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Four-legged robot that efficiently handles challenging terrain

October 30, 2015, 8:13 am
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starleth_quadruped_robot_bioinspiredStarlETH is a multi-purpose legged transporter robot developed at ETH Zurich’s Autonomous Systems Lab. Combining versatility, speed, robustness, and efficiency, StarlETH walks, climbs, and runs over varied terrain.

Precisely controlled elastic actuators allow for temporary energy storage – in fact this robotic system consumes 10 times less power than other hydraulic systems. Weighing in at just 26 kg, it can be handled by a single operator, but operates autonomously at a speed of 2km per hour walking or running. Potential applications for such a highly mobile robot include: inspection of industrial, construction, or polluted environments, search and rescue operations, security, or even the entertainment industry.

Further reading:
http://www.leggedrobotics.ethz.ch/doku.php?id=robots:starleth:starleth
http://www.leggedrobotics.ethz.ch/doku.php?id=robots:scarleth
http://www.leggedrobotics.ethz.ch/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=robots:starleth:description:201401_descriptiontransporter.pdf

StarlETH_SearchAndRescue_quadruped_robot_

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The Year of CoCoRo Video #46/52: JeffShoaling

November 17, 2015, 8:23 am
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TYOC-46-52--JeffShoaling---YouTubeThe EU-funded Collective Cognitive Robotics (CoCoRo) project has built a swarm of 41 autonomous underwater vehicles (AVs) that show collective cognition. Throughout 2015 – The Year of CoCoRo – we’ll be uploading a new weekly video detailing the latest stage in its development. This week’s video shows an autonomous swarm of underwater robots coordinating their motion to form coherent shoals.

The body shape of Jeff robots is much closer to that of a fish than the Lily robots are. With their slim bodies, Jeff robots can tightly flock together and move in one direction as a group. We implemented a simple blue-light-LED-based algorithm that allows neighboring robots to align to each other. This doesn’t work 100% of the time, but it still works quite often. And when we filmed the little fish that observed our experiments with robots in Livorno harbor (see at beginning of the movie), we observed that the natural fish also did not align 100% of the time. In other words, we came pretty close.

We implemented this code in a very short period of time (hours!) towards the end of the project. With more time and more local neighbor communication, the shoaling can be much improved in future. We hope to be able to further extend this in our follow up project, subCULTron.

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New video shows bionic athletes rehearsing for upcoming Cybathlon competition

November 19, 2015, 11:44 am
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Credit: ETH Zurich / Alessandro Della Bella
Credit: ETH Zurich / Alessandro Della Bella

In 21 countries across the globe, hundreds of people are preparing for Cybathlon 2016, where cutting edge robotic assistive technologies will help people with disabilities to compete in a series of races. This summer the Cybathlon practice session took place at the Swiss Arena in Kloten so that the teams could test out the courses. Watch the trailer for the rehearsal games!

Cybathlon 2016 is organised by ETH Zurich and will showcase six disciplines:

  • BCI Race Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) Bike Race
  • Powered Arm Prosthesis Race
  • Powered Leg Prosthesis Race
  • Powered Exoskeleton Race
  • Powered Wheelchair Race

The finals will take place on October 8, 2016.

Find out more at www.cybathlon.com

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Drones light up the sky with animated letters & shapes in award-winning video

November 20, 2015, 1:53 pm
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Hello_World_PRENAV_Drone_MovieCheck out this great little film by drone startup PRENAV, which took home the LOL WTF prize at the Flying Robot International Film Festival last night. According to Nathan Schuett, CEO of PRENAV, the team was looking for a way to demonstrate precision drone flight in a visually appealing way. “We decided to try something that had never been done before – drawing accurate shapes, letters and animations in the sky with a drone – and we’re very pleased with how ‘Hello World’ turned out.” Fun stuff.

 

According to a recent press release,

PRENAV and partner Hawk Aerial today announced that they have been granted the first Section 333 exemptions from the Federal Aviation Administration to operate the PRENAV precision drone system.  PRENAV drones are capable of autonomously navigating in complex, cluttered, or GPS-denied environments.  The two companies plan to use the system to perform close proximity visual inspections of cell phone towers, wind turbines, bridges, oil tankers, industrial boilers, and other large structures. 

