring is pulled back, and closed when the SMA wire is warm and the leaf spring is relaxed. The way that the sliding vent is attached to the transmission is the really clever bit about this robot, because it means that the motion of the wire itself is used to modulate the flow of fuel through a purely mechanical system. Essentially, it’s an actuator and a sensor at the same time.

The actuation cycle that causes the robot to walk begins with a full fuel tank and a cold SMA wire. There’s tension on the leaf spring, pulling the transmission back and rocking the legs forward and upward. The transmission also pulls the sliding vent into the open position, allowing methanol vapor to escape up out of the fuel tank and into the air, where it wafts past the SMA wire that runs directly above the vent.

The platinum facilitates a reaction of the methanol (CH3OH) with oxygen in the air (combustion, although not the dramatic flaming and explosive kind) to generate a couple of water molecules and some carbon dioxide plus a bunch of heat, and this is where the messy platinum coating is important, because messy means lots of surface area for the platinum to interact with as much methanol as possible. In just a second or two the temperature of the SMA wire skyrockets from 50 to 100 ºC and it expands, allowing the leaf spring about 0.1 mm of slack. As the leaf spring relaxes, the transmission moves the legs backwards and downwards, and the robot pulls itself forward about 1.2 mm. At the same time, the transmission is closing off the sliding vent, cutting off the supply of methanol vapor. Without the vapor reacting with the platinum and generating heat, in about a second and a half, the SMA wire cools down. As it does, it shrinks, pulling on the leaf spring and starting the cycle over again. Top speed is 0.76 mm/s (0.05 body-lengths per second).

An interesting environmental effect is that the speed of the robot can be enhanced by a gentle breeze. This is because air moving over the SMA wire cools it down a bit faster while also blowing away any residual methanol from around the vents, shutting down the reaction more completely. RoBeetle can carry more than its own body weight in fuel, and it takes approximately 155 minutes for a full tank of methanol to completely evaporate. It’s worth noting that despite the very high energy density of methanol, this is actually a stupendously inefficient way of powering a robot, with an estimated end-to-end efficiency of just 0.48 percent. Not 48 percent, mind you, but 0.48 percent, while in general, powering SMAs with electricity is much more efficient.

However, you have to look at the entire system that would be necessary to deliver that electricity, and for a robot as small as RoBeetle, the researchers say that it’s basically impossible. The lightest commercially available battery and power supply that would deliver enough juice to heat up an SMA actuator weighs about 800 mg, nearly 10 times the total weight of RoBeetle itself. From that perspective, RoBeetle’s efficiency is actually pretty good.

Image: A. Kitterman/Science Robotics; adapted from R.L.T./MIT

Comparison of various untethered microrobots and bioinspired soft robots that use different power and actuation strategies.

There are some other downsides to RoBeetle we should mention—it can only move forwards, not backwards, and it can’t steer. Its speed isn’t adjustable, and once it starts walking, it’ll walk until it either breaks or runs out of fuel. The researchers have some ideas about the speed, at least, pointing out that increasing the speed of fuel delivery by using pressurized liquid fuels like butane or propane would increase the actuator output frequency. And the frequency, amplitude, and efficiency of the SMAs themselves can be massively increased “by arranging multiple fiber-like thin artificial muscles in hierarchical configurations similar to those observed in sarcomere-based animal muscle,” making RoBeetle even more beetle-like.

As for sensing, RoBeetle’s 230-mg payload is enough to carry passive sensors, but getting those sensors to usefully interact with the robot itself to enable any kind of autonomy remains a challenge. Mechanically intelligence is certainly possible, though, and we can imagine RoBeetle adopting some of the same sorts of systems that have been proposed for the clockwork rover that JPL wants to use for Venus exploration. The researchers also mention how RoBeetle could potentially serve as a model for microbots capable of aerial locomotion, which is something we’d very much like to see.

“An 88-milligram insect-scale autonomous crawling robot driven by a catalytic artificial muscle,” by Xiufeng Yang, Longlong Chang, and Néstor O. Pérez-Arancibia from University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, was published in Science Robotics. Continue reading →

Posted in Human Robots

#437721 Video Friday: Child Robot Learning to ...

