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Tuesday, December 9, 2014

MiP toy robot

Quite a toy! Wouldn't you love to see the battle and stacking mode on a human-sized robot? 


For those having crazy christmas gift ideas, check out the full description here.

Note: i don't know in which of the blog categories to put this post, but depending on how many of you will see it and share it i will look into creating an appropriate new blog category. So... you know what you have to do ;-)

Saturday, November 1, 2014

Robots at their infancy

The use of robots nowadays has already "escaped" from the realm of industry and is now becoming available to the citizens. We can find today commercial robots for various uses at very low cost that come together with tele-operation interfaces designed for untrained users or other which are programmable.

Robots are also in use by the military, space exploration, civil security and fire-protection at a small scale, but it seems that their integration will proceed further in view of their advantages over humans.
This, of course, has a different meaning for each particular case, but at the basis of all we can recognize cost and responsibility.

Regarding cost, it appears as a natural consequence if a robot substitutes a human, given that both can do equally well the respective job but the robot construction and maintenance is much more cheaper. Well... at least if that does not concern your job and only if the substitution of the human by the robot means that the respective product will be cheaper for you, the consumer. 

If that's the case, what about the unlucky man/woman that will loose his/her job because of the robot? Before answering that question, consider if you prefer to pay the more expensive product/service given by the man or the less expensive product/service given by the robot. If you are a philanthropist and prefer to save the man's job, what do you think that the rest of the society will prefer? You may start to think now, that the substitution of the man is inevitable, if not necessary. You may even become positive if you think that for the construction and maintenance of the robot, other men will have to work and new jobs will be have to be created.

In any case, the relation between production cost of a robot/machine and human labor cost seems to have a well-understood basis and a long history today, as it has started some centuries now with the industrial revolution.

But the use of robots outside the factory and in particular within human society has and will have very serious new implications. Within the small, constrained boundaries of a factory, the notion of responsibility is very clear and accountability for the operation of robots is strictly within the limits of the company.

Unfortunately, we are not yet ready to understand these concepts for robots that are at the hands of consumers and in general out there in the open world (see earlier posts Beginning of a new era and Beginning of new era II). With robots being produced at a global scale and without any regulation for permission of use, anybody with good gaming skills can become a robot owner and user.

I truly do not wish that as a society we will need to realize the potential of this technology through an unfortunate event, but i fear that the freedom and lack of control for use of this technology will sooner or later lead to such an outcome.

The source of the following video is from euronews channel and is about a series of air drone flights in the surroundings of several nuclear plants around France, which are currently under investigation with no information yet about the purpose of those flights or their operators. 


Is it about naive enthousiasts that just want to draw attention and try something daring, or is there something more serious behind such actions? Whatever the answer, now is the time to see robotics from a very serious perspective before we need to pay the cost of negligence. The days of innocence will soon be over.

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Beginning of new era II: Sunbathing will never be the same again

This is what happens when air drone enthusiasts "accidentally" happen to fly over unwary citizens... in France.



You are advised NOT to try this at home (i meant the sunbathing on the terrace).

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Beginning of a new era: Air drone causes chaos in EURO 2016 qualifier football game between Serbia and Albania

The football game between the national teams of Serbia and Albania for the qualifier round of EURO 2016, which took place the 14th of October 2014, has been forced to be terminated just a few minutes before the end of the first half. The disruption was caused when a remotely controlled air drone entered the stadium and started to hover around carrying an Albanian flag followed by the word "AUTOCHTHONOUS" which means "indigenous", from the greek "αυτόχθονας".

The football players and the fans were stunned by the sight, until a serbian football player managed to grab the flag that was immediately after pursued by Albanian football players. The overall confusion lead to a conflict between football players of both teams, followed by the intrusion of fans in the terrain.



