MIT's Cheetah Untethered Running And Jumping!
From MIT:
Further info from Evan Ackerman at IEEE Spectrum:
We were wrong: it's not running untethered, it's bounding untethered. And unconstrained. And outdoors!
Two things strike us as particularly amazing about this: the first thing is that it's quiet, powered by electric motors and batteries. We've come to expect that compact systems capable of delivering high amounts of power rely on liquid fuels and hydraulics, because that's how you get the most power density: it's why Boston Dynamics uses gasoline engines to power hydraulic pumps on all of its dynamic robots. Also, high torque electric motors (like you'd need to get a robot to jump) have a tendency to overheat and destroy themselves, but MIT seems to have solved all of these issues, since they have a bounding, battery-powered robot that works. We're not sure yet how long it works for, but it works... (cont'd)
YuMi: ABB's Collaborative Robot
From ABB:
YuMi is a human-friendly dual arm robot designed for a new era of automation, for example in small parts assembly, where people and robots work hand-in-hand on the same tasks. YuMi is short for ‘you and me,' working together.
YuMi has been developed to meet the flexible and agile production needs of the consumer electronics industry in the first instance. It will increasingly be rolled out to cover other market sectors. YuMi is a collaborative, dual arm assembly solution with the ability to feel and see. The robot's soft, padded dual arms, combined with innovative force-sensing technology ensure the safety of YuMi's human co-workers. Safety is built into the functionality of the robot itself so that it can work cage-free... (cont'd)
ReWalk Robotics Hopes to Raise $50M in IPO
From Boston Herald:
A company with U.S. headquarters in Marlborough that was recently awarded FDA approval to sell its robotic exoskeletons for paraplegics plans to raise $50 million in an IPO this week, possibly on Friday.
Israeli-based ReWalk Robotics is planning to sell 3.5 million shares for between $14 and $16 each, which puts it at the low end of the 13 local health care companies which have gone public since the beginning of the year, more than any other year in history. Most of those have been biotech companies, however, making ReWalk the first robotics-focused company to do so in at least a couple of years... (cont'd)
Dyson 360 Eye
James Dyson explaining Dyson's new 360 Eye robotic vacuum:
High Speed Bipedal Robot Running Using High Speed Visual Feedback
From University of Tokyo:
ACHIRES is composed of high-speed vision and high-speed actuators to achieve instantaneous recognition and behavior. The similar technologies are used in our Janken (Rock Paper Scissors) Robot. High-speed vision detects the state of the biped robot including the timing of landing at 600 fps. The biped mechanism with the leg length of 14 cm is set to run in the sagittal plane. At present, the running velocity reaches 4.2 km/h. Simple control based on high-speed performance of sensory-motor system enables the biped robot to stably run without falling, unlike computationally expensive ZMP-based control which is commonly used for balance. The aerial posture is recovered to compensate for the deviation from the stable trajectory using high-speed visual feedback.
We also address a task of somersaulting. While running, the robot takes a big swing with one foot and jumps. After takeoff, both legs are controlled to curl up for high-speed rotation in the air. ACHIRES is going to be improved to push the envelope while demonstrating various biped locomotion tasks... (cont'd)
Beginners Tutorial: Autonomous Robot Control Theory
From Nick McCrea at Toptal:
In this article, I’m going to describe the control scheme of my simulated robot, illustrate how it interacts with its environment and achieves its goals, and discuss some of the fundamental challenges of robotics that I encountered along the way... (full article)
Unbounded Robotics to Shut Down Due to Issues With Willow Garage Spin-Off Agreement
From Evan Ackerman at IEEE Spectrum:
IEEE Spectrum has learned that Unbounded Robotics, a spin-off of Willow Garage that developed the UBR-1 mobile manipulator, is currently "in the process of shutting down." The UBR-1 is no longer for sale.
Recently, a source (who asked not to be named) forwarded us an email from Unbounded Robotics CEO Melonee Wise. Our source received the message after requesting a quote for a UBR-1 robot:
"Unfortunately Unbounded Robotics is in the process of shutting down due to issues with our Willow Garage spin off agreement that prevents us from raising series A investment. Unbounded Robotics is no longer selling the UBR-1.... (cont'd)
A Restaurant In China Where All The Food Is Prepared And Served By Robots
Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge 2014
Introduction:
This challenge evaluates algorithms for object detection and image classification at large scale. This year there will be two competitions:
A PASCAL-style detection challenge on fully labeled data for 200 categories of objects, and
An image classification plus object localization challenge with 1000 categories.
