Researchers from EPFL and Stanford have developed small drones that can land and then move objects that are 40 times their weight, with the help of powerful winches, gecko adhesives and microspines.
A closed door is just one of many obstacles that no longer pose a barrier to the small flying robots developed jointly by Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and Stanford University. Equipped with advanced gripping technology – inspired by gecko and insect feet – and able to interact with the world around them, these robots can work together to lasso a door handle and tug the door open. Read More
A recent Reuters story suggests Cruise is well behind schedule with one insider saying “nothing is on schedule” and various reports of problems not yet handled. This puts doubt into GM’s announced plan to have a commercial pilot without safety drivers in operation in San Francisco in 2019.
The problem for me, and everybody else, is that it’s very hard to judge the progress of a project from outside. This is because it’s “easy” to get a basic car together and do demo runs on various streets. Teams usually have something like that up and running within a year. Just 2 years in, Google had logged 100,000 miles on 1,000 different miles of road. Today, it’s even easier.
Yeti has the goal to develop an autonomous snow clearing service for use on future airports. The product will be introduced in steps, in parallel with the development of technology for self-driving vehicles.
A stable wheelchair is automatically heavier. The same thing applies to exoskeletons. For a wearer to move about freely for an entire day, the battery has to be very powerful. But this means that it is also large and heavy.
I believe that systems will receive high-level strategic goals ("Build one car according to the following specification: ...") and will be autonomous in the way of how they achieve these goals, together with people
Material handling and the inhouse transportation is often still done manually by humans spending valuable time just pushing carts from A to B. With collaborative mobile robots these tasks can be automated in a simple, efficient, and cost-effective way.
Similar to UPC, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has had delayed acceptance in the industry. Patented in 1983, initial RFID research completed in Los Alamos during the 1970’s has seen limited acceptance.
Industrial inspections, regardless of the reason for inspection, can be a very dirty and dangerous job. While not necessarily dull, industrial inspections definitely cover two of the three Ds of robotics deployment (dull, dirty, and dangerous).
As part of the “SeRoDi” project (“Service Robotics for Personal Services”), Fraunhofer IPA collaborated with other research and application partners to develop new service robotics solutions for the nursing sector. The resulting robots, the “intelligent care cart” and the “robotic service assistant”, were used in extensive real-world trials in a hospital and at two care homes.
Not enough nurses for too many patients or residents: this is a familiar problem in the nursing sector. Service robots have the potential to help maintaining an adequate quality of care also under these challenging conditions.
Intelligent care cart Credit: Fraunhofer IPA
To cut down the legwork of the nursing staff and reduce the time spent keeping manual records of the consumption of medical supplies, Fraunhofer IPA in collaboration with the MLR Company developed the “intelligent care cart”. Using a smartphone, the care staff is able to summon the care cart to the desired room, whereupon it makes its own way there. A 3D sensor along with object recognition software enables the care cart to automatically register the consumption of medical supplies. Being of modular design, the care cart can be adapted to different application scenarios and practical requirements.
The care carts developed as part of the project were used in a hospital (stocked with wound treatment materials) and two nursing homes (stocked with laundry items). As the intelligent care cart is based on the navigation processes of a driverless transport vehicle, it travels primarily along fixed predefined paths. For use in public spaces, it is possible to make minor deviations from these paths in order, for example, to dynamically negotiate obstacles in the way. The real-world trials revealed that efficient navigation requires extensive knowledge of the internal processes in order, among other things, to guarantee that the desired destination is actually accessible.
The initial trials also showed that it makes a big difference whether the corridors have a single lane for both directions or separate lanes, i.e. one for each direction. For the residents and staff, using one lane made it clearer where the robot was going. In addition, restricting the care carts to a single lane ensured that they did not have to make major detours. Evaluating the real-world trials, the participating nursing staff confirmed that, by reducing the amount of legwork, along with the associated timesaving, the intelligent care cart represents a potential benefit in their day-to-day work. Also, the faster provision of care, with no interruptions for restocking the care cart, results in an improvement in quality for patients and residents.
Robotic service assistant serves drinks to residents Credit: Fraunhofer IPA
Alongside the intelligent care cart, the robotic service assistant is another result of the SeRoDi project. Stocked with up to 28 drinks or snacks, the mobile robot is capable of serving them to patients or residents. Once again, the goal is to reduce the workload of the staff, in addition to improving the hydration of the residents by means of regular reminders. Using the robot also has the potential to promote the independence of those in need of care.
At a nursing home, where the robotic service assistant was trialed for one week in a common room nursing home, it made for a welcome change, with many residents being both curious and interested. Using the robot’s touch screen, they were able to select from a choice of drinks, which were then served to them by the robot. Once all the supplies had been used up, the service assistant returned to the kitchen, where it was restocked by the staff before being sent back to the common room by the use of a smartphone. This robot, too, received great interest from the participating nursing staff. The synthesized voice of the robot was especially popular and even motivated the residents to converse with the robot.
Have a look at the YouTube video showing the project results.
The project received funding from the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research.
Scientists have developed a very small magnetic steerable catheter for minimally invasive surgery. Thanks to its variable stiffness, surgeons can perform more complex movements inside the body with a lower risk of injury to the patient.
Milestone investment will combine connected digital technologies, state-of-the-art collaborative robotics and cutting-edge artificial intelligence research to create the most sophisticated, automated and flexible Factory of the Future.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Caitlyn Clabaugh, PhD Candidate at the University of Southern California, about lessons learned about putting robots in people’s homes for human-robot interaction research. Clabaugh speaks about her work to date, the expectations in human-subjects research, and gives general advice for PhD students.
Caitlyn Clabaugh
Caitlyn Clabaugh is a PhD student in Computer Science at the University of Southern California, co-advised by Prof. Maja J Matarić and Prof. Fei Sha, and supported by a graduate research assistantship in the Interaction Lab. She received my B.A. in Computer Science from Bryn Mawr College in May 2013. Her primary research interest is the application of machine learning and statistical methods to support long-term adaptation and personalization in socially assistive robot tutors, specifically for young children and early childhood STEM.
Software developers must anticipate that laws and regulations will inevitably change over time, and they should consider developing processes to update and adapt to new or revised legal requirements.
