Another experiment controlling a OWI 535 robotic arm with a Leap Motion device. NuiLogixUSB is an extension of one of our projects exploring the adaptation of emerging perceptual computing technologies to device and machine control applications.

This robot, developed by Howie Choset of Carnegie Mellon’s Biorobotics lab, can be programmed to “look” in any direction while maneuvering around obstacles. 

This video was produced at the University of Pennsylvania

IPI technology allows a robot to select a given item from a random assortment at Automate 2013.

Andrew McAfee on Robots and Jobs

ABB’s industrial robots enjoy the pleasure of contemporary dance in the modern dance performance “Human Interface”. The movement of the robots were programmed by dance/choreographer Thomas Freundlich using ABB’s RobotStudio software.

The performance also makes use of ABB’s SafeMove technology which, for the first time, makes it possible for a person to remain safe within the working zone of an industrial robot.

The roles in the performance are assigned to two robots of different types and sizes, IRB 4600 and IRB 2600 ID

“SafeMove is a great step to working with robots. Through it, it is possible for a robot and a person to operate near each other without compromising safety,” says Thomas

Developed at MIT, this robot is known as the Milli-Motein—a name that pays tribute to its small size and to proteins, the biological molecules it mimics. The bot seen here is essentially a chain of four units. Each unit has a small motor to turn the joint it’s connected to, and by turning each unit in various ways, the bot can take on many forms. Proteins work in much the same way, linking together and folding to create new structures. The project was funded by DARPA, which demanded that each unit be smaller than one cubic centimeter. There aren’t really any commercial prospects for this device quite yet, but according to Bloomberg Businessweek, some of the technology involved could be used to improve flap controls in airplanes or thrusters in satellites.

ROS turned five years old! As of November 2012:

There are 175 organizations or individuals who have publicly release ROS software in our indexed repositories

There are 3699 public ROS packages as of April, compared to 1600 three years ago

439 citations on Google Scholar for the paper: ROS: an open-source Robot Operating System

More than 200 individuals attended the ROSCon 2012 debut last year in St. Paul, MN.  ROSCon 2013 heads to Stuttgart, Germany next year

The Institute of Electrical Engineers and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and IEEE Spectrum spent almost a year building an iPad app that is equal parts education and entertainment. It covers over 120 robots and each bot gets its own page complete with 360 photos, video and opportunities to rate it. There’s also a description, and full specs for each.There is an area devoted to learning about robots that includes, among other things, a detailed description of “The Uncanny Valley,” a glossary, and Timeline. The app is for the iPad only (running iOS 5.0) and costs $4.99. 

Work by the HoverGroup at MIT on robotic ship hull inspection.

NEXTAGE factory robots from Japan’s Kawanda Industries are designed to work side by side with humans. 

Greg Shirakyan, a developer on the Microsoft Robotics team shows us his robot that he built using the Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 4 (RDS4) product, to replace photographers at parties or events.

Harvard researchers have created a soft robot inspired by animals like starfish and worms.

Robots learn some of the basics of their environments by exploring. Their software “brain” is BECCA, a brain-emulating cognition and control architecture. BECCA gives the robots the ability to learn from their experience and to develop very simple problem solving strategies.

Beryl Breas talks about Robotics Trends’ European partner organization innorobo and its service-robotics conference taking place this March in Lyon, France. 

Corey Clothier, with the strategy firm 6 Zulu, discusses Robot Town, a proposed community at a U.S. military facility where service-robotic technologies can be tested in an everyday environment.

Dr. Jim Overholt, senior research scientist in robotics U.S. Army TARDEC, explains what kinds of technologies the Army is currently seeking as it develops robotics systems aimed at protecting and serving American troops.

Elad Inbar founder and CEO of the Robots App Store tells Robotics Trends Managing Director Richard Erb how developers can work with his company.

The Northrup Grumman-built X-47B is also designed to take off and land from an aircraft carrier.

iRobot CEO Colin Angle with Richard Erb of Robotics Trends. Colin discusses the maturation of robots and the robot industry. iRobot was the Founding Sponsor and Colin the keynote speaker at the RoboBusiness 2011 Leadership Summit in Boston.

The AlphaDog Proto is a lab prototype for the Legged Squad Support System, a robot being developed by Boston Dynamics with funding from DARPA and the US Marine Corps. When fully developed the system will carry 400 lbs of payload on 20-mile missions in rough terrain.

