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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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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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!
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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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Robotics Weekly #8

Robotics Weekly

Issue #8

29.01.2016

Featured article:

• Throwing and catching an inverted pendulum - What can come from juggling skills combined with inverted pendulum balancing skills? It is not as surprise that it will be throwing and catching inverted pendulum ;). But surprising is that it is done by two autonomous flying drones. What else can be achieved with such precision and agility?

Articles and videos:

• Military robots and the future of war - I am pacifist so I'm trying to rather avoid topics related to using robots as a weapon. But I think that everyone should watch this TED video. Although it is quite old, P.W. Singer did complete summary of current state of robotics in war zones and possible future implications of using them.
• Ehang 184 - Forget about autonomous cars. The future is in hands of human transporting autonomous flying metropolitan quadrotors. Well, at least on visualizations from Ehang company. I wonder if they already sold at least one of those quadrotors on free market.
• Is the Future of Drones Dastardly or Daring? - Since we are at flying stuff topic, check this video. David Roberts, chairman of global drone services company, HaloDrop tries to answer few questions asked by Singularity University fans on Twitter. This short Q&A session just scratch the surface of whole topic, but it might give you few hints about current state of drones industry and about direction it might go in next couple of years.
• Modular Snake Robots - Another example of neat robot and his movement inspired directly by nature. What is most interesting here, is that this robot actually uses few independent type of movements, which you can check on trailer. At first view it may not look impressive, but if you compare type of terrains and objects on which it can move it seems that this may be good way of designing future robots.
• How robots can learn from babies - If you have a child or you had experience with toddlers, you probably had this moment (at least I had) when you observed toddler doing something that no one taught him/her. At some point you found that your approach to teach everything works on some level, but also that toddler learns other things by mimics your moves and tries to use things you are using, without any encourage, training and explanation of how to use it. In other words, it seems that robots can be taught to do something without explicit programming, if they are programmed to behave like toddler which explores word by himself. Are we at the edge of need of creating education materials for robots?
• EZWheel Omniwheel - It seems that typical rolling movement also could be easily upgraded to be more precise and agile. On this (sorry for age of this link) video you can see that this seemingly clumsy platform can be easily converted to agile platform, just by changing its wheels. I'm not sure if anyone used it in bigger projects, so if you find something related to it, please give me a ping ;).
• Want to buy a giant, rideable robot? Amazon Japan will sell you one - In previous issue of RW I linked to article about Amazon using 30K of robots as a backbone of some magazines. Amazon also sells many items from robotics assortment. But probably no one expected that they will offer Kuratas. OK, I'm not familiar with Japanese language, so this might be a fake, but if you check actual link to that offer it looks pretty valid. I promise to check it when I will have 1M USD spare money.
• DASH: A Dynamic 16g Hexapedal Robot - Another idea copied from nature. This time impressing factor is based on its resiliency and simplicity. Well, that impression might be hard to occur based on scientific publication, so here is video about it. Will we see paparazzi using such simple constructs as mounts for spy cameras?

Crowdfunding:

• CHiP: The World's First Lovable Robot Dog - If you watched Blade Runner, you can probably recall fact, that in world presented in that movie, the easy and cheap way to get a pet was to buy a robot which was carefully manufactured to look and behave as a real animal. Fortunately, there is still various animal life around us, and we have to pay extra to have robot which is designed to behave like a pet. And one of most promising approach to this concept is CHiP. It still needs some tuning, but its hard to find something comparable to it at this moment.

Book of the week:

• Robot Building for Beginners, 2nd Edition (Technology in Action) - If you are thinking about building a robot, and you believe that you are above level of Lego robots, but still below 3D seeing, gigabytes of data processing and multi degrees of freedom moving parts, this book might be perfect for you. You will be taught how to complete your tool set and components and then how to use them to build robot you designed. This book looks like serious enough to actually support you in constructing robots but is also explanatory enough so you will not have to climb you learning cliff alone.    