Posted on November 26, 2020 by Android

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!):

CLAWAR 2020 – August 24-26, 2020 – [Online Conference]
ICUAS 2020 – September 1-4, 2020 – Athens, Greece
ICRES 2020 – September 28-29, 2020 – Taipei, Taiwan
AUVSI EXPONENTIAL 2020 – October 5-8, 2020 – [Online Conference]
IROS 2020 – October 25-29, 2020 – Las Vegas, Nev., USA
CYBATHLON 2020 – November 13-14, 2020 – [Online Event]
ICSR 2020 – November 14-16, 2020 – Golden, Colo., USA
Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today’s videos.

We first met Ibuki, Hiroshi Ishiguro’s latest humanoid robot, a couple of years ago. A recent video shows how Ishiguro and his team are teaching the robot to express its emotional state through gait and body posture while moving.

This paper presents a subjective evaluation of the emotions of a wheeled mobile humanoid robot expressing emotions during movement by replicating human gait-induced upper body motion. For this purpose, we proposed the robot equipped with a vertical oscillation mechanism that generates such motion by focusing on human center-of-mass trajectory. In the experiment, participants watched videos of the robot’s different emotional gait-induced upper body motions, and assess the type of emotion shown, and their confidence level in their answer.

[ Hiroshi Ishiguro Lab ] via [ RobotStart ]

ICYMI: This is a zinc-air battery made partly of Kevlar that can be used to support weight, not just add to it.

Like biological fat reserves store energy in animals, a new rechargeable zinc battery integrates into the structure of a robot to provide much more energy, a team led by the University of Michigan has shown.

The new battery works by passing hydroxide ions between a zinc electrode and the air side through an electrolyte membrane. That membrane is partly a network of aramid nanofibers—the carbon-based fibers found in Kevlar vests—and a new water-based polymer gel. The gel helps shuttle the hydroxide ions between the electrodes. Made with cheap, abundant and largely nontoxic materials, the battery is more environmentally friendly than those currently in use. The gel and aramid nanofibers will not catch fire if the battery is damaged, unlike the flammable electrolyte in lithium ion batteries. The aramid nanofibers could be upcycled from retired body armor.

[ University of Michigan ]

In what they say is the first large-scale study of the interactions between sound and robotic action, researchers at CMU’s Robotics Institute found that sounds could help a robot differentiate between objects, such as a metal screwdriver and a metal wrench. Hearing also could help robots determine what type of action caused a sound and help them use sounds to predict the physical properties of new objects.

[ CMU ]

Captured on Aug. 11 during the second rehearsal of the OSIRIS-REx mission’s sample collection event, this series of images shows the SamCam imager’s field of view as the NASA spacecraft approaches asteroid Bennu’s surface. The rehearsal brought the spacecraft through the first three maneuvers of the sampling sequence to a point approximately 131 feet (40 meters) above the surface, after which the spacecraft performed a back-away burn.

These images were captured over a 13.5-minute period. The imaging sequence begins at approximately 420 feet (128 meters) above the surface – before the spacecraft executes the “Checkpoint” maneuver – and runs through to the “Matchpoint” maneuver, with the last image taken approximately 144 feet (44 meters) above the surface of Bennu.

[ NASA ]

The DARPA AlphaDogfight Trials Final Event took place yesterday; the livestream is like 5 hours long, but you can skip ahead to 4:39 ish to see the AI winner take on a human F-16 pilot in simulation.

Some things to keep in mind about the result: The AI had perfect situational knowledge while the human pilot had to use eyeballs, and in particular, the AI did very well at lining up its (virtual) gun with the human during fast passing maneuvers, which is the sort of thing that autonomous systems excel at but is not necessarily reflective of better strategy.

[ DARPA ]

Coming soon from Clearpath Robotics!

[ Clearpath ]

This video introduces Preferred Networks’ Hand type A, a tendon-driven robot gripper with passively switchable underactuated surface.

[ Preferred Networks ]

CYBATHLON 2020 will take place on 13 – 14 November 2020 – at the teams’ home bases. They will set up their infrastructure for the competition and film their races. Instead of starting directly next to each other, the pilots will start individually and under the supervision of CYBATHLON officials. From Zurich, the competitions will be broadcast through a new platform in a unique live programme.