In a first-ever demonstration of a two-way interaction between a primate brain and a virtual body, two monkeys trained at the Duke University Center for Neuroengineering learned to employ brain activity alone to move an avatar hand and identify the texture of virtual objects.

Professor Paul Newman, from the Department of Engineering Sciences at Oxford University, unveils a car with spatial awareness and the ability to navigate and drive itself.

ONR-sponsored research in biofouling prevention includes the development of an underwater grooming device called the robotic hull bio-mimetic underwater grooming, or Hull BUG, designed to groom and maintain ship/yacht hull surfaces.

Someday, machines appliances, control panels, and just about everything else we interact with could mimic the intuitive and natural interface developed by Spain’s Thecorpora Robotic Company for its Q.bo.

We may not see robot daycare anytime soon. But we are seeing a lot more robots in commercials these days. To wit: the latest example.

We knew robots could dance. But the University of Michigan’s MABEL can run ... at 6.8 miles per hour, making her — err — it “the world’s fastest bipedal robot with knees,” according to the school.

Tackling the game “Operation’ with the da Vinci Surgical System (by Intuitive Surgical Inc.). Students at the Johns Hopkins University Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics (LCSR) unwind after a long day of research.

This video describes the features of each Kilobot robot, and how they can be controlled in a group.

PR2 robot reading indoor signs and more from the GRASP lab, University of Pennsylvania.

Clothing’s a slow seller on the Internet. How do you know if the suit you buy will be the right size? An Estonian start-up, Fits.me, has a solution. Enter your measurements, and the and a virtual robotic mannequin adjusts itself to your body form. Next, the clothing items you choose appear over your shape-shifting doppelganger, so you’ll see how you’ll look wearing them. 

From nuclear disaster areas to deep sea emergencies and off into the far reaches of space, robots play vital roles when they enter the danger zone. Mark Ingebretsen and Michael Siggins of Robotics Trends discuss many of the ways that robots play an active and important role as first responders.

Richard Erb of Robotics Trends with Jean-Christophe Baillie of Gostai, founder of the company that fostered the development of Urbi, an innovative operating system for robotics, and a number of other software technologies for robotics and AI.

Robotics Trends Publisher Michael Siggins with Bruno Maisonnier of Aldebaran Robotics. In 2005 Bruno launched Aldebaran Robotics, the first French company dealing with humanoid robotics.

Robotics Trends Publisher Michael Siggins presents the latest trends in the North American Consumer Robotics Marketplace. This presentation was given at the 2011 INNOROBO event in Lyon, France

iRobot CEO Colin Angle discusses how to achieve growth in the global Robotics industry. This presentation was given at the 2011 INNOROBO event in Lyon, France.

Robotics Trends Publisher Michael Siggins with Bruno Maisonnier of Aldebaran Robotics

Rich Erb from Robotics Trends with Francois Hirigoyen from Robosoft

Robotics Trends Publisher Michael Siggins with Rob Widger from Lego Education

Robotics Trends Group Publisher Michael Siggins interviews Bruno Bonnell at the debut of the INNOROBO Innovation Robotic Summit in Lyon France.

Watch out Roger Federer: A student at Zurich’s Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control refs a game of “tennis” played by autonomous quadrocopters. The Swiss facility’s Flying Machine Arena allows safe testing of prototype aerial vehicles. We figure it’s only a matter of time before the copters learn to put some vicious topspin on their serves.

It’s not all work aboard the International Space Station. Occasionally, there’s even time for a little out-of-this-world humor. Watch the ISS crew as they open the box to take out Robonaut 2, the NASA-GM collaboration designed to serve as a companion worker for astronauts in space and a prototype for what could become the co-worker of tomorrow.

AeroVironment has developed a fully operational, life-size hummingbird-style unmanned aircraft for DARPA. It carries its own energy source and is the first two-wing, flapping wing craft to achieve controlled precision hovering and fast-forward flight.

A big challenge with telerobotic surgery is giving practitioners the ability to feel the minute degrees of resistance their instruments encounter when operating on a remote patient. Students at the University of Washington’s Biorobotics Lab hope to give remote surgeons an improved sense of touch by using Microsoft’s Kinect. Going forward, the team plans to explore how the Kinect system might prevent surgical mishaps by creating virtual walls around the body parts being operated upon, thus blocking a remotely controlled knife from entering those areas.

Already used for surveillance and inspection of hard-to-reach structures such as power lines, quadrotors may someday perform construction tasks autonomously, as researchers at the University of Pennsylvania’s General Robotics, Automation, Sensing & Perception (GRASP) Laboratory demonstrate. Operating under autonomous control, quadrotors could also become speedy, highly maneuverable platforms for military and search-and-rescue operations. 

