Category Robotics Classification

On 25 March, a small RoboHouse team went out in the fields of Oldeberkoop in East Friesland with gas leak detector Waylon and mechanic Rob. They began by checking the calibration to prevent malfunctions. Then they cleaned the detector mat and changed the filter, after which the search could start.

The two men proceeded slowly, constantly checking their tablet to see whether they were still close enough to the pipes. A big cart was pushed forward with the mat dragging behind it. Except for the grinding of the equipment on the sidewalk, everything was quiet.

The team waited to hear from the device, which is supposed to sound an alarm when it detects a leak. And then they heard it: a beep! After taking a few steps back, because the system lags, Rob sprayed a yellow dot. Waylon pointed to the beauty of the on-screen image that enables assessment of the severity of the leak. “It’s not a biggie”, Waylon said to the RoboHouse team. That means someone will come within a week to measure it again, before calling for a repair.

The team slowly walked on, looking for more leaks. When they bumped into any kind of obstacle, they had to lift the device over it themselves. They also pushed the big device while constantly looking down on their tablet. After a full day of leak detection, every member of the team could feel it in their shoulders.

The RoboHouse team then realised how easily bad ergonomics can lead to injuries. There have been tests with more expensive machines and Segways but a solution has not yet been found. So our ambition remains: develop robotic technology that transforms the daily grind of leak detection, but stay modest and don’t overestimate our progress.

At RoboHouse, the process of improving working life starts with the worker. “Research, development and co-creation go hand in hand to deploy robotics in the best way possible,” says Marieke Mulder, program manager. “The goal is to support 90% of the work in gas leak detection autonomously so Rob and Waylon can make the pipelines safe and future proof.”

The field research sparked many new ideas. Waylon was curious about next steps and Rob said: “I just hope we can come up with something that allows me to take the right routes without destroying my back by looking at the tablet all day”.

After the field session, the team from RoboHouse gathered experts from different sectors to analyse the challenges at hand and co-create the first concepts towards a solution. Development engineers Bas van Mil, Tom Dalhuisen and Guus Paris joined the team online in a workshop on Miro. Together they envisioned a way forward and this was translated into a roadmap to 2031 by the RoboHouse team.

There will be many interactions with workers at Alliander along the way, and many more hours in the field. Marieke Mulder says: “After walking just a mile through the mud, we have barely begun to know how it is to do this work every day. But by going beyond our lab, into the field, we already discovered so much more about the challenges that workers like Rob and Waylon face every day.”

The post When mud is our greatest teacher appeared first on RoboHouse.

It's not uncommon in the Bay Area to spot a driverless test car sharing the highway, a whirling lidar array atop its roof. Not so much in Southern California, where little robot car testing has been conducted to date.

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As part of our series showcasing the plenary and keynote talks from the IEEE/RSJ IROS2020 (International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems), this week we bring you Nikolaus Correll (Associate Professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder) and Cynthia Breazeal (Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT). Nikolaus’ talk is on the topic of robot manipulation, while Cynthia’s talk is about the topic of social robots.

Prof. Nikolaus Correll – Robots Getting a Grip on General Manipulation Bio: Nikolaus Correll is an Associate Professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He obtained his MS in Electrical Engineering from ETH Zürich and his PhD in Computer Science from EPF Lausanne in 2007. From 2007-2009 he was a post-doc at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL). Nikolaus is the recipient of a NSF CAREER award, a NASA Early Career Faculty Fellowship and a Provost Faculty achievement award. In 2016, he founded Robotic Materials Inc. to commercialize robotic manipulation technology.

Prof. Cynthia Breazeal – Living with Social Robots: from Research to Commercialization and Back Abstract: Social robots are designed to interact with people in an interpersonal way, engaging and supporting collaborative social and emotive behavior for beneficial outcomes. We develop adaptive algorithmic capabilities and deploy multitudes of cloud-connected robots in schools, homes, and other living facilities to support long-term interpersonal engagement and personalization of specific interventions. We examine the impact of the robot’s social embodiment, emotive and relational attributes, and personalization capabilities on sustaining people’s engagement, improving learning, impacting behavior, and shaping attitudes to help people achieve long-term goals. I will also highlight challenges and opportunities in commercializing social robot technologies for impact at scale. In a time where citizens are beginning to live with intelligent machines on a daily basis, we have the opportunity to explore, develop, study, and assess humanistic design principles to support and promote human flourishing at all ages and stages. Bio: Cynthia Breazeal is a Professor at the MIT Media Lab where she founded and Directs the Personal Robots Group. She is also Associate Director of the Media Lab in charge of new strategic initiatives, and she is spearheading MIT’s K-12 education initiative on AI in collaboration with the Media Lab, Open Learning and the Schwarzman College of Computing. She is recognized as a pioneer in the field of social robotics and human-robot interaction and is a AAAI Fellow. She is a recipient of awards by the National Academy of Engineering as well as the National Design Awards. She has received Technology Review’s TR100/35 Award and the George R. Stibitz Computer & Communications Pioneer Award. She has also been recognized as an award-winning entrepreneur, designer and innovator by CES, Fast Company, Entrepreneur Magazine, Forbes, and Core 77 to name a few. Her robots have been recognized by TIME magazine’s Best Inventions in 2008 and in 2017 where her award-wining Jibo robot was featured on the cover. She received her doctorate from MIT in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in 2000.

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A combined team of researchers from The Ohio State University and the Georgia Institute of Technology has developed a robot arm that moves like an octopus arm without the need for a motor. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes their robot arm, which moves in response to changes in a magnetic field around it.

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The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration is turning to a Japanese startup for help in creating maps of the wind that will make it safer for drones and air taxis to take to the skies around the world.

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