Robotic News Blog

Robots Will Quickly Recognize and Respond to Human Gestures, With New Algorithms

2012-05-29T05:23:00.000-07:00

New intelligent algorithms could help robots to quickly recognize and respond to human gestures. Researchers at A*STAR Institute for Infocomm Research in Singapore have created a computer program which recognizes human gestures quickly and accurately, and requires very little training.

Many works of science fiction have imagined robots that could interact directly with people to provide entertainment, services or even health care. Robotics is now at a stage where some of these ideas can be realized, but it remains difficult to make robots easy to operate.

One option is to train robots to recognize and respond to human gestures. In practice, however, this is difficult because a simple gesture such as waving a hand may appear very different between different people. Designers must develop intelligent computer algorithms that can be 'trained' to identify general patterns of motion and relate them correctly to individual commands.

Now, Rui Yan and co-workers at the A*STAR Institute for Infocomm Research in Singapore have adapted a cognitive memory model called a localist attractor network (LAN) to develop a new system that recognize gestures quickly and accurately, and requires very little training.

"Since many social robots will be operated by non-expert users, it is essential for them to be equipped with natural interfaces for interaction with humans," says Yan. "Gestures are an obvious, natural means of human communication. Our LAN gesture recognition system only requires a small amount of training data, and avoids tedious training processes."

Yan and co-workers tested their software by integrating it with ShapeTape, a special jacket that uses fibre optics and inertial sensors to monitor the bending and twisting of hands and arms. They programmed the ShapeTape to provide data 80 times per second on the three-dimensional orientation of shoulders, elbows and wrists, and applied velocity thresholds to detect when gestures were starting.

In tests, five different users wore the ShapeTape jacket and used it to control a virtual robot through simple arm motions that represented commands such as forward, backwards, faster or slower. The researchers found that 99.15% of gestures were correctly translated by their system. It is also easy to add new commands, by demonstrating a new control gesture just a few times.

The next step in improving the gesture recognition system is to allow humans to control robots without the need to wear any special devices. Yan and co-workers are tackling this problem by replacing the ShapeTape jacket with motion-sensitive cameras.

"Currently we are building a new gesture recognition system by incorporating our method with a Microsoft Kinect camera," says Yan. "We will implement the proposed system on an autonomous robot to test its usability in the context of a realistic service task, such as cleaning!"

Source : ScienceDaily

Russian Robotic Supply Ship Docks at Space Station

2012-04-22T21:33:00.000-07:00

An unmanned Russian supply ship arrived at the International Space Station Sunday (April 22) carrying tons of fresh supplies in an Earth Day delivery for the orbiting lab's crew.

The robotic Progress 47 cargo ship docked with the space station at 10:39 a.m. EDT (1439 GMT), ending a two-day flight that began with an eye-catching launch. The two spacecraft were sailing 249 miles (400 kilometers) over northern China, just south of the Mongolia border, when Progress 47 parked itself at the orbiting lab.

"Congratulations on a successful automatic docking," flight controllers in Russia's Mission Control Center in Moscow radioed the station crew in Russian.

The Progress supply ship is filled with more than 2.8 tons of food, equipment and other gear for the six-man crew living aboard the space station. Its arrival, which occurred on Earth Day by coincidence, comes just days after the departure of its predecessor Progress 46 from the station, and a week before the much-anticipated launch the first private U.S. cargo ship to the orbiting lab — the robotic Dragon capsule built by California-based SpaceX. Dragon is slated to launch on April 30.

With the retirement of NASA's space shuttle fleet last year, the space agency is dependent on Russia's Progress vehicles and similar robotic space trucks launched by Japan and Europe to ferry its supplies to the station. The Dragon capsule will be the first of two private U.S. spacecraft to take on the job with it begins operational flights.

Russia's Progress space cargo trucks are similar in appearance to the three-module Soyuz vehicles used to ferry crews to and from the International Space Station. Both vehicles have a propulsion module and orbital module, but the progress carries a fuel-laden module for the station's thrusters in place of the central crew capsule used on Soyuz flights. [ How Russia's Progress Spaceships Work (Infographic) ]

Progress 47 is filled with vital supplies for the space station's Expedition 30 crew, which includes three Russians, two Americans and one Dutch astronaut. The supply ship is carrying about 110 pounds (50 kilograms) of oxygen and air, 926 (420 kg) pounds of water, 1,988 (901 kg) pounds of propellant and 2703 pounds (1,226 kg) of dry supplies such as food, spare parts and experiment gear.

The arrival of Progress 47 comes at a busy time for the International Space Station. On Friday (April 27), three station crewmembers will return to Earth to wrap up their months-long mission. NASA astronaut Daniel Burbank, the station's Expedition 30 commander, and cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin are expected to return home aboard a Soyuz space capsule and land on the steppes of Kazakhstan in Central Asia.

Then comes the anticipated Dragon launch, which if all goes well, will occur on April 30 and be followed by a rendezvous at the space station a few days later. Astronauts aboard the station will use the outpost's robotic arm to grapple the Dragon capsule and attach to an empty port.

Three new space station crewmembers are slated to launch aboard a Soyuz spacecraft on May 17.

By : msnbc

Robots may be the first responders in case of another nuclear disaster

2012-04-11T05:52:00.001-07:00

In the event of another disaster at a nuclear power plant, the first responders may not be humans but robots. They may not even look humanoid.

The Pentagon's research and development agency is to announce a competition Tuesday to design specialized robots that can work in disaster zones while operating common tools and vehicles.

And while such tasks may well inspire humanoid designs, roboticists say they may also lead to the robotic equivalent of the Minotaur - a hybrid creature that might have multiple arms and not just legs but treads.

