Robots Move from Pancakes to Whiteboards

Remember that pancake flipping robot we posted about last year? The same researchers are still investigating upper-body kinesthetic teaching in robots and a reader let us know about the latest results:

The team of researchers from Italy and Japan, lead by Dr. Petar Kormushev, has taught a Japanese humanoid robot how to clean a whiteboard. The approach that the team developed is called "upper-body kinesthetic teaching", and can be applied to a wide variety of vertical surface related tasks, such as window cleaning, wall painting, wallpaper fitting, drawing on a wall, etc.

The new research will be presented at the upcoming International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) in May of 2011 in Shanghai, China. If you just can't wait to read the research, you're in luck because the paper is already online: Upper-body Kinesthetic Teaching of a Free-standing Humanoid Robot (PDF format).

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Ephaptic Coupling in Brain Offers New Understanding

Mimicking the human brain may be even harder than expected. For decades researchers have attempted to decode the inner workings of our grey matter and much progress has been made in the area of neural networks, but recent work by neuroscientists at Caltech are offering yet another mechanism crucial to brain function - ephaptic coupling. It was once thought that neural processing was performed entirely via synapses (junctions between neurons), but now it's believed that information is also transmitted through extracellular electric fields throughout the brain. This epiphenomenon allows groups of neurons to influence each other without physical connection complicating our understanding of this remarkable machine. Of course this also raises new questions about the effects of external electrical fields on our thinking processes.

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Keepon finally for sale

The funny yellow dancing robot KeepOn of youTube fame (see above) will finally be available in a toy version. The toy version will look the same as the current research version, which is used as a telepresence tool for autism research and therapy. However, unlike the research version which is priced at 30'000 dollars (!) a piece, the toy version will retail for a mere 40 dollars. For now it's not completely clear what the toy robot will be able to do, but according to the BeatBot's press release it will maintain the reactivity to touch and its ability to listen to music, detect the beat, and dance in a perfect rhythm.

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BrainDriver - A Mind Controlled Car

Following his recent interview for the Robots Podcast, Raúl Rojas at the Freie Universität Berlin has released a video which shows a driver controlling his car using a brain interface. In the video, the driver is wearing an Emotiv EEG (Electroenzephalogram) primarily sold as a gaming device - for which it may not be an ideal fit. The work is part of the MadeInGermany project and follows previous projects such as Rojas group's Project AutoNOMOS. For more information on the "BrainDriver" and the "MadeInGermany" autonomous car, have a look at the autoNOMOS web site.

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Robots Podcast #72: Telepresence Robots

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Hummingbird NAV Flies Successfully

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An Initiative to Create an American Robotics Network

On January 22nd, Professor Henrik Christensen of Georgia Tech posed the question Are we ready for an American Robotics Network, saying that he had started a discussion regarding the organization of an American Robotics Network. He has also discussed the formation of such a network in a brief essay. In the recent blog post, he says I would like to get this underway as soon as possible to make sure that we can leverage the momentum from a National Robotics Initiative. First among the tasks to be entrusted to such an organization, he lists maintaining the roadmap and promoting it to agencies. More about Christensen, the roadmap, and the network after the break.

The roadmap, to which Professor Christensen refers, got its start in 2006, at a one-day workshop titled Science and Technology Challenges for Robotics organized by George Bekey of USC, Vijay Kumar of UPenn, and Matthew Mason of CMU. A summary report of that workshop states There was an enthusiastic response to the workshop with over 85 participants. [...] There were many volunteers who were ready to take on more responsibilities to promote the discipline. (Vijay Kumar was recently mentioned on Robots.net in connection with quadrotors cooperating on a construction project.)

Professor Christensen was a panelist at that workshop and later collaborated with Matthew Mason on an essay which summarized the state of robotics and previewed the findings of the collective effort to produce a robotics roadmap. The final report A Roadmap for US Robotics, From Internet to Robotics was presented in May, 2009, before the Congressional Robotics Caucus, however, in the effort to produce that report, the call for the formation of an American Robotics Network (9th slide) appears to have slipped to the back burner. Christensen is seeking to renew that endeavor.

Before occupying the KUKA Chair of Robotics at Georgia Tech's College of Computing, Professor Christensen was the founding Chairman of EURON, the European Robotics Research Network. He has recently been awarded the 2011 Engelberger Award for Education.