 

 

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The Year of CoCoRo Video #47/52: Underwater robots swarm at CEBIT consumer electronics show

November 24, 2015, 9:21 am
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TYOC-47-52--CEBIT---YouTube

In March 2014, we exhibited CoCoRo in Hannover, Germany at the CEBIT — Europe’s largest consumer electronics fair. At first we thought we might be out of place and that our exhibit would be overshadowed by the latest flatscreen TVs, smartphones and gaming consoles. We were very wrong: though we had the smallest booth, we were overrun with thousands of people throughout the week, and television and radio crews also stopped by for interviews. By our own estimates, we may just have had the highest rate of visitors per square meter in the whole fair.

It’s not easy to bring a swarm of underwater robots and run live experiments at a consumer electronic show, but we gained a lot of motivation from the public interest we felt there. Thanks to our enduring team members and also to all the people who visited us!

The EU-funded Collective Cognitive Robotics (CoCoRo) project has built a swarm of 41 autonomous underwater vehicles (AVs) that show collective cognition. Throughout 2015 – The Year of CoCoRo – we’ll be uploading a new weekly video detailing the latest stage in its development.

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The Year of CoCoRo Video #48/52: Workshops

December 1, 2015, 2:25 am
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TYOC-48-52--Workshops---YouTube

Most of the videos from The Year of CoCoRo were shot during workshops we held throughout the project. These workshops, which were usually focussed on one or several specific demonstrators, were what drove our international team of collaborators to implement mechanical hardware, electronics and software into working installations. This form of workshop-driven development proved to be very successful, and by the end of the project we were able to show 17 working final demonstrators that show the versatility of robot swarms. 

The EU-funded Collective Cognitive Robotics (CoCoRo) project has built a swarm of 41 autonomous underwater vehicles (AVs) that show collective cognition. Throughout 2015 – The Year of CoCoRo – we’ll be uploading a new weekly video detailing the latest stage in its development.

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The Year of CoCoRo Video #49/52: Base stations

December 8, 2015, 12:32 pm
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underwater_robot_cocoro_swarm

During the past year we have shown many swarm algorithms in various experiments. The spotlight was always on the Lily and the Jeff robots. However, there is now another star in the team and this trailer is dedicated to this special agent: the base station!

The base station was finished towards the end of the project, thus, we had to develop (i.e. hack) many surrogates and placeholders for it over the course of the project. We got so experienced with it that we could quickly hack a surrogate base station from almost anything that was lying around in the lab: styrofoam, cans, boxes whatever was around and handy. This video shows some of those creations.

A few months before the final review we had the real thing ready: a typical Italian machine (like Italian cars) made by our partners from SSSA (Pontedera). It was fast as hell, highly manoeuvrable, and elegant. The base station has a docking device and can actively manoeuvre, dock and undock robots and carry three attached spare robots with it. With this central masterpiece, we were ready for our final review.

The EU-funded Collective Cognitive Robotics (CoCoRo) project has built a swarm of 41 autonomous underwater vehicles (AVs) that show collective cognition. Throughout 2015 – The Year of CoCoRo – we’ll be uploading a new weekly video detailing the latest stage in its development.

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Scaling up underwater swarmbot research from tabletop ‘aquarium’ to the Venice Lagoon (CoCoRo Video #50/52)

December 15, 2015, 12:45 pm
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CoCoRo's humble beginnings.
CoCoRo’s humble beginnings.

Our underwater swarm research started in a few cubic centimeters of water with some naked electronics on a table. Over the next three and a half years, our swarm increased by a factor of 40, and the size of our test waters increased by a factor of 40 million as we went from aquariums and pools, to ponds, rivers and lakes, and finally ending up in the salt water basin of the Livorno harbour. Quite a stretch for a small project!

Our new project, subCULTron, which extends the work of CoCoRo, will scale up the swarm size to 120+ robots, and will take place in an even larger body of water: the Venice Lagoon.

The EU-funded Collective Cognitive Robotics (CoCoRo) project has built a swarm of 41 autonomous underwater vehicles (AVs) that show collective cognition. Throughout 2015 – The Year of CoCoRo – we’ll be uploading a new weekly video detailing the latest stage in its development. 

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Robots that feel by seeing

March 6, 2021, 1:30 am
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Humanoid robot hand. Futuristic cyborg concept.

