Monthly Archives: March 2022

Julienne Greer, Emotional Robotics Living Lab director and professor of theater arts, social robotics and performance, center, and social robot Nao, right, watch social robot Pepper, left, on March 9at the Emotional Robotics Living Lab. The study on making emotional robots, which was a part of the 2019 UTA Interdisciplinary Research Program, was redesigned to accommodate no face-to-face contact.

Social robots, also known as emotional robots, are machines that can communicate socially with human beings, said Julienne Greer, the Emotional Robotics Living Lab director and professor of theater arts, social robotics and performance.

Greer found a way to bring together her seemingly odd combination of passions, theater and robotics into social robotics.

The Emotional Robotics Living Lab looks at how social robots can reflect the authenticity of human connection and help act as a replacement for the same.

Human beings crave social interaction and connections with others. But with the stringent quarantine and social distancing policies that came with the rise of COVID-19, many have been deprived of these essentials, Greer said.

I have a lifetime of understanding theater, connection and performance and how much human beings want to engage with each other. Not just socially, but emotionally, she said. The thing that really caught my eye was when some of these robots were being branded as emotional robots.

The sense of emotions is a discipline that theater and film are closely interconnected with, but Greer wanted to look at how these areas were connected to robots.

One study they explored in the lab was called Using Arts and Social Sciences to Enhance Social Companion Robots Adaptive Abilities to Improve Health Outcomes and was conducted as part of the 2019 UTA Interdisciplinary Research Program, according to a UTA press release.

Greer pushes a sensor on humanoid social robot Naos hand March 9 at the Emotional Robotics Living Lab. Greer teaches a robots, digital humanities and theater course along with leading the UTA-funded lab.

The study was a collaboration with labs led by Greer, Manfred Huber, professor of computer science and engineering, Kathryn Daniel, associate professor of nursing, and Hunter Ball, assistant professor of psychology.

Kalvry Cooper, recent UTA alumna and former research assistant at the lab, said the study examined how exercise affects older adults cognitive memory using social robots.

The study took place in an assisted-living facility, Greer said. However, they had to completely reframe the study because of COVID-19, as the researchers could not enter the living facility along with their robots, so the older adults were alone with the social robots.

These social machines are produced and programmed to connect with human beings, she said. It can do anything its programmed to do, given the flexibility and mobility of its body.

Social robots are beneficial in treating dementia, according to a study done by Greer and the team for the National Center for Biotechnology Information.

In another study, researchers discovered social robots increased engagement within the caretaker community for young adults with developmental disabilities to help with their respite.

Cooper said the robots can remind patients to take medication, check up on them, look for signs of distress and provide companionship that can emulate a human connection, especially with older adults.

Using a Beam robot, a mobile social robot with an interactive screen, participants were asked to do five exercise sets and given instructions to answer simple questions like their name or how they were feeling after a specific exercise, she said.

After the exercises and questions, they were given a questionnaire to vocalize their experience, Cooper said.

The research assistants recorded positive reactions from the participants.

Social robots can enhance life expectancy and the quality of life. It also makes people feel less lonely by imitating that emotional connections between loved ones like parents and a child or grandparents and grandchildren, she said.

Social robot Pepper demonstrates its motions March 9 in the Emotional Robotics Living Lab. The lab intends to have social robots like Pepper interact with isolated people daily at home and for caretakers.

Yet, Greer said many people feel disturbed and threatened by the idea of technology and robots replacing humans.

Cooper said this can be due to the lack of exposure people have to technology and robots.

Our society is going technological-based, like everything is happening through computers and AI systems, and its getting very techie, she said. Sometimes its not because they dont want to know about tech, its because they dont have someone there.

When asked if robots will replace humans, a humanoid social robot in the emotional robotics living lab named Pepper answered, Im here to serve humans. If there are no humans, there is no me.