Courses:

• Introduction to Robotics - Another introductory course about robotics. This time it is designed and presented by Professor Oussama Khatib from Stanford University. Topics include spatial descriptions, forward kinematics, inverse kinematics, jacobians, dynamics, motion planning and trajectory generation, position and force control, and manipulator design.

Jobs:

• Senior Robotics Scientist @ iRobot Corporation - Everyone of us probably heard of iRobot company mainly because of their flag product Roomba. They are hiring to design and improve vision algorithms for their robots. Again, job offer related to cleaning industry. Maybe this is our future? Location: Bedford, USA. Tags: mathematics, slam, c, c++.

Humor:

• Almost - In past issue of Robotics Weekly I mentioned finalist of DRC 2015. You should also check of other robot which "almost" made 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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Robotics Weekly #7

Robotics Weekly

Issue #7

22.01.2016

Featured article:

• Amazon’s Robot Hordes Have Doubled This Year - Every time I'm telling someone that Amazon started to use robots in their warehouses I'm not sure about actual numbers. Usually, even without numbers, my interlocutors often have this "skeptic" face and even if they are accepting general idea, they are not believe that those are big numbers. But lets face the facts: 30,000 robots taking care of 426 items per second on peak hours - those are not small numbers and definitely too big to be skeptic here.

Articles and videos:

• Star Wars BB-8 V2 - [spoiler free] If you watched Star Wars Episode VII you probably wondered how much of BB-8 was done by CGI and how much by robotics/animatronics. To be honest I don't know that. But If you check this Youtube playlist you will find that it is possible to entirely build such droid from scratch. I'm very impressed by it final look and movement of it and patience and skill of its constructor.
• LittleDog Robot - As usually, I couldn't skip constructions from Boston Dynamics. Although LittleDog is pretty old in robotics standards, I believe it is worth to recall it after presentation of its bigger brothers in previous issues of Robotics Weekly.
• A-Pod - One of most often used inspiration in robot design is nature. Of course, most universal and on the same time hardest to build is human alike structure. But other structures can be also useful and interesting. Here is example of ant like robot.
• Real Transformer - OK, this is pretty old video, sorry for that. But that was first video I can recall, which shows rolling "car" which can transform into walking humanoid. Please take in account that this is video from 2006 - so basically an eternity in modern robotics time.
• Perpetual Walking Robot - If you know physics on elementary level you probably dreamed about constructing perpetum mobile, at least once. If you know physics little more, you know that this is impossible. But, you also should know that there is something called potential energy, and in some cases it is easy to convert it into kinetic energy, which more or less means that something can be moved "for free". The trick is usually to find application for that "free movement". What applications can we find for such perpetual walking robot?
• OpenROV - Xprize foundation recently announced competition about mapping oceans. To win main prize, you should design and build autonomous device which will map targeted area of ocean. When I found OpenROV I immediately though about its team as potential team starting in this competition. They have experience with underwater unmanned vehicles which are cheap. In addition, software and hardware they designed is open source. Of course, if you just want send robot into underwater, you can buy it from them and freely experiment with it.
• Mondo Spider 2 - I believe that everyone would be impressed by this heavy metal human transporting spider. It is slightly to slow to be an actual transportation vehicle, but it seems durable and easy to steer. I'm curious if such spider could be registered as legal vehicle that could move on average roads.
• Sarcoman Robot Playing Air Hockey - Always wanted to have sparing partner for air hockey games? Fear no more. Of course, he is not as verbose and interactive as real opponent, but his gaming skills should be enough at least for entry level games.

Crowdfunding:

• ONAGOfly - I'm person who has no experience in piloting any flying vehicle and I'm almost certain that I would crash any UAV I would try to pilot. So I'm rather avoiding such devices. But after looking on ONAGOfly specification I believe that this could be the first UAV designed specially for me. Very autonomous, crash proof and able to take photos automatically. And the price seems to be very reasonable for its features.

