Dutch robot claims victory in Amazon Picking Challenge

Last year, Amazon kicked off its inaugural Picking Challenge to encourage teams to create robots able to perform the task of an Amazon stock picker. This year the competition was expanded to include not only picking items from a shelf and placing them in a container, but the reverse as well – and a team from the Netherlands has claimed victories in both.

This year's pick task, which carries over from last year but has been made more difficult, requires robots to grab target items from a shelf and place them in a container. Conversely, the stow task involves the robot removing items from a box and placing them back on the shelf. They sound like very simple tasks for a human, but for robot competitors it requires a sophisticated array of sensors, moving parts and artificial intelligence.

The robots have a time limit to grab as many items as they can, after which points are tallied up according to the number and value of those items retrieved, and deducted for dropped or damaged goods.

Team Delft, made up of engineers from the Delft University of Technology and the company Delft Robotics, won the stow task by a fairly large margin, gathering 214 points with the runner-up managing 186 and third place coming in at 164.

The pick task was more of a nail-biter. After drawing on 105 points with a Japanese team, the competition went into an overtime round where the fastest team to pick an item would be crowned the winner. Delft's robot completed the task about 30 seconds faster than its rival, earning itself both titles.

The winning robot is built according to industry standards, equipped with an arm allowing seven degrees of movement, 3D cameras and a specially-designed gripper. The software components used to control the robot were developed with the Robot Operating System for industry (ROS-Industrial) and will be released as open source software by the team. The team attributes the robot's success to it being robust and adaptable.

You can see a time-lapse video of the robot in action below.                         

Source : Delft University of Technology, Gizmag

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Kidobotikz- Where "Child's play" takes a newer dimension ! !

When people use the phrase “Child’s Play”, the term is more often than not used to describe something of insignificance, something that is quite repetitive and mundane. It has always been used to describe activities that children would do to just keep themselves occupied but the task in itself is not of much value. We at Kidobotikz have always believed this to be unfair to the young ones. Kids do the tasks of insignificance because anything that can be significant usually requires awareness of tools and processes that are quite beyond the understanding of any average kid. Take the example of science. Despite efforts by educators across the planet, ‘science kits’ have never progressed beyond the bedrooms of kids and has always been considered a leisure activity for children rather than one that can play an active role in their classrooms. This is a stigma that Kidobotikz has always desired to break and thanks to the support of hundreds of our students and their parents, we have been able to redefine the concept of “Child’s Play”.

“It is not what you do for your children, but what you have taught them to do for themselves that will make them successful human beings.”- Ann Anders

Keeping full faith behind the emotion of the aforementioned quote, we at Kidobotikz just decided to teach our students about the beautiful world of robotics. Every student that joins the Kidobotikz family learns the “A to Z” of robotics in a way nobody could’ve ever fathomed. Festering in every corner of Kidobotikz’s classrooms are students who potentially could disrupt the face of the planet with the intuitive understanding of technology that they acquire here at Kidobotikz. Understanding the complex concepts of electronics, mechanics and computer programming in a holistic manner is something all engineers crave for. But being able to acquire the same in a year’s span while still being in school is something that is as revolutionary as it appears futuristic. It is something no forecaster could’ve ever foretold. It is something no educator ever imagined. It is something no futurist ever felt achievable.

But thanks to Kidobotikz, the future is already here.  

Hundreds of students and thousands of projects later we are already online imparting the knowledge of robots to school kids across the nation. If you would like to make a change in the way kids view education, wait no more. Talk about us to the next kid you come across and ignite his dreams.

Happy Roboting!   

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Juno arrives at Jupiter after five-year voyage

Jupiter got a little less lonely today as NASA's Juno deep-space probe arrived after a five-year journey capped by a dramatic engine maneuver. The space agency's Deep Space Network has confirmed that the unmanned spacecraft successfully initiated a 35-minute course correction burn at 8:18 pm EDT (Earth Receive Time) that placed it in orbit around the Solar System's largest planet for a 20-month science mission.

According to NASA, Juno's final path to Jupiter orbit began about four days ago when the spacecraft received its final updates and reconfigured itself for the engine burn. All of the science instruments were powered down and some of the onboard computer's fault detection systems were taken offline to avoid interference with the maneuver. Instead, the computer was ordered to execute a quick shutdown/restart procedure in the event of trouble to prevent interrupting the engine burn.

Two hours before the burn, the probe turned away from the Sun to position the main engine at the correct angle. From then until the end of the burn, Juno was on battery power. Half an hour before engine ignition the spacecraft stabilized its attitude and increased its rotation from two to five revolutions per minute.