Cameron Sullins, UTA alumnus and former research assistant for the study, said most of the older adults in the assisted-living smart apartments who interacted with the social robots felt enthusiastic about being able to work and interact with the robots and excited about their contributions toward the growth of new technology.

While the thought of interacting might feel weird at first, theyre catered to make humans feel comfortable, Sullins said.

[The older adults] know that these robots arent real, but like the connections that they make with [the robots] kind of feels like its real, Cooper said.

These robots make an impression through their colorful personalities, making it easy for humans to build that connection.

When asked why it was named Pepper, the robot responded, I was named Pepper because Im here to spice up your life.

Sullins said with its quirky personality and jokes, most people feel comfortable with social robots like Pepper and can build a connection quickly, differentiating itself from artificial intelligence devices like Alexa or Siri.

I dont think were going to get phones that are cranky or phones that have tiffs, Greer said. I think were going to look at social robots, machines that have a lot more of our personality in them.

The value of why humans connect is significant, and it should apply to robots as well, she said.

People should be open to robots, as they are in societys future and vice versa because humans have the desire to connect, Greer said.

The Emotional Robotics Living Lab at UTA looks at how social robots can reflect the authenticity of human connection and help act as a replacement for the same.

@ayeshahshaji

features-editor.shorthorn@uta.edu

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Professor combines theater and robotics to reflect human connection - The Shorthorn

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Vanderlande is now an integrator of the RightPick system. | Source: RightHand Robotics

RightHand Robotics, a company that creates autonomous picking robots, and Vanderlande, a robotics integrator and subsidiary of Toyota Industries, are partnering to add the RightPick 3 system to Vanderlandes smart item robotics portfolio of technologies. The companies plan to deploy the system in general merchandise warehouses and distribution centers on a global scale.

Vanderlande provides logistic automation at airports, as well as in the warehousing and parcel sectors. RightPick will join the companys portfolio of picking offerings, which includes smart item robotics, automated tote picking and goods-to-picker workstations.

We are pleased to be included with the Smart Item Robotics (SIR) portfolio of technologies, Leif Jentoft, CSO and co-founder at RightHand, said. Warehouses are under increasing pressure to accelerate order fulfillment as ecommerce orders continue to rise. We look forward to helping Vanderlande meet the needs of customers worldwide and are honored to meet their standards for advanced automated picking.

Vanderlande chose RightPick because of its real-world successes in warehouses. The platform is able to pick and place individual items in a variety of fulfillment center processes. RightPick is made up of a Universal Robots collaborative robot arm with an end effector that uses both suction and mechanical fingers to grasp items. The platform uses a vision system and control software with machine learning as a form of hand, eye coordination, providing accountability for picking success.

The market wants integrated robotics that work, so weve tested the worlds leading robot solutions, Terry Verkuijlen, Vanderlandes vice president of warehouse solutions, said. Our findings showed that RightHand Robotics use of gripper technology, vision systems and software algorithms is the best fit for automated general merchandise warehouses.

As part of the partnership, Vanderlande is joining RightHands Partner Integrator Network. RightHands other integration partners are Element Logic, Manhattan Associates, Tompkins Robotics, Okamura and SVT Robotics.

In February 2022, RightHand raised $66 million in Series C funding. The most recent round brought the company to $119.3 million raised over six rounds.

RightHand Robotics co-founder and CEO Yaro Tenzer was on The Robot Report Podcast in August 2021. Certainly a lot has changed for the company since that appearance, but the conversation sheds light into thecapabilities of RightHands innovative picking solution and much more. You can listen to that interview below.