While modern cameras provide machines with a very well-developed sense of vision, robots still lack such a comprehensive solution for their sense of touch. At ETH Zurich, in the group led by Prof. Raffaello D’Andrea at the Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control, we have developed a tactile sensing principle that allows robots to retrieve rich contact feedback from their interactions with the environment. I recently described our approach in a TEDx talk at the last TEDxZurich. The talk features a tech demo that introduces the novel tactile sensing technology targeting the next generation of soft robotic skins.

Design

The sensing technique is based on a camera that tracks fluorescent particles, which are densely and randomly distributed within a soft, deformable gel. The randomness of the patterns simplifies production of the gel and their density provides strain information at each pixel of the resulting image. In addition, the technique does not make any assumption about the shape of the sensing surface, which can exhibit an arbitrary geometry.

Data Processing

While the images capturing the particles’ motion are intuitive and to some extent visually interpretable, the extraction of accurate physical quantities is challenging. In order to overcome the complexity of modeling the behavior of soft materials in real-time, the information extracted from the images is mapped to the distribution of the applied (shear and pressure) contact forces in a data-driven fashion. Specifically, a neural network is employed, which is trained entirely via accurate finite-element simulations to extract the aforementioned mapping.

Applications

This technology has the potential to impact several application fields, the obvious one being robotic manipulation. In a recent proof-of-concept, we have demonstrated how highly dynamic manipulation tasks can be achieved via the sole use of tactile sensing, as shown in the video below.

In addition, the versatility of this approach makes it suitable for various products beyond the robotics domain. In fact, an artificial sense of touch may find applications in smart prosthetic systems, with the potential to restore tactile sensations to people who have lost limbs.

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Holiday robot video 2014: GraspLab @ CITEC Bielefeld

December 17, 2014, 12:25 pm
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From the GraspLab at CITEC Bielefeld:

Dear Robohub Team,

Here’s a Christmas-themed video from our institutes bimanual GraspLab with a catchy melody and nerdy robotic voice … 

 

Have a holiday robot video of your own that you’d like to share? Send your submissions to info [at] robohub.org!

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Holiday robot video 2014: UTARI

December 19, 2014, 9:10 am
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From the University of Texas at Arlington Research Institute (UTARI):

Hello Robohub!

Here is our holiday video highlighting some of our robotic capabilities in a fun festive way. Enjoy the holiday from all of us here at the UT Arlington Research Institute!

 

 

Have a holiday robot video of your own that you’d like to share? Send your submissions to info [at] robohub.org!

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Holiday robot video 2014: Robot Drive-In Movies

December 22, 2014, 11:31 am
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From Penny and Harry at Robot Drive-In Movies:

Seasons Greetings, We have been watching your xmas robot videos – they are great! Ours features Ozobot, a small line-sensing robot being sold as a game piece. To us, he is an actor! In this case, Santa!

Have a holiday robot video of your own that you’d like to share? Send your submissions to info [at] robohub.org!

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The Year of CoCoRo Video #01/52: Overview of the Jeff robot

January 4, 2015, 3:04 pm
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TYOC 01 52 OVERVIEW JEFF ROBOT YouTube

The EU-funded Collective Cognitive Robotics (CoCoRo) project has built a swarm of 41 autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) that show collective cognition. Throughout 2015 – The Year of CoCoRo – we will be uploading a new weekly video detailing the latest stage in its development. Our CoCoRo system consists of 3 types of robots. One is Jeff, a very fast and agile small autonomous swarm robot. This is an overview of its capabilities.

To learn more about the project, see this introductory post, or check out all the videos from the Year of CoCoRo on Robohub.
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The Year of CoCoRo Video #02/52: Overview of largest swarm

January 11, 2015, 2:03 pm
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TYOC 02 52 OVERVIEW CoCoRo largest swarm YouTube

The EU-funded Collective Cognitive Robotics (CoCoRo) project has built a swarm of 41 autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) that show collective cognition. Throughout 2015 – The Year of CoCoRo – we will be uploading a new weekly video detailing the latest stage in its development.The CoCoRo system is currently the largest autonomous underwater swarm in the world. This video briefly shows some of its components and functions.

To learn more about the project, see this introductory post, or check out all the videos from the Year of CoCoRo on Robohub.

