Category Archives: Robotics

From 2016-2019, a team from the Australian Centre for Field Robotics at the University of Sydney undertook projects focusing on advancing the application of robotics, intelligent sensing systems, precision agriculture automation and more in Australias vegetable industry.

In November 2019, Vegetables Australia spoke to Project Lead Professor Salah Sukkarieh about the research, and the potential impact it has for the future of on-farm robotic automation.Over the past three years, many vegetable industry members would have seen the LadyBird and RIPPA (Robot for Intelligent Perception and Precision Application) robots in both trial-farm and commercial-farm settings.

A strategic levy investment under the Hort Innovation Vegetable Fund, Using autonomous systems to guide vegetable decision making on-farm (VG15003) was undertaken to research and develop novel sensors, algorithms and robotic technologies that would help reduce production cost and increase on-farm productivity in the vegetable industry, in particular brassica, lettuce and baby leaf.

The project was awarded to the Australian Centre for Field Robotics at the University of Sydney and, led by Professor Salah Sukkarieh, started in January 2016. It was divided into four themes: Sensing, Automated Decision Support (ADS), Crop Interaction and Farm Automation Standards.

The project used the LadyBird robotic platform, designed and developed by the Australian Centre for Field Robotics under a previous investment entitled An Intelligent Farm Robot for the Vegetable Industry (VG12104). The robot was fitted with a number of different sensors including Thermal, Hyperspectral, Vision and Laser, and experiments were conducted on the University of Sydney farm.

Evaluating and testing autonomous systems developed in VG15003 in Australian vegetable production systems (VG15059) started in June 2016 and focused on Evaluation, Market Analyses, Economic Viability and Industry Engagement of the four themes in VG15003. The project used the RIPPA robotic platform, also designed and developed under project VG12104. It was customised for testing and evaluation of these technologies on commercial operational farms.

The two projects worked together: VG15003 focused on the research and demonstration of novel sensing and algorithms, and VG15059 operationalised that research and it demonstrated to growers on-farm, Professor Sukkarieh explained.

Both investments drew to a close in February 2019, having supported and progressed the development of new technologies for the vegetable industry.

Key findingsThe experiments undertaken during project VG15003 collected large amounts of data and analysed for evaluation of plant health and estimation of water index.

Initially experiments were done for lettuce and the scope was expanded to cauliflower and broccoli. Machine learning algorithms were developed that could observe plant structure, distinguish weeds from crops, detect water stress or damage, and map soil properties such as conductivity and moisture, Professor Sukkarieh said.

The data collection exercise demonstrated the capacity to rapidly collect high spatial and spectral resolution data on a routine basis (weekly), as well as the software pipeline that could extract this data and make meaningful representations of the plants and environment in general.

A number of important characteristics were determined from these results, including the ability to get close to 100 per cent confidence in the machine learning systems extracting plant information (shape and size), as well as greater than 90 per cent accuracy in detecting weeds green-on-green when in uncluttered environments (using spatial and shape differences), and greater than 75 per cent in cases where weeds were similar to early established plants.

During VG15059, Professor Sukkarieh and his team ventured on-farm to demonstrate RIPPAs capability for detecting weeds in real-time among crops and real-time weeding using mechanical prongs as well as directed spraying technologies that minimised chemicals.

The software pipeline developed was also used to detect foreign objects and we retrofitted an industrial vacuum cleaner that could suck up those foreign objects. We demonstrated the capability of actively sampling water conductivity near plant roots. A user interface was developed that not only allowed growers to control the robot, but also to see results of plant statistics, history, weed pressure and water availability, Professor Sukkarieh said.

Both projects went through continuous cycles of experimentation and design improvements; especially for operational envelope enhancements.

Most of prototype tests were conducted at the University of Sydneys Lansdowne farm, and operational trials were conducted in Gatton, Cowra, Griffith, Werribee, Gippsland and Launceston. More than 660 growers attended, and feedback was collected through end-to-end demonstrations.

Addressing issuesThis was the first time extensive full production, autonomous data collection of individual plants in the field had been conducted which posed challenges to Professor Sukkarieh and his team.

There were are a number of technical challenges that we overcame, including registration of changing plant data over multiple weeks and the effect of lighting and weather on autonomous data gathering, Professor Sukkarieh said.

Plant biology means that the algorithms that were developed had to deal with changing plant architecture over time which hadnt been dealt with before in the research community.

This was also the first time that the robotics and automation work extended beyond just automating a platform for operation on-farm and moved into crop intelligence. Grower input also contributed to the program, as Professor Sukkarieh explained.

We received very positive feedback in our trials as well as a number of suggestions on operational improvements that were incorporated into the program. As the project moved through its various stages of development, the growers became very interested in the capability that the system could also provide in the future for pest/disease detection.

According to Professor Sukkarieh, VG15003 and VG15059 both demonstrated that a continuous cycle of research and development through to operational demonstration with the growers was key.

This is to ensure that the research aligned with the grower interests, and that continuous feedback was provided to the research. The next steps in robotics would include better crop intelligence algorithms for detecting pests/diseases and novel tools for precision action on plants and ultimately harvesting and these should follow the same approach, he said.

There are technologies that are ready for commercialisation, including automated platforms for weeding and crop intelligence (plant size and distribution). These should now transition into the hands of the growers for end-user feedback.

