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Workers have long confronted dangerous and dirty jobs. They’ve had to dig to the bottom of mines, or put themselves in harm’s way to decommission ageing nuclear sites. It’s time to make these jobs safer and more efficient, robots are just starting to provide the necessary tools.

Mining

Mining has become much safer, yet workers continue to die every year in accidents across Europe, highlighting the perils of this genuinely needed industry. Everyday products use minerals extracted from mining, and 30 million jobs in the EU depend on their supply. Robots are a way to modernise an industry that is constantly under pressure with the fall in prices of commodities and the lack of safe access to hard-to-reach resources. Making mining greener is also a key concern.

The vision is for people to move away from the rock face, and onto the surface. In an ideal world where mining 4.0 is the norm, a central control room will run all operations in the mine, which will become a zero-entry zone for workers. Robots will take care of safety critical tasks such as drilling, extracting, crushing and transport of excavated material. The mine could operate continuously while experts on the surface are in charge of managing, monitoring, optimising and maintenance of the systems – essentially making mining a high-tech job.

A recent report from the IDC echoes this vision saying, “The future of mining is to create the capability to manage the mine as a system – through an integrated web of technologies such as virtualization, robotics, Internet of Things (IoT), sensors, connectivity, and mobility – to command, control, and respond.”

And companies are betting their money on it, “69% of mining companies globally are looking for remote operation and monitoring centres, 56% at new mine methods, 29% at robotics and 27% at unmanned drones.”

Europe is also heavily investing, with several large projects over the past 15 years. The European project I2Mine, which finished last year, focussed on technologies suitable for underground mining activities (at depths greater than 1500m). With 23M Euros invested, it was the biggest EU RTD project funded in the mining sector.

Project Manager, Dr Horst Hejny, said: “The overall objective of the project was the development of innovative technologies and methods for sustainable mining at greater depths.”

One result of the project was a set of sensors for material recognition and boundary layer detection and sorting, as well as a new cutting head which allows for continuous operation.

Full, and even remote, automation, however, is still a long way ahead. Like any robotic system, automated mining will have to deal with a plethora of real-world challenges. And navigating underground mines, or manipulating rock, are very far from ideal laboratory settings. As an intermediate step, researchers are looking to set up test sites where they can experiment with the technology outside of the lab and before deployment in safety critical areas. Juha Röning from the University of Oulu in Finland uses Oulu Zone, a race track that could prove helpful to test automated driving for the mining industry. His laboratory has previous experience in this area, having tested an automated dumper robot for excavated material. It’s an obvious application for a country that Juha says “invented mining”. There is more to it than autonomous driving, however, and his laboratory has been thinking about ways to improve the infrastructure around the deployment of mobile robots, including using advanced positioning systems to increase the precision of robot tracking and control.

Another test site, RACE, which stands for Remote Applications in Challenging Environments, was recently opened by the UK Atomic Energy Authority. The facility conducts R&D and commercial activities focused on developing robots and autonomous systems for challenging environments.

On their website, they claim to be challenging ‘challenging environments’ saying: “Challenging Environments exist in numerous sectors, nuclear, petrochemical, space exploration, construction and mining are examples. The technical hurdle is different for different physical environments and includes radiation, extreme temperature, limited access, vacuum and magnetic fields, but solutions will have common features. The commercial imperative is to enable safe and cost efficient operations.”

Rather than develop full turn-key solutions for mines, many European companies have been providing automation solutions for very specific tasks. Swedish company Sandvik, for example, demonstrated a fully automated LHD (Load, Haul, Dump machine) vehicle.

Also based in Sweden, Atlas Copco has an autonomous LHD system of their own called Scooptram.

Polish company KGHM, a leader in copper and silver production, has been deeply involved in many R&D projects across Europe. Their mines in Lubin and Polkowice Sieroszowice have served as test sites for recent developments. KGHM, and mining companies Boliden and LKAB in Sweden joined forces with several major global suppliers and the academia to develop a common vision for future mining for 2011 to 2020.

The report discusses how to make deep mining of the future “safer, leaner and greener.” The short answer: “we need an innovative organisation that attracts talented young men and women to meet the grand challenges and opportunities of future mineral supply.” They add however that “by 2030 we will not yet have achieved invisible mining, zero waste, or the fully intelligent, automated mine without any human presence”. More time is needed.

Robotics technology also opens a new frontier in areas that can be mined beyond what is currently human-reachable. The new push is towards mining the deep sea, or space in a responsible manner. UK-based company Soil Machine Dynamics Ltd recently developed three vehicles that operate at depths of up to 2,500m on seafloor massive sulphide (SMS) deposits for the company Nautilus Minerals. The subsea mining machines weigh up to 310t and have vessel-based power and control systems, pilot consoles, umbilical systems and launch and recovery systems.

As for the space race, asteroids provide an untapped resource for metallic elements such as iron, nickel, and cobalt. Although space robots have been shown to navigate and drill in space, scaling up to meaningful extraction quantities will be a challenge. And it’s still unclear if the cost and complexity of space mining justify the means.

Nuclear Decommissioning

Like mining, nuclear decommissioning requires zero-entry operations. Across Europe, there are plans to close up to 80 civilian nuclear power reactors in the next ten years.

“The total cost of nuclear decommissioning in the UK alone is currently estimated at £60 billion. Analysis by the National Nuclear Laboratory indicates that 20% of the cost of complex decommissioning will be spent on RAS (Robotics and Autonomous Systems) technology.” – RAS UK Strategy.

Designing robots for the nuclear environment is especially challenging because the robots need to be robust, reliable, safe, and also need to withstand a highly radioactive environment.

In 2012, one of the high hazard plants at Sellafield UK used a custom-made remotely operated robot arm to isolate the risk caused by a 60-year-old First Generations Magnox Storage Pond. The arm had to separate and remove redundant pipework in a high radiation area, and then clean and seal a contaminated pond wall. The redundant pipework was then isolated with special sealants, before its remote removal. The robotic arm then scabbled the pond wall and applied a specialist coating to seal the concrete.

Over 80,000 hours of testing in a separate test facility were needed before the team had confidence the robots would perform flawlessly on such a high-risk task.

The Sellafield site has since added a “Riser” (Remote Intelligence Survey Equipment for Radiation) quadcopter developed by Blue Bear Systems Research Ltd and Createc Ltd. It is equipped with a system that allows it to map the inside of a building and radiation levels.

Little underwater vehicles were deployed in the nuclear storage pools. The robots build on existing technology developed for inspection of offshore oil and gas industries prepared by company James Fisher Nuclear. They were initially sent to image the environment but are now used for basic manipulation tasks.

In Marcoule France, Maestro, a tele-operated robot arm, is also being using to decommission a site. The robot can laser-cut 4mx2m metal structures into smaller pieces. Humans could do this faster, but 30 minutes on the site would be lethal.

And with so many robot arms entering the field, KUKA has also developed a suite of robots specifically for nuclear decommissioning.

Given the high-risk nature of nuclear decommissioning, traditional robotic solutions seem to be favoured for now, as they are tested and understood. However, a new wave of innovative solutions is also making its way to the market.

Swiss startup Rovenso, for example, developed ROVéo, a robot whose unique four-wheel design allows it to climb over obstacles up to two-thirds its height. They aim to produce a larger-scale model equipped with a robotic arm for use in dismantling nuclear plants.

OCRobotics in the UK is also working closely with the nuclear industry to build robots that have a better reach than modern industrial robot arms. Their snake arms can be fit with lasers or other tools, and can slither through nearly any structure.

Andy Graham, Technical Director at OC Robotics, said “Robots have the potential to improve everyone’s quality of life. Reducing the need for people to enter hazardous workplaces and confined spaces is central to what we do at OC Robotics, whether the application is in manufacturing industries, inspection and maintenance in the oil and gas sector, or decommissioning nuclear power stations. Users are becoming more and more aware of the potential for robots to enable their workers to work more comfortably and safely from outside these spaces”.

“The Lasersnake 2 project, led by OC Robotics and part-funded by the UK government, has developed and is currently testing a snake-arm robot equipped with a powerful laser capable of cutting effortlessly through 60mm thick steel. The same snake-arm robot can be equipped with a gripper enabling it to lift 25kg at a reach of about 5m, and has also been demonstrated underwater in an environment similar to a nuclear storage pond. With this cutting capability and the ability to snake through small holes and around obstacles, this enables “keyhole surgery” for nuclear decommissioning, leaving containment structures, shielding and cells intact while dismantling the processing equipment inside them”.

Beyond decommissioning, robots are also being used for new energy infrastructure including at ITER, the next generation fusion research device being built in the south of France that will achieve ‘burning plasma’, one of the required steps for fusion power. Remote handling is critical to ITER, says project partner RACE.

“Cutting and welding large diameter stainless steel pipes is a fundamental process for remote maintenance of ITER.” RACE has been developing concepts to replace remotely the beam sources of the neutral beam heating system, high energy ion beams that are used to heat the plasmas to 200M °C.

From their website, “A monorail crane was designed with high lift in a compact space, with an innovative control system for high radiation environments. The beam line transporter operates along the full length of the beam line, like an industrial production line. It has a load capacity of many tonnes, haptic feedback and is fully remotely operated and remotely recoverable.”