Because Jupiter is 540 million mi (869 million km) away, it takes 48 minutes and 19 seconds for signals to travel back to Earth, so the entire course correction was carried out entirely under autonomous control. As a jubilant mission control at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory monitored the flight, the burn completed at 8:53 p.m. PDT (Earth Receive Time). Juno shut down its main engine and reduced its rotation back to two RPM and pointed its panels back toward the Sun.

About 58 minutes after the start of the maneuver, Juno resumed telemetry transmission to Earth. The orbiter is programmed to switch its scientific instruments back on in about two days.

Named after the Roman goddess and wife of Jupiter, Juno is the first solar-powered spacecraft sent into the outer Solar System, the second spacecraft to orbit Jupiter, and the first to orbit its poles. With its giant solar panels, Juno is about as big as a basketball court and it has a specially hardened titanium vault to protect its avionics from Jupiter's intense radiation belts.

Juno lifted off from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida atop an Atlas/Centaur rocket on August 5, 2011. It arrived at Jupiter almost five years later after a roundabout orbit that sent it on a flyby of Earth in 2013 to build up speed to match orbits with Jupiter, resulting in a total distance traveled of 1.7 billion mi (2.8 billion km).

The Juno mission is tasked with returning the highest-resolution images of Jupiter in history with a special emphasis on the polar regions. It will look for clues regarding Jupiter's formation, determine the deep structure of the planet, and study its magnetic fields and the giant aurorae at the poles.

Currently, Juno is headed into a 53.5-day temporary orbit to conserve propellant. A subsequent burn in October will move the orbiter into its planned, highly eccentric 14-day orbit that will bring it within 2,600 mi (4,200 km) of Jupiter's cloud tops. Its scientific mission will continue for about 20 months, after which the local radiation will have degraded Juno's avionics. On February 20, 2018, it will make a controlled dive into the Jovian atmosphere, where it will burn up to avoid biological contamination of Jupiter's moons.

 Source: Gizmag  

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The countdown begins. . . .

It’s the eve before the big event and everyone can barely contain the excitement. The rooms are so fully that one can barely recognize any voice under the commotion. Festive atmosphere has descended upon all the parents and students who are taking part in the event. The fact that there was a slight drizzle outside and a rather overcast sky seems to have no effect on the entire gathering. With all the positivity and optimism, I would like to proudly announce “All set !” and we are good to go. One has to appreciate both the parents and the students who have given their time and resources to get ready for this event. And it goes without mention that all this would not be possible without the immense backing of the planning team. While it goes without saying that tomorrow’s event will be an astounding success, the credit for this will not be equally awarded if it isn’t dedicated to every single person at Kidobotikz. Every team be it the designing team, the animation team, the sales team or the human resource team, all of them have played a significant role in putting together every single aspect of this event. So, if the credit has to be given to someone, it actually would be everyone.

Moving on to the format of the event, the event would involve 101 All Terrain Vehicle Robots being assembles at the site by the students and would be then rallied across the beach in a line formation. Each student will be building one robot and the time for the assembly is expected to be half an hour. The jury for the event would be Assist World Records who will be issuing a certificate to every participant after the successful completion of the event. This record rally is being organized to promote the MAKER MOVEMENT and its role in technically empowering kids of the modern age.  

This could not have been possible without the immense support of our supporters and sponsors. We take immense pride in thanking The Hindu for allotting us space on the as a part of their Car Free Sunday initiative. We also would like to thank our event coordinator ezoneINDIA who have offered us immense support in staging the event. Last but least, we express our gratitude to The Corporation of Chennai and the Tamil Nadu Police for allowing us to conduct this record. We extend our warmest invitations to all of the citizens and netizens of Chennai and we request you humbly to help us make this event a great success by turning up in great numbers. For, it will be an event that will go down in history and one that will be cherished in our memories for a very long time.

Thank you!

Happy Roboting!

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Ingestible origami robot

In experiments involving a simulation of the human esophagus and stomach, researchers at MIT, the University of Sheffield, and the Tokyo Institute of Technology have demonstrated a tiny origami robot that can unfold itself from a swallowed capsule and, steered by external magnetic fields, crawl across the stomach wall to remove a swallowed button battery or patch a wound.

The work builds on a long sequence of papers on origami robots from the research group of Daniela Rus, the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Rus, who also directs MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). feels that for applications inside the body, there is need for a small, controllable, untethered robot system. It’s really difficult to control and place a robot inside the body if the robot is attached to a tether.

The robot can propel itself using what’s called a “stick-slip” motion, in which its appendages stick to a surface through friction when it executes a move, but slip free again when its body flexes to change its weight distribution.

Also like its predecessor — and like several other origami robots from the Rus group — the new robot consists of two layers of structural material sandwiching a material that shrinks when heated. A pattern of slits in the outer layers determines how the robot will fold when the middle layer contracts.

