Tag Archives: shape

#437800 Malleable Structure Makes Robot Arm More ...

Posted on November 30, 2020 by Android

The majority of robot arms are built out of some combination of long straight tubes and actuated joints. This isn’t surprising, since our limbs are built the same way, which was a clever and efficient bit of design. By adding more tubes and joints (or degrees of freedom), you can increase the versatility of your robot arm, but the tradeoff is that complexity, weight, and cost will increase, too.

At ICRA, researchers from Imperial College London’s REDS Lab, headed by Nicolas Rojas, introduced a design for a robot that’s built around a malleable structure rather than a rigid one, allowing you to improve how versatile the arm is without having to add extra degrees of freedom. The idea is that you’re no longer constrained to static tubes and joints but can instead reconfigure your robot to set it up exactly the way you want and easily change it whenever you feel like.

Inside of that bendable section of arm are layers and layers of mylar sheets, cut into flaps and stacked on top of one another so that each flap is overlapping or overlapped by at least 11 other flaps. The mylar is slippery enough that under most circumstances, the flaps can move smoothly against each other, letting you adjust the shape of the arm. The flaps are sealed up between latex membranes, and when air is pumped out from between the membranes, they press down on each other and turn the whole structure rigid, locking itself in whatever shape you’ve put it in.

Image: Imperial College London

The malleable part of the robot consists of layers of mylar sheets, cut into flaps that can move smoothly against each other, letting you adjust the shape of the arm. The flaps are sealed up between latex membranes, and when air is pumped out from between the membranes, they press down on each other and turn the whole structure rigid, locking itself in whatever shape you’ve put it in.

The nice thing about this system is that it’s a sort of combination of a soft robot and a rigid robot—you get the flexibility (both physical and metaphorical) of a soft system, without necessarily having to deal with all of the control problems. It’s more mechanically complex than either (as hybrid systems tend to be), but you save on cost, size, and weight, and reduce the number of actuators you need, which tend to be points of failure. You do need to deal with creating and maintaining a vacuum, and the fact that the malleable arm is not totally rigid, but depending on your application, those tradeoffs could easily be worth it.

For more details, we spoke with first author Angus B. Clark via email.

IEEE Spectrum: Where did this idea come from?

Angus Clark: The idea of malleable robots came from the realization that the majority of serial robot arms have 6 or more degrees of freedom (DoF)—usually rotary joints—yet are typically performing tasks that only require 2 or 3 DoF. The idea of a robot arm that achieves flexibility and adaptation to tasks but maintains the simplicity of a low DoF system, along with the rapid development of variable stiffness continuum robots for medical applications, inspired us to develop the malleable robot concept.

What are some ways in which a malleable robot arm could provide unique advantages, and what are some potential applications that could leverage these advantages?

Malleable robots have the ability to complete multiple traditional tasks, such as pick and place or bin picking operations, without the added bulk of extra joints that are not directly used within each task, as the flexibility of the robot arm is provided by ​a malleable link instead. This results in an overall smaller form factor, including weight and footprint of the robot, as well as a lower power requirement and cost of the robot as fewer joints are needed, without sacrificing adaptability. This makes the robot ideal for scenarios where any of these factors are critical, such as in space robotics—where every kilogram saved is vital—or in rehabilitation robotics, where cost reduction may facilitate adoption, to name two examples. Moreover, the collaborative soft-robot-esque nature of malleable robots also tends towards collaborative robots in factories working safely alongside and with humans.

“The idea of malleable robots came from the realization that the majority of serial robot arms have 6 or more degrees of freedom (DoF), yet are typically performing tasks that only require 2 or 3 DoF”
—Angus B. Clark, Imperial College London

Compared to a conventional rigid link between joints, what are the disadvantages of using a malleable link?