[ Cybathlon ]

In this project, we consider the task of autonomous car racing in the top-selling car racing game Gran Turismo Sport. Gran Turismo Sport is known for its detailed physics simulation of various cars and tracks. Our approach makes use of maximum-entropy deep reinforcement learning and a new reward design to train a sensorimotor policy to complete a given race track as fast as possible. We evaluate our approach in three different time trial settings with different cars and tracks. Our results show that the obtained controllers not only beat the built-in non-player character of Gran Turismo Sport, but also outperform the fastest known times in a dataset of personal best lap times of over 50,000 human drivers.

[ UZH ]

With the help of the software pitasc from Fraunhofer IPA, an assembly task is no longer programmed point by point, but workpiece-related. Thus, pitasc adapts the assembly process itself for new product variants with the help of updated parameters.

[ Fraunhofer ]

In this video, a multi-material robot simulator is used to design a shape-changing robot, which is then transferred to physical hardware. The simulated and real robots can use shape change to switch between rolling gaits and inchworm gaits, to locomote in multiple environments.

[ Yale ]

This work presents a novel loco-manipulation control framework for the execution of complex tasks with kinodynamic constraints using mobile manipulators. As a representative example, we consider the handling and re-positioning of pallet jacks in unstructured environments. While these results reveal with a proof-of- concept the effectiveness of the proposed framework, they also demonstrate the high potential of mobile manipulators for relieving human workers from such repetitive and labor intensive tasks. We believe that this extended functionality can contribute to increasing the usability of mobile manipulators in different application scenarios.

[ Paper ] via [ IIT ]

I don’t know why this dinosaur ice cream serving robot needs to blow smoke out of its nose, but I like it.

[ Connected Robotics ] via [ RobotStart ]

Guardian S remote visual inspection and surveillance robots make laying cable runs in confined or hard to reach spaces easy. With advanced maneuverability and the ability to climb vertical, ferrous surfaces, the robot reaches areas that are not always easily accessible.

[ Sarcos ]

Looks like the company that bought Anki is working on an add-on to let cars charge while they drive.

[ Digital Dream Labs ]

Chris Atkeson gives a brief talk for the CMU Robotics Institute orientation.

[ CMU RI ]

A UofT Robotics Seminar, featuring Russ Tedrake from MIT and TRI on “Feedback Control for Manipulation.”

Control theory has an answer for just about everything, but seems to fall short when it comes to closing a feedback loop using a camera, dealing with the dynamics of contact, and reasoning about robustness over the distribution of tasks one might find in the kitchen. Recent examples from RL and imitation learning demonstrate great promise, but don’t leverage the rigorous tools from systems theory. I’d like to discuss why, and describe some recent results of closing feedback loops from pixels for “category-level” robot manipulation.

[ UofT ] Continue reading →

Posted in Human Robots

#437697 These Underwater Drones Use Water ...

Posted on November 25, 2020 by Android

Yi Chao likes to describe himself as an “armchair oceanographer” because he got incredibly seasick the one time he spent a week aboard a ship. So it’s maybe not surprising that the former NASA scientist has a vision for promoting remote study of the ocean on a grand scale by enabling underwater drones to recharge on the go using his company’s energy-harvesting technology.

Many of the robotic gliders and floating sensor stations currently monitoring the world’s oceans are effectively treated as disposable devices because the research community has a limited number of both ships and funding to retrieve drones after they’ve accomplished their mission of beaming data back home. That’s not only a waste of money, but may also contribute to a growing assortment of abandoned lithium-ion batteries polluting the ocean with their leaking toxic materials—a decidedly unsustainable approach to studying the secrets of the underwater world.

“Our goal is to deploy our energy harvesting system to use renewable energy to power those robots,” says Chao, president and CEO of the startup Seatrec. “We're going to save one battery at a time, so hopefully we're going to not to dispose more toxic batteries in the ocean.”

Chao’s California-based startup claims that its SL1 Thermal Energy Harvesting System can already help save researchers money equivalent to an order of magnitude reduction in the cost of using robotic probes for oceanographic data collection. The startup is working on adapting its system to work with autonomous underwater gliders. And it has partnered with defense giant Northrop Grumman to develop an underwater recharging station for oceangoing drones that incorporates Northrop Grumman’s self-insulating electrical connector capable of operating while the powered electrical contacts are submerged.

