New Underactuated Robot Hands from Lacquey and Willow Garage

December 5, 2012 by Travis Deyle
spacer

Underactuated robot hands -- with fewer motors than joints -- have been around for decades; however, we've seen a surge of new designs in recent years.  Personally, I attribute this trend to the availability of low-cost robot arms and associated open-source software (ie. ROS).  In any case, underactuated hands offer numerous advantages in terms of cost, size, weight, and mechanical / electrical complexity while providing a large array of shape-adaptive grasps.  In this article, I'd like to introduce you to two new underactuated robot gripers, the Lacquey "Fetch Hand" and the Willow Garage "Velo Gripper."  Be sure to check out the photos and videos below.

→ Read post

Robot Dragonfly by TechJect (A New Georgia Tech Spinoff Company)

November 14, 2012 by Travis Deyle
spacer

I'd like to introduce you TechJect (a Georgia Tech spinout) that is building a robot dragonfly based on of years of academic research and $1+ Million in military funding -- aka, one hell of a toy!  Early prototypes look pretty compelling (see photos and videos below).  Currently, they have an ongoing IndieGoGo crowdfunding campaign that has already raised ~$200k in just a few days, where you can essentially preorder robot dragonflies for about the same price as a quadrotor platform! (Albeit with delivery sometime around September or October of 2013.)   Presumably, their 4-wing ornithopter is able to independently control the pitch and amplitude of each wing to perform aggressive aerial maneuvering, which should enable the dragonfly to both fly or hover -- a unique capability compared to most other UAVs (fixed wing or helicopter).  Initial product sketches suggest that the dragonflies will be ~6 inches long, weight ~25 grams, and have numerous sensors and connectivity options (ie. RC control, WiFi, IMU, cameras... the usual).  

→ Read post

Visceral Negative Reaction to Suitable Technologies' New "Beam" Robot

September 26, 2012 by Travis Deyle
spacer

Today, Suitable Technologies announced the "Beam Remote Presence System" -- aka, Beam telepresence robot.  You can see the press announcement below, and find plenty of commentary elsewhere online (eg. about how the $16k price tag compares to competitors).  Normally, I'd write a similar reaction piece.  But instead, I'm going to violate two of my personal rules: I'm going to write a negative piece on Hizook, and I'm going to do it while somewhat mad.  Suitable, what were you thinking?!?  BEAM robots have been around since the 1990's.  Mark Tilden's patent for super-simple analog "nervous nets" to build (often solar powered) "Braitenberg vehicles" dates back to 1992.  They have a Wikipedia page; there are several in-print books; there are entire communities and companies built around them.  They're the reason I learned electronics and got into robotics as a child.  To have the name subverted in this way is sickening.  Did no one at Suitable run a simple Google search?!   Furthermore, there is no way that "beam" should be eligible for a trademark -- there's too much existing prior use in robotics.

→ Read post

Baxter Robot from Rethink Robotics Finally Unveiled!

September 17, 2012 by Travis Deyle
spacer

Rethink Robotics (formerly Heartland Robotics) has come out of stealth mode with the announcement of Baxter -- a $22,000 dual-arm, human-scale robot with compliant joints. The details are available in Rethink Robotics'  Baxter datasheet and brochure, but here are a few key highlights: dual 7-DoF arms with 5 lb (2.3kg) payload with a max no-load speed of 3.3 ft/sec (1m/sec).  The arms are compliant owing to series-elastic actuators (SEAs) with force control and torque sensing at each joint.  The robot torso sans-pedistal is 3'1" tall (94cm), and the robot has a reach of roughly 104cm.  The robot weighs in at 165 lbs (75kg) and has a suite of sensors including: 5 camers (1 up top, 2 in the torso, and 2 "eye-in-hand"), a 360-deg. ring of ultrasonic range sensors in the head, and IR range sensors at the gripper, and (naturally) kinematics and torque sensing at each joint. Did I mention the starting price of $22,000 and that it starts shipping this October!?!  This will be a HUGE deal for robotics.  Comparable arms easily cost an order of magnitude more (~$100k each), so getting a full pair for $22k is going to completely change the game -- perhaps even more than the Kinect.  It's an exciting time for robotics!  Read on for pictures, an interview with Rod Brooks (CTO and co-founder of Rethink), and the press release.