Wednesday, September 10, 2014

CROPS project: Clever Robots for Crops


Intelligent sensing and manipulation for sustainable production and harvesting of high value crops
Crops is a large-scale integrating FP7 EU project in the theme Nanotechnologies, Materials and new Production Technologies within the call: Automation and robotics for sustainable crop and forestry management.
CROPS will develop scientific know-how for a highly configurable, modular and clever carrier platform that includes modular parallel manipulators and intelligent tools (sensors, algorithms, sprayers, grippers) that can be easily installed onto the carrier and are capable of adapting to new tasks and conditions. Several technological demonstrators will be developed for high value crops like greenhouse vegetables, fruits in orchards, and grapes for premium wines. The CROPS robotic platform will be capable of site-specific spraying (targets spray only towards foliage and selective targets) and selective harvesting of fruit (detects the fruit, determines its ripeness, moves towards the fruit, grasps it and softly detaches it). Another objective of CROPS is to develop techniques for reliable detection and classification of obstacles and other objects to enable successful autonomous navigation and operation in plantations and forests. The agricultural and forestry applications share many research areas, primarily regarding sensing and learning capabilities.

Monday, July 28, 2014

Fanbot, a.k.a. the Robotic Fan

If you thought you have seen, or imagined, all the different uses of robots in human society, you were mistaken:

Fanbot

Friday, June 6, 2014

SPARC: The world's largest funding for robotics in EU



Agreement signed by Neelie Kroes, Vice president of European Commision, and Bernd Liepert president of euRobotics (Europa press release).



Monday, April 28, 2014

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Cybathlon: Sports competition for robot-assisted parathletes


A few months later, the Cybathlon competition is announced which will take place in 2016 in Zurich and will constitute the first championship for parathletes who use advanced assistive devices in replacement of the corresponding impaired physical capability.


These news come faster than i expected, as now i can hardly imagine what could be the next great milestone in the progress of robotics technology. If one thing is for sure, it is that the future is here.

Saturday, March 29, 2014

3D printing technology currently allows replacement of almost any human part

This testifies the first ever implant operation of a 3D-printed skull to a human, replacing the upper part of the natural skull as its abnormal thickening put exceeding pressure to the person' s brain. The operation was recently performed in a Dutch hospital in Europe for a 22 year old woman who has now reportedly completely recovered and is back to her natural activities.


3D printing is already revolutionalizing diverse fields including medicine, robotics and military, as it brings manufacturing to a whole new level by globalizing the potential of producing physical objects that could otherwise cost multiple times more, since their production was geographically attached.

This essentially implies that a digitization of a domain in combination to 3D printing will bring the corresponding technology to the hands of anyone with an internet access and a 3D printer. This has immense implications in our understanding of the functioning of the world and the organization of the society as we knew it, is now, as a result, being completely transformed.

To conclude, and to satisfy the readers of the blog that might wonder about the relevance of this to robotics, here is a video that could make the above thesis more convincing.

Open Hand Project


Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Saturday, March 8, 2014

Robotics market data in Europe and worldwide; INNOROBO spotlight



INNOROBO 2014 exhibition will soon be hosted in Lyon. France between 18 and 20 of March. INNOROBO is an international event that hosts industry as well as academic exhibitors that showcase their latest products and results in all fields of robotics. It is an initiative that aims in increasing collaboration in Europe for research and development through the organization of workshops, presentations and general assemblies.

Here is a link that gives a spherical overview of the state of the market and research in Europe in various sectors, in comparison to the main players at the international level. Some figures date back at 2011, but still data are quite informative of the growth of robotics and their increasing integration at various levels.

Saturday, March 1, 2014

An interview with Google' s director of engineering Ray Kurzweil

Amidst the recent series of robotics and AI companies being integrated by Google, clearly, there exist long-term plans for making extremely influential technological breakthroughs in the forthcoming years. But what exactly is really being prepared? Is it just about plans for new products, bigger market shares, or is there something bigger being envisioned?

To understand better these questions and reach out for answers, a recent interview from Google' s director of engineering Ray Kurzweil is quite revealing (and accessible from this link), that i recommend you to go on and read.