The bottom lineProfessor Sukkarieh said that the three projects VG12104, VG15003, VG15059 have placed the Australian vegetable industry at the leading edge of on-farm robotic automation.

We are now in position to commercialise many of the technologies developed in these programs. The industry now should look further forward to understand what future vegetable farm operations would look like with the belief that on-farm robotic solutions are coming, he said.

This will help provide a vision on how best to use these technologies (beyond weeding and crop intelligence), how intelligent on-farm systems should work with each other, and how these intelligent assets will support supply chain optimisation.

For more information:Professor Salah Sukkarieh Email: salah.sukkarieh@sydney.edu.au http://www.sydney.edu.au

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Advancing robotics in the Australian vegetable industry - hortidaily.com

San Francisco Long maligned as job-stealers and aspiring overlords, robots are being increasingly relied on as fast, efficient, contagion-proof champions in the war against the deadly coronavirus.

One team of robots temporarily cared for patients in a makeshift hospital in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the COVID-19 outbreak began.

Meals were served, temperatures taken and communications handled by machines, one of them named Cloud Ginger by its maker CloudMinds, which has operations in Beijing and California.

It provided useful information, conversational engagement, entertainment with dancing, and even led patients through stretching exercises, CloudMinds president Karl Zhao said of the humanoid robot.

The smart field hospital was completely run by robots.

A small medical team remotely controlled the field hospital robots. Patients wore wristbands that gathered blood pressure and other vital data.

The smart clinic only handled patients for a few days, but it foreshadowed a future in which robots tend to patients with contagious diseases while health care workers manage from safe distances.

Patients in hospitals in Thailand, Israel and elsewhere meet with robots for consultations done by doctors via videoconference. Some consultation robots even tend to the classic checkup task of listening to patients lungs as they breathe.

Alexandra Hospital in Singapore will use a robot called BeamPro to deliver medicine and meals to patients diagnosed with COVID-19 or those suspected to be infected with the virus in its isolation wards.

Doctors and nurses can control the robot by using a computer from outside the room, and can hold conversations with the patient via the screen and camera.

The robot reduces the number of touch points with patients who are isolated, thereby reducing risk for healthcare workers, the hospitals health innovation director Alexander Yip told local news channel CNA.

Robotic machines can also be sent to scan for the presence of the virus, such as when the Diamond Princess cruise ship cabins were checked for safety weeks after infected passengers were evacuated, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

Additionally, hospitals are turning to robots to tirelessly rid room, halls and door handles of viruses and bacteria.

U.S. firm Xenex has seen a surge in demand for its robots that disinfect rooms, according to director of media relations Melinda Hart.

Xenexs LightStrike robots have been used in more than 500 healthcare facilities, with the number of deployed bots rising due to the pandemic, Hart said.

We are getting requests from around the world, Hart said.

In addition to hospitals, were being contacted by urgent care centers, hotels, government agencies and pharmaceutical companies to disinfect rooms.

Shark Robotics in France began testing a decontamination unit about a month ago and has already started getting orders, according to co-founder Cyril Kabbara.

The coronavirus pandemic has caused robotics innovation to accelerate, according to Lesley Rohrbaugh, the director of research for the US Consumer Technology Association.

We are in a time of need for some of this technology, so it seems like benefits outweigh costs, Rohrbaugh said.

Artificial intelligence, sensors and other capabilities built into robots can push up prices, as can the need to bolster high-speed internet connections on which machines often rely, according to Rohrbaugh.

Innovations on the horizon include using drones equipped with sensors and cameras to scan crowds for signs of people showing symptoms of coronavirus infection.

A team at the University of South Australia is working on just that, in collaboration with Canadian drone-maker Draganfly.

The use will be to identify the possible presence of the virus by observing humans, said university professor Javaan Singh Chahl.

It might form part of an early warning system or to establish statistically how many people are afflicted in a population.

His team is working on computer algorithms that can spot sneezing or coughing, say in an airport terminal, and remotely measure peoples pulses and temperatures.

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Much-maligned robots may become heroes in war on coronavirus - The Japan Times

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These four architectural employers offer everything from a cutting edge robotics lab through craftsmanship in design to innovative structures -...

One of the consequences of people being told to stay home to slow the spread of coronavirus is loneliness. And a collection of 13 robotics experts from around the world have a suggestion for how to solve that: a robot pal.

The innovation is just one of many mentioned in an open letter by the global contingent of robotics experts who suggest that the coronavirus pandemic should serve as a catalyst for the increased use and development of robots.

"Now the impact of COVID-19 may drive further research in robotics to address risks of infectious diseases," says the statement, published March 25 in Science Robotics magazine.

The statement aims to inspire more funding to develop these varieties of robots, many of which it became clear were needed during the 2015 Ebola crisis.

"[W]ithout sustained research efforts robots will, once again, not be ready for the next incident," says the statement. "By fostering a fusion of engineering and infectious disease professionals with dedicated funding we can be ready when (not if) the next pandemic arrives."

Here are some of the ways robots are being used and could be used in future pandemics.

One of the ways people can be infected with coronavirus is by touching a contaminated surface and then touching their face, as the virus can live on metal, glass or plastic surfaces for days. According to the scientists' statement,ultraviolet light has been shown to "be effective in reducing contamination" on surfaces in hospitals.

In fact, according to other experts, the intensity of UV light needed to kill coronavirus can be harmful to humans. But, the scientists say large and small autonomous or remote-controlled robots could be developed to locate and constantly sterilize frequently touched surfaces with ultraviolet light.