Book of the week:

• Arduino Robotics (Technology in Action) - Ever wondered if Arduino is mature enough for robotics? Wonder no more - in this book, apart of several robot blueprints, you can find informations about Arduino and electronics in general. It is nice mix between "boring" physics and cool robotics.

Courses:

• Cognitive Neuroscience Robotics Part A - This course is combination of cognitive science, neuroscience and robotics, and it is designed to present synthetic (engineering) and analytic (psychological) approach to creating social robots that interact with society. At least that is what I understood from course description ;).

Jobs:

• Robotics/Software Engineer @ Aurora - Did you ever dreamed about flying. You can stop dreaming and start flying... almost. You can actually design and work on software and algorithms used in autonomous flight vehicles. Although it is not flying in person, I bet it still could be exciting. Location: Cambridge, USA. Tags: ros, python, linux, opengl, c++.

Humor:

• Robot Soccer Goes Big Time - Definitely more exciting than "real" soccer!

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 #6

Robotics Weekly

Issue #6

15.01.2016

Featured article:

• How a Robot in the Garden Might Save a Trip to Whole Foods - I am type of person who would like to eat well. But I'm also to lazy (well... lets say I don't have much time) to take care of garden in which I could plant healthy fruits and vegetables. So when I heard about FarmBot I just asked myself, when could I buy that? And the best part of it is that this is open source software and hardware project based on Arduino and Raspberry Pi. It seems that even even I can be a farmer ;).

Articles and videos:

• A Robot That Balances on a Ball - Researchers from Tohoku Gakuin University presented some time ago their approach to mobility of robots. It looks like very stable, and agile way of moving, but on the other hand it looks like too much complicated to build out of the scratch. Maybe this is the reason that this type of "wheels" is not used too often?
• Winners of MAKE Robot Contest - If you are fan of MAKE magazine you are probably already familiar with this contest from few years ago. Robots presented there aren't revolutionary or highly technologically advanced. Instead they are ... colorful and noisy. I believe that its worthy to check them.
• Motobot - There is very much happening right now in land of autonomous cars. Academic researchers and mainstream motor companies are interested in developing their own solutions for that idea. But what about autonomous motorcycles? Or even autonomous motorcycle drivers? Somehow I cannot find real big pros for that idea, but I must say that this Motobot from Yamaha looks really sleek.
• Plen - Plen is plain simple humanoid robot which fits average desktop. It moves nicely and is very adorable. It is also compatible with ROS which makes it very serious toy after all. If only price were slightly lower.
• The Making of Drone 100 - What is current world record for simultaneously flying UAVs? Since few days it is round 100. It was done by Intel and it was done with style. The idea was to use this swarm of drones as "space pixels" and present images on sky with them in accompany of live orchestra. You should definitely check this video.
• DARPA 2015 winner - If you looking for autonomous humanoid robotics rescue machines saving people in urban areas, you should watch this finalist of DARPA robotics challenge ... and wait for some more years. I'm not saying that there was nothing special in finalist performance. I would even say that it was amazing, but there are still many things to improve in terms of speed of its task solving abilities.
• Google's Human-Shaped Robot Takes First Walk Outside - Another link regarding our regular guest - Boston Dynamics. This time I would like to present you ATLAS - humanoid robot which is almost ready to run freely in parks. This robot is designed to perform typical human manual tasks in typical human environments. So it was crucial part of design that this robot would travel from point to point also like a human. I'm very impressed by the test results even if it still has external power source.
• FIRST Stronghold Game Reveal - If you are bored with line follower, sumo or even Dekinnoka wrestling competitions you may direct your attention toward FIRST Stronghold competition. In this game, two teams of robots are trying to capture opponents fortress. They are competing in viciously designed foregrounds to achieve winning conditions before opponents. This might be 2016 hit in terms of robotics competitions. I'm looking forward to see first transmissions.

