Tag Archives: short
#437869 Video Friday: Japan’s Gundam Robot ...
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!):
ACRA 2020 – December 8-10, 2020 – [Online]
Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today’s videos.
Another BIG step for Japan’s Gundam project.
[ Gundam Factory ]
We present an interactive design system that allows users to create sculpting styles and fabricate clay models using a standard 6-axis robot arm. Given a general mesh as input, the user iteratively selects sub-areas of the mesh through decomposition and embeds the design expression into an initial set of toolpaths by modifying key parameters that affect the visual appearance of the sculpted surface finish. We demonstrate the versatility of our approach by designing and fabricating different sculpting styles over a wide range of clay models.
[ Disney Research ]
China’s Chang’e-5 completed the drilling, sampling and sealing of lunar soil at 04:53 BJT on Wednesday, marking the first automatic sampling on the Moon, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) announced Wednesday.
[ CCTV ]
Red Hat’s been putting together an excellent documentary on Willow Garage and ROS, and all five parts have just been released. We posted Part 1 a little while ago, so here’s Part 2 and Part 3.
Parts 4 and 5 are at the link below!
[ Red Hat ]
Congratulations to ANYbotics on a well-deserved raise!
ANYbotics has origins in the Robotic Systems Lab at ETH Zurich, and ANYmal’s heritage can be traced back at least as far as StarlETH, which we first met at ICRA 2013.
[ ANYbotics ]
Most conventional robots are working with 0.05-0.1mm accuracy. Such accuracy requires high-end components like low-backlash gears, high-resolution encoders, complicated CNC parts, powerful motor drives, etc. Those in combination end up an expensive solution, which is either unaffordable or unnecessary for many applications. As a result, we found the Apicoo Robotics to provide our customers solutions with a much lower cost and higher stability.
[ Apicoo Robotics ]
The Skydio 2 is an incredible drone that can take incredible footage fully autonomously, but it definitely helps if you do incredible things in incredible places.
[ Skydio ]
Jueying is the first domestic sensitive quadruped robot for industry applications and scenarios. It can coordinate (replace) humans to reach any place that can be reached. It has superior environmental adaptability, excellent dynamic balance capabilities and precise Environmental perception capabilities. By carrying functional modules for different application scenarios in the safe load area, the mobile superiority of the quadruped robot can be organically integrated with the commercialization of functional modules, providing smart factories, smart parks, scene display and public safety application solutions.
[ DeepRobotics ]
We have developed semi-autonomous quadruped robot, called LASER-D (Legged-Agile-Smart-Efficient Robot for Disinfection) for performing disinfection in cluttered environments. The robot is equipped with a spray-based disinfection system and leverages the body motion to controlling the spray action without the need for an extra stabilization mechanism. The system includes an image processing capability to verify disinfected regions with high accuracy. This system allows the robot to successfully carry out effective disinfection tasks while safely traversing through cluttered environments, climb stairs/slopes, and navigate on slippery surfaces.
[ USC Viterbi ]
We propose the “multi-vision hand”, in which a number of small high-speed cameras are mounted on the robot hand of a common 7 degrees-of-freedom robot. Also, we propose visual-servoing control by using a multi-vision system that combines the multi-vision hand and external fixed high-speed cameras. The target task was ball catching motion, which requires high-speed operation. In the proposed catching control, the catch position of the ball, which is estimated by the external fixed high-speed cameras, is corrected by the multi-vision hand in real-time.
More details available through IROS on-demand.
[ Namiki Laboratory ]
Shunichi Kurumaya wrote in to share his work on PneuFinger, a pneumatically actuated compliant robotic gripping system.
[ Nakamura Lab ]
Thanks Shunichi!
Motivated by insights into the human teaching process, we introduce a method for incorporating unstructured natural language into imitation learning. At training time, the expert can provide demonstrations along with verbal descriptions in order to describe the underlying intent, e.g., “Go to the large green bowl’’. The training process, then, interrelates the different modalities to encode the correlations between language, perception, and motion. The resulting language-conditioned visuomotor policies can be conditioned at run time on new human commands and instructions, which allows for more fine-grained control over the trained policies while also reducing situational ambiguity.
