Video Friday: India Sending Humanoid Robot Into Space
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We'll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!):
Robotic Arena - January 25, 2020 - WrocAaw, Poland DARPA SubT Urban Circuit - February 18-27, 2020 - Olympia, Wash., USA HRI 2020 - March 23-26, 2020 - Cambridge, U.K. ICARSC 2020 - April 15-17, 2020 - Ponta Delgada, Azores ICRA 2020 - May 31-4, 2020 - Paris, FranceLet us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos.
I've got to hand it to Boston Dynamics-letting Adam Savage borrow a Spot for a year is a pretty savvy marketing move.
[ Tested ]
The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) plans to send a humanoid robot into space later this year. According to a Times of India story, the humanoid is called Vyommitra and will help ISRO prepare for its Gaganyaan manned space flight mission, expected for 2022. Before sending human astronauts, ISRO will send Vyommitra, which can speak but doesn't move much (it currently has no legs). According to the Times of India, ISRO chief Kailasavadivoo Sivan said the "Gaganyaan mission is not just about sending a human to space, this mission provides us an opportunities to build a framework for long term national and international collaborations and cooperation. We all know that scientific discoveries, economic development, education, tech development and inspiring youth are coming goals for all nations. Human space flight provides perfect platform to meet all these objectives."
[ Times of India ]
Soft robots have applications in safe human-robot interactions, manipulation of fragile objects, and locomotion in challenging and unstructured environments. In this paper, we present a computational method for augmenting soft robots with proprioceptive sensing capabilities. Our method automatically computes a minimal stretch-receptive sensor network to user-provided soft robotic designs, which is optimized to perform well under a set of user-specified deformation-force pairs. The sensorized robots are able to reconstruct their full deformation state, under interaction forces. We cast our sensor design as a sub-selection problem, selecting a minimal set of sensors from a large set of fabricable ones which minimizes the error when sensing specified deformation-force pairs. Unique to our approach is the use of an analytical gradient of our reconstruction performance measure with respect to selection variables. We demonstrate our technique on a bending bar and gripper example, illustrating more complex designs with a simulated tentacle.
[ Disney Research ]
Dragonfly is a rotorcraft lander that will explore Saturn's large moon Titan. The sampling system called DrACO (Drill for Acquisition of Complex Organics) will extract material from Titan's surface and deliver it to DraMS (Dragonfly Mass Spectrometer, provided by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center). Honeybee Robotics will build the end-to-end DrACO system (including hardware, avionics, and flight software) and will command its operation once Dragonfly lands on Titan in 2034.
DARPA's Gremlins program has completed the first flight test of its X-61A vehicle. The test in late November at the U.S. Army's Dugway Proving Ground in Utah included one captive-carry mission aboard a C-130A and an airborne launch and free flight lasting just over an hour-and-a-half.
The goal for this third phase of the Gremlins program is completion of a full-scale technology demonstration series featuring the air recovery of multiple, low-cost, reusable unmanned aerial systems (UASs), or "Gremlins." Safety, reliability, and affordability are the key objectives for the system, which would launch groups of UASs from multiple types of military aircraft while out of range from adversary defenses. Once Gremlins complete their mission, the transport aircraft would retrieve them in the air and carry them home, where ground crews would prepare them for their next use within 24 hours.
[ DARPA ]
Thi is only sort of a robot, more of an automated system, but I like the idea: dog training!
[ CompanionPro ]
Free-falling paper shapes exhibit rich, complex and varied behaviours that are extremely challenging to model analytically. Physical experimentation aids in system understanding, but is time-consuming, sensitive to initial conditions and reliant on subjective visual behavioural classification. In this study, robotics, computer vision and machine learning are used to autonomously fabricate, drop, analyse and classify the behaviours of hundreds of shapes.
[ Nature ]
This paper introduces LiftTiles, modular inflatable actuators for prototyping room-scale shape-changing interfaces. Each inflatable actuator has a large footprint (e.g., 30 cm x 30 cm) and enables large-scale shape transformation. The ac- tuator is fabricated from a flexible plastic tube and constant force springs. It extends when inflated and retracts by the force of its spring when deflated. By controlling the internal air volume, the actuator can change its height from 15 cm to 150 cm.
We designed each module as low cost (e.g., 8 USD), lightweight (e.g., 1.8kg), and robust (e.g., with- stand more than 10 kg weight), so that it is suitable for rapid prototyping of room-sized interfaces. Our design utilizes constant force springs to provide greater scalability, simplified fabrication, and stronger retraction force, all essential for large-scale shape-change.
[ LiftTiles ]
Aibo may not be the most fearsome security pupper, but it does have what other dogs don't: Wireless connectivity, remote control, and a camera.
[ Aibo ]
I missed this Toyota HSR demo at CES, which is really too bad because I really could have used a snack.
[ NEU ]
The HKUST Aerial Robotics Group has some impressive real-time drone planning that'll be presented at ICRA 2020:
[ Paper ]
Gripping something tricky? When in doubt, just add more fingers.
[ Soft Robotics ]
Demo of the project of Nino Di Pasquale, Matthieu Le Cauchois, Alejandra Plaice and Joil Zbinden. The goal was to program in Python and combine in a project, elements of global path planning, local path planning, baysian filtering for pose estimation and computer vision. The video presents the visualisation interface in real time, assoicated with the real video of the setting with the Thymio robot controlled by wireless connection by the computer running the program.
[ EPFL ]
From public funding opportunities to the latest technologies in software and system integration, the combination of robotics and IT to hardware and application highlights plus updates on new platforms and open-source communities: ROS-Industrial Conference 2019 offered on 3 days in December a varied and top-class programme to more than 150 attendees.
[ ROS-I Consortium ]
Aaron Johnson and his students have been exploring whether hoof-inspired feet can help robots adapt to rough terrain without needing to exhaustively plan out every step.
There's no paper or anything yet, but Aaron did give a talk at Dynamic Walking 2018.
YouTube has put some money into an original eight-episode series on robots and AI, featuring some well-known roboticists. Here are a couple of the more robot-y episodes:
You can watch the whole series at the link below.
[ Age of AI ]
On the AI Podcast, Lex Fridman speaks with Ayanna Howard from Georgia Tech.
[ Lex Fridman ]