Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.

ICRA@40: 23–26 September 2024, ROTTERDAM, NETHERLANDS

IROS 2024: 14–18 October 2024, ABU DHABI, UAE

ICSR 2024: 23–26 October 2024, ODENSE, DENMARK

Cybathlon 2024: 25–27 October 2024, ZURICH

Enjoy today’s videos!

At ICRA 2024, in Tokyo last May, we sat down with the director of Shadow Robot, Rich Walker, to talk about the journey toward developing its newest model. Designed for reinforcement learning, the hand is extremely rugged, has three fingers that act like thumbs, and has fingertips that are highly sensitive to touch.

[ IEEE Spectrum ]

Food Angel is a food delivery robot to help with the problems of food insecurity and homelessness. Utilizing autonomous wheeled robots for this application may seem to be a good approach, especially with a number of successful commercial robotic delivery services. However, besides technical considerations such as range, payload, operation time, autonomy, etc., there are a number of important aspects that still need to be investigated, such as how the general public and the receiving end may feel about using robots for such applications, or human-robot interaction issues such as how to communicate the intent of the robot to the homeless.

[ RoMeLa ]

The UKRI FLF team RoboHike of UCL Computer Science of the Robot Perception and Learning lab with Forestry England demonstrate the ANYmal robot to help preserve the cultural heritage of an historic mine in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, UK.

This clip is from a reboot of the British TV show “Time Team.” If you’re not already a fan of “Time Team,” let me just say that it is one of the greatest retro reality TV shows ever made, where actual archaeologists wander around the United Kingdom and dig stuff up. If they can find anything. Which they often can’t. And also it has Tony Robinson (from “Blackadder”), who runs everywhere for some reason. Go to Time Team Classics on YouTube for 70+ archived episodes.

[ UCL RPL ]

UBTECH humanoid robot Walker S Lite is working in Zeekr’s intelligent factory to complete handling tasks at the loading workstation for 21 consecutive days, and assist its employees with logistics work.

[ UBTECH ]

Current visual navigation systems often treat the environment as static, lacking the ability to adaptively interact with obstacles. This limitation leads to navigation failure when encountering unavoidable obstructions. In response, we introduce IN-Sight, a novel approach to self-supervised path planning, enabling more effective navigation strategies through interaction with obstacles.

[ ETH Zurich paper / IROS 2024 ]

When working on autonomous cars, sometimes it’s best to start small.

[ University of Pennsylvania ]

MIT MechE researchers introduce an approach called SimPLE (Simulation to Pick Localize and placE), a method of precise kitting, or pick and place, in which a robot learns to pick, regrasp, and place objects using the object’s computer-aided design (CAD) model, and all without any prior experience or encounters with the specific objects.

[ MIT ]

Staff, students (and quadruped robots!) from UCL Computer Science wish the Great Britain athletes the best of luck this summer in the Olympic Games & Paralympics.

[ UCL Robotics Institute ]

Walking in tall grass can be hard for robots, because they can’t see the ground that they’re actually stepping on. Here’s a technique to solve that, published in Robotics and Automation Letters last year.

[ ETH Zurich Robotic Systems Lab ]

There is no such thing as excess batter on a corn dog, and there is also no such thing as a defective donut. And apparently, making Kool-Aid drink pouches is harder than it looks.

[ Oxipital AI ]

Unitree has open-sourced its software to teleoperate humanoids in VR for training-data collection.

[ Unitree / GitHub ]

Nothing more satisfying than seeing point-cloud segments wiggle themselves into place, and CSIRO’s Wildcat SLAM does this better than anyone.

[ IEEE Transactions on Robotics ]

A lecture by Mentee Robotics CEO Lior Wolf, on Mentee’s AI approach.

[ Mentee Robotics ]

Today, Figure is introducing the newest, slimmest, shiniest, and least creatively named next generation of its humanoid robot: Figure 02. According to the press release, Figure 02 is the result of “a ground-up hardware and software redesign” and is “the highest performing humanoid robot,” which may even be true for some arbitrary value of “performing.” Also notable is that Figure has been actively testing robots with BMW at a manufacturing plant in Spartanburg, S.C., where the new humanoid has been performing “data collection and use case training.”

The rest of the press release is pretty much, “Hey, check out our new robot!” And you’ll get all of the content in the release by watching the videos. What you won’t get from the videos is any additional info about the robot. But we sent along some questions to Figure about these videos, and have a few answers from Michael Rose, director of controls, and Vadim Chernyak, director of hardware.

First, the trailer:

How many parts does Figure 02 have, and is this all of them?

Figure: A couple hundred unique parts and a couple thousand parts total. No, this is not all of them.

Does Figure 02 make little Figure logos with every step?

Figure: If the surface is soft enough, yes.

Swappable legs! Was that hard to do, or easier to do because you only have to make one leg? Figure: We chose to make swappable legs to help with manufacturing.

Is the battery pack swappable too?

Figure: Our battery is swappable, but it is not a quick swap procedure.

What’s that squishy-looking stuff on the back of Figure 02’s knees and in its elbow joints?

Figure: These are soft stops which limit the range of motion in a controlled way and prevent robot pinch points

Where’d you hide that thumb motor?

Figure: The thumb is now fully contained in the hand.

Tell me about the “skin” on the neck!

Figure: The skin is a soft fabric which is able to keep a clean seamless look even as the robot moves its head.

And here’s the reveal video:

When Figure 02’s head turns, its body turns too, and its arms move. Is that necessary, or aesthetic?

Figure: Aesthetic.

The upper torso and shoulders seem very narrow compared to other humanoids. Why is that?

Figure: We find it essential to package the robot to be of similar proportions to a human. This allows us to complete our target use cases and fit into our environment more easily.

What can you tell me about Figure 02’s walking gait?

Figure: The robot is using a model predictive controller to determine footstep locations and forces required to maintain balance and follow the desired robot trajectory.

How much runtime do you get from 2.25 kilowatt-hours doing the kinds of tasks that we see in the video?

Figure: We are targeting a 5-hour run time for our product.

Slick, but also a little sinister?Figure

This thing looks slick. I’d say that it’s maybe a little too far on the sinister side for a robot intended to work around humans, but the industrial design is badass and the packaging is excellent, with the vast majority of the wiring now integrated within the robot’s skins and flexible materials covering joints that are typically left bare. Figure, if you remember, raised a US $675 million Series B that valued the company at $2.6 billion, and somehow the look of this robot seems appropriate to that.

I do still have some questions about Figure 02, such as where the interesting foot design came from and whether a 16-degree-of-freedom hand is really worth it in the near term. It’s also worth mentioning that Figure seems to have a fair number of Figure 02 robots running around—at least five units at its California headquarters, plus potentially a couple of more at the BMW Spartanburg manufacturing facility.

I also want to highlight this boilerplate at the end of the release: “our humanoid is designed to perform human-like tasks within the workforce and in the home.” We are very, very far away from a humanoid robot in the home, but I appreciate that it’s still an explicit goal that Figure is trying to achieve. Because I want one.

The dream of robotic floor care has always been for it to be hands-off and mind-off. That is, for a robot to live in your house that will keep your floors clean without you having to really do anything or even think about it. When it comes to robot vacuuming, that’s been more or less solved thanks to self-emptying robots that transfer debris into docking stations, which iRobot pioneered with the Roomba i7+ in 2018. By 2022, iRobot’s Combo j7+ added an intelligent mopping pad to the mix, which definitely made for cleaner floors but was also a step backwards in the sense that you had to remember to toss the pad into your washing machine and fill the robot’s clean water reservoir every time. The Combo j9+ stuffed a clean water reservoir into the dock itself, which could top off the robot with water by itself for a month.

With the new Roomba Combo 10 Max, announced today, iRobot has cut out (some of) that annoying process thanks to a massive new docking station that self-empties vacuum debris, empties dirty mop water, refills clean mop water, and then washes and dries the mopping pad, completely autonomously.

iRobot

The Roomba part of this is a mildly upgraded j7+, and most of what’s new on the hardware side here is in the “multifunction AutoWash Dock.” This new dock is a beast: It empties the robot of all of the dirt and debris picked up by the vacuum, refills the Roomba’s clean water tank from a reservoir, and then starts up a wet scrubby system down under the bottom of the dock. The Roomba deploys its dirty mopping pad onto that system, and then drives back and forth while the scrubby system cleans the pad. All the dirty water from this process gets sucked back up into a dedicated reservoir inside the dock, and the pad gets blow-dried while the scrubby system runs a self-cleaning cycle.

The dock removes debris from the vacuum, refills it with clean water, and then uses water to wash the mopping pad.iRobot

This means that as a user, you’ve only got to worry about three things: dumping out the dirty water tank every week (if you use the robot for mopping most days), filling the clean water tank every week, and then changing out the debris every two months. That is not a lot of hands-on time for having consistently clean floors.