“ITER provides some seriously challenging environments for robotics: high radiation dose; elevated temperatures; limited access; large, compact equipment and some very challenging inspection and maintenance procedures to implement fast and reliably, without failure.”

These projects are just part of a worldwide effort to advance the safety of nuclear applications. Japan has also been working on its robot fleet, in response to the Fukushima disaster and the cleanup efforts still ahead. Their robots take different shapes and forms depending on their task, and can blast dry ice, inspect vents, cut pipes, and remove debris.

Competitions like the recent Darpa Robotics Challenge, or the European Robotics League (ERL) Emergency Challenge, have been driving the state of the art forward. ERL Emergency is an outdoor multi-domain robotic competition inspired by the 2011 Fukushima accident. The challenge requires teams of land, underwater and flying robots to work together to survey the scene, collect environmental data, and identify critical hazards.

“Robotics competitions are not just for testing a robot outside a laboratory, or engaging with an audience; they are events that get people together, inspire younger generations and facilitate cooperation and exchange of knowledge between multiple research groups. Robotics competitions provide a perfect platform for challenging, developing and showcasing robotics technologies.” said Marta Palau, ERL Emergency Project Manager

Similar scenarios are also being explored by Juha Röning from the University of Oulu in Finland. He aims to use flying robots to map radiation levels after a nuclear accident thanks to support from the Nordic Nuclear Safety Research Agency. He says “in the future, flying robots could be used to map radiation levels, and then a second team of ground robots could be sent in for the cleanup”.

Overall, robots are helping workers avoid dirty and dangerous areas, while making the job more efficient, and potentially fulfilling. We are only at the initial stages, however, as many of these high-risk tasks require years of testing before new technologies are implemented.

When building a new robot mechanical engineers always ask me: how close can different antennas be to one another? It is not uncommon to try squeezing 5+ antennas on a single robot (GPS, GPS2 for heading, RTK, joystick, e-stop, communications, etc..). So what is the proper response? The real answer is that it depends heavily on the environment. However, below are the rules of thumb I have learned and have been passed down to me for antenna separation. I do want to give a disclaimer some of this has been passed down as rules of thumb and may not be 100% correct.

Here is the rule: The horizontal distance between antennas should be greater than 1/4 of its wavelength (absolute minimum separation), but it should not be located at the exact multiples of its wavelength (maybe avoid the first 3-4 multiples). If multiple frequency antennas are near each other, then use the spacing distance of the lower frequency antenna, or even better, try to satisfy the rule for both frequencies.

Here is a nice wavelength calculator I just found to generate the table above.

* If you are using two GPS antennas to compute heading then this does not apply. These numbers are strictly for RF considerations.

So, for example, if you have a GPS antenna and a WiFi 2.4GHz antenna you would want them to be separated by at least (more is better, within reason) 8.33cm. And you should avoid putting them at exactly 24.43cm or 33.3cm from each other.

This rule seems to work with the low power antennas that we typically use in most robotics applications. I am not sure how this would work with high power transmitters. For higher power transmitting antennas, you might want greater separation. The power drops off pretty quickly with distance (proportional to the square of the distance).

I also try to separate receive and transmit antennas (as a precaution) to try and prevent interference problems.

An extension of the above rule is ground planes. Ground planes are conductive reference planes that are put below antennas to reflect the waves to create a predictable wave pattern and can also help prevent multipath waves (that are bouncing off the ground, water, buildings, etc…). The further an antenna is from the ground (since the ground can act as a ground plane), the more likely having a ground place becomes necessary. In its simplest form, a ground plane is a piece of metal that extends out from the antennas base at least 1/4 wavelength in each direction. Fancy ground planes might just be several metal prongs that stick out. A very common ground plane is the metal roof of a vehicle/robot.

Note: Do not confuse ground planes with RF grounds, signal grounds, DC grounds, etc…

An example of building a ground plane can be with a GPS antenna. It should be mounted in the center of a metal roofed robot/car or on the largest flat metal location. This will minimize the multipath signals from the ground. If there is no flat metal surface to mount the antenna you can create a ground plane by putting a 12.22cm diameter metal sheet directly below the antenna (about 1/2 the signals wavelength, which gives 1/4 wavelength per side).

Note: Some fancy antennas do not require that you add a ground plane. For example, the Novatel GPS antennas do NOT require you to add a ground plane, as described above.

Other things to watch out for are shadowing between the antennas and sensors and the fresnel zone. For more information on the fresnel zone, and why antennas are not actually just line of site, click here.

As robots become integrated into society more widely, we need to be sure they’ll behave well among us. In 1942, science fiction writer Isaac Asimov attempted to lay out a philosophical and moral framework for ensuring robots serve humanity, and guarding against their becoming destructive overlords. This effort resulted in what became known as Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

Today, more than 70 years after Asimov’s first attempt, we have much more experience with robots, including having them drive us around, at least under good conditions. We are approaching the time when robots in our daily lives will be making decisions about how to act. Are Asimov’s Three Laws good enough to guide robot behavior in our society, or should we find ways to improve on them?

Asimov knew they weren’t perfect

Asimov’s “I, Robot” stories explore a number of unintended consequences and downright failures of the Three Laws. In these early stories, the Three Laws are treated as forces with varying strengths, which can have unintended equilibrium behaviors, as in the stories “Runaround” and “Catch that Rabbit,” requiring human ingenuity to resolve. In the story “Liar!,” a telepathic robot, motivated by the First Law, tells humans what they want to hear, failing to foresee the greater harm that will result when the truth comes out. The robopsychologist Susan Calvin forces it to confront this dilemma, destroying its positronic brain.

In “Escape!,” Susan Calvin depresses the strength of the First Law enough to allow a super-intelligent robot to design a faster-than-light interstellar transportation method, even though it causes the deaths (but only temporarily!) of human pilots. In “The Evitable Conflict,” the machines that control the world’s economy interpret the First Law as protecting all humanity, not just individual human beings. This foreshadows Asimov’s later introduction of the “Zeroth Law” that can supersede the original three, potentially allowing a robot to harm a human being for humanity’s greater good.

0. A robot may not harm humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

Robots without ethics

It is reasonable to fear that, without ethical constraints, robots (or other artificial intelligences) could do great harm, perhaps to the entire human race, even by simply following their human-given instructions.

The 1991 movie “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” begins with a well-known science fiction scenario: an AI system called Skynet starts a nuclear war and almost destroys the human race. Deploying Skynet was a rational decision (it had a “perfect operational record”). Skynet “begins to learn at a geometric rate,” scaring its creators, who try to shut it down. Skynet fights back (as a critical defense system, it was undoubtedly programmed to defend itself). Skynet finds an unexpected solution to its problem (through creative problem solving, unconstrained by common sense or morality).

Catastrophe results from giving too much power to artificial intelligence.

Less apocalyptic real-world examples of out-of-control AI have actually taken place. High-speed automated trading systems have responded to unusual conditions in the stock market, creating a positive feedback cycle resulting in a “flash crash.” Fortunately, only billions of dollars were lost, rather than billions of lives, but the computer systems involved have little or no understanding of the difference.

Toward defining robot ethics

While no simple fixed set of mechanical rules will ensure ethical behavior, we can make some observations about properties that a moral and ethical system should have in order to allow autonomous agents (people, robots or whatever) to live well together. Many of these elements are already expected of human beings.

These properties are inspired by a number of sources including
the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Principles of Robotics and neuroscience, social psychology, developmental psychology and philosophy.

The EPSRC takes the position that robots are simply tools, for which humans must take responsibility. At the extreme other end of the spectrum is the concern that super-intelligent, super-powerful robots could suddenly emerge and control the destiny of the human race, for better or for worse. The following list defines a middle ground, describing how future intelligent robots should learn, like children do, how to behave according to the standards of our society.

• If robots (and other AIs) increasingly participate in our society, then they will need to follow moral and ethical rules much as peopledo. Some rules are embodied in laws against killing, stealing, lying and driving on the wrong side of the street. Others are less formal but nonetheless important, like being helpful and cooperative when the opportunity arises.
• Some situations require a quick moral judgment and response – for example, a child running into traffic or the opportunity to pocket a dropped wallet. Simple rules can provide automatic real-time response, when there is no time for deliberation and a cost-benefit analysis. (Someday, robots may reach human-level intelligence while operating far faster than human thought, allowing careful deliberation in milliseconds, but that day has not yet arrived, and it may be far in the future.)
• A quick response may not always be the right one, which may be recognized after feedback from others or careful personal reflection. Therefore, the agent must be able to learn from experience including feedback and deliberation, resulting in new and improved rules.
• To benefit from feedback from others in society, the robot must be able to explain and justify its decisions about ethical actions, and to understand explanations and critiques from others.
• Given that an artificial intelligence learns from its mistakes, we must be very cautious about how much power we give it. We humans must ensure that it has experienced a sufficient range of situations and has satisfied us with its responses, earning our trust. The critical mistake humans made with Skynet in “Terminator 2” was handing over control of the nuclear arsenal.
• Trust, and trustworthiness, must be earned by the robot. Trust is earned slowly, through extensive experience, but can be lost quickly, through a single bad decision.
• As with a human, any time a robot acts, the selection of that action in that situation sends a signal to the rest of society about how that agent makes decisions, and therefore how trustworthy it is.
• A robot mind is software, which can be backed up, restored if the original is damaged or destroyed, or duplicated in another body. If robots of a certain kind are exact duplicates of each other, then trust may not need to be earned individually. Trust earned (or lost) by one robot could be shared by other robots of the same kind.
• Behaving morally and well toward others is not the same as taking moral responsibility. Only competent adult humans can take full responsibility for their actions, but we expect children, animals, corporations, and robots to behave well to the best of their abilities.

