The International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) is the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society’s flagship conference and is a premier international forum for robotics researchers to present their work. ICRA 2018 is just wrapping up over in Brisbane Australia.
Robohub will be bringing you stories and podcasts in the weeks ahead.
In the meantime, have a look at the #ICRA2018 tweets and nearly 1000 research spotlight videos from the conference!
The European Commission is launching a new call for Flagships. Existing Flagships include the Human Brian Project, and the Graphene Flagship – each funded at the level of 1B EUR.
Given the excitement around the field of robotics and its potential to benefit society and the economy, we’ve brought together the robotics community to apply for a Robotics Flagship Preparatory Action. The Robotics Flagship aims to drive developments in European Robotics for the next 10 years. You can read more about it on this website.
As a first step, we’ll be submitting a request for exploratory funds to inform the preparation of the full flagship proposal.
Key to our work will be to understand the robotics community’s and the public’s view on the technology so we can develop it in a way that positively impacts society and the economy.
That’s why we need your help. By filling in a short call for evidence (max 10 minutes) you’ll be providing us with valuable input for the proposal.
If you’re from the public, fill in this call for evidence.
If you’re from the robotics community, fill in this call for evidence.
You can also follow us on twitter, and help spread the word by RTing:
Help us make the European Robotics Flagship a reality, fill in our short call for evidence and RT https://t.co/IxQKuRYFJj
— Robotics Flagship (@robotflagship) February 14, 2018
In this episode of Robots in Depth, Per Sjöborg speaks with Daniel Lofaro, Assistant Professor at George Mason University specialising in humanoid robots.
Daniel talks about making humans and robots collaborate through co-robotics, and the need for lower-cost systems and better AI. He also mentions that robotics needs a “killer app”, something that makes it compelling enough for the customer to take the step of welcoming a robot into the business or home. Finally, Daniel discusses creating an ecosystem of robots and apps, and how competitions can help do this.
This was a busy year for robotics! The 10 most read Robohub articles in 2017 show an increased interest in machine learning, and a thirst to learn how robots work and can be programmed. Highlights also include the Robohub Podcast, which just celebrated its 250th episode (that’s 10 years of bi-weekly interviews in robotics), the Robot Launch Startup Competition, and our yearly list of 25 women in robotics you need to know about. Finally, we couldn’t skip over some of the remarkable events of 2017, including a swarm of drones flying over Metallica, and Sophia “gaining citizenship“.
Thanks to all our expert contributors, and here’s to many more articles in 2018!
Envisioning the future of robotics
By Víctor Mayoral Vilches
Deep Learning in Robotics, with Sergey Levine
By the Robohub Podcast
Robotics, maths, python: A fledgling computer scientist’s guide to inverse kinematics
By Alistair Wick
Programming for robotics: Introduction to ROS
By Péter Fankhauser
ROS robotics projects
By Lentin Joseph
Vote for your favorite in Robot Launch Startup Competition!
By Andra Keay
Micro drones swarm above Metallica
By Markus Waibel
25 women in robotics you need to know about – 2017
by Andra Keay, Hallie Siegel and Sabine Hauert
Three concerns about granting citizenship to robot Sophia
by Hussein Abbass and The Conversation
The Robot Academy: An open online robotics education resource
by Peter Corke
The Humanoids 2017 conference earlier this month hosted an excellent photo competition. I was lucky to be one of the judges, along with Erico Guizzo from IEEE Spectrum, and Giorgio Metta as awards chair.
The decision, which was tough given the excellent submissions, was based on social media votes and scores for originality, creativity, photo structure, and tech or fun factor.
The overall winner for Best Humanoid Photo featured a pensive iCub and was entitled “To be, or not to be” by Pedro Vicente from the Vislab in Lisbon.
Finalists, in no particular order, were:
The winner for Best Funny Humanoid was this picture of a frustrated SABIAN entitled “If only I had a self-driving car” by Marco Moscato at the Biorobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna.
