Archive 21.05.2020

Many companies make mesh network products for home Wi-Fi systems. Those are indeed valid and popular applications, but there are ample opportunities to use mesh networks for robotics, too.

Buckling, the sudden loss of structural stability, is usually the stuff of engineering nightmares. Mechanical buckling means catastrophic failure for every structural system from rockets to soufflés. It's what caused the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, among numerous other disasters.

CIMON-XPANEL is a Windows CE based HMI unit. A combination of software and hardware, suitable for various monitoring needs within industrial sites.

ABB assists Boyce to repurpose their advanced manufacturing facility, enabling them to make 3,000 ventilators in record time for New York hospitals.

In this episode, Kate Zhou interviews Farrell Helbling, postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Microrobotics lab, who has worked on developing the RoboBee, an insect-inspired robot that is the lightest vehicle to achieve untethered flight. Farrell discusses challenges with building the robot at centimeter-scale as well as integration of sensors and power electronics particularly in considerations with weight trade-offs.

Farrell Helbling

Farrell Helbling is a post doctoral fellow at Harvard University, where she focuses on the systems-level design of the Harvard RoboBee, an insect-scale flapping wing robot. Her research looks at the integration of the control system, sensors, and power electronics within the strict weight and power constraints of the vehicle. Her work led to the first untethered flight of an insect scale vehicle and was recently featured on the cover of Nature. She is the recipient of a NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, a 2018 Rising Star in EECS, and co-author on the IROS 2015 Best Student Paper for an insect-scale, hybrid aerial-aquatic vehicle. Her work on the RoboBee project is also featured at the Boston Museum of Science, World Economic Forum, London Science Museum, and the Smithsonian, as well as in the popular press (PBS NewsHour, The New York Times, Science Friday, BBC, and Wired). She is interested in the codesign of mechanical and electrical systems for mass-, power-, and computation-constrained robots.

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• Harvard Biorobotics Lab
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Standup comedian Jon the Robot likes to tell his audiences that he does lots of auditions but has a hard time getting bookings.

Standup comedian Jon the Robot likes to tell his audiences that he does lots of auditions but has a hard time getting bookings.

Researchers at University of California, Yale University, Stanford University, University of Cambridge and Seoul National University have recently carried out a study reviewing recent efforts in the development of machine-learning-enhanced electronic skins. Their review paper, published in Science Robotics, outlines how these e-skins could aid the creation of soft robots with touch-like capabilities, while also delineating challenges that are currently preventing their large-scale deployment.

Justin R. Bessette, Manager of Technology at Parker LORD, Microstrain shares with us his thoughts on how Parker LORD is managing through the pandemic as well as insights into what the future of Robotics and Automation may be.

Roboticists at the University of California San Diego have developed an affordable, easy to use system to track the location of flexible surgical robots inside the human body. The system performs as well as current state of the art methods, but is much less expensive. Many current methods also require exposure to radiation, while this system does not.

* Please register at:
https://robotsinsurgeryandhealthcare.eventbrite.com

The COVID-19 pandemic is increasing global demand for robots that can 
assist in surgery and healthcare. This symposium focuses on recent 
advances and open problems in robot-assisted tele-surgery and 
tele-medicine and needs for new research and development. The online 
format will encourage active dialogue among faculty, students, 
professionals, and entrepreneurs.

Featuring:
Gary Guthart, CEO, Intuitive Surgical
Robin Murphy, Texas A&M
Pablo Garcia Kilroy, VP Research, Verb Surgical
Allison Okamura, Professor Stanford
David Noonan, Director of Research, Auris Surgical
Jaydev Desai, Director, Georgia Tech Center for Medical Robotics
Nicole Kernbaum, Principal Engineer, Seismic Powered Clothin
Monroe Kennedy III, Professor, Stanford

Presented by the University of California Center for Information 
Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) and the Banatao 
Institute “People and Robots” Initiative, SRI International, and 
Silicon Valley Robotics.

Schedule:

   *  09:30-10:00: Conversation with Robin Murphy, Texas A&M and Director of 
Robotics for Infectious Diseases, and Andra Keay, Director of Silicon 
Valley Robotics
   *  10:00-10:30: Conversation with Gary Guthart, CEO Intuitive Surgical 
and Ken Goldberg, Director of CITRIS People and Robots Initiative
   *  10:30-11:00: Conversation with Pablo Garcia Kilroy, VP Research 
Verb Surgical and Tom Low, Director of Robotics at SRI International
   *  11:00-11:15: Coffee Break
   *  11:15-11:45: Conversation with David Noonan, Director of Research, 
Auris Surgical and Nicole Kernbaum
   *  11:45-12:45: Keynote by Jaydev Desai, Director, Georgia Tech Center 
for Medical Robotics
   *  12:45-01:15: Conversation with Allison Okamura, Stanford and Monroe 
Kennedy III, Stanford

Manufacturing the Hand-Held in a plastic injection molding process makes it possible to offer a more stable and cost-effective alternative to 3D printing. Installing it is fast and very easy and it is compatible with most commercially available door handles (Ø 18 - 22 mm).

Robots can be made from soft materials, but the flexibility of such robots is limited by the inclusion of rigid sensors necessary for their control. Researchers created embedded sensors, to replace rigid sensors, that offer the same functionality but afford the robot greater flexibility. Soft robots can be more adaptable and resilient than more traditional rigid designs. The team used cutting-edge machine learning techniques to create their design.

A team of Italian researchers from the BioRobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna and Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn has developed a new and improved version of its Seabed Interaction Legged Vehicle for Exploration and Research (SILVER) with the SILVER2—a robot that can walk around on the seafloor taking video as it goes. In their paper published in the journal Science Robotics, the group describes the robot, its capabilities and how it might be used in research efforts.

There are three adaptations we are watching closely at Aethon since we believe they are a trend and may become more permanent. These adaptations will have a significant influence specifically on the use of automation and autonomous mobile robotics.