Tag Archives: robot

#435784 Amazon Uses 800 Robots to Run This ...

Posted on September 20, 2019 by Android

At Amazon’s re:MARS conference in Las Vegas today, who else but Amazon is introducing two new robots designed to make its fulfillment centers even more fulfilling. Xanthus (named after a mythological horse that could very briefly talk but let’s not read too much into that) is a completely redesigned drive unit, one of the robotic mobile bases that carries piles of stuff around for humans to pick from. It has a thinner profile, a third of the parts, costs half as much, and can wear different modules on top to perform a much wider variety of tasks than its predecessor.

Pegasus (named after a mythological horse that could fly but let’s not read too much into that either) is also a mobile robot, but much smaller than Xanthus, designed to help the company quickly and accurately sort individual packages. For Amazon, it’s a completely new large-scale robotic system involving tightly coordinated fleets of robots tossing boxes down chutes, and it’s just as fun to watch as it sounds.

Amazon has 800 Pegasus units already deployed at a sorting facility in the United States, adding to their newly updated total of 200,000 robotic drive units worldwide.

If the Pegasus system looks familiar, it’s because other warehouse automation companies have had something that’s at least superficially very similar up and running for years.

Photo: Amazon

Pegasus is one of Amazon’s new warehouse robots, equipped with a conveyor belt on top and used in the company’s sorting facilities.

But the most interesting announcement that Amazon made, kind of low key and right at the end of their re:MARS talk, is that they’re working on ways of making some of their mobile robots actually collaborative, leveraging some of the technology that they acquired from Boulder, Colo.-based warehouse robotics startup Canvas Technology earlier this year:

“With our recent acquisition of Canvas, we expect to be able to combine this drive platform with AI and autonomous mobility capabilities, and for the first time, allow our robots to move outside of our robotic drive fields, and interact collaboratively with our associates to do a number of mobility tasks,” said Brad Porter, VP of robotics at Amazon.

At the moment, Amazon’s robots are physically separated from humans except for one highly structured station where the human only interacts with the robot in one or two very specific ways. We were told a few months ago that Amazon would like to have mobile robots that are able to move things through the areas of fulfillment centers that have people in them, but that they’re (quite rightly) worried about the safety aspects of having robots and humans work around each other. Other companies are already doing this on a smaller scale, and it means developing a reliable safety system that can handle randomly moving humans, environmental changes, and all kinds of other stuff. It’s much more difficult than having a nice, clean, roped-off area to work in where a wayward human would be an exception rather than just another part of the job.

Photo: Canvas Technology

A robot created by Canvas Technology, a Boulder, Colo.-based warehouse robotics startup acquired by Amazon earlier this year.

It now seems like Canvas has provided the secret sauce that Amazon needed to start implementing this level of autonomy. As for what it’s going to look like, our best guess is that Amazon is going to have to do a little bit more than slap some extra sensors onto Xanthus or Pegasus, if for no other reason than the robots will almost certainly need more ground clearance to let them operate away from the reliably flat floors that they’re accustomed to. We’re expecting to see them performing many of the tasks that companies like Fetch Robotics and OTTO Motors are doing already—moving everything from small boxes to large pallets to keep humans from having to waste time walking.

Of course, this all feeds back into what drives Amazon more than anything else: efficiency. And for better or worse, humans are not uniquely good at moving things from place to place, so it’s no surprise that Amazon wants to automate that, too. The good news is that, at least for now, Amazon still needs humans to babysit all those robots.

[ Amazon ] Continue reading →

Posted in Human Robots

#435779 This Robot Ostrich Can Ride Around on ...

Posted on September 20, 2019 by Android

Proponents of legged robots say that they make sense because legs are often required to go where humans go. Proponents of wheeled robots say, “Yeah, that’s great but watch how fast and efficient my robot is, compared to yours.” Some robots try and take advantage of wheels and legs with hybrid designs like whegs or wheeled feet, but a simpler and more versatile solution is to do what humans do, and just take advantage of wheels when you need them.