Fever is an overwhelmingly common symptom of COVID-19. Automated camera systems used in conjunction with thermal sensors and vision algorithms on autonomous or remotely operated robots could be used to monitor temperatures of patients in hospitals, the scientists say.

CNBC Make It previously reported on robots used in a field hospitala In Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. Beijing-based robotics company CloudMinds sent 14 robots to help with patient care, and one of those systemsmeasured people's temperatures as theyentered (video below).

While there will no doubt be privacy concerns with any tracking technology, the roboticists say combining existing security systems with facial recognition software could allow authorities to retrace the steps of patients who tested positive for COVID-19 and contact others who might be at risk, which is known as contact tracing.

Testing for coronavirus involves inserting a swab fairly deep into a patient's nasal cavity.

There are parts of the process that puts humans at risk of contracting the virus, including collecting the sample, handling the sample, transfering the sample to the test location and the test itself.

"During a major outbreak, a key challenge is a lack of qualified staff to swab patients and process test samples," the scientists say. "Automated or robot-assisted nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal swabbing may speed up the process, reduce the risk of infection, and free up staff for other tasks."

Patients can test positive for COVID-19 before they have symptoms. A blood test for antibodies (the protein produced when a pathogen is detected in the bloodstream that are used by the immune system), would enable testing before symptoms present, what the scientists called a "silent infection."

Robots that automate the process of drawing blood could reduce the risks to frontline medical personnel. Research is already being done on systems that use ultrasound imaging to identify veins in the forearm for blood draw.

Autonomous drones and ground robots can be used to deliver medicine to patients who have coronavirus.

Also in the field hospital in Wuhan, China, CloudMinds robots were used to deliver food, drink and medicine to patients.

People staying home to "flatten the curve" of the pandemic can mean less social interaction for some, "which may have a negative impact on mental health," the scientists say. "Social robots" would provide social stimulation and interactions, in addition to providing reminders to follow treatment regimens.

Developing a social robot is complicated, though. "This is a challenging area of development because social interactions require building and maintaining complex models of people, including their knowledge, beliefs, emotions, as well as the context and environment of the interaction," the scientists say.

Link:

COVID-19 pandemic proves the need for 'social robots,' 'robot avatars' and more, say experts - CNBC

Opinion: fromhospitals to shops and policing, the use of drones and robots to carry out critical services can save lives during an epidemic

By Boris Galkin, TCD

As the world is rocked by the coronavirus crisis, governments everywhere have come together with the same safety instructions: stay home and avoid close contact with other people. For many, this lifestyle change simply entails taking their workload home and balancing it with their domestic chores: bookkeeping while babysitting, coding while cooking.

But leaving the house is still a necessity for purchasing food and essentials, which carries a risk of infection. Even worse off are those people whose jobs cannot be taken home and who must be in contact with potentially sick individuals.

The good news is that possible solutions for many of these issues are just around the corner, as the crisis has given a boost to a number of emerging technologies. The last 10 years have seen a technological revolution occur in the robotics and autonomous vehicle sectors. Largely invisible to the layperson, this crisis has pushed the technology out of its niche into the public sphere like never before.

From CGTN, a Chinese hospital is using robots to deliver medicine

So how are robots and drones playing a key role in containing the spread of the Covid-19 virus - and what changes we can expect to see in Ireland in the near future?Among those most at risk of contracting the virus are healthcare personnel such as doctors and nurses, who spend prolonged periods of time in areas with potentially infectious patients. Recognising this, several hospitals in China have begun adopting autonomous robots for many of their day-to-day tasks, such as delivering foodand medicineto patients, as well as disinfecting the hospital environment.

In Singapore, doctors are using telemedicine robots to remotely interact with patients from a safe distance whenever possible. These robots take the form of electric carts carrying cameras, video monitors and health measurement equipment. The medical personnel using these devices have the opportunity to increase the frequency of their patient interactions without having to resort to wearing PPE such as gloves and masks, which are in short supply.

Another key service which is seeing a robotic transformation is the delivery sector. With individuals staying home, the demand for online shopping and home delivery has skyrocketed. This puts delivery staff in a difficult situation, as any contact with the end-client puts both parties at risk.

From New China TV, autonomous delivery robots delivering goods in Wuhan

While leaving packages on doorsteps is an option, Chinese company JD.com has a better idea. Already a big player in autonomous delivery systems, this company has used the quarantine conditions to push their autonomous ground vehicles from the lab to the street. Taking the form of miniature electric vans, JD.com's delivery robots are safely driving along Wuhans roads and carrying out the last-mile stage of package delivery (that is, the stage where a package is sent from the local storage hub to the clients address). Capable of piloting themselves around complicated road conditions day or night, these robots are reported to be making the majority of the companys medical deliveries at the time of writing.

Law enforcement has not been left behind by this technological trend. With the lockdown come new laws which need to be enforced, and police organisations around the world are turning to remotely-piloted tools. These devices most often take the form of commercially available drones carrying loudspeakers or other communication equipment. Using them, police officers are able to remotely patrol city streets and public areas, identify the locations of non-compliant individuals and directly engage them. Not only do these devices allow the police to maintain their physical distance when carrying out their patrols, but their speed allows the police to oversee much larger areas than what they could achieve from the ground.

