Archive 17.11.2022

Here, Knight Optical dives into the world of subsea technologies and runs through the optical components that are used to guarantee their high performance.

Growing up in Rhode Island (the Ocean State), I lived very close to the water. Over the years, I have seen the effects of sea level rise and rapid erosion. Entire houses and beaches have slowly been consumed by the tide. I have witnessed first hand how climate change is rapidly changing the ocean ecosystem. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by the inexorability of climate change. What can we do in the face of such a global, almost incomprehensible dilemma? The only way I can overcome this perception is by committing to doing something with my life to help, even if it’s in a small way. I think with such a big issue, the only way forward is by starting small, identifying one niche I can work in, and seeing how I can shape my research around solving that challenge.

One major challenge is rapid global ocean temperature rise. When scientists look to make climate associations using temperature data, they generally use fixed temperature loggers attached to buoys or on the ocean floor. Unfortunately, this approach discounts the area between the ocean’s surface and floor. Variable ocean conditions create microclimates, pockets of the ocean that are unaffected by general climate trends. Scientists have shown that most organisms experience climate change via these microclimates. Fish are greatly affected by this rapid increase in temperature as they can only lay eggs in a minimal range of temperatures. Microclimates are changing temperature with celerity. Hence, many species cannot adapt quickly enough to survive. At this rate, 60% of fish species could go extinct by 2100.

Of course, fish are not the only organisms affected by the rapid increase in temperature. Coral in the Great Barrier Reef can only survive in a minimal temperature threshold, and as temperature increases, reefs are experiencing mass coral bleaching. AIMS, the Australian Institute for Marine Science, the government agency that monitors the Great Barrier Reef, utilizes divers pulled behind boats to record reef observations and collect data. Unfortunately, this has led to some casualties due to shark attacks. They have begun deploying large, almost seven feet in length, ocean gliders that can mitigate this risk. These robots come with a hefty price tag of $125,000 to $500,000. They are also too large to navigate portions of the reef.

Our solution in the Soft Robotics Lab at Worcester Polytechnic Institute is building a free-swimming (tetherless), biologically inspired robotic fish, funded in part by the National Science Foundation Future of Robots in the Workplace Research and Development Program. Our goal is for the robot to navigate the complex environment of the Great Barrier Reef and record dense three-dimensional temperature data throughout the water column. Moreover, we will use non-hazardous and affordable material for the fish’s body. Since our motivation is to create a tool to use in climate research, a robot that is cheap and easy to manufacture will increase its effectiveness. Our approach is in stark contrast to traditional autonomous underwater vehicles that utilize propellers that are noisy and incongruous to underwater life. We chose to mimic the motion of real fish to reduce the environmental impact of our robot and enable close observation of other real fish.

We are, of course, not the first people to build a robot fish. In 1994, MIT produced the RoboTuna, a fully rigid fish robot, and since then, there have been many different iterations of fish robots. Some have been made of fully rigid materials like the RoboTuna and used motors that run the caudal tail (rear fin) actuation that powers the fish. However, this does not replicate the fluid motion achieved by real fish as they swim. A possible solution would be to use soft materials. Designs using soft materials, up to this point, utilize a silicone, pneumatically or hydraulically actuated tail. Unfortunately, these robots cannot operate in rough environments since any cuts or abrasions to the silicone could cause a leak in the system and lead to a total failure in the actuation of the tail. Other robots have combined the more durable rigid materials, actuated with cables, and then attached a soft silicone end that bends with the force of the water. All these previous robots are difficult to manufacture and require institutional knowledge to recreate.

We have fabricated a 3D printed, cable-actuated wave spring tail made from soft materials that can drive a small robot fish. The wave spring gives the robot its biologically inspired shape, but it can bend fluidly like the silicone-based robots and real fish. The wave springis entirely 3D printed from a flexible material that is affordable and easy to use. This material and method creates a very soft yet durable robot, withstands harsh treatment, and runs for hundreds of thousands of cycles without any degradation to any of the robot’s systems. The robot sets itself apart by being very easy to assemble, with only a handful of parts, most of which can be 3D printed.

