Tag Archives: warehouses

#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

#437614 Video Friday: Poimo Is a Portable ...

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!):

IROS 2020 – October 25-29, 2020 – [Online]
ROS World 2020 – November 12, 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.

Engineers at the University of California San Diego have built a squid-like robot that can swim untethered, propelling itself by generating jets of water. The robot carries its own power source inside its body. It can also carry a sensor, such as a camera, for underwater exploration.

[ UCSD ]

Thanks Ioana!

Shark Robotics, French and European leader in Unmanned Ground Vehicles, is announcing today a disinfection add-on for Boston Dynamics Spot robot, designed to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. The Spot robot with Shark’s purpose-built disinfection payload can decontaminate up to 2,000 m2 in 15 minutes, in any space that needs to be sanitized – such as hospitals, metro stations, offices, warehouses or facilities.

[ Shark Robotics ]

Here’s an update on the Poimo portable inflatable mobility project we wrote about a little while ago; while not strictly robotics, it seems like it holds some promise for rapidly developing different soft structures that robotics might find useful.

[ University of Tokyo ]

Thanks Ryuma!

Pretty cool that you can do useful force feedback teleop while video chatting through a “regular broadband Internet connection.” Although, what “regular” means to you is a bit subjective, right?

[ HEBI Robotics ]

Thanks Dave!

While NASA's Mars rover Perseverance travels through space toward the Red Planet, its nearly identical rover twin is hard at work on Earth. The vehicle system test bed (VSTB) rover named OPTIMISM is a full-scale engineering version of the Mars-bound rover. It is used to test hardware and software before the commands are sent up to the Perseverance rover.

[ NASA ]

Jacquard takes ordinary, familiar objects and enhances them with new digital abilities and experiences, while remaining true to their original purpose — like being your favorite jacket, backpack or a pair of shoes that you love to wear.

Our ambition is simple: to make life easier. By staying connected to your digital world, your things can do so much more. Skip a song by brushing your sleeve. Take a picture by tapping on a shoulder strap. Get reminded about the phone you left behind with a blink of light or a haptic buzz on your cuff.

[ Google ATAP ]

Should you attend the IROS 2020 workshop on “Planetary Exploration Robots: Challenges and Opportunities”? Of course you should!

[ Workshop ]

Kuka makes a lot of these videos where I can’t help but think that if they put as much effort into programming the robot as they did into producing the video, the result would be much more impressive.

[ Kuka ]

The Colorado School of Mines is one of the first customers to buy a Spot robot from Boston Dynamics to help with robotics research. Watch as scientists take Spot into the school's mine for the first time.

[ HCR ] via [ CNET ]

A very interesting soft(ish) actuator from Ayato Kanada at Kyushu University's Control Engineering Lab.

A flexible ultrasonic motor (FUSM), which generates linear motion as a novel soft actuator. This motor consists of a single metal cube stator with a hole and an elastic elongated coil spring inserted into the hole. When voltages are applied to piezoelectric plates on the stator, the coil spring moves back and forward as a linear slider. In the FUSM that uses the friction drive as the principle, the most important parameter for optimizing its output is the preload between the stator and slider. The coil spring has a slightly larger diameter than the stator hole and generates the preload by expanding in a radial direction. The coil springs act not only as a flexible slider but also as a resistive positional sensor. Changes in the resistance between the stator and the coil spring end are converted to a voltage and used for position detection.

[ Control Engineering Lab ]

Thanks Ayato!

We show how to use the limbs of a quadruped robot to identify fine-grained soil, representative for Martian regolith.

[ Paper ] via [ ANYmal Research ]

PR2 is serving breakfast and cleaning up afterwards. It’s slow, but all you have to do is eat and leave.

That poor PR2 is a little more naked than it's probably comfortable with.

[ EASE ]

NVIDIA researchers present a hierarchical framework that combines model-based control and reinforcement learning (RL) to synthesize robust controllers for a quadruped robot (the Unitree Laikago).

[ NVIDIA ]

What's interesting about this assembly task is that the robot is using its arm only for positioning, and doing the actual assembly with just fingers.

[ RC2L ]

In this electronics assembly application, Kawasaki's cobot duAro2 uses a tool changing station to tackle a multitude of tasks and assemble different CPU models.

Okay but can it apply thermal paste to a CPU in the right way? Personally, I find that impossible.

[ Kawasaki ]

You only need to watch this video long enough to appreciate the concept of putting a robot on a robot.