NEW: This year all participants are encouraged to submit object localization results; in past challenges, submissions to classification and classification with localization tasks were accepted separately.One high level motivation is to allow researchers to compare progress in detection across a wider variety of objects -- taking advantage of the quite expensive labeling effort. Another motivation is to measure the progress of computer vision for large scale image indexing for retrieval and annotation... (rules and results)
New York Times article:
Started in 2010 by Stanford, Princeton and Columbia University scientists, the Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge this year drew 38 entrants from 13 countries. The groups use advanced software, in most cases modeled loosely on the biological vision systems, to detect, locate and classify a huge set of images taken from Internet sources like Twitter. The contest was sponsored this year by Google, Stanford, Facebook and the University of North Carolina.
Contestants run their recognition programs on high-performance computers based in many cases on specialized processors called G.P.U.s, for graphic processing units.
This year there were six categories based on object detection, locating objects and classifying them... (cont'd)
Rising Colorspace
Rising Colorspace is a site-specific installation for “Metropol Park“ at Köllnischer Park 6-7 in Berlin. It is the third systemic robot installation of our colorspace series.
A robot draws his rising movements as bowlike lines onto a shiny metallic wall. All turns and falling movements are left out. Thereof derives a wickerwork of lines in rich botanic coloration. This condenses to a colorspace. Each line grows like a bending culm and modulates the colorspace after a daily color-protocol."¨ Rising Colorspace is an evolving system continuously overwriting itself... (cont'd)
T100 Underwater Thruster Designed for Marine Robotics
From BlueRobotics' Kickstarter:
An efficient, rugged, affordable underwater thruster to propel the future of marine robotics and ocean exploration. ($100 dollars a thruster, est delivery Nov 2014)
The T100 is made of high-strength, UV resistant polycarbonate injection molded plastic. The core of the motor is sealed and protected with an epoxy coating and it uses high-performance plastic bearings in place of steel bearings that rust in saltwater. Everything that isn’t plastic is either aluminum or high-quality stainless steel that doesn’t corrode.
A specially designed propeller and nozzle provides efficient, powerful thrust while active water-cooling keeps the motor cool. Unlike other thrusters, our design doesn’t have any air- or oil-filled cavities - water flows freely through all parts of the motor while it's running. That means it can go deep in the ocean and handle extreme pressures.
The thruster is easy to use: just connect the three motor wires to any brushless electronic speed controller (ESC) and you can control it with an RC radio or a microcontroller. It's usable with Arduino, ArduPilot, Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone, and many other embedded platforms... (kickstarter)
Self-Folding Origami Robot Goes From Flat to Walking in Four Minutes
From IEEE Spectrum:
Printable, self-folding robot created by Harvard and MIT researchers... (IEEE Spectrum story) (full paper)
Hitchbot is Halfway Across its Canadian Journey
From hitchBOT's page:
I am hitchBOT — a robot from Port Credit, Ontario.
I am traveling from Halifax, Nova Scotia to Victoria, British Columbia this summer. As you may have guessed, robots cannot get driver’s licences yet, so I’ll be hitchhiking my entire way... (cont'd)
Nvidia Jetson TK1 Development Kit
Features ($192 ):
Tegra K1 SOC
Kepler GPU with 192 CUDA cores
4-Plus-1 quad-core ARM Cortex A15 CPU
2 GB x16 memory with 64 bit width
16 GB 4.51 eMMC memory
1 Half mini-PCIE slot
1 Full size SD/MMC connector
1 Full-size HDMI port
1 USB 2.0 port, micro AB
1 USB 3.0 port, A
1 RS232 serial port
1 ALC5639 Realtek Audio codec with Mic in and Line out
1 RTL8111GS Realtek GigE LAN
1 SATA data port
SPI 4MByte boot flash
Dr. Dobbs has an in depth look here.
Ino: Command Line Toolkit for Arduino Hardware
Ino tools webpage:
Ino is a command line toolkit for working with Arduino hardware
It allows you to:
Quickly create new projects
Build a firmware from multiple source files and libraries
Upload the firmware to a device
Perform serial communication with a device (aka serial monitor)
Ino may replace Arduino IDE UI if you prefer to work with command line and an editor of your choice or if you want to integrate Arduino build process to 3-rd party IDE.
Ino is based on make to perform builds. However Makefiles are generated automatically and you’ll never see them if you don’t want to.
Features
Simple. No build scripts are necessary.
Out-of-source builds. Directories with source files are not cluttered with intermediate object files.
Support for *.ino and *.pde sketches as well as raw *.c and *.cpp.
Support for Arduino Software versions 1.x as well as 0.x.
Automatic dependency tracking. Referred libraries are automatically included in the build process. Changes in *.h files lead to recompilation of sources which include them.
Pretty colorful output.
Support for all boards that are supported by Arduino IDE.
Fast. Discovered tool paths and other stuff is cached across runs. If nothing has changed, nothing is build.
Flexible. Support for simple ini-style config files to setup machine-specific info like used Arduino model, Arduino distribution path, etc just once.
(Homepage)
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