Originally found on Robotland.

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First Humanoid Robot in space!

A few hours ago the space shuttle Discovery took off for its final flight. Among its cargo it carries the Robonaut2 humanoid robot that will be deployed to the ISS. Robonaut 2 or R2 is humanlike in appearance because it was designed to perform similar to human tasks. It has a torso, two 7dof arms with a 12doF hand each and a head where its vision equipment is placed. It can reach and grasp objects and tools and it is also capable of holding and handling soft materials like a cloth or an envelope. Robonaut2 is the latest step of a 15-year-old effort by NASA to develop a humanoid robot that will be able to operate alongside humans in the demanding environment of space. The Robonaut program started in 1997 with the first prototype and GM joined in 2006 to assist the development of the more advanced R2. It will be permanently installed in the Unity node of the International Space Station and during the next months it will be deployed for its first test in the Destiny Laboratory. Initially it will be evaluated and used for teaching engineers how a dexterous robot behaves in space. In the near future it will gradually receive software and hardware updates (possibly a lower body) and it will be engaged in simple or more elaborate tasks.
Robonaut2 Fact Sheet (PDF, 3.4 MB) , NASA Robonaut videos.

We brought our Centaur configuration of the robot out to KSC to see the launch from the press site. What an amazing experience. If you've never seen a shuttle launch, beg, borrow or steal to get to one of the last two. You will not be disappointed.

The Team is really excited to usher in the age of robots working elbow to elbow and shoulder to shoulder with crew on the International Space Station.

Godspeed R2.

-Nic Radford

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Next Giant Leap pursues Google Lunar X Prize

The Robots Podcast's John Payne sent a report on the Google Lunar X Prize team Next Giant Leap. It is planning something different from the rovers planned by most of the other teams, such as that led by Red Whittaker of CMU. Instead of rolling across the surface for the required 500 meters, they intend to hop over it, with a platform riding on four thrusters. Stabilizing such a device, so that it remains level throughout its flight and goes where it is supposed to, is no mean trick. Designing, on Earth, the technology to do so autonomously in the airless, low-gravity environment of the Moon is a challenge. The guidance, navigation, and control algorithms to accomplish these tasks are developed at Draper Laboratory and tested on a prototype named Talaris. Developed with the help of MIT students and under the watchful eye of Bobby Cohanim, Talaris uses ducted fans in an arrangement similar to a quadrotor to compensate for the difference in gravity between Earth and Moon. More information after the jump.

Created under the auspices of the X Prize Foundation, the Google Lunar X Prize, with a $20 Million grand prize to be awarded to the first privately funded team to send a robot to the moon, travel 500 meters, and transmit video, images and data back to the Earth (and another $10 Million to be distributed among second place, bonus prizes for achieving specific objectives, and the team which does the best job of promoting diversity in space), has attracted entries from twenty-five teams, of which twenty-one remain in the running, the most recent to join being Team Space IL.

One of the favorites in this competition, Next Giant Leap (NGL), founded by Michael Joyce (a former U.S. Air Force pilot and founder of B9Creations, makers of the Lost In Space robot replica), counts among its partners the Space Systems business area of Sierra Nevada Corporation, MIT's Space Systems Laboratory, The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc., Aurora Flight Sciences Corporation, and The Center for Space Entrepreneurship (eSpace). NGL has recently received cash infusions from two of these partners, an undisclosed figure from eSpace and $1 Million Draper Laboratory, underlining their confidence in and continued commitment to the Next Giant Leap team, and helping to ensure the team's mission advances to liftoff as quickly as due caution allows; the competition being a sort of race.

The launch vehicle is to be a multistage rocket built upon a Falcon 1e booster. When the last of these stages is exhausted, the payload, NGL's lander/hopper, will still be above the lunar surface, faced with the task of negotiating the final approach and landing for itself, autonomously. Once safely on the moon, this lander/hopper will survey its surroundings, then lift off again and skim laterally above the lunar surface, before settling back down a second time. The number of times it can lift off, traverse, and re-land, and the distance it can travel, are limited only by the amount of fuel remaining after the initial landing. For the purpose of winning the Google Lunar X Prize, it is enough that it make a single hop of at least 500 meters, or several that total that distance, and, after having done so, that it transmit video, images, and other data back to Earth.

