Tag Archives: video

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!):

RoboCup 2021 – June 22-28, 2021 – [Online Event]
RSS 2021 – July 12-16, 2021 – [Online Event]
Humanoids 2020 – July 19-21, 2021 – [Online Event]
RO-MAN 2021 – August 8-12, 2021 – [Online Event]
DARPA SubT Finals – September 21-23, 2021 – Louisville, KY, USA
WeRobot 2021 – September 23-25, 2021 – Coral Gables, FL, USA
IROS 2021 – September 27-1, 2021 – [Online Event]
ROSCon 2021 – October 21-23, 2021 – New Orleans, LA, USA
Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos.

I don't know why Telexistence's robots look the way they do, but I love it. They've got an ambitious vision as well, and just raised $20 million to make it happen.

[ Telexistence ]

A team of researchers of the Robotic Materials Department at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and at the University of Colorado Boulder in the US has now found a new way to exploit the principles of spiders’ joints to drive articulated robots without any bulky components and connectors, which weigh down the robot and reduce portability and speed. Their slender and lightweight simple structures impress by enabling a robot to jump 10 times its height.

[ Max Planck ]

For those of you who (like me) have been wondering where Spot’s mouth is, here you go.

[ Boston Dynamics ]

Meet Scythe: the self-driving, all-electric machine that multiplies commercial landscapers’ ability to care for the outdoors.

[ Scythe Robotics ]

Huge congrats do Dusty Robotics on its $16.5 million Series A!

[ Dusty Robotics ]

A team of scientists at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has developed millimetre-sized robots that can be controlled using magnetic fields to perform highly manoeuvrable and dexterous manipulations. This could pave the way to possible future applications in biomedicine and manufacturing.

The made-in-NTU robots improve on many existing small-scale robots by optimizing their ability to move in six degrees-of-freedom (DoF) – that is, translational movement along the three spatial axes, and rotational movement about those three axes, commonly known as roll, pitch and yaw angles.

While researchers have previously created six DoF miniature robots, the new NTU miniature robots can rotate 43 times faster than them in the critical sixth DoF when their orientation is precisely controlled. They can also be made with ‘soft’ materials and thus can replicate important mechanical qualities—one type can ‘swim’ like a jellyfish, and another has a gripping ability that can precisely pick and place miniature objects.

[ NTU ]

Thanks, Fan!

Not a lot of commercial mobile robots that can handle stairs, but ROVéo is one of them.

[ Rovenso ]

In preparation for the SubT Final this September, Team Robotika has been practicing its autonomous cave mapping.

[ Robotika ]

Aurora makes some cool stuff, much of which is now autonomous.

[ Aurora ]

FANUC America’s paint robots are ideal for automating applications that are ergonomically challenging, hazardous and labor intensive. Originally focused solely on the automotive industry, FANUC’s line of electric paint robots and door openers are now used by a diverse range of industries that include automotive, aerospace, agricultural products, recreational vehicles and boats, furniture, appliance, medical devices, and more.

[ Aurora ]

I appreciate the thought here, but this seems like a pretty meh example of the usefulness of a cobot.

[ ABB ]

Analysis of the manipulation strategies employed by upper-limb prosthetic device users can provide valuable insights into the shortcomings of current prosthetic technology or therapeutic interventions. Typically, this problem has been approached with survey or lab-based studies, whose prehensile-grasp-focused results do not necessarily give accurate representations of daily activity. In this work, we capture prosthesis-user behavior in the unstructured and familiar environments of the participants own homes.

[ Paper ] via [ Yale ]

From HRI 2020, DFKI's new series-parallel hybrid humanoid called RH5, which is 2 m tall and weighs only 62.5 kg capable of performing heavy-duty dynamic tasks with 5 kg payloads in each hand.

[ Paper ] via [ DFKI ]

Davide Scaramuzza's presentation from the ICRA 2021 Full-Day workshop on Opportunities and Challenges with Autonomous Racing.

[ ICRA Workshop ]

Thanks, Fan!

The IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (IEEE/RAS) and the (IFR International Federation of Robotics) awarded the 2021 “Award for Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Robotics & Automation,” er, award, to Kuka for its PixelPaint technology. You can see their finalist presentation, along with presentations from the other worthy finalists in this video.

[ IERA Award ] Continue reading →

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!):

ICRA 2021 – May 30-June 5, 2021 – [Online Event]
RoboCup 2021 – June 22-28, 2021 – [Online Event]
RSS 2021 – July 12-16, 2021 – [Online Event]
DARPA SubT Finals – September 21-23, 2021 – Louisville, KY, USA
WeRobot 2021 – September 23-25, 2021 – Coral Gables, FL, USA
IROS 2021 – September 27-1, 2021 – [Online Event]
ROSCon 2021 – October 21-23, 2021 – New Orleans, LA, USA
Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos.

