Category Archives: Robotics

Researchers have taken a major leap towards the realm of science fiction by creating what they claim are the world's first living robots.

Those concerned that the age of the Terminator may be upon us need not worry for now - the hybrids cooked up by scientists at the University of Vermont have been based on a type of African frog.

The "entirely new life forms", known as xenobots, have been made using stem cells from frog embryos and have been designed to one day be used in medicine and underwater research.

It is hoped that the millimetre-wide bots could swim around human bodies to reach specific areas requiring medicine, and be used to gather microplastics in the ocean.

But one potential feature very befitting of a T-800 is their ability to self-heal, which the team in Vermont believes will develop thanks to their biological tissues.

Joshua Bongard, a computer scientist and robotics expert who co-led the breakthrough, explained: "These are novel living machines. They're neither a traditional robot nor a known species of animal.

"It's a new class of artefact: a living, programmable organism."

The design of the robo-creatures were finalised after an algorithm running on a supercomputer created thousands of different variants, before being assembled and tested by biologists at Tufts University in Massachusetts.

Michael Levin, who co-led the study at Tufts, said the bots were "100% frog DNA - but these are not frogs".

Mr Levin added: "Then you ask, well, what else are these cells capable of building?

"As we've shown, these frog cells can be coaxed to make interesting living forms that are completely different from what their default anatomy would be."

The findings have been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The report says the bots are proof of a way to design "completely biological machines from the ground up".

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The world's first 'living robots' unveiled - and they can self-heal - Sky News

Buildings under construction are a maze of half-completed structures, gantries, stacked materials, and busy workers tracking whats going on can be a nightmare. Scaled Robotics has designed a robot that can navigate this chaos and produce 3D progress maps in minutes, precise enough to detect that a beam is just a centimeter or two off.

Bottlenecks in construction arent limited to manpower and materials. Understanding exactly whats been done and what needs doing is a critical part of completing a project in good time, but its the kind of painstaking work that requires special training and equipment. Or, as Scaled Robotics showed today at TC Disrupt Berlin 2019, specially trained equipment.

The team has created a robot that trundles autonomously around construction sites, using a 360-degree camera and custom lidar system to systematically document its surroundings. An object recognition system allows it to tell the difference between a constructed wall and a piece of sheet rock leaned against it, between a staircase and temporary stairs for electric work, and so on.

By comparing this to a source CAD model of the building, it can paint a very precise picture of the progress being made. Theyve built a special computer vision model thats suited to the task of sorting obstructions from the constructions and identifying everything in between.

All this information goes into a software backend where the supervisors can check things like which pieces are in place on which floor, whether they have been placed within the required tolerances, or if there are safety issues like too much detritus on the ground in work areas. But its not all about making the suits happy.

Its not just about getting management to buy in, you need the guy whos going to use it every day to buy in. So weve made a conscious effort to fit seamlessly into what they do, and they love that aspect of it, explained co-founder Bharath Sankaran. You dont need a computer scientist in the room. Issues get flagged in the morning, and thats a coffee conversation heres the problem, bam, lets go take a look at it.

The robot can make its rounds faster than a couple humans with measuring tapes and clipboards, certainly, but also someone equipped with a stationary laser ranging device that they carry from room to room. An advantage of simultaneous location and ranging (SLAM) tech is that it measures from multiple points of view over time, building a highly accurate and rich model of the environment.

The data is assembled automatically but the robot can be either autonomous or manually controlled in developing it, theyve brought the weight down from about 70 kilograms to 20, meaning it can be carried easily from floor to floor if necessary (or take the elevator); and simple joystick controls mean anyone can drive it.

A trio of pilot projects concluded this year and have resulted in paid pilots next year, which is of course a promising development.

Interestingly, the team found that construction companies were using outdated information and often more or less assumed they had done everything in the meantime correctly.

Right now decisions are being made on data thats maybe a month old, said co-founder Stuart Maggs. We can probably cover 2000 square meters in 40 minutes. One of the first times we took data on a site, they were completely convinced everything theyd done was perfect. We put the data in front of them and they found out there was a structural wall just missing, and it had been missing for 4 weeks.

