Project Beyond: 360° 3D Camera

From Project Beyond/Samsung: Today we offer a sneak preview of Project Beyond,the world’s first true 3D 360˚ omniview camera. Beyond captures and streams immersive videos in stunning high-resolution 3D, and allows every user to enjoy their viewing experience in the way they see fit. It offers full 3D reconstruction in all directions, using stereo camera pairs combined with a top-view camera to capture independent left and right eye stereo pairs. Project Beyond uses patent-pending stereoscopic interleaved capture and 3D-aware stitching technology to capture the scene just like the human eye, but in a form factor that is extremely compact. The innovative reconstruction system recreates the view geometry in the same way that the human eyes see, producing unparalleled 3D perception. Project Beyond is not a product, but one of the many exciting projects currently being developed by the Think Tank Team, an advanced research team within Samsung Research America. This is the first operational version of the device, and just a taste of what the final system we are working on will be capable of. Once complete, we hope to deploy Project Beyond around the world to beautiful and noteworthy locations and events, and allow users to experience those locations as if they were really there. The camera system can stream real time events, as well as store the data for future viewing... ( website )

Atlas Karate Kid

Atlas robot at IHMC standing on a stack of cinder blocks doing various poses. Robot is built by Boston Dynamics.

FPV Racing League

International FPV Multicopter Racing League: EQUIPMENT In the spec class, competitors must use a quadcopter with 2300Kv motors, 3S LiPo and 5" props. This is to ensure a level playing field amongst competitors with different budgetary constraints. SCORING 10 points will be awarded for 1st place, 8 points for 2nd place, 5 points for 3rd place and 1 point for 4th place. These results will be recorded on the regional leaderboard, with the champions at the end of each season being invited to a national competition. OBSTACLES Throughout the course there will be obstacles such as hoops. Missing an obstacle will incur a time penalty. These obstacles should be made clearly visible with brightly-colored material or flashing lights... ( Official page ) ( Subreddit ) ( Next event Brisbane, Dev 7 )

Boston Magazine Profiles Rodney Brooks of Rethink

Long article about Rodney Brooks co-founder of Rethink and former CTO at iRobot: ...Brooks cofounded the bedford-based iRobot in 1990, and his motivation, he explains, had something to do with vanity: “My thoughts on my self-image at the time was that I didn’t really want to be remembered for building insects.” Then he pauses for a moment and laughs. “But after that I started building vacuum-cleaning robots. And now there is a research group using Baxter to open stool samples. So now it’s shit-handling robots. I think maybe I should have quit while I was ahead. You know, that’s something no one ever says: ‘I hope my kid grows up to open stool samples... ( full article )

Reverse OCR

From Reverse OCR's tumblr: I am a bot that grabs a random word and draws semi-random lines until the OCRad.js library recognizes it as the word. By Darius Kazemi, creator of  Alternate Universe Prompts ,  Museum Bot , and  Scenes from The Wire ... ( see the latest results )

3D Reconstruction Firm Paracosm Has Closed $3.3 Million In Seed Funding

From Paracosm: Paracosm, a cloud-based software company, raised 3.3 million in seed round funding to further its mission to 3D-ify the world. The round, led by Atlas Venture, includes contributions from iRobot, Osage University Partners, BOLDstart Ventures, New World Angels, Deep Fork Capital and a number of angel investors.  Paracosm's advanced three-dimensional reconstruction technologies create digital models of physical spaces. When shared with machines, these models serve as blueprints which provide robots and applications a greater sense of awareness and understanding of the physical world. Such technologies are valuable for robotics, video game development, special effects, indoor navigation applications, and for the improvement of both virtual and augmented reality experiences... ( full press release )

MegaBots: Live-Action Giant Robot Combat

From MegaBots Kickstarter: The mad scientists at MegaBots, Inc. have been zealously working on the prototypes and final design of 15-foot-tall, 15,000-pound, walking humanoid combat robots with giant, modular pneumatic cannons for arms. A driver-and-gunner team pilot each MegaBot in a battle against other MegaBots, vehicles, and a variety of other defenses and obstacles in live-action combat – the likes of which the world has only dreamed of through video games and movies... ...At our minimum funding level ($1.8M), we can build two robots. They’ll duke it out in an epic 1-on-1 deathmatch tournament. At higher funding levels, we can build more MegaBots and unlock the gameplay options you know and love: team deathmatches, free-for-alls, king of the hill, capture the flag, home base capture, escort missions, and more!  ( Kickstarter )

Grabit Inc. Demos Electrostatic Gripper

From Grabit Inc.: Enhanced Flexibility Grabit technology eliminates the need for part-specific grippers and minimizes gripper changeover, dramatically reducing costs and downtime. Gentle Handling Grabit grippers offer scratch and smudge-free handling with its clean grasping and eliminates the need to remove residue left by vacuum cups. Grabit’s uniform grasping effect eliminates high “point stresses” on large format glass sheets. Low Energy & Quiet Operations Grabit products operate at ultra-low energy levels providing cost savings and enabling mobile robot applications, and also offer quiet operations improving factory conditions and supporting the adoption of collaborative robots... ( homepage )

