Tag Archives: robot arm

#436140 Let’s Build Robots That Are as Smart ...

Illustration: Nicholas Little

Let’s face it: Robots are dumb. At best they are idiot savants, capable of doing one thing really well. In general, even those robots require specialized environments in which to do their one thing really well. This is why autonomous cars or robots for home health care are so difficult to build. They’ll need to react to an uncountable number of situations, and they’ll need a generalized understanding of the world in order to navigate them all.

Babies as young as two months already understand that an unsupported object will fall, while five-month-old babies know materials like sand and water will pour from a container rather than plop out as a single chunk. Robots lack these understandings, which hinders them as they try to navigate the world without a prescribed task and movement.

But we could see robots with a generalized understanding of the world (and the processing power required to wield it) thanks to the video-game industry. Researchers are bringing physics engines—the software that provides real-time physical interactions in complex video-game worlds—to robotics. The goal is to develop robots’ understanding in order to learn about the world in the same way babies do.

Giving robots a baby’s sense of physics helps them navigate the real world and can even save on computing power, according to Lochlainn Wilson, the CEO of SE4, a Japanese company building robots that could operate on Mars. SE4 plans to avoid the problems of latency caused by distance from Earth to Mars by building robots that can operate independently for a few hours before receiving more instructions from Earth.

Wilson says that his company uses simple physics engines such as PhysX to help build more-independent robots. He adds that if you can tie a physics engine to a coprocessor on the robot, the real-time basic physics intuitions won’t take compute cycles away from the robot’s primary processor, which will often be focused on a more complicated task.

Wilson’s firm occasionally still turns to a traditional graphics engine, such as Unity or the Unreal Engine, to handle the demands of a robot’s movement. In certain cases, however, such as a robot accounting for friction or understanding force, you really need a robust physics engine, Wilson says, not a graphics engine that simply simulates a virtual environment. For his projects, he often turns to the open-source Bullet Physics engine built by Erwin Coumans, who is now an employee at Google.

Bullet is a popular physics-engine option, but it isn’t the only one out there. Nvidia Corp., for example, has realized that its gaming and physics engines are well-placed to handle the computing demands required by robots. In a lab in Seattle, Nvidia is working with teams from the University of Washington to build kitchen robots, fully articulated robot hands and more, all equipped with Nvidia’s tech.

When I visited the lab, I watched a robot arm move boxes of food from counters to cabinets. That’s fairly straightforward, but that same robot arm could avoid my body if I got in its way, and it could adapt if I moved a box of food or dropped it onto the floor.

The robot could also understand that less pressure is needed to grasp something like a cardboard box of Cheez-It crackers versus something more durable like an aluminum can of tomato soup.

Nvidia’s silicon has already helped advance the fields of artificial intelligence and computer vision by making it possible to process multiple decisions in parallel. It’s possible that the company’s new focus on virtual worlds will help advance the field of robotics and teach robots to think like babies.

This article appears in the November 2019 print issue as “Robots as Smart as Babies.” Continue reading

Posted in Human Robots

#435764 120 Million Dollar man with a robot arm!

Johnny Matheny controls his prosthetic arm with his mind!

Posted in Human Robots

#435775 Jaco Is a Low-Power Robot Arm That Hooks ...

We usually think of robots as taking the place of humans in various tasks, but robots of all kinds can also enhance human capabilities. This may be especially true for people with disabilities. And while the Cybathlon competition showed what's possible when cutting-edge research robotics is paired with expert humans, that competition isn't necessarily reflective of the kind of robotics available to most people today.

Kinova Robotics's Jaco arm is an assistive robotic arm designed to be mounted on an electric wheelchair. With six degrees of freedom plus a three-fingered gripper, the lightweight carbon fiber arm is frequently used in research because it's rugged and versatile. But from the start, Kinova created it to add autonomy to the lives of people with mobility constraints.

Earlier this year, Kinova shared the story of Mary Nelson, an 11-year-old girl with spinal muscular atrophy, who uses her Jaco arm to show her horse in competition. Spinal muscular atrophy is a neuromuscular disorder that impairs voluntary muscle movement, including muscles that help with respiration, and Mary depends on a power chair for mobility.

We wanted to learn more about how Kinova designs its Jaco arm, and what that means for folks like Mary, so we spoke with both Kinova and Mary's parents to find out how much of a difference a robot arm can make.

IEEE Spectrum: How did Mary interact with the world before having her arm, and what was involved in the decision to try a robot arm in general? And why then Kinova's arm specifically?

