Category Archives: Robotics

Photo: PAL Robotics TALOS humanoid robot from PAL Robotics.

If you are a roboticist and you want to work with humanoids but you dont want to build a robot from scratch, PAL Robotics would be happy to sell you one. The Spanish robot makeris introducing a new option that improves on its REEM humanoids: TALOS isa 32-degrees-of-freedom, 1.75-meter-tall, 100-kilogramrobotdesigned for dynamic walking, heavy lifting, and (eventually) assisting humans with all of those tasks that we really dont want to be doing.

PAL Robotics designed TALOS with the intention of having the robot work on physically demanding and accurate tasks performed under hostile or uncomfortable industrial settings, according to PAL CEO Francesco Ferro. This means that the robot is not justa research platformits going to start out in research, as many robots do, but PAL hopes it cantransition into doing useful tasks in the real world, a thing that humanoid robots in general arent known for.

Right out of the box (and we assume its a pretty big box), TALOS can walk at 3 km/h, it can handle traveling over irregular surfaces, and its battery can keep it running forup to 3 hours (depending on what the robot is doing). The robot is powered byROS (hooray!), and full EtherCAT communications allow its internal networks to run control loops in the kilohertz range. It has 7-DoF arms, each of which can lift an impressive 6 kilograms at full extension. Its modular and upgradeable in both hardware and software.

The first TALOS (named Pyrne) is already hard at work at the Laboratory for Analysis and Architecture Systems (LAAS-CNRS) in Toulouse, France:

Full-size humanoid robots are a tricky business, so we asked PAL Robotics what the story is behind TALOS:

We believe that our environment is tailored to us, humans, and as such, in the long term, we will need a robot that is able to adapt to our human environments. TALOS has been on our roadmap for a while and we are glad that we were able to work with LAAS-CNRS to have this first unit available and working already for research purposes. It has really proven to be a huge engineering challenge for us and we are very satisfied with the end result.

PAL Robotics hopes that within the next five years, TALOS will be working side by side with humans doing manipulation in industrial applications. Longer term, theres potential for working in search and rescue, or in other areas where its too dangerous to send humans. Its this kind of thing that TALOS is ideal for, and thats reflected in the costat something around 1 million, the best place for a robot like this is where a robot like this is the only safe option.

[ PAL Robotics ]

IEEE Spectrum's award-winning robotics blog, featuring news, articles, and videos on robots, humanoids, drones, automation, artificial intelligence, and more. Contact us:e.guizzo@ieee.org

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TALOS Humanoid Now Available from PAL Robotics - IEEE Spectrum

Both the George Washington and Tunstall high school robotics teams pushed through a challenging contest to earn high rankings during the first qualifying meet of the season, team coaches and players said.

I think we did great, much better than we originally thought we were going to do, said Tunstall build and drive captain Mindy Duenas.

Tunstall and GW both participated in the FIRST For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology Chesapeake districts Southwest Virginia event Saturday and Sunday in Blacksburg, competing against dozens of teams from Virginia, Washington and Maryland. The Tunstall Trojans finished the qualifying round ranked second and GWs Team Talon finished 14th.

Both teams also competed in the tournament phase. GW bowed out in the quarterfinals while Tunstall was able to advance to the semifinals, eventually losing to the No. 1 seed in a close match.

During each match, alliances made up of three teams use their robots to complete several objectives. This year the objectives are steampunk-themed, so the robots load fuel balls into a boiler and carry plastic gears up a rope system with the goal of powering a steam vehicle.

Team Talon coach Daniel Waters said he was very proud of his teams first performance of the season.

It was good, Waters said. We kept it really close.

During qualifying, GW also was part of the alliance that set the event high score of 360 points.

Tunstall coach Edward Sherlock whose team is competing in its second year said the robot excelled at the gear placing objective.

It was a strong climber, and thats worth 50 points at the end, Sherlock said.

Team Talon also scored points by winning the Gracious Professionalism Award, which is given to the team that displays qualities like teamwork, effective collaboration and positive attitudes. The award is determined by judges conversations with fellow alliance teams and event personnel.

That award shows you are willing to work together. Waters said. Thats kind of the ethos of FIRST.

The Trojans and Team Talon next will head to the second qualifying event on March 24-26 in Glen Allen. If the teams qualify, they will be able to attend the championship event on April 5-8 at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Waters said about 60 teams will qualify for the championship, based on a rankings system which takes into account awards, wins and losses, tournament placement and other factors. Currently, Team Talon is ranked 14th and the Trojans are ranked 18th.