From ABC News, Madrid police are using drones tobroadcast messages during the coronavirus outbreak

While China has emerged as the leader in adopting these robotic tools, other countries are following closely. Ireland is currently lagging behind with this technology, due to a combination of economic and legislative issues. Current legislation prevents many of the applications of autonomous vehicles described above, particularly those used outdoors in public areas.

By law, autonomous or remotely piloted delivery vans are not permitted on Irish roads, and drones are heavily restricted in how they can use Irish airspace, even in the hands of the emergency services. Fortunately, the legislation on autonomous vehicles and drones is gradually changing to allow for more expanded use cases, such as food delivery in selected parts of the country.

The automation revolution was visible on the horizon for a while, but thiscrisis has suddenly brought it into full view

It is unlikely that we will see the technologies described above become adopted in Ireland during this current crisis, but the existing global trends unanimously point towards a near future where this technology is a daily part of our lives. Economists, scientists and tech experts worldwide are predicting that the virus will create an even greater demand for automating parts of the economy from the factory to the office.

When the virus outbreak comes to an end, the world will return to a new normal, with robots and autonomous devices appearing in various workplaces in increasing numbers. Working from home will become available to more people, while others will find aspects of their jobs taken over by machines, whether remotely piloted by the workers themselves or controlled by artificial intelligence. New business opportunities will emerge to cater to these automation demands, with new jobs created in the process. The automation revolution was visible on the horizon for a while, but thiscrisis has suddenly brought it into full view, and showed just how important the technology is for saving lives.

Boris Galkinis a PhD researcher atCONNECTinTrinity College Dublin

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RT

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Meet the coronavirus drones and robots Coronavirus / 07 Apr - RTE.ie

Local grocers and big chains alike are deploying robots to clean floors, stock shelves and deliver groceries to shoppers during the coronavirus.

Grocers are searching for ways to reduce pressure on store workers and increase efficiency amid a surge of shoppers visiting stores and ordering online during the crisis. They believe robots and AI offer solutions that can help them bring down costs and improve store operations.

Theres strong interest in moving rapidly in this direction because everyone knows they need to raise their game to stay competitive and its ultimately more cost effective to automate than staff up, especially in todays labor market, said Bill Bishop, co-founder of retail and grocery consulting firm Brick Meets Click.

Experts say the crisis may speed up grocers use of robots in stores.

I strongly believe that the current health crisis will accelerate the adoption of robots in retail, said Steven Keith Platt, research director for the Retail Analytics Council and adjunct professor at Northwestern University. Short-term, this is to address health concerns of workers and customers, he said. In the long term, robots in stores will stock shelves and prepare food.

In Washington, DC,Broad Branch Markethas brought on 44-pound, six-wheel self-driving robots equipped with sensors and AI to ferry deliveries to customers in the area. Broad Branch has closed its stores to shoppers and shifted its operations to delivery and pick-up orders only during the crisis.

We have had them for a little over a week and they are very popular [with customers], said store co-owner Tracy Stannard.

Brain Corp., which supplies autonomous floor-scrubbing robots to grocers, said it saw a 13% jump in the usage of its robots at stores in March compared to a year ago. Grocers staying open during the crisis have shortened their hours to allow for deep cleaning overnight.

Walmart, the countrys largest retailer and private employer, will have Brain Corps self-driving robots in 1,860 of its more than 4,700 US stores by the end of the year. It will also have robots that scan shelf inventory at 1,000 stores and bots at 1,700 stores that automatically scan boxes as they come off delivery trucks and sort them by department onto conveyer belts by the end of the year.

During the crisis, Walmart has continued to roll out robots in stores, a spokesperson said.

The company said the smart assistants reduce the amount of time workers spend on repeatable, predictable and manual tasks in stores, allowing workers to switch to selling merchandise to shoppers and other customer service roles.

At a handful of Schnucks Markets stores in the Midwest, Tally, an autonomous robot, scans shelves to alert employees when products are out of stock or labeled incorrectly, said Brad Bogolea, CEO of Simbe Robotics, which developed the robot.

This massive surge in demand was a major shock to most retailers inventory counts, said Bogolea. The robot has been helping workers restock items on shelves by giving them real-time data on which items are out, he said.

Grocers are also looking to take the process for picking customers online grocery orders out of store aisles. Workers manually picking, bagging and delivering is costly for grocers, and employees picking orders can clog up aisles.

Albertsons, Stop & Shop and other grocers are testing small automated micro-fulfillment centers in the backs of their own stores that are dedicated to fulfilling deliveries and pickups. At two stores, Albertsons is using robots to prepare customers orders, which it says speeds up the picking process.

Takeoff Technologies, one of the companies that has created these mini-warehouses, has seen a double-digit increase in orders since the crisis began.

Robots handle a majority of the leg-work when fulfilling orders, meaning there is limited contact with grocery items, said Jose Aguerrevere, CEO of Takeoff Technologies. The process is well suited for social distancing.

Some fear that this type automation, however, will lead to the disappearance of low-wage jobs.

There are more than 15 million retail workers in America today, and lower-skilled jobs in the industry such as cashiers and clerks are among those vulnerable to technology advances. In the retail industry, margin pressure has made automation a requirement, not a choice, according toMcKinsey. Automation will disproportionately disrupt retail.

TheBrookings Institutionsaid in a report last month that any coronavirus-related recession is likely to bring about a spike in labor-replacing automation.