[ ASU ]
Thanks Heni!
Gita is on sale for the holidays for only $2,000.
[ Gita ]
This video introduces a computational approach for routing thin artificial muscle actuators through hyperelastic soft robots, in order to achieve a desired deformation behavior. Provided with a robot design, and a set of example deformations, we continuously co-optimize the routing of actuators, and their actuation, to approximate example deformations as closely as possible.
[ Disney Research ]
Researchers and mountain rescuers in Switzerland are making huge progress in the field of autonomous drones as the technology becomes more in-demand for global search-and-rescue operations.
[ SWI ]
This short clip of the Ghost Robotics V60 features an interesting, if awkward looking, righting behavior at the end.
[ Ghost Robotics ]
Europe’s Rosalind Franklin ExoMars rover has a younger ’sibling’, ExoMy. The blueprints and software for this mini-version of the full-size Mars explorer are available for free so that anyone can 3D print, assemble and program their own ExoMy.
[ ESA ]
The holiday season is here, and with the added impact of Covid-19 consumer demand is at an all-time high. Berkshire Grey is the partner that today’s leading organizations turn to when it comes to fulfillment automation.
[ Berkshire Grey ]
Until very recently, the vast majority of studies and reports on the use of cargo drones for public health were almost exclusively focused on the technology. The driving interest from was on the range that these drones could travel, how much they could carry and how they worked. Little to no attention was placed on the human side of these projects. Community perception, community engagement, consent and stakeholder feedback were rarely if ever addressed. This webinar presents the findings from a very recent study that finally sheds some light on the human side of drone delivery projects.
[ WeRobotics ] Continue reading
Posted in Human Robots
#437824 Video Friday: These Giant Robots Are ...
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!):
ACRA 2020 – December 8-10, 2020 – [Online]
Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos.
“Who doesn’t love giant robots?”
Luma, is a towering 8 metre snail which transforms spaces with its otherworldly presence. Another piece, Triffid, stands at 6 metres and its flexible end sweeps high over audiences’ heads like an enchanted plant. The movement of the creatures is inspired by the flexible, wiggling and contorting motions of the animal kingdom and is designed to provoke instinctive reactions and emotions from the people that meet them. Air Giants is a new creative robotic studio founded in 2020. They are based in Bristol, UK, and comprise a small team of artists, roboticists and software engineers. The studio is passionate about creating emotionally effective motion at a scale which is thought-provoking and transporting, as well as expanding the notion of what large robots can be used for.
Here’s a behind the scenes and more on how the creatures work.
[ Air Giants ]
Thanks Emma!
If the idea of submerging a very expensive sensor payload being submerged in a lake makes you as uncomfortable as it makes me, this is not the video for you.
[ ANYbotics ]
As the pandemic continues on, the measures due to this health crisis are increasingly stringent, and working from home continues to be promoted and solicited by many companies, Pepper will allow you to keep in touch with your relatives or even your colleagues.
[ Softbank ]
Fairly impressive footwork from Tencent Robotics.
Although, LittleDog was doing that like a decade ago:
[ Tencent ]
It's been long enough since I've been able to go out for boba tea that a robotic boba tea kiosk seems like a reasonable thing to get for my living room.
[ Bobacino ] via [ Gizmodo ]
Road construction and maintenance is challenging and dangerous work. Pioneer Industrial Systems has spent over twenty years designing custom robotic systems for industrial manufacturers around the world. These robotic systems greatly improve safety and increase efficiency. Now they’re taking that expertise on the road, with the Robotic Maintenance Vehicle. This base unit can be mounted on a truck or trailer, and utilizes various modules to perform a variety of road maintenance tasks.
[ Pioneer ]
Extend Robotics arm uses cloud-based teleoperation software, featuring human-like dexterity and intelligence, with multiple applications in healthcare, utilities and energy
[ Extend Robotics ]
ARC, short for “AI, Robot, Cloud,” includes the latest algorithms and high precision data required for human-robot coexistence. Now with ultra-low latency networks, many robots can simultaneously become smarter, just by connecting to ARC. “ARC Eye” serves as the eyes for all robots, accurately determining the current location and route even indoors where there is no GPS access. “ARC Brain” is the computing system shared simultaneously by all robots, which plans and processes movement, localization, and task performance for the robot.