Finalists, in no particular order, were:
You can see all the other photos below. Congratulations to all the participants, and to the Humanoids 2017 team for the organisation!
As you know, Robohub is a non-profit dedicated to connecting the robotics community to the public. Over nearly a decade we’ve produced more than 200 podcasts and helped thousands of roboticists communicate about their work through videos and blog posts.
Our website Robohub.org provides free high-quality information, and is seen as a top blog in robotics with nearly 1.5M pageviews every year and 20k followers on social media (facebook, twitter).
If you have a story you would like to share (news, tutorials, papers, conference summaries), please send it to editors@robohub.org and we’ll do our best to help you reach a wide audience.
In addition, we’re currently growing our community of volunteers. If you’re interested in blogging, video/podcasting, moderating discussions, curating news, covering conferences, or helping with sustainability of our non-profit, we would love to hear from you!
Just fill in this very short form.
By joining the community, you’ll be part of a grassroots international organisation. You’ll learn about robotics from the top people in the field, travel to conferences, and will improve your communication skills. More important, you’ll be helping us make sure robotics is portrayed in a high-quality manner to the public.
And thanks to all those who have already joined the community, supported us, or sent us their news!
If you follow the robotics community on the twittersphere, you’ll have noticed that Rodney Brooks is publishing a series of essays on the future of robotics and AI which has been gathering wide attention.
His articles are designed to be read as stand alone essays, and in any order. Robohub will be featuring links to the articles as they come out over the next 6 months or so. They are worth the read.
The Seven Deadly Sins of Predicting the Future of AI published on September 7, 2017.
Domo Arigato Mr. Roboto published on August 28, 2017.
Machine Learning Explained published on August 28, 2017.
13 researchers working in robotics and AI made the MIT Technology Review “35 Innovators Under 35” list this year.
Anca Dragan
UC Berkeley
Ensuring that robots and humans work and play well together.
Lorenz Meier
ETHZ
An open-source autopilot for drones.
Austin Russell
Luminar
Better sensors for safer automated driving.
Angela Schoellig
University of Toronto
Her algorithms are helping self-driving and self-flying vehicles get around more safely.
Jianxiong Xiao
AutoX
His company AutoX aims to make self-driving cars more accessible.
Greg Brockman
OpenAI
Trying to make sure that AI benefits humanity.
Joshua Browder
DoNotPay
Using chatbots to help people avoid legal fees.
Ian Goodfellow
Google Brain
Invented a way for neural networks to get better by working together.
Volodymyr Mnih
DeepMind
The first system to play Atari games as well as a human can.
Olga Russakovsky
Princeton University
Employed crowdsourcing to vastly improve computer-vision system.
Gang Wang
Alibaba
At the forefront of turning AI into consumer-ready products.
Gregory Wayne
DeepMind
Using an understanding of the brain to create smarter machines.
Jenna Wiens
University of Michigan
Her computational models identify patients who are most at risk of a deadly infection.
The Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence is convening their first annual conference, this Thursday and Friday, in Cambridge UK.
The two days of conference will focus on topics that cut across many of the issues and disciplines involved in the future of AI: narratives and trust.
Keynote speakers include Professor Stuart Russell (Berkeley), Baroness Onora O’Neill (Cambridge), Dr Claire Craig (Royal Society), Matt Hancock (MP) and Professor Francesca Rossi (University of Padova, Italy).
You can watch the live stream here, or follow the tweets below at #CFIConf.
Over 800 leading scientists, companies, and policymakers working in robotics will convene at the European Robotics Forum (#ERF2017) in Edinburgh, 22-24 March. This year’s theme is “Living and Working With Robots” with a focus on applications in manufacturing, disaster relief, agriculture, healthcare, assistive living, education, and mining.
The 3-day programme features keynotes, panel discussions, workshops, and plenty of robots roaming the exhibit floor.
We’ll be updating this post regularly with live tweets and videos. You can also follow all the Robohub coverage here.
#erf2017 Tweets