We’ve seen a few experiments with this. The University of Michigan managed to convince Cassie to ride a Segway, with mostly positive (but occasionally quite negative) results. A Segway, and hoverboard-like systems, can provide wheeled mobility for legged robots over flat terrain, but they can’t handle things like stairs, which is kind of the whole point of having a robot with legs anyway.

Image: UC Berkeley

From left, a Segway, a hovercraft, and hovershoes, with complexity in terms of user control increasing from left to right.

At UC Berkeley’s Hybrid Robotics Lab, led by Koushil Sreenath, researchers have taken things a step further. They are teaching their Cassie bipedal robot (called Cassie Cal) to wheel around on a pair of hovershoes. Hovershoes are like hoverboards that have been chopped in half, resulting in a pair of motorized single-wheel skates. You balance on the skates, and control them by leaning forwards and backwards and left and right, which causes each skate to accelerate or decelerate in an attempt to keep itself upright. It’s not easy to get these things to work, even for a human, but by adding a sensor package to Cassie the UC Berkeley researchers have managed to get it to zip around campus fully autonomously.

Remember, Cassie is operating autonomously here—it’s performing vSLAM (with an Intel RealSense) and doing all of its own computation onboard in real time. Watching it jolt across that cracked sidewalk is particularly impressive, especially considering that it only has pitch control over its ankles and can’t roll its feet to maintain maximum contact with the hovershoes. But you can see the advantage that this particular platform offers to a robot like Cassie, including the ability to handle stairs. Stairs in one direction, anyway.

It’s a testament to the robustness of UC Berkeley’s controller that they were willing to let the robot operate untethered and outside, and it sounds like they’re thinking long-term about how legged robots on wheels would be real-world useful:

Our feedback control and autonomous system allow for swift movement through urban environments to aid in everything from food delivery to security and surveillance to search and rescue missions. This work can also help with transportation in large factories and warehouses.

For more details, we spoke with the UC Berkeley students (Shuxiao Chen, Jonathan Rogers, and Bike Zhang) via email.

IEEE Spectrum: How representative of Cassie’s real-world performance is what we see in the video? What happens when things go wrong?

Cassie’s real-world performance is similar to what we see in the video. Cassie can ride the hovershoes successfully all around the campus. Our current controller allows Cassie to robustly ride the hovershoes and rejects various perturbations. At present, one of the failure modes is when the hovershoe rolls to the side—this happens when it goes sideways down a step or encounters a large obstacle on one side of it, causing it to roll over. Under these circumstances, Cassie doesn’t have sufficient control authority (due to the thin narrow feet) to get the hovershoe back on its wheel.

The Hybrid Robotics Lab has been working on robots that walk over challenging terrain—how do wheeled platforms like hovershoes fit in with that?

Surprisingly, this research is related to our prior work on walking on discrete terrain. While locomotion using legs is efficient when traveling over rough and discrete terrain, wheeled locomotion is more efficient when traveling over flat continuous terrain. Enabling legged robots to ride on various micro-mobility platforms will offer multimodal locomotion capabilities, improving the efficiency of locomotion over various terrains.

Our current research furthers the locomotion ability for bipedal robots over continuous terrains by using a wheeled platform. In the long run, we would like to develop multi-modal locomotion strategies based on our current and prior work to allow legged robots to robustly and efficiently locomote in our daily life.

Photo: UC Berkeley

In their experiments, the UC Berkeley researchers say Cassie proved quite capable of riding the hovershoes over rough and uneven terrain, including going down stairs.

How long did it take to train Cassie to use the hovershoes? Are there any hovershoe skills that Cassie is better at than an average human?