Human morality and ethics are learned by children over years, but the nature of morality and ethics itself varies with the society and evolves over decades and centuries. No simple fixed set of moral rules, whether Asimov’s Three Laws or the Ten Commandments, can be adequate guidance for humans or robots in our complex society and world. Through observations like the ones above, we are beginning to understand the complex feedback-driven learning process that leads to morality.

Disclosure statement

Benjamin Kuipers is primarily a professor. He spends a small amount of time as an advisor for Vicarious.com, for which he receives a small amount of money and stock. He hopes that they (like other readers) will benefit intellectually from this article, but recognizes that they are unlikely to benefit financially. He has received a number of research grants from government and industry, none directly on this topic. He is a member of several professional organizations, including the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). He has also taken public positions and signed statements opposing the use of lethal force by robots, and describing his own decision not to take military funding for his research.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The times are changing! What seemed like science fiction a few years ago is now on the front page of the news. Augmented reality, wearables, virtual assistants, robots, and other smart devices are beginning to permeate our daily lives. Amazon Prime Air, the e-commerce giant’s new retail drone delivery system, is ready to launch but is waiting on regulatory approval from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration. If you have not seen the latest video of their system in action then it’s an eye-opener on how far automation has come.

Turning from the skies to the road, robotics is set to revolutionize how we drive. Self-driving features are already available in certain models like Tesla, with fully automated vehicles ready for purchase in the next few years. In fact, some forecasts estimate that 10 million of these cars will be on the road by 2020. Who would have thought?

There’s no other way to state it: the business impacts of automation in the next decade will be profound. Market intelligence firm Tractica estimates that the global robotics market will grow from $28.3 billion worldwide in 2015 to $151.7 billion by 2020. What’s especially significant is that this market share will encompass most non-industrial robots, including segments like consumer, enterprise, medical, military, UAVs, and autonomous vehicles.

But even more impactful than CAGR numbers and market projections around robotics, are the implications on jobs. People are growing increasingly concerned about the ways automation will change their work and careers, and rightfully so. Gartner Research, one of the world’s leading voices in technology trends, has declared that the smart machine era will be the most disruptive in the history of IT. And even now, the results of a 2013 Gartner survey show that sixty percent of CEOs believe that the emergence of smart machines capable of taking away millions of middle-class jobs within the next 15 years is a “futuristic fantasy.” Be that as it may, this new era of robotics is going to dramatically change the nature of work – along with the roles and functions of business.

And this is where things get really interesting!

According to Remy Glaisner, CEO and founder of Myria Research, the future robotics revolution will significantly impact the C-Suite of business. As Robotics and Intelligence Operational Systems (RIOS) technologies scale up, companies will require more structured and strategic approaches to managing the implications of this global transformation on their verticals.

Enter the CRO or Chief Robotics Officer. In a whitepaper dedicated to this topic, Glaisner spells out the role and function of a CRO:

The Chief Robotics Officer plans, directs, organizes and manages all activities of the RIOS (Robotics & Intelligent Operational Systems) department to ensure the effective, secure and efficient use of all RIOS solutions and applications. These efforts must be accomplished in partnership with other business units (IT, Finance, Engineering, R&D, Operations, HR, Business Development, et al) and increasingly with senior management and the Board of Directors. CROs must have significant vertical industry knowledge so that they can better consider the evolution of RIOS solutions in existing and future functions and processes.

The anticipated effects of this new enterprise transformation in business and technology will be fascinating, if not a bit staggering, and suggest that we truly are living in unprecedented times.

Back in January of 2007, Bill Gates famously declared robots as the “next big thing” and placed the industry at the same place as the PC market in the late 1970s. Perhaps this prediction was a bit premature at the time since breakthroughs in mobile, cloud, and Big Data were just beginning. But now a decade later, things are much different; technology has reached an inflection point. Everything about the market suggests that it’s finally happening – that robots really are about to go mainstream.

So the question now becomes simple: How will you adapt and adjust to the global disruption caused by robots and automation in the next 5-10 years? What will your company do about this sea change? Now is the time to plan and pivot in order to avoid falling behind this technology curve. As Glaisner predicts, within the next decade “over 60% of manufacturing, logistics & supply chain, healthcare, agro-farming, and oil/gas/mining companies part of the Global 1000 will include a Chief Robotic Officer (CRO) and associated staff as part of their organization.”

The age of robotics is truly upon us. Will you be ready?

Can our emotional fear of machines, and the call for premature regulation, be mollified by a temporary increase in liability which takes the place of specific regulations to keep people safe?

So far, most new automotive technologies, especially ones that control driving such as autopilot, forward collision avoidance, lane keeping, anti-lock brakes, stability control and adaptive cruise control, have not been covered by specific regulations. They were developed and released by vendors, sold for years or decades, and when (and if) they got specific regulations, those often took the form of ‘electronic stability control is so useful, we will now require all cars to have it.’ It has worked reasonably well.

Just because there are no specific regulations for these things does not mean they are unregulated. There are rafts of general safety regulations on cars, and the biggest deterrent to the deployment of unsafe technology is the liability system and the huge cost of recalls. As a result, while there are exceptions, most carmakers are safety paranoid to a rather high degree — just because of liability. At the same time, they are free to experiment and develop new technologies. Specific regulations tend to come into play when it becomes clear that automakers are doing something dangerous, and that they won’t stop doing it because of the liability. In part, this is because today it’s easy to assign blame for accidents to drivers, and often harder to assign it to a manufacturing defect, or to a deliberate design decision.

The exceptions, like GM’s famous ignition switch problem, arise because of the huge cost of doing a recall for a defect that will have rare effects. Companies are afraid of having to replace parts in every car they made when they know they will fail — even fatally — just one time in a million. The one person killed or injured does not feel like one in a million, and our system pushes the car maker (and thus all customers) to bear that cost.

I wrote an article on regulating Robocar Safety in 2015, and this post expands on some of those ideas.

Robocars change some of this equation. First of all, in robocar accidents, the car manufacturer (or driving system) is going to be liable by default. Nobody else really makes sense, and indeed, some companies, like Volvo, Mercedes and Google, have already accepted that. Some governments are talking about declaring it, but frankly, it could never be any other way. Making the owner or passenger liable is technically possible, however, do you want to ride in an Uber where you have to pay if it crashes for reasons having nothing to do with you?

Due to this, the fear of liability is even stronger for robocar makers.

Robocar failures will almost all be software issues. As such, once fixed, they can be deployed for free. The logistics of the “recall” will cost nothing. GM would have no reason not to send out a software update once they found a problem; they would be crazy not to. Instead, there is the difficult question of what to do between the time a problem is discovered and a fix has been declared safe to deploy. Shutting down the whole fleet is not a workable answer, it would kill deployment of robocars if several times a year all robocars stopped working.

In spite of all this history and the prospect of it getting even better, a number of people — including government regulators — think they need to start writing robocar safety regulations today, rather than 10-20 years after the cars are on the road as has been traditional. This desire is well-meaning and understandable, but it’s actually dangerous because it will significantly slow down the deployment of safety technologies that will save many lives by making the world’s 2nd most dangerous consumer product safer. Regulations and standards generally codify existing practice and conventional wisdom. They are bad ideas with emerging technologies, where developers are coming up with entirely new ways to do things and entirely new ways to be safe. The last thing you want is to tell vendors is that they must apply old-world thinking when they can come up with much better ways of thinking.

Sadly, there are groups who love old-world thinking, namely the established players. Big companies start out hating regulation but eventually come to crave it, because it mandates the way they do things and understand the law. This stops upstarts from figuring out how to do it better, and established players love that.

The fear of machines is strong, so it may be that something else needs to be done to satisfy all desires: The desire of the public to feel the government is working to keep these scary new robots from being unsafe and the need for unconstrained innovation. I don’t desire to satisfy the need to protect old ways of doing things.

One option would be to propose a temporary rule: For accidents caused by robocar systems, the liability, if the system should be at fault, shall be double that if a similar accident were caused by driver error. (Punitive damages for willful negligence would not be governed by this rule.) We know the cost of accidents caused by humans. We all pay for it with our insurance premiums, at an average rate of about 6 cents/mile. This would double that cost, pushing vendors to make their systems at least twice as safe as the average human in order to match that insurance cost.

Victims of these accidents (including hapless passengers in the vehicles) would now be doubly compensated. Sometimes no compensation is enough, but for better or worse, we have set on values and doubling them is not a bad deal. Creators of systems would have a higher bar to reach, and the public would know it.

While doubling the cost is a high price, I think most system creators would accept this as part of the risk of a bold new venture. You expect those to cost extra as they get started. You invest to make the system sustainable.

Over time, the liability multiplier would reduce, and the rule would go away entirely. I suspect that might take about a decade. The multiplier does present a barrier to entry for small players and we don’t want something like that around for too long.