The wave spring itself has a biologically inspired design. Reef fish are morphologically diverse but share a similar body shape which we emulate with a tapered oval design. The wave spring itself is composed of a mesh of diamond-shaped cells that can compress and bend. To restrict our robot to only lateral bending, we added supports down the dorsal and ventral edges of the wave spring.

Using this design, we have successfully created a robot fish. The robot is able to swim freely in a fish tank, swimming pool, and in a lake. While testing the fish in these environments, we found that the speed and performance of our robot was comparable to other fish robots operating under similar parameters. In order to waterproof the robot (to protect the electronics required for tetherless swimming), we had to add a latex skin. This does increase the manufacturing complexity of the design, so we will look to improve not only the robot’s performance, but also its design to ensure a simplistic yet high functioning robot.

Most importantly, we will add the sensors required to collect data like temperature, which is imperative to a better understanding of the oceans’ rapidly changing microclimates. It’s crucial that we remain focused on this goal, as it drives not only the robot’s design, but our motivation for why we do this work. Climate change is the foremost crisis facing our world. I encourage everyone to connect their interests and work, no matter the field, in some way to this issue as we are the only ones who can do something about it.

Diesel is preferred over gasoline for three primary reasons: better torque output, long-term durability, and fuel economy. Research shows that diesel engines are typically 20%-35% more fuel efficient than similarly sized gasoline engines, allowing diesel cars to travel greater distances on a single fuel tank.  However, diesel engines require additional care and maintenance to function...

The post <strong>The Ultimate Maintenance Guide For Diesel Engines</strong> appeared first on 1redDrop.

This little robot can go almost anywhere.

How much computing power is needed at the edge? How much memory and storage are enough for AI at the edge? Minimum requirements are growing as AI opens the door to innovative applications that need more and faster processing, storage, and memory.

In two volatile spots in the occupied West Bank, Israel has installed robotic weapons that can fire tear gas, stun grenades and sponge-tipped bullets at Palestinian protesters.

Beneath our streets lies a maze of pipes, conduits for water, sewage, and gas. Regular inspection of these pipes for leaks or repair normally requires them to be dug up. The latter is not only onerous and expensive—with an estimated annual cost of 5.5 billion pounds in the UK alone—but causes disruption to traffic as well as a nuisance to people living nearby, not to mention damage to the environment.

Building a responsible approach to data collection with the Partnership on AI...

Researchers at North Carolina State University have created a ring-shaped soft robot capable of crawling across surfaces when exposed to elevated temperatures or infrared light. The researchers have demonstrated that these "ringbots" are capable of pulling a small payload across the surface—in ambient air or under water, as well as passing through a gap that is narrower than its ring size.

The vision system performs three key tasks: scanning in 3D the raw white vessels; analyzing the 3D scans to establish the vessels’ size, shape, position; and communicating the results to the cobot so it can accurately reach the teacups as they move along the production line.

Robots that can automatically recognize and track specific odors could have a wide range of valuable applications. For instance, they could help to identify the sources of harmful chemical substances in the air after hazardous accidents at power plants, explosions, or other disasters.

6-axis robots in particular, aside from being among the most widely-used industrial machines in general, have become known as the trusted workhorse of injection molding loading and unloading.

Did you have the chance to attend the 2022 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2022) in Kyoto? Here we bring you the papers that received an award this year in case you missed them. Congratulations to all the winners and finalists!

Best Paper Award on Cognitive Robotics

Gesture2Vec: Clustering Gestures using Representation Learning Methods for Co-speech Gesture Generation. Payam Jome Yazdian, Mo Chen, and Angelica Lim.

Best RoboCup Paper Award

RCareWorld: A Human-centric Simulation World for Caregiving Robots. Ruolin Ye, Wenqiang Xu, Haoyuan Fu, Rajat Kumar, Jenamani, Vy Nguyen, Cewu Lu, Katherine Dimitropoulou, and Tapomayukh Bhattacharjee.

SpeedFolding: Learning Efficient Bimanual Folding of Garments. Yahav Avigal, Lars Burscheid, Tamim Asfour, Torsten Kroeger, and Ken Goldberg.

Best Paper Award on Robot Mechanisms and Design

Aerial Grasping and the Velocity Sufficiency Region. Tony G. Chen, Kenneth Hoffmann, JunEn Low, Keiko Nagami, David Lentink, and Mark Cutkosky.