[ Impress ]

In this lecture, we’ll hear from the man behind one of the biggest robotics companies in the world, Boston Dynamics, whose robotic dog, Spot, has been used to encourage social distancing in Singapore and is now getting ready for FDA approval to be able to measure patients’ vital signs in hospitals.

[ Alan Turing Institute ]

Greg Kahn from UC Berkeley wrote in to share his recent dissertation talk on “Mobile Robot Learning.”

In order to create mobile robots that can autonomously navigate real-world environments, we need generalizable perception and control systems that can reason about the outcomes of navigational decisions. Learning-based methods, in which the robot learns to navigate by observing the outcomes of navigational decisions in the real world, offer considerable promise for obtaining these intelligent navigation systems. However, there are many challenges impeding mobile robots from autonomously learning to act in the real-world, in particular (1) sample-efficiency–how to learn using a limited amount of data? (2) supervision–how to tell the robot what to do? and (3) safety–how to ensure the robot and environment are not damaged or destroyed during learning? In this talk, I will present deep reinforcement learning methods for addressing these real world mobile robot learning challenges and show results which enable ground and aerial robots to navigate in complex indoor and outdoor environments.

[ UC Berkeley ]

Thanks Greg!

Leila Takayama from UC Santa Cruz (and previously Google X and Willow Garage) gives a talk entitled “Toward a more human-centered future of robotics.”

Robots are no longer only in outer space, in factory cages, or in our imaginations. We interact with robotic agents when withdrawing cash from bank ATMs, driving cars with adaptive cruise control, and tuning our smart home thermostats. In the moment of those interactions with robotic agents, we behave in ways that do not necessarily align with the rational belief that robots are just plain machines. Through a combination of controlled experiments and field studies, we use theories and concepts from the social sciences to explore ways that human and robotic agents come together, including how people interact with personal robots and how people interact through telepresence robots. Together, we will explore topics and raise questions about the psychology of human-robot interaction and how we could invent a future of a more human-centered robotics that we actually want to live in.

[ Leila Takayama ]

Roboticist and stand-up comedian Naomi Fitter from Oregon State University gives a talk on “Everything I Know about Telepresence.”

Telepresence robots hold promise to connect people by providing videoconferencing and navigation abilities in far-away environments. At the same time, the impacts of current commercial telepresence robots are not well understood, and circumstances of robot use including internet connection stability, odd personalizations, and interpersonal relationship between a robot operator and people co-located with the robot can overshadow the benefit of the robot itself. And although the idea of telepresence robots has been around for over two decades, available nonverbal expressive abilities through telepresence robots are limited, and suitable operator user interfaces for the robot (for example, controls that allow for the operator to hold a conversation and move the robot simultaneously) remain elusive. So where should we be using telepresence robots? Are there any pitfalls to watch out for? What do we know about potential robot expressivity and user interfaces? This talk will cover my attempts to address these questions and ways in which the robotics research community can build off of this work

[ Talking Robotics ] Continue reading

Posted in Human Robots

#437236 Why We Need Mass Automation to ...

The scale of goods moving around the planet at any moment is staggering. Raw materials are dug up in one country, spun into parts and pieces in another, and assembled into products in a third. Crossing oceans and continents, they find their way to a local store or direct to your door.

Magically, a roll of toilet paper, power tool, or tube of toothpaste is there just when you need it.

Even more staggering is that this whole system, the global supply chain, works so well that it’s effectively invisible most of the time. Until now, that is. The pandemic has thrown a floodlight on the inner workings of this modern wonder—and it’s exposed massive vulnerabilities.

The e-commerce supply chain is an instructive example. As the world went into lockdown, and everything non-essential went online, demand for digital fulfillment skyrocketed.

Even under “normal” conditions, most e-commerce warehouses were struggling to meet demand. But Covid-19 has further strained the ability to cope with shifting supply, an unprecedented tidal wave of orders, and labor shortages. Local stores are running out of key products. Online grocers and e-commerce platforms are suspending some home deliveries, restricting online purchases of certain items, and limiting new customers. The whole system is being severely tested.

Why? Despite an abundance of 21st century technology, we’re stuck in the 20th century.

Today’s supply chain consists of fleets of ships, trucks, warehouses, and importantly, people scattered around the world. While there are some notable instances of advanced automation, the overwhelming majority of work is still manual, resembling a sort of human-powered bucket brigade, with people wandering around warehouses or standing alongside conveyor belts. Each package of diapers or bottle of detergent ordered by an online customer might be touched dozens of times by warehouse workers before finding its way into a box delivered to a home.

