Accuride presents models 7950 and 7957, two new slides designed to expand the company’s heavyduty slide line-up and provide an intermediate load rating choice between the 3600 and 9300 products. The 7900 slides offer full extension, a load rating up to 350 pounds, and accommodate drawers up to 42″ wide. For added versatility, the slides […]
EPSON Expands RS-Series High Performance SCARA Plus Robot Lineup
EPSON Robots has added to their Power of Choice initiative by introducing the NEW RS4 to the RS-Series High Performance SCARA Plus robot lineup. The new work space design of the RS4 robot provides a pallet size of 778mm x 778mm. A pallet size this large would normally requre a SCARA arm which is more […]
EmTech@MIT – 35 Young Innovators Give Their Elevator Pitch
David Kobia, of start-up Ushahidi, won Humanitarian of the Year for his work creating web programs that collect and visualize information for communities around the world faced with natural disasters or social upheaval. David was one of 35 under-35 innovators giving their “elevator pitch” to attendees of EmTech@MIT 2010 and displaying a wide range of…
Biotech Wizards Engineer Electronic Skin
Biotech wizards have engineered electronic skin that can sense touch, in a major step towards next-generation robotics and prosthetic limbs. The lab-tested material responds to almost the same pressures as human skin and with the same speed, they reported in the British journal Nature Materials. Important hurdles remain but the exploit is an advance towards […]
Optimism: a conversation with Rodney Brooks
Rodney Brooks is the founder and chairman of Heartland Robotics and a founder and board member and former CTO of iRobot Corp. He was also the former director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab and then CSAIL. We discussed the need for a robotic solution to help small and medium-sized factories compete. We also talked…
Siemens PLM Mechatronics Software Derived From Video Games
Siemens PLM Software announced a new integrated machine design solution aimed at creating value for companies that develop and market machine tools and production machines. Mechatronics Concept Designer™ represents a paradigm shift for the industry with a new systems engineering approach to machine design that captures “voice of the user ” input, manages early requirements […]
Two New Market Analyses: The UAV and UGV Market 2010-2020
Visiongain now selling “The Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGV) Market 2010-2020: Military Robots for EOD & Counter-IED”, a $2,130 analysis of the worldwide UGV market. Visiongain also selling “The Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) Market 2010-2010: Technologies for ISR and Counter-Insurgency, also $2,130. Coincidentally, all of the providers mentioned in the UGV report are included in The…
Applied Time and Motion
From the control system perspective, I find it interesting that we continue to model most industrial applications of motors with trapezoidal “time displacement” curves and PID (proprotional integral and derivative) tuning algortihms. It seems that we should have better definitions for things after all the time and effort that goes into it. It is important […]
Five government agencies combine to fund a long list of robotic research
The Whitehouse Office of Science and Technology believes that “robotics is at a tipping point in terms of its usefulness and versatility” and is backing their belief with a fund to spur small business research. Companies can apply for up to $100,000 to aid research on a long list of areas of interest which include:…
Robot Snake That Can Climb Trees & Spy
From the Biorobotics Lab at Carnegie Mellon University, a snake robot (Snakebot) demonstrates how it can climb a tree and look around. Please keep in mind that this robot climbed a specific tree with a specific trunk width about 1 meter off of the ground. The researchers working to design, build and program these robots […]
Just Released: 2010 Industrial and Service Robotics Market Analyses
Selected quotes from the International Federation of Robotics’ just-released 2010 statistical reports on the robotics industry: Industrial Robots: There are many reasons for a bright future in robotics: Huge consumer markets are opening up in China, India, Brazil and Russia. The competitive nature of the automotive companies results in new investments in production facilities in…
High-voltage transmission line maintenance robots emerge
Three different efforts and products emerge to solve the problem of safely observing and maintaining high voltage transmission lines using robotics. Present methods range from humans crawling the lines, to helicopters flying close-by and scanning, to cars and jeeps with people and binoculars. 1. LineScout, a tele-operated obstacle crossing system developed by the Hydro-Quebec Research…
Founder of Microsoft Robotics Studio Retires and Launches New Start-up
Tandy Trower retired earlier this year as Microsoft VP and founder of MS Robotics Studio. Recently he launched Hoaloha Robotics. Today Hoaloha Robotics and Robosoft (the French provider of high-end mobile and service robots) announced a collaboration to develop and bring to market an assistive care robot to empower disabled and elderly individuals to live…
Time and Motion Part 2
A Phd mathematician friend once told me, after several years of work doing his dissertation, that electric motor design is a system in which there are 22 variables that are linked together in complex relationships. Since the human mind is not capable of operating at this level of complexity with all the variables simultaneously, we […]
Time and Motion
Motion control and mechatronics technology have grown up as a control discipline at somewhat of a disadvantage. Mechanical engineering programs tend to ignore electric motors as being, well, electrical. And electrical engineering programs ignore what’s attached to the motors as being mechanical, which it usually is. This prevents the two disciplines from correctly understanding each […]
Two new books on the entrepreneurial side of robotics
There's a chapter in Trade-Off by Kevin Maney where he describes how iRobot's Roombas came to be and why they became such a success. It offers the thesis that there is a “trade-off between the fidelity of an experience and its convenience and it's more like the invention of a feature that gives an edge to…
Slow going for tele-robotic companies
In spite of many positive stories – the two most recent from IEEE Spectrum and John Markoff of the NY Times – security, bureaucracy, undefined need, undocumented benefit(s) and alternative non-robotic methodologies (eg: telecom companies, Skype) seem to be the culprits holding back progress. Many start-ups but few success stories. InTouch Health, is one of…
NASA’s Global Hawk UAV Used to Track Hurricane Earl
AF hand-me-down Global Hawks refurbished by NASA (previously reported on The Robot Report in April) being put to use flying above storms. It sits above the hurricane and peers into it using new NASA instruments measuring wind vectors and ocean surface winds, and creating a 3-D distribution of temperature, water vapor, and cloud liquid water.…
Review of AUVSI Unmanned Systems 2010 Denver Conference & Exhibition
450 exhibitors; 392,000 sq ft; 5,500 attendees; mostly defense and security people attended because that’s what the show was all about. Speakers from USAF, Navy, DoD, DARPA – generals, admirals and Henrik Christensen, GA Tech professor and lead proponent of an American roadmap for robotics (including unmanned systems of all types; not just military/security).