Crowdfunding:

• iCamPRO Deluxe - If you ever have been thinking about home automation, you probably spent some time on security topic. I think that this Kickstarter project would fit into that system despite it is not a robot. I just hope that there will be open source software implementation of its firmware, or at least nice API which enable its integration in such home automation system.

Book of the week:

• Robotics: DISCOVER THE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY OF THE FUTURE with 20 PROJECTS (Build It Yourself) - Do you want to interest your kids with robotics? If yes, you might be interested in this book written by Kathy Ceceri. It is simple introduction to robotics which start with history of robots and then leads to more advanced topics. Book is illustrated by Sam Carbaugh which composes great and creates nice overall impression.

Courses:

• Begin Robotics - University of Reading just brought brand new course. They are aiming for non experienced learners to be able in the end to program their robots recreated in virtual simulations. Program in a way that it would move "consciously" and do something "useful".

Jobs:

• Software Engineer - ROS @ Avidbots - Okay, maybe cleaning industry doesn't seems like super hero dream job, but after all, if you are designing robots capable of doing human only chores you are a little hero. Location: Waterloo, Canada. Tags: ros, python, linux, arm, continuous integration.

Humor:

• Robot hand-holders - Who knows, maybe this is next billion dollar industry?

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.

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License: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Robotics Weekly #5

Robotics Weekly

Issue #5

08.01.2016

Featured article:

• Watch This Swarm of Simple Robots Do Surprisingly Complex Things - Usually when we think about robot, we think about mechanical being sized more or less from chihuahua to two times the average human size. And we think about individual robot. But in the nature, apart from individual entities, there are also swarms like bees and ants. Why couldn't we build robot designed to behave just like one simple member of bigger group of the same robots?

Articles and videos:

• Quadrocopter Ball Juggling - Another cool video from ETH Zurich. This time engineers from there mounted tennis rocket like nets on drones and made them juggle balls. They are quick, adaptive and very agile while handling the ball. It seems to me that they will outperform human juggling masters soon.
• Demonstration of humanoid robots for disaster rescue missions - One of the biggest problem of developed areas like cities are disasters. When one big event like tsunami, earthquake or explosions occurs usually there are not enough rescue workers helping the victims of such situations. Even if there were enough rescuers, some places are so damaged, flooded or filled with chemicals that they are unavailable for them. In my opinion this looks like good place for robotic rescue workers. Ideally such robot rescuers would be autonomous, but even if not, they can provide large amount of information for rescue teams which can help with making decisions. Not mention that such robot could also clean the way for trapped persons. I'm very happy that there are people which are constructing such robots already, even if those robots behave a little clumsy.
• This Lego robot is controlled entirely by a worm’s brain - How about combining Lego Mindstorm set with Open Worm artificial intelligence? Well, as we can expect, we will receive artificial worm brain in Lego body. Not spectacular combination, but if you think about it, we just created simple artificial life... almost.
• YASKAWA BUSHIDO PROJECT - Can industrial robots be so agile that they could perform in sword art according to Iaijutsu technique? It looks like yes. I'm afraid that in real combat (lets forget about immobility of such robot for a second) it would kill even Iaijutsu master.
• Uncanny valley - If you just started interesting with robotics, you may hear about "uncanny valley" and maybe no one explained well what this term mean. Basically it means that if you add more and more details to animate an inanimate object towards human look and movement, there is a moment when your model generates less positive feelings that you could expect. You see that something is almost human, but this "almost effect" tels you to back off from that object. So sometimes, it is better to design robot who looks like raw robot than human with few flaws.
• Kid's Walker - another invention from Japan. This time, someone built small "mecha" for kids. I'm not sure what was it purpose, but it looks pretty impressive since it actually moves.
• Soft autonomous robot inches along like an earthworm - Researchers from MIT presented simple worm like robot which moves by squeezing its mesh like "body" structure caused by change of shape of shape memory alloy. In my humble opinion it looks quite like normal bug, which is great result.
• Sand Flea Jumping Robot - We already had a chance to watch some walking robots from Boston Dynamics. But what would happen if someone wouldn't bother with walking, and just roll on easy terrain and skip high obstacle by jumping on it? Results may be very interesting. I just wonder how many "jumps" such robot can survive without need of repairing.