Rumors of the challenge have already set professional and amateur robot builders buzzing about possible designs and alliances. Aaron Edsinger, a founder of Meka Robotics in San Francisco, said he was speaking with fellow roboticists around the country and was considering a wide array of possible inspirations.

"Analogs to animals such as spiders, monkeys, bears, kangaroos and goats are useful inspiration when considering parts of the challenge," he said.

In the Tuesday announcement, the Defense Advanced Research and Planning Agency, or DARPA, lists eight likely tasks the robot will need to perform - among them driving a vehicle to a simulated disaster site, moving across rubble, removing rubble from an entryway, climbing a ladder, using a tool to break through a concrete wall, finding and closing a valve on a leaking pipe, and replacing a component like a cooling pump.

Edsinger said the challenge would be not in completing any one of the tasks but rather in integrating them into a single mission.

"I feel we have already have systems that can achieve each individual task in the challenge," he said.

The idea for the competition came from the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan a year ago, said Gill Pratt, a program manager in DARPA's defense sciences office.

"During the first 24 hours," he added, "there were things that should have been done but were not done because it was too dangerous for people to do them."

The agency has not announced how much it intends to spend on the program or how large the prize will be. It is calling the program a "robotics challenge," which is distinguished from a series of "grand challenge" events it held in 2004, 2005 and 2007, with $1 million and $2 million prizes for a contest to design autonomous vehicles to drive in desert and urban settings.

Corporate and university teams will compete to enter the robots in contests in 2013 and 2015. The robots will not need to be completely autonomous but rather will be "supervised" by human operators, much as ground-based pilots fly military drones.

The competition underscores the rapid progress being made in autonomous systems in military, manufacturing and home applications. Robotics researchers have said that these advances are largely a result of the falling cost of sensors, as well as developments in perception technologies that make it possible for robots to move in unplanned environments.

A number of ambitious humanoid robots have already been designed by industrial researchers. The Honda Asimo was unveiled in 2000 and by 2005 could operate for an hour on batteries. Last year it showed it could run as fast as 6 mph.

DARPA officials said they were hoping for international participation in the competition. Indeed, the challenge echoes a proposal made in November by Hirochika Inoue, the father of humanoid robot development in Japan.

Despite Japan's significant investment in robotics, he noted that the country did not have robots capable of completely replacing humans at the time of the Fukushima disaster.

"Many people wanted to do it by robots," he said in an email, "but we had not prepared."

In the United States, both General Motors and Boston Dynamics, a small research lab financed by the military, have developed humanoid robots. GM's Robonaut 2 is on the International Space Station, where it is being tested as an astronaut's assistant. Boston Dynamics, which has attracted attention for a transport robot called BigDog and more recently for a four-legged running robot called Cheetah, has a humanoid robot called Atlas.

In its announcement, DARPA says it will distribute a test hardware platform with legs, torso, arms and head to assist some of the teams in their development efforts. Several robot researchers said a version of the Boston Dynamics Atlas was a likely candidate for this role, but Pratt said his agency would also provide a software simulator to allow the widest possible participation in the challenge.

"We're opening the aperture as wide as we can," he said.

STATUES TO GOLEMS TO R2-D2

In proposing a competition to build remotely operated robots with human skills, the Defense Department is tapping into a deep vein of human fantasy and fear that goes back at least as far as Greek mythology - in which characters including Pygmalion, Daedalus and Hephaestus endowed statues with human qualities.

And while the goals for the Pentagon's Robot Challenge are humanitarian, mythology and literature tend to focus on the moral and philosophical contradictions of machines that can either help humans or harm them.

In the Middle Ages, Jewish folklore created the golem, an anthropomorphic creature assembled from inanimate matter - usually mud. In many tales the golems became violent.

Not surprisingly, Leonardo da Vinci probably designed the first modern robot, a mechanical knight operated by cables and pulleys that could stand, sit, raise its visor and move its arms. The military motif was perhaps an omen.

In 1818, Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" raised the specter of machines running amok. But in keeping with Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, written as part of a short story in 1942, many literary robots are designed to avoid harming humans; consider the lovable odd couple R2-D2 and C-3PO in George Lucas' "Star Wars" movies.

Still, given the rise of military drone aircraft that use artificial intelligence software in staging attacks, it seems unlikely that the next generation of humanoid robots will prove so benevolent.

Robotic Surgery Oversold on Hospital Websites, Study Contends

2011-05-20T07:40:00.001-07:00

Many hospitals tout the benefits of robotic surgery on their websites without solid scientific evidence to back up those claims, Johns Hopkins researchers report.
In fact, four out of 10 hospitals in the study only used manufacturers' claims that robotic surgery is better than conventional surgery, an assertion that the researchers said is unproven and misleading.
The findings are especially troubling since consumers depend on hospital websites for reliable, trustworthy information, the study authors said.

"Hospital websites are a trusted source of medical information for the public," said lead researcher Dr. Marty Makary, an associate professor of surgery at Hopkins.
"This is the first time we've seen industry create content, with disclosures, and put it on the official hospital website to educate patients about treatment options," he said. "To me, that's a very scary trend."
Robotic surgery has grown more than 400 percent over the past four years, Makary pointed out. "It's one of the great modern crazes," he said. "And the public is driven by the idea that more technology means better care."

Proponents say robot-assisted surgeries require smaller incisions, are more precise and result in less pain and shorter hospital stays. The study authors said those claims are unsubstantiated.
The growth of robotic surgery has been driven by hospital marketing, Makary said. "Marketing a robot has become a very successful strategy for hospitals. It implies the hospital has state-of-the-art care," he said. "Patients may perceive the hospital is on the cutting edge because they do robotic surgery."
Makary noted that often hospitals do not mention the material on their website was provided by the manufacturer, and the sites often fail to mention the risks associated with robotic surgery. Risks include being under anesthetic longer and needing to have a second incision to place the robotic arm, he said.