The other thing to keep in mind about all of these robots is that they do need relatively frequent human care if you want them to be happy and successful. That means flipping them over and getting into their guts to clean out the bearings and all that stuff. iRobot makes this very easy to do, and it’s a necessary part of robot ownership, so the dream of having a robot that you can actually forget completely is probably not achievable.

The consequence for this convenience is a real chonker of a dock. The dock is basically furniture, and to the company’s credit, iRobot designed it so that the top surface is useable as a shelf—Access to the guts of the dock are from the front, not the top. This is fine, but it’s also kind of crazy just how much these docks have expanded, especially once you factor in the front ramp that the robot drives up, which sticks out even farther.

The Roomba will detect carpet and lift its mopping pad up to prevent drips.iRobot

We asked iRobot director of project management Warren Fernandez about whether docks are just going to keep on getting bigger forever until we’re all just living in giant robot docks, to which he said: “Are you going to continue to see some large capable multifunction docks out there in the market? Yeah, I absolutely think you will—but when does big become too big?” Fernandez says that there are likely opportunities to reduce dock size going forward through packaging efficiencies or dual-purpose components, but that there’s another option, too: Distributed docks. “If a robot has dry capabilities and wet capabilities, do those have to coexist inside the same chassis? What if they were separate?” says Fernandez.

We should mention that iRobot is not the first in the robotic floor care robot space to have a self-cleaning mop, and it’s also not the first to think about distributed docks, although as Fernandez explains, this is a more common approach in Asia where you can also take advantage of home plumbing integration. “It’s a major trend in China, and starting to pop up a little bit in Europe, but not really in North America yet. How amazing could it be if you had a dock that, in a very easy manner, was able to tap right into plumbing lines for water supply and sewage disposal?”

According to Fernandez, this tends to be much easier to do in China, both because the labor cost for plumbing work is far lower than in the United States and Europe, and also because it’s fairly common for apartments in China to have accessible floor drains. “We don’t really yet see it in a major way at a global level,” Fernandez tells us. “But that doesn’t mean it’s not coming.”

The robot autonomously switches mopping mode on and off for different floor surfaces.iRobot

We should also mention the Roomba Combo 10 Max, which includes some software updates:

• The front-facing camera and specialized bin sensors can identify dirtier areas eight times as effectively as before.
• The Roomba can identify specific rooms and prioritize the order they’re cleaned in, depending on how dirty they get.
• A new cleaning behavior called “Smart Scrub” adds a back-and-forth scrubbing motion for floors that need extra oomph.

And here’s what I feel like the new software should do, but doesn’t:

• Use the front-facing camera and bin sensors to identify dirtier areas and then autonomously develop a schedule to more frequently clean those areas.
• Activate Smart Scrub when the camera and bin sensors recognize an especially dirty floor.

I say “should do” because the robot appears to be collecting the data that it needs to do these things but it doesn’t do them yet. New features (especially new features that involve autonomy) take time to develop and deploy, but imagine a robot that makes much more nuanced decisions about where and when to clean based on very detailed real-time data and environmental understanding that iRobot has already implemented.

I also appreciate that even as iRobot is emphasizing autonomy and leveraging data to start making more decisions for the user, the company is also making sure that the user has as much control as possible through the app. For example, you can set the robot to mop your floor without vacuuming first, even though if you do that, all you’re going to end up with a much dirtier mop. Doesn’t make a heck of a lot of sense, but if that’s what you want, iRobot has empowered you to do it.

The dock opens from the front for access to the clean- and dirty-water storage and the dirt bag.iRobot

The Roomba Combo 10 Max will be launching in August for US $1,400. That’s expensive, but it’s also how iRobot does things: A new Roomba with new tech always gets flagship status and premium cost. Sooner or later it’ll be affordable enough that the rest of us will be able to afford it, too.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.

RoboCup 2024: 17–22 July 2024, EINDHOVEN, NETHERLANDS

ICRA@40: 23–26 September 2024, ROTTERDAM, NETHERLANDS

IROS 2024: 14–18 October 2024, ABU DHABI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

ICSR 2024: 23–26 October 2024, ODENSE, DENMARK

Cybathlon 2024: 25–27 October 2024, ZURICH

Enjoy today’s videos!

In this video, you see the start of 1X’s development of an advanced AI system that chains simple tasks into complex actions using voice commands, allowing seamless multi-robot control and remote operation. By starting with single-task models, we ensure smooth transitions to more powerful unified models, ultimately aiming to automate high-level actions using AI.

This video does not contain teleoperation, computer graphics, cuts, video speedups, or scripted trajectory playback. It’s all controlled via neural networks.

[ 1X ]

As the old adage goes, one cannot claim to be a true man without a visit to the Great Wall of China. XBot-L, a full-sized humanoid robot developed by Robot Era, recently acquitted itself well in a walk along sections of the Great Wall.

[ Robot Era ]

The paper presents a novel rotary wing platform, that is capable of folding and expanding its wings during flight. Our source of inspiration came from birds’ ability to fold their wings to navigate through small spaces and dive. The design of the rotorcraft is based on the monocopter platform, which is inspired by the flight of Samara seeds.

[ AirLab ]

We present a variable stiffness robotic skin (VSRS), a concept that integrates stiffness-changing capabilities, sensing, and actuation into a single, thin modular robot design. Reconfiguring, reconnecting, and reshaping VSRSs allows them to achieve new functions both on and in the absence of a host body.

[ Yale Faboratory ]

Heimdall is a new rover design for the 2024 University Rover Challenge (URC). This video shows highlights of Heimdall’s trip during the four missions at URC 2024.

Heimdall features a split body design with whegs (wheel legs), and a drill for sub-surface sample collection. It also has the ability to manipulate a variety of objects, collect surface samples, and perform onboard spectrometry and chemical tests.

[ WVU ]

I think this may be the first time I’ve seen an autonomous robot using a train? This one is delivering lunch boxes!

[ JSME ]

The AI system used identifies and separates red apples from green apples, after which a robotic arm picks up the red apples identified with a qb SoftHand Industry and gently places them in a basket.

My favorite part is the magnetic apple stem system.

[ QB Robotics ]

DexNex (v0, June 2024) is an anthropomorphic teleoperation testbed for dexterous manipulation at the Center for Robotics and Biosystems at Northwestern University. DexNex recreates human upper-limb functionality through a near 1-to-1 mapping between Operator movements and Avatar actions.

Motion of the Operator’s arms, hands, fingers, and head are fed forward to the Avatar, while fingertip pressures, finger forces, and camera images are fed back to the Operator. DexNex aims to minimize the latency of each subsystem to provide a seamless, immersive, and responsive user experience. Future research includes gaining a better understanding of the criticality of haptic and vision feedback for different manipulation tasks; providing arm-level grounded force feedback; and using machine learning to transfer dexterous skills from the human to the robot.

[ Northwestern ]

Sometimes the best path isn’t the smoothest or straightest surface, it’s the path that’s actually meant to be a path.

[ RaiLab ]

Fulfilling a school requirement by working in a Romanian locomotive factory one week each month, Daniela Rus learned to operate “machines that help us make things.” Appreciation for the practical side of math and science stuck with Daniela, who is now Director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).

[ MIT ]

For AI to achieve its full potential, non-experts need to be let into the development process, says Rumman Chowdhury, CEO and cofounder of Humane Intelligence. She tells the story of farmers fighting for the right to repair their own AI-powered tractors (which some manufacturers actually made illegal), proposing everyone should have the ability to report issues, patch updates or even retrain AI technologies for their specific uses.

[ TED ]

Summer is quickly approaching and those of us with pools on their property will surely appreciate the benefits. Having the option to cool yourself down ...

The post Summer-Ready Pools: Discover the Magic of Smorobot Tank C1 Pool Cleaner appeared first on Gizchina.com.

Robosen Robotics Teams Up with Hasbro to Debut the World’s First Auto-Converting Decepticon – Megatron!

By Combining Robosen’s Industry Leading Robotic Expertise and Proprietary Servo Motor Technology, Along with One of the Most Beloved Franchises, Megatron Ushers in Next-Gen Robotics Which Will Provide Fans Hours of Endless Entertainment in an Immersive App & Voiced Activated Experience

(Los Angeles, CA and Shenzhen, China)—April 25, 2024—Robosen Robotics Innovation, Inc – a leading innovator in the field of consumer entertainment robotics, today announced during a Hasbro Pulse Fan Stream, the World’s First Auto-Converting Decepticon leader – Megatron! Joining the growing line of TRANSFORMERS robots created by Robosen and licensed by leading toy and game company Hasbro, the Flagship Megatron enters the battle against the Autobots with Optimus Prime, Bumblebee and Grimlock already available and on the market for order. The Flagship Megatron, first Decepticon collectible in the range, is now available for pre-order at Robosen.com and will retail on pre-sale for $899 USD for a 30-day window before moving to its standard price of $1,199.