Crowdfunding:

• Seems like there are no cool and fresh projects in crowdfunding stage this time ;(.

Book of the week:

• The Art of Tinkering - Colorful book about starting tinkering from members of San Fransisco Exploratorium.

Courses:

• Robotics: Estimation and Learning - Nothing is perfect, and robots you will build also will not be perfect. In this course you will learn how to deal with noise from sensors and how to estimate current status and location of robot.

Jobs:

• Robotics Software Engineer @ TORC Robotics - TORC Robotics has interesting offer for person who is looking to work on perception in robotics systems. Key requirements are knowledge of object oriented programming, mathematical background and experience with robotics navigation.

Humor:

• Asshole Robot Co-worker - lets hope that future collaboration of humans and robot will not look like that ;).

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!
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Robotics Weekly #4

Robotics Weekly

Issue #4

01.01.2016

Featured article:

• Rumored Google-Ford Deal, Low-End Robocars, and Tesla’s Backslide - Those are seemingly uninteresting news related to autonomous cars right now. But they might be peeks of how autonomous car market will be shaped in future. Will Google "marry" Ford in mass manufacturing of autonomous cars? Will Tesla enthusiasts sue Tesla Motors company for "downgrading" their cars? Are there many other small companies which will offer their versions of autonomous cars like mushrooms after rain?

Articles and videos:

• VertiGo - What will happen when we use typical rotor drone engines and propellers and mount on lightweight chassis with wheels. Well, I will not spoil the surprise. Check videos on that site and find out by yourself ;)
• Titan the Robot - At first impression I though that this is 100% robot. But on the other hand I couldn't connect it with anything I know about current robotics development. So that made me a little suspicious. And I was right. Nevertheless I'm still pretty impressed by this combination of actor play and mechanical elements.
• Mycroft.ai - Do you dream of having robotic assistant capable of helping you in your day to day chores? Who doesn't? But currently, there are no sensible solutions for such assistant to be humanoid. But what if we could get just its artificial intelligence for starter? Mycroft team tries to bring virtual artificial assistant with brain of Raspberry Pi and body of "alarm clock" into average households. Powered by open source software and hardware Mycroft will listen for commands and will try to give you all needed information or interact with various home devices. Existing as community powered product, Mycroft looks like promising approach to personal home assistant idea.
• Comparison of domestic robots - I know that gifts season just ended but I believe such comparison might still be useful. To be honest, I wasn't even aware that there are so many models in the market now.
• PR2 - did you checked Mycroft from above link? Well, actually there is possibility to put such artificial assistant into robotics body. PR2 might be perfect physical companion for it. But there is one practical problem with PR2 - its price. But if you have spare 280K USD fell free to order one and play with it. In worst case it can serve as self-propelled server :D.
• ASC Drone - There are many rural and unaccessible territories which can be used as a base for farming. Sometimes sophisticated or typical farming equipment cannot be used there. Why couldn't we use autonomous drones for planting and cultivation of the crops?
• Inverted Pendulum Wheel Robot - One of biggest problem in motion of robots and also handicapped people are stairs. It is problematic to construct cheap, easy to manufacture and reliable solution which will enable stairs climbing. But maybe idea demonstrated in this inverted pendulum wheel robot will be the key for further developments in this area?
• Geminoids - How would you feel when could you talk to robot that look and behave just like you? Check this video in which there are three persons and their robotics twins. At first look it might be tough to distinguish human from his geminoid. But if you look a few seconds more, you will find that it is extremely hard for human to completely stop all motion (especially this king of noise unnecessary motion) and such stop happens very often in geminoids. If we were in war with them we could find spies among us ;).

