Category Archives: Robotics

POCATELLO What started as a senior project for a student enrolled in Idaho State Universitys College of Technology Robotics program has evolved into something that many Star Wars fans have dreamed of for decades designing and building a fully-functional R2-D2 robot.

The Robotics program has one fully constructed R2-D2 robot and another thats under construction that program director Shane Slack said is hopeful will be done in time for Septembers Snake River Comic Con in Pocatello.

Originally, one of the students came up and said they wanted to build an R2-D2 robot for a final project, you know, and its movies and characters like this that get most kids excited to join this type of program, Slack said. We didnt really have 3-D printing at the time so trying to find the materials to make it and coming up with the mechanical aspects of it was difficult. Honestly, at the end of the two-month period it didnt look anything like R2-D2.

It took eight weeks to construct the first R2-D2 robots basic framework, which included two aluminum plates manufactured by the machine shop that serve as R2-D2s shoulders. The original model featured a plexiglass outer shell.

Over the next two semesters, students continued to shape the exterior skin, hardware and programming aspects until they had a functioning R2-D2 robot.

The red R2-D2 was started in 2010 and now we actually have some of the upperclassmen recruit some of the first- and second-semester students to serve as team members on these projects, Slack said. So the final semester students will have younger students come in and work on code, circuitry and other components to help them create these massive machines.

A few years later the implementation of advanced CAD, or computer-aided design software, laser cutting and 3-D printers allowed R2-D2 to get a makeover.

We had six or seven teams of students improving software, sensors and drive systems over the next few years, Slack said. The initial drive system only allowed him to travel about 2 mph and now hell go 28 mph.

R2-D2 robot is a fun pop-culture project students can relate to. But its also a teaching tool that lets students use what theyve learned through the construction process on other robotic systems, Slack said.

Inside the red R2-D2 several electronic and mechanical systems make the robot tick.

Inside we have a main board that communicates with the operator, so that main board receives commands from our remote and basically anything our operator does with the remote the robot interoperates those commands and executes a series of other commands, Slack said. We can open the doors, move the arms, it can run a vocal processor to communicate and the main board is capable of running 128 other circuit boards.

The process of designing and developing all the internal circuitry is completed by robotics students.

This process involves designing the board with CAD software. Students determine how each electronic component physically connects to another. The board itself is then machined out of copper and fiberglass.

The secondary board that mounts to the main board is a Wi-Fi radio, which is another student-built board that allows us to communicate directly with R2-D2, Slack said. With this student-built board weve tested the range out and it works just fine 3 miles out, and the board is about the size of an SD card.

After the first R2-D2 robot, Slack said the team really understood what worked well with the original model and what improvements could be made.

Theyre now in the process of building R2-D2 version 2.0. Slack said their goal is to document each step of the process into video and text files so that any person can download the materials and make their own R2-D2.

The students have to make the website, the manuals and technical documentation and the assembly videos just like they were working in industry, Slack said.

For the past several year, the Robotics program has showcased the R2-D2 robot at the Salt Lake Comic Con, all thanks to a bet made, and lost, by one of the events producers.

We were attending a Robotics competition in Salt Lake and on the last day one of the producers of the Salt Lake Comic Con came in and were doing an R2-D2 demonstration, Slack said. As he was walking around he saw our R2-D2 robot. When he noticed that it was 3-D printed he was actually floored that we were able to do it because he had stated a few weeks ago that he made a bet with a friend that nobody could 3-D print a R2-D2. But we did.

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ISU Robotics program builds functioning R2-D2 robots | Local ... - Idaho State Journal

Victoria Advocate

UHV teaches robotics through summer camp (w/video) Victoria Advocate Dylan Herrig, 14, of Victoria, a freshman at Victoria East High School, fist bumps Christian Okwuchukwu, a teacher's assistant at University of Houston Victoria, after Herrig's robot successfully completed a task during UHV's Robotics Summer Camp ...

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UHV teaches robotics through summer camp (w/video) - Victoria Advocate

Photo by Aaron Ricca.

A Lego robot moves stones across a table. Two robots faced off while moving and lifting different objects across the space-table for points. The robots also had avoid small obstacles in order to not lose points.

KINGMAN The competition was fierce, but fun.

After a week of learning to program and build Lego robots, as well as conducting research and building friendships, 40 third- through eighth-grade students put their skills to the test during the final trials of the 2017 FIRST Lego League Lego Camp at Kingman High School Friday.