The company uses a service-based business model, providing the robot and software on a monthly basis, with prices rising with square footage. That saves the construction company the trouble of actually buying, certifying, and maintaining an unfamiliar new robotic system.

But the founders emphasized that tracking progress is only the first hint of what can be done with this kind of accurate, timely data.

The big picture version of where this is going is that this is the visual wiki for everything related to your construction site. You just click and you see everything thats relevant, said Sankaran. Then you can provide other ancillary products, like health and safety stuff, where is storage space on site, predicting whether the project is on schedule.

At the moment, what youre seeing is about looking at one moment in time and diagnosing it as quickly as possible, said Maggs. But it will also be about tracking that over time: We can find patterns within that construction process. That data feeds that back into their processes, so it goes from a reactive workflow to a proactive one.

As the product evolves you start unwrapping, like an onion, the different layers of functionality, said Sankaran.

The company has come this far on $1 million of seed funding, but is hot on the track of more. Perhaps more importantly, its partnerships with construction giant PERI and Autodesk, which has helped push digital construction tools, may make it a familiar presence at building sites around the world soon.

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Scaled Robotics keeps an autonomous eye on busy construction sites - TechCrunch

Food producing has advanced to be a convoluted procedure that includes cooking, arranging, getting ready, bundling, and palletizing. Mechanical robots are ascending to be incorporated to spare existence, just as improve tidiness and safety.

Fremont, CA:Robots have opened up new conceivable outcomes with their ability of exact movements for bundling and preparing food securely and safely, beginning from chicken to Peeps. As per an ongoing study by the Association for Packaging and Processing Technologies, robotics performs about a third of food handling and above 90 percent of bundling activities. Mechanization in this area is expected to thrive as headways in machine vision, and gripper advances enable robotics to make exact developments and handle sensitive things in a superior manner than they had been doing before.

Refining Automation

Significant food organizations are cooperating with robotics accomplices to send new advancements. New vision technologies, Artificial Intelligence, and sensors are empowering robotics to be increasingly adaptable and versatile in food assembling and help them to take more jobs underway lately. High-goals vision sensors give better recognizable proof of part sizes, directions, and geometries in inventive ways. Furthermore, gripping technologies, for example, vacuum grippers, additionally empower robotic arms to be increasingly fragile and exact.

Improves Safety and Addressing Labor Issues

The manufacturers are developing robotic arms and apparatus to withstand the thorough cleaning necessities that they need to confront while taking care of the food. The utilization of better seals, new materials, and plans bolster the apply autonomy to hold up under the warmth, cold, water, and destructive cleaning synthetic compounds. Various robots are being structured with food-grade oil, epoxy paints for mechanical parts, more walled in areas, and better fixing to help an IP67 waterproofing rating.

Robots are additionally viewed as substantial intends to expand sanitation and diminish the odds of contamination, as they can't fall wiped out or convey along with human pathogens. Robots likewise reduce complicated work, developing profoundly dreary and hazardous assignments additionally decrease injuries at work and better working environment safety.

Check out:Top Robotics Solution Companies

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Robotics: Fast-pacing the Performance of Food Manufacturing - CIOReview

Mark your calendars and dust off your public-speaking skills. This year, theres an exciting new opportunity at TC Sessions: Robotics + AI, which returns to UC Berkeley on March 3, 2020. Weve added a pitch-off specifically for early-stage startups focused on AI or robotics.

You heard right. In addition to a full day packed with speakers, breakout sessions and Q&As featuring the top names, leading minds and creative makers in robotics and AI, were upping the ante. Well choose 10 startups to pitch at a private event the night before the show opens. Heres how it works.

The first step: Apply to the pitch-offby February 1.TechCrunch editors will review all applications and select 10 startups to participate. Well notify the founders by February 15 youll have plenty of time to hone your pitch.

Youll deliver your pitch at a private event, and your audience will consist of TechCrunch editors, main-stage speakers and industry experts. Our panel of VC judges will choose five teams as finalists, and they will pitch the next day on the main stage at TC Sessions: Robotics + AI.

