Hizook

Redwood Robotics: New Silicon Valley Startup by Meka Robotics, Willow Garage, and SRI

Travis Deyle — Thu, 03 May 2012 21:05:42 +0000

Redwood Robotics came out of its year-long stealth mode at today's Xconomy event in Menlo Park, California. Redwood Robotics is a joint venture between three west-coast robotics powerhouses: Meka Robotics, Willow Garage, and SRI. Aaron Edsinger, who is CEO of Meka Robotics and is expected to take a leadership / executive role at Redwood, made the announcement and explained the startup's goal: "To enable the personal and service robot markets through a new generation of robot arms that are simple to program, inexpensive, and safe to operate alongside people." In other words, they're teaming up to create a proper competitor to Heartland Robotics in Boston. Unfortunately, that's all the public details that they're sharing at this time. They're being tight-lipped about business and technical details given the amount of secrecy in this market (eg. Heartland is notoriously tight-lipped). We'll try to keep you updated as we learn more. In the meantime, check out the brief spotlights of the three joint partners below.

Artisan's Asylum: Hackerspace Startup Building a 2500+ lb. Rideable Hexapod Robot Named Stompy

Travis Deyle — Thu, 03 May 2012 01:03:31 +0000

Artisan's Asylum is a hackerspace startup in Boston, MA that is hosting classes to build big, bad-ass robots. Their first course set out to build 300-lb autonomous "vending machine robots." That class is winding down, so they're starting a new project: a 2500+ lb. ridable hexapod "spider" robot named Stompy. The robot will feature a propane engine generating 135 HP to hydraulically power six legs, and it will likely cost around $25k-$30k to build (versus $250k that would typically be involved in such an effort). The guys teaching the class are professional roboticsts, having worked at Boston Dynamics, Barrett Technology, and DEKA. So this is a serious endeavor! They're following the same design methodologies that their (current and former) employers use to produce classics such as BigDog, AlphaDog, and PETMAN. They're using the proceeds from the class to fund early development (a one leg cart), followed by a KickStarter project to fund the remainder of the robot (forthcoming announcement). It's a clever way to fund a large robot hardware platform. Conceivably, they could use the resulting robot to generate revenue to for the startup (rentals for promotional events, parades, or wedding processions!) and to bootstrap other robots. Read on for details supplied by Artisan's CEO, Gui Cavalcanti.

Two More Robotics Companies Get Acquired: My Robot Nation and Sensable Technologies

Travis Deyle — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 02:23:27 +0000

It seems like robotics companies are being acquired left-and-right. Just the other week we learned of two more: (1) My Robot Nation, which allows you to design and 3D print custom robot figurines, was acquired by 3D systems. (2) Sensable Technologies, which is best-known in robotics circles for their "Phantom Omni" haptic interfaces (eg. for teleoperation), was just acquired by Geomagic. While the acquisition prices were undisclosed, it's likely that they were smaller than the mega-acquisitions of Kiva Systems by Amazon for $775 Million and Aldebaran Robotics by Softbank for $100 Million. Either way, these recent acquisitions seem to indicate a growing trend in the robotics industry -- that... or I'm just paying more active attention to the business-side of robotics.

Wireless Power Transfer to Ground Sensors Using a UAV (Quadrotor)

Travis Deyle and Robert Powers — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 03:33:02 +0000

We were scanning through the upcoming ICRA2012 program and noticed an interesting paper titled, "Resonant Wireless Power Transfer to Ground Sensors from a UAV." This certainly piqued our interest -- especially for Travis, who happens to work with wirelessly-powered sensors at his day job. Come to find out... the article is by Dr. Carrick Detweiler, PI of the NIMBUS Lab at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (our undergrad alma mater!). Furthermore, he just provided a preprint of the paper (PDF) and a video on his website. Score! Their quadrotor delivers power via magnetic resonance (ie. WiTricity-style) to a load on the ground. This same type of technology is being actively researched for lots of applications, including: consumer electronics, transportation (eg. electric vehicle recharging), and remote sensing (this application). Adding it to a UAV adds a bit of flexibility to the system. Anyway, be sure to check out the video below... and we'll also give a brief overview of a few different wireless power + robotics projects over the ages.

KATE: A New Humanoid Robot from FutureBots Labs

Travis Deyle — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 06:20:01 +0000

As FutureBots Labs' solo roboticst, Dan Mathias has been toiling away for almost 10 years to develop humanoid robots (such as the ATOM-7XP humanoid) out of his lab. Today Dan has a special announcement: FutureBot Labs has developed a new humanoid robot named KATE, the "Kids Avatar Teacher and Entertainer." We're highlighting Dan's latest robot for three reasons: First, FutureBots is trying to become a legit robotics business with real products for entertainment, education, research, and healthcare. That's a tough nut to crack on a personal budget and as a solo engineer! Hopefully a little exposure will help FutureBots find some much-needed assistance on a number of fronts. Second, we are impressed with Dan's (solo!) engineering efforts over the years. He's clearly a dedicated and capable roboticist. Third, we've been unable to previously cover his robots' (seemingly-incremental) progress, so we're happy that KATE's unveiling gives us occasion to write about FutureBots Labs. Be sure to check out the photos and videos of Dan's latest KATE robot, as well as the more mature ATOM robot.