→ Read post

Artaic: Revolutionizing Tile Mosaics Through Robotic Assembly

August 2, 2012 by Travis Deyle
spacer

I love Artaic.  They're revolutionizing a millennia-old art form (tile mosaics) using dead-simple pick-and-place robots, to create a successful "non-robotics company."  Yet in my mind... they're the quintessential "robotics" company.  I had cause to visit their headquarters in Boston last March, where I got a special tour by Artaic co-founders Paul Reiss (Creative Director) and Ted Acworth (CEO).  Allow me to share their process, some of their beautiful mosaics, their unique outlook on robotics, and a quick sneak peak into advances coming down the pipeline.

→ Read post

Venture Capital Firms Behind the Hizook 2011 "VC in Robotics" List

August 1, 2012 by Robert Morris
spacer

Like many readers of this site, I’m planning to start a robotics company.  So when I saw Hizook's list of VC Funding in Robotics in 2011, it cried out to me: Who is investing in robotics?  And how can I get some of that VC money?  I did a bit of research to identify the robotics-friendly venture firms behind Hizook's list, with the hope of understanding how capital is allocated in robotics.  Unfortunately, most robotics investors are following a healthcare, consumer, or some other industrial hypothesis and end up investing in robotics by accident, not because they are eager for robotics per se.  As a result, the list is probably not as much help as a guide to fundraising as I had hoped.  Still, I think my research and results may be helpful to other budding robotics entrepreneurs... so many thanks to Hizook for letting me share.

→ Read post

P.W. Singer Wastes an Opportunity in the Atlantic

July 23, 2012 by Robert Morris
spacer

Peter W. Singer is arguably the most famous scholar of drones and robotic warfare today.  His book Wired for War probably did as much to introduce unmanned aircraft to the popular consciousness as any single work.  His article in the Atlantic on July 19th blew a huge opportunity to advance the discussion of unmanned aircraft regulation.  

→ Read post

Being Honest in Robot Videos: Motion Capture, Speedup Rates, and Teleoperation

July 2, 2012 by Travis Deyle
spacer

Movies and scifi books inspire roboticists to push the envelope, but they've also skewed the public's perception of robot capabilities. This problem is being exacerbated by researchers.  In the last three months, I've had to shatter a few dreams: "Your $300 AR.Drone or $150 Ladybird will not be able to perform insane autonomous aerial maneuvers (yet). The UPenn quadrotors rely on $20k-$50k camera-based (Vicon) motion capture systems, which provide global pose estimation of each UAV at millimeter-accuracies at up to 1kHz (and often uses an external, centralized motion planning computer too)."  That this crucial aspect of the videos does not register with intelligent people means that researchers are being disingenuous and violating their duty to the public -- which sucks, because their projects and research are awesome!   And this is just the example that happens to be most salient to me at the moment.  In this post I'd like to explore some "best practices" for robot videos so that we can quit misleading one another.

→ Read post

East Coast Chauvinism in Robotics: Time to Face Facts, Silicon Valley is Kicking Our Butt

June 25, 2012 by Robert Morris
spacer

I have lots of love for Pittsburgh in particular, but it really pisses me off when people on the East Coast repeat a bunch of falsehoods (See #8) about how Boston and Pittsburgh compare to Silicon Valley and the rest of the world.  Many people in Pittsburgh and Boston—including people I call friends and mentors—smugly think that the MIT and CMU centered robotics clusters are leading the world in robotics.  This is demonstrably false.