Talk about an unprecedented opportunity. Place your startup in front of the influential movers and shakers of these two world-changing industries and get video coverage on TechCrunch, too. We expect attendance to meet or exceed last years, when 1,500 people attended the show and tens of thousands followed along online.

Oh, and heres one more pitch-off perk. Each of the 10 startup team finalists will receive two free tickets to attend TC Sessions: Robotics + AI 2020 the next day.

TC Sessions: Robotics + AI 2020 takes place on March 3. Apply to the pitch-off here by February 1. Dont want to pitch? Thats fine but dont miss this epic day-long event dedicated to exploring the latest technology, trends and investment strategies in robotics and AI. Get your early-bird ticket here and save $100. Well see you in Berkeley!

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TC Sessions: Robotics & AI 2020? Contact our sponsorship sales team byfilling out this form.

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Apply to the pitch-off at TC Sessions: Robotics+AI 2020 - TechCrunch

At the very beginning, there were 14 startups. After two days of incredibly fierce competition, we now have a winner.

Startups participating in the Startup Battlefield have all been hand-picked to participate in our highly competitive startup competition. They all presented in front of multiple groups of VCs and tech leaders serving as judges for a chance to win $50,000 and the coveted Disrupt Cup.

After hours of deliberations, TechCrunch editors pored over the judges notes and narrowed the list down to five finalists: Gmelius, Hawa Dawa, Inovat, Scaled Robotics and Stable.

These startups made their way to the finale to demo in front of our final panel of judges, which included: Andrei Brasoveanu (Accel), Andrew Reed (Sequoia Capital), Carolina Brochado (SoftBank Vision Fund), Lila Preston (Generation Investment Management) and Mike Butcher (TechCrunch).

Scaled Robotics has designed a robot that can produce 3D progress maps of construction sites in minutes, precise enough to detect that a beam is just a centimeter or two off. Supervisors can then use the software to check things like which pieces are in place on which floor, whether they have been placed within the required tolerances or if there are safety issues like too much detritus on the ground in work areas.

Read more about Scaled Robotics in our separate post.

Stable offers a solution as simple as car insurance, designed to protect farmers around the world from pricing volatility. Through the startup, food buyers ranging from owners of a small smoothie shop to Coca-Cola employees can insure thousands of agricultural commodities, as well as packaging and energy products.

Read more about Stable in our separate post.

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And the winner of Startup Battlefield at Disrupt Berlin 2019 is Scaled Robotics - TechCrunch

The next automatica event will occupy a record area of 76,000 square meters. There will be an additional hall, more than 900 exhibitors and new highlights. Munich will be the meeting place for the international automation industry from June 16 to 19, 2020.

Visitors to automatica 2020 will find answers to the questions about how the topics of digital transformation, man and machine as well artificial intelligence will affect the manufacturing world of tomorrow.

Falk Senger, managing director of Messe Mnchen, organiser of the event, says: automatica is aimed at companies from all sectors of industry. The range of topics goes far beyond a traditional exhibition.

The supporting program provides a unique platform for dialog as well as access to innovations, knowledge and trends with high business relevance.

To cover the enormous range, automatica will also occupy Hall C6, which will be called Future Robotics Hall starting from 2020.

Robotics and automation will always be in great demand

The topic of automation plays an important role in the economy as a whole. Patrick Schwarzkopf, managing director of VDMA Robotics + Automation, says: Robotics and automation is the key technology for increased competitiveness, quality and sustainability.

If you want to make the best use of intelligent automation and robotics as well as find out about all new trends, you will find answers at automatica in Munich. It is clearly the leader in this topic area.

Key players and new exhibitors

The continued strong participation of exhibitors shows that automation solutions are in demand more than ever. The presence of important key players, in particular industry leaders in robotics such as ABB, Fanuc, Kuka and Yaskawa, confirms the leading trade fair character of automatica.

Many new exhibitors are also present, including Basler, Baumer, Hanwah, Nokia Solutions & Networks, Schaeffler Technologies and ZF Friedrichshafen.