After over 3 years of rigorous R&D, the talented team at Robosen has successfully produced a new, awe-inspiring conversion process with Megatron changing from robot to tank instantly, via app or voice!  Coupled with a comprehensive set of functions, including automatic convertible movements from tank to robot, a new and more fluid bipedal walking algorithm, integration of 112 ultra-bright LEDs, an arsenal of incredible included weapons, and a brilliant silver-metallic finish that embodies the true essence of the ominous leader. The Flagship Megatron is poised to dominate any Autobot that stands in his way at a staggering 21” tall and is equipped with 36 servo motors along with 118 microchips powering it from the inside.

Robosen continues to develop a truly interactive experience for the millions of TRANSFORMERS fans worldwide, with its ever growing cast of TRANSFORMERS robots, which can now stage engaging scenes through Mini-Theater (a feature within the app), bringing these beloved characters to life right before your eyes!  With all this astonishing technology and capabilities built into the Flagship Megatron, Robosen completes the savage leader in the most authentic way possible – building in the treasured talents of Frank Welker, the original voice of the 1984 G1 Megatron himself!  Going into the studio specifically for this launch, Frank Welker recorded over 270+ unique lines and beloved phrases, which allow users to experience Megatron like never before, and in the most genuine way.

“We have been eagerly waiting to launch the most incredible, high-end TRANSFORMERS robot available on the market,” said Hansen Su, Founder and CEO of Robosen. “Our engineers have brought Megatron to life! Through the 50 engaging actions built in – the original voice of Frank Welker – to the most amazing converting process we have been able to achieve. Megatron in either tank or robot mode will bring any fan pure joy when they see it for the first time!  It’s a beautiful product – we can’t wait for customers to get theirs!”

“Released in time for the TRANSFORMERS franchise’s 40th anniversary this year, the Flagship Megatron offers an exciting expansion to our existing line with Robosen as we introduce the first Decepticon to the mix. Now, fans can play out the battle between good and evil with stunning, state-of-the-art bots as we honor the franchise’s legacy and embark on the next four decades of action and adventure,” said Casey Collins, President, Licensed Consumer Products, Hasbro.

All Robosen products and collectibles are meticulously designed and crafted with state-of-the-art, high-grade metal alloy parts, combining a classic industrial design with the most cutting-edge robotic technology, while providing an ultimate entertaining experience filled with programming, and pure fun!

About Robosen

Robosen Robotics Innovation Inc (Shenzhen) Co. Ltd, is a leading innovator in the field of robotics, leading the way in digital drive technology, artificial joint driving algorithms, force feedback technology, artificial intelligence, and programming. For more information, please visit https://www.robosen.com

About Hasbro

Hasbro is a leading toy and game company whose mission is to entertain and connect generations of fans through the wonder of storytelling and exhilaration of play. Hasbro delivers play experiences for fans of all ages around the world, through toys, games, licensed consumer products, digital games and services, location-based entertainment, film, TV, and more. With a portfolio of over 1,800 iconic brands including MAGIC: THE GATHERING, DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, Hasbro Gaming, NERF, TRANSFORMERS, PLAY-DOH and PEPPA PIG, as well as premier partner brands, Hasbro brings fans together wherever they are, from tabletop to screen.

Hasbro is guided by our Purpose to create joy and community for all people around the world, one game, one toy, one story at a time. For more than a decade, Hasbro has been consistently recognized for its corporate citizenship, including being named one of the 100 Best Corporate Citizens by 3BL Media, one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies by Ethisphere Institute and one of the 50 Most Community-Minded Companies in the U.S. by the Civic 50. For more information, visit https://corporate.hasbro.com or @Hasbro on LinkedIn.

© 2024 Hasbro, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

About TRANSFORMERS   

The TRANSFORMERS brand is a global powerhouse franchise with millions of fans around the world. Since 1984, the battle between the Autobots and Decepticons has come to life in movies, TV shows, comic books, innovative toys, and digital media, bringing incredible “MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE” experiences to fans of all ages. The brand’s enduring connection is made possible by its rich storytelling and characters: the heroic Autobots who seek to protect all life, and the evil Decepticons who seek to conquer the universe. The TRANSFORMERS brand is a Hasbro franchise.   

Looks like Megatron’s unleashed (just a press release) by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

Robosen Robotics Teams Up with Hasbro to Debut the World’s First Auto-Converting Decepticon – Megatron!

By Combining Robosen’s Industry Leading Robotic Expertise and Proprietary Servo Motor Technology, Along with One of the Most Beloved Franchises, Megatron Ushers in Next-Gen Robotics Which Will Provide Fans Hours of Endless Entertainment in an Immersive App & Voiced Activated Experience

(Los Angeles, CA and Shenzhen, China)—April 25, 2024—Robosen Robotics Innovation, Inc – a leading innovator in the field of consumer entertainment robotics, today announced during a Hasbro Pulse Fan Stream, the World’s First Auto-Converting Decepticon leader – Megatron! Joining the growing line of TRANSFORMERS robots created by Robosen and licensed by leading toy and game company Hasbro, the Flagship Megatron enters the battle against the Autobots with Optimus Prime, Bumblebee and Grimlock already available and on the market for order. The Flagship Megatron, first Decepticon collectible in the range, is now available for pre-order at Robosen.com and will retail on pre-sale for $899 USD for a 30-day window before moving to its standard price of $1,199.

After over 3 years of rigorous R&D, the talented team at Robosen has successfully produced a new, awe-inspiring conversion process with Megatron changing from robot to tank instantly, via app or voice!  Coupled with a comprehensive set of functions, including automatic convertible movements from tank to robot, a new and more fluid bipedal walking algorithm, integration of 112 ultra-bright LEDs, an arsenal of incredible included weapons, and a brilliant silver-metallic finish that embodies the true essence of the ominous leader. The Flagship Megatron is poised to dominate any Autobot that stands in his way at a staggering 21” tall and is equipped with 36 servo motors along with 118 microchips powering it from the inside.

Robosen continues to develop a truly interactive experience for the millions of TRANSFORMERS fans worldwide, with its ever growing cast of TRANSFORMERS robots, which can now stage engaging scenes through Mini-Theater (a feature within the app), bringing these beloved characters to life right before your eyes!  With all this astonishing technology and capabilities built into the Flagship Megatron, Robosen completes the savage leader in the most authentic way possible – building in the treasured talents of Frank Welker, the original voice of the 1984 G1 Megatron himself!  Going into the studio specifically for this launch, Frank Welker recorded over 270+ unique lines and beloved phrases, which allow users to experience Megatron like never before, and in the most genuine way.

“We have been eagerly waiting to launch the most incredible, high-end TRANSFORMERS robot available on the market,” said Hansen Su, Founder and CEO of Robosen. “Our engineers have brought Megatron to life! Through the 50 engaging actions built in – the original voice of Frank Welker – to the most amazing converting process we have been able to achieve. Megatron in either tank or robot mode will bring any fan pure joy when they see it for the first time!  It’s a beautiful product – we can’t wait for customers to get theirs!”

“Released in time for the TRANSFORMERS franchise’s 40th anniversary this year, the Flagship Megatron offers an exciting expansion to our existing line with Robosen as we introduce the first Decepticon to the mix. Now, fans can play out the battle between good and evil with stunning, state-of-the-art bots as we honor the franchise’s legacy and embark on the next four decades of action and adventure,” said Casey Collins, President, Licensed Consumer Products, Hasbro.

All Robosen products and collectibles are meticulously designed and crafted with state-of-the-art, high-grade metal alloy parts, combining a classic industrial design with the most cutting-edge robotic technology, while providing an ultimate entertaining experience filled with programming, and pure fun!

About Robosen

Robosen Robotics Innovation Inc (Shenzhen) Co. Ltd, is a leading innovator in the field of robotics, leading the way in digital drive technology, artificial joint driving algorithms, force feedback technology, artificial intelligence, and programming. For more information, please visit https://www.robosen.com

About Hasbro

Hasbro is a leading toy and game company whose mission is to entertain and connect generations of fans through the wonder of storytelling and exhilaration of play. Hasbro delivers play experiences for fans of all ages around the world, through toys, games, licensed consumer products, digital games and services, location-based entertainment, film, TV, and more. With a portfolio of over 1,800 iconic brands including MAGIC: THE GATHERING, DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, Hasbro Gaming, NERF, TRANSFORMERS, PLAY-DOH and PEPPA PIG, as well as premier partner brands, Hasbro brings fans together wherever they are, from tabletop to screen.