The pandemic has proven the critical need for innovation due to increased demand, concerns about the health and safety of workers, and traceability and safety of products and services.

At the 2020 World Economic Forum, there was much discussion about the ongoing societal transformation in which humans and machines work in tandem, automating and augmenting the way we get things done. At the time, pre-pandemic, debate trended toward skepticism and fear of job losses, with some even questioning the ethics and need for these technologies.

Now, we see things differently. To make the global supply chain more resilient to shocks like Covid-19, we must look to technology.

Perfecting the Global Supply Chain: The Massive ‘Matter Router’
Technology has faced and overcome similar challenges in the past.

World War II, for example, drove innovation in techniques for rapid production of many products on a large scale, including penicillin. We went from the availability of one dose of the drug in 1941, to four million sterile packages of the drug every month four years later.

Similarly, today’s companies, big and small, are looking to automation, robotics, and AI to meet the pandemic head on. These technologies are crucial to scaling the infrastructure that will fulfill most of the world’s e-commerce and food distribution needs.

You can think of this new infrastructure as a rapidly evolving “matter router” that will employ increasingly complex robotic systems to move products more freely and efficiently.

Robots powered by specialized AI software, for example, are already learning to adapt to changes in the environment, using the most recent advances in industrial robotics and machine learning. When customers suddenly need to order dramatically new items, these robots don’t need to stop or be reprogrammed. They can perform new tasks by learning from experience using low-cost camera systems and deep learning for visual and image recognition.

These more flexible robots can work around the clock, helping make facilities less sensitive to sudden changes in workforce and customer demand and strengthening the supply chain.

Today, e-commerce is roughly 12% of retail sales in the US and is expected to rise well beyond 25% within the decade, fueled by changes in buying habits. However, analysts have begun to consider whether the current crisis might cause permanent jumps in those numbers, as it has in the past (for instance with the SARS epidemic in China in 2003). Whatever happens, the larger supply chain will benefit from greater, more flexible automation, especially during global crises.

We must create what Hamza Mudassire of the University of Cambridge calls a “resilient ecosystem that links multiple buyers with multiple vendors, across a mesh of supply chains.” This ecosystem must be backed by robust, efficient, and scalable automation that uses robotics, autonomous vehicles, and the Internet of Things to help track the flow of goods through the supply chain.

The good news? We can accomplish this with technologies we have today.

Image credit: Guillaume Bolduc / Unsplash Continue reading

Posted in Human Robots

#436261 AI and the future of work: The prospects ...

AI experts gathered at MIT last week, with the aim of predicting the role artificial intelligence will play in the future of work. Will it be the enemy of the human worker? Will it prove to be a savior? Or will it be just another innovation—like electricity or the internet?

As IEEE Spectrum previously reported, this conference (“AI and the Future of Work Congress”), held at MIT’s Kresge Auditorium, offered sometimes pessimistic outlooks on the job- and industry-destroying path that AI and automation seems to be taking: Self-driving technology will put truck drivers out of work; smart law clerk algorithms will put paralegals out of work; robots will (continue to) put factory and warehouse workers out of work.

Andrew McAfee, co-director of MIT’s Initiative on the Digital Economy, said even just in the past couple years, he’s noticed a shift in the public’s perception of AI. “I remember from previous versions of this conference, it felt like we had to make the case that we’re living in a period of accelerating change and that AI’s going to have a big impact,” he said. “Nobody had to make that case today.”

Elisabeth Reynolds, executive director of MIT’s Task Force on the Work of the Future, noted that following the path of least resistance is not a viable way forward. “If we do nothing, we’re in trouble,” she said. “The future will not take care of itself. We have to do something about it.”

Panelists and speakers spoke about championing productive uses of AI in the workplace, which ultimately benefit both employees and customers.

As one example, Zeynep Ton, professor at MIT Sloan School of Management, highlighted retailer Sam’s Club’s recent rollout of a program called Sam’s Garage. Previously customers shopping for tires for their car spent somewhere between 30 and 45 minutes with a Sam’s Club associate paging through manuals and looking up specs on websites.

But with an AI algorithm, they were able to cut that spec hunting time down to 2.2 minutes. “Now instead of wasting their time trying to figure out the different tires, they can field the different options and talk about which one would work best [for the customer],” she said. “This is a great example of solving a real problem, including [enhancing] the experience of the associate as well as the customer.”