→ Read post

Redwood Robotics: New Silicon Valley Startup by Meka Robotics, Willow Garage, and SRI

May 3, 2012 by Travis Deyle
spacer

Redwood Robotics came out of its year-long stealth mode at today's Xconomy event in Menlo Park, California.  Redwood Robotics is a joint venture between three west-coast robotics powerhouses: Meka Robotics, Willow Garage, and SRI.  Aaron Edsinger, who is CEO of Meka Robotics and is expected to take a leadership / executive role at Redwood, made the announcement and explained the startup's goal: "To enable the personal and service robot markets through a new generation of robot arms that are simple to program, inexpensive, and safe to operate alongside people."  In other words, they're teaming up to create a proper competitor to Heartland Robotics in Boston.  Unfortunately, that's all the public details that they're sharing at this time.  They're being tight-lipped about business and technical details given the amount of secrecy in this market (eg. Heartland is notoriously tight-lipped).  We'll try to keep you updated as we learn more.  In the meantime, check out the brief spotlights of the three joint partners below.

→ Read post

Artisan's Asylum: Hackerspace Startup Building a 2500+ lb. Rideable Hexapod Robot Named Stompy

May 2, 2012 by Travis Deyle
spacer

Artisan's Asylum is a hackerspace startup in Boston, MA that is hosting classes to build big, bad-ass robots.  Their first course set out to build 300-lb autonomous "vending machine robots."  That class is winding down, so they're starting a new project: a 2500+ lb. ridable hexapod "spider" robot named Stompy.  The robot will feature a propane engine generating 135 HP to hydraulically power six legs, and it will likely cost around $25k-$30k to build (versus $250k that would typically be involved in such an effort).  The guys teaching the class are professional roboticsts, having worked at Boston Dynamics, Barrett Technology, and DEKA.  So this is a serious endeavor!  They're following the same design methodologies that their (current and former) employers use to produce classics such as BigDog, AlphaDog, and PETMAN.  They're using the proceeds from the class to fund early development (a one leg cart), followed by a KickStarter project to fund the remainder of the robot (forthcoming announcement).  It's a clever way to fund a large robot hardware platform.  Conceivably, they could use the resulting robot to generate revenue to for the startup (rentals for promotional events, parades, or wedding processions!) and to bootstrap other robots.  Read on for details supplied by Artisan's CEO, Gui Cavalcanti.

→ Read post

Two More Robotics Companies Get Acquired: My Robot Nation and Sensable Technologies

April 22, 2012 by Travis Deyle
spacer

It seems like robotics companies are being acquired left-and-right.  Just the other week we learned of two more: (1) My Robot Nation, which allows you to design and 3D print custom robot figurines, was acquired by 3D systems.  (2) Sensable Technologies, which is best-known in robotics circles for their "Phantom Omni" haptic interfaces (eg. for teleoperation), was just acquired by Geomagic.  While the acquisition prices were undisclosed, it's likely that they were smaller than the mega-acquisitions of Kiva Systems by Amazon for $775 Million and Aldebaran Robotics by Softbank for $100 Million.  Either way, these recent acquisitions seem to indicate a growing trend in the robotics industry -- that... or I'm just paying more active attention to the business-side of robotics.

→ Read post

Wireless Power Transfer to Ground Sensors Using a UAV (Quadrotor)

April 17, 2012 by Travis Deyle and Robert Powers
spacer

We were scanning through the upcoming ICRA2012 program and noticed an interesting paper titled, "Resonant Wireless Power Transfer to Ground Sensors from a UAV."    This certainly piqued our interest -- especially for Travis, who happens to work with wirelessly-powered sensors at his day job.  Come to find out...  the article is by Dr. Carrick Detweiler, PI of the NIMBUS Lab at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (our undergrad alma mater!).  Furthermore, he just provided a preprint of the paper (PDF) and a video on his website.  Score!  Their quadrotor delivers power via magnetic resonance (ie. WiTricity-style) to a load on the ground.  This same type of technology is being actively researched for lots of applications, including: consumer electronics, transportation (eg. electric vehicle recharging), and remote sensing (this application).  Adding it to a UAV adds a bit of flexibility to the system.   Anyway, be sure to check out the video below... and we'll also give a brief overview of a few different wireless power + robotics projects over the ages.