In addition, the researchers looked at the claims made about the benefits of robotic surgery on these sites. "Frankly, the claims are overstated," Makary said. "Improved cancer outcomes -- that's ridiculous."
Thirty-two percent of the sites claimed that robotic surgery improved cancer outcomes, the researchers found. Makary pointed out that in the studies of robotic surgery, patients suffer as many complications as they do with conventional surgery.
Eighty percent of the robotic surgeries done in the United States are urological and gynecological, Makary said. There have been no randomized trials in these areas comparing robotic and conventional surgery, he said.
"To me, this is exactly what is wrong with American health care," Makary said. "We are adopting technology without being up front about the outcomes to consumers. And we adopt technology before we properly evaluate it."
The report is published in the May online edition of the Journal for Healthcare Quality.
For the study, Makary's team looked at the websites of 400 hospitals with 200 beds or more. They looked for whether robotic surgery was available and what information was provided on the hospital's website in June 2010.
They wanted to see how many hospitals used photos and text directly from the manufacturer of the device and what claims were made about the efficacy of robotic surgery.
The researchers found 41 percent of the websites detailed the availability of robotic surgery and how it worked. In addition, 37 percent of these sites had the information on the home page and 66 percent had a link to another page.
The information on 73 percent of these sites came directly from the manufacturer and 33 percent offered a direct link to the manufacturer's site, Makary's group found.
Moreover, 89 percent of these sites said that robotic surgery was better than conventional surgeries. The claims included less pain (85 percent), shorter recovery (86 percent), less scarring (80 percent) and less blood loss (78 percent). No hospital website mentioned risks associated with the surgery.
Chris Simmonds, senior director of marketing services at Intuitive Surgical Inc., the maker of the da Vinci Surgical System, which is the most widely used robotic system, acknowledged that the company does provide ready-made marketing materials for hospital websites.
Simmonds disputed Makary's findings, however.
The evidence of the benefits of robotic surgery is well-documented, Simmonds said. "All the indicators in terms of length of stay, blood loss, complications and cancer control are all better," he said. The company does tell hospitals the system does provide better patient outcomes, he said.
Dr. David B. Samadi, chief of robotics and minimally invasive surgery at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City, said that "there is some truth to what Makary says."
"There is a lot of misinformation on some of the websites out there, and patients have to really dig in and make sure the information is correct," he said.
However, the key to successful robotic surgery is the same as any other surgery, namely the skill and experience of the surgeon, Samadi said. "This technology in the hands of an experienced surgeon is a great tool, but if you don't have the adequate training it could be quite dangerous," he said.
The procedure is being oversold, Samadi added, and it is sometimes being done by inexperienced surgeons.
"It's up to patients to get a second opinion," he said. Before undergoing robotic surgery, patients need to understand the risks and benefits and be confident that the surgeon is well-trained and performs many such procedures each year, he said.

Robotic Truck Keeps Bin Cleaning a Safe Operation

2011-05-11T04:38:00.001-07:00

FRESHBINS won a 2010 WorkSafe Award for its robotic bin cleaning trucks.

The company won the category for Best OHS Solution in Manufacturing, Logistics and Agriculture for its use of robotics to increase the safety of its workers who operate bin cleaning services.

The bin cleaning industry is relatively new and largely unregulated. Currently, many operations involve high-pressure washing, manual lifting, potential ingestion of vapours and liquids, traffic hazards, and exposure to UV.

Testing has found domestic bins are covered with high levels of disease-carrying bacteria, and garbage industry operators, landfill operators, councils and their workers risk breathing in these toxic vapors.

To alleviate these concerns, bin cleaning services are used to sanitize the bins on a regular basis. However, manual handling of these bins expose bin cleaning workers to the same hazards.

Freshbins fitted its vehicle with a camera-enabled 3D-sensing robot which automatically senses the position of the bins, and lifts them into the cleaning chamber. A high-efficiency ozone sterilization system reduces the use of dangerous chemicals.

The operator is kept away from the cleaning process, remaining in the driver’s cabin at all times.

Mumbai University May Bring In Robotics In Engineering Courses

2011-05-10T08:24:00.001-07:00

The University of Mumbai (MU) is functioning on an determined project to set up robotics as a subject in engineering courses. The project, called ‘E Yantra’, is being urbanized with the help of experts from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay.

University Administration convened a conference of directors of the top 15 School of Engineering and the Faculty of Department of Information Processing May 13 to discuss how the project can be implemented in schools. IIT experts also present.

The MU project aims to create a robotic revolution in the educational domain by conducting workshops, hosting competitions, deploying homegrown low-cost educational robotic platform hardware at colleges with the aim of creating quality content for teaching robotics. The idea of the project is to reach the faculty at engineering colleges through a series of workshops.

Dr Rajpal Hande, director, Board of College and University Development at MU, said: “In modern times, there is a need to use robotic tools in the educational field. Most of the developed countries have already started using robotics in teaching. Through the E Yantra project, we will also lay down a plan to use robotics for teaching in our engineering colleges.

The intention is to create a hub-and-spoke model for the delivery pf content and expertise to college. We will first train faculty of the hub institutes in the use of our robots and our content.” The robotics course will be for students who have graduated in mechanical, electrical, instrumentation or computer engineering with an interest in robotics and artificial intelligence.

According to reports, the candidates with a Masters in robotics could work in space research organizations and companies that manufacture computer chips. Employment opportunities are also available in IIT to implement a comprehensive research of artificial intelligence.

Robotics Teams Ready to Share the Knowledge

2011-05-07T01:53:00.001-07:00

Robots took a immerse in the pool Saturday at Coronado High School in western Colorado Springs.