“We think of it as an AI-first world that’s coming,” said Scott Prevost, VP of engineering at Adobe. Prevost said AI agents in Adobe’s software will behave something like a creative assistant or intern who will take care of more mundane tasks for you.

“We need a mindset change. That it is not just about minimizing costs or maximizing tax benefits, but really worrying about what kind of society we’re creating and what kind of environment we’re creating if we keep on just automating and [eliminating] good jobs.”
—Daron Acemoglu, MIT Institute Professor of Economics

Prevost cited an internal survey of Adobe customers that found 74 percent of respondents’ time was spent doing repetitive work—the kind that might be automated by an AI script or smart agent.

“It used to be you’d have the resources to work on three ideas [for a creative pitch or presentation],” Prevost said. “But if the AI can do a lot of the production work, then you can have 10 or 100. Which means you can actually explore some of the further out ideas. It’s also lowering the bar for everyday people to create really compelling output.”

In addition to changing the nature of work, noted a number of speakers at the event, AI is also directly transforming the workforce.

Jacob Hsu, CEO of the recruitment company Catalyte spoke about using AI as a job placement tool. The company seeks to fill myriad positions including auto mechanics, baristas, and office workers—with its sights on candidates including young people and mid-career job changers. To find them, it advertises on Craigslist, social media, and traditional media.

The prospects who sign up with Catalyte take a battery of tests. The company’s AI algorithms then match each prospect’s skills with the field best suited for their talents.

“We want to be like the Harry Potter Sorting Hat,” Hsu said.

Guillermo Miranda, IBM’s global head of corporate social responsibility, said IBM has increasingly been hiring based not on credentials but on skills. For instance, he said, as much as 50 per cent of the company’s new hires in some divisions do not have a traditional four-year college degree. “As a company, we need to be much more clear about hiring by skills,” he said. “It takes discipline. It takes conviction. It takes a little bit of enforcing with H.R. by the business leaders. But if you hire by skills, it works.”

Ardine Williams, Amazon’s VP of workforce development, said the e-commerce giant has been experimenting with developing skills of the employees at its warehouses (a.k.a. fulfillment centers) with an eye toward putting them in a position to get higher-paying work with other companies.

She described an agreement Amazon had made in its Dallas fulfillment center with aircraft maker Sikorsky, which had been experiencing a shortage of skilled workers for its nearby factory. So Amazon offered to its employees a free certification training to seek higher-paying work at Sikorsky.

“I do that because now I have an attraction mechanism—like a G.I. Bill,” Williams said. The program is also only available for employees who have worked at least a year with Amazon. So their program offers medium-term job retention, while ultimately moving workers up the wage ladder.

Radha Basu, CEO of AI data company iMerit, said her firm aggressively hires from the pool of women and under-resourced minority communities in the U.S. and India. The company specializes in turning unstructured data (e.g. video or audio feeds) into tagged and annotated data for machine learning, natural language processing, or computer vision applications.

“There is a motivation with these young people to learn these things,” she said. “It comes with no baggage.”

Alastair Fitzpayne, executive director of The Aspen Institute’s Future of Work Initiative, said the future of work ultimately means, in bottom-line terms, the future of human capital. “We have an R&D tax credit,” he said. “We’ve had it for decades. It provides credit for companies that make new investment in research and development. But we have nothing on the human capital side that’s analogous.”

So a company that’s making a big investment in worker training does it on their own dime, without any of the tax benefits that they might accrue if they, say, spent it on new equipment or new technology. Fitzpayne said a simple tweak to the R&D tax credit could make a big difference by incentivizing new investment programs in worker training. Which still means Amazon’s pre-existing worker training programs—for a company that already famously pays no taxes—would not count.

“We need a different way of developing new technologies,” said Daron Acemoglu, MIT Institute Professor of Economics. He pointed to the clean energy sector as an example. First a consensus around the problem needs to emerge. Then a broadly agreed-upon set of goals and measurements needs to be developed (e.g., that AI and automation would, for instance, create at least X new jobs for every Y jobs that it eliminates).

Then it just needs to be implemented.

“We need to build a consensus that, along the path we’re following at the moment, there are going to be increasing problems for labor,” Acemoglu said. “We need a mindset change. That it is not just about minimizing costs or maximizing tax benefits, but really worrying about what kind of society we’re creating and what kind of environment we’re creating if we keep on just automating and [eliminating] good jobs.” Continue reading

Posted in Human Robots

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

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