We spent about eight months to develop our whole system, including a controller, a path planner, and a vision system. This involved developing mathematical models of Cassie and the hovershoes, setting up a dynamical simulation, figuring out how to interface and communicate with various sensors and Cassie, and doing several experiments to slowly improve performance. In contrast, a human with a good sense of balance needs a few hours to learn to use the hovershoes. A human who has never used skates or skis will probably need a longer time.

A human can easily turn in place on the hovershoes, while Cassie cannot do this motion currently due to our algorithm requiring a non-zero forward speed in order to turn. However, Cassie is much better at riding the hovershoes over rough and uneven terrain including riding the hovershoes down some stairs!

What would it take to make Cassie faster or more agile on the hovershoes?

While Cassie can currently move at a decent pace on the hovershoes and navigate obstacles, Cassie’s ability to avoid obstacles at rapid speeds is constrained by the sensing, the controller, and the onboard computation. To enable Cassie to dynamically weave around obstacles at high speeds exhibiting agile motions, we need to make progress on different fronts.

We need planners that take into account the entire dynamics of the Cassie-Hovershoe system and rapidly generate dynamically-feasible trajectories; we need controllers that tightly coordinate all the degrees-of-freedom of Cassie to dynamically move while balancing on the hovershoes; we need sensors that are robust to motion-blur artifacts caused due to fast turns; and we need onboard computation that can execute our algorithms at real-time speeds.

What are you working on next?

We are working on enabling more aggressive movements for Cassie on the hovershoes by fully exploiting Cassie’s dynamics. We are working on approaches that enable us to easily go beyond hovershoes to other challenging micro-mobility platforms. We are working on enabling Cassie to step onto and off from wheeled platforms such as hovershoes. We would like to create a future of multi-modal locomotion strategies for legged robots to enable them to efficiently help people in our daily life.

“Feedback Control for Autonomous Riding of Hovershoes by a Cassie Bipedal Robot,” by Shuxiao Chen, Jonathan Rogers, Bike Zhang, and Koushil Sreenath from the Hybrid Robotics Lab at UC Berkeley, has been submitted to IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters with option to be presented at the 2019 IEEE RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots. Continue reading →

Posted in Human Robots

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

Posted on September 20, 2019 by Android

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

#435773 Video Friday: Roller-Skating Quadruped ...

Posted on September 20, 2019 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!):

IEEE Africon 2019 – September 25-27, 2019 – Accra, Ghana
RoboBusiness 2019 – October 1-3, 2019 – Santa Clara, CA, USA
ISRR 2019 – October 6-10, 2019 – Hanoi, Vietnam
Ro-Man 2019 – October 14-18, 2019 – New Delhi, India
Humanoids 2019 – October 15-17, 2019 – Toronto, Canada
ARSO 2019 – October 31-1, 2019 – Beijing, China
ROSCon 2019 – October 31-1, 2019 – Macau
IROS 2019 – November 4-8, 2019 – Macau
Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos.

We got a sneak peek of a new version of ANYmal equipped with actuated wheels for feet at the DARPA SubT Challenge, where it did surprisingly well at quickly and (mostly) robustly navigating some very tricky terrain. And when you're not expecting it to travel through a muddy, rocky, and dark tunnel, it looks even more capable:

[ Paper ]

Thanks Marko!

In Langley’s makerspace lab, researchers are developing a series of soft robot actuators to investigate the viability of soft robotics in space exploration and assembly. By design, the actuator has chambers, or air bladders, that expand and compress based on the amount of air in them.

[ NASA ]

I’m not normally a fan of the AdultSize RoboCup soccer competition, but NimbRo had a very impressive season.

I don’t know how it managed to not fall over at 45 seconds, but damn.

[ NimbRo ]

This is more AI than robotics, but that’s okay, because it’s totally cool.

I’m wondering whether the hiders ever tried another possibly effective strategy: trapping the seekers in a locked shelter right at the start.

[ OpenAI ]

We haven’t heard much from Piaggio Fast Forward in a while, but evidently they’ve still got a Gita robot going on, designed to be your personal autonomous caddy for absolutely anything that can fit into something the size of a portable cooler.