[ Naver Labs ]
How can we re-imagine urban infrastructures with cutting-edge technologies? Listen to this webinar from Ger Baron, Amsterdam’s CTO, and Senseable City Lab’s researchers, on how MIT and Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS Institute) are reimagining Amsterdam’s canals with the first fleet of autonomous boats.
[ MIT ]
Join Guy Burroughes in this webinar recording to hear about Spot, the robot dog created by Boston Dynamics, and how RACE plan to use it in nuclear decommissioning and beyond.
[ UKAEA ]
This GRASP on Robotics seminar comes from Marco Pavone at Stanford University, “On Safe and Efficient Human-robot interactions via Multimodal Intent Modeling and Reachability-based Safety Assurance.”
In this talk I will present a decision-making and control stack for human-robot interactions by using autonomous driving as a motivating example. Specifically, I will first discuss a data-driven approach for learning multimodal interaction dynamics between robot-driven and human-driven vehicles based on recent advances in deep generative modeling. Then, I will discuss how to incorporate such a learned interaction model into a real-time, interaction-aware decision-making framework. The framework is designed to be minimally interventional; in particular, by leveraging backward reachability analysis, it ensures safety even when other cars defy the robot's expectations without unduly sacrificing performance. I will present recent results from experiments on a full-scale steer-by-wire platform, validating the framework and providing practical insights. I will conclude the talk by providing an overview of related efforts from my group on infusing safety assurances in robot autonomy stacks equipped with learning-based components, with an emphasis on adding structure within robot learning via control-theoretical and formal methods.
[ UPenn ]
Autonomous Systems Failures: Who is Legally and Morally Responsible? Sponsored by Northwestern University’s Law and Technology Initiative and AI@NU, the event was moderated by Dan Linna and included Northwestern Engineering's Todd Murphey, University of Washington Law Professor Ryan Calo, and Google Senior Research Scientist Madeleine Clare Elish.
[ Northwestern ] Continue reading
Posted in Human Robots
#437805 Video Friday: Quadruped Robot HyQ ...
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 2020 – July 12-16, 2020 – [Virtual Conference]
CLAWAR 2020 – August 24-26, 2020 – [Virtual Conference]
ICUAS 2020 – September 1-4, 2020 – Athens, Greece
ICRES 2020 – September 28-29, 2020 – Taipei, Taiwan
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.
Four-legged HyQ balancing on two legs. Nice results from the team at IIT’s Dynamic Legged Systems Lab. And we can’t wait to see the “ninja walk,” currently shown in simulation, implemented with the real robot!
The development of balance controllers for legged robots with point feet remains a challenge when they have to traverse extremely constrained environments. We present a balance controller that has the potential to achieve line walking for quadruped robots. Our initial experiments show the 90-kg robot HyQ balancing on two feet and recovering from external pushes, as well as some changes in posture achieved without losing balance.
[ IIT ]
Thanks Victor!
Ava Robotics’ telepresence robot has been beheaded by MIT, and it now sports a coronavirus-destroying UV array.
UV-C light has proven to be effective at killing viruses and bacteria on surfaces and aerosols, but it’s unsafe for humans to be exposed. Fortunately, Ava’s telepresence robot doesn’t require any human supervision. Instead of the telepresence top, the team subbed in a UV-C array for disinfecting surfaces. Specifically, the array uses short-wavelength ultraviolet light to kill microorganisms and disrupt their DNA in a process called ultraviolet germicidal irradiation. The complete robot system is capable of mapping the space — in this case, GBFB’s warehouse — and navigating between waypoints and other specified areas. In testing the system, the team used a UV-C dosimeter, which confirmed that the robot was delivering the expected dosage of UV-C light predicted by the model.
[ MIT ]
While it’s hard enough to get quadrupedal robots to walk in complex environments, this work from the Robotic Systems Lab at ETH Zurich shows some impressive whole body planning that allows ANYmal to squeeze its body through small or weirdly shaped spaces.
