Latest in Robotics news thread

[ScienceRocks]

Care-O-bot 4: A Robot Servant We All Want But Most Can't Afford
http://spectrum.ieee...ile-manipulator

Mobile manipulators are the robots we want, because they’re the robots that have the most potential to do the things that we care about: working in our homes and businesses, making things better and faster and easier. Robots have a long way to go before better and faster and easier become a thing that consumers get to experience directly, but with each new and updated platform, we get a little closer. Today, that little bit closer is the new and improved Care-O-bot 4, from Fraunhofer IPA.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Robots Are Learning How To Cook - Using YouTube

Robots are using the powers of technology - YouTube - to learn how to complete a necessary human task, writes Tech Times.

The robots are being taught how to cook using the video-sharing website, writes Tech Times.

Researchers from the University of Maryland, funded by DARPA's Mathematics of Sensing, Exploitation, and Execution program, are showing robots cooking videos on YouTube to study whether the robots then learn to recognize, grasp and use the correct kitchen utensils and ingredients that are being used in the educational videos.

 

[ScienceRocks]

SAFFiR, the US Navy’s prototype firefighting robot gets baptism of fire
By David Szondy
February 4, 2015
2 Pictures

If there's one job that a person would probably prefer to lose to a robot, it would be fighting fires aboard ships. To help make such a vision a reality, the US Navy and the Office of Naval Research (ONR) released details of demonstration exercises conducted by their Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot (SAFFiR) aboard the fire training ship USS Shadwell last November.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Octopus robot makes waves with ultra-fast propulsion

Scientists have developed an octopus-like robot, which can zoom through water with ultra-fast propulsion and acceleration never before seen in man-made underwater vehicles.
Most fast aquatic animals are sleek and slender to help them move easily through the water but cephalopods, such as the octopus, are capable of high-speed escapes by filling their bodies with water and then quickly expelling it to dart away.

 

[fmdog44]

Nano-bots to farm bots...To Robo-cop!

Robot kills weeds on farms with 98% accuracy

1st October 2012

Another step towards autonomous and eco-friendly farming could soon be achieved.
visionrobotics.com - Orange Harvesting

Blue River Technology – a startup founded in 2011 by two Stanford University Alumni – has announced $3.1 million in funding from angel investors led by Khosla Ventures.

The company is developing an alternative to chemical-intensive agriculture, which is both expensive and hazardous to the environment. With advanced computer vision techniques for identifying weeds and selectively killing unwanted plants, Blue River Technology's equipment is much faster and more efficient than traditional methods of weed killing. Known as "Lettuce-bot", this machine is particularly well-suited to organic agriculture and fields with chemical-resistant weeds.

During tests, this automated system gathered over a million images as it moved through the fields. Its Computer Vision System was able to detect and segment individual plants – even those that were touching each other – with 98% accuracy.


"We intend to invest the proceeds of this round in growing our engineering team and accelerating our new product roadmap," said Jorge Heraud, co-founder and CEO of Blue River Technology. "Our culture fosters extreme innovation aimed at real-world problems. We are looking for passionate engineers to advance the boundaries of computer vision, machine learning and robotics and help us reinvent food production. "

"With global population expected to increase to 9.5 billion by 2050, increasing food production in a sustainable way is going to be one of the great challenges of this century," said Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures. "Blue River Technology's solution will not only be more cost effective than current solutions, but has the potential to reduce U.S. herbicide use by over 250 million pounds a year."

Currently, the machine only works on Iceberg and Romaine lettuce, as the database of images was generated for those plants only. However, it is hoped that more varieties will be possible soon. A number of other companies are developing robots for agriculture and these machines are expected to become fairly commonplace by 2016.

Further into the future, robots working in fields could do more than just eliminate weeds. They could also monitor insects, identify pests, measure the soil pH and nitrogen levels, and check the water content, keeping fields in near-perfect condition.

Read Michio Kaku for the future of robotics totally fascinating.

 

[ScienceRocks]

China to Have Most Robots in the World by 2017

China will have more robots operating in its production plants by 2017 than any other country as it cranks up automation of its car and electronics factories, the International Federation of Robotics said on Thursday. Already the biggest market in the $9.5 billion global robot trade, China lags far behind its more industrialized peers in terms of robot density. China has just 30 robots per 10,000 workers employed in manufacturing industries, compared with 437 in South Korea, 323 in Japan, 282 in Germany and 152 in the United States.

