TC_Chu's Point

Open Source Robotics Foundation

Open Source Robotics Foundation, Inc. (OSRF) is an independent non-profit organization founded by members of the global robotics community.  The mission of OSRF is to support the development, distribution, and adoption of open source software for use in robotics research, education, and product development.

http://www.osrfoundation.org/

Skinless Robot With Real Muscles is Less Scary Than it Looks

ECCERobot was built to move just like a human being and to interact with its environment in the way that a human body would. Its design allows it to leave behind the typical mechanical movements and move with the fluidity characteristic of us meatbags. It features the same bones as humans and “muscles” that work very similarly to our own.

http://gajitz.com/skinless-robot-with-real-muscles-is-less-scary-than-it-looks/

Warehouse Robots Get Smarter With Ant Intelligence

What Fraunhofer is trying to do is mimic the ant swarm system with robots. For example, instead of having one central computer control the movements every robot (as with Kiva), Fraunhofer's system utilizes robots that make their own decisions with onboard computers. Each robot communicates with all the other robots in the swarm simultaneously using WLAN, and they use algorithms based on a model for how ants forage for food to cooperatively decide which of them should go where and do what. 

The robots don't need fixed localization points, but instead rely on "integrated localization and navigation technology" (including signal-based location capability, distance and acceleration sensors and laser scanners) to find the most direct routes to their destination without crashing into anything or each other. This makes them very efficient, and it also makes the system easily scalable, since you can introduce new things and the robots won't freak out.

via IEEE Spectrum

 

Robotic doodle clock

http://hackaday.com/2012/03/14/robotic-doodle-clock/

HDT's MK2 Manipulators Can Outfit PackBots with Arms and Hands

 

HDT Global has just introduced some new robotic limbs to give explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) robots like PackBots and Talons [pictured above] a helping hand (or two) when it comes to complex and delicate tasks like defusing bombs. This is a very good idea, since just poking high explosives with a simple gripper doesn't always work out the way everyone would like.

via IEEE

Kilobots

 Kilobot, a robot designed to make testing collective algorithms on hundreds or thousands of robots accessible to robotics researchers. To enable the possibility of large Kilobot collectives where the number of robots is an order of magnitude larger than the largest that exist today, each robot is low cost and takes only a few minutes to assemble. Furthermore, the robot design allows a single user to easily oversee the operation of a large Kilobot collective, such as programming, powering on, and charging all robots, which would be dificult or impossible to do with many existing robotic systems. We demonstrate the capabilities of the Kilobot as a collective robot, using a 29 robot test collective to implement some popular swarm behaviors.

via Wyss of Harvard

Incredible Robot Arm Made Entirely of LEGOs

http://gajitz.com/toybotics-incredible-robot-arm-made-entirely-of-legos/

iRobot Goes to the Hospital

iRobot Corp., makers of the beloved Roomba (and a lot more), announced that it would be investing $6 million in InTouch Health, a telemedicine company operating in 80 hospitals around the world. Though $6 million represents just a minority stake in the company, it’s--needless to say--a substantial investment, and a strong expansion of a joint development and licensing agreement the two companies had announced last summer.

via MIT Technology Review

Cubelets Promise Robotic

Very intersting demo video!

via http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/04/cubelets-promise-robotic-good-times/

I like it, because it looks familier to the protien. And now programming become assembly instead of coding!

Maxwell Gets a Vertical Arm Lift

http://www.showusyoursensors.com/2011/12/maxwell-finally-gets-vertical-arm-lift.html

Roboticists Learn from the Dragonflies

a 14-channel digital wireless neural/EMG telemetry system, suitable for in-flight neural recording from flying insects such as dragonflies. It has a system mass of only 38 milligrams. The IC is powered by RF energy harvesting and consumes less than 1.23mW. It digitizes 10 neural and 4 EMG signals with 11 bit resolution as a 5 Mbps backscattered data stream at UHF (902-928 MHz). It has been fabricated in a 0.35um 4M1P CMOS process.

http://robots.net/article/3269.html

塗鴉機器人

SENSELESS DRAWING BOT from yang02 on Vimeo.