About the dimension of a shoebox, with plastic pipe frames, the machines used dip noodle foam to keep afloat.

No, they weren’t looking for unsuspecting victims as part of an alien plot. These robots churned through the water, passing through submerged rings as part of an obstacle course to test the savvy of five area high school robotics teams.

About 70 students from five school district worked in teams of three to build the submersible robots Saturday. They will eventually share their knowledge with younger kids.

Each team was given a robot kit, containing the half-inch pipe, foam, three small motors, a battery and several other technical gizmos. The scattered tools and debris in the school’s cafeteria showed they worked hard all morning.

“It’s definitely a lot of fun,” said Coronado senior Scott Von Thun, who had his prom Friday night and was “working on two hours of sleep.”

Von Thun partnered with another Coronado student and one from the Academy School District 20 put together a robot that navigated the obstacles pretty well.

Other teams struggled.

With Saturday’s training session winding down just after 2 p.m., a group of four robot scientists scrambled to fix their rig after it had already “taken a swim.” Andy Robinson, a junior at Vista Ridge High School, said his team figured out the problem and were almost ready to take it back to the pool.

“We’re finishing up,” he said while wrapping electrical tape around some PVC. “We tested the buoyancy and it wouldn’t go down fast enough.”

Von Thun’s D-11 team competed at the robotics national championships last week in St. Louis. The group came in seventh out of 88 teams and walked away with the Chairman’s Award, recognizing their robot-building skills and their community involvement.

Saturday’s session helped fulfill that community requirement for the D-11 team. Bryce McLean, a teacher at Coronado and coach of the host team, said one of the biggest goals of the team is to share their love for robotic technology.

“The hope is that they come here and learn, so that next falls, they can share that with the middle schoolers,” he said.

Symposium to Take Defence Robotics to Next Step

2011-04-27T00:37:00.001-07:00

PUNE: Research and development organisations, academia and industries will gather under one roof in Pune for a two-day symposium on robotics and autonomous vehicles starting from April 28.

According to defence officials, the aim of the symposium is to take robotics to the next level in view of improvement of defence robotics technology. The symposium, titled 'Robotics and Unmanned Vehicles', will take place at Research and Development Establishment (Engineers) [R&DE (E) ], an establishment of Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). This two-day long event will conclude on Friday.

The symposium will bring together users such as Army, Airforce, paramilitary and police forces, research and development organizations including DRDO, ISRO, BARC along academia like IIT-Kanpur, IISc-Bengalore, BITS-Pilani and Industry in order to synergize the efforts and accelerate robotic development process.

The conference, being arranged as part of the Golden Jubilee Celebrations of R&DE (E) will be inaugurated by W Selvamurthy, chief controller, R&D, DRDO on Thursday morning. Lt Gen (Retd) VJ Sundaram, advisor, National Design & Research Forum will be delivering the keynote address.

Live-demonstration of Robotics and Unmanned systems and exhibition of associated products is also being organized to coincide with the symposium.

"The field of Robotics and Autonomous Vehicles is gaining momentum globally. Development of unmanned vehicles, whether on ground, air or underwater is a major domain of research and development. These systems are extensively used for reconnaissance, surveillance, and target-acquisition and for carrying out remote strikes. So it is need of the hour to take the defence robotics to the next step", said Manish Bharadwaj, a senior scientist and regional PRO of DRDO.

Roomba-Maker iRobot Clears Path For Robotics

2011-04-20T06:43:00.001-07:00

Top scientists around the world are trying to improve upon robots, which can already detect bombs, perform surgery and even go into battle.

At iRobot Corp., they're trying to make a better vacuum.

Of course, iRobot's scientists do other things too. The company, best known for its Roomba floor vacuum, recently sent machines to Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant disaster to help detect radiation, to the war zone in Afghanistan to find bombs, and to the Gulf of Mexico to locate spilled oil in the water.

But home robots — dominated by vacuums — make up 55 percent of the company's revenue and are part of the reason iRobot is on a tear. Shares are up 43 percent since the start of the year, and the company earned a profit of $26 million on sales of $401 million last year, up from $3 million on $299 million in revenue the year before.

Last week, the company announced it had won a contract to make bomb disposal robots for the Navy.

That iRobot, the only public company that focuses purely on robotics, is getting attention from investors indicates that this young industry is becoming more mainstream. As analysts and consumers get more comfortable with robots, more companies might succeed in the space.

"It's almost like buying Internet companies in the 1990s," said Alex Hamilton, an analyst with Early Bird Capital who covers iRobot. "The sky's the limit."

Not everyone is a fan. A 2008 Consumer Reports review of vacuums found that the Roomba 560 "was among the worst performers at cleaning edges and corners." On consumer tech site CNET, comments ranged from "always broken, warranty poor" to "It's awesome! Great for what it costs."

The company is now trying to boost sales of secondary items, such as pool and gutter cleaners, to go along with its bestselling Roomba and Scooba robots.

Next up: a device on wheels that can follow you around the house like Rosie from "The Jetsons" and someday maybe even bring you a beer. The company predicts an expanding market in robots that assist the country's aging population.

"No one has ever made money with robots before," said Chief Executive Colin Angle, a freckle-faced 43-year-old who happens to be married to Erika Ebbel, Miss Massachusetts 2004. "But ours create more value than they cost to build."

The growth is evident at the company's headquarters in a Bedford, Mass., office park, where young men in ties and white shirts follow a tour on their first day of orientation. Awards from the last decade sit along the walls: gold-plated and silver Roombas, a crystal Entrepreneur of the Year award for Angle. IRobot now employs about 650 people.

The success is new for a company that teetered on the edge of survival for its first decade and a half. Founded in 1990 by Angle, MIT professor Rodney Brooks and graduate student Helen Greiner, the company's mission was initially vague: to make practical robots that could be useful in everyday lives.

