Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 3.17
November 14, 2021
…handling automation, said Ted Stinson, chief operating officer at manipulation AI provider Covariant. After all, how does one determine if an AI-driven arm and gripper can actually handle the rapidly changing SKU mixes seen in modern e-commerce? Flashy presentations from a dozen or more vendors can’t really answer that question, Stinson said. “It’s a crowded and confusing marketplace, where trying to understand the capabilities of one system versus another is highly challenging,” Stinson said. “It’s not like some more traditional materials handling system categories, where you can compare specification sheets and pretty well-established metrics around performance.” One path forward is…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 12.13
November 08, 2021
…the sense of touch is just as important for manipulation and teleoperation. Touchlab Ltd. has been developing flexible sensors that it said are less bulky than others on the market and could enable new applications. “At Amazon's re:MARS conference in 2019, Jeff Bezos said that people 40 years ago thought that the hardest challenges would be in artificial intelligence and machine learning,” recalled Zakareya Hussein, CEO of Touchlab. “Many of those have been addressed, but grasping is still hard.” “We were approached by clients trying to solve the grasping problem,” he told Robotics 24/7. “We're aware that physical robots are…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 14.99
November 05, 2021
…replicate a natural pull towards exploratory or sophisticated dexterous manipulation, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. OpenAI gave it a try with “Dactyl” (meaning “finger” from the Greek word daktylos), using its humanoid robot hand to solve a Rubik’s cube with software that’s a step towards more general AI, and a step away from the common single-task mentality. DeepMind created “RGB-Stacking,” a vision-based system that challenges a robot to learn how to grab items and stack them. In the ongoing quest to get machines to replicate human abilities, scientists at the MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 10.31
November 05, 2021
…unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) to perform complex navigation and manipulation tasks in a GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System)-denied environment. A swarm of UAVs must identify a target vessel from several similar vessels in open waters in a GNSS-denied environment. It must then offload specific items from the target onto an USV in the shortest possible time using autonomous technologies. Morrish said this is a new kind of exercise for robotics. “A nice thing about this challenge is that you tell people what you want, but you don’t specify an approach to do it,” he said. “The very idea of the…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 5.98
October 22, 2021
…Genesis, there are no pull wires and no handheld manipulation,” added Fischel. “It uses external magnets for precise positioning and soft plastic to reduce the risk of physical damage to the heart.” During a virtual tour of Stereotaxis' laboratory, Fischel demonstrated the magnets, positioned by two robotic arms, as well as the X-ray, which displayed a simulated cardiac ablation in real time in a control room. Such simulation is useful not only for preoperative planning, but also for training. “In open surgery, the physicians are literally standing over the patients, and in laparoscopic procedures, they're looking through scopes,” he said.…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 11.91
October 20, 2021
…Research and Markets. It credited improvements in machine vision, manipulation capabilites, and robot mechanics. While most warehouses don't yet have much automation, most speakers were bullish on market prospects. Conference gives glimpses of the future of logistics The conference and show floor grew since A3's last AMR conference in Louisville, Ky., in 2019. “The event exceeded our expectations,” said Jeff Burnstein, president of the Association for Advancing Automation. “In Louisville, we had 430 people for one day, and this year's event had double the exhibitors.” “Other events have recorded 70% of pre-pandemic attendance, so for us to do 50% better…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 30.30
October 19, 2021
…partnering to expand their capabilities to bring cloud-based mobile manipulation to the forefront of robotics. “We're excited to be working with Formant,” stated Dr. Dave Coleman, founder and CEO of PickNik. “We've been watching the maturing robotics industry and see a lot of potential in providing supervised autonomy to a similar set of customers as Formant's platform serves.” Founded in 2015, PickNik Robotics said it provides supervised autonomy for robotic arm manipulators that bridges the gap between manual control and full autonomy. Founded by robotics veteran Jeff Linnell in 2017, Formant said it provides the data infrastructure to efficiently deploy,…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 6.65
October 04, 2021
…lot of promise with deep learning, particularly in robotic manipulation, where robots are picking objects that they haven’t been previously trained on. I believe that there’s a very long way to go for AGI. The technology is not there yet, even though there are some encouraging demonstrations out there. It’s much harder than anyone thinks, and we’ve even seen massively funded companies disbanding their robotics team simply because they came to the conclusion that it was too hard. The last school of thought believes in building end-to-end robotic work cells. Essentially, these work cells are “boxes” (also termed micro-factories or…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 7.42
October 03, 2021
…mechanical design and artificial intelligence to provide precise robotic manipulation. Prof. Ken Goldberg and four graduate students at the Engineering Department at the University of California, Berkeley, worked to improve suction-based grippers. The AmbiSort system is based on the Dex-Net (Dexterity Network) deep learning program created by Berkeley researchers to train robots to grasp a wide range of objects. This has been a challenge for pick-and-place applications. The system can “grasp, scan, and place objects at twice the speed of human workers,” said Goldberg. Ambi Robotics' AmbiKit can apply this dexterity to assemble subscription boxes and gift sets, as well…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 9.69
September 28, 2021
…vision software, and RE2 Intellect autonomy software for mobile manipulation systems that can operate in a variety of complex indoor and outdoor environments. The company said its systems help companies in the aviation, construction, defense, energy, and medical industries to enable remote operations, improve worker safety and efficiency, and reduce operational costs. Autonomous maintenance with RE2 arms, vision The MAAPS system will focus on tasks that are part of the pre- and post-flight inspection of C-17 aircraft, including at-height visual inspection of the aircraft’s fuselage, wing, and tail. It will also conduct the at-height reading of analog gauges and other…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 5.35
September 22, 2021
…stereo camera ROS navigation ROS TurtleBot 3 sample ROS manipulation and camera sample ROS services MoveIT motion-planning framework Native Python ROS usage ROS 2 navigation Functional block diagram of Isaac Sim on Omniverse showing three inputs to the simulator: the robot model, environment model, and 3D assets. The simulator can be controlled from both ROS and python. Outputs of the simulator include the digital twin and the synthetic data, which can be used to train perception models. Source: NVIDIA Isaac Sim generates synthetic data for perception training In addition to being a robotic simulator, Isaac Sim can generate synthetic data…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 7.13
August 31, 2021
…In production applications, it's still early days for mobile manipulation, acknowledged Vu. “We have a 3D-printed, ultralightweight prototype of robotic arms,” he said. “Our strategy has been to identify clear use cases and partners to go to market and demonstrate the value of the technology. We're not developing technology for its own sake.” “We have some overlaying information, but no true VR or AR [virtual reality or augmented reality] yet,” he noted. “It's mostly for controlling the arm.” “We do have APIs [application programming interfaces] so that people can integrate different types of controllers or customize the interface to overlay…