To make robots more cooperative and have them perform tasks in close proximity to humans, they must be softer and safer. A new actuator developed by a team led by George Whitesides, Ph.D. — who is a Core Faculty member at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and the Woodford L. and Ann A. Flowers University Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology in Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) – generates movements similar to those of skeletal muscles using vacuum power to automate soft, rubber beams.

Like real muscles, the actuators are soft, shock absorbing, and pose no danger to their environment or humans working collaboratively alongside them or the potential future robots equipped with them. The work was reported June 1 in the journal Advanced Materials Technologies.

“Functionally, our actuator models the human bicep muscle,” said Whitesides, who is also a Director of the Kavli Institute for Bionano Science and Technology at Harvard University. “There are other soft actuators that have been developed, but this one is most similar to muscle in terms of response time and efficiency.”

Whitesides’ team took an unconventional approach to its design, relying on vacuum to decrease the actuator’s volume and cause it to buckle. While conventional engineering would consider bucking to be a mechanical instability and a point of failure, in this case the team leveraged this instability to develop VAMPs (vacuum-actuated muscle-inspired pneumatic structures). Whereas previous soft actuators rely on pressurized systems that expand in volume, VAMPs mimic true muscle because they contract, which makes them an attractive candidate for use in confined spaces and for a variety of purposes.

The actuator — comprising soft rubber or ‘elastomeric’ beams — is filled with small, hollow chambers of air like a honeycomb. By applying vacuum the chambers collapse and the entire actuator contracts, generating movement. The internal honeycomb structure can be custom tailored to enable linear, twisting, bending, or combinatorial motions.

“Having VAMPs built of soft elastomers would make it much easier to automate a robot that could be used to help humans in the service industry,” said the study’s first author Dian Yang, who was a graduate researcher pursuing his Ph.D. in Engineering Sciences at Harvard during the time of the work, and is now a Postdoctoral Researcher.

The team envisions that robots built with VAMPs could be used to assist the disabled or elderly, to serve food, deliver goods, and perform other tasks related to the service industry. What’s more, soft robots could make industrial production lines safer, faster, and quality control easier to manage by enabling human operators to work in the same space.

Although a complex control system has not yet been developed for VAMPs, this type of actuation is easy to control due to its simplicity: when vacuum is applied, VAMPs will contract. They could be used as part of a tethered or untethered system depending on environmental or performance needs. Additionally, VAMPs are designed to prevent failure — even when damaged with a 2mm hole, the team showed that VAMPs will still function. In the event that major damage is caused to the system, it fails safely.

“It can’t explode, so it’s intrinsically safe,” said Whitesides.

Whereas other actuators powered by electricity or combustion could cause damage to humans or their surroundings, loss of vacuum pressure in VAMPs would simply render the actuator motionless.

“These self-healing, bioinspired actuators bring us another step closer to being able to build entirely soft-bodied robots, which may help to bridge the gap between humans and robots and open entirely new application areas in medicine and beyond,” said Wyss Founding Director Donald Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., who is also the Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology at Harvard Medical School and the Boston Children’s Hospital Vascular Biology Program, as well as Professor of Bioengineering at Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS).

In addition to Whitesides and Yang, other authors on the study included: Mohit S. Verma, Ph.D.,(FAS); Ju-Hee So, Ph.D., (FAS); Bobak Mosadegh, Ph.D., (Wyss, FAS); Christoph Keplinger, Ph.D., (FAS); Benjamin Lee (FAS); Fatemeh Khashai (FAS); Elton Lossner (FAS), and Zhigang Suo, Ph.D., (SEAS, Kavli Institute).

UPDATE: June 1, 2016: Forbes wrote today that Toyota is in discussions with Google not only for Boston Dynamics but also for Schaft, the Japanese startup that won the DARPA Robotics Challenge — a two-company sale.

May was another big month for robotics – 13 companies were funded to the tune of $111 million. Four companies were acquired with 2 of the 4 reporting selling prices totaling $422 million. And that’s without the $5.2 billion bid for Kuka by Chinese Midea, or the pending sale of Google’s Boston Dynamics.

The financial pages are lighting up over recent stories about these big-money sales. First there was the $5.2 billion offer by Midea Group, a Chinese appliance manufacturer, for Kuka AG, the Augsburg, Germany-based manufacturer of robots and automated systems. Kuka is one of the Big Four of robot manufacturers. On the day of the bid, Kuka’s stock rose from $84/share to $110 where it’s stayed since.

Then came the announcement by Tech Insider that the Toyota Research Institute is in the final phase of negotiations to acquire Google’s robotics company Boston Dynamics, of Big Dog fame. Boston Dynamics spun out of the MIT Leg Lab in 1992 and worked on various military and DARPA funded research projects until Google’s Andy Rubin acquired the company along with 8 other robotics companies. Boston Dynamics never quite adapted to Google and Google’s push to build a consumer robot, hence their being put on the block in March, 2016.

From Forbes, news of a new fund focusing on robotics: Chrysalix VC, a Vancouver, BC venture capital group focused on alternative energy, has partnered with Dutch robotics commercialization center RoboValley to create a new VC fund focused on robotics. The vehicle is targeting E100 million.

Below are the fundings, acquisitions, IPOs and failures that actually happened in May:

FUNDINGS

1. Locus Robotics raised $8 million in a Series A funding from existing seed investors. The funds will be used to expand product development and general marketing of Locus’ novel material handling robots. Locus is a Massachusetts-based company founded specifically in answer to Kiva Systems’ robots being taken in house by Amazon and no longer available to non-Amazon clients. Locus’ founder, Bruce Welty is a Kiva-using distribution center owner, who, as a consequence of Amazon’s actions, had no recourse other than to build a company that uses a fleet of robots integrated into current warehouse management systems to provide robotic platforms to carry picked items to a conveyor or to the packing station thereby reducing human walking distances and improving overall picking efficiencies.
2. Gamaya, a Swiss aerial analytics spin-off from the Swiss EPFL, raised $3.2 million in a Series A funding. Funds will be used to develop their new 40 bands of light hyperspectral imaging sensor and analytics software platform (traditional multi-spectral sensors have 4 bands).
3. Hortau is a California soil moisture monitoring company which raised $10 million to grow and broaden their new system of networked field sensors, weather stations and control units allowing growers to remotely open and close valves and fire up engines for irrigation from cloud-based management software.
4. nuTonomy is a Cambridge-based start-up that raised $16 million in a Series A round of funding from a group of Singapore and US VCs. This is in addition to the $3.6 million raised in January which included funds from Ford Chairman Bill Ford. nuTonomy is planning to launch a fleet of autonomous taxis in Singapore by 2019 and begin testing later this year. NuTonomy is using retrofitted Mitsubishi electric cars and plans to add Renault EVs later this year.
5. Mazor Surgical Technologies, an Israeli company, has sold $11.9 million of their stock, 4% of their shares, to Medtronic, a global medical technology, services, and solutions provider, with a performance agreement to sell another 6% of Mazor shares for up to $20 million. An additional clause of the agreement kicks in if performance milestones are met whereby Mazor can issue an addition 5% of new shares for an additional $20M from Medtronic. Details of the deal are here.
6. Dedrone GmbH, a German startup whose DroneTracker drone detection platform, raised $10 million in a Series A funding from a series of EU and Silicon Valley VCs. In just 15 months, Dedrone has grown to more than 40 employees and 100 distributors in over 50 countries.
7. Astrobotic Technology, the CMU spin-off company working on delivering payloads to the moon, raised $2.5 million from Space Angels Network. Astrobotic has 10 projects with governments, companies, universities, non-profits, NASA, and individuals for their first moon mission.
8. MegaBots, an Oakland, CA entertainment startup, has raised $2.4 million in seed funding to bring robot-fighting to a venue near you. MegaBots plans to use the seed funding to build their robot for the fight against the Japanese team they’ve challenged; and to secure sponsorships, perhaps even a TV contract for a program that tracks the team from building the robots to competing.
9. Zipline International, a San Francisco startup, raised $800k from UPS and $18 million from Yahoo founder Jerry Yang, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and others to develop their small robot airplane designed to carry vaccines, medicine and blood to remote areas where health workers place text orders for what they need.
10. Cyberhawk Innovations raised $2.9 million in financing to enable UK-based Cyberhawk to expand its commercial development of the drone-captured data inspection market for the oil & gas industry and infrastructure markets.
11. Eonite Perception, a Silicon Valley vision systems startup, raised $5.25 million in a seed round from multiple Silicon Valley VCs. Eonite is building a 3D mapping and tracking system for the virtual reality marketplace using low latency dense depth sensors.
12. eyeSight Technologies, an Israeli vision systems startup, received $20 million from a Chinese VC group, for its vision system of sensing, gesture recognition and user awareness to be embedded into consumer products.
13. AIO Robotics is a Los Angeles startup developing an all-in-one 3D printer scanner with an onboard CAD and modeling system. AIO received an undisclosed amount of seed funding.

