Design / Development

The robot uses a camera to see how rough the terrain is, and it uses sensors in the legs to feel how hard the walking surface is.

Robotics researchers are developing exoskeletons and prosthetic legs capable of making control decisions on their own using sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) technology. The system combines computer vision and deep learning to mimic how able-bodied people walk by seeing their surroundings and adjusting their movements. “We’re giving robotic exoskeletons vision so they can control themselves,” said…

Exoskeleton users can now go from sitting to standing safely and without assistance based on the work of University of Michigan researchers, who developed an approach to create and test solutions to such problems virtually.

Training data is collected in Unity and used to train a deep neural network that predicts the pose of a cube. This model is then deployed in a simulated robot pick-and-place task.

New soft actuator can flap nearly 500 times per second, giving drones insect-like resilience.

Artificial intelligence (AI) remains a major buzz word across many industries, including manufacturing, with the media covering new AI capabilities and trends playing a key role in enabling the digitalization of production. But what’s the real story? In many cases, AI exists only in theory, and there’s a long way to go before it’s ubiquitous.…

SLAMcore added dense 2.5D mapping capabilities to its latest software release. Robots require maps of their surroundings and the objects within it to navigate effectively – these maps can include point clouds, 2D flat maps, 2.5D dense maps (with heights), 3D maps and semantic maps that identify objects. One of the main challenges of robot…

Editor’s Note: R&D World is a sister publication of The Robot Report. This article is part of R&D World’s annual Global Funding Forecast (Executive Edition). This report has been published annually for more than six decades. The Executive Edition will be published in the April 2020 print issue of R&D World. To purchase the full,…

As the pace of digital transformation in manufacturing continues to accelerate, Fictiv announced a new $35 million round of funding led by 40 North Ventures to expand Fictiv’s Digital Manufacturing Ecosystem. Honeywell, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp., Adit Ventures, and M20 also participated, along with previous investors including Accel, G2VP, and Bill Gates. This brings Fictiv’s…

Balaram described what it took to develop the helicopter and what to expect on Mars.

Welcome to Episode 33 of The Robot Report Podcast, which brings conversations with robotics innovators straight to you. Join us each week for discussions with leading roboticists, innovative robotics companies, and other key members of the robotics community. You can subscribe to The Robot Report Podcast on Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, SoundCloud, Spotify and more. Please subscribe to the podcast and leave us…

The Robot Operating System (ROS) has played a fundamental role in the development of robots as solutions to real-world challenges in many different sectors. From warehouses and logistics, to agriculture and healthcare, ROS-based designs are delivering real value. Since its birth at Willow Garage in 2007, this flexible framework has helped thousands of robotics developers.…

In September 2020, Clearpath Robotics released a ROS package for Boston Dynamics’ Spot quadruped. The idea was to allow robotics researchers to leverage ROS capabilities out-of-the-box, as well as open-source libraries, tools and the greater ROS community to accelerate their robotics development. Spot comes with a dedicated computer, power and communication interfaces and a flexible…

We’ve learned a lot over the last month about how Boston Dynamics’ robots became such talented dancers. We now know the RBR50 company employed human dancers, reflexive control, simulation and new Choreographer software, among many other techniques. But we’ve yet to hear from Marc Raibert, founder, former CEO, and now chairman of Boston Dynamics. Until…

Contemporary robots can move quickly. “The motors are fast, and they’re powerful,” says Sabrina Neuman. Yet in complex situations, like interactions with people, robots often don’t move quickly. “The hang up is what’s going on in the robot’s head,” she adds. Perceiving stimuli and calculating a response takes a “boatload of computation,” which limits reaction…

For tens of thousands of students globally, over the last two decades, a part of their education involved an open-source software toolkit known as the Robotics Toolbox for MATLAB. This started as a modest collection of tools to help me in my PhD research in the early 1990s. It leveraged MATLAB, at that time a…

Boston Dynamics detailed how its Atlas and Spot robots learned to dance, including its use of choreographers and model predictive control.

Researchers said the optical neuromorphic processor could benefit autonomous vehicles and other data-intensive applications.

WeRide, a leading autonomous vehicle company in China, has strengthened its partnership with bus maker Yutong Group, receiving $200 million in Series B1 funding.

NVIDIA said its Isaac Gym simulation software is designed to provide end-to-end reinforcement learning for robotics developers.

Researchers are embracing chaos and nonlinear physics to create insectlike gaits for tiny robots — complete with a locomotion controller to provide a brain-machine interface. The group now describes using a system of three nonlinear differential equations as a building block for central pattern generators.

In this Q&A, Vincent Guo from Siemens Digital Industries Software discusses how digital twins, augmented reality, and virtual reality can help production environments with productivity and social distancing.