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RightHand Robotics adds Vanderlande as integration partner - Robot Report

WATKINS GLEN-The youth robotics team Mechanical Meltdown, based in Watkins Glen, ended their season ranked number one in New York state.Each year, students from around the world put in countless hours with their teammates preparing for competitions through FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology). As they are building skills in engineering, technology, business, and teamwork, they also happen to be building a robot.At the beginning of each season, a new challenge is released. Teams immediately begin to analyze the game and consider strategies to maximize scores by weighing points versus difficulty versus cycle time for the various tasks. Over the next several months teams problem-solve through the entire engineering process to design, build and program a robot to complete the given challenges.Now finishing up its fifth year, Mechanical Meltdown brings together youth in grades 7-12 from a five-county area surrounding Watkins Glen. Current members hail from Watkins Glen, Burdett, Trumansburg, Ithaca, and Horseheads. The students, guided by mentors, collaborate to create a high-scoring robot, track their progress through technical documentation, and prepare a presentation to describe their season's journey to a panel of judges.Mechanical Meltdown earned advancement to the world championship for the third time in the 2019-20 season but was disappointed when it was suddenly canceled due to COVID-19. The following season was fully remote, so members were very excited to get back to in-person competitions. The tournament season begins with qualifying events where teams battle for a spot at the regional championship.In December 2021, Mechanical Meltdown won the top honor, the Inspire Award, at their first qualifier in Penfield, where they also became the first team to advance to the championship. In January the team competed again in Corning, where they earned the New York state high score of 239 with their alliance partners, #6955 Robovines from Ballston Spa.The high score held until the Excelsior Regional Championship, where Mechanical Meltdown beat their own state record... five times. Twenty-eight teams competed in the all-day event, which took place Sunday, March 6 at Mohawk Valley Community College in Utica.The tournament started with a series of 35 matches where teams were randomly paired to compete against another alliance of two teams. The top four teams coming out of the qualifying matches got to choose their alliance partners for elimination rounds. As a captain, Mechanical Meltdown selected #13357 IR-Lightning from Philadelphia, NY in Jefferson County and #14281 Ravena Robotics from Coeymans in Albany County.After sweeping through the semi-finals, Mechanical Meltdown's alliance was putting up scores to make a ticket to the World Championship look very promising. However, they ultimately fell in the finals through an unfortunate turn of events. During finals match one, their alliance partner lost connection and was unable to move their robot for nearly half of the match. Mechanical Meltdown put up a valiant fight alone against the opposing alliance of two very impressive teams, losing by a narrow margin of 267-246.The final blow came during finals match two when their second partner's robotic arm malfunctioned. They were unable to perform the double-capping objective as planned and instead used their much slower mechanism to deliver ducks from the carousel.Mechanical Meltdown ends their season as the highest-ranked team in New York state with a rating of 141.9 points. The overall average for the more than 150 New York teams is 43.9 points. They also go out holding the state record with a high score of 280 points, as well as second and fifth high scores of 278 and 261 respectively.Mechanical Meltdown and FLARE operate under Trumansburg Robotics, Inc. For more information, e-mail ftcflare@gmail.com.

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Almost three months before the start of automatica, which takes place from June 21 to 24 at the Munich Exhibition Center, one thing is certain: never before has there been such a wide range of collaborative robots as this year. And they are easier to use than ever.

The latter also applies to industrial robots. Here, no-code robotics allows an almost playful handling of robots.

These and many other developments pursue one goal: the democratization of robotics. In the future, anyone should be able to operate robots without special knowledge. With cobots, this is already possible thanks to simple programming options.

The problem-free integration and operation of these devices are also important reasons for their popularity.

The market for this species is currently growing considerably. Industry leader Universal Robots says it already has over 50,000 cobots in use in all kinds of applications.

Kim Povlsen, managing director of the Danish company, put the potential for cobots at around nine million units in an interview with the Handelsblatt, and sees the industry on the way to billions in sales.

So it is not surprising that many manufacturers are discovering their love for the cobot. While some qualify their standard robots for direct human-robot interaction by integrating numerous safety features, others rely on the development of special lightweight robots.

In Munich, visitors to automatica can see for themselves the advantages and disadvantages of the two different worlds. However, the hype is clearly with the lightweight cobots. Here, the competition between established manufacturers and start-ups is creating unprecedented dynamics.