ACQUISITIONS

1. 5D Robotics, a San Diego area integrator of unmanned and mobile robotics using ultra-wide band (5D) communications, acquired Aerial MOB, a drone aerial cinematography startup, for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition has led to the formation of the 5D Aerial division which will provide 3D mapping, photogrammetry, thermal and multi-spectral imagery data to vertical markets including oil and gas, utilities and construction.
2. Dematic, a global supplier of AGVs and materials handling technology, acquired (in March) NDC Automation, an AGV manufacturer in Australia and New Zealand, for an undisclosed amount.
3. Voith GmbH, a family-owned German group of industrial and engineering companies, has sold 80% of its industrial services unit to buyout group Triton Partners for $342 million to free up capital for planned investments. Voith has a 25.1% share of Kuka’s stock which, if the $5.2 bn Midea offer passes, will be worth close to 40% more than the share value the day before the offer. According to Forbes, Voith ranks 200th in global family-owned businesses with revenue of $7.5 bn and 43,000 employees.
4. ChemChina and a group of other investors including Chinese state funds, acquired Germany’s KraussMaffei Automation, an industrial robot integrator and plastics, carbon fiber, and rubber processor, for $1 billion – in January.

IPOs

• None. Private placements and increased investment from hedge funds, mutual funds and via corporate acquisitions appears to have dried up the robotics IPO pipeline.
• But Moley Robotics, a UK startup developing a cooking robot, is using the new equity crowd funding rules that passed the FCC last year to offer 2% of their shares via the Seedrs crowd funding site. Details will be released soon to subscribers to the Moley and Seedrs websites.

FAILURES

• RoboDynamics, a SoCal startup with a stylish mobile telepresence robot named Luna, has gone out of business.

Felix von Drigalski, leader for Team NAIST, tells us about their robot design, unforeseen challenges, and working together to find a solution to prepare for the Airbus Shopfloor Challenge at ICRA in Stockholm, Sweden.

How did you come up with initial robot concept?

When we started talking about the contest back in January, I had the basic idea in my head fairly quickly: something that would make contact with the plate to stabilize the drill. The main inspiration was taken from the intuitive experience that it is hard to hold a position with an outstretched arm. Humans solve this problem by resting their hand when performing precision tasks such as writing, so we carried this idea over to the robot.

In mechanical terms, resting your hand reduces the amount of load-bearing structure between your tool and the workpiece. The kinematic chain is shorter and the flow of forces more direct. As such, there are fewer things that can vibrate and the stiffness is higher. And we knew that high stiffness would be key to drilling quality holes.

Further, to keep with the analogy, resting your hand while writing almost removes your arm from the process. You write with your hand, and not your arm. Similarly, in our solution the function “Drilling” would be fulfilled by the end effector, and the function “Positioning” only by the arm. If there is one thing that remains firmly hammered into my head after my engineering classes, it’s separation of function.

With our design goal formulated, we soon converged on the three-pronged frame with a separate pneumatic actuator. Instead of having all the motors in the robot arm actively compensate for the forces from the drilling, the end effector would transmit them right back to the workpiece and the arm would do nothing but move the end effector and hold it in place.

In our final design, the robot applies force during the drilling process to keep the end effector stationary. Ideally though, the robot would only be responsible for positioning. We were planning to take the next step to transfer the load off the robot and onto the end effector and the workpiece, but sadly, could not get the necessary parts to Japan in time, and simplified the idea in late April.

Everything else was mostly decided in order of simplicity. We already had the robot arm and small powerful cameras in the lab, so it was clear we would use that. A lot of the code originally comes from our research projects, that we tried to stay close to (for example, the vision system is repurposed eye-tracking code).

As an anecdote: another of the original ideas was to fine-tune the position of the drill by using the end effector. We were basically thinking of using a whole robot hand to adjust the position of the drill. However, unless the robot cannot ensure the positioning on its own, there is no advantage to adding that functionality to the end effector, so we dropped it in favor of the fixed rods with springs (rubber) on the feet. Just another lesson to be learned from Separation Of Function, the benevolent goddess of good design!

What sort of prep work went into the project prior to the competition?

After fleshing out the main idea between January and March, we decided to go for it and write a solid application. We spent a long weekend 3D printing a proof-of-concept, cutting together this flashy video and writing our application in research paper format — since that’s what grad students do. When we got the OK from Airbus to compete on March 27, I doubt we realized how much time would be spent on the project until we started our weekly meetings with our Airbus contact.

It turned out that our biggest problem was logistics. I would estimate a good 40% of our time was spent calling the airport, customs, shipping companies, university offices, and insurance companies for quotes and details about how to get our robot from Japan to Sweden. Shipping would take a whole week, a visiting PhD student needed the robot for his experiments, and with us having to work with the robot before the contest, we had to think creatively and find a workable solution fast.

The biggest issue was that our robot weighed 31 kg on its own, and no single piece of luggage can be over 32 kg in European airports. This left us just 1 kg to package the robot safely. In the end, we made a custom box by cutting a robot-shaped hole into boards of styrofoam with a soldering iron and gluing them together. We even sewed a bag for it.

This is a good moment to remember that this robot arm is easily worth $80,000!

With all the logistics issues, long delivery times, and Golden Week (a string of closely-packed public holidays in Japan) delaying them even more, the time we had to prepare the solution got shorter and shorter. We had parts arriving until the last week before we left, so we had to put everything together in a hurry. We ran the first full trial before the competition on Saturday morning, the day of our flight! It was ridiculously last minute.

Thinking of prep work: we needed our robot at different heights when the plate was inclined, but I designed our stand for the wrong height! I spent almost two months under the completely unfounded misconception that the plate would be inclined by 15° instead of 30°. This is why our stand looks completely different each round and why we had a new mechanical design problem to solve each time. As if that weren’t enough, we misread the distance between the rails and were off by 50 mm. This is why the stand always looks like a mess, on top of everything else!

What was it like competing with your robot? What have you learned in the manic process? Anything you’d do differently?

When we arrived with our limited preparation on Monday to set up the robot and saw the other teams, we didn’t have high hopes. Everyone looked so well-prepared and primed to win. At that point, we just wanted to deliver something solid and keep our heads held high. We freaked out at the thought of not making it through the demo round, so we dragged the robot back to the hotel and stayed up all night to make sure we would get into the contest.

After passing the demo round (with a bug that inverted our hole pattern; look closely at the interview video), we were so happy that we were actually drilling real holes in a real plate that we just kept drilling all through the first round, almost blind. We didn’t have a good way to recalibrate on the fly that day, so we had to accept that our positioning would be off and hope for the best. In fact, our holes were so far off the mark that two thirds of them gave us negative points and we got a terrible score. However, one of the judges said that the calibration was basically the only problem we had — the holes themselves were “absolutely perfect”. That made us perk up.

We had a look at the other plates. Everyone was having more problems with the drilling than we thought. Most were applying force on the drill by moving their robot arm, and the quality of their holes were suffering because of it. Our drilling process was by far the fastest and cleanest. My design worked. It really was only a problem of calibration and our code. That was the moment we gained hope and decided to take the robot back to the hotel for another grueling night of work.

The next day, we paid for our sleep deprivation: we spent the first half hour of round 2 with the robot not moving at all, until we figured out that we never put all the things we fixed during the night into our live code. After we finally did and finished the round with barely half the plate’s holes drilled, we thought we may well have missed our shot at entering the final. However, we absolutely wanted to prove to ourselves that we could at least properly drill a whole set and take a picture of it home, so we were hoping for a chance to maybe perform on a plate separately from the contest, if it came to that. When all the team leaders were informed that the last round would be between 4 teams and we were in it, I was the first to rush out of the room and prepare (and accidentally spill the news to the neighboring and positively amazing team from India, who were the only ones to drop out that round).

In the end, we had more arcane bugs to sort out during the final and we didn’t get to drill through the entire hole pattern like we hoped. The first 10 minutes we weren’t drilling anything at all, and it was only during the last 20 minutes that we really were on point and drilling at (almost) full speed. It was also the first time I had the time to stand back and talk to spectators about what we were doing. Which is when our drill bit got sucked into the clamp with 3 minutes on the clock. Ah well, things never go as planned. We still managed to drill three more holes, although sadly not the damaged one the bit got stuck on. All of that stress fell off our shoulders when the round was called, and we could turn our attention to celebrate everything and everyone who powered through along with us.

All in all, the competition was a blast! Constant adrenaline in an incredible atmosphere. Probably the best thing was that there was not a shred of negativity anywhere, all of the teams were supportive of everyone’s efforts. Team Sirado even helped us troubleshoot KUKA software we had been struggling to install on our virtual machine the day before the competition! Everyone was simply great! Airbus made an excellent choice putting the celebration right after the final round instead of the awards. That allowed us to celebrate everyone’s efforts rather than our scores.

It was also an incomparable team-building experience. Although we had some stressful moments when our robot did not run in the second round, no one cracked or became emotional or accusatory — everyone stayed laser sharp and focused on solving the problem. We could not have done it without a heavy dose of team spirit.

In all that chaos, we learned our lessons about project planning and software development. Probably the worst mistake we made was working on the same code on multiple machines, with multiple sleep deprived people during the night, then trying to merge all those changes. To illustrate: There is a comment in our code history from 6 AM on Tuesday morning that just reads “only a miracle can save us” (the first day of the contest!!), and our live branch is called “last-minute-firebrigade”. You can imagine the state we were in!

What advice would you give to any future robotic challengers out there?

I relay these from the team:

• Do not underestimate logistics!
• Don’t rely exclusively on software, robust hardware design is key!
• Just try and have fun, don’t think it’s impossible without even trying!