 

[ScienceRocks]

World’s first robot-staffed hotel to open in Japan

A robot-staffed hotel, said to be the world’s first, is set to open in Japan in July where guests checking into the futuristic facility will be greeted and served by remarkably human-like robots.

“In the future, we’re hoping to build 1,000 similar hotels around the world,” says Sawada, CNN quoted Japan’s Nikkei News as saying. Other features will help make Henn-na the most futuristic low-cost hotel in the industry, according to the company.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Muscle Powered Bio-Bots Walk On Command

“Biological actuation driven by cells is a fundamental need for any kind of biological machine you want to build,” said study leader Rashid Bashir, Abel Bliss Professor and head of bioengineering at the U. of I.
Bashir’s group has been a pioneer in designing and building bio-bots, less than a centimeter in size, made of flexible 3-D printed hydrogels and living cells. Previously, the group demonstrated bio-bots that “walk” on their own, powered by beating heart cells from rats.
However, heart cells constantly contract, denying researchers control over the bot’s motion. This makes it difficult to use heart cells to engineer a bio-bot that can be turned on and off, sped up or slowed down.
The new bio-bots are powered by a strip of skeletal muscle cells that can be triggered by an electric pulse. This gives the researchers a simple way to control the bio-bots and opens the possibilities for customize bio-bots for specific applications.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Drone waiters to plug Singapore's service staff gap

In Singapore food is a national obsession. But finding enough people to bring the food to diners is increasingly becoming a problem.

One company thinks it has come up with a solution - flying robot waiters. They are sturdy, reliable, and promise never to call in sick at the last minute.

Infinium Robotics' drones, due to be introduced at a local restaurant-bar chain by the end of this year, can carry up to 2kg (4.4lbs) of food and drink - that's about two pints of beer, a pizza, and two glasses of wine.

The unpiloted robots whizz above the heads of diners on paths charted by a computer programme, and navigate using infra-red sensors placed around the restaurant.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Boston Dynamics’ new Spot robot gets knocked down, gets back up again
Boston Dynamics 8217 new Spot robot gets knocked down gets back up again ExtremeTech

• By Ryan Whitwam on February 10, 2015 at 12:46 pm
• 14 Comments

Google-owned Boston Dynamics specializes in creating robots that move in almost impossibly life-like ways. They can climb hills, carry heavy loads, and follow humans around. The company’s latest creation is called Spot, and it has made its video debut showing just how nimble and sturdy walking robots have become. So this is how the world ends — not with a bang, but with a robot that doesn’t fall over when you kick it.

Spot is a refinement of the company’s past robots. It’s quadrupedal and electrically powered, unlike that super speedy WildCat robot with its internal combustion engine. Spot’s movements are hydraulically actuated for fine control on a variety of terrains. This robot weighs in at 160 lbs and is considerably more mobile than some of Boston Dynamic’s older models, as illustrated in the video.

If it is doing this on its own. Well, I am utterly fucking amazed!

 

[ScienceRocks]

INFOGRAPHIC : Robotics, building the future

The world has imagined the emergence of game-changing robotic and automation technologies for decades, but recent years have seen some of the most extraordinary advances in the field. What follows is a look at how robotics is opening up huge potential in important industries and helping to create the world of the future.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Driverless Trucks: German Daimler AG hopes to bring them to market by 2025 [The Guardian]

Pollution in the trucking industry has long been a public issue, and it’s one that certainly didn’t end when the first federal emission limits were introduced in 1974. For good reason: heavy- and medium-duty trucks, which include everything from ambulances and garbage trucks to cement mixers and semis, make up nearly a quarter of all US greenhouse-gas emissions from transportation, according to the US transportation department.