Automation happens in bursts, concentrated especially in bad times such as in the wake of economic shocks, when humans become relatively more expensive as firms revenues rapidly decline, the Brookings Institution said in its report.

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Grocery stores nationwide deploying robots to reduce pressure on workers during COVID-19 pandemic - KTLA

Five girls in Afghanistan, aged between 14 and 17, have joined the fight against the coronavirus, designing a cheap ventilator that runs off the motor of a Toyota Corolla.

The all-female robotics team, aptly named the Afghan Dreamers, has long been more accomplished than average teenagers.

Tech entrepreneur Roya Mahboob founded the trail-blazing programme in the Afghani city of Herat, selecting young girls from high schools across the country, usually aged 14 or 15, for the programme.

It was a passion project for Ms Mahboob, a serial entrepreneur who became one of Afghanistans first female chief executives at 23, established a non-profit organisation to help young women to build digital literacy, and has since been named one of Time Magazines 100 most influential people.

Participants are selected for the Dreamers based on their entrance exam for the 9th and 10th grades, and the very best of them then get to join the national team the Afghan Girls Robotics Team for international competitions. There are about 50 participants in the Dreamers, and they stay in the programme for about two years.

In 2017, the national team made international headlines when their US visas were rejected not long before they were due to travel to an international robotics competition in Washington, DC. After individual appeals to the US Embassy in Kabul failed, the group took to social media to air their grievances. The teams' plight received international attention, and led to US President Donald Trump intervening on their behalf.

The Afghan Girls Robotics Team returned from that competition with a silver medal for courageous achievement won by their ball-sorting robot, designed to distinguish between contaminated and clean water.

Upon their return home, the girls were not only heroes, but inspiration for women seeking higher education in Afghanistan, where about 40 per cent of women are literate.

In the years since, that robotics team has graduated, and another has come to the fore. But Ms Mahboob has remained, spearheading a movement to tackle inequality with education.

"The only thing that we all want to do is help our people and our community. We will do anything to help them," she tells The National.

"I work with the girls, but mostly to co-ordinate. They are the real heroes."

Ms Mahboob now splits her time between New York and Kabul. She is currently in Afghanistan, initially to oversee the Brite conference (Building Resilience through Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship) another brainchild of hers which is due to take place in Kabul this June.

Other teams in the Afghan Dreamers have been working on big projects too, after all. One team was developing a device to help farmers with saffron picking. Another was building drones and robots to work in the mining sector.

But with cities under increasing lockdown in the country and the conference postponed, Ms Mahboob has turned her attention to ventilators.

"We don't know what's going to happen here in two or there weeks so we want to be prepared," she says.

Cases of Covid-19 are accelerating in Afghanistan. The first was reported in Herat, the country's third most populous city, on February 24. That number has since increased to 337, with seven deaths. But authorities fear it could get much worse and with a compromised health system and an insufficient number of ventilators, the authorities face a race against the clock.

Which is why, when the governor of Herat put out a public plea for more ventilators, five young women answered the call.

This team consists of five Dreamers aged between 14 and 17; captain Somaya Faruqi, Dyana Wahbzadeh, Folernace Poya, Ellaham Mansori and Nahid Rahimi. Ms Mahboob has been working with them for about a year.

They are currently working with two prototypes. One is a gear-based system based on a design from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US. The other uses parts from a Toyota Corolla.

The key to this MIT ventilator alternative was devising a mechanical system to operate the hand-operated plastic pouch, or Ambu bag, which hospitals have on hand in large quantities. An Ambu bag is designed to be operated by hand, by squeezing the bag, which pumps air into a patient's lungs. The mechanic version would cost about $200 to make. A company from Texas has now offered to help provide advice for the design and to connect them with others who can help them bring the concept to fruition.

For the other ventilator, the Toyota Corolla motor was used as it runs off a battery and is easily sourced in the country. And it costs just $300 to make.

Both needed to be made with local materials, Ms Mahboob says. That proved a challenge for the girls, as did working with a gear-based device, rather than their usual technological or robotic designs.

"The idea of these machines is that we use them for emergency cases, when there are no professional ventilators. The thing in Afghanistan is, we don't have enough ventilators, but that's the case for many other countries, even Italy or New York.

"If we don't have access to anything professional we can use these ones."

As cities across the country shut down, working on the designs became increasingly challenging, Ms Mahboob says. The girls' parents were concerned about them being out of the house as the pandemic raged on, but they were usually able to work together for a couple of hours a day.

"It's very difficult for the girls to come together in one place. The shops are closed, so we have to call so many people to open the shop someone who knows someone, who can open the store to get that part."

The team was still fine-tuning both designs, and working with doctors to test them.

However, since a new governor of Herat took over a few days ago, Ms Mahboob doesn't know what the immediate future of her designs is. She hopes the new governor will look favourably on their work.

"We want to make sure that the government and the community are excited about technology," she says.

"There are other focuses for government money to be spent, but in order to compete and prosper in the 21st century, all countries must be able to access the highest technology that's transforming our world.

"If these girls have access to the opportunity or the tools, their lives can be changed. But not only their lives, they can change their community, too."