A team of biomedical scientists and engineers from the University of Houston (UH) and physicians from The Methodist Hospital Research Institute (TMHRI) are collaborating to develop a platform for image-guided and robot-assisted surgeries on beating hearts that is minimally invasive.

Supported by a $1.4 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), researchers in UH’s Medical Robotics Laboratory (MRL) are creating a robotic system to one day be used in cardiothoracic surgeries that would not only automate, but also increase the precision of surgeries.

Happy Holidays from the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at EPFL.

This video by Festo, entitled “Learning from Nature,” features robotically engineered human arms with exceptional muscle control and hydraulically operated jelly fish and sting rays. Understanding the movements of these animals and emulating their biological principles will enable scientists to create superior technologies and increase efficiency while decreasing energy output.

Tod Machover of the MIT Media Lab, the composer of “Death and the Powers,’ an opera with life-size, singing robot performers, describes how robotic technology can be used in innovative ways to enhance operatic performances.

Carnegie Mellon University’s latest robotic snake has been taught to climb trees. The snake is the newest version of “modsnake,” created by the university’s biorobotics laboratory under director Howie Choset.

According to AEROPAK, their new fuel cell powerpack for mini-unmanned aerial vehicles can extend the flight times of 5-10kg class mini-UAVs by 300%. The company goes on to say that the battery “integrates ultra-light fuel cells and dry-fuel cartridge technology, creating a simple and easy-to-use solution - that can replace battery-based systems today.”

In this video, the HRP-2 robot, developed by Kawada Industries and the Humanoid Research Group at Japan’s National Institute for Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), is able to autonomously walk over uneven terrain and up an incline.

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics have developed a simulation of a Ferrari F2007 racing around the Monza race track at high speed that uses a sturdy robotic arm to replicate the motion of the vehicle.  The researchers are studying the cognitive processes of the human brain that are related to the sensation of motion.

This video of a TED Conference presentation features Tan Le describing Emotiv’s computer interface that allows virtual and physical objects to be controlled by brain waves.  For readers of Robotics Trends the salient points are (1 the ability to control robotics devices using the Emotiv product and 2) the low cost of the technology.  The mind control demonstration begins at 04:00.

Spain’s PAL Robotics debuted their REEM-H1 humanoid at the Glories shopping center in Barcelona. According to reports, the robot answered questions and gave directions.  How mobile robots are better than an information kiosk (automated or otherwise) was not addressed.  Other mobile robots serving a similar role are mostly used as a prop for photos of smiling, adjacent humans.  Maybe that is enough.

Many thanks to Trossen Robotics for alerting us to this short documentary about robotics enthusiasts.  Robotics Trends focuses on the business of robotics, but as this video attests, a great deal of innovation is occurring within the community of grassroots robotics engineers. Pioneers indeed.

Developed at INRIA, the French national institute for research in computer science and control, the Acroban humanoid robot displays much more natural movement than morphologically similar systems.  The scenes of interaction with children are charming, as well as insightful.

Work on the Curiosity Mars rover, which is slated to launch in late 2011, continues with the addition of new wheels.  Following successful testing of the mobility systems, the NASA team will add a “mast” which will support imaging systems and other sensors.

In this uplifting video, Hayden Allen, who suffered a spinal cord injury and is a full-time wheelchair user demonstrates Rex Bionics’ REX robotic exoskeleton, which provides stability, assistance and guidance. The Rex is possibly the first commercially available wearable robotic exoskeleton products commercially available, but a great deal of systems development and clinical research is underway.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania’s General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Laboratory, developers of extremely agile quadrocopters, have updated the systems so that they can now work co-operatively. 

As physician-guided robots routinely operate on patients at most major hospitals, the next generation robot could eliminate a surprising element from that scenario—the doctor. Feasibility studies conducted by Duke University bioengineers have demonstrated that a robot—without any human assistance—can locate a man-made, or phantom, lesion in simulated human organs, guide a device to the lesion and take multiple samples during a single session. The researchers believe that as the technology is further developed, autonomous robots could some day perform many more simple surgical tasks.

At the France Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo 2010, Aldebaran had 20 of its robots put on a show. This is far and away the largest of the group humanoid demonstrations. Similar shows featuring Sony’s discontinued Qrio SDR-4X, which ran as late as 2006 and were very impressive, show how much the technology has improved.