Hasbro is guided by our Purpose to create joy and community for all people around the world, one game, one toy, one story at a time. For more than a decade, Hasbro has been consistently recognized for its corporate citizenship, including being named one of the 100 Best Corporate Citizens by 3BL Media, one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies by Ethisphere Institute and one of the 50 Most Community-Minded Companies in the U.S. by the Civic 50. For more information, visit https://corporate.hasbro.com or @Hasbro on LinkedIn.

© 2024 Hasbro, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

About TRANSFORMERS   

The TRANSFORMERS brand is a global powerhouse franchise with millions of fans around the world. Since 1984, the battle between the Autobots and Decepticons has come to life in movies, TV shows, comic books, innovative toys, and digital media, bringing incredible “MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE” experiences to fans of all ages. The brand’s enduring connection is made possible by its rich storytelling and characters: the heroic Autobots who seek to protect all life, and the evil Decepticons who seek to conquer the universe. The TRANSFORMERS brand is a Hasbro franchise.   

Looks like Megatron’s unleashed (just a press release) by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

For years, Shadow Robot Company’s Shadow Hand has arguably been the gold standard for robotic manipulation. Beautiful and expensive, it is able to mimic the form factor and functionality of human hands, which has made it ideal for complex tasks. I’ve personally experienced how amazing it is to use Shadow Hands in a teleoperation context, and it’s hard to imagine anything better.

The problem with the original Shadow hand was (and still is) fragility. In a research environment, this has been fine, except that research is changing: Roboticists no longer carefully program manipulation tasks by, uh, hand. Now it’s all about machine learning, in which you need robotic hands to massively fail over and over again until they build up enough data to understand how to succeed.

“We’ve aimed for robustness and performance over anthropomorphism and human size and shape.” —Rich Walker, Shadow Robot Company

Doing this with a Shadow Hand was just not realistic, which Google DeepMind understood five years ago when it asked Shadow Robot to build it a new hand with hardware that could handle the kind of training environments that now typify manipulation research. So Shadow Robot spent the last half-decade-ish working on a new, three-fingered Shadow Hand, which the company unveiled today. The company is calling it, appropriately enough, “the new Shadow Hand.”

As you can see, this thing is an absolute beast. Shadow Robot says that the new hand is “robust against a significant amount of misuse, including aggressive force demands, abrasion and impacts.” Part of the point, though, is that what robot-hand designers might call “misuse,” robot-manipulation researchers might very well call “progress,” and the hand is designed to stand up to manipulation research that pushes the envelope of what robotic hardware and software are physically capable of.

Shadow Robot understands that despite its best engineering efforts, this new hand will still occasionally break (because it’s a robot and that’s what robots do), so the company designed it to be modular and easy to repair. Each finger is its own self-contained unit that can be easily swapped out, with five Maxon motors in the base of the finger driving the four finger joints through cables in a design that eliminates backlash. The cables themselves will need replacement from time to time, but it’s much easier to do this on the new Shadow Hand than it was on the original. Shadow Robot says that you can swap out an entire New Hand’s worth of cables in the same time it would take you to replace a single cable on the old hand.

Shadow Robot

The new Shadow Hand itself is somewhat larger than a typical human hand, and heavier too: Each modular finger unit weighs 1.2 kilograms, and the entire three-fingered hand is just over 4 kg. The fingers have humanlike kinematics, and each joint can move up to 180 degrees per second with the capability of exerting at least 8 newtons of force at each fingertip. Both force control and position control are available, and the entire hand runs Robot Operating System, the Open Source Robotics Foundation’s collection of open-source software libraries and tools.

One of the coolest new features of this hand is the tactile sensing. Shadow Robot has decided to take the optical route with fingertip sensors, GelSight-style. Each fingertip is covered in soft, squishy gel with thousands of embedded particles. Cameras in the fingers behind the gel track each of those particles, and when the fingertip touches something, the particles move. Based on that movement, the fingertips can very accurately detect the magnitude and direction of even very small forces. And there are even more sensors on the insides of the fingers too, with embedded Hall effect sensors to help provide feedback during grasping and manipulation tasks.

Shadow Robot

The most striking difference here is how completely different of a robotic-manipulation philosophy this new hand represents for Shadow Robot. “We’ve aimed for robustness and performance over anthropomorphism and human size and shape,” says Rich Walker, director of Shadow Robot Company. “There’s a very definite design choice there to get something that really behaves much more like an optimized manipulator rather than a humanlike hand.”

Walker explains that Shadow Robot sees two different approaches to manipulation within the robotics community right now: There’s imitation learning, where a human does a task and then a robot tries to do the task the same way, and then there’s reinforcement learning, where a robot tries to figure out how do the task by itself. “Obviously, this hand was built from the ground up to make reinforcement learning easy.”

The hand was also built from the ground up to be rugged and repairable, which had a significant effect on the form factor. To make the fingers modular, they have to be chunky, and trying to cram five of them onto one hand was just not practical. But because of this modularity, Shadow Robot could make you a five-fingered hand if you really wanted one. Or a two-fingered hand. Or (and this is the company’s suggestion, not mine) “a giant spider.” Really, though, it’s probably not useful to get stuck on the form factor. Instead, focus more on what the hand can do. In fact, Shadow Robot tells me that the best way to think about the hand in the context of agility is as having three thumbs, not three fingers, but Walker says that “if we describe it as that, people get confused.”

There’s still definitely a place for the original anthropomorphic Shadow Hand, and Shadow Robot has no plans to discontinue it. “It’s clear that for some people anthropomorphism is a deal breaker, they have to have it,” Walker says. “But for a lot of people, the idea that they could have something which is really robust and dexterous and can gather lots of data, that’s exciting enough to be worth saying okay, what can we do with this? We’re very interested to find out what happens.”

The Shadow New Hand is available now, starting at about US $74,000 depending on configuration.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.

Eurobot Open 2024: 8–11 May 2024, LA ROCHE-SUR-YON, FRANCE

ICRA 2024: 13–17 May 2024, YOKOHAMA, JAPAN

RoboCup 2024: 17–22 July 2024, EINDHOVEN, NETHERLANDS

Cybathlon 2024: 25–27 October 2024, ZURICH

Enjoy today’s videos!

In this work, we present LocoMan, a dexterous quadrupedal robot with a novel morphology to perform versatile manipulation in diverse constrained environments. By equipping a Unitree Go1 robot with two low-cost and lightweight modular 3-DoF loco-manipulators on its front calves, LocoMan leverages the combined mobility and functionality of the legs and grippers for complex manipulation tasks that require precise 6D positioning of the end effector in a wide workspace.

[ CMU ]

Thanks, Changyi!

Object manipulation has been extensively studied in the context of fixed-base and mobile manipulators. However, the overactuated locomotion modality employed by snake robots allows for a unique blend of object manipulation through locomotion, referred to as loco-manipulation. In this paper, we present an optimization approach to solving the loco-manipulation problem based on nonimpulsive implicit-contact path planning for our snake robot COBRA.

[ Silicon Synapse Lab ]

Okay, but where that costume has eyes is not where Spot has eyes, so the Spot in the costume can’t see, right? And now I’m skeptical of the authenticity of the mutual snoot-boop.

[ Boston Dynamics ]

Here’s some video of Field AI’s robots operating in relatively complex and unstructured environments without prior maps. Make sure to read our article from this week for details!

[ Field AI ]

Is it just me, or is it kind of wild that researchers are now publishing papers comparing their humanoid controller to the “manufacturer’s” humanoid controller? It’s like humanoids are a commodity now or something.

[ OSU ]

I, too, am packing armor for ICRA.

[ Pollen Robotics ]

Honey Badger 4.0 is our latest robotic platform, created specifically for traversing hostile environments and difficult terrains. Equipped with multiple cameras and sensors, it will make sure no defect is omitted during inspection.

[ MAB Robotics ]

Thanks, Jakub!

Have an automation task that calls for the precision and torque of an industrial robot arm…but you need something that is more rugged or a nonconventional form factor? Meet the HEBI Robotics H-Series Actuator! With 9x the torque of our X-Series and seamless compatibility with the HEBI ecosystem for robot development, the H-Series opens a new world of possibilities for robots.

[ HEBI ]

Thanks, Dave!

This is how all spills happen at my house too: super passive-aggressively.

[ 1X ]

EPFL’s team, led by Ph.D. student Milad Shafiee along with coauthors Guillaume Bellegarda and BioRobotics Lab head Auke Ijspeert, have trained a four-legged robot using deep-reinforcement learning to navigate challenging terrain, achieving a milestone in both robotics and biology.

[ EPFL ]

At Agility, we make robots that are made for work. Our robot Digit works alongside us in spaces designed for people. Digit handles the tedious and repetitive tasks meant for a machine, allowing companies and their people to focus on the work that requires the human element.