via IEEE Spectrum

Robot Dog for the Blind

the Japanese manufacturer is working on a new mechanized canine that could one day serve as a guide dog for the blind. The company's latest prototype builds on the work of the University of Electro-Communications (UEC), which unveiled its first model, the NR001, in 2005, followed by an updated version (NR002) in 2007. With this third iteration, unveiled late last month, NSK and UEC have added a Microsoft Kinect sensor, which allows it to more easily identify and navigate obstacles or stairs. The quadrupedal beast can also scamper up and down steps with more grace than its predecessors, which moved more like arthropods than actual dogs. The bot's paws have also been equipped with obstacle-avoiding bumper sensors, and researchers are working on incorporating voice commands, as well. NSK says its guide dog could eventually feature GPS capabilities to provide more accurate directions for the blind and visually impaired, though it'll probably be a while before it hits the pavement; the company hopes to commercialize the dogbot by 2020

via Engadget

The biped robot which rides on a bicycle

太酷了！

via BoingBoing

Hitechnic HT Way & the Gymnast Ride

超可愛!

via Youtube

Virtu-LIMB lets prospective patients take upgraded Touch Bionics hand for a spin

This little yellow dome tethers to a patient's arm and transmits their myoelectric signals to a nearby computer via Bluetooth -- the data is then used to either control an i-LIMB Ultra prosthetic hand or, failing that, a PC simulation of one. The rig was shown at the American Orthotic & Prosthetic Association National Assembly this week, and can be used to help clinicians fine-tune prostheses for their patients, train patients to manipulate their bionic digits, or even demonstrate the Touch Bionics' i-LIMB to a potential user

via Engadget

Crawler Robot on the Loose at German Lab

The star of the movie is the DLR Crawler, a six-legged robot that the researchers use to develop autonomous vision-based navigation. Apparently the Crawler was feeling lonely in the vast lab and set out to make friends, eventually meeting the DLR humanoid robot Justin, which was practicing its ball-catching skills, and the DLR Hand-Arm-System, which was enduring yet more torture tests in the name of science.

超可愛的Robot!

 

via IEEE

iRobot Partners With InTouch, Ava to Start Caring About Your Health

There aren't any details about what Ava will actually be doing (beyond nebulous statements like "we will revolutionize how people communicate and deliver information through remote presence"), but if anything, Ava is going to be capable of much more than I suggested in my original prediction, which was based on the relatively limited ConnectR platform. In retrospect, this is likely a big part of the reason why iRobot canceled ConnectR in the first place in favor of what would become Ava, but I digress.

It seems likely that Ava is going to start off in a hospital setting, cruising around and letting doctors interact with patients via telepresence. This isn't the first step towards robots replacing human doctors or anything, but if there's a specialist that you want to see who lives across the country, telepresence is far more effective than a phone call. As far as when we can expect Ava to start making house calls, well... Telepresence is one of the few robotics markets that consumers (or small businesses) could actually get involved in, so it's certainly possible that some of the telepresence technology embodied in Ava might eventually end up in some kind of Ava / ConnectR love-child. Now there's a mental picture for you.

via IEEE

或許將來就是它幫你照x光 量血壓 送病歷 掛號吧

Mini Maxwell

There are now about half a dozen Mini Maxes running around across the United States. As our software development is starting to calm down, I thought I would take a moment to showcase a few of the robot's features.

As you probably have guessed, this robot runs ROS (on a netbook). We're using an ArbotiX to control the arm and neck servos (7 AX-12s total), while the Create base connects directly to the netbook. Two demo buttons are attached through the ArbotiX allowing users to quickly add user input to programs.

http://www.showusyoursensors.com/2011/06/introducing-mini-maxwell.html

Seeing Robotics with New Eyes

 

Since Microsoft launched its Kinect motion-detecting system for video games, hackers have been eagerly repurposing the $150 device. Garratt Gallagher, a robotics engineer at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, used it to build a robot called the Bilibot that he is selling online for $1,200. The device, which is small enough for Gallagher to carry in his arms, can perceive its surroundings, move around, and manipulate objects.

vit MIT Technology Review

A Biologically Inspired Visual Search Engine

Cortexica's VisualSearch platform uses techniques inspired by the human vision system to compensate for different lighting conditions. It identifies key features of an object irrespective of their orientation, size, or how dark or light they appear in the image. This makes it possible to identify products at a distance or even while they are moving. Cortexica's technology can also spot logos and objects in videos.

...

The human vision system compares different points of an image with its neighbors—a phenomenon known as "edge extraction"—in order to identify features in a range of different conditions. "We have basically copied that architecture," says Bharath. Cortexica uses graphical processing units (GPUs) to handle the parallel processing.