Ryan Nelson: Mary interacts with the world much like you and I do, she just uses different tools to do so. For example, she is 100 percent independent using her computer, iPad, and phone, and she prefers to use a mouse. However, she cannot move a standard mouse, so she connects her wheelchair to each device with Bluetooth to move the mouse pointer/cursor using her wheelchair joystick.

For years, we had a Manfrotto magic arm and super clamp attached to her wheelchair and she used that much like the robotic arm. We could put a baseball bat, paint brush, toys, etc. in the super clamp so that Mary could hold the object and interact as physically able children do. Mary has always wanted to be more independent, so we knew the robotic arm was something she must try. We had seen videos of the Kinova arm on YouTube and on their website, so we reached out to them to get a trial.

Can you tell us about the Jaco arm, and how the process of designing an assistive robot arm is different from the process of designing a conventional robot arm?

Nathaniel Swenson, Director of U.S. Operations — Assistive Technologies at Kinova: Jaco is our flagship robotic arm. Inspired by our CEO's uncle and its namesake, Jacques “Jaco” Forest, it was designed as assistive technology with power wheelchair users in mind.

The primary differences between Jaco and our other robots, such as the new Gen3, which was designed to meet the needs of academic and industry research teams, are speed and power consumption. Other robots such as the Gen3 can move faster and draw slightly more power because they aren't limited by the battery size of power wheelchairs. Depending on the use case, they might not interact directly with a human being in the research setting and can safely move more quickly. Jaco is designed to move at safe speeds and make direct contact with the end user and draw very little power directly from their wheelchair.

The most important consideration in the design process of an assistive robot is the safety of the end user. Jaco users operate their robots through their existing drive controls to assist them in daily activities such as eating, drinking, and opening doors and they don't have to worry about the robot draining their chair's batteries throughout the day. The elegant design that results from meeting the needs of our power chair users has benefited subsequent iterations, [of products] such as the Gen3, as well: Kinova's robots are lightweight, extremely efficient in their power consumption, and safe for direct human-robot interaction. This is not true of conventional industrial robots.

What was the learning process like for Mary? Does she feel like she's mastered the arm, or is it a continuous learning process?

Ryan Nelson: The learning process was super quick for Mary. However, she amazes us every day with the new things that she can do with the arm. Literally within minutes of installing the arm on her chair, Mary had it figured out and was shaking hands with the Kinova rep. The control of the arm is super intuitive and the Kinova reps say that SMA (Spinal Muscular Atrophy) children are perfect users because they are so smart—they pick it up right away. Mary has learned to do many fine motor tasks with the arm, from picking up small objects like a pencil or a ruler, to adjusting her glasses on her face, to doing science experiments.

Photo: The Nelson Family

Mary uses a headset microphone to amplify her voice, and she will use the arm and finger to adjust the microphone in front of her mouth after she is done eating (also a task she mastered quickly with the arm). Additionally, Mary will use the arms to reach down and adjust her feet or leg by grabbing them with the arm and moving them to a more comfortable position. All of these examples are things she never really asked us to do, but something she needed and just did on her own, with the help of the arm.

What is the most common feedback that you get from new users of the arm? How about from experienced users who have been using the arm for a while?

Nathaniel Swenson: New users always tell us how excited they are to see what they can accomplish with their new Jaco. From day one, they are able to do things that they have longed to do without assistance from a caregiver: take a drink of water or coffee, scratch an itch, push the button to open an “accessible” door or elevator, or even feed their baby with a bottle.

The most common feedback I hear from experienced users is that Jaco has changed their life. Our experienced users like Mary are rock stars: everywhere they go, people get excited to see what they'll do next. The difference between a new user and an experienced user could be as little as two weeks. People who operate power wheelchairs every day are already expert drivers and we just add a new “gear” to their chair: robot mode. It's fun to see how quickly new users master the intuitive Jaco control modes.

What changes would you like to see in the next generation of Jaco arm?

Ryan Nelson: Titanium fingers! Make it lift heavier objects, hold heavier items like a baseball bat, machine gun, flame thrower, etc., and Mary literally said this last night: “I wish the arm moved fast enough to play the piano.”

Nathaniel Swenson: I love the idea of titanium fingers! Jaco's fingers are made from a flexible polymer and designed to avoid harm. This allows the fingers to bend or dislocate, rather than break, but it also means they are not as durable as a material like titanium. Increased payload, the ability to manipulate heavier objects, requires increased power consumption. We've struck a careful balance between providing enough strength to accomplish most medically necessary Activities of Daily Living and efficient use of the power chair's batteries.