Kingman FIRST Robotics Team 60 coaches and high school science teachers Celeste Lucier and Jody Schanaman, along with Team 60 student mentors, watched, learned, advised and cheered the various teams on as they and their Lego robots scrambled to lift, shift and move random Lego parts across a space-table during coordinated exercises for points.

Theyll also conducted research to identify real world problems, learning how to create innovative solutions and create a presentation to share their findings.

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Tough competition during FIRST Robotics final - Kdminer

When Ford hired Jim Hackett as its new chief executive officer last month, he delivered a mandate: In a rapidly changing industry, the automaker no longer could afford to take a plodding approach to making decisions. Ford needed to move faster.

The company took a step in that direction Thursday, consolidating its artificial-intelligence and robotics researchers into a single new team that will explore using those technologies on a broad range of transportation projects.

The team will report to Randy Visintainer, Fords director of autonomous-vehicle development and controls. While self-driving vehicles will be a significant focus, they wont be the lone one. Ford expects the researchers will evaluate artificial-intelligence applications for drones, mobility projects, and the technical requirements for entry into global markets

I can tell you theres so much going on in the world of advanced engineering, its imperative that we maintain a crystal-clear focus on the most important elements to help us achieve our vision of changing the way the world moves, wrote Ken Washington, Fords chief technology officer, in a Medium blog post.

This means youll likely see at least two separate fleets of self-driving vehicles on the road, one led by the Ford team conducting advanced research and another by Argo AI.

Ken Washington, Ford

Some of those visions are well documented, with the companys recent investments in artificial-intelligence and high-definition mapping companies. Others, Washington noted, havent yet been revealed.

Perhaps he hints at some of the more secretive projects, saying the team will also explore aerial robotics to enhance first- and last-mile travel. Whether Ford will follow with plans for a contraption similar to the likes of Ubers flying taxi or the Airbus self-flying Vahana concept, well, thats an intriguing thought. For the time being, Ford is focused on the process of discovering and refining its next innovations.

The new research team will work with Argo AI, the Pittsburgh-based artificial-intelligence company that Ford made a $1 billion investment in last year. Argo will continue to do the bulk of the work developing the virtual driver system for Fords first generation of autonomous vehicles, a company spokesperson said, while the new team concentrates its efforts on more fledgling technologies.

This means youll likely see at least two separate fleets of self-driving vehicles on the roadone led by the Ford team conducting advanced research, and another by Argo AI, developing and testing our virtual driver system for production, Washington wrote.

In his introductory remarks, Hackett stressed that the company needs to match the speed of the ever-changing industry. But in terms of autonomous vehicles, the companys approach hasnt necessarily been lacking. An independent report issued earlier this year by Navigant Research found that Fords autonomous strategy and execution ranked as the most effective out of the 18 companies examined.

Ford has previously stated its intent to put Level 4 autonomous vehiclesthose that never require input from drivers when the system is active but might have limitations on the conditions in which they operateinto production by 2021. Combining the AI and robotics teams may show that Hackett and others are starting to make plans for what happens beyond that first autonomous launch.

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Ford Accelerates Robotics and Artificial-Intelligence Development - Car and Driver (blog)

Six teenage girls from Afghanistan planned to come to the US to compete in the First Global Challenge robotics competition this month, but those plans were canceled after they were denied visas to enter the country. Forbes reports that the girls traveled 500 miles to Kabul for their visa interviews, and that their robots supplies were held in customs for months.

This kit, which the competition organizers issued to every participating team, included different components, like brackets, extrusions, fastening hardware, hardware adaptors, bearings, wheels of different sizes, gears, pulleys, motors, servos, and sprockets. The State Department feared ISIS might try to use these parts on the battlefield, which is why they delayed sending them to the girls.

Still, the team built a ball-sorting robot on a shortened timeline; their kit only arrived three weeks ago. More than 100 other teams have entered the competition, including participants from Iraq, Iran, and Sudan. The girls robot will still compete, but the team will only be able to watch over a video call from their homes in Herat, Afghanistan.

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US denies visas to Afghanistan's all-girl robotics team - The Verge

It's no secret that Ford has been lagging when it comes to the 'futuristic' tech that its rivals are already on top of. It's still three years away from releasing a long-range electric car (GM already has the Bolt on the market) and only launched its self-driving focused 'mobility' subsidiary little over a year ago.