At the time, few investors believed this was a profitable venture, so the three put company expenses on their credit cards, and struggled.

"We were unfundable," said Angle, walking through an exhibit in the company's headquarters of experiments from iRobot's past — a baby doll robot, a Zamboni-like vacuum, a furry creature that runs away from humans when it senses anger.

IRobot didn't receive its first venture funding until 1998. Even then, its endeavors were disjointed, spread across eight divisions: robots that could vacuum floors, entertain children and work on oil wells, to name just a few. It sent robots to work in war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the government contracts weren't profitable enough to support the flailing consumer side.

The company nearly went under in 2002 as it tried to find retailers that would stock the newly completed Roomba. Just when its founders had given up hope, the Brookstone retailing chain called, saying that a test run of the machines had gone well and that consumer demand was increasing.

"We went from the lowest of the low to the most exciting time," Angle said. "Suddenly, things started to work."

Even after the company went public in 2005, its financial problems continued. Its stock slid, precipitously at times, to a low of $7 in 2009 as the company burned through cash because of manufacturing issues and the high price of nickel, which is used to make batteries.

A new chief financial officer, John Leahy, has helped the company better manage its finances, analysts say, as has a focus on what it does best: robotic vacuums. Demand is growing overseas as the company expands into Latin America and Europe. International sales grew 70 percent in 2010, and international home robot revenue made up two-thirds of the company's home robot sales.

The military machines have been a success too: IRobot is one of only two companies that provided robots to the military that have actually ended up on the ground, said Barbara Coffey, managing director at Brigantine Advisors, an investment research company. And the contracts keep coming in. Aside from the Navy deal, the Army said in March that it had ordered 76 small unmanned ground vehicles from iRobot.

"The company during that period really did grow from focused on the next flashy thing to the nuts and bolts of running a business," Coffey said. "Things like quality assurance and all the heavy lifting stuff came to bear."

IRobot hopes next to enter the health care field with Ava, essentially a device on wheels that works with existing tablet computers and can follow people around, sensing walls and other obstacles. If someone is trying to reach a senior citizen who isn't answering the phone, for example, Ava can go find the person, Angle said.

The company is inviting iPad developers to get into the game, designing apps for Ava.

It's just one way the company is expanding outside of cleaning products to make robots a more common presence in our lives.

"Nearly 100 percent of robots are going to help us do more and more and be part of a better life," Angle said. "It's the stuff of dreams."

Robotics Team Wins Praise at National Contest

2011-04-20T00:57:00.001-07:00

MANIPAL: The eight-member robotics team of Manipal Insitute of Technology (MIT), RoboManipal, which took part in ROBOCON 2011 held in Pune recently, has a success story to tell despite failing at making it to the top slot.

The national event was organized under the auspices of Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU) at Belawadi stadium in Pune. The experience, though their first, came as a boost for the team and they are hopeful of a bigger opportunity in the future. They also hope to win the top slot in the next international event in 2012. This year, Robomanipal competed with teams that included those from IITs and other renowned institutes.

Team leader Nalin Garg , a student of BE, Electronics and Communication,

said the team started operation and assembling of their robots from October 2010.

Anubhav Dhar, Raghav Mittal, Budhaithya Sen, Sabyaschi Dattagupta, Kausav Roychowhary, Midhun Jose and Vikram Hattangady were part of the team. Originally, the team had 20 members from various second and third year branches who worked day and night for about five months before the competion.

Inspite of losing vital components during transportation, Nalin said, "We completed the task assigned to us at tech competition fairly well in time. We were rated as one of the best teams as we had an edge over our opponents by implementing cost-efficient hydraulics which comprised master and slave cylinders the main purpose of which was to move the arms of the robots smoothly."

"Imagine, think, create, this is our new mantra," said Nalin adding that MIT director Kumkum Garg, faculty co-oridantor Vasanthkumar, professors Rammohan Pai, HOD aeronatical and R C Ramesha, associate director extended great support to the Robotic team.

Robotic Surgery Gains Prominence in India

2011-03-20T06:46:00.001-07:00

Currently in Chennai in India, major heart surgeries are being performed by a surgeon sitting on a console and manipulating a joy stick. In actuality, he is performing a surgery with the help of an extremely efficient electronic robot with arms.

Robotics News Blog

The robot’s arms could be maneuvered to perform some very minute and subtle movements to wield the instruments for the operation. The patients, instead of the normally high recovery time are up and about in no time at all. The surgeon in question was Dr Ravi Kumar R from the Chettinad Health City CHC, and the patient was an auto driver on whom a double valve replacement operation was performed with robotics for the first ever time.

Formerly, either the aortal or the mitral valve had been substituted with the help of robots, but simultaneous replacement of both the valves was a new occurrence. From the year 2000, robotics has been utilized in cardiac procedures and it usage has also spread over to other medical fields such as gynecology, urology and oncology. Despite being found in many hospitals in the US, in India it is available in just 4-6 hospitals such as CHC in Chennai, CARE in Pune, AIIMS in Delhi and Fortis-Escorts in Delhi.

Dr. Sudhir Srivastava who is the CMD of the new Fortis International Center for Robotic Surgery (ICRS) states that robotic surgical operations are to be performed in surgeries involving lung, heart, neck, head and in fields such as gynecology and urology. Dr. Srivastava further mentions that they have plans of launching 6-10 centers all over India in places such as Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai, Gurgaon, Jaipur and Mohali. In the meantime, CARE has started a Center for Excellence in Minimal Access. According to Dr Ravi Kumar, as more and more awareness about robotic surgeries is spreading, in the future more than 30,000 robotic cardiac procedures could be performed in CHC annually.

