Daily Archives: August 2, 2017

While originally a coalition of robotics teams in Ashburn Virginia, Ashburn Robotics has grown into a non profit (501(c)(3)) organization dedicated to the promotion of STEM education throughout our community, both through STEM outreach and our support of local FLL and FTC teams. Each of our teams is formed and managed by the parents of the children on that team. While each of our teams have their own unique identities they all share a common belief that kids discover more when they explore the world around them through a hands on approach to science and technology.

Ashburn Robotics was established in 2006 with the simple goal of starting a FIRST Lego League (FLL) program in our neighborhood. Over the years the program has grown and now includes both FLL and FTC teams. Ashburn Robotics FLL and FTC teams are respected not only for the many local, state and international awards they have won, but more importantly, for their commitment to helping spread FIRSTs mission to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders, by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering and technology skills, that inspire innovation, and that foster well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication, and leadership. Our teams understand the value of gracious professionalism and giving back to our communities through volunteering as mentors, coaches and passionate advocates for science and technology. If you are interested in finding out more about FLL or FTC visit FIRSTinspires.org or us contact us.

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Fairfax OB-Gyn Associates, P.C. is a group practice of board certified obstetrician/gynecologists, certified nurse midwives, and certified nurse practitioners specializing in providing the highest quality care with a level of personalization to meet the individual needs of our patients. Fairfax OB-Gyn Associates, P.C. has been serving the Northern Virginia/Greater Washington area since 1980, with three convenient area locations. We are proud to be affiliated with the INOVA Health System and our births and most surgeries take place at INOVA Fair Oaks Hospital. Fairfax OB-Gyn Associates, P.C. is a practice with a focus on quality, personalization, and compassion for the needs of all women.

It is our belief and goal here at Fairfax OB/GYN Associates, P.C. to provide top quality health care using a minimally invasive technique while integrating an individualized approach. Fairfax OB/Gyn Associates, P.C. combines the latest in innovation and technology with personalized care to meet the needs of our patients. We have been performing Laparoscopic surgery for over 30 years and introduced Robotic surgery within the last4 years. Our staff of highly skilled surgeons has now completed over 350 Robotic cases with 98% of our patients going home the same day and resuming normal activities with 2 weeks. Our innovative services include complete obstetrical care with nurse-midwifery services, gynecologic care offering the latest in laparoscopic-assisted surgical techniques, robotics, infertility, pre-conception counseling, contraception, Nexplanon, Gardasil, Well Women and menopausal management. We offer in-house ultrasonography, Dexa Scans, Urodynamic Testing, NovaSure Endometrial Ablation procedure, Essure Sterilization procedure, and childbirth classes.

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OBGYN Fairfax, VA - Robotic GYN Surgeons of Nova

It looks like Snap is enlisting outside help to advance its expansion into new hardware projects. The U.S. company is in talks with China-based drone maker Zero Zero Robotics over an acquisition, according to a source with knowledge of discussions.

The deal, which was first reported by The Information, is in the range of $150 million-$200 million, the source told TechCrunch. That price would represent quite an outlay, but Snap previously paid upwards of $250 million for social map company Zenly which is its most expensive acquisition to date. (Although Snap hasnt confirmed its price for Zenly.)

Neither Snap norZero Zero Robotics had returned our requests for comment at the time of writing.

Zero Zero Robotics is best known for its Hover Camera drone, which is designed for taking aerial selfies and was on display at our TechCrunch China event in Shanghailast year. The device launched to the public in October, it is sold exclusively by Apple for $500 via both its online and physical retail stores.

When we first began to hear rumors that Zero Zero Robotics had been acquired by a major U.S. company earlier this summer, it was easy to assume that it had followed the fate of other drone companies in struggling to build a sustainable business and was seeking a soft landing. Most prominently, Lily, a Kickstarter success story, was forced to shutter earlier this year due to financial issues.

Snap does have a track record in shopping for bargains among defunct drone companies.The fact that Lily had held unsuccessful acquisition talks with Snap as an alternative to closing and that Snap reportedly did acquire drone firmCtrl Me Robotics, which was about to shutdown,played into that theory. While increased competition from drone pioneer DJI, which announced its own take on Hover Camera, the $499 Spark drone, may well have put some heat on the Hover Camera.

However, these negotiations are not driven by failure.Not only is Snap in talks to pay a lot more than the $25 million which Zero Zero Robotics has raised from investors to date, but, according to The Information, the Chinese company actually approached Snap over a potential investment and that turned to a prospective acquisition.