Demand is particularly strong in the field of collaborative mobile robotics, to which the Future Robot Hall C6 is dedicated. Seven months before the start of the trade fair, the growth in exhibition area from abroad is already 12 percent higher compared to the final result in 2018.

The vision of autonomous production

Topics such as digitalization, big data and artificial intelligence provide enormous opportunities for manufacturing companies.

But how can they benefit? To what extent can the factory of the future be automated? Are further steps toward autonomous production possible and sensible? What role will people play in the future?

There is no doubt that todays reality is still far from the vision of autonomous production. But the rapid pace of technological progress makes an open dialog on opportunities and prospects urgently necessary, because tomorrows production is moving away from sequential to matrix production.

This requires driverless transport systems to become more flexible, machines to solve complex tasks increasingly autonomously, and software to become even more networked and intelligent.

Organisers of automatica describe the event as a meeting place for pioneers, visionaries, entrepreneurs and technology experts, adding that it provides the ideal platform for professional exchange and further development of creative ideas for production of the future.

Further expansion: automation and IT

Digital transformation encompasses all areas of the economy and requires new thinking, new alliances, new processes and structures.

With the IT2Industry exhibition area with approx. 80 expected exhibitors, the IIoT Forum and the Smart Maintenance Pavilion, automatica spans the spectrum from robotics and automation to information technology and all the way to cloud computing and big data.

VDMA Robotics + Automation will demonstrate a sustainable approach for standardized and vendor-independent data exchange with the OPC UA demonstrator. At the same time, the OPC Day Europe 2020 will again take place within the context of automatica.

New IIoT Conference

To bring the production and IT worlds closer to each other, automatica is developing a new format in cooperation with Heise Verlag, one of the leading media houses in the ICT environment.

As part of the IIoT Conference, the classic automatica topics will be addressed with IT-related lectures. The goal is to bridge the gap between automation engineers and software developers as well as IT professionals.

The offer is aimed at a technical audience from the IT industry and consists of a conference day and a half-day workshop.

Expanded sensor technology area

Relevant data form the basis of technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence. Sensors are becoming an important part of the value chain and consequently for automatica.

The Sensor Show will be hosted for the first time at automatica 2020. It will be a component-oriented sensor exhibition area with lecture stages and supporting congress, say the organisers.

The aim of the expansion of the trade fair offer is to increase the focus on the already established topic of sensor, test and measurement technology to complete the value chain and cover areas for new visitor target groups.

Well-known companies such as the BMW Group, Deloitte, Tesla, Hugo Boss, MTC Aero, Dell EMC, General Motors and TATA Technologies have already confirmed their participation in The Sensor Show Congress and the network forums of The Sensor Show.

Orientation knowledge with high business relevance

With expert forums, international congresses, demo shows and use cases, a service robotics exhibition area as well as hands-on formats such as the planned AI-Lab, automatica provides orientation knowledge and consequently concrete added value for visitors and exhibitors.

The trend topics of digital transformation, man and machine interfaces as well as artificial intelligence will be discussed with experts in all their practical scenarios that can be employed in industry.

The automatica forum provides valuable know-how transfer. The top topics of the lectures: Work 4.0, collaborative robotics in actual practice, mobile robotics in logistics, artificial intelligence in production, and data analytics.

The worlds leading robotics conference International Symposium on Robotics 2020 will take place from June 17 to 18 within the context of automatica. More than 100 talks will provide insights into state-of-the-art robotics technologies.

Automation for the next generation

The shortage of skilled workers is a central issue in the production world. With several initiatives, automatica aims to draw the attention of the young generation to potential in the automation industry.

The highlights: the Start-up Arena, the extended Makeathon contest with up to 250 participants, the new format VDMA Robotics Challenge and other attractive offers for university and high school students.

Organisers describe automatica as a door opener, enabling young people from different age groups to find exciting opportunities for participating and trying things out at the fair as well as solid networking possibilities for professional development.

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Robotics and automation event 'automatica' to occupy record 76000 square meters - Robotics and Automation News

Ada, an AI-driven robot, searches for new solar cell designs at the University of British Columbia.