MIT researchers have now designed a sharp-tipped robot finger equipped with tactile sensing to meet the challenge of identifying buried objects. In experiments, the aptly named Digger Finger was able to dig through granular media such as sand and rice, and it correctly sensed the shapes of submerged items it encountered. The researchers say the robot might one day perform various subterranean duties, such as finding buried cables or disarming buried bombs.

[ MIT ]

Bye bye, robots!

I’m sure they'll be fine. And I’m sure because they were, in fact, fine:

[ Squishy Robotics ]

This has to be the most heavily modified Husky I’ve ever seen.

[ ORI ]

TRI is now letting anyone build their own bubble gripper, which is very kind of them.

The Punyo bubbles employ state of the art visuotactile sensing techniques that allow a robot to recognize objects by shape, track their orientation in its grasp and sense forces as it interacts with the world. This feedback is critical as robots learn to push and pull on the world safely and robustly while assisting people by opening doors, putting things away, using household tools, and other domestic tasks.

[ Punyo ] via [ TRI ]

Thanks, Andrew!

Some impressive work from Giuseppe Loianno’s lab at NYU, showing cooperative aerial transport of a payload using only a monocular camera and IMU on each drone. No external anything!

[ Paper ] via [ ARPL ]

Thanks, Giuseppe!

Highly constrained manipulation tasks continue to be challenging for autonomous robots as they require high levels of precision. This paper demonstrates that the combination of state-of-the-art object tracking with passively adaptive mechanical hardware can be leveraged to complete precision manipulation tasks with tight, industrially-relevant tolerances (0.25mm).

[ Paper ]

Thanks, Fan!

Need a tank cleaned? HEBI's got you.

[ HEBI Robotics ]

Thanks, Hardik!

Multi-robotics cooperation is one of several key technologies that are seen as promising for planetary exploration. In the PRO-ACT project, these technologies were applied and further developed. The involved robotic systems VELES (a six-wheeled rover from PIAP Space, Poland), Mantis (a six-legged walking robotic system from DFKI, Germany) and the Mobile Gantry (a four-wheeled gantry with a 3D printer from AVS, Spain) were foreseen to perform tasks together.

[ Pro-Act ]

This work presents a new version of the tactile-sensing finger GelSlim 3.0, which integrates the ability to sense high-resolution shape, force, and slip in a compact form factor for use with small parallel jaw grippers in cluttered bin-picking scenarios. The novel design incorporates the capability to use real-time analytic methods to measure shape, estimate the contact 3D force distribution, and detect incipient slip.

[ GelSlim ]

A swarm of robots and a human collaborate to create paintings: Robotic Canvas was created in Bristol Robotics Laboratory (University of Bristol and University of the West of England), aiming at combining swarm robotics, human-robot interaction and art.

[ BRL ] via [ Robohub ]

As someone who plays rec soccer, I'm impressed. Also, lol.

[ Paper ]

It's unclear how big of a deal fomites actually are, but robots are out there zapping stuff anyway.

[ PAL ]

The Magic Queen is the largest ever made 3D printed, biodegradable structure, created with an ABB IRB 2600 robot, and tended by an ABB IRB IRB 4600. Showcased by the Austrian architectural bureau MAEID at the 17th International Architecture La Biennale di Venezia, the Magic Queen aims to inspire architects about the possibilities of automation and 3D printing, driving innovation and enabling new ways of building.

[ ABB ]

This video showcases our current research to address the challenges of aerial manipulation with omnidirectional flying robots at ETH Zurich's Autonomous systems lab. This topic connects several different topics of active research at our institute, including design and control of omnidirectional aerial manipulators, planning frameworks, and grasp detection.

[ ASL ]

Legged locomotion can extend the operational domain of robots to some of the most challenging environments on Earth. However, conventional controllers for legged locomotion are based on elaborate state machines that explicitly trigger the execution of motion primitives and reflexes. These designs have increased in complexity but fallen short of the generality and robustness of animal locomotion. Here, we present a robust controller for blind quadrupedal locomotion in challenging natural environments.

[ ETHZ ]

We sat down with ElliQ user Deanna Dezern to hear her heartwarming story on what it's been like to have ElliQ at home with her (throughout the pandemic and long before). She explains the meaningful bond she has developed with ElliQ, the value she has found in ElliQ, and how ElliQ helped her when she needed it most.

[ ElliQ ]

On May 13, 2021, the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public and Tech Policy Lab co-hosted a virtual book talk featuring Kate Crawford, a leading scholar of the social implications of artificial intelligence and author of the recently published book, Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence (Yale University Press, April 2021). This recording features a discussion and Q&A moderated by UW School of Law professor Ryan Calo, a co-founder of the Center for an Informed Public and faculty co-director at the Tech Policy Lab.

[ UW ] Continue reading →