Available this fall, I guess?

[ Gita ]

This passively triggered robotic hand is startlingly fast, and seems almost predatory when it grabs stuff, especially once they fit it onto a drone.

[ New Dexterity ]

Thanks Fan!

Autonomous vehicles seem like a recent thing, but CMU has been working on them since the mid 1980s.

CMU was also working on drones back before drones were even really a thing:

[ CMU NavLab ] and [ CMU ]

Welcome to the most complicated and expensive robotic ice cream deployment system ever created.

[ Niska ]

Some impressive dexterity from a robot hand equipped with magnetic gears.

[ Ishikawa Senoo Lab ]

The Buddy Arduino social robot kit is now live on Kickstarter, and you can pledge for one of these little dudes for 49 bucks.

[ Kickstarter ]

Thanks Jenny!

Mobile manipulation robots have high potential to support rescue forces in disaster-response missions. Despite the difficulties imposed by real-world scenarios, robots are promising to perform mission tasks from a safe distance. In the CENTAURO project, we developed a disaster-response system which consists of the highly flexible Centauro robot and suitable control interfaces including an immersive telepresence suit and support-operator controls on different levels of autonomy.

[ CENTAURO ]

Thanks Sven!

Determined robots are the cutest robots.

[ Paper ]

The goal of the Dronument project is to create an aerial platform enabling interior and exterior documentation of heritage sites.

It’s got a base station that helps with localization, but still, flying that close to a chandelier in a UNESCO world heritage site makes me nervous.

[ Dronument ]

Thanks Fan!

Avast ye! No hornswaggling, lick-spittlering, or run-rigging over here – Only serious tech for devs. All hands hoay to check out Misty's capabilities and to build your own skills with plenty of heave ho! ARRRRRRRRGH…

International Talk Like a Pirate Day was yesterday, but I'm sure nobody will look at you funny if you keep at it today too.

[ Misty Robotics ]

This video presents an unobtrusive bimanual teleoperation setup with very low weight, consisting of two Vive visual motion trackers and two Myo surface electromyography bracelets. The video demonstrates complex, dexterous teleoperated bimanual daily-living tasks performed by the torque-controlled humanoid robot TORO.

[ DLR RMC ]

Lex Fridman interviews iRobot’s Colin Angle on the Artificial Intelligence Podcast.

Colin Angle is the CEO and co-founder of iRobot, a robotics company that for 29 years has been creating robots that operate successfully in the real world, not as a demo or on a scale of dozens, but on a scale of thousands and millions. As of this year, iRobot has sold more than 25 million robots to consumers, including the Roomba vacuum cleaning robot, the Braava floor mopping robot, and soon the Terra lawn mowing robot. 25 million robots successfully operating autonomously in people's homes to me is an incredible accomplishment of science, engineering, logistics, and all kinds of entrepreneurial innovation.

[ AI Podcast ]

This week’s CMU RI Seminar comes from CMU’s own Sarah Bergbreiter, on Microsystems-Inspired Robotics.

The ability to manufacture micro-scale sensors and actuators has inspired the robotics community for over 30 years. There have been huge success stories; MEMS inertial sensors have enabled an entire market of low-cost, small UAVs. However, the promise of ant-scale robots has largely failed. Ants can move high speeds on surfaces from picnic tables to front lawns, but the few legged microrobots that have walked have done so at slow speeds (< 1 body length/sec) on smooth silicon wafers. In addition, the vision of large numbers of microfabricated sensors interacting directly with the environment has suffered in part due to the brittle materials used in micro-fabrication. This talk will present our progress in the design of sensors, mechanisms, and actuators that utilize new microfabrication processes to incorporate materials with widely varying moduli and functionality to achieve more robustness, dynamic range, and complexity in smaller packages.

