Blog

Robotics NEWS: ROBOTS PAINTING CARS

ABB Robotics has collaborated with two world-renowned artists—8-year-old Indian child prodigy Advait Kolarkar and Dubai-based digital-design collective Illusorr—to create the world’s first robot-painted art car. ABB’s award-winning PixelPaint technology has, without human intervention, perfectly recreated Advait’s swirling, monochromatic design as well as Illusorr’s tricolor geometrical patterns.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/video-friday-automotive-artistry

Robotics NEWS: VIDEO oN ROBOT TOUCH SENSING

Cool video from the science communication folks at Maya's alma mater (Middle East Technical University), featuring recent work on making robots move naturally and communicate intent through movement.

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=9484175

Robotics NEWS: MUJOCO OPEN SOURCED

Mujoco is a robotic simulator that started as a research project at the UW. It was recently acquired by DeepMind and has just been released as open source.

https://www.deepmind.com/blog/open-sourcing-mujoco

Robotics NEWS: NORTHWEST ROBOTICS SYMPOSIUM

UW hosted the first Northwest Robotics Symposium last week with participants from UW, OSU, Simon Frasier, MSR, NVidia, Amazon, and others from the region. One highlight of the event was the live demonstration of the bipedal Cassie robot on the Bradley terrace.

https://nwrsymposium.github.io/

Robotics NEWS: JUMPING ROBOT

Thanks for sharing: Mrigank Arora

The robot, developed at UC Santa Barbara, jumps about the height of a 10-story building, and seems to be much higher than most robotic jumpers. According to the article, jumping robots are typically designed based on animal physiology but the researchers took a different approach for this robot using a motor that slowly compresses a spring in multiple strokes until it's suddenly released and launched upwards.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/robot-jumps-a-record-breaking-100-feet-in-the-air-180980006/

Robotics NEWS: Wearable Hand Exoskeleton

Thanks for sharing: Linden Gan

This video is about a wearable robotic device that can assist humans with grasping. Basically, the "fingers" are made from pressure-sensitive fibers, so it can feel an objects and automatically form a desirable shape to grasp it. This recent technology can help injured/impaired individuals to accomplish manipulation tasks.

Robotics NEWS: A HEALTHY AGING COMPANION ROBOT

The robot ElliQ made an appearance on the Today show this past week! (see first 18 seconds of video below)

https://elliq.com/

Robotics NEWS: Can Robots Save Nursing Homes?

The pandemic has given a new urgency to the development of robots and ‘virtual assisted living’ that can help care for aging adults, physically and emotionally.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/21/realestate/nursing-home-robots.html

Robotics NEWS: NATURE ARTICLE ON ROBOTS FOR ELDERCARE

Robots rise to meet the challenge of caring for old people. Robotics technology is improving, but its routine use in the home, hospital and care settings could be a long way off.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00072-z

Robotics NEWS: AMAZON INVESTS $1B IN ROBOTS

Amazon is investing $1 billion to spur supply chain, fulfillment, and logistics innovation and further improve the customer and employee experience.

https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/innovation-at-amazon/introducing-the-1-billion-amazon-industrial-innovation-fund

Robotics NEWS: AMAZON'S ROBIN

An advanced perception system, that detects and learns from its own mistakes, enables Robin robots to select individual objects from jumbled packages — at production scale.

https://www.amazon.science/latest-news/robin-deals-with-a-world-where-things-are-changing-all-around-it

Robotics NEWS: AGILITY ROBOTICS

Agility Robotics raises $150M from Amazon and others to build human-like robots used in warehouses.

https://www.geekwire.com/2022/agility-robotics-raises-150m-from-amazon-and-others-to-build-robots-used-in-the-workplace/

Robotics NEWS: BIONICHIVE GETS INVESTMENT FROM AMAZON

The startup's SqUID robotics solution is deployed in a wide range of supply chain facilities utilizing existing shelving racks and boxes and is capable of pick and put-away from floor to ceiling.

https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/r1qg2lkbq

Robotics NEWS: DILIGENT ROBOTICS RAISES $30M

Diligent Robotics, the nurse assisting robotics firm from Austin, TX recently raised $30M in Series B funding.

https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/12/nurse-assisting-robotics-firm-diligent-raises-30m/

Robotics NEWS: NEW DESKTOP SOCIAL ROBOT

Looks cute.. but will it survive?

https://energizelab.com/

Robotics NEWS: POLICE STOPS AUTONOMOUS CAR

Thanks for sharing: Vinitha Ranganeni

SFPD stops driverless autonomous Cruise, which promptly takes off.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9w66NvmrlJ0

Robotics NEWS: FENCING ROBOT

Thanks for sharing: Linden Gan

"Basically, it applies reinforcement learning to train robot. I think it's difficult for robot to win because robot must have a very agile arm. But this technology would have great application in HRI, where arm's agility is highly required." Research from a UW CSE/ECE lab.

https://youtu.be/RK3-Ar29I6w

Robotics NEWS: UPDATE ON TESLA'S HUMANOID

Elon Musk says people might download their personalities onto a humanoid robot Tesla is making, which he says could be in 'moderate volume production' next year.

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-people-may-download-memory-personality-onto-tesla-robot-2022-3

Robotics NEWS: STRETCH ROBOTS SOLD OUT

Boston Dynamics’s “Stretch” robot hits production, and it’s already sold out.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/04/boston-dynamics-stretch-robot-hits-production-and-its-already-sold-out/

Robotics NEWS: The Return of FIRST Robotics

After a 2 year hiatus due to the COVID pandemic, FRC is back for most students. This article covers the LA regionals.

https://makezine.com/2022/04/07/the-return-of-first-robotics-la-regional-2022/

Robotics NEWS: BANANA PEELING ROBOTS

Thanks for sharing: Long Thanh Nguyen

This is a robot researched in a lab in Japan. Even though this robot is still under testing and just only get an accuracy of 57%, it shows a potential of robots undertaking the subtle tasks and could help more in different fields and alleviate the labour's shortage in Japan.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/japanese-robots-newest-skill-peeling-banana-rcna23206

Robotics NEWS: CO-PARENTING THROUGH ROBOTS

An IEEE spectrum article describes a case study of a remote parents interacting with their kids through a telepresence robot.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/co-parenting-with-telepresence-robots

Robotics NEWS: ROBOTIC SLIME

Scientists developed a magnetic slime that can be controlled to perform different tasks, like manipulating wires or marbles.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/apr/01/magnetic-turd-scientists-invent-moving-slime-that-could-be-used-in-human-digestive-systems

Robotics NEWS: MR TRASH WHEEL

The water "robot" that goggles garbage in a Baltimore bay.

"There has been a great renaissance in garbage collection technology in the past 10 years and Mr. Trash Wheel is one of the pioneers, collecting over 3 million pounds of trash in Baltimore, Maryland. An old technology becomes new again and is changing the landscape of the beautiful inner harbor."