By Robert F. ServiceDec. 11, 2019 , 4:00 PM

BOSTONInJuly 2018, Curtis Berlinguette, a materials scientist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, realized he was wasting his graduate student's time and talent. He had asked her to refine a key material in solar cells to boost its electrical conductivity. But the number of potential tweaks was overwhelming, from spiking the recipe with traces of metals and other additives to varying the heating and drying times. "There are so many things you can go change, you can quickly go through 10 million [designs] you can test," Berlinguette says.

So he and colleagues outsourced the effort to a single-armed robot overseen by an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm. Dubbed Ada, the robot mixed different solutions, cast them in films, performed heat treatments and other processing steps, tested the films' conductivity, evaluated their microstructure, and logged the results. The AI interpreted each experiment and determined what to synthesize next. At a meeting of the Materials Research Society (MRS) here last week, Berlinguette reported that the system quickly homed in on a recipe and heating conditions that created defect-free films ideal for solar cells. "What used to take us 9 months now takes us 5 days," Berlinguette says.

Other material scientists also reported successes with such "closed loop" systems that combine the latest advances in automation with AI that directs how the experiments should proceed on the fly. Drug developers, geneticists, and investigators in other fields had already melded AIs and robots to design and do experiments, but materials scientists had lagged behind. DNA synthesizers can be programmed to assemble any combination of DNA letters, but there's no single way to synthesize, process, or characterize materials, making it exponentially more complicated to develop an automated system that can be guided by an AI. Materials scientists are finally bringing such systems online. "It's a superexciting area," says Benji Maruyama, a materials scientist with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory east of Dayton, Ohio. "The closed loop is what is really going to make progress in materials research go orders of magnitude faster."

With more than 100 elements in the periodic table and the ability to combine them in virtually limitless ways, the number of possible materials is daunting. "The good news is there are millions to billions of undiscovered materials out there," says Apurva Mehta, a materials physicist at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource in Menlo Park, California. The bad news, he says, is that most are unremarkable, making the challenge of finding gems a needle-in-the-haystack problem.

Robots have already helped. They are now commonly used to mix dozens of slightly different recipes for a material, deposit them on single wafers or other platforms, and then process and test them simultaneously. But simply plodding through recipe after recipe is a slow route to a breakthrough, Maruyama says. "High throughput is a way to do lots of experiments, but not a lot of innovation."

To speed the process, many teams have added in computer modeling to predict the formula of likely gems. "We're seeing an avalanche of exciting materials coming from prediction," says Kristin Persson of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in California, who runs a large-scale prediction enterprise known as the Materials Project. But those systems still typically rely on graduate students or experienced scientists to evaluate the results of experiments and determine how to proceed. Yet, "People still need to do things like sleep and eat," says Keith Brown, a mechanical engineer at Boston University (BU).

So, like Berlinguette, Brown and his colleagues built an AI-driven robotics system. Their goal was to find the toughest possible 3D-printed structures. Toughness comes from a blend of high strength and ductility, and it varies depending on the details of a structure, even if the material itself doesn't change. Predicting which shape will be toughest isn't feasible, Brown says. "You have to do the experiment."

As a test case, the BU team set out to make salt shakersize, barrel-shaped structures from a plastic. They varied the number of struts that make up the outer wall of the barrel and details of each strut's shape and orientation. Testing all possible combinations, about a half-million, wasn't realistic. So, they initially had their robots fabricate 600 structures that sampled the full array of options. A kind of vise then squeezed each one until it gave way.

The group then added an AI decision-making algorithm that calculated the most likely next best design after each test. The program spots trends in attributes that confer toughness, such as the thickness and radius of each strut, in order to predict even sturdier structures. "We basically turned on the machine and walked out the door," Brown says. After 24 hours and just over 60 designs, the AI-driven system had come up with a tougher barrel than any of the original designs.