[ CMU RI ] Continue reading →

Posted in Human Robots

#435757 Robotic Animal Agility

Posted on September 19, 2019 by Android

An off-shore wind power platform, somewhere in the North Sea, on a freezing cold night, with howling winds and waves crashing against the impressive structure. An imperturbable ANYmal is quietly conducting its inspection.

ANYmal, a medium sized dog-like quadruped robot, walks down the stairs, lifts a “paw” to open doors or to call the elevator and trots along corridors. Darkness is no problem: it knows the place perfectly, having 3D-mapped it. Its laser sensors keep it informed about its precise path, location and potential obstacles. It conducts its inspection across several rooms. Its cameras zoom in on counters, recording the measurements displayed. Its thermal sensors record the temperature of machines and equipment and its ultrasound microphone checks for potential gas leaks. The robot also inspects lever positions as well as the correct positioning of regulatory fire extinguishers. As the electronic buzz of its engines resumes, it carries on working tirelessly.

After a little over two hours of inspection, the robot returns to its docking station for recharging. It will soon head back out to conduct its next solitary patrol. ANYmal played alongside Mulder and Scully in the “X-Files” TV series*, but it is in no way a Hollywood robot. It genuinely exists and surveillance missions are part of its very near future.

Off-shore oil platforms, the first test fields and probably the first actual application of ANYmal. ©ANYbotics

This quadruped robot was designed by ANYbotics, a spinoff of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich). Made of carbon fibre and aluminium, it weighs about thirty kilos. It is fully ruggedised, water- and dust-proof (IP-67). A kevlar belly protects its main body, carrying its powerful brain, batteries, network device, power management system and navigational systems.

ANYmal was designed for all types of terrain, including rubble, sand or snow. It has been field tested on industrial sites and is at ease with new obstacles to overcome (and it can even get up after a fall). Depending on its mission, its batteries last 2 to 4 hours.

On its jointed legs, protected by rubber pads, it can walk (at the speed of human steps), trot, climb, curl upon itself to crawl, carry a load or even jump and dance. It is the need to move on all surfaces that has driven its designers to choose a quadruped. “Biped robots are not easy to stabilise, especially on irregular terrain” explains Dr Péter Fankhauser, co-founder and chief business development officer of ANYbotics. “Wheeled or tracked robots can carry heavy loads, but they are bulky and less agile. Flying drones are highly mobile, but cannot carry load, handle objects or operate in bad weather conditions. We believe that quadrupeds combine the optimal characteristics, both in terms of mobility and versatility.”

What served as a source of inspiration for the team behind the project, the Robotic Systems Lab of the ETH Zurich, is a champion of agility on rugged terrain: the mountain goat. “We are of course still a long way” says Fankhauser. “However, it remains our objective on the longer term.

The first prototype, ALoF, was designed already back in 2009. It was still rather slow, very rigid and clumsy – more of a proof of concept than a robot ready for application. In 2012, StarlETH, fitted with spring joints, could hop, jump and climb. It was with this robot that the team started participating in 2014 in ARGOS, a full-scale challenge, launched by the Total oil group. The idea was to present a robot capable of inspecting an off-shore drilling station autonomously.

Up against dozens of competitors, the ETH Zurich team was the only team to enter the competition with such a quadrupedal robot. They didn’t win, but the multiple field tests were growing evermore convincing. Especially because, during the challenge, the team designed new joints with elastic actuators made in-house. These joints, inspired by tendons and muscles, are compact, sealed and include their own custom control electronics. They can regulate joint torque, position and impedance directly. Thanks to this innovation, the team could enter the same competition with a new version of its robot, ANYmal, fitted with three joints on each leg.

The ARGOS experience confirms the relevance of the selected means of locomotion. “Our robot is lighter, takes up less space on site and it is less noisy” says Fankhauser. “It also overcomes bigger obstacles than larger wheeled or tracked robots!” As ANYmal generated public interest and its transformation into a genuine product seemed more than possible, the startup ANYbotics was launched in 2016. It sold not only its robot, but also its revolutionary joints, called ANYdrive.