We take Isaac Asimov's Laws of Robotics pretty seriously. When we start to combine machine guns, flame throwers, and artificial intelligence with robots, I get very nervous!

I wish the arm moved fast enough to play the piano, too! I am also a musician and I share Mary's dream of an assistive robot that would enable her to make music. In the meantime, while we work on that, please enjoy this beautiful violin piece by Manami Ito and her one-of-a-kind violin prosthesis:

To what extent could more autonomy for the arm be helpful for users? What would be involved in implementing that?

Nathaniel Swenson: Artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning will introduce greater autonomy in future iterations of assistive robots. This will enable them to perform more complex tasks that aren't currently possible, and enable them to accomplish routine tasks more quickly and with less input than the current manual control requires.

For assistive robots, implementation of greater autonomy involves a focus on end-user safety and improvements in the robot's awareness of its environment. Autonomous robots that work in close proximity with humans need vision. They must be able to see to avoid collisions and they use haptic feedback to tell the robot how much force is being exerted on objects. All of these technologies exist, but the largest obstacle to bringing them to the assistive technology market is to prove to the health insurance companies who will fund them that they are both safe and medically necessary. Continue reading

Posted in Human Robots

#435748 Video Friday: This Robot Is Like a ...

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!):

RSS 2019 – June 22-26, 2019 – Freiburg, Germany
Hamlyn Symposium on Medical Robotics – June 23-26, 2019 – London, U.K.
ETH Robotics Summer School – June 27-1, 2019 – Zurich, Switzerland
MARSS 2019 – July 1-5, 2019 – Helsinki, Finland
ICRES 2019 – July 29-30, 2019 – London, U.K.
DARPA SubT Tunnel Circuit – August 15-22, 2019 – Pittsburgh, Pa., USA
Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today’s videos.

It’s been a while since we last spoke to Joe Jones, the inventor of Roomba, about his solar-powered, weed-killing robot, called Tertill, which he was launching as a Kickstarter project. Tertill is now available for purchase (US $300) and is shipping right now.

[ Tertill ]

Usually, we don’t post videos that involve drone use that looks to be either illegal or unsafe. These flights over the protests in Hong Kong are almost certainly both. However, it’s also a unique perspective on the scale of these protests.

[ Team BlackSheep ]

ICYMI: iRobot announced this week that it has acquired Root Robotics.

[ iRobot ]

This Boston Dynamics parody video went viral this week.

The CGI is good but the gratuitous violence—even if it’s against a fake robot—is a bit too much?

This is still our favorite Boston Dynamics parody video:

[ Corridor ]

Biomedical Engineering Department Head Bin He and his team have developed the first-ever successful non-invasive mind-controlled robotic arm to continuously track a computer cursor.

[ CMU ]

Organic chemists, prepare to meet your replacement:

Automated chemical synthesis carries great promises of safety, efficiency and reproducibility for both research and industry laboratories. Current approaches are based on specifically-designed automation systems, which present two major drawbacks: (i) existing apparatus must be modified to be integrated into the automation systems; (ii) such systems are not flexible and would require substantial re-design to handle new reactions or procedures. In this paper, we propose a system based on a robot arm which, by mimicking the motions of human chemists, is able to perform complex chemical reactions without any modifications to the existing setup used by humans. The system is capable of precise liquid handling, mixing, filtering, and is flexible: new skills and procedures could be added with minimum effort. We show that the robot is able to perform a Michael reaction, reaching a yield of 34%, which is comparable to that obtained by a junior chemist (undergraduate student in Chemistry).

[ arXiv ] via [ NTU ]

So yeah, ICRA 2019 was huge and awesome. Here are some brief highlights.

[ Montreal Gazette ]

For about US $5, this drone will deliver raw meat and beer to you if you live on an uninhabited island in Tokyo Bay.

[ Nikkei ]

The Smart Microsystems Lab at Michigan State University has a new version of their Autonomous Surface Craft. It’s autonomous, open source, and awfully hard to sink.

[ SML ]

As drone shows go, this one is pretty good.

[ CCTV ]

Here’s a remote controlled robot shooting stuff with a very large gun.

[ HDT ]

Over a period of three quarters (September 2018 thru May 2019), we’ve had the opportunity to work with five graduating University of Denver students as they brought their idea for a Misty II arm extension to life.

[ Misty Robotics ]

If you wonder how it looks to inspect burners and superheaters of a boiler with an Elios 2, here you are! This inspection was performed by Svenska Elektrod in a peat-fired boiler for Vattenfall in Sweden. Enjoy!

