Robotics Weekly #12

Robotics Weekly

Issue #12

26.02.2016

Featured material:

• Meet the dazzling flying machines of the future - Again guys (and girls?) from ETH Zürich. As usually they are presenting bleeding edge practical results of their research related to UAVs. They are researching reliability, safety, robustness, agility and cooperation abilities. Now, they are presenting something new, but it seems that those ideas will arrive to our households in next few year.

Articles and videos:

• Atlas, The Next Generation - I must confess that when I saw latest video from Boston Dynamics I had mixed feelings. Main feeling was more or less "Wow! This is awesome! Look how it holds doors to avoid being hit by them!". But then I remembered that BD is military subsidized company and that make me sad. Of course, those projects can always led to products used in non military environments. But I would like to see such achievements rather for more pacifist company.
• Automation and Employment - Another podcast from Robohub. This time Michael Osborne presents his findings based on analysis of employment marked and its future in context of more and more advanced robotics. During his research he found that there are bad but also good "futures" and that we certainly shouldn't ignore forthcoming robotic revolution.
• This Remarkable Robot Hand Is Worthy of Luke Skywalker - This is indisputably best tele-operated hand at this moment. It is not clear yet how long it will take to use such hand as prosthesis. But it still is very impressive in context of tele-operations.
• Underwater robot can make its own snap decisions - What fauna and flora is hidden from humans eyes in depths of oceans? There are many mysteries to uncover there, and we might be one step closer to reveal them with this autonomous underwater vehicles. I guess that we just need longer lasting batteries and we might start releasing such machines for weeks or months long missions.
• Robot allows musicians to become three-armed drummers - I would totally bet on company that will try to augment humans by adding them additional pair of robotic hands. Here you have example of additional hand which is used for playing on percussion. The trick here is that this hand learns habits of its "host" so he can actually collaborate with it in crating music.
• Vibrating Bat Wings Inspire Efficient Sea-Skimming Drones - Not sure if you would like to have quick unmanned boat or airplane? Why not both? Well... maybe not both on the same time. In this construction you can observe lightweight skeleton wrapped with special material which changes its properties which enables more control of it. I'm just not sure if it can be easily scaled.
• Meet the soft, cuddly robots of the future - Will robots of the future be soft? Well, maybe not every one, but at least some of them.
• Drone Racing League | Level 1: Miami Lights - "It is like Formula 1 in drones" my wife said, and I could totally agree with her. Biggest difference is that when someone crashes in F1 you feel pity, here you are laughing and waiting for someone else to crash ;). Totally worth to watch.

Crowdfunding:

• Ardusea: Opensource modular sailing robot - Very interesting project, especially in context of Ocean Discovery Xprize. I didn't found if this project is using Arduino (because of naming similarity) or something else as CPU, but I'm afraid that it might be slightly overpriced - you will receive actual Ardusea when you support campaign with 1500 USD. Anyway, it might be worth to at least observe it.

Book of the week:

• Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future - This time I recommend something non-technical. There are some predictions about trends in robots as market labor. In his book, Martin Ford tries to precise his predictions about rising possibilities of robotics and artificial intelligence and its impact on average household and economy.

Courses:

• Control of Mobile Robots - "Control of Mobile Robots is a course that focuses on the application of modern control theory to the problem of making robots move around in safe and effective ways. The structure of this class is somewhat unusual since it involves many moving parts - to do robotics right, one has to go from basic theory all the way to an actual robot moving around in the real world, which is the challenge we have set out to address through the different pieces in the course."

Jobs:

• Deep Learning R&D Engineer - Autonomous Driving @ Nvidia - If you started to play computer games in 90's your first "meeting" with Nvidia was probably when you though about upgrading your computer to something more powerful at some point. Well, it isn't secret that Nvidia is working on something else than graphical cards. This time interested persons will have opportunity to work on machine learning systems in context of self-driving cars. Location: Morganville, United States. Tags: deep-learning, computer-vision, c++, ros, c.

Humor:

• Yellow Drum Machine - I saw this cute one ages ago on Internet and casually forgot about it. Now I found it again and I'm still amused.