For Snap, the deal makes sense as it looks to push its hardware business on from its Spectacles product. While another, more advanced iteration of the wearable camera glasses that could include augmented reality technology is currently under development, as TechCrunch recently reported, Snap has shown a desire to get into drones as part of its broadening focus on being a camera company.

Snap once looked into developing its own dronesin house, according to a New York Times report, but in the end it looks to have opted to lean on specialists outside of the company.

Snap is under pressure from Wall Street to show growth, which could explain why it is prepared to pay a large sum to get a product that is already in the mark. Its stock just came out of the dreaded lock-up period, when insiders are able to sell their shares, relatively unscathed, but its current value of $13.10 is well down on the $17 that it priced its IPO at in March.

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Snap is in talks to buy Chinese selfie drone maker Zero Zero Robotics for $150M-$200M - TechCrunch

As e-commerce giants like Amazon continue expanding their on-demand offerings, retailers are struggling to keep up. CommonSense Robotics wants to make near-instantaneous deliveries accessible to smaller businesses with micro-fulfillment centers that can be built inside existing retail spaces. The company announced today that it has raised $6 million in seed funding from Aleph VC and Innovation Endeavors.

CommonSense Robotics was founded by Eyal Goren, Ori Avraham, Shay Cohen and Elram Goren after they became curious about why more grocery stores dont offer online shipping and on-demand delivery. They discovered that its just not economically sustainable for most supermarkets (or even well-funded startups for that matter, as the recent flurry of consolidation in the food delivery space shows). The team decided to work on ways for retailers to be able to deliver orders within an hour and keep margins the same as it would be in their brick-and-mortar stores, but without having to charge fees or higher prices.

CommonSense Robotics is now getting ready to deploy its micro-fulfillment centers for the first time and is not giving away a lot of details until they start operating. Each one combines robotics and artificial intelligence to automate the preparation of orders, including receiving inventory, picking orders and packing them. Then deliveries are carried out by the retailers themselves or third-party services. Building micro-fulfillment centers into stores means retailers can save on overhead and sell more things to their existing customers.

Retailers that use our platform arent just catching up to leaders, they are positioning themselves to set new standards for the industry, says Goren.

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CommonSense Robotics raises $6M seed round to make on ... - TechCrunch

PEMBROKE Robots will invade the Jones Center on the campus of The University of North Carolina at Pembroke on Saturday.

The main gym will be the site of the countys first-ever Thundering Herds of Robots event. It is a robotics competition pitting high school students from across North Carolina against one another. A dozen teams are scheduled to compete, including Robeson Early College High Schools ROBCOBOT.

This is not just about robots, Keenan Locklear, the teams coach. They gain leadership skills and I have found since theyve been involved in these robotics competitions, they are doing better in school. Some have found something they didnt know they had an interest in, like software programming and mechanical engineering.

We are trying to get our students interested in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) and this is the first step.

The host of Saturdays competition will be FIRST North Carolina, a nonprofit created to inspire young people to pursue careers in science and technology and to help them acquire the skills to compete in a technologically-driven economy.

There are 21 members on the ROBCOBOT squad. They will be competing in a game called Steamworks, in which a three-team alliance will guide their robots in an attempt to score points by building steam pressure, gathering materials to ignite rotors, and boarding robots onto an airship.

THOR is the states first off-season robotics competition for FIRST Robotics Competition teams. The build season for FIRST begins in January. Teams are given six weeks to design, build, program, and test a robot that can perform the necessary tasks to succeed in each years game.

Students work closely with teachers, like Locklear at Robeson Community Colleges Early College, and volunteer mentors. Locklear said they are in need of mentors to assist during each phase.

The students come up with the design, he said. There are no instructions just a tub or parts. Thats why we need mentors from the community to assist with the engineering and testing.

The Early College team was formed in 2016. Locklear, a two-time UNCP graduate who teaches Chemistry and Physical Science at the Early College, learned about the FIRST organization while serving on the N.C. Board of Science, Technology and Innovation.

My goal is to start up clubs at each of the middle schools in Robeson County, he said. I have seen my kids mature in the areas of public speaking. They come to high school thinking they want to be a doctor and thats all they think.

But once they get involved in robotics, they start thinking about designing prosthetics. This exposes them to other areas that they can succeed.

We have some smart students. They just need to be challenged. Robotics gives them the opportunity to rise to the challenge.

Mark Locklear is a Public Relations specialist at The University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

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Robotics competition at UNCP on Friday - The Robesonian

BBC News reported the winning entry to be Cartman a budget-priced robot from Australia.

