All Industrial Robotics Stories and Videos

Inventables has all kinds of interesting raw materials available for purchase in small quantities. Materials include:

• Aluminum Foam
• Conductive Velcro
• Conductive Paint
• Temperature-Sensitive Glass
• etc.

From Upverter:

Y Combinator has seen a huge increase in the number of hardware startups they fund. And so in an effort to encourage the renaissance and throw some gas on the fire, we are hosting a hardware hackathon. The focus is on getting like-minded hardware hackers into the same space, sharing ideas, designing hardware and ultimately creating more hardware startups.

Want a taste of what goes on in a hardware hackathon? Read about Upverter's first ever hackathon in August 2012: Day 1,Day 2 and the wrap up. We also held a hardware hackathon at the Open Compute Summit just this past month.

If you’re hardware savvy and interested in starting a hardware startup, you should apply to come and hack with us!

Want to start a startup? Get funded by Y Combinator.

Whe​n
February 23rd, 2013, 10AM - 10PM

Wher​e
Y Combinator
320 Pioneer Way
Mountain View, CA 94041
map

You can apply here.

New Scientist:

George Whitesides from Harvard University and colleagues have created a three-legged robot lined with tubes filled with a mixture of methane and oxygen. When an electrical spark ignites the gases, the combustion reaction generates bursts of pressure that propel the robot aloft. "By actuating all three legs simultaneously, we caused the robot to jump more than 30 times its height," write the team. As the height of the jump was limited by the size of the experimental chamber, they think it could spring twice as high without the attached tubing.

Yesterday IEEE Spectrum reported that Willow Garage might be closing its doors, with information coming from several current employees. Then late last night Steve Cousins, President and CEO, released an official statement on their website:

Willow Garage is changing

Willow Garage has decided to enter the world of commercial opportunities with an eye to becoming a self-sustaining company. This is an important change to our funding model.

The success of the PR2 personal robot and of ROS will continue. There are close to 50 PR2 robots in the world and Willow Garage support of the platform will not diminish. And of course, ROS, as an open source platform, will continue independent of our business model choices. In addition to Willow Garage, its supporters include the Open Source Robotics Foundation and all the other contributors in the ROS community (academic, industrial and individual) who have made it the platform of choice for Robotics.

The statement doesn't confirm IEEE Spectrum's story but it doesn't dismiss it either. The original Spectrum story can be found here.

IEEE Spectrum article about RobotsLab new box of robots for making robots available in school systems:

British troops in Afghanistan are the first to use state-of-the-art handheld nano surveillance helicopters.

The Black Hornet Nano Unmanned Air Vehicle measures around 4 inches by 1 inch (10cm x 2.5cm) and provides troops on the ground with vital situational awareness.

The Black Hornet is equipped with a tiny camera which gives troops reliable full-motion video and still images. Soldiers are using it to peer around corners or over walls and other obstacles to identify any hidden dangers and the images are displayed on a handheld terminal.

The Black Hornet weighs as little as 16 grams and has been developed by Prox Dynamics AS of Norway as part of a £20 million contract for 160 units with Marlborough Communications Ltd in Surrey.

On Febuary 7th Channel 4 in the UK will air the special "How To Build A Bionic Man".

From bionic arms and legs to artificial organs, science is beginning to catch up with science fiction in the race to replace body parts with man-made alternatives.

How to Build a Bionic Man follows psychologist Bertolt Meyer, who has a bionic hand himself, as he meets scientists working at the cutting edge of research to find out just how far this new technology can go.

Meanwhile, a team of roboticists create a complete 'bionic man' for the first time, using nearly $1 million-worth of state-of-the-art limbs and organs - the products of billions of dollars of research - borrowed from some of the world's leading laboratories and manufacturers.