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Dan River Region robotics teams take to the field - GoDanRiver.com

Real Human Tissue

With all the advances being made in robotics in terms of capabilities, it was only a matter of time before researchers took it one step further, making robots look more human.Thats what a pair of biomedical researchers at the University of Oxford are hoping to do, anyway.

In a report published in Science Robotics,Pierre-Alexis Mouthuyand Andrew Carr assert that the time has come to beginbuilding robots with real human tissue. Not just for looks, either: using humanoid robots would be ideal for advancing our understanding of muscle and tendon grafts, and refining the technologyused to develop them.

To engineer tissue, scientists use bioreactors filled with nutrients and chemicals that can grow sheets of cells. Cells in muscles and tendons, however, require the ability to be stretched and moved by the skeleton a mechanical component that bioreactors are unable to mimic.

Because humanoid robots are capable of mimicking human movement, they would prove an excellent tool. They can essentially serve as a humanoid-bioreactor system, and the tissuecould develop with a little structural help from the robots, more or less the same way it would on a human skeleton.

The ability of humanoids to freely interact with their environment and real objects could be an advantage compared with desktop bioreactors. This may provide more realistic stresses to tissue constructs and eventually achieve grafts with better functionality or with tailored properties, Mouthuy and Carr explain in Science Robotics.

In theory, a humanoid-bioreactor system can be built on top of the humanoid robot using muscles made with electroactive polymers. The developing muscles can essentially piggyback on the robot skeletons movement so the tissues get exercised.The robot skeleton wouldneed to be covered in soft, stretchable sensors so that it can closely monitor the development of the tissues.

In their research, Mouthuy and Carradd that [] in aging populations, musculoskeletal tissue disorders and injuries are a growing health, social, and economic burden. Pain and lack of mobility are common problems due to failure of tissues, such as tendon, ligament, bone, and cartilage. A promising repair strategy is to engineer tissue grafts.

This will lead to the creation of more clinically relevant musculoskeletal tissue grafts and, in particular, allow for personalized tissue graft development by matching the robots morphology and mechanics to the patients needs.

Following this method, its likely we will likely end up with a robot that looks like the Kenshiro robot developed in Tokyo, where its actuators closely copy human movements. In other words, a Terminator-like humanoid robot where a metal skeleton would be covered in human muscles, tendons, and skin.

The researchers assert that not only do we have the technology to make this happen, but that it likely will. Given that it would bescientifically relevant,and has numerous applications in regenerative medicine and other fields, it looks like we could be mingling with robot lookalikes sooner rather than later.

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Scientists Are Building Humanoid Robots Using Skin Grafts - Futurism - Futurism

Ghost Roboticsa leader in fast and lightweight direct-drive legged robotsannounced recently that its Minitaur model has been updated with advanced reactive behaviors for navigating grass, rock, sand, snow and ice fields, urban objects and debris, and vertical terrain.

The latest gaits adapt reactively to unstructured environments to maintain balance, ascend steep inclines up to 35, climb up to 15cm curb-sized steps, crouch to fit under crawl spaces as low as 27cm, and operate at variable speeds and turning rates. Minitaurs high-force capabilities enable it to leap up to 40cm onto ledges and across gaps of up to 80cm. Its high control bandwidth allows it to actively balance on two legs, and its high speed operation allows its legs to navigate challenging environments rapidly, whilst reacting to unexpected contact.

Our primary focus since releasing the Minitaur late last year has been expanding its behaviors to traverse a wide range of terrains and real-world operating scenarios, saidGavin Kenneally, and Avik De, Co-founders of Ghost Robotics. In a short time, we have shown that legged robots not only have superior baseline mobility over wheels and tracks in a variety of environments and terrains, but also exhibit a diverse set of behaviors that allow them to easily overcome natural obstacles. We are excited to push the envelope with future capabilities, improved hardware, as well as integrated sensing and autonomy.

Ghost Robotics is designing next-generation legged robots that they claim are superior to wheeled and tracked autonomous vehicles in real-world field applications. They are also attempting to substantially reduce costs to drive adoption and scalable deployments. Whilst a commercial version of the Ghost Minitaur robot is slated for delivery in the future, the current development platform is in high demand, and has been shipped to many top robotics researchers worldwide (Carnegie Mellon, University of Pennsylvania, University of Washington, U.S. Army Research Labs and Google) for use in a broad range of research and commercialization initiatives.

