Archive 06.10.2023

Mobility impairments such as those caused by cerebral palsy make it hard for people to perform even simple tasks like drinking a sip of water.

Claire chatted to Guillaume Doisy from Dexory about autonomous warehouse robots, mobile robotics, and software.

Guillaume Doisy is the current Lead Systems Architect at Dexory, the leading UK robotics and AI company building state-of-the-art fully autonomous mobile robots for use in warehouses. Guillaume has a wide range of responsibilities including building the robots ability to function autonomously. The French native has significant expertise in the field of autonomous mobile robots having begun his career at French start-up Wyca as Chief Robotics Officer. Guillaume is also a long-term contributor to ROS (Robotic Operating Software), the open-source robotics software project.

Utilizing soft, flexible materials such as cloth, paper, and silicone, soft robotic grippers act like a robot's hand to perform functions such as safely grasping and releasing objects. Unlike conventional rigid material grippers, they are more flexible and safe, and are being researched for household robots that handle fragile objects such as eggs, or for logistics robots that need to carry various types of objects. However, its low load capacity makes it difficult to lift heavy objects, and its poor grasping stability makes it easy to lose the object even under mild external impact.

Welding engineers all over the world associate the name Fronius with innovative welding technology. Above all, the innovators are known for providing high-performance, high-tech welding systems.

Researchers from the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) have successfully applied reinforcement learning to a video game problem. The research team created a new complicated movement design software based on an approach that has proven effective in board games like Chess and Go. In a single testing, the movements from the new approach appeared to be superior to those of top human players.

Robots are often found in very controlled, indoor environments because, unlike in a natural environment, there are no tripping hazards to overcome. However, in order to perform important tasks like environmental monitoring or search and rescue, robots must be able to navigate through branches and vines without getting tied up.

Someday, when quakes, fires, and floods strike, the first responders might be packs of robotic rescue dogs rushing in to help stranded souls. These battery-powered quadrupeds would use computer vision to size up obstacles and employ doglike agility skills to get past them.

What sets magnetic levitation apart is the ability to create a contactless, ultra-high-precision virtual bearing within our control system”. Dr. Christian Rudolf provides a glimpse into the exciting development journey of PI's magnetic levitation solutions.

In celebration of the launch of International Women in Robotics Day, the Women in Robotics organization is proud to release another “50 women in robotics you need to know about” collection of stories. With a growing robotics industry there are many opportunities for everyone to get involved. This is why we showcase the wide range of roles that women play in robotics today.

Since 2012, the Women in Robotics organization has released a list of women building the future in robotics. The list has covered all ages, career stages, types of occupation and experience. We’ve featured more than 350 women already and we’ve shown that women have always been working in the robotics industry, in the earliest robotics research labs and companies, although those stories have often been forgotten.

This year’s collection includes Nancy Cornelius, co-founder of Boston Dynamics and the first engineer hired. Cornelius remained an integral part of Boston Dynamics until the company was sold to Google in 2013. Vandi Verma is the head of NASA’s rover (robot) program. Joanna Buttler is the head of the Global Autonomous Technology Group for Daimler Truck. And Whitney Rockley founded a venture capital company investing exclusively in ‘industrial internet’ companies like Clearpath Robotics.

For the first time, we feature an Indigenous (Ojibwe) American roboticist, Danielle Boyer. Boyer started a non-profit The STEAM Connection to combat the difficulties that many kids have getting access to robotics. She created an affordable robot kit that’s been distributed to thousands of students, and is proudest of the SKOBOT project. Personalized robots that keep culture and language traditions alive. Boyer epitomizes the motto “Building the Future”.

We also try to feature women from all regions of the world and this year’s collection represents Nigeria, India, China, Australia, Japan, Switzerland, Croatia, Korea, Denmark, Singapore, Italy, Romania, United States, Sweden, Spain, Canada, the UK, Israel, Austria, Belgium, Mexico, Argentina and Brazil. There is an active Latinx community in Women in Robotics engaged in translating more robotics information into Spanish, hoping to create more connections between the global robotics community and the roboticists, and potential roboticists, of Latin America.

There have always been women doing great things in robotics! And we’re pleased to present another collection of strong female role models for young and upcoming roboticists (of any gender).

You can also join in the Women in Robotics celebrations today and throughout October, with events listed on the women in robotics site, like Diversity Cocktails at the IROS conference in Detroit, or the launch of the Los Angeles women in robotics chapter. Women in Robotics is a global community organization for women and non-binary people working in robotics and those who’d like to work in robotics. Learn more at https://womeninrobotics.org

Join our events, host your own events, share our celebration on social media!

Insect cyborgs may sound like science fiction, but they're a relatively new development that uses electrical stimuli to control the movement of insects. These hybrid insect computer robots, as they are scientifically called, herald the future of small, highly mobile and efficient devices.

Robots built by engineers at the University of California San Diego helped achieve a major breakthrough in understanding how insect flight evolved, as described in the journal Nature. The study is a result of a six-year long collaboration between roboticists at UC San Diego and biophysicists at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Domestic work is vital for society to function. Meals need to be cooked, clothes and homes cleaned, and people need to be cared for. These tasks take time and, generally speaking, are not shared equally within households.

Imagine grasping a heavy object, like a pipe wrench, with one hand. You would likely grab the wrench using your entire fingers, not just your fingertips. Sensory receptors in your skin, which run along the entire length of each finger, would send information to your brain about the tool you are grasping.

Using AI at the edge, Kabilan KB — a robotics developer and undergraduate from the Karunya Institute of Technology and Sciences — aims to increase mobility for people with disabilities.

Robots are great specialists, but poor generalists. Typically, you have to train a model for each task, robot, and environment. Changing a single variable often requires starting from scratch. But what if we could combine the knowledge across robotics and create a way to train a general-purpose robot?