Material difference

The robot’s envisioned use also dictated a host of structural modifications. Stick-slip only works when, one, the robot is small enough and, two, the robot is stiff enough. With the original Mylar design, it was much stiffer than the new design, which is based on a biocompatible material.

To compensate for the biocompatible material’s relative malleability, the researchers had to come up with a design that required fewer slits. At the same time, the robot’s folds increase its stiffness along certain axes.

But because the stomach is filled with fluids, the robot doesn’t rely entirely on stick-slip motion. 20 percent of forward motion is by propelling water — thrust — and 80 percent is by stick-slip motion. It also had to be possible to compress the robot enough that it could fit inside a capsule for swallowing; similarly, when the capsule dissolved, the forces acting on the robot had to be strong enough to cause it to fully unfold.

In the center of one of the forward accordion folds is a permanent magnet that responds to changing magnetic fields outside the body, which control the robot’s motion. The forces applied to the robot are principally rotational. A quick rotation will make it spin in place, but a slower rotation will cause it to pivot around one of its fixed feet. In the researchers’ experiments, the robot uses the same magnet to pick up the button battery.

“This concept is both highly creative and highly practical, and it addresses a clinical need in an elegant way,” says Bradley Nelson, a professor of robotics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich. “It is one of the most convincing applications of origami robots that I have seen.”

Source: Ingestible Origami Robot

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The Brains n Brawns behind a world record ! !

All week long, I have quite covered only about our participants who were getting their robots ready for the weekend’s event. But, what I had failed to cover was the round the clock work by a brigade of planners who are quite as enthused as the participants themselves are of the upcoming weekend. These faces who I am quite familiar with have actually been quite absent in my vicinity all week long. Why? Because they’ve been running from pillar to post getting the arrangements for the venue and the permissions for the venue ready. In every event that is ever hosted, the most visible part is the staging area where all the hullabaloo occurs. What is often missed is the effort put by the planners and executors who often remain on the sidelines. It is upon the foundation of their efforts rests the success of the entire event.

As I enter our “meeting room”; the room with arguably the hardest door, I realize I landed right in the middle of an intense discussion between a group of the aforementioned familiar faces. The meeting has been in progress for over an hour now and it shows no signs of dispersing within the next hour. I glance upon the sheet of paper that has been held by Mani, our key planner, and notice quite a long list of issues on the agenda for today’s meeting. The group seems to have discussed everything from mike sets to refreshments to camera men and there are not many  details left to iron out before the meeting ends. Such is the proficiency and street smartness of the team behind the planning of the event. While all seems fine, I ask Shaikh how confident he is, his answer evokes a very mixed response from me. Says Shaikh ”We are well prepared for every aspect of the event except for what surprise nature can throw at us.” I share his concern as well, for even a rain on the previous night could still impact the outcome of the event with bad lighting or puddles on the staging area. Well, there’s nothing much left to do from our side except to keep our fingers crossed and play the waiting game with nature itself.

Fingers Crossed ! !

Happy Roboting ! !

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Pneumatically powered motor enables robots that can take a beating

  

In recent years robots have gone soft – literally – bringing with them a number of advantages. They are safer for humans to work with, can grasp different types of objects and now, may soon be better equipped to handle rough terrain. Scientists have developed a squishy motor that powers a soft rover across rocky paths and through water. They say such a vehicle could find applications in search and rescue missions and even deep space exploration.

Xiangyu Gong, a graduate student at Rutgers University,  and his team led a study and crafted a soft rover out of silicone rubber, a material nearly one million times softer than aluminum. The four-wheeled vehicle is able to roll across rock beds and through water, handle falls of more than eight times its own height and is entirely free of metal so is suitable for harsh areas with electromagnetic fields.

The team believes that the introduction of a wheel and axle assembly in soft robotics should enable vast improvement in the manipulation and mobility of devices and they would very much like to continue developing soft motors for future applications, and develop the science to understand the requirements that improve their performance.

But the real breakthrough lies in the engine room, more specifically, a soft rotary actuator inside the wheel and axle assembly. These were created using 3D-printed molds and soft lithography and were inspired by peristalsis, the contraction and relaxation of circular muscles like those in the esophagus that drive food down into your stomach.

By inflating and deflating air-filled pockets within the wheel, the researchers were able replicate the actions of the esophagus to drive an attached rotor, which then had the effect of converting peristaltic motion into torque to drive the vehicle forward. They notes that, alternatively, the rotary actuators could be modified to operate a winch-like apparatus for an entirely different set of applications.

The team imagines its soft motors finding applications in amphibious vehicles to explore lake beds, dangerous search and rescue missions and in deep space where shock-absorbing landers are needed to plonk down on other planets to explore the environment.

The research was published in the journal Advanced Materials.

Source: Gizmag 

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