Kudos:

Michał Neonek, MrValgad, Tompul, Magdalena

Appendix:

Do you have link to cool news, article, tutorial or video and want to share with other robot fans? Send it to me and if meet quality standards I will include it in next issue of Robotics Weekly.

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License: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Robotics Weekly #11

Robotics Weekly

Issue #11

19.02.2016

Featured material:

• A robot that runs and swims like a salamander - Although this Ted talk has salamander in title, author refers to way wider topic which is biorobotics.  He presents their team approach to analyze biological entities, and their team ideas to mimics animals movement in robotics.

Articles and videos:

• Robots Podcast #201: The Airbus Shopfloor Challenge, with Curtis Carson - In this short podcast, author from RoboHub interviews Airbus employee and talks about areas where Airbus expects to use robots in near future. There is also discussion about next IEEE conference and robotics competition co organized by Airbus.
• Drone Racing League - It seems like new professional and visually spectacular sport competitions just emerged. Despite that drones used there are not autonomous, we can still enjoy great races.
• Top 10: Swarmbots - Quite nice compilation from Make magazine summarizing so called swarmbots which are usually small robots designed to cooperate with them selves in large groups. 
• Vortex: Robotic Toy Re-invented - Vortex is a simple robotics toy based on Arduino. It is designed especially for kids, but authors promise open API which could be used to produce more sophisticated applications. It is effect of recent successful campaign from Kickstarter.
• Robotic Fingers with a Gentle Touch - When we are thinking about robots, we are usually thinking about them as mobile constructions which can't delicately take something and hold it. In this case, situation is just opposite. This robotic "fingers" are designed especially to delicately hold objects, even such fragile as raw eggs.
• Watch DARPA's tiny drone do 45 MPH indoors, autonomously - This prototype could probably start in DRL mentioned above. Or at least it seems that it could compete with human controlled drones on straight and simple tracks.
• Playing Catch and Juggling with a Humanoid Robot - It seems that soon robots will outperform humans in circus tricks related to juggling. Anyway, in worst case, such robot could be nice companion for mindless throwing ball ;).
• Create Teeny Tiny Solar Insect Robots - If you ever wonder what robot would be small, simple, easy to build and functional, you might encounter on something similar to this solar powered "bugs". They seems to be easy to construct and can give some experience with solar powered constructions. 

Crowdfunding:

• Dumy: The family robot - Another example of home helping caring robot. Or at least ambitious approach to it. I'm not sure if it isn't to early to start crowdfunding campaign - after all, its inventor didn't presented working prototype yet. But I let you decide on you own.

Book of the week:

• Intermediate Robot Building (Technology in Action) - Continuation of Robot Building for Beginners by David Cook. Second book focuses on more advanced topics but can also be read independently if someone already have some background in electronics and don't want to waste time on basics.

Courses:

• Autonomous Mobile Robots - It is always good time to learn something new. If you would like to learn some basics about concepts related to autonomous mobile robots, you can always enroll to this self paced MOOC organized by ETH Zürich (institution often mentioned in Robotics Weekly). After carefully following this course you will be familiar with environment perception, probabilistic map basic localization and motion planning.

Jobs:

• Software engineer @ NCCR digital fabrication, ETH Zürich - If you ever dream about constructing big and non trivial structures with robots, this job might be right for you. Warning, this position is research position, so you should have some scientific experience and drive toward solid scientific research. Location: Zürich, Switzerland. Tags: python, c, c++, ros, cad.

Humor:

• Beer Pong Robot - I didn't had a chance to play beer pong even once in my life, but I'm afraid that I would loose anyway if I had to play against it.

Kudos:

Michał Neonek, MrValgad, Tompul

Appendix:

Do you have link to cool news, article, tutorial or video and want to share with other robot fans? Send it to me and if meet quality standards I will include it in next issue of Robotics Weekly.

Don't forget to subscribe Robotics Weekly!
You can sponsor this magazine also through Patreon.

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License: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Robotics Weekly #10

Robotics Weekly

Issue #10

12.02.2016

Featured material:

• AAAI Video Competition 2016 - AI Video Competition is people choice competition organized yearly, as part of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence. I'm afraid that it might be to late to participate in voting, but I think it is still worth to watch at least some of the videos, especially that their length is about 5 minutes each.

