#439187 Video Friday: Good Robots for Bad Knees

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 30-5, 2021 – [Online Event]

RoboCup 2021 – June 22-28, 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 20201 – October 21-23, 2021 – New Orleans, LA, USA

Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos.

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[ Roam Robotics ]

Ingenuity’s third flight achieved a longer flight time and more sideways movement than previously attempted. During the 80-second flight, the helicopter climbed to 16 feet (5 meters) and flew 164 feet (50 meters) downrange and back, for a total distance of 328 feet (100 meters). The third flight test took place at “Wright Brothers Field” in Jezero Crater, Mars, on April 25, 2021.

[ NASA ]

This right here, the future of remote work.

The robot will run you about $3,000 USD.

[ VStone ] via [ Robotstart ]

Texas-based aerospace robotics company, Wilder Systems, enhanced their existing automation capabilities to aid in the fight against COVID-19. Their recent development of a robotic testing system is both increasing capacity for COVID-19 testing and delivering faster results to individuals. The system conducts saliva-based PCR tests, which is considered the gold standard for COVID testing. Based on a protocol developed by Yale and authorized by the FDA, the system does not need additional approvals. This flexible, modular system can run up to 2,000 test samples per day, and can be deployed anywhere where standard electric power is available.

[ ARM Institute ]

Tests show that people do not like being nearly hit by drones.

But seriously, this research has resulted in some useful potential lessons for deploying drones in areas where they have a chance of interacting with humans.

[ Paper ]

The Ingenuity helicopter made history on April 19, 2021, with the first powered, controlled flight of an aircraft on another planet. How do engineers talk to a helicopter all the way out on Mars? We’ll hear about it from Nacer Chahat of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who worked on the helicopter’s antenna and telecommunication system.

[ NASA ]

A team of scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems has developed a system with which they can fabricate miniature robots building block by building block, which function exactly as required.

[ Max Planck Institute ]

Well this was inevitable, wasn't it?

The pilot regained control and the drone was fine, though.

[ PetaPixel ]

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter takes off and lands in this video captured on April 25, 2021, by Mastcam-Z, an imager aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover. As expected, the helicopter flew out of its field of vision while completing a flight plan that took it 164 feet (50 meters) downrange of the landing spot. Keep watching, the helicopter will return to stick the landing. Top speed for today's flight was about 2 meters per second, or about 4.5 miles-per-hour.

[ NASA ]

U.S. Naval Research Laboratory engineers recently demonstrated Hybrid Tiger, an electric unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with multi-day endurance flight capability, at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Maryland.

[ NRL ]

This week's CMU RI Seminar is by Avik De from Ghost Robotics, on “Design and control of insect-scale bees and dog-scale quadrupeds.”

Did you watch the Q&A? If not, you should watch the Q&A.

[ CMU ]

Autonomous quadrotors will soon play a major role in search-and-rescue, delivery, and inspection missions, where a fast response is crucial. However, their speed and maneuverability are still far from those of birds and human pilots. What does it take to make drones navigate as good or even better than human pilots?

[ GRASP Lab ]

With the current pandemic accelerating the revolution of AI in healthcare, where is the industry heading in the next 5-10 years? What are the key challenges and most exciting opportunities? These questions will be answered by HAI’s Co-Director, Fei-Fei Li and the Founder of DeepLearning.AI, Andrew Ng in this fireside chat virtual event.

[ Stanford HAI ]

Autonomous robots have the potential to serve as versatile caregivers that improve quality of life for millions of people with disabilities worldwide. Yet, physical robotic assistance presents several challenges, including risks associated with physical human-robot interaction, difficulty sensing the human body, and a lack of tools for benchmarking and training physically assistive robots. In this talk, I will present techniques towards addressing each of these core challenges in robotic caregiving.

[ GRASP Lab ]

What does it take to empower persons with disabilities, and why is educating ourselves on this topic the first step towards better inclusion? Why is developing assistive technologies for people with disabilities important in order to contribute to their integration in society? How do we implement the policies and actions required to enable everyone to live their lives fully? ETH Zurich and the Global Shapers Zurich Hub invited to an online dialogue on the topic “For a World without Barriers-Removing Obstacles in Daily Life for People with Disabilities.”

[ Cybathlon ]

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