Archive 28.07.2022

Researchers are designing more effective drugs than ever before

Helping plastics become 100% recyclable

Piecing together one of the largest molecular structures in human cells

The mussel and scallop industry could be revolutionized by a new autonomous underwater drone.

Unlocking a decade of data in minutes to help beat antibiotic resistance

A team of researchers at Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia's Bioinspired Soft Robotics Laboratory has developed a new pleat-based soft robotic actuator that can be used in a variety of sizes, down to just 1 centimeter. In their paper published in the journal Science Robotics, the group describes the technology behind their new actuator and how well it worked when they tested it under varied circumstances.

As companies continue to integrate more automation into their warehouses and DCs, the need for intelligent sensors to monitor and guide that equipment in a very safe, efficient, and productive manner will also increase.

This post shows the proceedings for the 2nd annual Reddit Robotics Showcase! We’re delighted to once again offer an event for robotics enthusiasts of all ages and abilities from across the world to share their passion and their projects.

This year, we are planning an event which anticipates the enthusiasm we’ve had from our community, continuing to provide a unique opportunity for roboticists around the world to share and discuss their work, regardless of age or ability. The primary purpose of this event is to showcase the multitude of projects underway in the r/Robotics Reddit community. Topics range across all focuses of robotics, such as simulation, navigation, control, perception, and mechatronic design. We will use this showcase to present discussion pieces and foster conversation between active members in the robotics community around the world. The showcase will feature invited roboticists in research and industry to discuss what they see as technical challenges or interesting directions for robots.

The showcase is free and online, and is to be held on July 30th & 31st 2022, livestreamed via the Reddit Robotics Showcase YouTube channel. For more information, please check out the official website.

2022 Program

All times are recorded in Eastern Daylight Time (EDT), UTC-4.

Saturday, 30th of July
Session 1: Industrial and Applied Robotics
10:00 – 11:00 Matt Whelan (Ocado Technology) – The Ocado 600 Series Robot
11:00 – 11:15 Nye Mech Works (HAPPA) – Real Power Armor
11:15 – 11:30 3D Printed 6-Axis Robot Arm
11:30 – 12:00 Vasily Morzhakov (Rembrain) – Cloud Platform for Smart Robotics
12:00 – 12:15 Bridging the Gap Between Physical and Digital with BOTSZY
12:15 – 12:45 Advoard – Autonomous Fleet Robots for Logistics
Lunch Break

Session 2: Mobile Robots
14:00 – 15:00 TBC
15:00 – 15:30 Julius Sustarevas – Armstone: Autonomous Mobile 3D Printer
15:30 – 15:45 Camera Controller Hexapod & Screw/Augur All-Terrain Robot
15:45 – 16:15 Keegan Neave – NE-Five
16:15 – 16:30 Dimitar – Gravis and Ricardo
16:30 – 16:40 Kamal Carter – Aim-Hack Robot
16:40 – 16:55 Calvin – BeBOT Real Time

Sunday, 31st of July
Session 1: Bio-Inspired Robots
10:00 – 11:00 Dr. Matteo Russo (Rolls-Royce UTC in Manufacturing and On-Wing Technology) – Entering the Maze: Snake-Like Robots from Aerospace to Industry
11:00 – 11:10 Humanoid, Hexapod, and Legged Robot Control
11:10 – 11:25 Halid Yildirim – Design of a Modular Quadruped Robot Dog
11:25 – 11:35 Hexapod as Robot Pet
11:35 – 12:05 Jakub Bartoszek – Honey Badger Quadruped
12:05 – 12:20 Lutz Freitag – 01. RFC Berlin
12:20 – 12:35 Hamburg Bit-Bots
12:35 – 12:50 William Kerber – Human Mode Robotics – Lynx Quadruped and AI Training
12:50 – 13:00 Sanjeev Hegde – Juggernaut
Lunch Break

Session 2: Human Robot Interaction
14:00 – 15:00 Dr. Ruth Aylett (The National Robotarium) – Social Agents and Human Robot Interaction
15:00 – 15:30 Senmag Robotics – High Fidelity Haptics Made Accessible
15:30 – 15:40 Hand Controlled Artificial Hand
15:40 – 16:10 The Shadow Robot Company
16:10 – 16:25 Maël Abril – 6 Axis Dynamixel Robot Arm
16:25 – 16:35 Control 4WD Raspberry Pi Robot Car Using Hand Gestures
16:35 – 17:05 Tentacular – Interactive Robotic Art

Today, in partnership with EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), we’re now releasing predicted structures for nearly all catalogued proteins known to science, which will expand the AlphaFold DB by over 200x - from nearly 1 million structures to over 200 million structures - with the potential to dramatically increase our understanding of biology.

Today, in partnership with EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), we’re now releasing predicted structures for nearly all catalogued proteins known to science, which will expand the AlphaFold DB by over 200x - from nearly 1 million structures to over 200 million structures - with the potential to dramatically increase our understanding of biology.

Humans behave and act in a way that other humans can recognize as human-like. If humanness has specific features, is it possible to replicate these features on a machine like a robot? Researchers at IIT-Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (Italian Institute of Technology) tried to answer that question by implementing a non-verbal Turing test in a human-robot interaction task. They involved human participants and the humanoid robot iCub in a joint action experiment. What they found is that specific features of human behavior, namely response timing, can be translated into the robot in a way that humans cannot distinguish whether they are interacting with a person or a machine.

Training robots to complete tasks in the real-world can be a very time-consuming process, which involves building a fast and efficient simulator, performing numerous trials on it, and then transferring the behaviors learned during these trials to the real world. In many cases, however, the performance achieved in simulations does not match the one attained in the real-world, due to unpredictable changes in the environment or task.

More than a decade ago, Ted Adelson set out to create tactile sensors for robots that would give them a sense of touch. The result? A handheld imaging system powerful enough to visualize the raised print on a dollar bill. The technology was spun into GelSight, to answer an industry need for low-cost, high-resolution imaging.

Disturbing footage emerged this week of a chess-playing robot breaking the finger of a seven-year-old child during a tournament in Russia.

The 2021 World Robot Report shows that the global number of robots per 10,000 employees has risen from 66 to 126 between 2015–2020. So which sectors are reaping the rewards?