robots.net

Robots Podcast #151: Big deals and privacy

Mon, 10 Mar 2014 01:03:09 GMT

As part of Robohub's focus series on Big Deals, in Robots Podcast #151 interviewer AJung Moon talks with Avner Levin, Chair of the Law and Business Department, Ted Rogers School of Management, Ryerson University, and Director of the Privacy & Cyber Crime Institute. Their conversation ranges widely, but keeps coming back to recent acquisitions on the part of Google, in particular, and whether they represent something to be concerned about from perspective of customer privacy, or even the potential for cyber crime manifesting physically, via robotics. Levin discusses the nature of his own concern, the state of existing law and policy as regards privacy, and the need for government involvement and guidance in this fast-changing, highly competitive environment.

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Robots Podcast #150: Dario Floreano

Mon, 24 Feb 2014 00:12:58 GMT

Before Robohub there was Robots Podcast. Before Robots Podcast there was Talking Robots. Before Talking Robots there was Dario Floreano, a professor at EPFL, with an idea and a handful of graduate students eager to run with it. In episode #150, Robots Podcast goes back to its roots, repeating the combination from the first episode of Talking Robots, of Markus Waibel (now a senior researcher at ETH-Zurich and heavily involved in the RoboEarth project) interviewing Dario Floreano (now also Director of the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research for Robotics, in addition to being head of the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at EPFL). All episodes of both Robots Podcast and Talking Robots are available directly from the Robots Podcast website as well as from the iTunes Store.

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Robots Podcast #149: Industry and Society

Sat, 8 Feb 2014 18:44:35 GMT

In Robots Podcast #149 Per Sjöborg speaks with Rezia Molfino from the PMAR group at University of Genova about how all robots are service robots and some of the many interesting projects she is working on, ranging from challenging manufacturing problems in thin sheet machining (SwarmItFIX) and the textile industry (clopema), to assisted-living vehicles for use in an urban environment (PICAV) and do-it-yourself, practical equipment for demining war zones (Locastra).

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Robots Podcast #148: Robert Bosch Venture Capital

Sun, 26 Jan 2014 18:09:44 GMT

In Robots Podcast #148, Per Sjöborg speaks with Jan Westerhues, Investment Partner with Robert Bosch Venture Capital in Frankfurt, Germany, where he is responsible for robotic investments. Robert Bosch began as an automotive parts firm, but has branched out into other businesses and now has an R&D staff of 15,000 persons. The company's venture capital operation is not an angel investor, and only ever takes a minority position in the companies in which it invests, but, when approached by a company that has already completed the initial phases of identifying a market and defining a product, and has a prototype and a business plan, Westerhues will locate someone within Bosch's R&D staff with the competence to evaluate the prototype, whether it holds the potential to deliver what the company claims for it, and to ‘talk tech’ with the company's own designers and engineers. The ideal situation for Bosch is that in which their own industrial strength can be brought to bear, perhaps supplying parts for the products of the companies in which they invest, but this is not a requirement.

(I listened to this episode five or six times in preparation for this post, and suggest that anyone interested in venture capital funding do likewise.)

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Robots Podcast #147: Giulio Sandini & Interdisciplinarity

Mon, 13 Jan 2014 15:46:11 GMT

In Robots Podcast #147, Per Sjöborg speaks with Giulio Sandini, director of Robotics, Brain and Cognitive Sciences (RBCS) at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), about how, having begun his career as a bioengineer working on how the brain controls the muscles which aim and focus the eye, he eventually came to work in robotics, about why interdisciplinary work is important to robotics, and about how diverse teams of engineers, biologists, psychologists, mathematicians, physicists, and medical doctors can learn from each other. Sandini illustrates the point using examples of successful interdisciplinary efforts at IIT, including the iCub and COMAN humanoid platforms, the HyQ quadruped, and their work in rehabilitation robotics.

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Robots Podcast #146: Lynne Parker, robot teamwork

Sat, 28 Dec 2013 23:27:31 GMT

Lynne Parker is Professor and Associate Head in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK). At UTK, she is the founder and director of the Distributed Intelligence Laboratory, which performs research in multi-robot systems, sensor networks, machine learning, and human-robot interaction. In this episode, Per Sjöborg speaks with Lynne Parker about her work with robot teams.

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Robots Podcast #145: Paul Oh on DRC

Sat, 14 Dec 2013 19:53:58 GMT

In this episode, Sabine Hauert interviews Paul Oh, Director of the Drexel Autonomous Systems Lab at Drexel University. His team, spanning 10 universities, is competing in the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) with the HUBO humanoid made by KAIST in South Korea.

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Robots Podcast #144: Working with EOD personnel

Thu, 5 Dec 2013 06:30:35 GMT

In this episode, AJung Moon talks with Julie Carpenter, who recently received her doctorate in Educational Psychology from the University of Washington, having written her dissertation on the interaction between military Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) personnel and the robots they use in investigating suspicious objects and rendering explosives harmless – primarily PackBots from iRobot and TALONS from QinetiQ. More generally, Julie is interested in emotional attachment issues in human-robot interaction, and how it affects user decision-making in collaborative, sometimes stressful, situations.

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Robots Podcast #143: David Dorhout

Sat, 16 Nov 2013 23:53:07 GMT

David Dorhout is a graduate of Iowa State University. He has always been interested in robotics and 14 years of experience in agriculture and the biotech industry. He is the founder of Dorhout R&D LLC which is a research and development business designing and building novel robotic systems and interactive consumer electronic devices. In this episode, Ron Vanderkley speaks with David about his robots that include Prospero the robot farmer and Aquarius the greenhouse watering robot. This episode of Robots Podcast is part of Robohub's focus series on agricultural robotics.