[ Flyability ]

The newest Soft Robotics technology, mGrip mini fingers, made for tight spaces, small packaging, and delicate items, giving limitless opportunities for your applications.

[ Soft Robotics ]

What if legged robots were able to generate dynamic motions in real-time while interacting with a complex environment? Such technology would represent a significant step forward the deployment of legged systems in real world scenarios. This means being able to replace humans in the execution of dangerous tasks and to collaborate with them in industrial applications.

This workshop aims to bring together researchers from all the relevant communities in legged locomotion such as: numerical optimization, machine learning (ML), model predictive control (MPC) and computational geometry in order to chart the most promising methods to address the above-mentioned scientific challenges.

[ Num Opt Wkshp ]

Army researchers teamed with the U.S. Marine Corps to fly and test 3-D printed quadcopter prototypes a the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in 29 Palms, California recently.

[ CCDC ARL ]

Lex Fridman’s Artificial Intelligence podcast featuring Rosalind Picard.

[ AI Podcast ]

In this week’s episode of Robots in Depth, per speaks with Christian Guttmann, executive director of the Nordic AI Artificial Intelligence Institute.

Christian Guttmann talks about AI and wanting to understand intelligence enough to recreate it. Christian has be focusing on AI in healthcare and has recently started to communicate the opportunities and challenges in artificial intelligence to the general public. This is something that the host Per Sjöborg is also very passionate about. We also get to hear about the Nordic AI institute and the work it does to inform all parts of society about AI.

[ Robots in Depth ] Continue reading

Posted in Human Robots

#435731 Video Friday: NASA Is Sending This ...

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!):

MARSS 2019 – July 1-5, 2019 – Helsinki, Finland
ICRES 2019 – July 29-30, 2019 – London, UK
DARPA SubT Tunnel Circuit – August 15-22, 2019 – Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today’s videos.

The big news today is that NASA is sending a robot to Saturn’s moon Titan. A flying robot. The Dragonfly mission will launch in 2026 and arrive in 2034, but you knew that already, because last January, we posted a detailed article about the concept from the Applied Physics Lab at Johns Hopkins University. And now it’s not a concept anymore, yay!

Again, read all the details plus an interview in 2018 article.

[ NASA ]

A robotic gripping arm that uses engineered bacteria to “taste” for a specific chemical has been developed by engineers at the University of California, Davis, and Carnegie Mellon University. The gripper is a proof-of-concept for biologically-based soft robotics.

The new device uses a biosensing module based on E. coli bacteria engineered to respond to the chemical IPTG by producing a fluorescent protein. The bacterial cells reside in wells with a flexible, porous membrane that allows chemicals to enter but keeps the cells inside. This biosensing module is built into the surface of a flexible gripper on a robotic arm, so the gripper can “taste” the environment through its fingers.

When IPTG crosses the membrane into the chamber, the cells fluoresce and electronic circuits inside the module detect the light. The electrical signal travels to the gripper’s control unit, which can decide whether to pick something up or release it.

[ UC Davis ]

The Toyota Research Institute (TRI) is taking on the hard problems in manipulation research toward making human-assist robots reliable and robust. Dr. Russ Tedrake, TRI Vice President of Robotics Research, explains how we are exploring the challenges and addressing the reliability gap by using a robot loading dishes in a dishwasher as an example task.

[ TRI ]

The Tactile Telerobot is the world’s first haptic telerobotic system that transmits realistic touch feedback to an operator located anywhere in the world. It is the product of joint collaboration between Shadow Robot Company, HaptX, and SynTouch. All Nippon Airways funded the project’s initial research and development.

What’s really unique about this is the HaptX tactile feedback system, which is something we’ve been following for several years now. It’s one of the most magical tech experiences I’ve ever had, and you can read about it here and here.

[ HaptX ]

Thanks Andrew!

I love how snake robots can emulate some of the fanciest moves of real snakes, and then also do bonkers things that real snakes never do.

[ Matsuno Lab ]

Here are a couple interesting videos from the Human-Robot Interaction Lab at Tufts.

A robot is instructed to perform an action and cannot do it due to lack of sensors. But when another robot is placed nearby, it can execute the instruction by tacitly tapping into the other robot’s mind and using that robot’s sensors for its own actions. Yes, it’s automatic, and yes, it’s the BORG!