The little device is called a milli-motein — a name melding its millimeter-sized components and a motorized design inspired by proteins, which naturally fold themselves into incredibly complex shapes. This minuscule robot may be a harbinger of future devices that could fold themselves up into almost any shape imaginable. The device was conceived by Neil Gershenfeld, head of MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms, visiting scientist Ara Knaian and graduate student Kenneth Cheung, and is described in a paper presented recently at the 2012 Intelligent Robots and Systems conference. Its key feature, Gershenfeld says: "It's effectively a one-dimensional robot that can be made in a continuous strip, without conventionally moving parts, and then folded into arbitrary shapes."

Momentum Machines is a Silicon Valley startup that is aims to build a fully automated gourmet quality burger production line. They plan to first open their own restaurant using the technology and then sell the hardware to others in the future. Here is their bullet points from the current alpha hardware:

• Our alpha machine replaces all of the hamburger line cooks in a restaurant.It does everything employees can do except better:
• It slices toppings like tomatoes and pickles only immediately before it places the slice onto your burger, giving you the freshest burger possible.
• Our next revision will offer custom meat grinds for every single customer. Want a patty with 1/3 pork and 2/3 bison ground after you place your order? No problem.
• Also, our next revision will use gourmet cooking techniques never before used in a fast food restaurant, giving the patty the perfect char but keeping in all the juices.
• It’s more consistent, more sanitary, and can produce ~360 hamburgers per hour.

If you live in US you can stream last nights episode of the science show NOVA from the PBS webpage here.

The Adept Lynx is an Autonomous Indoor Vehicle (AIV) available to developers for custom applications and payloads. The Lynx includes Adept’s proprietary self-navigation software ideal for use in crowded environments, tight hallways, and applications where a small automated vehicle is advantageous. Adept OEM partners and payload developers enjoy access to a reliable drive system, an on-board power supply, automated self-charging, and I/O for integrating payload hardware onto the mobile platform. The Adept Lynx is capable of transporting up to 60kg with a runtime of up to 19 hours a day.

• Simplifies payload integration with a small mobile platform
• Self-navigation software safely avoids people and obstacles
• Reliable drive system optimized for self-navigation
• Structural support of payloads up to 60kg on level surfaces
• Navigates through the use of a digital map
• Easy to deploy, no facilities modifications required
• Manages power and self charging operations

A project by Mattias Jones:

Towards the end of 2012, as part of The Festival of the Mind in Sheffield, myself and a small team of technicians, coders and mathematicians developed a drawing system and put it to work. The robots drew one line pattern solutions, the shortest line possible, derived from theories on how bees fly from flower to flower. It ended up covering three walls and the floor of a twenty foot cube in one unbroken line.

CU-Boulder researchers are working to build a swarm of small robots that can work together to accomplish complex tasks. In the future, teams of intelligent robots could be deployed to tackle a number of challenging problems, from containing an oil spill to self-assembling into a piece of hardware after being launched into space. For now, the CU researchers, led by Assistant Professor Nikolaus Correll, have built a swarm of 20 robots, each about the size of a pingpong ball, in their lab.

Started last year on Kickstarter and now available through their website, as well as several other distributors, OpenBeam is a T-Slot aluminum framing systems that uses standard M3 nuts and bolts.

Introduction:

T-Slot extruded aluminum framing systems have been in use throughout the manufacturing and automation industries for machine building, prototyping and robotics applications for the past 30 years.  Unfortunately, all the vendors in this industry utilize a razor and blade business model; while the extrusions are priced low, they require the use of specialty nuts and plates, which can be priced as high as $3.00 per nut and $10.00 per joining plate.

Starter kits cost $80 and include:

• 4 pieces of 150mm long extrusion
• 4 pieces of 120mm long extrusion
• 4 pieces of 90mm long extrusion
• 4 pieces of 60mm long extrusion
• 4 pieces of 30mm long extrusion
• 8 pieces of T bracket
• 16 pieces of L bracket
• 100 pack of nuts, 100 pack of bolts and a 2mm hex key