Robots Explore Dangerous Mines with Novel Sensor Fusion Technology
The 3D Riegl scanning laser range finder and an Acumine 2D scanning millimeter wave radar were transported on Husky and used to record video footage and densely sampled data sets. The data is being submitted to the International Journal of Robotics Research to ensure that this insight and information is available to the robotics community.
SAM Robotic Surrogate Operator
From AkihabaraNews and Robohub:
Conceptually, it’s quite simple: joysticks, knobs, and switches manipulated on a custom radio controller direct the flexing and relaxing of pneumatic “artificial muscles” arranged along “arms and legs” that attach to a vehicle’s pedals and levers. When actuated, the robot replicates a human body’s controlling movements.
Kowa Tech claims the system delivers input strength equal to that of human limbs and an overall operational capability 80% that of in-vehicle operation (with gains expected as the system matures). The 3-piece modular robot is weather and vibration-proof, weighs only about 30 kg (66 lbs.), easily installs in under 30 minutes, and can be removed in half that time. Current prototypes are operable from up to 200m, and commercial models are expected to reach 1 kilometer.
Rounded out with video monitoring for an in-vehicle perspective, in theory ActiveRobo SAM is a near-comprehensive surrogate operator. Most of their demos and testing have thus far been limited to excavator and other heavy equipment work, but the company hopes to eventually make the system adaptable to any vehicle... ( full article )
The Industrial Automation Exchange
New online tool connects manufacturers with industrial automation expertise, products
Anibit Online Graphical Programmer for the Pololu 3pi Robot
From Anibit:
We have adapted a graphical programming environment for the Arduino known as "Blocklyduino" to be tailored to Pololu's 3Pi Robot Platform. Blocklyduino is itself an adaptation of Blockly, a software package for developers to create graphical programming environments.
All of this is heavily inspired by Scratch and the MIT App inventor. If you are not familiar with those tools and watch to teach kids about programming, you really should check the out.
Graphical Programming is a great introduction to programming for kids. and the Pololu 3Pi is a low cost, ready-made robot that kids love. As part part of our mission at Anibit to inspire and educate about robotics, we felt the need to bring the two together... ( Anibit link )
My 2015 Predictions: Big Deployments, Big Ideas and Big Problems Solved
I see three exciting and significant trends taking place right now that I think will begin to gain some very real traction in 2015.
DARPA Reveals Upgrades To Its Atlas Robot
From DARPA:
The teams using the DARPA-developed Atlas robot got their first look at the newly upgraded system during a technical shakeout the week of January 12th in Waltham, Mass. The upgraded Atlas is 75 percent new—only the lower legs and feet were carried over from the original design. Lighter materials allowed for inclusion of a battery and a new pump system with only a modest increase in overall weight; the upgraded robot is 6-foot-2 (1.88 meters) and weighs 345 pounds (156.5 kilograms).
The most significant changes are to the robot’s power supply and pump. Atlas will now carry an onboard 3.7-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack, with the potential for one hour of “mixed mission” operation that includes walking, standing, use of tools, and other movements. This will drive a new variable-pressure pump that allows for more efficient operation... ( full details )
Upcoming Tradeshow, Conference & Exhibition Summary
March, April & May 2015
Automate 2015 gets going in March and the once every 2 year Tradeshow is perhaps the biggest and most important Manufacturing show in North America.
Why I Automate: Manufacturer Finds Promising Gains with Automation
Job loss was on everyones mind. Results showed that the opposite took place. Higher quality led to more orders and an increase in the number of jobs.
Voxel8: 3D Electronics Printing
Voxel8 announces its dual-head printer that prints thermoplastics and highly conductive silver inks together.
NVIDIA Drive PX
From Nvidia's CES press conference:
The DRIVE PX platform is based on the NVIDIA® Tegra® X1 processor, enabling smarter, more sophisticated advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and paving the way for the autonomous car.