The robot was designed by a team calling itself the Australian Centre for Robotic Vision (ACRV), which featured engineers from the Queensland University of Technology, the University of Adelaide and the Australian National University. Their cash prize was US$80,000 (60,980).

The bot was designed from scratch for the challenge and, unlike past winners that used a robotic arm, used a sliding mechanism to pick up products.

According to the BBC report, the winning team believes its Cartesian co-ordinate robot design was better suited to the task than the arm-like designs of others.

The robot uses a frame to move in straight lines across three axes at right-angles to one another. It supports a rotating gripper fitted with suction cups and a two-fingered claw to hold and manipulate the items.

The parts used to make it were cheap by the standards of typical industrial robots, according to professor Jonathan Roberts, robotics lab leader at Queensland University of Technology.

It could be built for under A$30,000 (18,245), he told the BBC. However, he noted the many thousands of hours of team effort that went into the design, testing and programming.

The online retailer sponsorsthe event to strengthen ties between the industrial and academic robotics communities and to promote shared and open solutions to the practical hurdles of running a global supplier.

The competitions tasks tested the robots ability to identify products, pick them up from a mixed batch of goods of differing shapes, sizes and weights, and place them in appropriate boxes for shipping to a customer.

Amazon is one of the biggest public companies in the world. Its logistics and warehousing operations serve a business with a global reach, so in a search for technical solutions to automated product picking it set up competitions to encourage the design of warehouse robots in 2015 and 2016.

This year it combined those competitions into the Amazon Robotics Challenge. This was a seven-day event held at Nagoya, Japan in July. Sixteen teams from universities and research institutes around the world brought robots they had designed, and assembled them to attempt a series of tasks to identify the winners.

Images: Amazon

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Australian team wins Amazon Robotics Challenge - Electronics Weekly (blog)

Jessica Russo frowned at the miniature motor to which she was fitting a tiny wheel.

"I need one of those little green things," she announced to her four teammates.

"Once you are on the table? You can't change the code," interjected mentor and coach, Rodrigo Dillon. "So set it up exactly the way you want it."

That would be the way some 255,000 students on 35,000 teams worldwide also want it: a robot built and programmed to push a cart or pick up an object - each task requiring a different computer coding that makes it all happen.

Russo and her team wanted the robot to lift and move a two-inch plastic container holding a toy over rough terrain without tipping over, then ... the team isn't sure what next. They haven't decided what that will be yet.

Elizabeth Roberts/Staff photo

The 30 members of the 4-H Tech Wizards Robotics Club in Deerfield Beach - and 32,000 other teams in 88 countries - will soon compete in the FIRST Robotics Competition, an international competition that introduces students to the disciplines of science, technology, engineering and math.

Tasks are assigned nationally with teams work independently for six weeks, designing and building a robot capable of finding, transporting, using and disposing of water in some way.

The Deerfield team has various levels of experience. Dana Greenland, 10, a Quiet Waters Elementary fifth grader, built a "really large Lego ship." Zane Deblaker, who is home schooled, also built a Lego house.

Mentor David Guzman said after it organized as a 4-H club in 2015, it expanded to include not just high school students, but middle and elementary school students as well.

The club has evolved after competing in the FIRST Robotics competition 14 years ago.

When this year's challenge is released at noon on Aug. 29, the team will be waiting for this the task at hand.

"Baseball has the farm system where they progress kids to the minor leagues," said mentor Andrew Disbury. "This is the same thing for robotics.

The 4-H Tech Wizards Robotics Club meets from 6 to 8:30 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and from 2 to 5 p.m. on Sundays, at the Hillsboro Community Center in Deerfield Beach. For information, call 954-571-7550.

eroberts@sun-sentinel.com

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Local robotics club preps for international competition - Sun Sentinel

TABOR If you travel about three miles northeast of Tabor, there is a hillside that is home to the Pechous Dairy. It might not look different from the average dairy operation on the outside, but inside its a different story.

Housed inside the walls of the Pechous Dairys newly built free-stall barn is a high-tech system of four robots working 24/7 to milk 230 cows an average of 2.8 times per day. The new barn and advanced machinery are investments in the familys legacy as dairy farmers for future generations. Tabor is in Bon Homme County, northwest of Yankton.