With the cost of robots being very high, it is necessary to know if the patients would have to face the brunt of the heavy capital outlay needed for each center. However the advantages offered by robotic surgery such as lesser hospitalization times, reduced scarring, lesser pain and loss of blood, reduced recovery times, and much lower chances of infections post operations would definitely offset the much higher costs involved.

One more major benefit would be that the operation would become much more precise for the surgeons with three-dimensional imaging, which has the capacity of magnifying 40 times and also much lower rates of fatigue and tremors for the surgeon. According to Dr Sailesh Puntnambaker robotic surgery was like driving on a ten lane expressway, without any traffic.

Rochester High School Team Takes Robot to District Competition

2011-03-18T07:02:00.001-07:00

The Rochester FEDS head to Wayne State University this weekend to let their robot compete against other schools.

In a workshop inside Rochester High School, a group of 45 students — mostly aspiring engineers and computer scientists — has spent the past three months somewhere between Legos and the grown-up working world.

They've been brainstorming, designing, building and testing as part of FIRST Robotics, a national science and technology program that challenges students each year to build a real, working robot that will compete against other schools' robots in an arena-like game.

This weekend the Rochester FEDS (which stands for Falcon Engineering & Design Solutions) will take that robot to Wayne State University to compete in the Detroit FIRST Robotics District competition. Last year, Rochester was a finalist in that contest; this year, the group hopes for something more.

"We all want to win," said Justin Murphy, a senior and a member of the team. "It's a team competition, it's not an individual competition, but for me, the winning shows that hard work pays off."

The competition begins in January each year when teams watch a computer simulation of a game that their robot will need to perform. They then put their robot through a product development cycle: they brainstorm what they're going to build; they design it, build it and publicize it. Then they take the robot to competition, where they see what the rest of the market is like.

This year, Rochester's robot weighs about 120 pounds and operates on six-wheel drive. It is intended to place a series of shapes onto pegs by being controlled remotely.

FEDS members are future engineers and aspiring computer scientists. They are kids who used to play with the advanced Lego sets. They say recent graduates who used to be part of the team now work for NASA, Pixar and Apple, among other favorites.

"It's fun to build the robot, to actually see it pieced together and do what you want it to do," said Sarah Yaqub, a senior, one of 10 girls on the team.

At this weekend's Robotics competition, more than 30 teams (including the combined Stoney Creek-Adams High School team) will show off their versions of the FIRST robot.

National Robotics Week Will Be April 9-17

2011-03-11T05:30:00.001-08:00

The second annual National Robotics Week will be held from April 9-17, 2011, with a weeklong series of events in a dozen U.S. locations aimed at increasing public awareness of the growing importance of “robo-technology” and the social and cultural impact that it will have on how people live, work, and play.

Robotics News

National Robotics Week recognizes robotics technology as a pillar of 21st century American innovation and seeks to inspire students while building their interest in technology and innovation. Events include panel discussions, robotics competitions, introductory courses on robotics for kids, educational workshops for businesses, demos, and tours of innovative labs.

National Robotics Week is a product of an effort by leading universities and companies to create a “national roadmap” for robotics technology, which was initially unveiled at a May 2009 briefing by academic and industry leaders to the Congressional Caucus on Robotics. U.S. Representative Mike Doyle (PA-14), co-chair of the caucus, and other members submitted a formal resolution (H.Res. 1055) that Congress passed on March 9, 2010 to support the designation of the second full week in April as National Robotics Week.

"Robotics provides an exciting, hands-on way for students to learn science, technology, engineering and math subjects, and the industry is poised to create many high-tech jobs in the U.S. in areas ranging from manufacturing to healthcare,” said Rep. Doyle.

The 2011 effort is coordinated by a National Robotics Week Advisory Council organized by:
• iRobot Corp., maker of military robots and home appliance robots
• The Technology Collaborative, a Pittsburgh-based non-profit economic development organization

Also a part of 2011 organization efforts:
• Adept Technology
• Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI)
• AUVSI Foundation
• Carnegie Mellon University
• Carnegie Science Center of Pittsburgh
• FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology)
• Infamous Robotics
• Innovation First International
• Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council
• Museum of Science, Boston
• Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago
• Robotic Industries Association (RIA)
• The Tech Museum in Silicon Valley
• Stanford University

Robotics technology is expected to fuel a broad array of next-generation products and applications. Robotics is also proving to be uniquely suited to enabling students of all ages to learn important science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) concepts and at inspiring them to pursue careers in STEM-related fields.

National Robotics Week Events will be in:
• Boston, MA
• Pittsburgh, PA
• Chicago, IL
• Washington, DC area
• San Francisco Bay Area, CA
• Rocklin, CA
• Bloomington, IN
• Hilo, HI
• Durham, NC
• Orlando, FL area
• Branchburg, NJ
• Baltimore, MD

Staples High Robotics Team Engineers State Tourney Victory

2011-03-10T00:34:00.001-08:00

Robotics

The Staples High School Robotics Team, called The Wreckers 577, dominated the Connecticut Tournament of the First Tech Challenge on March 5.

The Staples team members are Haris Durrani, Timothy Yang, Alec Solder, Erin Gandelman, Dylan Roncati, Mrinal Kumar, and John Solder, with Joshua Schwartz providing supervision.

The tourney included 22 schools from New England, New York and Pennsylvania, part of the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition In Science and Technology) program.

The Wreckers 577 robot dominated the state tourney from the outset. The performance challenge consisted of five rounds of four teams randomly paired up so that two team's robots formed an alliance and competed against the other alliance. The Wreckers 577 defeated all the other teams in its division through all five challenges.

The Staples team was primarily mentored by two seniors, Haris Durrani and Timothy Yang, and they beat better-funded teams, including two mentored by MIT faculty.