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Pars Rescue Robot Prototype Tested

Mon, 11 Nov 2013 22:44:33 GMT

You may recall our story in March of this year that described the Pars rescue robot concept developed by RTS Lab in Tehran, Iran. They presented a design for a flying robot that could quickly locate drowning victims in the ocean and launch life preserver floats to them. In less than a year, RTS Lab has gone from conceptual artwork to a working prototype of their robot. From their test report:

The robot’s tests have been taken from 11th to 15th August 2013 at the Caspian Sea. Thirteen tests were taken in a 4 day period and the following aspects were analyzed: Life vest releasing system performance, flight stability, search and rescue performance at day and night, Simplicity of robot’s control, comparing performance with traditional rescue methods, analyzing the deficiencies of robots design. Pars can fly ten minutes in this design and its maximum speed is 10 m/s, thus it can be used in missions with a 4.5 kilometer radius range. Tests were completely successful and all of the expected goals were achieved. Based on the test results and considering the general rescue methods new ideas for developing Pars were achieved that will be revealed after careful scrutiny.

RTS Labs hopes to create further, improved prototypes and eventually commercialize the life-saving robot. And, of course we have lots of cool photos of the robot in action during it's test flight over the Caspian Sea!

Jinn: A Smartphone Controlled Biped

Wed, 6 Nov 2013 21:23:49 GMT

Two roboticists in Switzerland have designed and built a new bipedal robot called Jinn. It includes 3D printed parts and can be controlled using open source software running on an Android based mobile phone. Roger Seeberger writes:

"My partner, Michael Roggli, and me developed an biped smartphone controlled (without extra controller like Arduino) robot. The robot, we call it Jinn, is 1m tall and has 24 servos. We will an open source API, Android development, and diffrent Apps. The idea is, customers could order assembled robots but also plans, parts etc."

Seeberger Robotics is the name of their company and they're also developing a small quadraped. Read on for video of both robots in action.

Random Robot Roundup

Tue, 5 Nov 2013 20:53:12 GMT

Howdy, robot fans, I'm back and have a ton of robot news waiting to roll out! So what better way to start than with a quick news roundup? Here we go...

Kim from Rethink Robotics let us know that their Baxter Research Robot has lots of new features and improvements to help promote the ROS open source robotics platform.
Speaking of ROS, Tim Smith sends word about the latest spin-off from Willow Garage, Unbounded Robotics and the UBR-1 robot for researchers and businesses.
The Swirling Brain sent a link to the latest in DiY cyborg technology, a mashup between body mods and wearable computers.
Wendy from Intellibot Robotics let us know about their new HydroBot 17 cleaning robot that's ready to start scrubbing the hallways and aisles in schools, hospitals, and grocery stores near you.
A Technology Review article notes that robots are beginning to move more like humans.
MIT meanwhile, has been busy with robots that move nothing like humans: self-assembling cube bots.
John from Logic Supply thinks your next robot needs one of their ML300 fanless NUCs, which works at temperatures up to 50C.
The EU Human Brain Project officially kicked off last month, joining the US BRAIN Initiative which is already underway. This will be an exciting time for anyone interested in AI and cognitive science!

Know any other robot news, gossip, or amazing facts we should report? Send 'em our way please. Don't forget to follow us on twitter and Facebook. And now you can add us to your Google+ circles too.

Robots Podcast #142: Blue River Technology

Mon, 4 Nov 2013 01:43:26 GMT

“In this episode Sabine Hauert speaks with Jorge Heraud, CEO of California-based startup Blue River Technology which brings together computer vision and robotics to automate agriculture. Their first robot LettuceBot targets the state’s #1 vegetable crop. Its task is to thin rows of lettuce in fields. This involves selectively removing some of the plants by spraying excess fertilizer on them, thereby avoiding overcrowding while fertilizing nearby plants. The tractor-mounted robot is already being rented out to farms across the state.” (This podcast episode is part of Robohub's focus series on agricultural robotics.)

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Robots Podcast #141: Kendra Kerrisk on automatic milking

Sun, 20 Oct 2013 00:36:08 GMT

Kendra Kerrisk, a member of the Faculty of Veterinary Science at the The University of Sydney, developed a strong interest in the dairy industry while a student at Massey University in New Zealand, an interest which she continued to pursue during her doctoral studies at the University of Melbourne. Following that, she worked for Dexcel (formerly Dairying Research Corporation and now merged with Dairy InSight as DairyNZ), in New Zealand, on the world’s first pasture-based automatic milking system (AMS) research farm. She has contributed significantly to the body of knowledge regarding automatic milking systems in a pasture-fed diary context. As AMS Research Leader within the FutureDairy program, she has also contributed to the development of the world's first robotic rotary (Automatic Milking Rotary).

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Robots Podcast #140: Getting started with RobotGrrl

Sat, 5 Oct 2013 19:27:36 GMT

In Robots Podcast #140, interviewer Sabine talks with Erin Kennedy at the Open Hardware Summit at MIT. Kennedy is famously know as RobotGrrl, the self-made roboticist and proud maker of the RobotBrrd, Buddy 4000 and BotBait. Starting at age 13, she taught herself programming, electronics, pcb design and mechanical engineering. She’s been sharing her passion for robotics through her blog and weekly G+ Hangout Robot Party that brings together robot enthusiasts to share their latest contraptions. She’s now bringing her work to the next level with robot kits commercialized through Indiegogo last year and funded at 151%.

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