Updated: April 9, 2020 09:00 PM

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The all-female robotics team in Afghanistan who made a cheap ventilator out of Toyota parts - The National

What was it about the 1970s that promoted suffering for ones art? In Rhythm 0 (1974), Marina Abramovi stood next to a table loaded with items ranging from a rose to a gun, and let the audience desecrate her with them. Tehching Hsieh took a two-storey leap for Jump Piece (1973) and broke his ankles. Chris Burden somehow lived to the age of 69, despite in the same curious decade getting a friend to shoot him, cramming himself into a locker for five days and nailing himself onto a Volkswagen Beetle. For Eleanor Antins 1972 work Carving a Traditional Sculpture, the artist crash-dieted for 45 days and documented her decline.

Stelarcs series of 25 Body Suspensions also began in that decade, when the singularly named performance artist lived in Japan. Before one such flesh-hook suspension, at Tokyos Komai Gallery, he additionally stitched his lips and eyelids shut for a week. Since then, he has continued to use his body he calls it the body as a medium, subjecting it to surgical construction, liposuction, implanting, sensory deprivation and internal probing with recording devices.

Yet when we meet for coffee in Melbourne, Stelarc says, I am the least tormented person youll probably ever meet. His practice is not about exploring what the body is capable of, but rather about understanding its limitations. Stelarc sees the body as an object among other objects, to be assembled as part of a greater structure. And, he adds, he doesnt get a kick out of pain. I would scream and shout in the dentists chair as much as anyone would, he says.

Stelarc was born Stelios Arcadiou in 1946 in Cyprus and raised in Sunshine, Melbourne. Initially, he was going to study architecture at Melbourne University, before realising he was more interested in the architecture of the body and switching to art school.

Now in his 70s, Stelarc has engineered a new work for the 2020 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art with its theme of Monster Theatres. Reclining Stickman taps into his interest in prosthetics, robotics, cybernetics biotechnology and virtual reality, which began when he moved to Japan as a young man and became fascinated by its hi-tech culture.

The 9m robot has rubber muscles and can be operated by Stelarc, using pneumatic joysticks, when he sits in it. It can also be choreographed remotely by the public, at any time of day, from anywhere in the world, by using the interface on his website. The Art Gallery of South Australia is working to move the exhibition online during the gallerys Covid-19 closure, but this is one work that was ahead of the curve. Like curator Leigh Robb says: At a time when we are physically distanced, Stelarcs robot offers moments of intimacy with art and technology.

Back in the mid-70s, Stelarc had intended his very first flesh-hook suspension to be in Adelaide, at the Experimental Art Foundation, but it turned into a melodrama that shaped his way of working from that moment onwards.

The media found out what was going to happen and there was an outcry, he says. There were comments from doctors saying that this was self-harm, that it might cause a fatality. Thirty minutes before the performance, the foundation withdrew their support, and then the accusation in the media was that the whole thing had been a stunt and hadnt really been going to happen.

Ever since, his more controversial performances have been unadvertised and are usually only performed in front of those who helped build the installation.

As the director of the Alternate Anatomies Lab at Perths Curtin University, Stelarc has overseen many research projects that tie in to his interests, including Ambidextrous Arm a prototype arm with a manipulator that is double-jointed, allowing it to be both a left hand and a right hand that could benefit amputees.

His friend, Neuromancer author William Gibson, wrote of Stelarcs work: I associate it with da Vincis ornithopter, eccentric 19th-century velocipedes, and Victorian schemes for electroplating the dead though not retrograde in any way. Instead, it seems timeless moments of the purest technologically induced cognitive disjunction.

I ask Stelarc if he thinks hes doing a service to science by demonstrating what can be done without the constraints of ethics boards, risk assessment and other red tape.

I dont think realistically that artists meaningfully contribute to science, he says. Im very sceptical of this kind of mashing together which is now becoming more and more a genre of artistic practice because the methodologies of scientific research and artistic actions are totally different ... You dont want a situation where artists do bad research and scientists make bad art.

Another of his ongoing projects is Ear on Arm, and he sportingly rolls up his sleeve in the cafe to show me. It took Stelarc 10 years to find three surgeons willing to form the ear on his left forearm. Its made out of cartilage grown from his tissue and stem cells, shaped into a scaffold, then implanted. He had originally wanted to put the ear on his head, next to his actual ear. But, you know, no surgeon would do it.

Originally, the ear was to have a microphone embedded in it that would transmit the noises around Stelarc to an internet portal, allowing others to eavesdrop. He might even whisper things into his own forearm for them to hear. But the site became infected when wires were introduced, and, as he says, I almost lost an arm for an ear. He was hospitalised for a week and put on industrial-strength antibiotics for six months.

Whats interesting about any art project is the slippage that occurs between intention and actual outcome, he says cheerfully. Ive always admitted that Ive made a career out of being a failure nothing I imagine turns out the way I expected it to.

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The artist with the remote-controlled robotic body: 'Ive made a career out of being a failure' - The Guardian

Starsky robotic trucking has closed their doors

In March, Stefan Seltz-Axmacher, CEO and founder of Starsky Robotics, announced the end of their trucking company, which combined autonomous driving software and remote monitoring techniques to move big rigs. Back in 2015, I had advised Seltz-Axmacher on their plan, but had lost touch. Recently he published a detailed essay outlining the causes of the failure of the company which caused some stir, because one of its assertions that effectively, the problem is too hard, and others will fail as well. Others have rejected that claim and argue that Starsky failed because of failings of the company itself, not the industry.