After dominating the regular rounds, the Wreckers 577 swept the semi-finals and final round to emerge champions. This qualifies the local squad as one of 500 teams from 50 nations to vie for honors at the First Tech Challenge World Robotics Championship event to be held in St. Louis in April.

Rival Robot Squads Share Work Space

2011-02-24T00:34:00.001-08:00

In its first year in the First Robotics competition, students from Sauk Rapids-Rice had almost completed their robot and were ready to prepare it for shipping.

Then, just days before the entry deadline, the students and adviser Eric Leblanc, a tech education teacher at the high school, discovered two key parts that make the robot run were gone.

Apollo coach Mark Weimer had extra parts and offered them to Sauk Rapids-Rice, along with the opportunity to share work space and advice in a shop at the St. Cloud high school.

“Everybody competes, but everybody helps each other out,” Weimer said.

The robots should be ready to compete in the First Robotics regional competitions next month. Sauk Rapids-Rice is competing March 10-12 in Duluth, and Apollo will compete March 31-April 2 at Williams Arena in Minneapolis.

“It’s going real well. We’ve had our ups and downs,” Leblanc said.

The students are building a robot that moves and has an arm that can place an inflatable tube over a hook. The teams score more points depending how high they can get the robot to place the tubes on the hooks.

Sauk Rapids-Rice ninth-graders Katie Ford and Beka Sneed were at Apollo this week working on the robot with their teammates. They were getting a small robot to climb a pole. They said they joined the robotics team because they thought it might be fun to see what they could accomplish.

The girls said they were disappointed by the setback. The parts are believed to have been stolen Thursday or Friday. The parts are small and worthless apart from the robot. Whoever took them left more valuable things in the shop room including tools and a laptop.

The setback did not sit well with the six students who are part of the first Sauk Rapids-Rice team to enter the contest.

“I was very upset and frustrated,” Sneed said.

But the atmosphere inside the shop room was festive and full of cooperation, even while snow piled up outside the school earlier this week.

St. Cloud’s team is called the Granite City Gearheads. The team wore bright orange T-shirts and shared food and advice with their friends from across the river. The white board in the classroom read “Welcome Sauk Rapids.”

Sauk Rapids student Tyler Nash wants to be a robotic engineer; that’s why he joined the team. He said he is grateful to Apollo for helping out.

“It was nice of them to invite us over,” Nash said.

Are We Ready To Have Robots Fighting Our Battles

2011-02-24T00:24:00.001-08:00

Leslea Mair got a new floor sweeper - a puppy-like robot that happily cleans up crumbs before returning to its corner to recharge. But then she wondered about its cousins - the ones with machine guns strapped to their backs.

When the U.S. and their allies entered Iraq in 2003, they had no robotics fleet. Today, they have 7,000 unmanned vehicles in the air and another 12,000 on the ground.Another 43 countries, including Canada, now have dogs in the global robotic fight.

Mair, a Regina-based documentary film producer for Zoot Pictures, believes people just accept the growing use of drones and self-guiding vehicles without understanding the ethical burden they carry.

"If we wait too long, there won't be (room) for debate," says Mair, whose documentary Remote Control War airs on CBC's Doc Zone on Thursday night.

"There's something a little cold-blooded about targeting someone from the other side of the planet. You actually toss a bomb and someone dies - then you take your kids to soccer. "Some people think it's a really good thing, while "¦ others see there are problems."

An estimated 63% of Canadian fatalities in Afghanistan have come from improvised explosive devices. So why not just send in robots? Mair says there's more to it than just finding a way to stop another knock on another military family's door.

"There is something incredibly important happening," explains Peter W. Singer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and author or Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century. "Not only for the history of war, but maybe for the history of humanity."

Suddenly, humans are not just armoured in machinery. Technology allows robot sentries to fight in our place - and pull the trigger on our behalf. While experts admit current battle bots are more like washing machines than Terminators from Hollywood's dark imaginings, Mair's documentary argues the technology is quickly developing into self-thinking attack swarms - that could also be used by our enemies.

Mair says now may be the only time when Canadians can enter the debate over the use and counter-use of warrior robots - rather than just sweeping up after things have settled.

Ex-Robotics Team Coach Faces Porn Charges

2011-02-24T00:16:00.001-08:00

A West Lafayette man who served as a coach for West Lafayette High School's FIRST Robotics team has been charged in federal court with distributing child pornography.

According to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Indiana, Carl Ross Agnew, 27, is accused of using peer-to-peer software to share photos via the Internet of children engaged in sexual activity.

The charge stems from an investigation that began in September 2010 by the FBI's Cyber Crime Task Force and the Kokomo Police Department.

Agnew was arrested Tuesday in West Lafayette and is being held in federal custody without bond, said Mary Hatton, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office.

He's scheduled for a detention hearing Thursday, she said.

Information on whether he will hire an attorney or be appointed one will likely be discussed during that hearing.

According to a probable cause affidavit, Agnew -- using the name "Brighteyedboy" -- was logged onto a peer-to-peer network on Sept. 28, 2010, that allowed others to access his shared directories.

An FBI agent connected to Agnew's files and downloaded 234 photos -- 196 of them showing prepubescent boys in various sexual scenarios.

Agnew is further suspected of collecting "thousands" of such photos and storing them on an encrypted computer drive.

Investigators served a search warrant at Agnew's West Lafayette apartment on Tuesday.

Agnew works at a private engineering firm but also served as one of two coaches for West Lafayette's FIRST Robotics team, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.

FIRST, an acronym for "For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology," is an organization dedicated to inspiring in students an appreciation for science and engineering.

High school students compete against other teams using machines they've built.

The seventh annual Boilermaker regional of the FIRST Robotics competition is scheduled for next month at Purdue University.