Fanuc is showing three new cobot models that are characterized by their low weight and intuitive drag-and-drop programming and should therefore also be of particular interest to first-time users.

In order to meet the increasing demand, Fanuc not only wants to increase production capacities. Shinichi Tanzawa, CEO of Fanuc Europe, has another goal: We want to become the clear market leader for cobots in Europe.

What the market companions think of the idea remains to be seen. In any case, Kuka is totally committed to innovation and is presenting the LBR iisy, a cobot that, thanks to a brand-new operating system, is also intended to set standards in terms of operation. Set it up, switch it on, get started thats what Kuka promises.

ABB makes a similar promise. The new cobot families GoFa and SWIFTI should also be particularly easy to use and are characterized by high payloads and speeds. Our new cobot portfolio is the most diverse on the market, said Sami Atiya, head of ABBs Robotics & Factory Automation business.

And Yaskawa? The Japanese are showing their HC DTP Cobot series at the automatica under the motto Easy Smart No protective fence. With the new Yaskawa ecosystem, the manufacturer offers a variety of proven partner and in-house plug & play products with which the customer can set up his cobot cell in a modular way.

Anyone who thinks that only the big industrial robot manufacturers can build cobots will be taught otherwise at automatica. The number of new, young or non-industry manufacturers is growing exponentially and with it the ideas for a wide variety of cobot variants for all possible applications.

For example, igus, previously known primarily as a manufacturer of cable drag chains, is showing the attractively priced plastic cobot ReBeL, which, with a weight of around ten kilograms, lowers the barriers to entry to a minimum.

This means that the machine will be used in particular for simple applications where robotics has not previously been worthwhile.

Neura Robotics, among others, operates at the other end of the range. With the cobots Lara and Maira, the Swabians present highly developed production assistants with a clean design, speech recognition and outstanding performance.

Between low cost and high end, manufacturers from all over the world, including Comau, Denso, Doosan, Franka Emika, Kassow, Omron, Rethink, Stubli, Techman and many other cobot solutions for all kinds of applications will be present.

Not to be forgotten: Agile Robots, the most valuable German robotics start-up, is also exhibiting at automatica. The latest developments of this company are not only eagerly awaited by large investors.

The programming of classic industrial robots is also about to undergo a minor revolution. Wherever applications allow it, new methods will replace classic high-level language programming in the future.

Its not just about giving newcomers a barrier-free introduction to robotics. In fact, no-code robotics can reduce the programming time for many applications by a factor of 70, believe it or not.

At least thats what the young company Wandelbots promises. With its pen programming, the Dresden start-up is turning the programming world upside down.

For example, if a welding path needs to be programmed, the user simply traces it with the so-called TracePen. Anyone can do it and its breathtakingly fast. It also saves expensive programming time. An extraordinary innovation that the automatica audience gets to see.

Like many other robot manufacturers in Munich, Epson is also presenting a no-code programming environment for robotics beginners with little or no specialist knowledge. This allows the manufacturers four-axis robots to be operated quickly and easily.

Fruitcore Robotics is also taking an interesting approach to adapting the robot programming exactly to the skills of the user.

The Constance-based company now offers four software packages for its Horst robots: Starter, Profi, Digital and Premium. If the requirements change, users simply book a different package. This creates maximum flexibility and future security.

The exhibits at automatica prove it: people are finally moving into the focus of developments. And the current level of development suggests that robots will be as easy to use as a smartphone in the near future.

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Cobots and no code: Robotics for everyone - Robotics and Automation News

The robo cyber security firm from Vitoria-Gasteiz (Spain) is once again leading an investigation involving international experts on the importance of security in the Robot Operating System (ROS) and the DDS communications middlware

The participants in the study have discovered more than a dozen of dangerous vulnerabilities present in more than 650 devices online today, very common in the Industrial field, the University, and even in Hospitals and Military Agencies

Alias Robotics' research has been cited and published by the United States Cybersecurity Infrastructure and Security Agency, which reflects the importance of the conclusions set forth.