Perhaps the two trickiest aspects of this plan are the combination of sensory hardware and software which enable the identification and avoidance of hazards in choosing a landing spot, which Draper is working on, building upon knowledge and experience gained from previous landing programs like NASA's ALHAT (Autonomous Landing and Hazard Avoidance Technology), and the Guidance, Navigation, and Control algorithms mentioned above, also being developed at Draper Laboratory.

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Microbots can now swim back and forth

Until now you can have big elaborate robots or very small microbots but it is very difficult to have both. A blog post from New Scientist (where this video is from) points out the research on microbots, very small machines that will move, navigate and perform simple tasks. The ability to remotely power a microbot, thus eliminating the need for onboard battery or fuel, is already proven and one of the methods is the application of an AC field to a liquid where the robot is located. This microbot is essentially a diode, a one-way electric conductor. The different electric charges at its ends force the neighboring ions to move thus creating a small thrust that propels the bot. The team of Rachita Sharma and Orlin Velev from North Carolina State University developed a method where a controlled application of an additional DC field changes the ion distribution around the microbot and this time the ion field creates a torque that rotates the microbot. The DC field is applied until the completion of a 180-degree turn. Then the microbot moves again, now in the opposite direction. It is only 1.3mm long and as claimed by other scientists like Vesselin Paunov from the University of Hull, UK this arrangement can be further scaled down where it can be useful for diagnostic and localized drug supply applications.

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Random Robot Roundup

This week's roundup starts with a reminder about the upcoming World Premier of Bots High, Joey Daoud's documentary about high school students participating in Battlebots. If you're into remote controlled machines smashing each other, check it out. There's an interesting Robotics Trends article on an AI control system for spacecraft called, no not HAL, but sysbrain. Alexey Burbin of Russia emailed to let us know about his cool Transformable Worm drive for amphibious robots. Pablo Rivera wrote to let us know about his new project, the International Programming Club; their goal is to teach more people programming and they plan a robot programming tutorial series. Finally, no roundup is complete with out some news from The Swirling Brain. This week he sent us a Singularity Hub story on the X-47B UAV, a PopSci article about a hamster with a cat-proof robot exo-skeleton, and an Escapist article about California robot spotted buying scones in a local coffee shop. Know any other robot news, gossip, or amazing facts we should report? Send 'em our way please. And don't forget to follow us on twitter.

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Robots: Robotics Roadmaps - Japan

The February 11th episode of RobotsPodcast is the first part of a series on funding strategies worldwide, which will cover America, Asia and Europe. Starting from Japan we talk to an expert and leading figure in Japanese Robotics, Tomomasa Sato, who is currently a project manager for intelligent robot projects supported by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, otherwise known at METI. During this interview, Tomomasa Sato tells us about the money spent in robotics; the differences between industry and government funding and developments and the cultural differences that make Japanese people accept robots into their daily lives. Read on or tune in! (image from the Robotics Society of Japan)

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John Holdren Addresses the AAAS Annual Meeting

The 2011 meeting of the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) drew to a close yesterday. Several plenary lectures are available. One of these, by John P. Holdren offers a particularly clear view of the Obama administration's policies and initiatives with respect to science and technology. Holdren, as Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Co-Chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), is very well positioned to provide a clear view of administration priorities and efforts. While he makes no direct mention of robotics, robotics is clearly included beneath the broad science and technology umbrella.

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Prospero, an Autonomous Micro Planter

A forum post on TrossenRobotics.com shows what's called a an Autonomous Micro Planter (AMP), a small, six-legged robot named Prospero, that's capable of drilling seed holes and depositing seeds in them. The forum post includes two YouTube videos and several photos. The author of the post, David Dorhout, describes this category of machine as the first of four steps, saying The other three steps involve autonomous robots that tend the crops, harvest them, and finally one robot that can plant, tend, and harvest--autonomously transitioning from one phase to another. Prospero was designed for a contest sponsored by SchmartBoard and placed first in the Parallax MCU segment (there were also TI and MicroChip MCU segments). The forum post links to a PDF which explains the project in detail, including source code.

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