Currently the maximum stiffness of a malleable link is considerably weaker than that of an equivalent solid steel rigid link, and this is one of the key areas we are focusing research on improving as motion precision and accuracy are impacted. We have created the largest existing variable stiffness link at roughly 800 mm length and 50 mm diameter, which suits malleable robots towards small and medium size workspaces. Our current results evaluating this accuracy are good, however achieving a uniform stiffness across the entire malleable link can be problematic due to the production of wrinkles under bending in the encapsulating membrane. As demonstrated by our SCARA topology results, this can produce slight structural variations resulting in reduced accuracy.

Does the robot have any way of knowing its own shape? Potentially, could this system reconfigure itself somehow?

Currently we compute the robot topology using motion tracking, with markers placed on the joints of the robot. Using distance geometry, we are then able to obtain the forward and inverse kinematics of the robot, of which we can use to control the end effector (the gripper) of the robot. Ideally, in the future we would love to develop a system that no longer requires the use of motion tracking cameras.

As for the robot reconfiguring itself, which we call an “intrinsic malleable link,” there are many methods that have been demonstrated for controlling a continuum structure, such as using positive pressure or via tendon wires, however the ability to in real-time determine the curvature of the link, not just the joint positions, is a significant hurdle to solve. However, we hope to see future development on malleable robots work towards solving this problem.

What are you working on next?

For us, refining the kinematics of the robot to enable a robust and complete system for allowing a user to collaboratively reshape the robot, while still achieving the accuracy expected from robotic systems, is our current main goal. Malleable robots are a brand new field we have introduced, and as such provide many opportunities for development and optimization. Over the coming years, we hope to see other researchers work alongside us to solve these problems.

“Design and Workspace Characterization of Malleable Robots,” by Angus B. Clark and Nicolas Rojas from Imperial College London, was presented at ICRA 2020.

< Back to IEEE Journal Watch Continue reading →

Posted in Human Robots

#437776 Video Friday: This Terrifying Robot Will ...

Posted on November 29, 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 – [Virtual Conference]
ICUAS 2020 – September 1-4, 2020 – Athens, Greece
ICRES 2020 – September 28-29, 2020 – Taipei, Taiwan
IROS 2020 – October 25-29, 2020 – Las Vegas, Nevada
ICSR 2020 – November 14-16, 2020 – Golden, Colorado
Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos.

The Aigency, which created the FitBot launch video below, is “the world’s first talent management resource for robotic personalities.”

Robots will be playing a bigger role in our lives in the future. By learning to speak their language and work with them now, we can make this future better for everybody. If you’re a creator that’s producing content to entertain and educate people, robots can be a part of that. And we can help you. Robotic actors can show up alongside the rest of your actors.

The folks at Aigency have put together a compilation reel of clips they’ve put on TikTok, which is nice of them, because some of us don’t know how to TikTok because we’re old and boring.

Do googly eyes violate the terms and conditions?

[ Aigency ]

Shane Wighton of the “Stuff Made Here” YouTube channel, who you might remember from that robotic basketball hoop, has a new invention: A haircut robot. This is not the the first barber bot, but previous designs typically used hair clippers. Shane wanted his robot to use scissors. Hilarious and terrifying at once.

[ Stuff Made Here ]

Starting in October of 2016, Prof. Charlie Kemp and Henry M. Clever invented a new kind of robot. They named the prototype NewRo. In March of 2017, Prof. Kemp filmed this video of Henry operating NewRo to perform a number of assistive tasks. While visiting the Bay Area for a AAAI Symposium workshop at Stanford, Prof. Kemp showed this video to a select group of people to get advice, including Dr. Aaron Edsinger. In August of 2017, Dr. Edsinger and Dr. Kemp founded Hello Robot Inc. to commercialize this patent pending assistive technology. Hello Robot Inc. licensed the intellectual property (IP) from Georgia Tech. After three years of stealthy effort, Hello Robot Inc. revealed Stretch, a new kind of robot!