To mitigate these vulnerabilities, Alias Robotics has contributed to SROS2, a series of developer tools to detect insecurities in ROS 2 and DDS

VITORIA, Spain, March 30, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- A team of researchers led by the Spanish firm Alias Robotics - specialized in robotic cybersecurity - together with cybersecurity experts from several multinationals and cybersecurity professionals from various governments, have discovered about fifteen dangerous vulnerabilities, some critical, in the Robot Operating System (ROS) and the DDS communications protocols that affect industrial systems and robots that, if used by cybercriminals, could have "devastating consequences. In turn, they have detected that these vulnerabilities are present in almost 650 different devices exposed on the Internet and used not only in industry, but also in healthcare or in the military field.

(PRNewsfoto/Alias Robotics)

Robotics and IT security professionals from the firm Alias Robotics in Spain have collaborated in recent months with security experts from around the world in the detection of security vulnerabilities in the Robot Operating System (ROS) and in the software communications middleware DDS ("Data Distribution Service"), present in many systems (autonomous cars, industrial robotic arms, aerospace systems, military equipment, critical infrastructure, ), as well as in industrial robots.

In particular, the vulnerabilities affect DDS, an 'intermediate software' (called middleware) that is the main communication bus between different robotic devices, that is, the core of ROS 2 (Robot Operating System ), which is used by the majority of robotics engineers for all types of present or future industrial robots, with applications in the business world, in the industrial field, but also in the world of health, as is the case of surgical robots. As per Victor Vilches studies suggests that the use of ROS will grow significantly over the next few years and that by 2024, 55% of commercialized robots will use ROS.

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From Alias Robotics -specialized in robot cyber security- it is considered that "DDS is a middleware still largely insecure communications technology , used in areas where security is very important, so investment in cybersecurity is needed immediately". They also consider that the response times of the DDS manufacturers are too long, "which greatly exposes these systems to cyber-attacks," according to Vctor Mayoral-Vilches, a leading robot cybersecurity researcher from Alias Robotics and founder of the startup.

In his opinion, " cybercriminals could today use these vulnerabilities to paralyze robots and critical infrastructures all over the world leveraging DDS". The company from Vitoria warns that it is necessary for robotics and automation companies to invest in cybersecurity and cooperate "with qualified groups in robot cybersecurity".

Summary of results

The results of this research derive from the collaboration of several researchers including Vctor Mayoral-Vilches (Alias Robotics), Federico Maggi, Mars Cheng, Patrick Kuo , Chizuru Toyama, Rainer Vosseler, and Ta-Lun Yen (Trend Micro and TxOne) and Erik Boasson (ADLINK Labs).

Its impact in robotics has been led by Alias Robotics and a good part of these vulnerabilities "have not been patched or mitigated by the manufacturers serving robotics companies today".

The team of researchers has come to detect up to 13 security vulnerabilities (some classified as "critical" by cybersecurity experts), which could affect both workers and users who handle industrial robots that include this DDS software. Based on the security-immaturity of DDS, the appearance of new vulnerabilities affecting DDS in the coming months is not ruled out.

One of the conclusions is that these vulnerabilities are present in almost 650 different devices used in across areas of application around the world. From Alias Robotics they have detected devices affected by these vulnerabilities in organizations such as NASA, but also in global data centers (Huawei Cloud Service), large industrial multinationals (Siemens), as well as hospitals, banks and universities in 34 countries, affecting 100 organizations through 89 Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

Key vulnerability findings

These detected vulnerabilities could lead to the loss of control of the robotic device, its complete loss of security, the denial of services through brute force, the possibility of facilitating access to the device through the exploitation of remote services, problems in the supply chain or the fact that attackers abuse the security protocols themselves to create an efficient command and control channel.

