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!
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
The Pleurobot is a bioinspired robot being developed by the BioRob at EPFL and NCCR Robotics. Taking it’s cues from the salamander, the Pleurobot is a walking robot that can change its gait to help it to navigate uneven terrain, and is currently learning to swim. Watch the video to see the researchers discuss what they are doing with the Pleurobot and how they hope to improve it in future.
For further information on the Pleurobot please see:
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 signal waves can be used to keep a swarm of Lily robots together as a group.
A group of Lily robots can achieve a coherent shoaling or flocking configuration by emitting and receiving pulsed light signals. Similar to slime mold or fireflies, such pulsed signals are relayed from one agent to the next, forming signal waves that move through the whole swarm. We use such waves to keep the swarm of Lily robots together as a group, to coordinate the swarm and to move it in a desired direction.
To learn more about the project, see this introductory post, or check out all the videos from the Year of CoCoRo on Robohub.
Working in the field of rescue robotics, the Robotics Perception Group (UZH and NCCR Robotics) works on how to get air robots communicating with ground robots, with the aim of exploiting the strengths of each by working in a team. In the video below, student Elias Müggler explains how he is doing this.
For further information:
Robotics Perception Group website
Aerial-guided Navigation of a Ground Robot among Movable Obstacles (paper by Elias Müggler)
Autonomous flying robots – Davide Scaramuzza at TedxZurich:
Demonstration of the project, winning the Kuka innovation award 2014:
In this video, PhD student at LIS, EPFL and NCCR Robotics Jun Shintake explains his project “Sensory-Motor tissues for Soft Robots”.
For more information on this project please see:
New soft antagonistic actuator enables robots to fold
A foldable antagonistic actuator (academic paper)
Variable stiffness material based on rigid low-melting-point-alloy microstructures embedded in soft poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) (academic paper)
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 a swarm of Lily robots can form a coherent group by exchanging light pulses among the group members, similar to how slime-mold does in biology.
By modulating the frequency of these signals the group can alter the path of the emerging blinking wave to turn the whole group towards the aggregation target. Such a target can be any form of gradient emitting source, regardless of the type of the emitted signal. We demonstrate this here by using a light source as a target.
To learn more about the project, see this introductory post, or check out all the videos from the Year of CoCoRo on Robohub.
Livestream of the Council of Foreign Relations’ Malcolm and Carolyn Wiener Annual Lecture on Science and Technology starting 02/27/2015 at 12:45 EST.
The Malcolm and Carolyn Wiener Annual Lecture on Science and Technology addresses issues at the intersection of science, technology, and foreign policy. In this lecture, experts discuss artificial intelligence and robot technology, and their economic impact on industry and society over the next decade.
Speakers:
Presider:
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 we generate some water currents and turbulences by using a water hose in our outdoor pool.
The video shows our first tests of the Jeff robot performed under such conditions (performed in summer 2013 and spring 2014). Those tests clearly indicated that the maneuverability of the robot (steering, forward drive) is strong enough to compensate for currents and drifts up to approximately 1m/sec. In those days we were very happy to realize such impressive capabilities for such a small robot, as this maneuverability is a prerequisite for the good performance in an underwater swarm under out-of-the lab conditions (large outside tanks, lazy river arms, ponds, lakes).
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 we test Jeff’s ability to pick up a target (the magnet) while swimming in a current.
In this video we again generate water currents and turbulences by using a water hose in our outdoor pool. By radio-frequency control we navigate a Jeff robot remotely in those currents. To test the precision of the steering under these conditions we use some small magnets in our hands as targets that have to be picked up by the Jeff robot. Thus it looks like we feed the robot with magnets :-)
To learn more about the project, see this introductory post, or check out all the videos from the Year of CoCoRo on Robohub.
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 summarizes all out-of-the-lab activities in which we tested our robots (Lily and Jeff).
There will be more detailed videos following throughout this year showing some of those activities more specifically. The activities shown here show autonomous robots in larger outdoor pools, ponds, lakes, rivers and ocean harbours. They act there either alone (e.g. as autonomous underwater camera agents) or in smaller groups (swarms).
To learn more about the project, see this introductory post, or check out all the videos from the Year of CoCoRo on Robohub.
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. One day in early 2014, at one of those long workshops, we stayed at a hotel that had a large and deep outside pool. It was a nice day in Italy, so what else could we do than taking a JEFF robot in autonomous driving mode to this pool and have some fun with it?
It didn’t take long and more and more hotel guests gathered and watched. Special applause to Vega and Finn, the kids of the project coordinator, for helping with the filming (above and under the water), catching the robot and rescuing it sometimes from the ground after we pushed the robot beyond its limits.