[ RSL ]
Engineering researchers at North Carolina State University and Temple University have developed soft robots inspired by jellyfish that can outswim their real-life counterparts. More practically, the new jellyfish-bots highlight a technique that uses pre-stressed polymers to make soft robots more powerful.
The researchers also used the technique to make a fast-moving robot that resembles a larval insect curling its body, then jumping forward as it quickly releases its stored energy. Lastly, the researchers created a three-pronged gripping robot – with a twist. Most grippers hang open when “relaxed,” and require energy to hold on to their cargo as it is lifted and moved from point A to point B. But this claw’s default position is clenched shut. Energy is required to open the grippers, but once they’re in position, the grippers return to their “resting” mode – holding their cargo tight.
[ NC State ]
As control skills increase, we are more and more impressed by what a Cassie bipedal robot can do. Those who have been following our channel, know that we always show the limitations of our work. So while there is still much to do, you gotta like the direction things are going. Later this year, you will see this controller integrated with our real-time planner and perception system. Autonomy with agility! Watch out for us!
[ University of Michigan ]
GITAI’s S1 arm is a little less exciting than their humanoid torso, but it looks like this one might actually be going to the ISS next year.
Here’s how the humanoid would handle a similar task:
[ GITAI ]
Thanks Fan!
If you need a robot that can lift 250 kg at 10 m/s across a workspace of a thousand cubic meters, here’s your answer.
[ Fraunhofer ]
Penn engineers with funding from the National Science Foundation, have nanocardboard plates able to levitate when bright light is shone on them. This fleet of tiny aircraft could someday explore the skies of other worlds, including Mars. The thinner atmosphere there would give the flyers a boost, enabling them to carry payloads ten times as massive as they are, making them an efficient, light-weight alternative to the Mars helicopter.
[ UPenn ]
Erin Sparks, assistant professor in Plant and Soil Sciences, dreamed of a robot she could use in her research. A perfect partnership was formed when Adam Stager, then a mechanical engineering Ph.D. student, reached out about a robot he had a gut feeling might be useful in agriculture. The pair moved forward with their research with corn at the UD Farm, using the robot to capture dynamic phenotyping information of brace roots over time.
[ Sparks Lab ]
This is a video about robot spy turtles but OMG that bird drone landing gear.
[ PBS ]
If you have a DJI Mavic, you now have something new to worry about.
[ DroGone ]
I was able to spot just one single person in the warehouse footage in this video.
[ Berkshire Grey ]
Flyability has partnered with the ROBINS Project to help fill gaps in the technology used in ship inspections. Watch this video to learn more about the ROBINS project and how Flyability’s drones for confined spaces are helping make inspections on ships safer, cheaper, and more efficient.
[ Flyability ]
In this video, a mission of the Alpha Aerial Scout of Team CERBERUS during the DARPA Subterranean Challenge Urban Circuit event is presented. The Alpha Robot operates inside the Satsop Abandoned Power Plant and performs autonomous exploration. This deployment took place during the 3rd field trial of team CERBERUS during the Urban Circuit event of the DARPA Subterranean Challenge.
[ ARL ]
More excellent talks from the remote Legged Robots ICRA workshop- we’ve posted three here, but there are several other good talks this week as well.
[ ICRA 2020 Legged Robots Workshop ] Continue reading
Posted in Human Robots
#437791 Is the Pandemic Spurring a Robot ...
“Are robots really destined to take over restaurant kitchens?” This was the headline of an article published by Eater four years ago. One of the experts interviewed was Siddhartha Srinivasa, at the time professor of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University and currently director of Robotics and AI for Amazon. He said, “I’d love to make robots unsexy. It’s weird to say this, but when something becomes unsexy, it means that it works so well that you don’t have to think about it. You don’t stare at your dishwasher as it washes your dishes in fascination, because you know it’s gonna work every time… I want to get robots to that stage of reliability.”
Have we managed to get there over the last four years? Are robots unsexy yet? And how has the pandemic changed the trajectory of automation across industries?