[ Georgia Tech ]

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter will make history's first attempt at powered flight on another planet next spring. It is riding with the agency's next mission to Mars (the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover) as it launches from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station later this summer. Perseverance, with Ingenuity attached to its belly, will land on Mars February 18, 2021.

[ JPL ]

For humans, it can be challenging to manipulate thin flexible objects like ropes, wires, or cables. But if these problems are hard for humans, they are nearly impossible for robots. As a cable slides between the fingers, its shape is constantly changing, and the robot’s fingers must be constantly sensing and adjusting the cable’s position and motion. A group of researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and from the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering pursued the task from a different angle, in a manner that more closely mimics us humans. The team’s new system uses a pair of soft robotic grippers with high-resolution tactile sensors (and no added mechanical constraints) to successfully manipulate freely moving cables.

The team observed that it was difficult to pull the cable back when it reached the edge of the finger, because of the convex surface of the GelSight sensor. Therefore, they hope to improve the finger-sensor shape to enhance the overall performance. In the future, they plan to study more complex cable manipulation tasks such as cable routing and cable inserting through obstacles, and they want to eventually explore autonomous cable manipulation tasks in the auto industry.

[ MIT ]

Gripping robots typically have troubles grabbing transparent or shiny objects. A new technique by Carnegie Mellon University relies on color camera system and machine learning to recognize shapes based on color.

[ CMU ]

A new robotic prosthetic leg prototype offers a more natural, comfortable gait while also being quieter and more energy efficient than other designs. The key is the use of new small and powerful motors with fewer gears, borrowed from the space industry. This streamlined technology enables a free-swinging knee and regenerative braking, which charges the battery during use with energy that would typically be dissipated when the foot hits the ground. This feature enables the leg to more than double a typical prosthetic user's walking needs with one charge per day.

[ University of Michigan ]

Thanks Kate!

This year’s Wonder League teams have been put to the test not only with the challenges set forth by Wonder Workshop and Cartoon Network as they look to help the creek kids from Craig of the Creek solve the greatest mystery of all – the quest for the Lost Realm but due to forces outside their control. With a global pandemic displacing many teams from one another due to lockdowns and quarantines, these teams continued to push themselves to find new ways to work together, solve problems, communicate more effectively, and push themselves to complete a journey that they started and refused to give up on. We at Wonder Workshop are humbled and in awe of all these teams have accomplished.

[ Wonder Workshop ]

Thanks Nicole!

Meet Colin Creager, a mechanical engineer at NASA's Glenn Research Center. Colin is focusing on developing tires that can be used on other worlds. These tires use coil springs made of a special shape memory alloy that will let rovers move across sharp jagged rocks or through soft sand on the Moon or Mars.

[ NASA ]

To be presented at IROS this year, “the first on robot collision detection system using low cost microphones.”

[ Rutgers ]

Robot and mechanism designs inspired by the art of Origami have the potential to generate compact, deployable, lightweight morphing structures, as seen in nature, for potential applications in search-and-rescue, aerospace systems, and medical devices. However, it is challenging to obtain actuation that is easily patternable, reversible, and made with a scalable manufacturing process for origami-inspired self-folding machines. In this work, we describe an approach to design reversible self-folding machines using liquid crystal elastomer (LCE), that contracts when heated, as an artificial muscle.

[ UCSD ]

Just in case you need some extra home entertainment, and you’d like cleaner floors at the same time.

[ iRobot ]

Sure, toss it from a drone. Or from orbit. Whatever, it’s squishy!

[ Squishy Robotics ]

The [virtual] RSS conference this week featured an excellent lineup of speakers and panels, and the best part about it being virtual is that you can watch them all at your leisure! Here’s what’s been posted so far:

[ RSS 2020 ]

Lockheed Martin Robotics Seminar: Toward autonomous flying insect-sized robots: recent results in fabrication, design, power systems, control, and sensing with Sawyer Fuller.

[ UMD ]

In this episode of the AI Podcast, Lex interviews Sergey Levine.

[ AI Podcast ] 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

#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