[ Agility ]

With a wealth of incredible figures and outstanding facts, here’s Jan Jonsson, ABB Robotics veteran, sharing his knowledge and passion for some of our robots and controllers from the past.

[ ABB ]

I have it on good authority that getting robots to mow a lawn (like, any lawn) is much harder than it looks, but Electric Sheep has built a business around it.

[ Electric Sheep ]

The AI Index, currently in its seventh year, tracks, collates, distills, and visualizes data relating to artificial intelligence. The Index provides unbiased, rigorously vetted, and globally sourced data for policymakers, researchers, journalists, executives, and the general public to develop a deeper understanding of the complex field of AI. Led by a steering committee of influential AI thought leaders, the Index is the world’s most comprehensive report on trends in AI. In this seminar, HAI Research Manager Nestor Maslej offers highlights from the 2024 report, explaining trends related to research and development, technical performance, technical AI ethics, the economy, education, policy and governance, diversity, and public opinion.

[ Stanford HAI ]

This week’s CMU Robotics Institute seminar, from Dieter Fox at Nvidia and the University of Washington, is “Where’s RobotGPT?”

In this talk, I will discuss approaches to generating large datasets for training robot-manipulation capabilities, with a focus on the role simulation can play in this context. I will show some of our prior work, where we demonstrated robust sim-to-real transfer of manipulation skills trained in simulation, and then present a path toward generating large-scale demonstration sets that could help train robust, open-world robot-manipulation models.

[ CMU ]

Robosen Robotics Teams Up with Hasbro to Debut the World’s First Auto-Converting Decepticon – Megatron!

By Combining Robosen’s Industry Leading Robotic Expertise and Proprietary Servo Motor Technology, Along with One of the Most Beloved Franchises, Megatron Ushers in Next-Gen Robotics Which Will Provide Fans Hours of Endless Entertainment in an Immersive App & Voiced Activated Experience

(Los Angeles, CA and Shenzhen, China)—April 25, 2024—Robosen Robotics Innovation, Inc – a leading innovator in the field of consumer entertainment robotics, today announced during a Hasbro Pulse Fan Stream, the World’s First Auto-Converting Decepticon leader – Megatron! Joining the growing line of TRANSFORMERS robots created by Robosen and licensed by leading toy and game company Hasbro, the Flagship Megatron enters the battle against the Autobots with Optimus Prime, Bumblebee and Grimlock already available and on the market for order. The Flagship Megatron, first Decepticon collectible in the range, is now available for pre-order at Robosen.com and will retail on pre-sale for $899 USD for a 30-day window before moving to its standard price of $1,199.

After over 3 years of rigorous R&D, the talented team at Robosen has successfully produced a new, awe-inspiring conversion process with Megatron changing from robot to tank instantly, via app or voice!  Coupled with a comprehensive set of functions, including automatic convertible movements from tank to robot, a new and more fluid bipedal walking algorithm, integration of 112 ultra-bright LEDs, an arsenal of incredible included weapons, and a brilliant silver-metallic finish that embodies the true essence of the ominous leader. The Flagship Megatron is poised to dominate any Autobot that stands in his way at a staggering 21” tall and is equipped with 36 servo motors along with 118 microchips powering it from the inside.

Robosen continues to develop a truly interactive experience for the millions of TRANSFORMERS fans worldwide, with its ever growing cast of TRANSFORMERS robots, which can now stage engaging scenes through Mini-Theater (a feature within the app), bringing these beloved characters to life right before your eyes!  With all this astonishing technology and capabilities built into the Flagship Megatron, Robosen completes the savage leader in the most authentic way possible – building in the treasured talents of Frank Welker, the original voice of the 1984 G1 Megatron himself!  Going into the studio specifically for this launch, Frank Welker recorded over 270+ unique lines and beloved phrases, which allow users to experience Megatron like never before, and in the most genuine way.

“We have been eagerly waiting to launch the most incredible, high-end TRANSFORMERS robot available on the market,” said Hansen Su, Founder and CEO of Robosen. “Our engineers have brought Megatron to life! Through the 50 engaging actions built in – the original voice of Frank Welker – to the most amazing converting process we have been able to achieve. Megatron in either tank or robot mode will bring any fan pure joy when they see it for the first time!  It’s a beautiful product – we can’t wait for customers to get theirs!”

“Released in time for the TRANSFORMERS franchise’s 40th anniversary this year, the Flagship Megatron offers an exciting expansion to our existing line with Robosen as we introduce the first Decepticon to the mix. Now, fans can play out the battle between good and evil with stunning, state-of-the-art bots as we honor the franchise’s legacy and embark on the next four decades of action and adventure,” said Casey Collins, President, Licensed Consumer Products, Hasbro.

All Robosen products and collectibles are meticulously designed and crafted with state-of-the-art, high-grade metal alloy parts, combining a classic industrial design with the most cutting-edge robotic technology, while providing an ultimate entertaining experience filled with programming, and pure fun!

About Robosen

Robosen Robotics Innovation Inc (Shenzhen) Co. Ltd, is a leading innovator in the field of robotics, leading the way in digital drive technology, artificial joint driving algorithms, force feedback technology, artificial intelligence, and programming. For more information, please visit https://www.robosen.com

About Hasbro

Hasbro is a leading toy and game company whose mission is to entertain and connect generations of fans through the wonder of storytelling and exhilaration of play. Hasbro delivers play experiences for fans of all ages around the world, through toys, games, licensed consumer products, digital games and services, location-based entertainment, film, TV, and more. With a portfolio of over 1,800 iconic brands including MAGIC: THE GATHERING, DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, Hasbro Gaming, NERF, TRANSFORMERS, PLAY-DOH and PEPPA PIG, as well as premier partner brands, Hasbro brings fans together wherever they are, from tabletop to screen.

Hasbro is guided by our Purpose to create joy and community for all people around the world, one game, one toy, one story at a time. For more than a decade, Hasbro has been consistently recognized for its corporate citizenship, including being named one of the 100 Best Corporate Citizens by 3BL Media, one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies by Ethisphere Institute and one of the 50 Most Community-Minded Companies in the U.S. by the Civic 50. For more information, visit https://corporate.hasbro.com or @Hasbro on LinkedIn.

© 2024 Hasbro, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

About TRANSFORMERS   

The TRANSFORMERS brand is a global powerhouse franchise with millions of fans around the world. Since 1984, the battle between the Autobots and Decepticons has come to life in movies, TV shows, comic books, innovative toys, and digital media, bringing incredible “MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE” experiences to fans of all ages. The brand’s enduring connection is made possible by its rich storytelling and characters: the heroic Autobots who seek to protect all life, and the evil Decepticons who seek to conquer the universe. The TRANSFORMERS brand is a Hasbro franchise.   

Looks like Megatron’s unleashed (just a press release) by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.

RoboCup German Open: 17–21 April 2024, KASSEL, GERMANY

AUVSI XPONENTIAL 2024: 22–25 April 2024, SAN DIEGO

Eurobot Open 2024: 8–11 May 2024, LA ROCHE-SUR-YON, FRANCE

ICRA 2024: 13–17 May 2024, YOKOHAMA, JAPAN

RoboCup 2024: 17–22 July 2024, EINDHOVEN, NETHERLANDS

Enjoy today’s videos!

In the SpaceHopper project, students at ETH Zurich developed a robot capable of moving in low gravity environments through hopping motions. It is intended to be used in future space missions to explore small celestial bodies.

The exploration of asteroids and moons could provide insights into the formation of the universe, and they may contain valuable minerals that humanity could use in the future.The project began in 2021 as an ETH focus project for bachelor’s students. Now, it is being continued as a regular research project. A particular challenge in developing exploration robots for asteroids is that, unlike larger celestial bodies like Earth, there is low gravity on asteroids and moons. The students have therefore tested their robot’s functionality in zero gravity during a parabolic flight. The parabolic flight was conducted in collaboration with the European Space Agency as part of the ESA Academy Experiments Programme.

[ SpaceHopper ]

It’s still kind of wild to me that it’s now possible to just build a robot like Menteebot. Having said that, at present it looks to be a fairly long way from being able to usefully do tasks in a reliable way.

[ Menteebot ]

Look, it’s the robot we all actually want!

[ Github ]

I wasn’t quite sure what made this building especially “robot-friendly” until I saw the DEDICATED ROBOT ELEVATOR.

[ NAVER ]

We are glad to announce the latest updates with our humanoid robot CL-1. In the test, it demonstrates stair climbing in a single stride based on real-time terrain perception. For the very first time, CL-1 accomplishes back and forth running, in a stable and dynamic way!

