Hizook

Fashion, Robots, and Travis' Hiatus to Lollipuff

Travis Deyle — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 21:10:49 +0000

Some people have been asking, "Travis, where did you (and Hizook) disappear to?" Well... I'm taking a prolonged (but ultimately temporary) hiatus from robotics to co-found a new, YCombinator-funded web startup: Lollipuff.com -- an online auction site dedicated exclusively to women's designer clothes and accessories, where every item is authenticated by a team of experts. Surprised? Frankly, I am too. I'll explain more down below... but since this is a robotics website, I figure I have to talk about robotics too. So really, this is two blog posts in one: (1) looking at the intersection of fashion and robotics, and (2) a description of my latest endeavors.

New Underactuated Robot Hands from Lacquey and Willow Garage

Travis Deyle — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 08:27:25 +0000

Underactuated robot hands -- with fewer motors than joints -- have been around for decades; however, we've seen a surge of new designs in recent years. Personally, I attribute this trend to the availability of low-cost robot arms and associated open-source software (ie. ROS). In any case, underactuated hands offer numerous advantages in terms of cost, size, weight, and mechanical / electrical complexity while providing a large array of shape-adaptive grasps. In this article, I'd like to introduce you to two new underactuated robot gripers, the Lacquey "Fetch Hand" and the Willow Garage "Velo Gripper." Be sure to check out the photos and videos below.

Robot Dragonfly by TechJect (A New Georgia Tech Spinoff Company)

Travis Deyle — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 21:32:25 +0000

I'd like to introduce you TechJect (a Georgia Tech spinout) that is building a robot dragonfly based on of years of academic research and $1+ Million in military funding -- aka, one hell of a toy! Early prototypes look pretty compelling (see photos and videos below). Currently, they have an ongoing IndieGoGo crowdfunding campaign that has already raised ~$200k in just a few days, where you can essentially preorder robot dragonflies for about the same price as a quadrotor platform! (Albeit with delivery sometime around September or October of 2013.) Presumably, their 4-wing ornithopter is able to independently control the pitch and amplitude of each wing to perform aggressive aerial maneuvering, which should enable the dragonfly to both fly or hover -- a unique capability compared to most other UAVs (fixed wing or helicopter). Initial product sketches suggest that the dragonflies will be ~6 inches long, weight ~25 grams, and have numerous sensors and connectivity options (ie. RC control, WiFi, IMU, cameras... the usual).

Visceral Negative Reaction to Suitable Technologies' New "Beam" Robot

Travis Deyle — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 06:24:51 +0000

Today, Suitable Technologies announced the "Beam Remote Presence System" -- aka, Beam telepresence robot. You can see the press announcement below, and find plenty of commentary elsewhere online (eg. about how the $16k price tag compares to competitors). Normally, I'd write a similar reaction piece. But instead, I'm going to violate two of my personal rules: I'm going to write a negative piece on Hizook, and I'm going to do it while somewhat mad. Suitable, what were you thinking?!? BEAM robots have been around since the 1990's. Mark Tilden's patent for super-simple analog "nervous nets" to build (often solar powered) "Braitenberg vehicles" dates back to 1992. They have a Wikipedia page; there are several in-print books; there are entire communities and companies built around them. They're the reason I learned electronics and got into robotics as a child. To have the name subverted in this way is sickening. Did no one at Suitable run a simple Google search?! Furthermore, there is no way that "beam" should be eligible for a trademark -- there's too much existing prior use in robotics.

Baxter Robot from Rethink Robotics Finally Unveiled!