Articles and videos:

• BionicOpter - Everyone of us is more or less familiar with concept of airplane, balloon, helicopter or its multiple rotor cousins. But it seems, that apart of them, there are other possibilities to achieve stable and effective flight. One of them is "dragonfly" type of motion. It seems that this UAV is quite fragile and have to be lightweight, but on the other hand it looks like it is moving freely with great grace.
• Crabfu - When we are thinking about robots, we are usually thinking about constructions powered by electricity, eventually by gasoline engines. It is pretty rare to have robot powered by ... steam. It seems that in overall, such robots might be harder to construct, but when you have one, you only need to boil water somehow, and you have fully powered simple robot.
• Robo-One - Do you remember Dekinnoka from previous issue of Robotics Weekly? Now I would like to present you something similar but slightly more serious. I'm not exactly sure about details of this competition (I still didn't learn Japanese) but there are some videos worth watching anyway.
• Robots that fly ... and cooperate - TED talk by Vijay Kumar. If you are very interested in autonomous UAV you probably saw this talk. Sorry for that. Anyway, I find it as a nice summary and a profile of trends in drones industry.
• PETMAN Robot - If you though that this issue will be closed without Boston Dynamics robot, you are wrong ;). I'm not sure what actually happened to PETMAN (did he evolved into ATLAS?) but it is very hypnotizing to see him walking on that video synchronized to Stayin' Alive.
• Navy’s Robot Firefighter - And if we are in land of humanoid robots, I would like to present you SAFFiR - Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot. This robot is designed to fight fires on autonomous ships. Well, I bet that if it will be effective enough, it maybe will help with fighting fire on land and in buildings.
• Swarmanoid project - Usually I'm presenting here single entity robot or pack of small universal robots swarms. And how about single specialized robotic units collaborating with each other to achieve goal that any single of them weren't capable of? In this project, there are three distinct units which can communicate and collaborate with each other.
• Building Quadcopters, Drones and UAV's - In this instructable, author (eben89) shows how to plan, design and build simple and cheap drone. With step by step illustrations and descriptions it seems like anyone can consider joining quadrotor constructors club.

Crowdfunding:

• Aijia: Smart healthcare Robot - IMHO one of most promising possibilities for the future are caring robots. Aijia is current approach to this topic. Actually I wouldn't name it as robot - rather sophisticated interactive device. When I was analyzing this project I had mixed feelings. It looks too unpolished for its functions and slightly overpriced. Maybe future iterations of it will be more consistent and market ready. Anyway, check it for yourself.

Book of the week:

• Programming Robots with ROS: A Practical Introduction to the Robot Operating System - Fresh book dedicated to ROS directly from ROS founders and developers. Do we need more?

Courses:

• Mobile Robots and Autonomous Vehicles - Main objective of this MOOC is to teach most popular and effective techniques related to autonomous robotics movement and cars subsystems like: sensor-based mapping and localization, fusing noisy and multi-modal data to improve robustness and integrating human knowledge to be used for scene interpretation and decision making. General requirements for this course are basic notions of robotics, probabilities, linear algebra and Python.

Jobs:

• Robotics Scientist @ Bossa Nova - If you like to work in small university spin-off companies this might be interesting for your. Bossa Nova is currently looking for person which will deal with planning, simulating and testing robotics algorithm either in simulations and on real physical systems. Location: Pittsburgh, USA. Tags: machine-learning, matlab, c++, ros, linux.

Humor:

• Robots Falling Down at the DRC - More funny moments from DRC :D.

Kudos:

Michał Neonek, MrValgad, Tompul

Appendix:

Do you have link to cool news, article, tutorial or video and want to share with other robot fans? Send it to me and if meet quality standards I will include it in next issue of Robotics Weekly.

Don't forget to subscribe Robotics Weekly!
You can sponsor this magazine also through Patreon.