[ LimX Dynamics ]

EEWOC [Extended-reach Enhanced Wheeled Orb for Climbing] uses a unique locomotion scheme to climb complex steel structures with its magnetic grippers. Its lightweight and highly extendable tape spring limb can reach over 1.2 meters, allowing it to traverse gaps and obstacles much larger than other existing climbing robots. Its ability to bend allows it to reach around corners and over ledges, and it can transition between surfaces easily thanks to assistance from its wheels. The wheels also let it to drive more quickly and efficiently on the ground. These features make EEWOC well-suited for climbing the complex steel structures seen in real-world environments.

[ Paper ]

Thanks to its “buttock-contact sensors,” JSK’s musculoskeletal humanoid has mastered(ish) the chair-scoot.

[ University of Tokyo ]

Thanks, Kento!

Physical therapy seems like a great application for a humaonid robot when you don’t really need that humanoid robot to do much of anything.

[ Fourier Intelligence ]

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter became the first vehicle to achieve powered, controlled flight on another planet when it took to the Martian skies on 19 April 2021. This video maps the location of the 72 flights that the helicopter took over the course of nearly three years. Ingenuity far surpassed expectations—soaring higher and faster than previously imagined.

[ JPL ]

No thank you!

[ Paper ]

MERL introduces a new autonomous robotic assembly technology, offering an initial glimpse into how robots will work in future factories. Unlike conventional approaches where humans set pre-conditions for assembly, our technology empowers robots to adapt to diverse scenarios. We showcase the autonomous assembly of a gear box that was demonstrated live at CES2024.

[ Mitsubishi ]

Thanks, Devesh!

In November, 2023 Digit was deployed in a distribution center unloading totes from an AMR as part of regular facility operations, including a shift during Cyber Monday.

[ Agility ]

The PR2 just refuses to die. Last time I checked, official support for it ceased in 2016!

[ University of Bremen ]

DARPA’s Air Combat Evolution (ACE) program has achieved the first-ever in-air tests of AI algorithms autonomously flying a fighter jet against a human-piloted fighter jet in within-visual-range combat scenarios (sometimes referred to as “dogfighting”).In this video, team members discuss what makes the ACE program unlike other aerospace autonomy projects and how it represents a transformational moment in aerospace history, establishing a foundation for ethical, trusted, human-machine teaming for complex military and civilian applications.

[ DARPA ]

Sometimes robots that exist for one single purpose that they only do moderately successfully while trying really hard are the best of robots.

[ CMU ]

In a new video posted today, Boston Dynamics is sending off its hydraulic Atlas humanoid robot. “For almost a decade,” the video description reads, “Atlas has sparked our imagination, inspired the next generations of roboticists, and leapt over technical barriers in the field. Now it’s time for our hydraulic Atlas robot to kick back and relax.”

Hydraulic Atlas has certainly earned some relaxation; Boston Dynamics has been absolutely merciless with its humanoid research program. This isn’t a criticism—sometimes being merciless to your hardware is necessary to push the envelope of what’s possible. And as spectators, we just just get to enjoy it, and this highlight reel includes unseen footage of Atlas doing things well along with unseen footage of Atlas doing things not so well. Which, let’s be honest, is what we’re all really here for.

There’s so much more to the history of Atlas than this video shows. Atlas traces its history back to a DARPA project called PETMAN (Protection Ensemble Test Mannequin), which we first wrote about in 2009, so long ago that we had to dig up our own article on the Wayback Machine. As contributor Mikell Taylor wrote back then:

PETMAN is designed to test the suits used by soldiers to protect themselves against chemical warfare agents. It has to be capable of moving just like a soldier—walking, running, bending, reaching, army crawling—to test the suit’s durability in a full range of motion. To really simulate humans as accurately as possible, PETMAN will even be able to “sweat”.

Relative to the other humanoid robots out there at the time (the most famous of which, by far, was Honda’s ASIMO), PETMAN’s movement and balance were very, very impressive. Also impressive was the presumably unintentional way in which this PETMAN video synced up with the music video to Stayin’ Alive by the Bee Gees. Anyway, DARPA was suitably impressed by all this impressiveness, and chose Boston Dynamics to build another humanoid robot to be used for the DARPA Robotics Challenge. That robot was unveiled ten years ago.

The DRC featured a [still looking for a collective noun for humanoid robots] of Atlases, and it seemed like Boston Dynamics was hooked on the form factor, because less than a year after the DRC Finals the company announced the next generation of Atlas, which could do some useful things like move boxes around. Every six months or so, Boston Dynamics put out a new Atlas video, with the robot running or jumping or dancing or doing parkour, leveraging its powerful hydraulics to impress us every single time. There was really nothing like hydraulic Atlas in terms of dynamic performance, and you could argue that there still isn’t. This is a robot that will be missed.

The original rendering of Atlas, followed by four generations of the robot.Boston Dynamics/IEEE Spectrum

Now, if you’re wondering why Boston Dynamics is saying “it’s time for our hydraulic Atlas robot to kick back and relax,” rather than just “our Atlas robot,” and if you’re also wondering why the video description ends with “take a look back at everything we’ve accomplished with the Atlas platform “to date,” well, I can’t help you. Some people might attempt to draw some inferences and conclusions from that very specific and deliberate language, but I would certainly not be one of them, because I’m well known for never speculating about anything.

I would, however, point out a few things that have been obvious for a while now. Namely, that:

• Boston Dynamics has been focusing fairly explicitly on commercialization over the past several years
• Complex hydraulic robots are not product friendly because (among other things) they tend to leave puddles of hydraulic fluid on the carpet
• Boston Dynamics has been very successful with Spot as a productized electric platform based on earlier hydraulic research platforms
• Fully electric commercial humanoids really seems to be where robotics is at right now

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.

RoboCup German Open: 17–21 April 2024, KASSEL, GERMANY

AUVSI XPONENTIAL 2024: 22–25 April 2024, SAN DIEGO

Eurobot Open 2024: 8–11 May 2024, LA ROCHE-SUR-YON, FRANCE

ICRA 2024: 13–17 May 2024, YOKOHAMA, JAPAN

RoboCup 2024: 17–22 July 2024, EINDHOVEN, NETHERLANDS

Cybathlon 2024: 25–27 October 2024, ZURICH

Enjoy today’s videos!

I think suggesting that robots can’t fall is much less useful than instead suggesting that robots can fall and get quickly and easily get back up again.

[ Deep Robotics ]

Sanctuary AI says that this video shows Phoenix operating at “human-equivalent speed,” but they don’t specify which human or under which conditions. Though it’s faster than I would be, that’s for sure.

[ Sanctuary AI ]

“Suzume” is an animated film by Makoto Shinkai, in which one of the characters gets turned into a three-legged chair:

Shintaro Inoue from JSK Lab at the University of Tokyo has managed to build a robotic version of that same chair, which is pretty impressive:

[ Github ]

Thanks, Shintaro!

Humanoid robot EVE training for home assistance like putting groceries into the kitchen cabinets.

[ 1X ]

This is the RAM—robotic autonomous mower. It can be dropped anywhere in the world and will wake up with a mission to make tall grass around it shorter. Here is a quick clip of it working on the Presidio in SF.

[ Electric Sheep ]

This year, our robots braved a Finnish winter for the first time. As the snow clears and the days get longer, we’re looking back on how our robots made thousands of deliveries to S Group customers during the colder months.

[ Starship ]

Agility Robotics is doing its best to answer the (very common) question of “Okay, but what can humanoid robots actually do?”

[ Agility Robotics ]

Digit is great and everything, but Cassie will always be one of my favorite robots.

[ CoRIS ]

Adopting omnidirectional Field of View (FoV) cameras in aerial robots vastly improves perception ability, significantly advancing aerial robotics’s capabilities in inspection, reconstruction, and rescue tasks. We propose OmniNxt, a fully open-source aerial robotics platform with omnidirectional perception.

[ OmniNxt ]

The MAkEable framework enhances mobile manipulation in settings designed around humans by streamlining the process of sharing learned skills and experiences among different robots and contexts. Practical tests confirm its efficiency in a range of scenarios, involving different robots, in tasks such as object grasping, coordinated use of both hands in tasks, and the exchange of skills among humanoid robots.

[ Paper ]

We conducted trials of Ringbot outdoors on a 400 meter track. With a power source of 2300 milliamp-hours and 11.1 Volts, Ringbot managed to cover approximately 3 kilometers in 37 minutes. We commanded its target speed and direction using a remote joystick controller (Steam Deck), and Ringbot experienced five falls during this trial.

[ Paper ]

There is a notable lack of consistency about where exactly Boston Dynamics wants you to think Spot’s eyes are.

[ Boston Dynamics ]

As with every single cooking video, there’s a lot of background prep that’s required for this robot to cook an entire meal, but I would utterly demolish those fries.