→ Read post

KATE: A New Humanoid Robot from FutureBots Labs

April 16, 2012 by Travis Deyle
spacer

As FutureBots Labs' solo roboticst, Dan Mathias has been toiling away for almost 10 years to develop humanoid robots (such as the ATOM-7XP humanoid) out of his lab.  Today Dan has a special announcement: FutureBot Labs has developed a new humanoid robot named KATE, the "Kids Avatar Teacher and Entertainer."  We're highlighting Dan's latest robot for three reasons:  First, FutureBots is trying to become a legit robotics business with real products for entertainment, education, research, and healthcare.  That's a tough nut to crack on a personal budget and as a solo engineer!  Hopefully a little exposure will help FutureBots find some much-needed assistance on a number of fronts.  Second, we are impressed with Dan's (solo!) engineering efforts over the years.  He's clearly a dedicated and capable roboticist.  Third, we've been unable to previously cover his robots' (seemingly-incremental) progress, so we're happy that KATE's unveiling gives us occasion to write about FutureBots Labs.  Be sure to check out the photos and videos of Dan's latest KATE robot, as well as the more mature ATOM robot.

→ Read post

Robotics and the Law: The New "We Robot" Conference

April 10, 2012 by Robert Powers
spacer

Legal subtleties will naturally arise as robots become increasingly ubiquitous.   Hizook touched briefly on this topic back when we discussed ISO safety standards for robotics.  However, this topic deserves additional attention.  It's a touch-and-go issue:  It's important not to burden a burgeoning industry with premature regulations, but at the same time, accountability is a serious issue -- especially as robots enter our homes.  Creating a dialog between roboticists and legal professionals would clearly be a good thing.  Naturally, Hizook follows a number of blogs dedicated to the subject, including the aptly-named "Robotics and the Law" blog from Stanford Law.  But we're also happy to share an announcement from U.Miami Professor of Law, Michael Froomkin, who wrote in to tell us about the We Robot 2012 conference later this month.   The full details about the conference are below.  Basically, We Robot is billing itself as the "Inaugural Conference on Legal and Policy Issues Relating to Robotics," whose aim is to "create a conversation between people designing and building robots and the people thinking about the law and policy issues they create."

→ Read post

Exclusive Preview of Robotiq's New 2-Finger Adaptive Gripper -- Sponsor Spotlight

April 6, 2012 by Travis Deyle
spacer

Hizook was first to cover the Robotiq's unique 3-fingered Adaptive Robot Gripper back in 2010, even before it became a commercially-available product. Since then, that gripper has been spotted on a number of robots, appeared in a TV commercial, and been used in numerous robotics research projects that needed a rugged and dexterous robot hand.  Today, we're happy to share the news that Robotiq has a new, upcoming product: a simplified, 2-fingered version of the Adaptive Gripper.  In the video below, we can see that this new design has some definite advantages over existing 2-finger parallel-jaw grippers... namely, the added ability to conformally wrap around objects for improved grasp configurations.  Oh, and it apparently has sufficient grip force to lift loads in excess of 10 lbs (that's pretty impressive!).

→ Read post

New DARPA Grand Challenge for Humanoid Robots -- Preliminary (Unofficial) Details

April 3, 2012 by Travis Deyle
spacer

It seems we're going to have a new DARPA Grand Challenge!  The BAA with formal details should be out very soon, but for now we're bringing you the unofficial, preliminary details based on notes from Dr. Gill Pratt's talk at DTRA Industry Day: The new Grand Challenge is for a humanoid robot (with a bias toward bipedal designs) that can be used in rough terrain and for industrial disasters.  The robot will be required to maneuver into and drive an open-frame vehicle (eg. tractor), proceed to a building and dismount, ingress through a locked door using a key, traverse a 100 meter rubble-strewn hallway, climb a ladder, locate a leaking pipe and seal it by closing off a nearby valve, and then replace a faulty pump to resume normal operations -- all semi-autonomously with just "supervisory teleoperation."  That's a tough challenge, but it should be fun!  It looks like there will be six hardware teams to develop new robots, and twelve software teams using a common platform (PETMAN anyone?!).  The most crazy part about all of this: The United States is getting back into the humanoid robot game... in a big way!  Updated 4/10/2012 with official details!