And I would stress how much trying is worth it, no matter what. Winning is great and all, but it was just after the final, after close to 60 hours with almost no sleep and all of our holes drilled, that we felt the most relieved and accomplished. We didn’t spend a second thinking about scores or placements — we were just proud that we made something that worked, and we didn’t give up. Thinking up and developing your own solution, working together and seeing it come to life is one of the most satisfying and fulfilling experiences. Making your performance and efforts your motivation, rather than winning, will keep you going when things look dire.

Any closing words?

After the event, we kept getting amused comments about not having Japanese members in our Japanese team. It’s true we come from Germany, Mexico, Belgium and Ecuador, but studying and living in Japan has changed all of us in ways that we sometimes don’t even realize, as anyone who has left home to go abroad understands. As such, we have always said that our team consists of 4 people with 5 nationalities — just no one with a Japanese passport.

So, for the big closing words: If you’re an aspiring youngster reading this and you want to see the world, or if you’re in your undergrad and thinking of going on an exchange, or if you dream of living somewhere else — go for it! Every journey starts with the first step, and it is worth it.

Like this story? Read more about the Airbus Shopfloor Challenge here.

We have the first report of a real Tesla autopilot crash. To be fair to Tesla, their owner warnings specify very clearly that the autopilot could crash in just this situation. In the video, there is a stalled car partly in the lane and the car in front swerves around, revealing little time for the driver, or the autopilot, to react.

The deeper issue is the way that the improving quality of the Tesla Autopilot and systems like it are lulling drivers into a false sense of security. I have heard reports of people who now are trusting the Tesla system enough to work while being driven, and indeed, most people will get away with this. And as people get away with it more and more, we will see people driving like this driver, not really prepared to react. This is one of the reasons Google decided not to make a system which requires driver takeover ever. As the system gets better, does it get more dangerous?

Declaration of Amsterdam

Last month, various EU officials gathered in Amsterdam and signed the Declaration of Amsterdam that outlines a plan for normalizing EU laws around self-driving cars. The meeting included a truck automation demo in the Netherlands and a self-drive transit shuttle demonstration. It’s a fairly bland document, more an expression of the times, and it sadly spends a lot of time on the red herring of “connected” vehicles and V2V/V2I, which governments seem to love, and self-driving car developers care very little about.

Let’s hope the regulatory touch is light. The reality is that even the people building these vehicles can’t make firm pronouncements on their final form or development needs, so governments certainly can’t do that, we must be careful that attempts to “help” but may hinder. We already have a number of examples of that happening in draft and real regulations and we’ve barely gotten started. For now, government statements should be limited to, “let’s get out of the way until people start figuring out how this will actually work, unless we see somebody doing something demonstrably dangerous that can’t be stopped except through regulations.” Sadly, too many regulators and commentators imagine it should be, “let’s use our limited current knowledge to imagine what might go wrong and write rules to ban it before it happens.”

Speech from the throne

It was a sign of the times when her Majesty the Queen, giving the speech from the throne in the UK parliament, laid out elements of self-driving car plans. The Queen drove jeeps during her military days, and so routinely drives herself at her country estates, otherwise she would be among the set of people most use to never driving.

The UK has 4 pilot projects in planning. Milton Keynes is underway, and later this year, a variation of the Ultra PRT pods in use at T5 of Heathrow airport — they run on private tracks to the car park — will go out on the open road in Greenwich. They are already signing up people for rides.

 Car companies thinking differently

In deciding which car companies are going to survive the transition to robocars, one thing I look for is willingness to stop thinking like a traditional car company which makes cars and sells them to customers. Most car company CEOs have said they don’t plan to keep thinking that way, but what they do is more important than what they say.

In the past we’ve seen Daimler say it will use their Car2Go service (with the name Car2Come probably likely to cause giggles in the USA) as a way to sell rides rather than cars. BMW has said the same about DriveNow. (And now GM has said this about its partnership with Lyft.) Daimler is also promoting their moovel app which tries to combine different forms of mobility, and BMW is re-launching DriveNow in Seattle as ReachNow which adds peer-to-peer carsharing and other modes of transportation to the mix.

Of course, these are tiny efforts for these big companies, but it scores big over companies still thinking only in the old ways. I’m looking at you, most car companies.

BWM also announced the iNext electric flagship sedan will offer self-drive in 2021.

Florida tells cities — think about self-driving

In 2010, I put out a call for urban planners to starting thinking about robocars and mostly it fell on deaf ears. Times are changing and this month Florida told its cities they should include consideration of this and other future transit in their updated long-term plans.

It is a tough call. Nobody’s predictions about the future here are good enough to make a firm plan and commit billions of dollars. At the same time, we are starting to learn that certain plans — especially status quo plans — are almost certainly seriously wrong. We may not have a perfect idea on what to spend city money on, but we can start to learn what not to do.

Fortunately, transportation is becoming a digital technology, which means you can change your plans much faster than physical infrastructure plans. Robocars like bare pavement, as stupid as can be. The ‘smarts’ go in the cars, not in the roads or the cities. So if you change your mind, you just have to reprogram your cars, not rebuild your city. Which is good, because you can’t rebuild your city.

China gets in the game

China is the world’s number one car manufacturing company. A lot of people don’t know that. Last year I visited the Shanghai auto show and it was a strange trip to walk through giant hall after giant hall of automakers you have never heard of before.

Self-driving car action in China has been slow. Right now everybody has a focus on just making regular cars for the rising middle class that is buying them as fast as they can. Wealthier Chinese usually buy foreign brands, although those cars are often made in China even though they have a VW or Buick nameplate.

Baidu has been working on cars for a couple of years and promises a pilot project in 2018. Recently, Chinese automaker Changan did an autopilot demo driving 1,000 miles. China has had its own annual academic version of the Darpa Grand Challenge for several years as well.

There is a strong chance that companies like Uber, Apple or Google, when they want to get their cars made, could go to Chinese manufacturers. Now that they’re getting practice at making their own technology. China is also a major source of electric vehicles, with future robotaxis likely to be small and electric. The manufacturers and suppliers with the most experience at making such vehicles are likely to be the winners.

Apple buys into Didi

Speaking of which, Apple just put a billion dollar investment into Didi. You may not know Didi, but it is the dominant phone-hail service in China with a much larger market share than Uber. It’s one of the few places Uber has lost in the market, but of course it’s China. As the auto industry moves to being about selling rides rather than cars, it’s an interesting move by Apple, which rarely does outside investments like this.

I have been part of many software teams where we desired to do code reviews. In most of those cases the code reviews did not take place, or were pointless and a waste of time. So the question is: how do you effectively conduct peer reviews in order to improve the quality of your systems?

I found this book, Peer Reviews in Software: A Practical Guide by Karl E. Wiegers. This book was recommended to me, and having “practical guide” in the title caught my attention —  I have reviewed other books that claimed practical, but were not. Hopefully this book will help provide me (and you) with tools for conducting valuable code reviews.

As a human, I will make mistakes when programming; finding my mistakes is often difficult since I am very close to my work. How many times have you spent hours trying to find a bug in your code only to realize you had a bad semi-colon or parentheses? Another person who has not worked on the code for hours might have been able to spot the problem right away. When I first started programming it could be embarrassing to have somebody review my code and point out the problems. However now that I am more senior, I do not view it as an embarrassment, but as a learning opportunity since everybody has a different set of experiences that influences their code. I would encourage other developers to view it as a learning experience and not be bashful about reviews. Remember the person is critiquing the work, not you; this is how to become a better developer.

According to Wiegers, there are many types of peer reviews including: inspections, team reviews, walkthroughs, pair programming, peer desk check passaround, and finally ad hoc review.

This book is divided into three sections:

1. Cultural & social aspects
2. Different types of reviews (with a strong focus on inspection)
3. How to implement review process within your projects

Cultural & Social Aspects

In this first section of the book, the author makes the argument that quality work is not free and that “paying” the extra cost of peer reviews is a good investment in the future. By having peer review you can reduce failures before the product is released out into the world and any applicable reworks. Shifting the defect detection to the early stages of a product has huge potential payoff, due to high costs of fixing defects found late in the release cycle, or after release. The space shuttle program found the relative cost for fixing a defect is: $1, if found during initial inspection; $13, if found during a system test; and $92, to fix after delivery! In the book, the author documents various companies who saved substantial amounts of time and money all by having code inspection programs.

One thing I like is the reference to IEEE 1999, which talks about other items that are good to review. People don’t think about it but other things, such as marketing brochures, requirement specifications, user guides, test plans and many other things, are good candidates for peer review.

I have seen many project teams try to do error tracking and/or code reviews but fail, due to team culture. I saw one case where peer review actually worked: when a dedicated person’s only job was to manage reliability in the project. He was great at hounding people to track bugs and review code. This book discussed how team culture must be developed to value “quality”. If you are the type of person that does not want to waste time reviewing another’s code, you must remember you will want the other person to “waste” time looking at your code. In this manner, we must all learn to scratch each other’s back. There are also two traps to watch out for:

1. Becoming lazy and submitting bad code for review since somebody else will find/fix it, or
2. Trying to perfect your code before sharing it, in order to protect your ego from getting bruised, and to only show your best work.

We also cannot forget managers. Managers need to value quality and provide time and resources for employees to develop good practices. Managers need to understand the point of these exercises are to find flaws and people should not be punished based on those flaws. I have often seen managers not putting time in the schedule for good code reviews.