Crowdfunding:

• Baby BiBli - Bibli is simple social robot designed to interact especially with kids who has autism. It has wireless communication interface, 2 inch LCD display, camera, microphone and stereo speakers. It uses wheels to move and it has easy to learn programming interface.

Book of the week:

• Invent To Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom - book form Sylvia Libow Martinez and Gary S. Stager. This book is dedicated to wonderful journey of bringing best practices and ideas from makers environment into classrooms.

Courses:

• Robotics: Perception - How robots see 3D world? In this course students will learn how to recalculate 2D data gathered from cameras into 3D meaningful data. This data will enable sophisticated navigation in complex environment.

Jobs:

• Embedded C/Vision experts @ Bizzy Robotics - Do you want to design vision system of personal home robot? Do you want to participate in shaping home robotics systems? If yes, you will be probably interested in this job offer, especially because you can work remotely.

Humor:

• When Robot Programmers get bored - small heart attack for safety inspectors.

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!
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Robotics Weekly #3

Robotics Weekly

Issue #3

25.12.2015

Featured article:

• 14 Robotics Breakthroughs From the Past Decade - End of year is nice time for summaries of past achievements. In this article (from 2013) we have nice summary of year after year robotics achievements.

Articles and videos:

• hitchBOT - There are more and more discussions about possible dangers and risks of creating advanced robots and artificial intelligence. But is anyone considering how we, humans will interact with robots? Will we help them with their problems or will we harm them and release our hate towards them? Actually some people are considering this situations. They build simple humanoid robot and sent him on hitch hiking trip. Surprisingly people were very helpful to hitchBOT except for pretty big incident in Philadelphia.
• Dobot - Ever wanted to have industry quality robotics arm on your desktop? Check out Dobot. It is Arduino compatible, easy to program and easy to use.
• Watch These Drones Build a Rope Bridge - When I was younger I loved to watch adventure movies like Indiana Jones. There were many scenes when some adventure hunters were crossing rope bridge. Usually at the end of scene such bridges were spectacularly destroyed and no one even though how hard will it be to rebuild it. That was one of most annoying thing in those movies for me. But finally ETH Zurich researchers come with brilliant solution: why can't we build rope bridge with help of autonomous drones? The results are astonishing.
• GlaDOS as 3d printed ceiling lamp - Do you remember Wheatley from last issue of Robotics Weekly? If you like it, you definitely should check another "character" form Portal 2. This time it is even practical, because this GlaDOS can perform also like ceiling lamp.
• Robot Pro-Wrestling Dekinnoka! - Welcome in strange land of Japanese entertainment. Forget about simple box shaped sumo robots which are pushing them selfs out of dohyō. Check those videos from Dekinnoka tournaments where humanoid remote controlled robots are fighting each other. To be honest, they are rather funny than amazing but still worth watching.
• Simple Bots - List of instructables projects of very very simple robots which can be build based on toothbrush or ruler.
• Drifting Robot Car - How can simple drifting remote controlled car be upgraded? Simple, make it autonomous drifting car. And this slow motion shot was very impressive.
• RiSE V2 and V3 - Do you remember tree climbing robot from previous issue of Robotics Weekly? Boston Dynamics also have their own approach to this problem. But their solution also works on walls, so it might be slightly better approach.

Crowdfunding:

• Thimble - When I was young kid, I loved to buy Dinosaurs magazine issued on 2 week base. Apart of magazine, there were simple plastic dinosaur bones and instruction how to connect them to make one big model. I loved anticipation for new issue and parts. Now, Thimble team tries to do something similar with simple robotics education kits. It seems that they already achieved their funding goal, but it still might be worth to check them out.

