Video Friday: UC Berkeley’s Little Humanoid
by Evan Ackerman from IEEE Spectrum on (#6PPHF)
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!
We introduce Berkeley Humanoid, a reliable and low-cost mid-scale humanoid research platform for learning-based control. Our lightweight, in-house-built robot is designed specifically for learning algorithms with low simulation complexity, anthropomorphic motion, and high reliability against falls. Capable of omnidirectional locomotion and withstanding large perturbations with a compact setup, our system aims for scalable, sim-to-real deployment of learning-based humanoid systems.
This article presents Ray, a new type of audio-animatronic robot head. All the mechanical structure of the robot is built in one step by 3-D printing... This simple, lightweight structure and the separate tendon-based actuation system underneath allow for smooth, fast motions of the robot. We also develop an audio-driven motion generation module that automatically synthesizes natural and rhythmic motions of the head and mouth based on the given audio.
[ Paper ]
CSAIL researchers introduce a novel approach allowing robots to be trained in simulations of scanned home environments, paving the way for customized household automation accessible to anyone.
[ MIT News ]
Okay, sign me up for this.
[ Deep Robotics ]
NEURA Robotics is among the first joining the early access NVIDIA Humanoid Robot Developer Program.
This could be great, but there's an awful lot of jump cuts in that video.
I like that Unitree's tagline in the video description here is Let's have fun together."
Is that please don't do dumb stuff with our robots" at the end of the video new...?
[ Unitree ]
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang presented a major breakthrough on Project GR00T with WIRED's Lauren Goode at SIGGRAPH 2024. In a two-minute demonstration video, NVIDIA explained a systematic approach they discovered to scale up robot data, addressing one of the most challenging issues in robotics.
[ Nvidia ]
In this research, we investigated the innovative use of a manipulator as a tail in quadruped robots to augment their physical capabilities. Previous studies have primarily focused on enhancing various abilities by attaching robotic tails that function solely as tails on quadruped robots. While these tails improve the performance of the robots, they come with several disadvantages, such as increased overall weight and higher costs. To mitigate these limitations, we propose the use of a 6-DoF manipulator as a tail, allowing it to serve both as a tail and as a manipulator.
[ Paper ]
In this end-to-end demo, we showcase how MenteeBot transforms the shopping experience for individuals, particularly those using wheelchairs. Through discussions with a global retailer, MenteeBot has been designed to act as the ultimate shopping companion, offering a seamless, natural experience.
[ Menteebot ]
Nature Fresh Farms, based in Leamington, Ontario, is one of North America's largest greenhouse farms growing high-quality organics, berries, peppers, tomatoes, and cucumbers. In 2022, Nature Fresh partnered with Four Growers, a FANUC Authorized System Integrator, to develop a robotic system equipped with AI to harvest tomatoes in the greenhouse environment.
[ FANUC ]
Contrary to what you may have been led to believe by several previous Video Fridays, WVUIRL's open source rover is quite functional, most of the time.
[ WVUIRL ]
Honeybee Robotics, a Blue Origin company, is developing Lunar Utility Navigation with Advanced Remote Sensing and Autonomous Beaming for Energy Redistribution, also known as LUNARSABER. In July 2024, Honeybee Robotics captured LUNARSABER's capabilities during a demonstration of a scaled prototype.
Bunker Mini is a compact tracked mobile robot specifically designed to tackle demanding off-road terrains.
[ AgileX ]
In this video we present results of our lab from the latest field deployments conducted in the scope of the Digiforest EU project, in Stein am Rhein, Switzerland. Digiforest brings together various partners working on aerial and legged robots, autonomous harvesters, and forestry decision-makers. The goal of the project is to enable autonomous robot navigation, exploration, and mapping, both below and above the canopy, to create a data pipeline that can support and enhance foresters' decision-making systems.
[ ARL ]