Many more closed loop efforts were showcased at the MRS meeting. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and LBNL have independently developed autonomous systems to find better perovskite photovoltaicscheap, lightweight materials that are poised to revolutionize solar energy. A team at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, reported using another AI system to find safer charge-carrying electrolytes for lithium-ion batteries, which are now prone to catching fire. And researchers at the University of Liverpool in the United Kingdom have developed a suite of AI-driven robots to discover novel catalysts for generating hydrogen gas, a potential carbon-free fuel, from water.

Few of these projects have turned up blockbuster results, researchers acknowledge. However, Maruyama says, "It's still early days." One challenge is that materials scientists themselves often don't agree on how best to relate a material's conductivity or other testable properties to its structure, says John Gregoire, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "If we haven't figured out how to break that down in the community, it's hard to imagine how we will teach a computer to do it," he says.

Another issue is that each team must design its own robotics and software systems, as standards have yet to take shape. "Everyone is exploring different ways to do this," says Joshua Schrier, a computational chemist at Fordham University in New York City. Eventually, the materials community may coalesce around a handful of systems that can be used by a wide swath of researchers, Schrier says. "Over the next year or two I think we'll begin to see things converge."

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AI-driven robots are making new materials, improving solar cells and other technologies - Science Magazine

Realtime Robotics, a developer of responsive motion planning software for industrial robots and autonomous vehicles, is expanding its partnership with Mitsubishi Electric.

The company is to develop a custom integrated solution that pairs Realtime Robotics smart motion planning technology with Mitsubishi Electrics industrial and collaborative robot product lines.

The intelligent robots will be on display at iREX later this month and there will be a series of demonstrations showcasing the motion-planning technology in action.

Despite the growing demand for automation, multi-robot work cells continue to require complicated, time-consuming, and costly programming, which prohibits the automation of new tasks.

The custom Mitsubishi Electric seamless stackable solution significantly reduces work cell development time and costs while reducing cycle time with interlock-free, collision-free autonomous planning.

The joint solution delivers the productivity and efficiency gains that increased automation has promised but failed to deliver as yet.

Incorporation of Realtimes technology enables industrial robots to work safely in dynamic, unstructured environments, allowing the robots to evaluate millions of alternative motion paths to avoid a collision and choose the optimal route before making a move, all in milliseconds.

The integrated robots will be demonstrated at Mitsubishi Electrics booth (S1-03) at iREX in Tokyo (December 18-21) and will be commercially available in 2020.

Peter Howard, CEO, Realtime Robotics, says: Our shared vision with Mitsubishi Electric is to help robots realize their potential in industrial settings. We are excited to unveil our motion planning technology coupled with Mitsubishi Electrics robots at iREX, removing many of the boundaries to greater robotic automation.

Satoshi Takeda, senior deputy general manager of Nagoya Works, Mitsubishi Electric, says: Smart manufacturing requires productive and safe robotic systems. With Realtimes innovative motion planning technology, together, we will be able to transform industrial automation.

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Realtime Robotics extends technology relationship with Mitsubishi Electric - Robotics and Automation News

It's an exciting time to be in robotics. Driven by increasing diversification in the industry, the $100+ billion global sector has been growing by leaps and bounds.

Industrial robots are no longer the exclusive domain of heavy industry or huge factories. Collaborative robots in particular have helped expand the enterprise customer base to include mid-sized and even small businesses in light manufacturing, materials handling, fulfillment, and beyond.

But are the good times coming to an end? We spoke with Chris Harlow, Director of Product Development atRealtime Robotics, about his predictions for 2020 and beyond. The takeaway? The good times are still rolling in some corners of the sector, but they won't last much longer across the board.

When it comes to short-term takeaways, Harlow has bad news for collaborative robots, or "cobots." Small, force-limited table top units have helped drive the spread of industrial automation beyond large factories. Cobot companies have been a small but potent spear tip for the sector, but that may be coming to an end.

"Demand for power and forced limited robots (cobots) has peaked due to reduced functionality and capabilities," says Harlow. "By 2025 manufacturers will no longer be investing in these systems, and traditional cobots will be replaced by better technology for the human-robot workcell."