[ Dino Robotics ]

Here’s everything you need to know about Wing delivery drones, except for how much human time they actually require and the true cost of making deliveries by drone, because those things aren’t fun to talk about.

[ Wing ]

This CMU Teruko Yata Memorial Lecture is by Agility Robotics’ Jonathan Hurst, on “Human-Centric Robots and How Learning Enables Generality.”

Humans have dreamt of robot helpers forever. What’s new is that this dream is becoming real. New developments in AI, building on foundations of hardware and passive dynamics, enable vastly improved generality. Robots can step out of highly structured environments and become more human-centric: operating in human spaces, interacting with people, and doing some basic human workflows. By connecting a Large Language Model, Digit can convert natural language high-level requests into complex robot instructions, composing the library of skills together, using human context to achieve real work in the human world. All of this is new—and it is never going back: AI will drive a fast-following robot revolution that is going to change the way we live.

[ CMU ]

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.

RoboCup German Open: 17–21 April 2024, KASSEL, GERMANY

AUVSI XPONENTIAL 2024: 22–25 April 2024, SAN DIEGO

Eurobot Open 2024: 8–11 May 2024, LA ROCHE-SUR-YON, FRANCE

ICRA 2024: 13–17 May 2024, YOKOHAMA, JAPAN

RoboCup 2024: 17–22 July 2024, EINDHOVEN, NETHERLANDS

Enjoy today’s videos!

USC, UPenn, Texas A&M, Oregon State, Georgia Tech, Temple University, and NASA Johnson Space Center are teaching dog-like robots to navigate craters of the moon and other challenging planetary surfaces in research funded by NASA.

[ USC ]

AMBIDEX is a revolutionary robot that is fast, lightweight, and capable of human-like manipulation. We have added a sensor head and the torso and the waist to greatly expand the range of movement. Compared to the previous arm-centered version, the overall impression and balance has completely changed.

[ Naver Labs ]

It still needs a lot of work, but the six-armed pollinator, Stickbug, can autonomously navigate and pollinate flowers in a greenhouse now.

I think “needs a lot of work” really means “needs a couple more arms.”

[ Paper ]

Experience the future of robotics as UBTECH’s humanoid robot integrates with Baidu’s ERNIE through AppBuilder! Witness robots [that] understand language and autonomously perform tasks like folding clothes and object sorting.

[ UBTECH ]

I know the fins on this robot are for walking underwater rather than on land, but watching it move, I feel like it’s destined to evolve into something a little more terrestrial.

[ Paper ] via [ HERO Lab ]

iRobot has a new Roomba that vacuums and mops—and at $275, it’s a pretty good deal.

Also, if you are a robot vacuum owner, please, please remember to clean the poor thing out from time to time. Here’s how to do it with a Roomba:

[ iRobot ]

The video demonstrates the wave-basin testing of a 43 kg (95 lb) amphibious cycloidal propeller unmanned underwater vehicle (Cyclo-UUV) developed at the Advanced Vertical Flight Laboratory, Texas A&M University. The use of cyclo-propellers allows for 360 degree thrust vectoring for more robust dynamic controllability compared to UUVs with conventional screw propellers.

[ AVFL ]

Sony is still upgrading Aibo with new features, like the ability to listen to your terrible music and dance along.

[ Aibo ]

Operating robots precisely and at high speeds has been a long-standing goal of robotics research. To enable precise and safe dynamic motions, we introduce a four degree-of-freedom (DoF) tendon-driven robot arm. Tendons allow placing the actuation at the base to reduce the robot’s inertia, which we show significantly reduces peak collision forces compared to conventional motor-driven systems. Pairing our robot with pneumatic muscles allows generating high forces and highly accelerated motions, while benefiting from impact resilience through passive compliance.

[ Max Planck Institute ]

Rovers on Mars have previously been caught in loose soils, and turning the wheels dug them deeper, just like a car stuck in sand. To avoid this, Rosalind Franklin has a unique wheel-walking locomotion mode to overcome difficult terrain, as well as autonomous navigation software.

[ ESA ]

Cassie is able to walk on sand, gravel, and rocks inside the Robot Playground at the University of Michigan.

Aww, they stopped before they got to the fun rocks.

[ Paper ] via [ Michigan Robotics ]

Not bad for 2016, right?

[ Namiki Lab ]

MOMO has learned the Bam Yang Gang dance moves with its hand dexterity. :) By analyzing 2D dance videos, we extract detailed hand skeleton data, allowing us to recreate the moves in 3D using a hand model. With this information, MOMO replicates the dance motions with its arm and hand joints.

[ RILAB ] via [ KIMLAB ]

This UPenn GRASP SFI Seminar is from Eric Jang at 1X Technologies, on “Data Engines for Humanoid Robots.”

1X’s mission is to create an abundant supply of physical labor through androids that work alongside humans. I will share some of the progress 1X has been making towards general-purpose mobile manipulation. We have scaled up the number of tasks our androids can do by combining an end-to-end learning strategy with a no-code system to add new robotic capabilities. Our Android Operations team trains their own models on the data they gather themselves, producing an extremely high-quality “farm-to-table” dataset that can be used to learn extremely capable behaviors. I’ll also share an early preview of the progress we’ve been making towards a generalist “World Model” for humanoid robots.

[ UPenn ]

This Microsoft Future Leaders in Robotics and AI Seminar is from Chahat Deep Singh at the University of Maryland, on “Minimal Perception: Enabling Autonomy in Palm-Sized Robots.”

The solution to robot autonomy lies at the intersection of AI, computer vision, computational imaging, and robotics—resulting in minimal robots. This talk explores the challenge of developing a minimal perception framework for tiny robots (less than 6 inches) used in field operations such as space inspections in confined spaces and robot pollination. Furthermore, we will delve into the realm of selective perception, embodied AI, and the future of robot autonomy in the palm of your hands.

[ UMD ]

February is here. Let’s watch some movies. Welcome to io9's latest edition of the Nerd’s Watch, where we pare down the enormous lists of new films and television shows arriving on all your favorite streaming services into the sci-fi, fantasy, and horror titles we think you’ll like most. (And sometimes, just the ones…

Read more...

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.

Cybathlon Challenges: 2 February 2024, ZURICH

HRI 2024: 11–15 March 2024, BOULDER, COLO.

Eurobot Open 2024: 8–11 May 2024, LA ROCHE-SUR-YON, FRANCE

ICRA 2024: 13–17 May 2024, YOKOHAMA, JAPAN

Enjoy today’s videos!

Just like a real human, Acrobot will sometimes kick you in the face.

[ Acrobotics ]

Thanks, Elizabeth!

You had me at “wormlike, limbless robots.”

[ GitHub ] via [ Georgia Tech ]

Filmed in July 2017, this video shows us using Atlas to put out a “fire” on our loading dock. This uses a combination of teleoperation and autonomous behaviors through a single, remote computer. Robot built by Boston Dynamics for the DARPA Robotics Challenge in 2013. Software by IHMC Robotics.

I would say that in the middle of a rainstorm is probably the best time to start a fire that you expect to be extinguished by a robot.

[ IHMC ]

We’re hard at work, but Atlas still has time for a dance break.

[ Boston Dynamics ]

This is pretty cool: BruBotics is testing its self-healing robotics gripper technology on commercial grippers from Festo.

[ Paper ] via [ BruBotics ]

Thanks, Bram!

You should read our in-depth article on Stretch 3, so if you haven’t yet, consider this as just a teaser.

[ Hello Robot ]

Inspired by caregiving experts, we proposed a bimanual interactive robotic dressing assistance scheme, which is unprecedented in previous research. In the scheme, an interactive robot joins hands with the human thus supporting/guiding the human in the dressing process, while the dressing robot performs the dressing task. This work represents a paradigm shift of thinking of the dressing assistance task from one-robot-to-one-arm to two-robot-to-one-arm.

[ Project ]

Thanks, Jihong!

Tony Punnoose Valayil from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences Institute of Robotics wrote in to share some very low-cost hand-rehabilitation robots for home use.

In this video, we present a robot-assisted rehabilitation of the wrist joint which can aid in restoring the strength that has been lost across the upper limb due to stroke. This robot is very cost-effective and can be used for home rehabilitation.

In this video, we present an exoskeleton robot which can be used at home for rehabilitating the index and middle fingers of stroke-affected patients. This robot is built at a cost of 50 euros for patients who are not financially independent to get better treatment.

[ BAS ]

Some very impressive work here from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), showing a drone tracking its position using radar and lidar-based odometry in some nightmare (for robots) environments, including a long tunnel that looks the same everywhere and a hallway full of smoke.

[ Paper ] via [ GitHub ]

I’m sorry, but people should really know better than to make videos like this for social robot crowdfunding by now.

It’s on Kickstarter for about $300, and the fact that it’s been funded so quickly tells me that people have already forgotten about the social robotpocalypse.