Travis Deyle — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 04:43:00 +0000

Rethink Robotics (formerly Heartland Robotics) has come out of stealth mode with the announcement of Baxter -- a $22,000 dual-arm, human-scale robot with compliant joints. The details are available in Rethink Robotics' Baxter datasheet and brochure, but here are a few key highlights: dual 7-DoF arms with 5 lb (2.3kg) payload with a max no-load speed of 3.3 ft/sec (1m/sec). The arms are compliant owing to series-elastic actuators (SEAs) with force control and torque sensing at each joint. The robot torso sans-pedistal is 3'1" tall (94cm), and the robot has a reach of roughly 104cm. The robot weighs in at 165 lbs (75kg) and has a suite of sensors including: 5 camers (1 up top, 2 in the torso, and 2 "eye-in-hand"), a 360-deg. ring of ultrasonic range sensors in the head, and IR range sensors at the gripper, and (naturally) kinematics and torque sensing at each joint. Did I mention the starting price of $22,000 and that it starts shipping this October!?! This will be a HUGE deal for robotics. Comparable arms easily cost an order of magnitude more (~$100k each), so getting a full pair for $22k is going to completely change the game -- perhaps even more than the Kinect. It's an exciting time for robotics! Read on for pictures, an interview with Rod Brooks (CTO and co-founder of Rethink), and the press release.

Artaic: Revolutionizing Tile Mosaics Through Robotic Assembly

Travis Deyle — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 11:02:48 +0000

I love Artaic. They're revolutionizing a millennia-old art form (tile mosaics) using dead-simple pick-and-place robots, to create a successful "non-robotics company." Yet in my mind... they're the quintessential "robotics" company. I had cause to visit their headquarters in Boston last March, where I got a special tour by Artaic co-founders Paul Reiss (Creative Director) and Ted Acworth (CEO). Allow me to share their process, some of their beautiful mosaics, their unique outlook on robotics, and a quick sneak peak into advances coming down the pipeline.

Venture Capital Firms Behind the Hizook 2011 "VC in Robotics" List

Robert Morris — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 06:28:29 +0000

Like many readers of this site, I’m planning to start a robotics company. So when I saw Hizook's list of VC Funding in Robotics in 2011, it cried out to me: Who is investing in robotics? And how can I get some of that VC money? I did a bit of research to identify the robotics-friendly venture firms behind Hizook's list, with the hope of understanding how capital is allocated in robotics. Unfortunately, most robotics investors are following a healthcare, consumer, or some other industrial hypothesis and end up investing in robotics by accident, not because they are eager for robotics per se. As a result, the list is probably not as much help as a guide to fundraising as I had hoped. Still, I think my research and results may be helpful to other budding robotics entrepreneurs... so many thanks to Hizook for letting me share.

P.W. Singer Wastes an Opportunity in the Atlantic

Robert Morris — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 15:15:52 +0000

Peter W. Singer is arguably the most famous scholar of drones and robotic warfare today. His book Wired for War probably did as much to introduce unmanned aircraft to the popular consciousness as any single work. His article in the Atlantic on July 19th blew a huge opportunity to advance the discussion of unmanned aircraft regulation.

Being Honest in Robot Videos: Motion Capture, Speedup Rates, and Teleoperation

Travis Deyle — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 22:55:11 +0000

Movies and scifi books inspire roboticists to push the envelope, but they've also skewed the public's perception of robot capabilities. This problem is being exacerbated by researchers. In the last three months, I've had to shatter a few dreams: "Your $300 AR.Drone or $150 Ladybird will not be able to perform insane autonomous aerial maneuvers (yet). The UPenn quadrotors rely on $20k-$50k camera-based (Vicon) motion capture systems, which provide global pose estimation of each UAV at millimeter-accuracies at up to 1kHz (and often uses an external, centralized motion planning computer too)." That this crucial aspect of the videos does not register with intelligent people means that researchers are being disingenuous and violating their duty to the public -- which sucks, because their projects and research are awesome! And this is just the example that happens to be most salient to me at the moment. In this post I'd like to explore some "best practices" for robot videos so that we can quit misleading one another.

East Coast Chauvinism in Robotics: Time to Face Facts, Silicon Valley is Kicking Our Butt

Robert Morris — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 05:37:48 +0000

I have lots of love for Pittsburgh in particular, but it really pisses me off when people on the East Coast repeat a bunch of falsehoods (See #8) about how Boston and Pittsburgh compare to Silicon Valley and the rest of the world. Many people in Pittsburgh and Boston—including people I call friends and mentors—smugly think that the MIT and CMU centered robotics clusters are leading the world in robotics. This is demonstrably false.