Part of that shift will be driven by the increasing capabilities of traditional industrial robots, which have long been confined to cages but are starting to work alongside humans thanks to advanced vision systems and a host of other safety features.

"Industrial robots will become more persuasive as they will become significantly easier to program," explains Harlow. "As robotic automation expands into new industrial areas like logistics and electronic assembly, this will be essential to facilitate widespread adoption. The shift from script-based programming to graphical-based programming will be the catalyst behind this."

In the midterm, Harlow cautions that the regulatory environment could slow down the pace of progress.

"In the 2020s," he says, "the artificial intelligence and machine learning technology landscape will move from the 'Wild West' where almost anything goes to a more controlled regulatory environment. The introduction of mandatory legislation will inevitably slow down the pace of progress, and this will impact robotic automation. For example, AI and ML algorithms will face safety regulations, and this will hamper the speed of development of vision systems that are the key to AVs along with industrial robots taking on more complex tasks such as kitting or parcel sorting."

All of this puts a bit a damper on an industry that's enjoyed CAGR of about 26 percent recently.

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Prediction 2020: The future of robotics next year and beyond - ZDNet

CARLSBAD Inclusion is a part of the fabric at Kelly Elementary School.

From the schools annual Acceptance Day to robotics, the teachers, parents and students make sure special needs students are part of the schools community.

And this year, two special needs students joined the robotics program, which is open to any and all fourth- and fifth-graders. On Dec. 8, Kelly was represented by Como Fun and City Savers teams in the FIRST Lego League regional competition at Legoland.

The Lego competition promotes science, technology, engineering and math, through Legos and project-based events.

The Kelly City Savers team was awarded the judges inclusion award, celebrating Jacob Nichols, who is a high-functioning Down syndrome student, Kelly Robotics Program Director Nicole Buchanan said.

Buchanan oversees the nine teams and coaches two of them, one of which has another special needs student, Bailey Benton, who was diagnosed with autism and is nonverbal.

Theyve figured out a way to really include her throughout this whole process, Buchanan said. They share with the community that a student like Bailey, who has disabilities, can be included.

Despite her challenges, Baileys teammates, fourth-graders Emery Cramond, Moorea Marchi and Bradley Lyon, said she is a big part of the team, even though Bailey has certain limitations.

Bailey communicates through her mother, Tricia Benton, and together the two helped the team develop its project for the competition. With Bailey as inspiration, the team focused on creating a more inclusive playground to better service special needs kids.

Its amazing how much shes proved to people, Moorea said. The doctors said she could never walk. She can walk like 20 seconds or more.

Emery said they came up with designs for swings to generate electricity, while Bradley said it would be powered using collaborative motion, or como (also their team name), for short.

Additionally, Emery also came up with a drum set for special needs kids who have tendencies to hit objects.

You when hit them, they vibrate and create energy, Emery said. Im still working on that.

The team also met with Carlsbad Unified School District Superintendent Dr. Ben Churchill, the Carlsbad Parks and Recreation Department and Pacific Play Systems, a commercial playground equipment company, to discuss their playground, and to perhaps add some of the more available and functional features to a more inclusive playground at the school. Buchanan said the students made the pitch because of Measure HH, the $265 million school bond passed in 2018 for facilities upgrades throughout the district, including Kelly Elementary School.

Were trying to make playgrounds that make power and are more inclusive, Bradley said.

Buchanan said many of the teams ideas are not yet fully functional or realized in the real world yet, but the concept of a more inclusive playground area is attainable on certain levels.

Regardless, the team overcame nerves at the competition to present its project and robot skills. Each team must complete a set of missions to show its robot the depth of programming and execution.

Bradley said he was excited for the event, while Emery and Moorea each said they were nervous. Still, the team finished in the top 25.

Although the Kelly teams came up short in their chase to the world championship in Texas in April 2020, Aviara Oaks Middle School won the competition and qualified. They beat out 54 other teams and will compete in Houston.

Steve Puterski covers Carlsbad and Vista. For tips or story ideas, contact him at steve.puterski@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @StevePuterski.

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Inclusivity core to Kelly Elementary School robotics team - Coast News