Today, ANYmal is not yet ready for sale to companies. However, ANYbotics has a growing number of partnerships with several industries, testing the robot for a few days or several weeks, for all types of tasks. Last October, for example, ANYmal navigated its way through the dark sewage system of the city of Zurich in order to test its capacity to help workers in similar difficult, repetitive and even dangerous tasks.

Why such an early interest among companies? “Because many companies want to integrate robots into their maintenance tasks” answers Fankhauser. “With ANYmal, they can actually evaluate its feasibility and plan their strategy. Eventually, both the architecture and the equipment of buildings could be rethought to be adapted to these maintenance robots”.

ANYmal requires ruggedised, sealed and extremely reliable interconnection solutions, such as LEMO. ©ANYbotics

Through field demonstrations and testing, ANYbotics can gather masses of information (up to 50,000 measurements are recorded every second during each test!) “It helps us to shape the product.” In due time, the startup will be ready to deliver a commercial product which really caters for companies’ needs.

Inspection and surveillance tasks on industrial sites are not the only applications considered. The startup is also thinking of agricultural inspections – with its onboard sensors, ANYmal is capable of mapping its environment, measuring bio mass and even taking soil samples. In the longer term, it could also be used for search and rescue operations. By the way, the robot can already be switched to “remote control” mode at any time and can be easily tele-operated. It is also capable of live audio and video transmission.

The transition from the prototype to the marketed product stage will involve a number of further developments. These include increasing ANYmal’s agility and speed, extending its capacity to map large-scale environments, improving safety, security, user handling and integrating the system with the customer’s data management software. It will also be necessary to enhance the robot’s reliability “so that it can work for days, weeks, or even months without human supervision.” All required certifications will have to be obtained. The locomotion system, which had triggered the whole business, is only one of a number of considerations of ANYbotics.

Designed for extreme environments, for ANYmal smoke is not a problem and it can walk in the snow, through rubble or in water. ©ANYbotics

The startup is not all alone. In fact, it has sold ANYmal robots to a dozen major universities who use them to develop their know-how in robotics. The startup has also founded ANYmal Research, a community including members such as Toyota Research Institute, the German Aerospace Center and the computer company Nvidia. Members have full access to ANYmal’s control software, simulations and documentation. Sharing has boosted both software and hardware ideas and developments (built on ROS, the open-source Robot Operating System). In particular, payload variations, providing for expandability and scalability. For instance, one of the universities uses a robotic arm which enables ANYmal to grasp or handle objects and open doors.

Among possible applications, ANYbotics mentions entertainment. It is not only about playing in more films or TV series, but rather about participating in various attractions (trade shows, museums, etc.). “ANYmal is so novel that it attracts a great amount of interest” confirms Fankhauser with a smile. “Whenever we present it somewhere, people gather around.”

Videos of these events show a fascinated and sometimes slightly fearful audience, when ANYmal gets too close to them. Is it fear of the “bad robot”? “This fear exists indeed and we are happy to be able to use ANYmal also to promote public awareness towards robotics and robots.” Reminiscent of a young dog, ANYmal is truly adapted for the purpose.

However, Péter Fankhauser softens the image of humans and sophisticated robots living together. “These coming years, robots will continue to work in the background, like they have for a long time in factories. Then, they will be used in public places in a selective and targeted way, for instance for dangerous missions. We will need to wait another ten years before animal-like robots, such as ANYmal will share our everyday lives!”

At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in January, Continental, the German automotive manufacturing company, used robots to demonstrate a last-mile delivery. It showed ANYmal getting out of an autonomous vehicle with a parcel, climbing onto the front porch, lifting a paw to ring the doorbell, depositing the parcel before getting back into the vehicle. This futuristic image seems very close indeed.

*X-Files, season 11, episode 7, aired in February 2018 Continue reading →

Posted in Human Robots