Types of reviews

Before discussing the types of reviews there is a good discussion on the guiding principles for reviews. Some of the principles are:

• Check your egos at the door
• Keep the review team small
• Find problems during review, but don’t try to fix them at the review. Give up to 1 minute for discussion of fixes.
• Limit review meeting to 2 hours max
• Require advanced preparation

There are several types of peer reviews discussed in this book. This list starts with the least formal approach and develops until the most formal approach (the book uses the opposite order which I found non intuitive).

1. Ad Hoc – These are the spur of the moment meetings where you call a coworker to your desk to help with a small problem. Usually, this just solves an immediate problem. (This is super useful when trying to work out various coordinate transforms)
2. Peer passaround/deskcheck, – In this approach a copy of the work is sent to multiple reviewers, after which you can then collate all of the reviews. This allows multiple people to look at the code/item and also lets you get something if one person does not respond. In the peer deskcheck version, only one person looks at it instead of passing it around for multiple reviews.
3. Pair Programming – This is the idea that two people program together. So while there is no official review two sets of eyes see each line of code being typed. This has an added bonus that now two people will understand the code. The downside is that often one of the coders can “doze-off” and not be effective at watching for flaws. Also, many coders might not like this.
4. Walkthrough – This is where the author of the code walks through the code to a group of reviewers. This is often unstructured and heavily dependent on how good of a job the author prepared. In my experience this is good for helping people understand the code and finding large logic flaws, but not so much for finding smalls flaws/bugs.
5. Team Review – This is similar to the walkthrough however reviewers are provided with documentation/code in advance to review and their results are collated.
6. Inspection – Finally, we have the most formal approach which the author appears to favor. In this approach the author of the code does not lead the review, rather, a moderator, often with the help of checklists, will lead the meeting and read out the various sections. After the moderator reads a section, the reviewers discuss it. The author of the code can answer questions and learn how to improve various sections. Often the author might identify other instances of the same problem that the reviewers did not point out. An issue log should be maintained as a formal way of providing feedback and a list to verify fixes against.

The book then spends the next few chapters detailing the inspection method of peer review. Here are just a few notes. As always, read the book to find out more.

• In most situation 3-7 is a good size group for the inspection. The number of people can be based on the item being reviewed.
• The review needs to be planned in advance and have time to prepare content to distribute to reviewers.
• After the meeting the author should address each item in the issue log that was created and submit it to the moderator (or other such person) to verify that the solutions are good.
• Perform an inspection when that module is ready to pass to the next development stage. Waiting too long can leave a person with a lot of bad code that is now too hard to fix.
• You can (sort of) measure the ROI by looking at the bugs found and how long they took to find. There are many other metrics detailed in the book.
• Keep spelling and grammar mistakes on a separate paper and not on the main issue list.

How to implement review processes within your projects

Getting a software team and management to change can be difficult. The last part of this book is dedicated to how you can get reviews started, and how to let them naturally grow within the company. One significant thing identified is to have a key senior person act as a coordinator for building a culture of peer review and to provide training to developers. There is a nice long table in the book of the various pitfalls that an organization may encounter and how to deal with them.

This book also discusses special challenges and how it can affect your review process. Some of the situations addressed are:

• Large work products
• Geographic or time separation
• Distributed reviewers
• Asynchronous review
• Generated and non-procedural code
• To many participants
• No qualified reviewers available

At the end of this book, there is a link to supplemental material online. I was excited to see this. However when I went to the site, I saw it was all for sale and not free (most things were around $5). That kind of burst my bubble of excitement for the supplemental material. There is a second website for the book that is referenced but does not seem to be valid anymore.

Throughout the book the idea is getting proper training for people on how to conduct inspection reviews. Towards the end of the book, the idea of hiring the book’s author as a trainer to help with this training is suggested.

Overall, I think this is a good book. It introduces people on how to do software reviews. The use of graphics and tables in the book are pretty good. It is practical and easy to read. I also like how this book addresses management and makes the business case for peer reviews. I give this book 4.5 out of 5 stars. The missing 0.5 stars is due to the supplemental material not being free and for not providing those forms with the book.

Disclaimer: I do not know the book author. I purchased this book myself from Amazon.

At the Center for the Study of the Drone

As more commercial drone users take to the sky, insurers are struggling to develop policies to cover the eventualities of flying. Meanwhile, insurance companies also want to fly drones themselves for appraisals and damage assessments. We spoke with Tom Karol, general counsel-federal for the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies, to learn about the uncertain landscape that is the drone insurance industry.

News

Pakistan criticized the U.S. government for a drone strike that killed Mullah Akhtar Mansour, the leader of the Afghan Taliban. In a statement, Sartaj Aziz, foreign affairs special adviser to Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, said that the strike undermined attempts to negotiate a peace deal with the Taliban. “Pakistan believes that politically negotiated settlement remains the most viable option for bringing lasting peace to Afghanistan,” Aziz said. (Wall Street Journal)

Commentary, Analysis and Art

The editorial board at the New York Times argues that the political and strategic consequences of a drone strike are not always immediately apparent.

Also at the New York Times, Vanda Felbab-Brown contends that the drone strike that killed Mullah Mansour “may create more difficulties than it solves.”

At Lawfare, Robert Chesney considers what it would mean if the strike against Mullah Mansour had not been conducted under the Authorization for Use of Military Force.

At the National Interest, Elsa Kania and Kenneth W. Allen provide a detailed summary of China’s push to develop military drones.

At Slate, Stephen E. Henderson writes that law enforcement officers have as much right under the law to fly a drone as a private citizen.

Also at Slate, Faine Greenwood offers an etiquette guide to flying a drone.

Jarrod Hodgson, an ecologist at the University of Adelaide in Australia, is calling for scientists and hobbyists to follow a code of conduct when using drones for wildlife research. (ABC News)

In testimony before the House Committee on Homeland Security, Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security, Rebecca Gambler, the director of homeland security and justice at the Government Accountability Office, reviewed the Customs and Border Protection’s drone program. (GAO)

At NBC News, Richard Engel reports from inside Creech Air Force Base, the Nevada home of U.S. drone operations.

At DroneLife.com, Malek Murison takes a look at a technological solution aimed at boosting the popularity of drone racing.

A report by the NPD Group found that drone sales increased by 224 percent between April 2015 and April 2016. (MarketWatch)

At Flightglobal, Beth Stevenson examines the German military’s efforts to acquire advanced unmanned aircraft.

At Aviation Week, Tony Osborne considers the challenges that beset the Anglo-French project to develop the Taranis, an advanced fighter drone.

The Economist surveys the different drone countermeasures currently in development.

In Cities From the Sky, German photographer Stephan Zirwes captures aerial views of pools, beaches and golf courses. (Curbed)

Meanwhile, photographer Gabriel Scanu uses a drone to capture the scale of Australia’s landscapes. (Wired)

Know Your Drone

Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi unveiled two consumer multirotor drones. (Wired)

DRS Technologies partnered with Roboteam to develop an anti-IED unmanned ground vehicle for the U.S. Army. (Press Release)

Belgian startup EagleEye Systems has developed software that allows commercial drones to operate with a high degree of autonomy. (ZDNet)

Estonian defense firm Milrem announced that its THeMIS unmanned ground vehicle has passed a round of testing by the Estonian military. (Digital Journal)

Defense contractor Raytheon is working to offer its Phalanx autonomous ship defense system as a counter-drone weapon. (Flightglobal)

Meanwhile, Raytheon and Israeli firm UVision are modifying the Hero-30, a canister-launched loitering munition drone, for the U.S. Army. (UPI)

3D printing services company Shapeways announced the winners of a competition to design 3D-printed accessories for DJI consumer drones. (3DPrint.com)

Cambridge Pixel released a radar display that can control multiple unmanned maritime vehicles. (C4ISR & Networks)

The Office of Naval Research released footage of LOCUST, a drone swarming system, in action. (Popular Science)

Drones at Work

Tom Davis, an Ohio-based engineer, offers the elderly the opportunity to fly drones. (Ozy)

Egyptian authorities used an unmanned undersea vehicle to search for debris from the downed EgyptAir flight in the Mediterranean. (Reuters)

Commercial spaceflight company SpaceX completed another successful landing of its Falcon 9 reusable rocket on an unmanned barge. (The Verge)

A South Korean activist group uses unmanned aircraft to drop flash-cards into North Korean territory. (CNN)

Hobbyists used a series of drones to make an impressive Star Wars fan film. (CNET)

The city of Denver partnered with Autodesk, 3D Robotics, and Kimley-Horn to make a drone-generated 3D map of the city’s famous Red Rocks site. (TechRepublic)

The Town of Hempstead in Long Island, New York, is considering a ban on the use of drones over beaches, pools, golf courses, and parks. (CBS New York)

A man in Rutherford County, Tennessee told WKRN that his drone was shot at as he was flying near his home.

HoneyComb, a drone services startup, offers farmers the chance to view every inch of their farms from the air. (New York Times)

A drone resembling the Iranian Shahed-129 was spotted flying over Aleppo, Syria. (YouTube)

Images obtained by Fox News appear to show a Chinese Harbin BZK-005 drone on Woody Island, one of the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea.