Put another way, these trucks add 1.6bn metric tons of CO2 equivalent emissions into the atmosphere annually, accounting for 5.75% of emissions globally, according to a 2012 Carbon War Room report (pdf). In the US, trucking accounts for 18% of all oil combustion, or about 3.8m barrels daily, according to the Rocky Mountain Institute, a nonprofit focused on efficient resource use. And the trucking market is only expected to grow.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Giant robotic teddy bear: Japan's nurse of the future

The population of Japan is ageing, and fewer children being born. This creates a variety of problems -- not the least of which is a shortage of caregivers for the elderly, as the elderly population grows while the younger population shrinks. To help compensate, the country has been exploring a different solution: robots.
In the case of research institute RIKEN, cuddly teddy bear-faced robots that can lift and carry a mobility impaired patient, or help them stand and provide a support to lean on while walking.

 

[ScienceRocks]

This robot at U-Md. taught itself to cook by watching YouTube

 

[ScienceRocks]

Rise of Robot Factories Leading 'Fourth Industrial Revolution'

Busy day? A million things to do? Well, here’s depressing news: you’ll probably mess up about 1,000 of them. That’s what the research shows, at least: for every million tasks a human performs, even the best of us inserts mistakes between 500 and 1,000 times. It might seem a lot, but think of the number of emails you send containing a typo, the number of dishes that make it to the drying rack with a fleck of food still on them, the gaffes when talking with colleagues, the mismatched socks you only spot at lunchtime.

None of these slip-ups is likely to prove very costly, whether in terms of time, money or reputation. But the stakes grow higher in certain environments: a pharmacist getting a dosage wrong can take a life; a trader with “fat fingers” can cost his employer millions. It was with this idea in mind, just over 25 years ago, that a team of engineers and scientists at Siemens began to rethink one particular shop floor. The factory in Amberg, a small town near Nuremberg in Germany, made controllers – the boxes stuffed with circuit boards and switches that act as brains for other factories. And it did a pretty good job of it, with customers from across countries and sectors, and a defects per million rate of 550.

But even that number felt too high, particularly given that a broken controller can quickly shut down a factory, costing its owners millions of euros per day in stopped production alone. So the team at Siemens began moving the factory towards greater automation, counting on computers to beat humans in the race for quality. In 1990, 25% of the shop floor was automated; today, it is 75%. And the defect rate has dropped sharply – to 11.5 per million. Output has increased 8.5 times while employee numbers and floor space have stayed steady.

 

[ScienceRocks]

 

[ScienceRocks]

Researchers Create A [Simplified] Simulated Mouse Brain in a Virtual Mouse Body

Neurorobotics scientist Marc-Oliver Gewaltig and his team at the Human Brain Project (HBP) built a model mouse brain and a model mouse body, integrating them both into a single simulation and providing a simplified but comprehensive model of how the body and the brain interact with each other. "Replicating sensory input and motor output is one of the best ways to go towards a detailed brain model analogous to the real thing," explains Gewaltig.
A simplified version of the virtual mouse brain (just 200,000 neurons) was then mapped to different parts of the mouse body, including the mouse's spinal cord, whiskers, eyes and skin. For instance, touching the mouse's whiskers activated the corresponding parts of the mouse sensory cortex. And they expect the models to improve as more data comes in and gets incorporated.

 

[haissem123]

just curious, are all those scientist putting all their eggs in the techno basket? Is that basket protected or backed up in case of emp or other techno electric threats? just wandering are we making ourselves more vunerable or just more lazy? sorry for the spelling need spell check. see how dangerous tech is? lol

 

[ScienceRocks]

25 Robots Compete for DARPA Robotic Challenge 2015 $2 Million Prize

A robot competition to be hosted by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will involve 25 competing teams from all over the globe competing to determine which will be able to build a better robot for responding to disasters or calamities.

Eleven teams were previously selected and will now be joined by 14 new teams from the U.S., Japan, Hong Kong, China, South Korea, Germany and Italy. The contest will be held in Pomona, California.

 

[ScienceRocks]

ATRIAS bipedal robot can take a beating and keep walking
By Eric Mack
March 18, 2015
8 Pictures

The great tradition of designing robots inspired by the many beautiful forms of locomotion seen in the animal kingdom likely predates robotics itself, arguably stretching all the way back to Michelangelo's time. Standing on the shoulders of such giants is ATRIAS, a series of human-sized bipedal robots that remind us of other two-legged creatures like the ostrich or emu.