Lets look at some of the arguments made in the essay:

Ill actually start with some elements of #2 that I dug into in a discussion last week with Seltz-Axmacher. Starsky picked trucking because its a horribly managed industry with lots of opportunities to do better. Theres a giant driver shortage. Drivers are also sometimes unreliable as one customer told him, a robot is unlikely to get into a fight with people at a warehouse, or decide to stop in Las Vegas and spend a few days in a strip club. This doesnt happen all the time in trucking, but it happens enough that having it never happen is a big plus. Starsky planned to run their trucks only on the easiest of highways, short to middle distance runs on clear, open uncongested highways. If a problem arose due to traffic or weather, the truck would just pull over because multi-hour stops are common with human drivers too.

This also meant that a combination of full self-driving with occasional remote assistance could work on these easy roads. Their trucks would never change lanes on their own. They would not mind going slow behind other trucks. They would not mind anything. They felt they picked the easiest driving problem to solve, other than, of course the issue of moving an 40 ton vehicle at high speed and the risks that entails.

Current fleet operators are not early adopters. It is indeed going to be hard to convince them to do something this radical, even with the problem in finding good drivers, or any drivers at all. Starskys original plan was all remote operation, sticking only to roads with good data. In 2015, I told them that finding such roads would be a challenge. Its more possible today, and the deployment of services like Starlink DTLK will probably make it much easier soon.

If existing operators are not early adopters, Starsky reports that investors are scared of having to become a freight carrier in order to be a robotic truck company. Theyre probably right VC investing habits are strange to the rest of the world. They expect to invest in a dozen interesting startups each with the potential of becoming a home run and expecting the other 11 to try like crazy for that but flame out. Traditional businesses dont usually fit that mold.

So here we have a case where Seltz-Axmacher is right that trucking can be a hard sell though it hasnt stopped many other trucking options from getting large investments.

Youll need to read the essay for the full details, but it touches on one of the big questions of 2020 how much harder is self-driving AI than people originally thought? In particular, there was a lot of enthusiasm, some of it definitely hype, about the powers of deep neural networks.

Pretty much every car team has done extensive work building training data for these machine learning approaches. That means gathering real world data (images and LIDAR clouds) and having humans label them to train the AI. This technique has delivered astonishing results, by the standards of just a few years ago. The question is, is it good enough to provide the quality level for self driving, and when will it be, and will it ever be?

Seltz-Axmacher correctly points out its pretty easy to get some early impressive results, and this guiles people into thinking full success is just around the corner. Several companies have even tried to build self-driving systems with full end to end neural networks, which are black boxes you stick camera pixels in and get driving commands out of (steering and pedals.)

Hes right that pure supervised machine learning is not enough right now, and may be some distance in the future. Tesla TSLA is betting it isnt, but most companies are trying to build hybrids that use other algorithms combined with asking machine learning to do what its best at. They still believe this strategy will succeed. Generally, they have looked with disdain on those hoping to use an end-to-end approach, for the very reasons that Seltz-Axmacher outlines. In 2019 and 2020, there has been a pull-back by several players, particularly those in no particular hurry to see the automotive industry disrupted. Those who exist to do that disruption always expected the problem to be hard, I believe, but do not think their efforts are wasted.

That includes the self-driving truck world. Many companies have been attracted to trucking because highway driving is simple, even if trucks are fast and heavy. I mean really simple compared to urban streets. And the commercial value is also very clear. If anything, the commercial value is too clear, and there could be backlash when accidents come (even if at a lower rate) that people are being hurt just to make shipping more efficient, rather than to change how transportation works in general.

This claim is also true, though not entirely. There are forward thinking VCs and strategic investors who could be sold on a somewhat more capital and infrastructure intensive business. Its true that, given the choice, they would rather invest in an Uber that writes only software and owns no cars. The returns are far greater. But even Uber can get investment selling a story of switching to owning large fleets of robotaxis, replacing their drivers.

It may simply be that as the slowdown and market jitters have come, it was Starskys plan and company that didnt pass muster, and not the concept behind it. Certainly several other companies have raised rounds and gotten good valuations, though perhaps not as stratospheric as the valuations from a couple of years ago. There is still a very big prize to be won.

Seltz-Axmacher touches on a real issue when he wonders how much people really care about safety. After all, every company in every presentation you see says, we are all about safety and safety is priority #1 for us. Now, you have to say that, and everybody is very interested in safety, because if you cant attain safety, you cant put your product on the market. So in that sense its a top priority. But in reality, in almost every business, Safety is definitely third after functionality and price. We can recount a hundred stories of products that could have been safer if they cost more money, or has less functionality. After all, self-driving cars that only went 10mph would be pretty easy to make safe quickly, but nobody would want them.

In fact, when car buyers are asked what factors they are considering in choosing their next car, they always list safety as the first choice. Studies of what factors actually govern their choices have suggested its really in more like seventh place. Otherwise, nobody would buy from anybody but the highly-safety focused brands like Volvo and Mercedes, which at various times in history have had the top reputations in that area. They dont.

But Seltz-Axmacher points out something stronger that the public, press and investors dont get excited about safety because it is inherently boring. And it is. The ideal demo ride in a self-driving car is dull as dishwater. Its hard to demo safety.