Two Nao robots are instructed to perform a dance and are able to do it right after instruction. Moreover, they can switch roles immediately, and even a third different PR2 robot can perform the dance right away, demonstrating the ability of our DIARC architecture to learn quickly and share the knowledge with any type of robot running the architecture.

Compared to Nao, PR2 just sounds… depressed.

[ HRI Lab ]

This work explores the problem of robot tool construction – creating tools from parts available in the environment. We advance the state-of-the-art in robotic tool construction by introducing an approach that enables the robot to construct a wider range of tools with greater computational efficiency. Specifically, given an action that the robot wishes to accomplish and a set of building parts available to the robot, our approach reasons about the shape of the parts and potential ways of attaching them, generating a ranking of part combinations that the robot then uses to construct and test the target tool. We validate our approach on the construction of five tools using a physical 7-DOF robot arm.

[ RAIL Lab ] via [ RSS ]

We like Magazino’s approach to warehouse picking- constrain the problem to something you can reliably solve, like shoeboxes.

Magazino has announced a new pricing model for their robots. You pay 55k euros for the robot itself, and then after that, all you pay to keep the robot working is 6 cents per pick, so the robot is only costing you money for the work that it actually does.

[ Magazino ]

Thanks Florin!

Human-Robot Collaborations are happening across factories worldwide, yet very few are using it for smaller businesses, due to high costs or the difficulty of customization. Elephant Robotics, a new player from Shenzhen, the Silicon Valley of Asia, has set its sight on helping smaller businesses gain access to smart robotics. They created a Catbot (a collaborative robotic arm) that will offer high efficiency and flexibility to various industries.

The Catbot is set to help from education projects, photography, massaging, to being a personal barista or co-playing a table game. The customizations are endless. To increase the flexibility of usage, the Catbot is extremely easy to program from a high precision task up to covering hefty ground projects.

[ Elephant Robotics ]

Thanks Johnson!

Dronistics, an EPFL spin-off, has been testing out their enclosed delivery drone in the Dominican Republic through a partnership with WeRobotics.

[ WeRobotics ]

QTrobot is an expressive humanoid robot designed to help children with autism spectrum disorder and children with special educational needs in learning new skills. QTrobot uses simple and exaggerated facial expressions combined by interactive games and stories, to help children improve their emotional skills. QTrobot helps children to learn about and better understand the emotions and teach them strategies to handle their emotions more effectively.

[ LuxAI ]

Here’s a typical day in the life of a Tertill solar-powered autonomous weed-destroying robot.

$300, now shipping from Franklin Robotics.

[ Tertill ]

PAL Robotics is excited to announce a new TIAGo with two arms, TIAGo++! After carefully listening to the robotics community needs, we used TIAGo’s modularity to integrate two 7-DoF arms to our mobile manipulator. TIAGo++ can help you swiftly accomplish your research goals, opening endless possibilities in mobile manipulation.

[ PAL Robotics ]

Thanks Jack!

You’ve definitely already met the Cobalt security robot, but Toyota AI Ventures just threw a pile of money at them and would therefore like you to experience this re-introduction:

[ Cobalt Robotics ] via [ Toyota AI ]

ROSIE is a mobile manipulator kit from HEBI Robotics. And if you don’t like ROSIE, the modular nature of HEBI’s hardware means that you can take her apart and make something more interesting.

[ HEBI Robotics ]

Learn about Kawasaki Robotics’ second addition to their line of duAro dual-arm collaborative robots, duAro2. This model offers an extended vertical reach (550 mm) and an increased payload capacity (3 kg/arm).

[ Kawasaki Robotics ]

Drone Delivery Canada has partnered with Peel Region Paramedics to pilot its proprietary drone delivery platform to enable rapid first responder technology via drone with the goal to reduce response time and potentially save lives.

[ Drone Delivery Canada ]

In this week’s episode of Robots in Depth, Per speaks with Harri Ketamo, from Headai.

Harri Ketamo talks about AI and how he aims to mimic human decision making with algorithms. Harri has done a lot of AI for computer games to create opponents that are entertaining to play against. It is easy to develop a very bad or a very good opponent, but designing an opponent that behaves like a human, is entertaining to play against and that you can beat is quite hard. He talks about how AI in computer games is a very important story telling tool and an important part of making a game entertaining to play.

This work led him into other parts of the AI field. Harri thinks that we sometimes have a problem separating what is real from what is the type of story telling he knows from gaming AI. He calls for critical analysis of AI and says that data has to be used to verify AI decisions and results.

[ Robots in Depth ]

Thanks Per! Continue reading

Posted in Human Robots