Book of the week:

• Tinkering: Kids Learn by Making Stuff - Looking for tinkering ideas and projects that might be done with larger groups of kids? You should check this book. Author proposes some tinkering activities with lot of explanation and references for further "research". And apart of that he tries to distill the hows and whys of tinkering kids and give tips and tricks based oh his own experiences.

Courses:

• Robotics: Mobility - OK, so you have idea of how your robot will look and what is his purpose, but you have no idea how to make him to move? In this Coursera MOOC you will learn how to think and design robots which will move in a way that you intent to. There will be also following topics discussed: mobility in animals and robots, kinematics and dynamics of legged machines, and design of dynamical behavior via energy landscapes.

Jobs:

• Equipment Engineer, Robotics @ Tesla Motors - If you are looking for job in industrial robotics, Tesla Motors might be good choice. You still have to had a loot of experience, but I bet that you can learn something new there.

Humor:

• Happy Holidays - Well, those reindeer might not be flying yet, but who knows who will deliver presents next Christmas :).

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!
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Robotics Weekly #2

Robotics Weekly

Issue #2

18.12.2015

Featured article:

• How to get started (and progress) in robotics - quick and simple guide about getting started in robotics world. It has hints and tips for kids, teenagers and adults and saves hardcore robotics engineering for the last step.

Articles and videos:

• HRP-4C - pretty cool Japanese  robot which was designed to look like average 30 years old Japanese woman. Most interesting in this robot is its ability to walk almost naturally.
• Bolt Stiller Show Reel Behind the Scenes (minimally NSFW) - do you know that high precision robot arms are used for high FPS cameras in some scenes? As you can see in above video, such robot enables precision movement and recording in time windows which is practically to small to any human camera operator. You totally need to watch final cut of this video (also slightly NSFW).
• How differential gear works? - Ever wandered how differential gear works? Check out this vintage video which explains in very simple way how such gear is built. Maybe you will use it in your next rover project?
• Portal 2 Wheatley - If you played Portal 2 game you probably can easily recognize "robot" Wheatley. He likes to talk and look around. Check out this excellent replica which mimics him just like he would be taken directly from game.
• Spot - yes, it is another four leg dog like robot from Boston Dynamics. It is smaller that other "big" robots from BD, but also it is pretty agile, quick and autonomous. I can watch movie with it over and over again.
• Treebot - Can new types of motion be invented and applied to robots? For example caterpillar type of movement? Looks like yes. In this quite old video you can observe simple robot that climbs different trees easily. It seems that checking nature for inspiration can give very good results.
• Giant Robot Duel Kickstarted - I'm totally excited with thoughts about possible future fight between two big combat robots. Will we see epic battle of robots from USA and Japan? Obviously Japan will invest in melee combat, will it be enough?
• GoPiGo - still missing gift for Christmas? Maybe you still can grab one of those small and simple Raspberry Pi based robots. GoPiGo seems to be nice as a starter pack leading to more sophisticated robot ideas.

Crowdfunding:

• HEW - simple 6 axis robot arm which is designed to stand on your desk and do stuff. It is controlled by PWM so it can be used with Arduino or Raspberry Pi and programmed with Python and Scratch among other programming languages.

Book of the week:

• Paper Inventions - Do you know that you can make pretty neat constructions and circuits based on paper? Yes, ordinary peace of paper! Enter the world of paper crafts with help of experienced writer Kathy Ceceri and never look the at paper in the same way again!

Courses:

• Computational Motion Planning - part 2 of Coursera robotics specialization. This course is dedicated to most common approaches to addressing motion planning problem including graph-based methods, potential fields, randomized planners and optimization-based methods.

Jobs:

• Researcher/Robotics Software Engineer (Self-Driving Car) @ Google[x] - are you interested in self driving cars? Do you know how to work with LIDAR and and can write safety-critical, efficient C++ code? Maybe this job is perfect for you.

Humor:

• The Breakfast Machine - future is now.

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 also sponsor this magazine.

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