As of 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, e-mails sent to members and representatives of the West Lafayette robotics team seeking comment were not responded to.

Area 53- The ERHS Robotics Team

2011-02-23T00:24:00.001-08:00

Area 53, The Eleanor Roosevelt High School Robotics team has entered the build season for their first competition of the year, hoping to improve upon the results they received last year.

Going from only a few members in the past to almost fifty this year, this club is hoping the increase in numbers will help their chances of winning at the competition this year. The main competition called F.I.R.S.T. (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) for robotics is held in March and students work diligently for a one month period to design and build a robot that fits the criteria of the challenge. This year, Area 53 has to build a robot that can climb a pole to put inner tubes on a wall. The number of inner tubes put on the wall is the number of points the team receives depending on how high up the robot is able to put the inner tubes.

Members of the club joined at various times during the beginning of the year. Enrollment is open until January, when the build season begins. “We’re always happy to get new members and train them in various aspects of the robotics team, not just the robots and programming,” said captain of the robotics team and ERHS junior Patrick Healey.

Robotics is also about graphic design and has a very heavy business aspect to it as well. The team made T-shirts and buttons as well with their team name on them. Healey admitted as far as the business aspect it was something the team often forgot to focus on. Healey said it is difficult “getting funding, because building these robots are really expensive, it goes up to $10,000 so we generally get grants from various engineering companies around the area.” Luckily, Roosevelt is in an area where there are a lot of engineering firms because of NASA Goddard. “What we do is put up proposals and explain what we want to do, what we want to teach people, what we want to show them and then we use that to get grant money,” Healey explained. The grant money the team recieved would then be used to build better robots.

The increase in enrollment this year was surprising to some of the senior members who remembered having only a dozen or less people on the team the year before. “last year I was the only freshman and I kind of liked it all by myself but this year there's 20 to 30 [freshmen],” said sophomore Jacky Cheng. Others were glad to see a rise in enrollment because this would hopefully give them a chance to do well at the competitions this year. Although there are so many new freshman on the team, that does not mean they are deprived of responsibility. “It can be difficult sometimes being a freshman on the robotics team because the older members, they kind of expect you to know what to do. It's not like they don't help if you don't know it, though,” said freshman Selena Healey.

Robotics is a well-loved club among those who are members of the team. Other than joining because students want to learn about building robots, a lot of students like the social scene as well. “I love being with all my friends, you know all the seniors, we get together and have a lot of fun,” said senior Paolo Cocchairo. “It's very interesting and it has taught me a lot about engineering that I never thought I'd understand,” he added. This was also a common idea among members of the club. Most members agreed they understood so much more about engineering and programming because of the club and even some of the real world aspects that they would otherwise not have been exposed to. “It’s a really good club, it really prepares students for what it’s like to have a science and technology career so it’s a lot of problem solving, a lot of real world issues like not enough time not enough money, working with other people. They all have to kind of come together and work together,” said sponsor of the robotics team and biology teacher Ms. Emily Moore.

Other than the sponsor, Ms. Moore, there are quite a few other adults who help with the team. Guru Ramu, a former ERHS student who was on the school's 2004 team, came back with another former student Laura Woodworth to restart the team four years ago. Ramu, now an engineering major at the University of Maryland acts as the mentor of the group, attending meetings, and is helping with whatever the team needs help with. “[I] am leading the mechanical teams in the actual construction of the robots,” said Ramu “Of course I have wonderful support from fellow mentors- Laura, and Hieu, who were both on the team with me in 2005.” Along with the mentors of the current team Ramu says he also receives support from Mr. Desch and Matt Zuckerman who were both his mentors in 2005. The other adult in charge of the team is Science and Technology coordinator Ms. Jane Hemelt. “I help with the funding part of the team, I'm in control of the money so that we can buy various things,” said Ms. Hemelt, “I'm here on Saturdays when the team is working so they can get in and out of the building and I’m like an emergency type person.”

With practices three or more times per week and a team that grew vastly in numbers since the previous year the ERHS robotics team is hoping to do well at the March robotics competition. They are also planning to attend several other events and competitions. These include demonstrations for Elementary school students, competitions called the Urban Challenge and the mini Urban Challenge, and the Real World Design challenge. The Urban Challenge is a competition in which students build a vehicle that has to be able to maneuver through a city on its own and the Real World Design challenge is a competition which is heavily focused on physics and building airplanes. The main focus right now is on creating a good robot and placing in the the F.I.R.S.T. competition.

Advantages Of Robotics

2011-02-20T00:34:00.001-08:00

Robotics is a modern technology and today most of the things are being automated with the help of robots. Thanks to the advance technology that the dependence on human beings has been cut to a large extent. Robotics has many advantages and a few limitations.

One of the biggest advantages of automating procedures is the accuracy of results. The chances of a robot going wrong are very minimal and as a process, the whole thing may fail or get executed to perfection. Robotics is being used across several industries like automobiles, medicine, household appliances and several more. The most complicated of machines can be assembled using robotics.

Robotics is also playing fairly an important role in the medicine industry. From preparing drugs to performing simple tasks in surgery. However, the process of actual medicine which involves surgery and others cannot be left to robots and human interference becomes inevitable there.

Robotics is very advantageous in several ways to man kind. For example, humans work in many unsuitable places and conditions like chemical plants, or pharmaceuticals and exposure to some chemicals constantly may not be good for the humans. However, if these responsibilities are automated using robots, then human beings need not face work based injuries and diseases. When it comes to handling hazardous materials robots are better suited. There are similar advantageous applications for a robot in several other industries.

Today, robots are also used to launch satellites and travel to a different planet altogether. Robots are being launched on Mars to explore the planet and are being designed with intelligence at par with humans.