→ Read post

Meka Robotics Introduces New Humanoid Legs and Tactile Skin -- Sponsor Spotlight

March 26, 2012 by Travis Deyle
spacer

Meka Robotics is renowned for their humanoid robot, the M1 mobile manipulator with omnidirectional wheeled base.  However, Meka also has a number of joint collaborations with research labs that have resulted in some cool, new robotic technologies.  First up, Meka teamed up with Luis Sentis' Human Centered Robotics Lab at UT Austin to design and build a new legged biped, named Hume, for rough-terrain locomotion.  As you can see in the video below, Meka and Luis designed a high-speed, high-strength pair of robot legs that will (hopefully) be paired with a set of Meka's famous series-elastic arms (and thus give BDI's PetMan some healthy competition!).  Second, Meka teamed up with Mark Cutkosky from Stanford's Biomimetics and Dexterous Manipulation Lab to build upon Standord's tactile sensor technology.  They worked with Charlie Kemp's Healthcare Robotics Lab (at Georgia Tech) to develop the sensor into a tactile-sensing skin for Cody that is now being used to explore cutting-edge robot behaviors for tactile manipulation.  Check out the videos of the sensor below, and be on the lookout for cool "manipulation in clutter" videos from Charlie's lab in the coming weeks.   So... while Meka develops some great products, they can also work with you to make your robot concepts into beautifully-designed robot realities.

→ Read post

Breaking News: Amazon Acquires Kiva Systems for $775 Million in Cash

March 19, 2012 by Travis Deyle
spacer

Amazon.com just announced that it was acquiring Kiva Systems for $775 Million in cash.  Kiva Systems is one of my favorite "companies that employ robots" (rather than "robotics companies" -- there's a big difference).  Kiva is all about improving warehouse logistics and fulfillment, and they happen to employ a large swarm of robots (see video below) to accomplish this.  Namely, they use robots to autonomously fetch and arrange "pods" so that human pickers can more efficiently fill orders.  Their technology is exceedingly relevant in the modern age of large (internet) fulfillment centers.  Frankly, they're a perfect match for Amazon.  According to a November report, Boston-based Kiva Systems boasted revenues in excess of $100 Million, had 240 employees, was growing 130% year-over-year, and was a prime example of a venture capital-backed robotics outfit (having received $33 Million in total).  Honestly, this acquisition makes me sad... I would have liked to see Kiva go public.  Plus, I certainly hope Amazon doesn't hoard Kiva away for itself and rob the world of efficient, robotic warehouses...

→ Read post

RoboSquirrel vs Live Rattlesnakes: BioRobots Allow Researchers to Study Predator-Prey Interactions

March 13, 2012 by Bree Putman
spacer

Animal behavior scientists strive to understand why and how animals do the things they do. Up until recently, scientists had to rely on natural observations -- fortuitous encounters or staged interactions.  But advances in biorobots (mechanical robots that mimic live animals) are giving scientists unprecedented control over experimental variables, allowing them to run studies that would be unfeasible (or dangerous, or inhumane) in the course of normal research.  They have already proved valuable for testing various animal communication hypotheses: flocking, mate selection, and animal communication.  In this article, we examine new work by researchers from UC Davis and San Diego State University that pits a robotic squirrel, RoboSquirrel, against real-life rattlesnakes to study the subtleties of predator-prey interactions

→ Read post

Venture Capital (VC) Funding for Robotics in 2011

March 1, 2012 by Travis Deyle
spacer

I've been tracking venture capital (VC) funding of robotics companies for the better part of two years.  Based on my (limited) data, VC funding in robotics exceeded $160 Million for 2011.  This is just a rounding error compared to VC funding of Internet (web-based) companies, which hit a decade-long high of $6.9 Billion in 2011.  My hope is that robotics will get more love in the next year(s), but getting VC funding for robotics is a decidedly tough nut to crack.  Robotics companies have large capital requirements for robot hardware, few potential acquirers, and almost no "Google-scale" breakout success stories (ie. IPOs).  I mean, c'mon... one of the best known robotics companies, iRobot, has a market cap of just $700 Million.  This makes robotics a difficult sell to your typical VC firm.  My hope is that this list can give others courage to pursue "swing for the fences" t

gipoco.com is neither affiliated with the authors of this page nor responsible for its contents. This is a safe-cache copy of the original web site.