Having grown up and lived on dairy farms only two miles apart, Bob and Nancy Pechous took over Bobs parents operation in 1980 before getting married in 1981. The couple started with 30 cows in a stanchion barn and had to physically haul their own buckets of milk to the cooler. In 1986, the couple expanded their operation and built a 12-station milking parlor with a pipeline for hauling milk. The upgrade allowed them to gradually begin increasing their herd size to around 125 cows.

The addition of the milking parlor was great because everything became centralized, Nancy Pechous told the Yankton Daily Press & Dakotan. We could have six cows on each side. Once we finished milking on one side, we could switch to the other side and rotate in six new cows.

The Pechous Dairy operated out of its 12-station milking parlor for the next 30 years with help from two hired hands and family support before changing to their current operation.

Out of their three children, only the Pechous youngest son, Kyle, decided to join the dairy as a partner. Their oldest son, Justin, operates Pechous Repair in Tabor and their daughter, Jennifer, teaches in Brandon.

Kyle was adjoined at the hip with Bob since he could walk, Nancy said. We knew he was going to be our farmer. He was always helping out at the dairy as soon as he was old enough.

Kyle obtained a degree in diesel mechanics from Northeast Community College before returning home as a full-time partner in 2005. It was his idea to upgrade to the new robotic milking system in 2016.

We got to the point where the old barn was falling apart, Nancy said. We either needed to repair it or start new. Bob and I were actually thinking about getting out of the dairy business at the time, but Kyle came up with the idea to implement the new robotic system. We decided that we were all in this together and went full speed ahead.

Construction on the new barn and the installation of the robotic milking system began in January 2016 and finished late last September.

We are now nine months into the new system, Nancy said. For the first three months, we practically lived up in the barn after it was built. Thats how long it took before the cows adjusted to the new system.

Built with the potential for expansion in mind, the new barn is divided into two main sections capable of housing 120 cows on each side. Both sections are outfitted with access to a feeding trough, back scratchers and bedded stalls. The barn is also outfitted with fans that create a constant five-mile-per-hour breeze that keeps the cows comfortable and the bugs out. Adding to the overall automation of the Pechous Dairy, manure is also automatically scrapped from the floors by a robotic system and pressed into dry bedding to be put on top of the rubber mats that cover the stall floors.

We built this for future generations, Bob Pechous said. We want to keep this dairy going and pass it down to our grandchildren.

Installed in each section are two fully-automatic milking machines, each with the capability of milking 60 cows. All the cows at the dairy have been trained to come to one of the four milking machines through the use of special protein pellets that are delivered by the robots. When a cow walks into the stall next to a machine, it reads the chip inside of a collar placed around the cows neck. The cow is then weighed and fed according to how much milk it produces.

While the cow is feeding, the machine washes each teat and hooks up to them automatically, guided by lasers. The system records how much time each cow has been attached to the machine; it even measures down to the exact time that each teat is attached and how much milk each one produced. All the milk is then automatically transported from the machine to the cooler where it waits to be hauled out by truck every other day.

If something were to go wrong with the machine, like a computer glitch or a milking cup getting knocked out of position, the system automatically calls for assistance until someone responds. As an added safety net in case of power outages, the whole dairy is also backed up by a diesel generator to ensure that the system never goes offline and the cows are always milked.

The automated system also offers total monitoring of the herd from an office computer. It notifies the dairy of which cows are in need of artificial insemination and which cows need to be dried up. It also records the weight and body temperature of each animal, as well as notifies the dairy of abnormal milk, mastitis and other potential illnesses.

The new system allows us to get to the cows before they get sick, Nancy said. It helps us to head off a lot of things before they become a real problem.

Under the new milking robotic milking system, the Pechous Dairy has seen an increase of approximately 10 pounds of milk per cow. The daily average at the dairy is currently about 80 pounds of milk per cow. Overall, the dairy produces approximately 20,000 pounds of milk per day.

My goal per cow was 86 pounds per day, Bob said. We are not far from that right now. We actually have 33 cows producing over 100 pounds of milk per day, and our top producer is at about 145 pounds per day.

Currently, two-thirds of the Pechous Dairys herd is first-time heifers who dont produce as much milk until their second lactation.

Next lactation, we are going to probably get another 10 pounds of milk per cow from the majority of our herd, Nancy said. After our first-time heifers have their second calf, they will produce more milk.

Already the largest of three dairies in Yankton County, the Pechous family said it wants to continue to lead local dairy production well into the future with the technological investments they have made at their facility.

We want to help educate people on where their dairy products come from, Bob said. A lot of people might not know what goes into the process of getting their milk from the cow to the table.

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SD dairy looks to future with robotics - The Capital Journal