Robotics and the Law: The New "We Robot" Conference

Robert Powers — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 00:08:37 +0000

Legal subtleties will naturally arise as robots become increasingly ubiquitous. Hizook touched briefly on this topic back when we discussed ISO safety standards for robotics. However, this topic deserves additional attention. It's a touch-and-go issue: It's important not to burden a burgeoning industry with premature regulations, but at the same time, accountability is a serious issue -- especially as robots enter our homes. Creating a dialog between roboticists and legal professionals would clearly be a good thing. Naturally, Hizook follows a number of blogs dedicated to the subject, including the aptly-named "Robotics and the Law" blog from Stanford Law. But we're also happy to share an announcement from U.Miami Professor of Law, Michael Froomkin, who wrote in to tell us about the We Robot 2012 conference later this month. The full details about the conference are below. Basically, We Robot is billing itself as the "Inaugural Conference on Legal and Policy Issues Relating to Robotics," whose aim is to "create a conversation between people designing and building robots and the people thinking about the law and policy issues they create."

Exclusive Preview of Robotiq's New 2-Finger Adaptive Gripper -- Sponsor Spotlight

Travis Deyle — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 06:07:11 +0000

Hizook was first to cover the Robotiq's unique 3-fingered Adaptive Robot Gripper back in 2010, even before it became a commercially-available product. Since then, that gripper has been spotted on a number of robots, appeared in a TV commercial, and been used in numerous robotics research projects that needed a rugged and dexterous robot hand. Today, we're happy to share the news that Robotiq has a new, upcoming product: a simplified, 2-fingered version of the Adaptive Gripper. In the video below, we can see that this new design has some definite advantages over existing 2-finger parallel-jaw grippers... namely, the added ability to conformally wrap around objects for improved grasp configurations. Oh, and it apparently has sufficient grip force to lift loads in excess of 10 lbs (that's pretty impressive!).

New DARPA Grand Challenge for Humanoid Robots -- Preliminary (Unofficial) Details

Travis Deyle — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 19:52:35 +0000

It seems we're going to have a new DARPA Grand Challenge! The BAA with formal details should be out very soon, but for now we're bringing you the unofficial, preliminary details based on notes from Dr. Gill Pratt's talk at DTRA Industry Day: The new Grand Challenge is for a humanoid robot (with a bias toward bipedal designs) that can be used in rough terrain and for industrial disasters. The robot will be required to maneuver into and drive an open-frame vehicle (eg. tractor), proceed to a building and dismount, ingress through a locked door using a key, traverse a 100 meter rubble-strewn hallway, climb a ladder, locate a leaking pipe and seal it by closing off a nearby valve, and then replace a faulty pump to resume normal operations -- all semi-autonomously with just "supervisory teleoperation." That's a tough challenge, but it should be fun! It looks like there will be six hardware teams to develop new robots, and twelve software teams using a common platform (PETMAN anyone?!). The most crazy part about all of this: The United States is getting back into the humanoid robot game... in a big way! Updated 4/10/2012 with official details!

Meka Robotics Introduces New Humanoid Legs and Tactile Skin -- Sponsor Spotlight

Travis Deyle — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 15:09:21 +0000

Meka Robotics is renowned for their humanoid robot, the M1 mobile manipulator with omnidirectional wheeled base. However, Meka also has a number of joint collaborations with research labs that have resulted in some cool, new robotic technologies. First up, Meka teamed up with Luis Sentis' Human Centered Robotics Lab at UT Austin to design and build a new legged biped, named Hume, for rough-terrain locomotion. As you can see in the video below, Meka and Luis designed a high-speed, high-strength pair of robot legs that will (hopefully) be paired with a set of Meka's famous series-elastic arms (and thus give BDI's PetMan some healthy competition!). Second, Meka teamed up with Mark Cutkosky from Stanford's Biomimetics and Dexterous Manipulation Lab to build upon Standord's tactile sensor technology. They worked with Charlie Kemp's Healthcare Robotics Lab (at Georgia Tech) to develop the sensor into a tactile-sensing skin for Cody that is now being used to explore cutting-edge robot behaviors for tactile manipulation. Check out the videos of the sensor below, and be on the lookout for cool "manipulation in clutter" videos from Charlie's lab in the coming weeks. So... while Meka develops some great products, they can also work with you to make your robot concepts into beautifully-designed robot realities.

Breaking News: Amazon Acquires Kiva Systems for $775 Million in Cash

Travis Deyle — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 22:23:08 +0000

Amazon.com just announced that it was acquiring Kiva Systems for $775 Million in cash. Kiva Systems is one of my favorite "companies that employ robots" (rather than "robotics companies" -- there's a big difference). Kiva is all about improving warehouse logistics and fulfillment, and they happen to employ a large swarm of robots (see video below) to accomplish this. Namely, they use robots to autonomously fetch and arrange "pods" so that human pickers can more efficiently fill orders. Their technology is exceedingly relevant in the modern age of large (internet) fulfillment centers. Frankly, they're a perfect match for Amazon. According to a November report, Boston-based Kiva Systems boasted revenues in excess of $100 Million, had 240 employees, was growing 130% year-over-year, and was a prime example of a venture capital-backed robotics outfit (having received $33 Million in total). Honestly, this acquisition makes me sad... I would have liked to see Kiva go public. Plus, I certainly hope Amazon doesn't hoard Kiva away for itself and rob the world of efficient, robotic warehouses...