Tegra X1 delivers an astonishing 1.3 gigapixels/second throughput – enough to handle 12 two-Megapixel cameras at frame rates up to 60 fps for some cameras. It is equipped with 10 GB of DRAM memory and combines surround Computer Vision (CV) technology, extensive deep learning training, and over-the-air updates to transform how cars see, think, and learn.
DEEP LEARNING COMPUTER VISION
Conventional ADAS technology today can detect some objects, do basic classification, alert the driver, and in some cases, stop the vehicle. DRIVE PX takes this to the next level with the ability to differentiate an ambulance from a delivery truck or a parked car from one about to pull into traffic. The system can now inform the driver, not just get their attention with a warning. The car is not just sensing, but interpreting what is taking place around it—an essential capability for auto-piloted driving... ( more info )
VERSABALL Beer Pong Robot
From Empire Robotics:
The VERSABALL is a squishy balloon membrane full of loose sub-millimeter particles. The soft ball gripper easily conforms around a wide range of target object shapes and sizes. Using a process known as “granular jamming”, air is quickly sucked out of the ball, which vacuum-packs the particles and hardens the gripper around the object to hold and lift it. The object releases when the ball is re-inflated. VERSABALL comes in multiple head shapes and sizes that use the same pneumatic base... ( Empire Robotics' site )
Four Robotics Related Kickstarters For January
EVB: Replace the brain of your LEGO® EV3 with BeagleBone / X PlusOne: Your Ultimate Hover + Speed Aerial Camera Drone / The ProtoCam+: An easy way to build projects and prototypes around your Raspberry Pi Camera Module with your A+ and B+ Raspberry Pi / Tektyte: LogIT Specialised Circuit Testers
Robot Learning Manipulation Action Plans by "Watching" Unconstrained Videos from the World Wide Web
From Yezhou Yang, Yi Li, Cornelia Fermuller and Yiannis Aloimonos:
In order to advance action generation and creation in robots beyond simple learned schemas we need computational tools that allow us to automatically interpret and represent human actions. This paper presents a system that learns manipulation action plans by processing unconstrained videos from the World Wide Web. Its goal is to robustly generate the sequence of atomic actions of seen longer actions in video in order to acquire knowledge for robots. The lower level of the system consists of two convolutional neural network (CNN) based recognition modules, one for classifying the hand grasp type and the other for object recognition. The higher level is a probabilistic manipulation action grammar based parsing module that aims at generating visual sentences for robot manipulation.
The list of the grasping types.
Experiments conducted on a publicly available unconstrained video dataset show that the system is able to learn manipulation actions by “watching” unconstrained videos with high accuracy.... ( article at Kurzweilai.net ) ( original paper )
2014 Robotics In A Word: "MORE"
The list of top stories in robotics for 2014 is a story of "MORE": MORE uses of and for robots; MORE serious discussions about robots; MORE robots in unusual places; MORE news in the financial press; MORE funding, acquisitions and IPOs; and MORE choices.
Intuitive Robot Programming for Flexible Aerospace Manufacturing
Robots are proving to be flexible tools for aircraft manufacturing and assembly. Their full potential however can be limited by the challenges of programming a robot in a CAD/CAM environment. Software that integrates offline programming, simulation, code generation, and path optimization makes the process seamless and error-free.
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Industrial Robotics - Featured Product
TM Robotics - Shibaura Machine THE SCARA range
The THE range from Shibaura Machine is an extensive line up of SCARA robots. Available in four arm lengths THE400 (400mm), THE600 (600mm) and the most recent THE800 (800mm) and THE1000 (1000mm), this range is suitable for assembly, handling, inspection and pick and place processes in varied industrial applications. The THE1000 boasts a 20kg payload capacity and an impressive 0.44 second cycle time, providing high speeds for processes with large components. In fact, the range has been recognised for as the price-to-performance leader compared to other SCARA models in its price range due to its impressive speed versus payload capacity.