[ Kickstarter ]

Introducing Orbit, your portal for managing asset-intensive facilities through real-time and predictive intelligence. Orbit brings a whole new suite of fleet management capabilities and will unify your ecosystem of Boston Dynamics robots, starting with Spot.

[ Boston Dynamics ]

A lot has happened in robotics over the last year. Everyone is wondering how AI will transform robotics, and everyone else is wondering whether humanoids are going to blow it or not, and the rest of us are busy trying not to get completely run over as things shake out however they’re going to shake out.

Meanwhile, over at Hello Robot, they’ve been focused on making their Stretch robot do useful things while also being affordable and reliable and affordable and expandable and affordable and community-friendly and affordable. Which are some really hard and important problems that can sometimes get overwhelmed by flashier things.

Today, Hello Robot is announcing Stretch 3, which provides a suite of upgrades to what they (quite accurately) call “the world’s only lightweight, capable, developer-friendly mobile manipulator.” And impressively, they’ve managed to do it without forgetting about that whole “affordable” part.

Hello Robot

Stretch 3 looks about the same as the previous versions, but there are important upgrades that are worth highlighting. The most impactful: Stretch 3 now comes with the dexterous wrist kit that used to be an add-on, and it now also includes an Intel Realsense D405 camera mounted right behind the gripper, which is a huge help for both autonomy and remote teleoperation—a useful new feature shipping with Stretch 3 that’s based on research out of Maya Cakmak’s lab at the University of Washington, in Seattle. This is an example of turning innovation from the community of Stretch users into product features, a product-development approach that seems to be working well for Hello Robot.

“We’ve really been learning from our community,” says Hello Robot cofounder and CEO Aaron Edsinger. “In the past year, we’ve seen a real uptick in publications, and it feels like we’re getting to this critical-mass moment with Stretch. So with Stretch 3, it’s about implementing features that our community has been asking us for.”

“When we launched, we didn’t have a dexterous wrist at the end as standard, because we were trying to start with truly the minimum viable product,” says Hello Robot cofounder and CTO Charlie Kemp. “And what we found is that almost every order was adding the dexterous wrist, and by actually having it come in standard, we’ve been able to devote more attention to it and make it a much more robust and capable system.”

Kemp says that having Stretch do everything right out of the box (with Hello Robot support) makes a big difference for their research customers. “Making it easier for people to try things—we’ve learned to really value that, because the more steps that people have to go through to experience it, the less likely they are to build on it.” In a research context, this is important because what you’re really talking about is time: The more time people spend just trying to make the robot function, the less time they’ll spend getting the robot to do useful things.

Hello Robot

At this point, you may be thinking of Stretch as a research platform. Or you may be thinking of Stretch as a robot for people with disabilities, if you read our November 2023 cover story about Stretch and Henry and Jane Evans. And the robot is definitely both of those things. But Hello Robot stresses that these specific markets are not their end goal—they see Stretch as a generalist mobile manipulator with a future in the home, as suggested by this Stretch 3 promo video:

Hello Robot

Dishes, laundry, bubble cannons: All of these are critical to the functionality of any normal household. “Stretch is an inclusive robot,” says Kemp. “It’s not just for older adults or people with disabilities. We want a robot that can be beneficial for everyone. Our vision, and what we believe will really happen, whether it’s us or someone else, is that there is going to be a versatile, general-purpose home robot. Right now, clearly, our market is not yet consumers in the home. But that’s where we want to go.”

Robots in the home have been promised for decades, and with the notable exception of the Roomba, there has not been a lot of success. The idea of a robot that could handle dishes or laundry is tempting, but is it near-term or medium-term realistic? Edsinger, who has been at this whole robots thing for a very long time, is an optimist about this, and about the role that Stretch will play. “There are so many places where you can see the progress happening—in sensing, in manipulation,” Edsinger says. “I can imagine those things coming together now in a way that I could not have 5 to 10 years ago, when it seemed so incredibly hard.”

“We’re very pragmatic about what is possible. And I think that we do believe that things are changing faster than we anticipated—10 years ago, I had a pretty clear linear path in mind for robotics, but it’s hard to really imagine where we’ll be in terms of robot capabilities 10 years from now.” —Aaron Edsinger, Hello Robot

I’d say that it’s still incredibly hard, but Edsinger is right that a lot of the pieces do seem to be coming together. Arguably, the hardware is the biggest challenge here, because working in a home puts heavy constraints on what kind of hardware you’re able to use. You’re not likely to see a humanoid in a home anytime soon, because they’d actually be dangerous, and even a quadruped is likely to be more trouble than it’s worth in a home environment. Hello Robot is conscious of this, and that’s been one of the main drivers of the design of Stretch.

“I think the portability of Stretch is really worth highlighting because there’s just so much value in that which is maybe not obvious,” Edsinger tells us. Being able to just pick up and move a mobile manipulator is not normal. Stretch’s weight (24.5 kilograms) is almost trivial to work with, in sharp contrast with virtually every other mobile robot with an arm: Stretch fits into places that humans fit into, and manages to have a similar workspace as well, and its bottom-heavy design makes it safe for humans to be around. It can’t climb stairs, but it can be carried upstairs, which is a bigger deal than it may seem. It’ll fit in the back of a car, too. Stretch is built to explore the world—not just some facsimile of the world in a research lab.

“NYU students have been taking Stretch into tens of homes around New York,” says Edsinger. “They carried one up a four-story walk-up. This enables real in-home data collection. And this is where home robots will start to happen—when you can have hundreds of these out there in homes collecting data for machine learning.”

“That’s where the opportunity is,” adds Kemp. “It’s that engagement with the world about where to apply the technology beneficially. And if you’re in a lab, you’re not going to find it.”

We’ve seen some compelling examples of this recently, with Mobile ALOHA. These are robots learning to be autonomous by having humans teleoperate them through common household skills. But the system isn’t particularly portable, and it costs nearly US $32,000 in parts alone. Don’t get me wrong: I love the research. It’s just going to be difficult to scale, and in order to collect enough data to effectively tackle the world, scale is critical. Stretch is much easier to scale, because you can just straight up buy one.

Or two! You may have noticed that some of the Stretch 3 videos have two robots in them, collaborating with each other. This is not yet autonomous, but with two robots, a single human (or a pair of humans) can teleoperate them as if they were effectively a single two-armed robot:

Hello Robot

Essentially, what you’ve got here is a two-armed robot that (very intentionally) has nothing to do with humanoids. As Kemp explains: “We’re trying to help our community and the world see that there is a different path from the human model. We humans tend to think of the preexisting solution: People have two arms, so we think, well, I’m going to need to have two arms on my robot or it’s going to have all these issues.” Kemp points out that robots like Stretch have shown that really quite a lot of things can be done with only one arm, but two arms can still be helpful for a substantial subset of common tasks. “The challenge for us, which I had just never been able to find a solution for, was how you get two arms into a portable, compact, affordable lightweight mobile manipulator. You can’t!”

But with two Stretches, you have not only two arms but also two shoulders that you can put wherever you want. Washing a dish? You’ll probably want two arms close together for collaborative manipulation. Making a bed? Put the two arms far apart to handle both sides of a sheet at once. It’s a sort of distributed on-demand bimanual manipulation, which certainly adds a little bit of complexity but also solves a bunch of problems when it comes to practical in-home manipulation. Oh—and if those teleop tools look like modified kitchen tongs, that’s because they’re modified kitchen tongs.

Of course, buying two Stretch robots is twice as expensive as buying a single Stretch robot, and even though Stretch 3’s cost of just under $25,000 is very inexpensive for a mobile manipulator and very affordable in a research or education context, we’re still pretty far from something that most people would be able to afford for themselves. Hello Robot says that producing robots at scale is the answer here, which I’m sure is true, but it can be a difficult thing for a small company to achieve.

Moving slowly toward scale is at least partly intentional, Kemp tells us. “We’re still in the process of discovering Stretch’s true form—what the robot really should be. If we tried to scale to make lots and lots of robots at a much lower cost before we fundamentally understood what the needs and challenges were going to be, I think it would be a mistake. And there are many gravestones out there for various home-robotics companies, some of which I truly loved. We don’t want to become one of those.”

This is not to say that Hello Robot isn’t actively trying to make Stretch more affordable, and Edsinger suggests that the next iteration of the robot will be more focused on that. But—and this is super important—Kemp tells us that Stretch has been, is, and will continue to be sustainable for Hello Robot: “We actually charge what we should be charging to be able to have a sustainable business.” In other words, Hello Robot is not relying on some nebulous scale-defined future to transition into a business model that can develop, sell, and support robots. They can do that right now while keeping the lights on. “Our sales have enough margin to make our business work,” says Kemp. “That’s part of our discipline.”