Seatrec’s energy-harvesting system works by taking advantage of how certain substances transition from solid-to-liquid phase and liquid-to-gas phase when they heat up. The company’s technology harnesses the pressure changes that result from such phase changes in order to generate electricity.

Image: Seatrec

To make the phase changes happen, Seatrec’s solution taps the temperature differences between warmer water at the ocean surface and colder water at the ocean depths. Even a relatively simple robotic probe can generate additional electricity by changing its buoyancy to either float at the surface or sink down into the colder depths.

By attaching an external energy-harvesting module, Seatrec has already begun transforming robotic probes into assets that can be recharged and reused more affordably than sending out a ship each time to retrieve the probes. This renewable energy approach could keep such drones going almost indefinitely barring electrical or mechanical failures. “We just attach the backpack to the robots, we give them a cable providing power, and they go into the ocean,” Chao explains.

The early buyers of Seatrec’s products are primarily academic researchers who use underwater drones to collect oceanographic data. But the startup has also attracted military and government interest. It has already received small business innovation research contracts from both the U.S. Office of Naval Research and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Seatrec has also won two $10,000 prizes under the Powering the Blue Economy: Ocean Observing Prize administered by the U.S. Department of Energy and NOAA. The prizes awarded during the DISCOVER Competition phase back in March 2020 included one prize split with Northrop Grumman for the joint Mission Unlimited UUV Station concept. The startup and defense giant are currently looking for a robotics company to partner with for the DEVELOP Competition phase of the Ocean Observing Prize that will offer a total of $3 million in prizes.

In the long run, Seatrec hopes its energy-harvesting technology can support commercial ventures such as the aquaculture industry that operates vast underwater farms. The technology could also support underwater drones carrying out seabed surveys that pave the way for deep sea mining ventures, although those are not without controversy because of their projected environmental impacts.

Among all the possible applications Chao seems especially enthusiastic about the prospect of Seatrec’s renewable power technology enabling underwater drones and floaters to collect oceanographic data for much longer periods of time. He spent the better part of two decades working at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., where he helped develop a satellite designed for monitoring the Earth’s oceans. But he and the JPL engineering team that developed Seatrec’s core technology believe that swarms of underwater drones can provide a continuous monitoring network to truly begin understanding the oceans in depth.

The COVID-19 pandemic has slowed production and delivery of Seatrec’s products somewhat given local shutdowns and supply chain disruptions. Still, the startup has been able to continue operating in part because it’s considered to be a defense contractor that is operating an essential manufacturing facility. Seatrec’s engineers and other staff members are working in shifts to practice social distancing.

“Rather than building one or two for the government, we want to scale up to build thousands, hundreds of thousands, hopefully millions, so we can improve our understanding and provide that data to the community,” Chao says. Continue reading →

Posted in Human Robots

#437687 Video Friday: Bittle Is a Palm-Sized ...

Posted on November 24, 2020 by Android

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We’ll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!):

ICRES 2020 – September 28-29, 2020 – Taipei, Taiwan
AUVSI EXPONENTIAL 2020 – October 5-8, 2020 – [Online]
IROS 2020 – October 25-29, 2020 – [Online]
CYBATHLON 2020 – November 13-14, 2020 – [Online]
ICSR 2020 – November 14-16, 2020 – Golden, Colo., USA
Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos.

Rongzhong Li, who is responsible for the adorable robotic cat Nybble, has an updated and even more adorable quadruped that's more robust and agile but only costs around US $200 in kit form on Kickstarter.

Looks like the early bird options are sold out, but a full kit is a $225 pledge, for delivery in December.

[ Kickstarter ]

Thanks Rz!

I still maintain that Stickybot was one of the most elegantly designed robots ever.

[ Stanford ]

With the unpredictable health crisis of COVID-19 continuing to place high demands on hospitals, PAL Robotics have successfully completed testing of their delivery robots in Barcelona hospitals this summer. The TIAGo Delivery and TIAGo Conveyor robots were deployed in Hospital Municipal of Badalona and Hospital Clínic Barcelona following a winning proposal submitted to the European DIH-Hero project. Accerion sensors were integrated onto the TIAGo Delivery Robot and TIAGo Conveyor Robot for use in this project.

