Video Friday: Robots Stock Up
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.
Enjoy today's videos!
Telexistence announced the mass production of its originally developed AI robot, TX SCARA, to be installed in 300 FamilyMart stores, Japan's top-tier convenience store chain in major metropolitan areas, starting in late August 2022. TX SCARA was created to do the specific task of restocking refrigerated shelves with bottles and cans, a repetitive, tedious job generally performed by employees in often uncomfortable settings. TX SCARA can be in operation 24/7, relying almost completely on its AI system to know when and where products need to be placed on the shelves.
It's awesome to see a mobile (ish?) manipulator doing useful commercial work, but I have to wonder about this system where bottles are stocked on one shelf (presumably by a human?) and then have to be constantly moved to a different shelf nearby. Is there not a better way of doing it?
[ Telexistence ]
Curiosity has spent 10 years on Mars, which is both awesome and vaguely shocking since I was at JPL a decade ago watching it happen. Here are a couple of videos very briefly summarizing what's been going on, and what's to come.
[ JPL ]
I (still) really appreciate what Canvas is doing, solving a specific problem with tangible value. Robots doing what robots are good at!
[ Canvas ]
I do not understand who these people are that they have this massive trailer containing a robot to make them (just the two of them!) coffee, but the shape of the robot pleases me, so we'll let it slide.
[ Richtech ]
Thanks, Timothy!
Look, delivery drones are certainly a technical challenge, and making them safe and robust is important. But I'm still waiting for someone to show me that doing consumer delivery is sustainable and makes sense.
[ Amazon ]
The latest from RoMeLa at ICRA 2022: "Design and Control of a Miniature Bipedal Robot with Proprioceptive Actuation for Dynamic Behaviors."
[ RoMeLa ]
When the rubber hits the road, even the best technology can carry you only so far. We partnered with footwear sole technology experts Vibram Corporation to develop a new sole for Digit. The result was increased stability on variable surfaces and decreased wear, and we couldn't be happier.
[ Agility Robotics ]
Lunar Zebro, a project of the @TU Delft, in the Netherlands, wants to build a robot and be the first Dutch and European rover to walk on the moon.
[ Lunar Zebro ]
You'll have to sit through a lot of okays" in this video, but it's worth it for the last few seconds for what happens after the robot finally finishes its kitting task.
[ HRI Lab ]
Extend Robotics set out to perform a feasibility study of using a virtual-reality human-robot interface software, AMAS, to demonstrate human-assisted robotic docking in a simulated space environment.
[ Extend Robotics ]
FIRST is great, but the competitions they put on are always superchaotic (and confusing) to watch.
[ FIRST ]
You may have done some reliability testing on your robot, but if you really want to know what it takes to build something durable that you can bring back from the dead, check out this video from Ray Billings on a postmortem after one of the best BattleBots in the world got knocked out in the ring.
[ Tombstone ]
Marco Hutter's keynote speech from ICRA 2022.
[ RSL ]