Our friends at PlasticPals have just published a nice overview of the new Toyota Human Support Robot, or HSR. HSR is designed to assist people with limited mobility complete common tasks around the home, like picking up the remote control or fetching boxes from shelves. It has a clever telescoping design, that allows it to adjust its height, and a single arm that folds up into its side when not needed. The end of the arm also has a clever design combining a standard gripper with a suction cup for flat things like papers and books, that would be very hard to grasp. Read more…
Robotis is coming out with a new line of high-end servos called “Dynamixel Pro”. They’ve released a teaser video (below).
Trossen Robotics also posted a few tidbits of information on their blog. They claim 10X higher torque and precision over the DXL series, the previous high-end Robotis servos, as well as some other nifty features like current-based torque control and support for CAN-Bus and RS-485 communications.
This RoboSavvy Forum thread has also been discussing the new line. One poster speculates that 1 Dynamixel Pro servo will cost as much as an entire Bioloid Premium kit. Nobody knows for sure, but being Robotis, it’s a good bet that these servos won’t come cheap. On the other hand, they’re also likely to be very high quality. Fortunately for them (if not for us), the industrial and academic markets they’re targeting with this line don’t tend to be price-sensitive.
IEEE writer Evan Ackerman, reporting from the IROS 2012 conference, shares a story and video about a U.S. Navy experiment using a robot called Octavia to help fight fires.
What’s interesting in this project isn’t the fire extinguishing, but rather the human/robot interaction. The video below illustrates both verbal and gestural interaction, and shows a lot of interesting detail from the robot’s point of view. Read more…
Here’s a fun little program created by Florian Boucault and Zaheer Merali for the Nao robot. The bot asks how many people will be in the picture, gets a good view, and then snaps a photo (complete with pantomimed camera). The photo is then uploaded and emailed. (Video below.)
The actual function here is nothing extraordinary, but if you haven’t looked at the Nao before, this video provides a great place to start. Notice the smooth movements, the speech recognition, the clear speech synthesis, and the emotive lights in the head. Not to mention smooth body shells that cover up all the workings. This is a robot with polish. Read more…
Michael Schreiber and colleagues at the University of Bonn Institute for Computer Science have developed a new humanoid robot called NimbRo-OP. The robot stands 95 cm tall, which is just big enough for the “Teen Size” RoboCup Humanoid soccer class.
Both hardware and software are open source, though the bulk of the hardware are off-the-shelf Dynamixel servos from Robotis. These include 12 MX-106 (about $500 each) and 8 MX-64 ($300 each). A fully assembled and tested prototype can be ordered from the university for about $25,000; a DIY-er could probably assemble one for about $10-$12K. So, not cheap, but not outrageous for a robot of this size and capability.
NimbRo has an onboard dual-core PC, and can run Windows or Linux. The Linux software is based on the DARwin-OP software from Robotis, but sports some custom adaptations and enhancements. The robot also features a wide-angle camera, which is a great idea; too many vision systems suffer from a narrow field of view. It also has a 6-axis IMU, though that’s fairly standard these days. Read more…
Chris Farrell, the son in the “Farrell Robotics” father/son team that are by far the top American humanoid Robo-One builders, has launched a KickStarter campaign to fund further development of a unique robot video game.
The game is called Dysis, and is described as a “real time strategy/first person shooter hybrid.” It takes place in a chunky, malleable environment like Minecraft, and involves development and combat with armies of robots. You’ll be able to control these robots from an overhead view, as in an RTS, or enter any of your robots and control it directly in a first-person view. The game will run on Windows, Linux, and Mac. Read more…
With the 2012 World Maker Faire drawn to a successful close, Make magazine has reminded us of the many smaller, local maker fairs coming up around the country. This includes newly announced fairs in Denver and San Francisco.
A maker fair is a great place to get some inspiration, swap tips with other builders, and maybe even inspire some others to join you in your obsession. While not robot-specific events, robots of all sorts are certainly welcome.
I encourage you to find the closest upcoming Mini Maker Faire, put it on your calendar, and aim to have your current project working by then. The deadline will be motivating, and sharing it with enthusiastic attendees will be rewarding.
And if you don’t think you can have something to share by then, be one of the enthusiastic attendees — bring the whole family, and some of the neighbor kids too (get permission first). Building stuff is cool, whether it’s robots, wearable electronics, or some weird interactive art display. The more people we can expose to the notion that cool stuff doesn’t have to come from a factory, the better!
And now for something completely different.
Our focus here at BotScene.Net is on humanoid robotics — and in particular, the fun and educational uses to which they can be put, such as duking it out in the ring.
But eventually, we will reach the point of full-sized humanoid robots that can reliably walk, see, climb stairs, sit down, get up, and so on. And then what? There will be no point to such machines if they are not able to “think” and act on their own — and that means, in particular, that we must be able to speak to them, and them to us.
So this new study from Cornell University is important. Read more…
Here’s a great video (below) from the 2012 RoboCup soccer, “Adult Size” category. There are some really great robots here; a few years ago, there were very few (nearly) full-sized humanoids on the planet, Asimo being the most famous. Now there are more, built with substantially smaller budgets, and doing a fairly complex task in fully autonomous mode, using vision to find and control the ball.
OK, here’s one I’ve never seen before — a humanoid robot attempting to swim.
Researchers at Tokyo Institute of Technology built SWUMANOID, a half-sized humanoid swimmer, to better understand water resistance and propulsion. Unlike a human swimmer, the robot can execute exactly the same motions over and over, allowing the researchers to control all the independent variables and focus on whatever question they want to answer.
Bot Scene 