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The Year of CoCoRo Video #03/52: Jeff robots explore

January 18, 2015, 7:32 am
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TYOC 03 52 Jeff Massive Exploration YouTube

The EU-funded Collective Cognitive Robotics (CoCoRo) project has built a swarm of 41 autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) that show collective cognition. Throughout 2015 – The Year of CoCoRo – we will be uploading a new weekly video detailing the latest stage in its development. In this video, a swarm of Jeff robots is browsing the environment.

They use their front blue-light sensors to detect and avoid obstacles.

To learn more about the project, see this introductory post, or check out all the videos from the Year of CoCoRo on Robohub.

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The Year of CoCoRo Video #04/52: Aggregation parcour

January 25, 2015, 1:59 pm
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TYOC 04 52 Aggregation Parcour YouTube

The EU-funded Collective Cognitive Robotics (CoCoRo) project has built a swarm of 41 autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) that show collective cognition. Throughout 2015 – The Year of CoCoRo – we will be uploading a new weekly video detailing the latest stage in its development. This video shows how, in a complex underwater habitat, a swarm of Jeff robots searches for a magnetic target and then the communicate to Lily robots at smaller depths to join the group.

To learn more about the project, see this introductory post, or check out all the videos from the Year of CoCoRo on Robohub.

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The Year of CoCoRo Video #05/52: Lily swarm size awareness

February 8, 2015, 10:08 am
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TYOC 05 52 Lily SwarmSizeAwareness YouTube

The EU-funded Collective Cognitive Robotics (CoCoRo) project has built a swarm of 41 autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) that show collective cognition. Throughout 2015 – The Year of CoCoRo – we will be uploading a new weekly video detailing the latest stage in its development. This video shows how the swarm can estimate its own size.

Lily robots build swarms that change in size over time. By using a bio-inspired method of signal exchange these swarms can make reliable estimates of their own swarm size. Our Lily robots emit a pulsed signal that is relayed by other Lily robots in the swarm, just like slime mold amoebas or fireflies relay their signals in nature. Based on this simple signal exchange every member can estimate the number of other swarm members around it.

To learn more about the project, see this introductory post, or check out all the videos from the Year of CoCoRo on Robohub.

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The Year of CoCoRo Video #06/52: Jeff swarm size measurement

February 8, 2015, 10:09 am
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TYOC 06 52 Jeff SwarmSizeMeasurement YouTube

The EU-funded Collective Cognitive Robotics (CoCoRo) project has built a swarm of 41 autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) that show collective cognition. Throughout 2015 – The Year of CoCoRo – we will be uploading a new weekly video detailing the latest stage in its development. This video shows the Jeff robot using an algorithm to estimate the size of the swarm.

It is important for our robot swarm that the swarm as a whole is aware of its size. We use a bio-inspired method, called the „fireslime algorithm“ to achieve this form of collective awareness. The algorithm makes the robots to spread a one-bit signal (pulse) among the swarm members allowing them to make quite reliable and precise estimates of the size of their swarm. This video shows an advanced version of the algorithm implemented on Jeff robots.

To learn more about the project, see this introductory post, or check out all the videos from the Year of CoCoRo on Robohub.
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Video: A day in the life of BeatBots’ Marek Michalowski

February 9, 2015, 12:23 pm
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ConnectEd

At ConnectEd Studios we had the pleasure of visiting the workshop of Marek Michalowski, a co-founder of BeatBots. BeatBots is the robotic design studio behind the Keepon, and creates dynamic robotic characters for therapy, research, education, and entertainment.

We interviewed Michalowski about his career in an effort to inspire and educate high school students about careers in robotics. Enjoy!

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Introducing Spot, a new smaller 4-legged robot from Boston Dynamics

February 9, 2015, 4:11 pm
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vlcsnap-2015-02-10-01h48m52s164

Boston Dynamics just released a video of a new four legged robot named “Spot”.  It is an evolution along the lines of their previous four-legged robots like BigDog and Wildcat, but this one is much smaller and lighter (160lbs / 72.5kg). As usual not many details are known, but Spot is electrically powered (others had an internal combustion engine onboard) and has a prominent rotating LIDAR on top.

Spot can perform the usual Boston Dynamics trick: it can withstand a kick without tipping over in an eerie life-like manner; and it can also move slowly and accurately indoors while being able to run faster if necessary.

You can watch the video below and you can read other Boston Dynamics articles here.

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