Insurance giant Munich Re partnered with PrecisionHawk to use drones for assessing insurance claims. (Press Release)

The Australian Navy completed flight trials of the Boeing Insitu ScanEagle drone. (UPI)

Meanwhile, Australian energy company Queensland Gas, a subsidiary of Shell, will use a Boeing Insitu ScanEagle to conduct pipeline inspections. (Aviation Business)

The FAA granted the Menlo Park Fire Protection District permission to use drones during wildfires and other emergencies. (Palo Alto Online)

Industry Intel

Defense firm Thales sold its Gecko system, which uses radars and thermal cameras to detect drones, to an undisclosed country in Southeast Asia. (Press Release)

General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. announced collaborations with the University of North Dakota and CAE, Inc. to provide equipment for the new RPA Training Academy in Grand Forks, North Dakota. (Press Release)

Ultra Electronics secured an $18.4 million contract to provide engineering support to a NATO country for a surveillance drone. (IHS Jane’s 360)

For updates, news, and commentary, follow us on Twitter. The Weekly Drone Roundup is a newsletter from the Center for the Study of the Drone. It covers news, commentary, analysis and technology from the drone world. You can subscribe to the Roundup here.

The US just moved a step closer to building an advanced robotics institute modeled on the hugely successful Fraunhofer Institutes. The proposed ARM or Advanced Robotics Manufacturing Institute is one of seven candidates moving forward in an open bid for $70 million funding from NIST for an innovation institute to join the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation. Previously funded institutes are for advanced composites, flexible electronics, digital and additive manufacturing, semiconductor technology, textiles and photonics.

The ARM Institute bid is being led by Georgia Tech and CMU, alongside several other universities, including MIT, RPI, USC, UPENN, TAMU and UC Berkeley. At a recent ‘industry day’ at UC Berkeley on May 25, an invitation was extended to “all companies, regional economic development organizations, colleges and universities, government representatives and non-­profit groups with interests in advanced and collaborative robotics industry to participate in this initiative to ensure the competitiveness of US robotics and thereby enhance the quality of life of our citizens.”

Industry participation is critical to the success of the ARM institute. Industry is expected to provide matching funding to the NIST grant, but also strategically to provide guidance in setting the priorities of the initiative. Currently defined as:

• Collaborative Robotics
• Rapid Deployment of Flexible Robotic Manufacturing
• Low-cost Mass Production in Quantities of One

The vision is to create a national resource of manufacturing research and solutions, linking regional hubs and manufacturing centers. An important component of this vision is providing a pathway for SMEs and startups to connect with established industry and research partners.

To participate in the ARM Institute bid, industry leaders, SMEs and startups are expected to provide a non-binding letter of support before June 15. For more information see the ARM Institute. If the bid is successful, the ARM Institute may start as early as first quarter 2017.

A small photo essay from this year’s ICRA in Stockholm featuring photos from the exhibition hall. At the end, you can watch a video with all the companies, their robots and systems. (All photos by Ioannis Erripis @ Robohub.)

Consequential Robotics

MIRO is a very advanced biomimetic companion robot originated from Sheffield University.

http://consequentialrobotics.com/
http://www.sebastianconran.com/

Furhat Robotics

Furhat is a very original take on human-robot interaction. They bypass the stereotypical uncanny valley problem with a mix of realism and abstraction that focus on the crucial parts of what someone may value in a conversation. Furhat may act as an interface between a human and a service like Siri. You can see in this series of photos its simple, but clever, construction with a vertical video projection to the face acting as a screen, via a tilted mirror.

http://www.furhatrobotics.com/

Cogniteam

Cogniteam, from Israel, presented the hamster, a small but capable rover similar in size to an R/C car.

http://cogniteam.com/

HEBI Robotics

HEBI Robotics had on display an arrangement comprised of several X-Series modular actuators.

http://hebirobotics.com/

Husqvarna

Husqvarna initiated a project where they provide a version of their established autonomous lawnmowers to researchers. These are modified versions that have an open architecture so one can add various modules and have direct access to the functions of the platform. The robots are not for sale, but if you are interested, and your research can make use of this platform, you can contact Husqvarna and they may collaborate with your lab or institute.

http://www.husqvarna.com/

Milvus Robotics

Milvus Robotics, from Turkey, had on display their smart kiosk robot and their research platform.

http://milvusrobotics.com/

Moog

Moog produces a variety of products for industrial or aerospace use. The photos show examples of metal 3D printing where the company is heavily focused. 3D printing can produce shapes that otherwise would have been impossible to manufacture. Currently, apart from fatigue, their products are on par mechanically with die-cast items. Moog is working on improving the final item properties and create products comparable to extruded metal items, or better.

http://www.moog.com/

Sake Robotics

Sake robotics have a direct demo of their griper which is robust, strong and relatively cheap. It has a clever system of pulleys that allow every component to be loose while standing by, but on the same time it can tighten up and hold heavy objects when under load.

http://sakerobotics.com/

ROBOTIS – Seed Robotics – Righthand Robotics

Robotis, apart from their big variety of products, hosted two other companies: seed robotics and Righthand robotics. Each company had their own specialized gripers and robotic hands.

http://robotis.com/
http://www.seedrobotics.com/
http://www.righthandrobotics.com/

Phoenix Technologies

Phoenix Technologies demonstrated their fast and modular 3D tracker.

http://www.ptiphoenix.com/

PAL Robotics

The REEM-C humanoid managed to attract most of the interest on PAL Robotics stand. It was able not only to perform standing but also walked throughout the exhibition hall (loosely attached to a frame for security reasons).

http://pal-robotics.com/

Here you can watch a video with various clips from the exhibition area:

Pepper is a child-height human-shaped robot described as having been designed to be a genuine companion that perceives and acts upon a range of human emotions.

SoftBank, the Japanese telecom giant, acquired Aldebaran Robotics and commissioned the development of Pepper. Subsequently SoftBank joint ventured with Alibaba and Foxconn to form a development, production and marketing entity for the robots. There has been much fanfare about Pepper, particularly about its ability to use its body movement and tone of voice to communicate in a way designed to feel natural and intuitive.

The number of Peppers sold to date is newsworthy. As of today, there are likely close to 10,000 Peppers out in the world. Online sales have been 1,000 units each month for the last seven months with additional sales to businesses such as Nestle for their coffee shops and SoftBank for their telecom stores.

At around $1,600 per robot, 10,000 robots equates to $16 million in sales but Peppers are sold on a subscription contract that includes a network data plan and equipment insurance. This costs $360 per month and, over 36 months, brings the total cost of ownership to over $14,000. Consequently many are asking what Peppers are being used for, how they are being perceived, and whether they are useful? Essentially, how is Pepper doing? Does it offer value for money spent?

Two recent videos provide a window into Pepper’s state of development.

FINANCIAL TIMES

In a promotional effort, Pepper and a SoftBank publicity team came to the London offices of the Financial Times for an introduction and visit. This video shows one reporter’s attempt to understand Pepper’s capabilities and interactive abilities.

People in the FT offices were definitely attracted, amused and happy with the initial experience of being introduced to Pepper. They laughed at Peppers failures and patted its head to make it feel better. But, Pepper failed in every way to (1) be a companion, (2) recognize emotional cues, (3) be able to converse reliably and intelligently, and (4) provide any level of service other than first-time entertainment.

MASTERCARD

MasterCard unveiled the first application of their MasterPass digital payment service by a robot. It will be rolled out in Pizza Hut restaurants in Asia on Pepper robot order-takers beginning in Q4 2016. To accentuate the hook-up, MasterCard created this video showing what they hope will be a typical interaction involved in Pepper taking a customer’s order.

Tobias Puehse, vice president, innovation management, Digital Payments & Labs at MasterCard, said of the venture with SoftBank and Pepper bots:

“The app’s goal is to provide consumers with more memorable and personalized shopping experience beyond today’s self-serve machines and kiosks, by combining Pepper’s intelligence with a secure digital payment experience via MasterPass.”

One might ask what happens in a noisy, imperfect, acoustic environment? What does conversing with Pepper really add to a conveniently placed kiosk or tablet? How are Pepper’s emotional capabilities being used in this simple order-taking interaction? What happens if a customer strays from the dialogue the robot expects?

BOTTOM LINE

There’s no doubt that Pepper is an impressive engineering feat and that it is an advertising draw. However the emotion recognition aspects of Pepper didn’t appear to be important in both videos even though that is supposed to be Pepper’s strength. The entertainment value seemed to be what attracted the crowds. This temporary phenomena isn’t likely to persevere over time. In fact, this was shown to be true in China where restaurants began using rudimentary robots as mobile servers and busbots. In the last few months, however, there have been reports of those robots being retired because their entertainment value wore off and their inflexibility as real servers became evident.

The marketing around Pepper may have created expectations that can’t be met with this iteration of the robot. A comparison can be made here to Jibo and the problems it is having meeting deadlines and expectations. Jibo has extended the delivery date – once again – to October 2016 for crowdfunded orders, and early next year for the others.

The connection of Pepper to a telecom provider and the sales it brings in the form of 2 and 3 year data service contracts, can be big business to that provider: SoftBank is the exclusive provider of those data services in Japan. An example of the value of that business can be seen by a surge in share price of Taiwan telecom company Asia Pacific Telecom on news that the company will begin selling Pepper robots in Taiwan.