Meanwhile, Volkswagen has recently announced its cars will be 'talking' to each other within as little as two years, while Tesla, a company focused on tech innovation, last year delivered less than 80,000 cars compared to Ford's 6.7 million, and has still managed to overtake Ford in terms of market value.

The creation of this new team is unsurprising given the leadership reshuffle seen in May, when self-driving car chief Jim Hackett was brought in to replace CEO Mark Fields. This renewed focus is certainly attributable to his vision -- and Ford is better-positioned to realize this now it's working in partnership with self-driving tech company Argo AI.

Of course, car manufacturers are already focusing their efforts on innovating their technology so the announcement doesn't give Ford any lead. But it does put it back in the race. As Washington says in his blog post, this is "a team tasked with not just watching the future, but helping to create it."

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Ford realizes it should have an AI and robotics team - Engadget - Engadget

Consumers are confident that the introduction of robotics and artificial intelligence in the workplace will enhance and not destroy their jobs, according to a recent survey from semiconductor company ARM.

In itsAI Today, AI Tomorrow global survey of 4,000 consumers, carried out by Northstar Research Partners, more than six out of ten (61 percent) of respondents said they believe that an increase in automation and AI would make society become better. In particular, 37 percent believe there will be advancements in medicine and science that help humans live longer and healthier lives, andare prepared to trust machines to diagnose illnesses.

Those who believe advancements in AI and robotics will lead to fewer jobs for humans are in the minority, with just 30 percent identifying fewer or different jobs for humans as the biggest drawback to these technological changes.

Instead, 29 percent of respondents feel that tedious or dangerous tasks will be done by robots, and 11 percent see less chance of human accidents or mistakes. In fact, many companies are already doing this, including General Electric in automating its field services and the use ofmaintenance drones from enterprise applications company, IFS.

Read more:Manchester Uni plans for robots to work on nuclear clean-ups

On a more granular level,survey respondents said they believe that jobs in manufacturing and banking would be most disrupted by new AI technologies, while occupations related to cooking, fire-fighting and farming will continue to be the domain of humans. This was the view of most people surveyed about a robotic future; with those surveyed in Asia responding most positively, followed by the US and then Europe.

It is encouraging to see the survey results highlighting the optimism and opportunities tied to AI, but we are just scratching the surface of its potential, said Joyce Kim, vice president of global marketing, brand and communications at ARM.

The impact of AI on jobs will be disruptive but it can be a manageable and highly positive disruption in terms of opportunities and enhancing our lives. If we increase our investments in STEM and educating the next-generation workforce on AI technologies, we can ensure they are not left behind in the robot economy.

Read more:Trend Micro finds 83,000 industrial robots are exposed

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Consumers welcome workplace AI & robotics, says ARM - The Internet of Business (blog)

June 30, 2017 Credit: University of Hertfordshire

Artificial intelligence experts from the University of Hertfordshire, Dr Christoph Salge and Professor Daniel Polani, have designed a concept which could lead to a new set of generic, situation-aware guidelines to help robots work and co-exist successfully alongside humans.

Empowerment, which has been developed over the course of twelve years, is discussed in the latest edition of the journal Frontiers in Robotics and AI today, as a potential replacement for Asimov's celebrated Three Laws of Robotics the most famous set of guidelines to govern robotic behaviour to date.

The paper shows how Empowerment has the potential to equip a robot with guidelines or motivations that cause it to a) protect itself and keep itself functioning b) do the same for a human partner c) stick around and follow the human's lead. In the future this principle could be implemented on a range of robots that interact closely with humans in challenging environments, such as elder care robots, hospital robots, self-driving cars or exploration robots.

Empowering robots to change their environment

Motivated by the term from sociology and psychology, empowerment stands for the opposite of helplessness; it is the ability to change one's environment and to be aware of that possibility. Over the past twelve years, leading University of Hertfordshire researchers have been developing ways to translate this social concept into a quantifiable and operational mathematical/technical language, endowing robots with a drive towards being empowered.

The principle of empowerment states that an agent should attempt to keep its options open, and will try to move to states in its world where it has the most options it can reliably attain. Since 2005, when it was first introduced, researchers have generalized the empowerment principle and applied it to various scenarios. The resulting behaviours are surprisingly "natural" in many cases, and typically only require the robot to know the dynamics of the world, but no specialized Artificial Intelligence behaviour coded for the particular scenario.

Empowerment has also already begun to be adopted by pioneers in artificial intelligence, such as Google DeepMind.