The Covid Effect
The pandemic has had a massive economic impact all over the world, and one of the problems faced by many companies has been keeping their businesses running without putting employees at risk of infection. Many organizations are seeking to remain operational in the short term by automating tasks that would otherwise be carried out by humans. According to Digital Trends, since the start of the pandemic we have seen a significant increase in automation efforts in manufacturing, meat packing, grocery stores and more. In a June survey, 44 percent of corporate financial officers said they were considering more automation in response to coronavirus.
MIT economist David Autor described the economic crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic as “an event that forces automation.” But he added that Covid-19 created a kind of disruption that has forced automation in sectors and activities with a shortage of workers, while at the same time there has been no reduction in demand. This hasn’t taken place in hospitality, where demand has practically disappeared, but it is still present in agriculture and distribution. The latter is being altered by the rapid growth of e-commerce, with more efficient and automated warehouses that can provide better service.
China Leads the Way
China is currently in a unique position to lead the world’s automation economy. Although the country boasts a huge workforce, labor costs have multiplied by 10 over the past 20 years. As the world’s factory, China has a strong incentive to automate its manufacturing sector, which enjoys a solid leadership in high quality products. China is currently the largest and fastest-growing market in the world for industrial robotics, with a 21 percent increase up to $5.4 billion in 2019. This represents one third of global sales. As a result, Chinese companies are developing a significant advantage in terms of learning to work with metallic colleagues.
The reasons behind this Asian dominance are evident: the population has a greater capacity and need for tech adoption. A large percentage of the population will soon be of retirement age, without an equivalent younger demographic to replace it, leading to a pressing need to adopt automation in the short term.
China is well ahead of other countries in restaurant automation. As reported in Bloomberg, in early 2020 UBS Group AG conducted a survey of over 13,000 consumers in different countries and found that 64 percent of Chinese participants had ordered meals through their phones at least once a week, compared to a mere 17 percent in the US. As digital ordering gains ground, robot waiters and chefs are likely not far behind. The West harbors a mistrust towards non-humans that the East does not.
The Robot Evolution
The pandemic was a perfect excuse for robots to replace us. But despite the hype around this idea, robots have mostly disappointed during the pandemic.
Just over 66 different kinds of “social” robots have been piloted in hospitals, health centers, airports, office buildings, and other public and private spaces in response to the pandemic, according to a study from researchers at Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona, Spain). Their survey looked at 195 robot deployments across 35 countries including China, the US, Thailand, and Hong Kong.
But if the “robot revolution” is a movement in which automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence proliferate through the value chain of various industries, bringing a paradigm shift in how we produce, consume, and distribute products—it hasn’t happened yet.
But there’s a more nuanced answer: rather than a revolution, we’re seeing an incremental robot evolution. It’s a trend that will likely accelerate over the next five years, particularly when 5G takes center stage and robotics as a field leaves behind imitation and evolves independently.
Automation Anxiety
Why don’t we finally welcome the long-promised robotic takeover? Despite progress in AI and increased adoption of industrial robots, consumer-facing robotic products are not nearly as ubiquitous as popular culture predicted decades ago. As Amara’s Law says: “We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.” It seems we are living through the Gartner hype cycle.
People have a complicated relationship with robots, torn between admiring them, fearing them, rejecting them, and even boycotting them, as has happened in the automobile industry.
Retail robot in a Walmart store. Credit: Bossa Nova Robotics
Walmart terminated its contract with Bossa Nova and withdrew its 1,000 inventory robots from its stores because the company was concerned about how shoppers were reacting to seeing the six-foot robots in the aisles.
With road blocks like this, will the World Economic Forum’s prediction of almost half of tasks being carried out by machines by 2025 come to pass?
At the rate we’re going, it seems unlikely, even with the boost in automation caused by the pandemic. Robotics will continue to advance its capabilities, and will take over more human jobs as it does so, but it’s unlikely we’ll hit a dramatic inflection point that could be described as a “revolution.” Instead, the robot evolution will happen the way most societal change does: incrementally, with time for people to adapt both practically and psychologically.
For now though, robots are still pretty sexy.
Image Credit: charles taylor / Shutterstock.com Continue reading
Posted in Human Robots