[ PAL Robotics ]

Energy Robotics, a leading developer of software solutions for mobile robots used in industrial applications, announced that its remote sensing and inspection solution for Boston Dynamics’s agile mobile robot Spot was successfully deployed at Merck’s thermal exhaust treatment plant at its headquarters in Darmstadt, Germany. Energy Robotics equipped Spot with sensor technology and remote supervision functions to support the inspection mission.

Combining Boston Dynamics’ intuitive controls, robotic intelligence and open interface with Energy Robotics’ control and autonomy software, user interface and encrypted cloud connection, Spot can be taught to autonomously perform a specific inspection round while being supervised remotely from anywhere with internet connectivity. Multiple cameras and industrial sensors enable the robot to find its way around while recording and transmitting information about the facility’s onsite equipment operations.

Spot reads the displays of gauges in its immediate vicinity and can also zoom in on distant objects using an externally-mounted optical zoom lens. In the thermal exhaust treatment facility, for instance, it monitors cooling water levels and notes whether condensation water has accumulated. Outside the facility, Spot monitors pipe bridges for anomalies.

Among the robot’s many abilities, it can detect defects of wires or the temperature of pump components using thermal imaging. The robot was put through its paces on a comprehensive course that tested its ability to handle special challenges such as climbing stairs, scaling embankments and walking over grating.

[ Energy Robotics ]

Thanks Stefan!

Boston Dynamics really should give Dr. Guero an Atlas just to see what he can do with it.

[ DrGuero ]

World's First Socially Distanced Birthday Party: Located in London, the robotic arm was piloted in real time to light the candles on the cake by the founder of Extend Robotics, Chang Liu, who was sat 50 miles away in Reading. Other team members in Manchester and Reading were also able to join in the celebration as the robot was used to accurately light the candles on the birthday cake.

[ Extend Robotics ]

The Robocon in-person competition was canceled this year, but check out Tokyo University's robots in action:

[ Robocon ]

Sphero has managed to pack an entire Sphero into a much smaller sphere.

[ Sphero ]

Squishy Robotics, a small business funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), is developing mobile sensor robots for use in disaster rescue, remote monitoring, and space exploration. The shape-shifting, mobile, senor robots from UC-Berkeley spin-off Squishy Robotics can be dropped from airplanes or drones and can provide first responders with ground-based situational awareness during fires, hazardous materials (HazMat) release, and natural and man-made disasters.

[ Squishy Robotics ]

Meet Jasper, the small girl with big dreams to FLY. Created by UTS Animal Logic Academy in partnership with the Royal Australian Air Force to encourage girls to soar above the clouds. Jasper was created using a hybrid of traditional animation techniques and technology such as robotics and 3D printing. A KUKA QUANTEC robot is used during the film making to help the Australian Royal Airforce tell their story in a unique way. UTS adapted their High Accurate robot to film consistent paths, creating a video with physical sets and digital characters.

[ AU AF ]

Impressive what the Ghost Robotics V60 can do without any vision sensors on it.

[ Ghost Robotics ]

Is your job moving tiny amounts of liquid around? Would you rather be doing something else? ABB’s YuMi got you.

[ Yumi ]

For his PhD work at the Media Lab, Biomechatronics researcher Roman Stolyarov developed a terrain-adaptive control system for robotic leg prostheses. as a way to help people with amputations feel as able-bodied and mobile as possible, by allowing them to walk seamlessly regardless of the ground terrain.

[ MIT ]

This robot collects data on each cow when she enters to be milked. Milk samples and 3D photos can be taken to monitor the cow’s health status. The Ontario Dairy Research Centre in Elora, Ontario, is leading dairy innovation through education and collaboration. It is a state-of-the-art 175,000 square foot facility for discovery, learning and outreach. This centre is a partnership between the Agricultural Research Institute of Ontario, OMAFRA, the University of Guelph and the Ontario dairy industry.

[ University of Guleph ]

Australia has one of these now, should the rest of us panic?

[ Boeing ]

Daimler and Torc are developing Level 4 automated trucks for the real world. Here is a glimpse into our closed-course testing, routes on public highways in Virginia, and self-driving capabilities development. Our year of collaborating on the future of transportation culminated in the announcement of our new truck testing center in New Mexico.

[ Torc Robotics ] Continue reading →

Posted in Human Robots