We are pleased with our R&D progress towards commercializing the Ghost Minitaur to prove legged robots can surpass the performance of wheel and track UGVs, while keeping the cost model low to support volume adoptionwhich is certainly not the case with existing bipedal and quadrupedal robot vendors, saidJiren Parikh, Ghost Robotics, CEO.

In the coming quarters, the company plans to demonstrate further improvements in mobility, built-in manipulation capabilities, integration with more sensors, built-in autonomy for operation with reduced human intervention, as well as increased mechanical robustness and durability for operation in harsh environments. Watch this space.

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Leg over wheels: Ghost robotics' Minitaur proves legged capabilities over difficult terrain - Robohub

WPI News

A Long History with FIRST Robotics Competition WPI News WPI was the first university in the country to offer a bachelor's degree in robotics engineering, and once enrolled undergraduate and inventor Dean Kamen, founder of For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, or FIRST. So it's no ...

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A Long History with FIRST Robotics Competition - WPI News

Johnson County robotics team to...

MOUNTAIN CITY, Tenn. - After winning a state title, the Johnson County Middle School robotics team is the only one from a public school in Tennessee to qualify for the world tournament.

It is coming up next month, and tonight, News 5's Kristi O'Connor finds out how the team has become more than just an after school program for this group of 7th and 8th graders.

The Johnson County Middle School Robotoics team will head to the 2017 VEX World Robotics Tournament for the first time in school history. They will be judged in four areas including the robot design, their performance on the field, the engineering and design journal and their interviews with the judges.

In the VEX State Tournament this weekend, the team of 7th and 8th graders excelled in all four categories, qualifying them for World.

It is Johnson County's only second year having a robotics team. Their instructor Susan Quave started the program off of two grants and donations, but it has quickly grown.

They started working Tuesdays and Thursday after school, but now they work four sometimes five nights a week for several hours.

"They are the hardest working team," Quave said.

The students designed the robot from scratch. It took them about ten months before they were ready for competition.

While they have been very successful this season, Quave says it is more than just trophies and competitions. She says many of her students now want to make a career out of engineering and robotics. She hopes to make robotics part of the curriculum eventually.

"I personally want to be an aerospace engineer and grow up to work at NASA. I think this will help greatly," Student Isaac Brown said.

"Almost daily there's a new technology that helps make life simpler and there has to be programmers and engineers to do that," Student Robert Coffey said.

The robotics team is still short on travel and hotel expenses. They hope to raise the money before the World Tournament on April 19, which is in Louisville. If you would like to donate, you can make checks out to the Johnson County Middle School Robotics Team.

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Johnson County Middle School robotics team makes school history ... - WCYB

WINDHAM, N.H. The Lawrence High School Gearheadz robotics team won the Motorola-sponsored Quality Award at the Granite State District's FIRST robotics competition at Windham High School this past weekend.

Forty teams from across New England competed over two days at the competition. This year, teams were required to design and build robots over the course of six weeks that could fetch and deliver oversized gears, shoot balls and climb a rope.

The Gearheadz are not resting on their laurels. They have their second competition at Reading High School from March 18-19, said Art Rousmaniere, lead mentor for the team.

Methuen holds Democratic caucus

METHUEN The Methuen Democratic City Committee will host a caucus for registered Democrats in the city on Saturday, March 11.

The caucus is to elect delegates and alternates to the 2017 Massachusetts Democratic Convention, which will be held on Saturday, June 3 at the Tsongas Center at UMass Lowell.

The event is open to the public and all are welcome. However, only Democrats registered or preregistered in the city of Methuen may vote for or be a candidate for delegate in the caucus. Any person who is not 18 years of age at the time of the caucus, but will be by Sept. 11, 2018, may preregister to vote with the city clerk's office.

Delegates will be divided equally between men and women, and all ballots will be written and secret. In the spirit of inclusion, youth, minorities, and people with disabilities who are not elected as delegates or alternates may apply to be add-on delegates, either at the caucus or online at http://www.massdems.org.

Registration for the caucus will open at 9:30 a.m. in the Great Hall at City Hall, 41 Pleasant St. Registration will close at 10 a.m. and the caucus will begin.