Coping with variations and resolving them is a major issue in computational vision, says Ferryman. "It's crucial. If you can't have this invariance, then you can't do reliable matching," he says.

via MIT Technology Review

Kinect Hackers Are Changing the Future of Robotics – The Real Story Behind the Kinect

For 25 years, the field of robotics has been bedeviled by a fundamental problem: If a robot is to move through the world, it needs to be able to create a map of its environment and understand its place within it. Roboticists have developed tools to accomplish this task, known as simultaneous localization and mapping, or SLAM. But the sensors required to build that map have traditionally been either expensive and bulky or cheap and inaccurate. Laser arrays cost a few thousand dollars and weigh several pounds, and the images they capture are only two-dimensional. Stereo cameras are less expensive, lighter, and can construct 3-D maps, but they require a massive amount of computing power. Until a reasonably priced, easier method could be designed, autonomous robots were trapped in the lab.

via Adafruit

MIT Technology Review

 

BAMF2011: Google’s SKPR Bot, not for arachnophobes

via HackADay

Mat’s prosthetic hands

via ponoko

Workplace Robots Need a Better View

In the last few years, robotics researchers have made progress in machine vision, due in part to the falling cost of computer power, and the photo and image resources that can be pulled from the Web and used to train computer vision systems to recognize different objects. However, Brooks says, giving machines more human-like vision remains one of the biggest challenges to the development of more practical robots.

"Perception is really, really hard. For robots, I think it's largely unsolved," says Brooks. "Image-based recognition has worked surprisingly well, [but] it can't do the recognition that a three-year-old child can do."

via MIT Technology Review

BiliBot combines Kinect, iRobot Create and gripper arm for affordable ROS fun

The Personal Robotics Group at MIT may have already strapped a Kinect to a iRobot Create, but BiliBot did them one better by adding an arm to the mix -- not to mention this cherry-red frame. Better yet, you can order your own BiliBot Developer Edition now for the affordable price of only $1,200. OK, maybe calling $1,200 "affordable" is a bit of a stretch, but in the world of programmable robotics that's not half bad, especially when you consider this self-contained robotics platform comes with its own Ubuntu-booting Core i3 computer with 4GB of RAM. The preinstalled ROS software can be used to steer the bot using data gathered through the battery operated Kinect and also to control the arm, which is connected to geared motors instead of more traditional servos. Those motors allow the BiliBot to lift three pounds up to a height of 17 inches -- perfect for beer delivery, provided you're sitting. Watch it navigate a relatively obstacle-free room in the video after the break.

via Engadget

Video Craziness With da Vinci Surgical Robots

more interesting video

ReWalk Robotic Exoskeleton Gives Paraplegics the Ability to Walk

via Inhabitat

Amit Goffer, the founder of Argo Medical Technologies, recently unveiled a revolutionary exoskeleton that enables paraplegics to stand, walk, and even climb stairs. The bionic device, called ReWalk, is a RoboCop-style suit outfitted with sensors and servos that utilizes simple body movements to produce life-changing results.

 

電腦廢料機械人

via Engadget

Robots Mustering for Recovery in Japan

A radiation monitoring robot, dubbed Monirobo ("monitor" + "robot") (source), developed by Japan's Nuclear Safety Technology Center (NUSTEC), has been deployed to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. While possibly the only robot being brought into play which had been specifically designed for use in a nuclear accident, it's far from the only robot to be deployed, or at least offerred for deployment during the during the recovery phase of the current disaster in Japan. (More after the break)

http://robots.net/article/3125.html

 

UCSF's robotic pharmacy automatically distributes medication

很棒的產品 機器人幫藥劑師配藥這樣比教不會出錯

via Engadget

First Humanoid Robot in space!

via http://robots.net/article/3113.html

其實太空中已經有很多機器人 只是這隻是人形的喔

Stochastic Robots Assemble and Disassemble Themselves

via IEEE Spectrum

文章名稱聽起來是很偉大 不過動作實在不怎樣 這樣簡單的動作 不是用電腦模擬比較快嗎? 當然啦東西是一步一步做出來的 只是這一步有點小 哈哈!

Farmbot

via HackADay

The Bilibot Project

http://www.bilibot.com/

A Low-Cost Robot Platform with iRobot Create, Kinect, and ROSified Computer