Watch That Windows Update: FTDI Drivers Are Killing Fake Chips

From Brian Benchoff at Hack A Day: The FTDI FT232 chip is found in thousands of electronic baubles, from Arduinos to test equipment, and more than a few bits of consumer electronics. It’s a simple chip, converting USB to a serial port, but very useful and probably one of the most cloned pieces of silicon on Earth. Thanks to a recent Windows update,  all those fake FTDI chips are at risk of being bricked.  This isn’t a case where fake FTDI chips won’t work if plugged into a machine running the newest FTDI driver; the latest driver bricks the fake chips, rendering them inoperable with any computer. Reports of problems with FTDI chips  surfaced early this month , with an explanation of the behavior showing up in  an EEVblog forum thread . The new driver for these chips from FTDI, delivered through a recent Windows update, reprograms the USB PID to 0, something Windows, Linux, and OS X don’t like. This renders the chip inaccessible from any OS, effectively bricking any device that happens to have one of these fake FTDI serial chips... ( full story with workaround solution )

At Japan Robot Week, Mechanical Barista Treats Visitors to Coffee

From  Japan Times :

iRobot Unveils Its First Multi-Robot Tablet Controller for First Responders, Defense Forces and Industrial Customers

From iRobot: The uPoint MRC system runs an Android-based app that standardizes the control of any robot within the iRobot family of unmanned vehicles. Utilizing the same intuitive touchscreen technology in use today on millions of digital devices, the uPoint MRC system simplifies robot operations including driving, manipulation and inspection, allowing operators to focus more on the mission at hand... ( full press release )

NASA's Free Flying Robot Challenge

From NASA, Google's Project Tango, and Top Coders: Welcome to the NASA Free Flying Robot Mission Patch & Naming Challenge sponsored by the NASA Tournament Lab!  In 2017, NASA is aiming to launch a robot that will be used on-board the International Space Station (ISS). The robot has been tentatively called the “Free Flying Robot”. Not that catchy, right?  So here’s where NASA needs your help – we need the Topcoder community to help design a custom mission patch AND develop a name for the Free Flying Robot.  So what is a Free Flying Robot? It’s a robot that is capable of functioning autonomously, but can also be controlled by a flight crew on-board the ISS or from Earth. It can conduct zero gravity robotics experiments, carry mobile sensors such as an RFID reader for logging inventory & inspect items using a built in camera  Currently on the ISS there are robotic devices called  “ SPHERES ”  (Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites), and the new Free Flyer Robot program is being seen as a step forward in the use of robotic devices in spaceflight... ( submission form )  

FPV Forest Quad Racing

From french quad racing association  Airgonay :    

Soft Robotics Toolkit

From Harvard Biodesign Lab: The Soft Robotics Toolkit is a collection of shared resources to support the design, fabrication, modeling, characterization, and control of soft robotic devices. The toolkit was developed as part of educational research being undertaken in the Harvard Biodesign Lab. The ultimate aim of the toolkit is to advance the field of soft robotics by allowing designers and researchers to build upon each other’s work. The toolkit includes an open source fluidic control board, detailed design documentation describing a wide range of soft robotic components (including actuators and sensors), and related files that can be downloaded and used in the design, manufacture, and operation of soft robots. In combination with low material costs and increasingly accessible rapid prototyping technologies such as 3D printers, laser cutters, and CNC mills, the toolkit enables soft robotic components to be produced easily and affordably... ( project's homepage )

Robot Octopus Takes to the Sea

From Evan Ackerman at IEEE Spectrum: The video below has four parts to it: the first shows the difference between the robotic octopus swimming with just flexible arms, and swimming with just flexible arms in addition to a web. The most obvious difference is the speed: just over 100 millimeters per second with arms only, and up to 180 mm/s (or 0.5 body lengths per second) with the web. This is a significant increase, obviously, but what's more important is the overall cost of transport (CoT), which is a measure of the efficiency of the robot (specifically, the ratio of the energy put in over the resulting speed). The CoT for the arms-only version is 0.85, whereas the web drops that down to 0.62. So yeah, having that web in there is better in almost every way... ( cont'd )

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Industrial Robotics - Featured Product

Denso Robotics - Newest 6-axis VMB Series offers longer arm reach and higher load capacity

Denso Robotics - Newest 6-axis VMB Series offers longer arm reach and higher load capacity

The new VMB series represent some of the newest members to our 6-axis family of robots. These high-performance, versatile units offer a longer arm reach and a higher load capacity than traditional models which make VMB an excellent solution for palletizing, packaging, and material handling. New features include greater air piping, valve and signal line options, as well as new programming options with state-of-the-art functions using our new WINCAPS Plus software. VMB offers an IP67 protection grade along with meeting ISO Class 5, which makes them suitable for electric parts, food manufacturing processes, and pharmaceutical and medical devices. With the addition of the new VMB large robots, all manufacturing processes can now be automated by DENSO Robotics.