Picture of Ray Kurzweil

Besides any extracted facts or conclusions made after reading that article, i can certainly highlight the immense responsibility and role of scientists in shaping human society and tomorrow' s world. Which is, a COLLECTIVE responsibility. As it won't matter what one individually pursues as long as the overall scientific research system' s trend follows a clear distinctive pattern.

Plenty of food for thought, that is, regarding the impact of robotics and AI' s research. Which motivates me to conclude this post with the following quote:

'Research responsibly'


Friday, February 21, 2014

Project TANGO

Project Tango by Google was announced officially, featuring a prototype mobile device with augmented sensing and processing capabilities allowing it to perceive the motion of the device and reconstruct the surrounding environment. The project' s launch video is disclosed here:


The technology that it seeks to integrate has already been showcased, scientifically, but this should be the first time where it could be part of commercial technology at the scale of the mobile phone market. However, together with the new range of cool applications that such a technology would offer, we should at the same time consider its implications to everyday life and in particular the aspect of privacy. 

It is probably not so far in the future where the ability to accurately track the motion of a mobile phone and reconstruct its surroundings in real-time within indoor environments, will be integral part of our mobile phones. This may probably bring the end in privacy as people tend to carry their cell-phones wherever they go.

Consider that you use this functionality while you are at home, when you are with your friends or family. Just as a single photo may capture a single moment of a single view in time, we can imagine how this would translate in the case of a reconstructed environment and your motion within it. And after you may consider what this would mean if this data were to be "accidentally" taken by various companies, agencies or individuals and be exploited for different reasons.

To conclude, Big brother might be knocking at your door very soon and you could be its new star.

Saturday, January 25, 2014

First kick in WORLD CUP 2014, through mind-controlled exoskeleton?

As the titles suggests, this the provisioned plan for this year' s world cup in Brazil.  This is the goal of Brazilian neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis and his team, in the context of a project called "Walk Again".

Generally speaking, this is probably where the future of robotics resides i.e. actively assisting people' s lives and surpassing their natural barriers, rather than developing completely autonomous machines that replace humans.

Here' s a promo video of the corresponding work:


And so if that is going to happen next summer by a person, i believe that it will not be long before the idea of Special Olympics will take on a whole new model, or we will even witness a new concept in sports competition as a result of robotics technology. Too ambitious... ? Place your bets!

Saturday, January 11, 2014

VERSABALL; dexterous manipulation revisited

This post comes as a follow-up to the earlier post A custom-made robotic gripper where we saw how ingenuity and simplicity in robotics can provide state-of-the-art solutions, in this case when it comes to robotic grasping.

Empire Robotics, a start-up company from Cornell University has recently announced the commercialization of this idea with the name VERSABALL and is probably about to revolutionalize the concept of dexterous manipulation. VERSABALL is a low-cost gripper (around 4000$) that can grasp objects with diverse shapes, will little care about computing grasping affordances of the object. 


As can be seen from the video, it is very effective and agile and seems to be very well suited for home robots allowing them to pick up and manipulate common house-hold objects, even at the scale of coins!


Friday, January 3, 2014

Super Ball Bot: next generation planetary explorer

NASA is considering an innovative design for planetary robots, in an effort to optimize the mobility when it comes to uneven terrain and reduce hardware payload that is required for safe landing. The next picture shows an illustration of the featured design which is inspired by the concept of Tensegrity, that is, by preserving integrity through tension.


The idea is to use rods that are connected with elastic wires and by regulating the tension among them, movement patterns arise that allow the structure to move at a desired direction. These patterns can emerge iteratively by optimizing certain criteria. At the same time, the elasticity of the cords allows the structure to sustain collisions upon landing on the surface or moving along it, by absorbing the energy of collision.

The following video illustrates the prototype in action and shows its full provisioned utility in simulation.



The project is lead by Vytas Sunspiral and Adrian Agogino from the Intelligent Systems Division of NASA' s Ames Research Center. Visit here for full article.