Tag Archives: remotely
#437758 Remotely Operated Robot Takes Straight ...
Roboticists love hard problems. Challenges like the DRC and SubT have helped (and are still helping) to catalyze major advances in robotics, but not all hard problems require a massive amount of DARPA funding—sometimes, a hard problem can just be something very specific that’s really hard for a robot to do, especially relative to the ease with which a moderately trained human might be able to do it. Catching a ball. Putting a peg in a hole. Or using a straight razor to shave someone’s face without Sweeney Todd-izing them.
This particular roboticist who sees straight-razor face shaving as a hard problem that robots should be solving is John Peter Whitney, who we first met back at IROS 2014 in Chicago when (working at Disney Research) he introduced an elegant fluidic actuator system. These actuators use tubes containing a fluid (like air or water) to transmit forces from a primary robot to a secondary robot in a very efficient way that also allows for either compliance or very high fidelity force feedback, depending on the compressibility of the fluid.
Photo: John Peter Whitney/Northeastern University
Barber meets robot: Boston based barber Jesse Cabbage [top, right] observes the machine created by roboticist John Peter Whitney. Before testing the robot on Whitney’s face, they used his arm for a quick practice [bottom].
Whitney is now at Northeastern University, in Boston, and he recently gave a talk at the RSS workshop on “Reacting to Contact,” where he suggested that straight razor shaving would be an interesting and valuable problem for robotics to work toward, due to its difficulty and requirement for an extremely high level of both performance and reliability.
Now, a straight razor is sort of like a safety razor, except with the safety part removed, which in fact does make it significantly less safe for humans, much less robots. Also not ideal for those worried about safety is that as part of the process the razor ends up in distressingly close proximity to things like the artery that is busily delivering your brain’s entire supply of blood, which is very close to the top of the list of things that most people want to keep blades very far away from. But that didn’t stop Whitney from putting his whiskers where his mouth is and letting his robotic system mediate the ministrations of a professional barber. It’s not an autonomous robotic straight-razor shave (because Whitney is not totally crazy), but it’s a step in that direction, and requires that the hardware Whitney developed be dead reliable.
Perhaps that was a poor choice of words. But, rest assured that Whitney lived long enough to answer our questions after. Here’s the video; it’s part of a longer talk, but it should start in the right spot, at about 23:30.
If Whitney looked a little bit nervous to you, that’s because he was. “This was the first time I’d ever been shaved by someone (something?!) else with a straight razor,” he told us, and while having a professional barber at the helm was some comfort, “the lack of feeling and control on my part was somewhat unsettling.” Whitney says that the barber, Jesse Cabbage of Dentes Barbershop in Somerville, Mass., was surprised by how well he could feel the tactile sensations being transmitted from the razor. “That’s one of the reasons we decided to make this video,” Whitney says. “I can’t show someone how something feels, so the next best thing is to show a delicate task that either from experience or intuition makes it clear to the viewer that the system must have these properties—otherwise the task wouldn’t be possible.”
And as for when Whitney might be comfortable getting shaved by a robotic system without a human in the loop? It’s going to take a lot of work, as do most other hard problems in robotics. “There are two parts to this,” he explains. “One is fault-tolerance of the components themselves (software, electronics, etc.) and the second is the quality of the perception and planning algorithms.”
He offers a comparison to self-driving cars, in which similar (or greater) risks are incurred: “To learn how to perceive, interpret, and adapt, we need a very high-fidelity model of the problem, or a wealth of data and experience, or both” he says. “But in the case of shaving we are greatly lacking in both!” He continues with the analogy: “I think there is a natural progression—the community started with autonomous driving of toy cars on closed courses and worked up to real cars carrying human passengers; in robotic manipulation we are beginning to move out of the ‘toy car’ stage and so I think it’s good to target high-consequence hard problems to help drive progress.”
The ultimate goal is much more general than the creation of a dedicated straight razor shaving robot. This particular hardware system is actually a testbed for exploring MRI-compatible remote needle biopsy.
Of course, the ultimate goal here is much more general than the creation of a dedicated straight razor shaving robot; it’s a challenge that includes a host of sub-goals that will benefit robotics more generally. This particular hardware system Whitney is developing is actually a testbed for exploring MRI-compatible remote needle biopsy, and he and his students are collaborating with Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston on adapting this technology to prostate biopsy and ablation procedures. They’re also exploring how delicate touch can be used as a way to map an environment and localize within it, especially where using vision may not be a good option. “These traits and behaviors are especially interesting for applications where we must interact with delicate and uncertain environments,” says Whitney. “Medical robots, assistive and rehabilitation robots and exoskeletons, and shared-autonomy teleoperation for delicate tasks.”
A paper with more details on this robotic system, “Series Elastic Force Control for Soft Robotic Fluid Actuators,” is available on arXiv. Continue reading
Posted in Human Robots
#437687 Video Friday: Bittle Is a Palm-Sized ...
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