For more information on the caucus or the committee, contact Chairwoman Jessica Finocchiaro at methuendems@gmail.com or by phone at 978-566-1786, or visit http://www.facebook.com/MethuenDems.

Continued here:

Lawrence robotics team wins award - Eagle-Tribune

Forty teams of children competed in the SBPLI FIRST Lego League Championship on Sunday, March 5, 2017, at Longwood High School in Middle Island. About 400 competitors, ages 8-14, showed off their robots' skills in the 13th annual event. A team from Seaford won the competition and will advance to the FIRST Lego League Championshipin St. Louis in April.

A team of four Seaford children is set to compete in a Lego robotics world competition in St. Louis after winning the Long Island championships Sunday.

The Seaford Sea Lions will advance to the First Lego League Championship in April after beating out 39 other teams of children. The young competitors, ages 8 through 14, had to build motorized Lego robots that complete skill tasks, and propose...

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Seaford students advance to Lego robotics world competition ... - Newsday

The hype surrounding the robotics industry continues to grow as we see more and more interest from retail investors in robots and robotics stocks. Robots are already changing the global labor marketand, as time goes by, will have a direct effect on our livelihoods. Besides the fact that we are happy to see household helperstaking over our apartment and Granny being able to walk easily again, our main question is how can we get a piece of the action as retail investors? Maybe if we make some money by investing in robot stockswell have something to live on when all the jobs are gone to the fourth industrial revolution. Basically there are 4 ways to invest in robots and robotics for retail investors:

ETFs

Weve already covered the Robo Global Robotics & Automation Index ETF (NASDAQ:ROBO)in a previous article, which is a well-diversified listed fund holding 85 companies, the largest company weight being below 2%. This also means not all holdings are pure play robotics stocks the pure play part (so-called bellwether stocks) is about 40% of the fund, and has approximately double the weight of non-bellwether stocks.The fund has a 3-year track record and boasts a rolling1-year performance of +34% (vs. Nasdaq return of +24%) and a return of +27% since it was created (vs. Nasdaq +48% return). Here a look at their not-so-impressive performance so far (ROBO in blue, Nasdaq in red):

Robo Global charges you about 1% a year (95 bps) for managing the ETFso its not cheap. In terms of exposure, ROBO is exposed 45% to the US and 25% to Japan, and mainly invests in Industrials with 51.8% weight in Machinery, Equipment and Components.

A direct competitor to ROBO launched on Nasdaq in September 2016: the Global X Robotics & Artificial Intelligence Thematic ETF (NASDAQ:BOTZ). With 28 holdings, BOTZ is more concentrated than ROBO, and the largest constituent weight is 8.45%. BOTZ constituents overlap significantly with ROBO, with only four stocks not held by ROBO. Since inceptionBOTZ has returned +13.2% and charges a management fee of 68 bps.BOTZ has a different country breakdown where Japan takes first place with 48% exposure and the U.S. is second with 25%. Again, we see a heavy concentration inIndustrials at +70%.

iShares, the ETF platform of the worlds largest asset manager, Blackrock also launched a robotics themed ETF in September 2016. The iShares Automation & Robotics UCITS ETF (LSE:RBOT) is another diversified fund with 92 holdings and a more balanced geographical exposure (US is 34%, Japan is 27%) than the other two. RBOT is heavily investing in Information Technology (69.6%) with companies like STMicroelectronics, NVidia and Microsemi Corp. Return is +16% since inception, and more of this return is made available to the investor with the lowest expense ratio of the three at 40 bps. The ETF is currentlyregistered to be sold in Western Europe, but not in the US.

The three above ETFs all offer a different take on the global robotics opportunity in terms of concentration, geographical focus and industry weights.

Mutual Fund

If you dont necessarily want to stick to listed ETFs, the CS (Lux) Global Robotics Equity Fund is a mutual fund offering from Credit Suisse for retail investors sold in Western Europe and Singapore. Launched in June 2016, the fund description claims they are only investing in companies which have at least 50% of their exposure attributable to robotics, automation or AI, which is good news for pure-play investors. The composition does lack most of the large conglomerates weve seen in the other ETFs with largest holdings being Intuitive Surgical, Thermo Fisher Scientific and Tecan Group (though the latter two aremedical/biotech companies).Its country composition is US-heavy with 50%+, and investments are balanced almost 1/3rd each between activities in productivity improvement, performing dangerous tasks and improving quality of life. Performance since inception is+12%similar to the above mentioned ETFs.On the other hand, it has been discussed and proven that in over 80% ofcases, active managers cannot consistently outperform the market, especially in the equities space. Would you pay the 160 bps management fee of the fund for that? Fcuk no.