Need for ethical standards and guidelines for robots

Dr Christoph Salge, Research Fellow at the University of Hertfordshire said, "There is currently a lot of debate on ethics and safety in robotics, including a recent a call for ethical standards or guidelines for robots. In particular there is a need for robots to be guided by some form of generic, higher instruction level if they are expected to deal with increasingly novel and complex situations in the future - acting as servants, companions and co-workers.

"In the challenging scenarios of the future, we will not be able to rely on a clearly defined functionality that requires robots to be safely separated from humans, or the scenarios to be simplistic or very well defined in advance."

"Imbuing a robot with these kinds of motivation is difficult, because robots have problems understanding human language and specific behaviour rules can fail when applied to differing contexts. For example, some robots will have automatisms that stop moving whenever they encounter resistance, as a typical safety feature to avoid damaging themselves or injuring a human. But there might be a situation where a robot actually should move to provide a safer space for instance, to move something away from the human, to get out of the human's escape route, or to actively block the human from stepping into a dangerous trajectory."

"From the outset, formalising this kind of behaviour in a generic and proactive way poses a difficult challenge. We believe that our approach can offer a solution."

Daniel Polani, Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Hertfordshire, added: "As we toyed with the idea of using empowerment in more complex situations, we realized that several of the original goals of the Three Laws of Robotics by Asimov might be addressable in the context of empowerment.

"While much of the public discourse is about how it is difficult or impossible to rein in robots' behaviour, and most certainly in keeping robots - in the most naive sense 'ethical', in the paper we discuss possibilities to map such requirements into the formal and operational language of empowerment."

Explore further: After 75 years, Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics need updating

More information: Christoph Salge et al. Empowerment As Replacement for the Three Laws of Robotics, Frontiers in Robotics and AI (2017). DOI: 10.3389/frobt.2017.00025

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Generic, situation-aware guidelines to help robots co-exist successfully alongside humans - Phys.Org

Fords recent executive shuffle was bound to lead to reorganization throughout the company, but the addition of a new Robotics and AI Research team operating under Fords Research and Advanced Engineering department seems like it was inevitable either way, given the industrys trajectory.

Fords VP of Research and Engineering and CTO Dr. Ken Washington revealed the new research group via a Medium post, in which he discusses the huge potential impact of AI and robotics over the next decade. The team will work with Argo AI, the startup that Ford took a majority stake in earlier this year via a large investment, as well as on other partnership and acquisition/investment opportunities. Itll help with work on drones, personal mobility platforms (last-mile, scooter-style transport), automation and aerial robotics.

Washington also discussed how in the future well see at least two separate fleets of self-driving vehicles on the road operated by Ford: one led by Fords own team pursuing advanced research and another led by Argo AI focused on development and testing of the virtual driver system Ford intends to bring to production in time for its 2021 deployment of a ride-hailing fleet.

Focusing on AI and robotics research is not novel to Ford among automakers; Honda has long had a program in place to develop its robotics capability, and has frequently demonstrated its Asimo humanoid robot. Toyota also runs the Toyota Research Institute, an entire subsidiary devoted to long-term research and development of robotics and AI, through its own work and partnerships with leading academic institutions.

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Ford creates a new dedicated Robotics and AI Research team ... - TechCrunch

HOUGHTON, Mich. (WLUC) - Michigan Technological University staff are inspiring local high school students interested in engineering.

MTUs Mechanical Engineering and Engineering Mechanics department holds their second annual Robotics Machining Workshop this week.

"This year they're building a sterling engine, and with that engine you can put in on a coffee pot and the heat coming from the hot coffee will, the engine will move and that generates the power," said William Predebon, chair for MTUs Mechanical Engineering and Engineering Mechanics department.

Students from Houghton, Calumet and Lake Linden high schools are attending.

"It's important because it will help these students develop these skills and then hopefully consider engineering as a profession when they graduate," said Predebon. One incoming senior from Houghton High School is considering exactly that.

"When I am in robotics, I feel like I am in my full functioning capacity, said Houghton High School senior Danielle Lunde. Everything makes sense and I can just work. It's so much fun and the people are so great. The robotics team just becomes like your family. And so, I love it so much."

Lunde has been in robotics for three years. She attended the workshop last year as well.

"It really teaches us how to make our parts more precise and make parts that we, in the past, would have just bought because we didn't realize that we could make it ourselves, Lunde said.

Lunde plans to study mechanical engineering at Michigan Tech after graduation. Her goal is to someday design prosthetic legs.

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MTU reaches out to high school robotics - UpperMichigansSource.com