In the early days of the field, when advising a potential X Prize on self-driving to follow on the heels of the DARPA challenges, I suggested a man vs. machine safety contest. Vehicles would drive a tricky course, and fake obstacles, inflatable pedestrians and cars on small robot platforms, would create problems. Both the skilled race drivers and the robocars would compete on who could avoid hitting anything. It might have been popular not when perfect, but when things are hit but once the robots got perfect while the famous race car drivers were not, it would actually install confidence in the public. But nothing like this has ever been done, and no demo like this has been set up, both because nobody wants video of cars hitting even balloons, and it turns out that just driving was complex enough that handling fake situations never got high on the priority list. Teams now do this in simulator, or sometimes on test tracks, but its never the exciting demo. (Waymo shows a video of their car reacting to employees letting moving boxes fall onto the road.)

I wasnt in the VC meetings that turned down more funding for Starsky. Todays VC climate has cooled, and a lot of companies are being turned down. They may have had other flaws which they dont want to go into. I suspect a lot of companies will continue to get funding, though some will be hurt by having initially received high valuations that cant be sustained.

And it may be true that building a robocar or robotruck just isnt a game for a small startup. Its hard enough for the megafunded startups like Zoox, Cruise and Aurora. Theres a tremendous amount of hard slogging detail work to get from 99% to 99.9999%, which is where you need to be. Its not 1% harder, its 10,000 times harder, and not everybody realizes that. The closer you get to great safety, the harder and harder it is, because each issue becomes harder to find, and each change could cause a regression on something fixed long ago. This may remain something for the big boys, at least for a few years. (Things which took billions to do the first time eventually become doable in a dorm room, it often seems.)

Some companies were going to fail. There was no way they could all survive. Indeed, there is no way that most of the teams out there will survive. Thats to be expected in something as audacious as this. Big valuations demand big results, and only a few will deliver them.

Continued here:

Starsky Robotics Shuts Down And Worries Everybody Else Will Also Fail In Robotic Trucks - Forbes

OYSTER BAY, N.Y., April 2, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The Coronavirus outbreak has highlighted use cases for mobile robotics to successfully disinfect, monitor, surveille, and handle and deliver materials. These proven use cases will propel the overall mobile robotics market to US$23 billion by 2021, states global tech market advisory firm, ABI Research.

"Crises shift perceptions on what is possible regarding investment and transformative action on the part of both private and government actors. By the time the COVID-19 pandemic has passed, robots will be mainstreamed across a range of applications and markets," says Rian Whitton, Senior Analyst at ABI Research.

The virus has been a good opportunity for companies to display robots for public applications. One of the more popular has been deploying mobile unmanned platforms with Ultraviolet (UV) light to disinfect facilities. Danish company UVD Robots is reaping the benefits of this opportunity and is scaling up deployments of robots to disinfect hospitals. U.S.-based Germ Falcon is offering a similar UV disinfection solution for aircraft, while Chinese TMiRob is deploying disinfection robots in Wuhan. "Automating disinfection is a key part of maintaining health and safety and could be one of the major bright spots in the response to COVID-19," Whitton points out.

Drones have also been deployed to enforce curfews and surveil areas for security purposes. This represents a big opportunity for aerospace and drone companies to increase sales to government agencies. ABI Research expects the small drone delivery market to reach US$414 million by 2021 and US$10.4 billion by 2030.

In the short term, to enforce quarantine mandates, governments will need to increase their security apparatuses, as well as the productivity of their medical agencies. Robots will be key to achieving that through disinfection, monitoring, and surveillance. Furthermore, the shutting down of households and even ships represents a chance for robot delivery companies (for both land and air) to display their worth. The drone delivery market could take its experience with transporting supplies in the developing world and scale up their operations in the most affected countries.

Long-term, COVID-19 is leading to a significant reassessment of the global manufacturing supply chain. America's dependence on Chinese imports for basic equipment and medicines is becoming a contentious issue, and government representatives are already interpreting the crisis as a chance to revitalize the campaign to reshore more manufacturing capacity to the domestic market. If this translates into more significant measures by governments to diversify or reshore the manufacturing of key goods, this could bode very well for the robotics industry, as such changes would require big increases in CAPEX and productivity improvements within developed countries.

COVID-19 represents a disaster for robotics vendors building solutions for developed markets in manufacturing, industry, and the supply chain. But for vendors targeting markets closer to government, such as health, security, and defense, it represents a big opportunity. Whitton recommends that "industrial players develop customized solutions for non-manufacturing use cases or look to build comprehensive solutions for enabling a scale-up in medical supply manufacturing. For mobile robotics vendors and software companies targeting more nascent markets, this represents a big chance to highlight the importance of robotics for dealing with national emergencies, as well as mitigating the economic shock."

For a clearer picture of the current and future ramifications of COVID-19 across technologies and verticals, including Industrial, Collaborative and Commercial Robotics, download the whitepaper Taking Stock of COVID-19: The Short- and Long-Term Ramifications on Technology and End Markets.

About ABI ResearchABI Research provides strategic guidance to visionaries, delivering actionable intelligence on the transformative technologies that are dramatically reshaping industries, economies, and workforces across the world. ABI Research's global team of analysts publish groundbreaking studies often years ahead of other technology advisory firms, empowering our clients to stay ahead of their markets and their competitors.

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For more information about ABI Research's services, contact us at +1.516.624.2500 in the Americas, +44.203.326.0140 in Europe, +65.6592.0290 in Asia-Pacific or visitwww.abiresearch.com.

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COVID-19 Pandemic Impact: A Surge in Proven Mobile Robotics Use Cases for Disinfection, Monitoring, Surveillance, and Delivery Will Propel the Market...