Stock Picking

As all of these funds hold a large number of stocks, it is inevitable that with certain holdings, exposure to robotics is derivative at best. If youre looking for pure-play investments, you can still pick stocks yourself. While were constantly hunting for new investment opportunities in the field to share with you, here are the robotics stocksweve covered so far:

One thing to note here is that you could make an argument for autonomous cars and drones being included in robotics but were keeping these two themes separate from this article.

Motifs

Stock picking can get you closer to pure exposure, but it is also a risky endeavor to put all your eggs in one basket you can see the cycles of volatility on the performance of the above robot stocks. There is an in-between solution for investors offered by Motif Investing. Motif allows retail clients to customize a basket of US stocks (these are called motifs) and trade this basketat $9.95 a trade (its like your own mini-ETF). We set up our own motifwith the below stocks that are all U.S. bellweather robotics stocks found in the ROBO ETF:

Motif Investing also serves as a mechanism to track certain investing themes, like robotics. So far, our Nanalyze Robot Stocks motif has returned a respectable +37.1% over the past year as seen below:

So there you have 4 ways to invest in robots and robotics stocks. The above vehicles and the number of recent launches show the increasing demand for this kind of investment is being recognized by the industry. All the successful startup funding rounds and the appetite of retail investorsmake us hopeful to see additional IPOs and product launches coming our way as well. Stay tuned.

You can open a Motif Investing account for free with no deposit required so you can create your own baskets of stocks and also take a look at our many Nanalyze "motifs" which cover various disruptive technology investing themes.

Link:

How to Invest in Robots and Robotics Stocks - Nanalyze

One team of The Harvey Schools robotics program placed second in the VEX Robotics Southern State Championship Saturday, March 4, in Massapequa, New York. A team comprised of seniors Ryan Hurst of Katonah and Jarrod Waner of North Salem fell just a few points short of finishing first among the 44 best New York teams south of Albany.

Harvey saw all five of its teams make it through the qualification matches in the first round and advanced to the elimination matches, but only Hurst and Waner's team 6277A advanced to the finals in a best-of-three match. The two Harvey teammates took the match to a third and decisive round where they came up just short of winning.

"If the match were just three seconds longer our team would be the state champions," said Harvey co-coach John Wahlers. "Ultimately, the competition is about celebrating STEM education, sharing ideas, working collaboratively, and forming friendships across the state with technology as the common denominator," he added.

Team 6277A also won the state robotics skills challenge --- a separate individual competition that requires the robot to be programmed to run through a challenge for 60 seconds autonomously and then another 60-second segment where the robot is driven.

Harvey Director of Robotics and the team's co-coach, Chris Kelly, was very happy to see his students come out on top in the skills challenge. Winning the state title for robotic skills is a major accomplishment for our program, Kelly said. I am proud all of our teams," he added. A team of Middle School RoboCavs finished fifth in their first state competition. Mr. Kelly called the finish of the youngest members of the program outstanding.

All five of Harvey's Upper School teams have qualified to compete in the nationals at the CREATE U.S Open in Council Bluffs, IowaApril 6-8. The second-place finish in the states qualifies Harveys team 6277A for the VEX Robotics World ChampionshipsApril 19-22in Louisville, Kentucky where Harvey will face the best teams from countries that include China, Australia, Singapore and Mexico.

Photos: Courtesy of The Harvey School

1. Members of The Harvey School robotics team, the RoboCavs, place second in the VEX Robotics Southern New York State tournament March 4 and will move on to compete in both the national and world championships in April.

2. Senior Ryan Hurst of Katonah works on his team's robot that captured the top prize for robot skills in the VEX Robotics Southern New York State tournament March 4 and earned his team a chance to compete in both the national and world championships in April.

3. Senior Jarrod Waner of North Salem, second member of a Harvey School team that captured the top prize for robot skills in the VEX Robotics Southern New York State tournament March 4, will compete in both the national and world championships in April.

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Harvey Robotics Comes in Close 2nd in State Tourney; Qualifies for Worlds - HamletHub