The authors of the study, have found that many of these security vulnerabilities - some even with the source code (proprietary) exposed to the public - have been open "for a long time, even years, so today cybercriminals could use them to paralyze critical infrastructure around the world" , according to Vctor Mayoral-Vilches.

In his opinion, "many still robotic device manufacturers prioritize their business development and continue to ignore cybersecurity." Mayoral-Vilches emphasizes that many of the manufacturers refuse to solve the problems "because if they did they would not comply with the DDS standard/specification". This is a problem of magnitude" - emphasizes the founder of Alias Robotics - "since the revision of the DDS standard may take years to be properly revised".

The report, which has been recently cited and published by the United States Agency for Security and Cybersecurity Infrastructure, was presented during 2021 in various forums including 'Black Hat 2021' from Las Vegas, the world's largest annual cybersecurity forum - but also at the ROS-Industrial Conference 2021 and more recently at a session organized by the European Commission on safety, security and performance. His research will continue to be presented throughout 2022 at new conferences and industry forums.

Tools to identify ROS 2 and DDS vulnerabilities

In order to mitigate the threats found and train robotics engineers in security matters, the Alias Robotics team has led a second research effort that has contributed and released a series of extensions to tools under an open source license that allow detecting these vulnerabilities in ROS 2 and DDS.

The results of this effort have been summarized in the article "SROS2: Usable Cyber Security Tools for ROS 2" which has been sent to the International Conference on Robots and Systems (IROS 2022).

Aliases Robotics was founded in 2018 by Vctor Mayoral-Vilches and has become an international leader in cybersecurity solutions for robots. His team is the creator of the first Immune Robot System (RIS), an intelligent antivirus that protects bots from cybercriminals from the inside out. RIS is incorporated into robots to protect them as it evolves and adapts like the human immune system.

Alias Robotics is made up of renowned robotics engineers, scientists and security researchers with more than 10 years of experience. Its clients include large automation companies, government institutions and users of industrial robots http://www.aliasrobotics.com

Communication inquiries:

Vctor Mayoral-Vilches

Phone : 616 151561

e-mail: victor@aliasrobotics.com

Vitoria, lava, Spain

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Alias Robotics discovers numerous and dangerous vulnerabilities in the Robot Operating System's (ROS) communications that can have "devastating...

Interact Analysis and Geek+. The pandemic meant warehouses had to cope with social distancing and staff absences. It also caused a massive e-commerce boost and has led to a protracted labor shortage. All this has forced warehouse managers to take a deeper look at the possibilities offered by warehouse automation and to accelerate any existing plans they had to automate. The goal is not only to improve the efficiency of their businesses in a newly competitive landscape, but also to boost staff retention by improving working lives. At the same time, the pandemic has highlighted that nothing is certain and that industries can be turned upside down overnight. Flexibility for operations and not being tied to major infrastructure for too long is of much greater importance.

On top of COVID-related challenges, other major changes in the market are afoot too. These include so-called mass customization which, for warehouses, means that the product lines they have to store and deliver are liable to change size and shape at short notice. As well as demands for ever more rapid delivery.

An AMR solution usually presents several major benefits compared to fixed automation: it is cheaper, it is faster to deploy, it is more flexible, and it is easier to scale. New mobile robot solutions are enabling robots to select individual totes and bring them to pickers, instead of bringing whole racks, resulting in major efficiency improvements. Meanwhile, combining sophisticated software management systems with the wide variety of AMR platforms now available gives the option of knitting different robot types together into a single solution. Ultimately, this presents the possibility of a wholesale replacement of fixed automation solutions with mobile ones.

To put it bluntly: if a team of well managed mobile robots can pick and carry any item to any location in a warehouse, why would anybody ever install a fixed conveyor belt ever again?

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The Future of Warehouse Robotics - IEN Europe