Best Entertainment and Amusement Paper Award

Robot Learning to Paint from Demonstrations. Younghyo Park, Seunghun Jeon, and Taeyoon Lee.

Best Paper Award on Safety, Security, and Rescue Robotics

Power-based Safety Layer for Aerial Vehicles in Physical Interaction using Lyapunov Exponents. Eugenio Cuniato, Nicholas Lawrance, Marco Tognon, and Roland Siegwart.

Best Paper Award on Agri-Robotics

Explicitly Incorporating Spatial Information to Recurrent Networks for Agriculture. Claus Smitt, Michael Allan Halstead, Alireza Ahmadi, and Christopher Steven McCool.

Best Paper Award on Mobile Manipulation

Robot Learning of Mobile Manipulation with Reachability Behavior Priors. Snehal Jauhri, Jan Peters, and Georgia Chalvatzaki.

Best Application Paper Award

Soft Tissue Characterisation Using a Novel Robotic Medical Percussion Device with Acoustic Analysis and Neural Networks. Pilar Zhang Qiu, Yongxuan Tan, Oliver Thompson, Bennet Cobley, and Thrishantha Nanayakkara.

Best Paper Award for Industrial Robotics Research for Applications

Absolute Position Detection in 7-Phase Sensorless Electric Stepper Motor. Vincent Groenhuis, Gijs Rolff, Koen Bosman, Leon Abelmann, and Stefano Stramigioli.

ABB Best Student Paper Award

FAR Planner: Fast, Attemptable Route Planner using Dynamic Visibility Update. Fan Yang, Chao Cao, Hongbiao Zhu, Jean Oh, and Ji Zhang.

Best Paper Award

SpeedFolding: Learning Efficient Bimanual Folding of Garments. Yahav Avigal, Lars Berscheid, Tamim Asfour, Torsten Kroeger, and Ken Goldberg.

Episode 20 – Paul Dominick Baniqued

Claire talked to Dr Paul Dominick Baniqued from The University of Manchester all about brain-computer interface technology and rehabilitation robotics.

Paul Dominick Baniqued received his PhD in robotics and immersive technologies at the University of Leeds. His research tackled the integration of a brain-computer interface with virtual reality and hand exoskeletons for motor rehabilitation and skills learning. He is currently working as a postdoc researcher on cyber-physical systems and digital twins at the Robotics for Extreme Environments Group at the University of Manchester.

Episode 21 – Sean Katagiri

Claire chatted to Sean Katagiri from The National Robotarium all about underwater robots, offshore energy, and other industrial applications of robotics.

Sean Katagiri is a robotics engineer who has the pleasure of being surrounded by and working with robots for a living. His experience in robotics mainly comes from the subsea domain, but has also worked with wheeled and legged ground robots as well. Sean is very excited to have recently started his role at The National Robotarium, whose goal is to bring ideas from academia and turn them into real world solutions.

Episode 22 – Iveta Eimontaite

Claire talked to Dr Iveta Eimontaite from Cranfield University about psychology, human-robot interaction, and industrial robots.

Iveta Eimontaite studied Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of York and completed her PhD in Cognitive Psychology at Hull University. Prior to joining Cranfield University, Iveta held research positions at Bristol Robotics Laboratory and Sheffield Robotics. Her work mainly focuses on behavioural and cognitive aspects of Human-Technology Interaction, with particular interest in user needs and requirements for the successful integration of technology within the workplace/social environments.

Mickey Li

Claire talked to Mickey Li from the University of Bristol about aerial robotics, building inspection and multi-robot teams.

Mickey Li is a Robotics and Autonomous systems PhD researcher at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory and the University of Bristol. His research focuses on optimal multi-UAV path planning for building inspection, in particular how guarantees can be provided despite vehicle failures. Most recently he has been developing a portable development and deployment infrastructure for multi-UAV experimentation for the BRL Flight Arena inspired by advances in cloud computing.

A new study by Missouri S&T researchers shows how human subjects, walking hand-in-hand with a robot guide, stiffen or relax their arms at different times during the walk. The researchers' analysis of these movements could aid in the design of smarter, more humanlike robot guides and assistants.