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Robotics Weekly #9

Robotics Weekly

Issue #9

05.02.2016

Featured article:

• Dusseldorf airport receives RAY robotic parking system - I believe that mankind is wasting gigantic amount of time spent on ... parking a car. Yes, it seems like simple and quick task, but it sums to non trivial minutes and hours. One of flag features of autonomous cars is automatic parking and recalling, so potential driver (or should I write user, since we are talking about autonomous car?) could use this time on something else. But autonomous cars are still "behind the corner" and initially they will be to expensive to adapt on mass market. On the other hand, maybe solution is even simpler. As you can see in mentioned link, if you add careful enough robotic platform which can lift, transport and leave car, you will have autonomous parking which can save lot of time of your clients and even add "recall" function for classic "manned" cars. It is just pity that this is not much popular solution.

Articles and videos:

• RoBoHoN - Product from Japan ... designed with thinking about Japan. At least I think so. Because it is hard for me to imagine wider adaptation of this cute robo phone on European or US market. Or maybe I'm wrong and this walking and talking robo phone is our future?
• Modular robot reassembles when kicked apart - I like to observe self-healing structures. Of course, this implementation is far away form T-1000, but is still impressing.
• Bridge-Laying Lego NXT Robot - Lego group is designing and maintaining its most advanced bricks set called Mindstorms. There are some iterations of it, and they are pretty expensive for a bricks set. But if you stop thinking about them as just bricks sets and start to treat them as easy and powerful robotics construction set, everything stats to make sense. You can even design and prototype robots that will lay such temporary bridges on moon.
• Solar Chariot - There are stronger and bigger reasons to switch from traditional gasoline engines to electric one in personal transportation. One of the reasons is that electrical engines could be solar powered which makes them ecological and cheap in exploitation. I guess that inventor of this solar chariot was very ambitious and took those arguments deeply into his heart when he was constricting this vehicle. I'm just not sure if putting George Bush into it was giving him better overall performance of it ;).
• Harvard Monolithic Bee - As you can see, sometimes building robot part after part may be not optimal approach. I would like to see this constructing method implemented on bigger structures.
• HyTAQ Robot - Another example of nicely secured quad-rotor. And if you are living near airport, you can always just roll it on ground and still have fun :).
• JPL's RoboSimian - Since I started to post links about DARPA Robotics Challenge I would like to present you JPL entry from 2013. What can I say, it looks ... pretty universal and delicate on the same time. It looks like it is rather effective, but somehow it feels like very complicated to operate. What do you think?
• Smart Trashbox - OK, we have autonomous and smart vacuum cleaners, cars, drones and some other things, but I bet that you didn't know about autonomous and smart trashbox. Will it be must "have equipment" for sci-fi writer?

Crowdfunding:

• Hobby Hand - If you watched Terminator 2 then you probably remember scene with mechanical arm. When I was younger I was very impressed by this special effects and overall by this idea. Now there is possibility for you to have something similar in home. Slightly more colorful and less lethal but still mechanical hand.

Book of the week:

• Mastering ROS for Robotics Programming - If you are familiar with ROS and you would like to dive deeper into this topic, you might be interested by this book from Lentin Joseph. Author discusses different advanced topics related to ROS and shows many examples how to use most of its features. It seems like nice book to read in context of ROS, especially it is still fresh (release date: December 21, 2015).

Courses:

• Artificial Intelligence for Robotics - Course presented by Sebastian Thrun from Georgia Tech. You can start it anytime and you will learn how do design and implement artificial intelligence for self-driving cars. There is requirement for some basic algebra and Python programming skills, but nothing which you couldn't learn from other MOOCs before taking this course.

Jobs:

• Machine Vision Software Engineer - Some time ago I mentioned that Amazon is using about 30K of robots in their warehouses. It looks like if you have proper skills, you can join their engineers now and help on machine vision software. Location: North Reading, USA. Tags: vision-sensors, java, c++, ros, python.

Humor:

• Dragon Runner Robot - OK, maybe this robot is not funny at all, but the way it is presented is hilarious. I love it!

Kudos:

Michał Neonek, MrValgad, Tompul

Appendix:

Do you have link to cool news, article, tutorial or video and want to share with other robot fans? Send it to me and if meet quality standards I will include it in next issue of Robotics Weekly.

Don't forget to subscribe Robotics Weekly!
You can sponsor this magazine also through Patreon.

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License: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0