Yamaha designs an autonomous boat optimised for dam surveying

Dams have a variety of roles including irrigation, flood prevention, and power generation. When it comes to maintaining a dam, there's more to worry about than stopping the walls from falling down. Silt buildup can damage a dam's ability to effectively collect water, which means they need to be scanned and dredged periodically. Yamaha has developed an autonomous boat designed to make the mundane task of dam and lake bed sediment surveying a little bit easier.

BREEZE10, developed by Yamaha, is an electric FRP (Fiber Reinforced Polymer) craft approximately three meters in length which has been developed to enable easy mounting of measurement equipment such as narrow multibeam sonar, such as R2Sonic's "Sonic2024", to aid in measurement work, such as domestic dam silt level measurement.

Yamaha's Breeze10 uses a satellite positioning system in combination with azimuth angle data for autonomous navigation, with routes able to be saved for use again when resurveying. Measuring 3.2 m (10.4 ft) long with a beam of 1.2 m (3.9 ft), the craft is compact enough to fit in a large minivan.

Sonar sensors can be fitted quickly and easily thanks to a dedicated mounting point in the center of the underside of the craft, and an 0.5 kW electric motor allows for operation in shallow water. Range anxiety shouldn't be a problem, with the 20 AH lithium-ion battery and 1.6-kW on-board generator promising six hours of continuous running.

Although it can operate in fully autonomous mode, Yamaha has also included two other drive modes, allowing remote control or giving full control to an on-board driver. That driver isn't going to be winning any drag races with the Breeze10's four knot (7.2 km/h) top speed, but that's not really the point.

Yamaha is hoping its design will be able to transfer into surveillance and defense roles in the future, but for now it's expected to find a home with commercial surveyors when it launches in August.

Source: Yamaha, Gizmag

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Scientists make Robotic ray with rat cells and steer it with light

Soft robots are nothing new, but they're generally made with a mix of circuitry and silicone or other rubber-like materials. Researchers from a variety of universities have just announced in the journal Science that they took a different approach. A team headed by University of Illinois scientist Sung-Jin Park has developed a bio-inspired swimming robot that mimics a ray fish can be guided by light. Dr.Park and his team built a 1/10th-scale version of a ray fish with a microfabricated gold skeleton and a rubber body powered by rat heart muscle cells. The cardiomyocytes were genetically engineered to respond to light cues, so that the undulatory movements propelling the robot through water would follow a light source. To create their robotic ray, they engineered some pretty special heart cells and attached them to a golden skeleton. Inspired by the relatively simple shape and swimming methods of batoid fish like stingrays and skates, the group first built a framework for the robotic fish from gold. The golden skeleton was designed in such a way that it could store energy when it was flexed upward. Meanwhile, some members of the team were busy bioengineering rat heart cells known as cardiomyocytes to make them sensitive to light.

The heart cells – about 200,000 of them, to be exact – were then placed atop the gold framework. When they were stimulated by light, they contracted, causing the artificial skeleton to bend in a downward motion. Then, once the heart cells relaxed, the framework could flex downward using the energy it had stored. This created a swimming motion that could propel the half-muscle, half-machine creation through water. By altering the position of the light pulses, the robotic ray could be steered left or right, and by adjusting the light's frequency, the speed of the tiny robot could be controlled. The researchers had so much success in steering the robot that they were able to maneuver it through a basic obstacle course. Optogenetics allows for phototactic guidance, steering, and turning maneuvers. Optical stimulation induced sequential muscle activation via serpentine-patterned muscle circuits, leading to coordinated undulatory swimming. The speed and direction of the ray was controlled by modulating light frequency and by independently eliciting right and left fins, allowing the biohybrid machine to maneuver through an obstacle course.

You can watch the little hybrid ray in action in the following video.

Source: Gizmag, Science

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Geek Speak: Jeffin Sam

7 days and counting ! That’s how we at Team Kidobotikz are now keeping track of the news articles that have sprung up around the city commemorating the unique achievement of our kids. The news has spread across the country as a wildfire and we’ve received accolades in heaps. Credit in it’s entirety belongs to the students, the parents and the volunteers  who helped us dearly in this unique achievement. In the past couple of days we’ve been featured on a myriad of media platforms ranging from news aggregator apps such as Wrap-up to weekend tabloids such as the Hindu Downtown. Not to forget a good number of Tamil magazines who have covered our event. We owe a great deal of gratitude to all of the media personnel who were wanted to highlight our efforts and help it reach a large audience.

Meanwhile, back at Kidobotikz, it’s Sunday and our students are back. I met a few of them yesterday and was chronicling their experience at school after the world record. I came across quite a few interesting stories. I’ve met a lot of interesting students here at Kidobotikz. Infact, all the students I meet are usually interesting in their own right. But there’s one thing that’s quite common among all of them. Each of them is voluble and bubbly. Their energy and enthusiasm usually rubs on to me even as I talk to them. However, all that changed today. I come across a rather interesting student with whom I am engaged in a constant struggle to get words out of him .

Meet Jeffin Sam, the introvert. He is here a good one week after the world record. This guy is modesty personified. I inquire him as to how his friends reacted about his world record and he says they all don’t know much about the event .Quite perplexed, I ask him why and he says he never told anybody. So I ask him as to why he didn’t tell anybody to which he says the poster was stuck on the notice board of his school, Jawahar Vidyalaya, for everyone to see; so he chose to not bother anybody about it. Most people would prefer to boast about such an achievement, but that line of thought seems to have been lost on our gentleman. One look at him and you realise he has a composure that many of us would envy and is adept at what he wants to do. I ask him a few more questions to which most of his answers were quite crisp and in a low baritone. This 8th grader, who is pursuing his advanced level at Kidobotikz has already made up his mind to pursue robotics as a career. He says his favourite kind of robots are ATV Robots, a bunch of which he has build at home. But, he aspires to build an airworthy Quadcopter someday.

Happy Roboting ! !   

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Geek Speak: Maahir Ali

The week after the world record has been quite tiring. There’s been quite a lot of hustle bustle about the event from all corners and the team at Kidobotikz has been working at the same frenetic pace as before the event even a week after the event. There are still a few ends that have to be tied. Prizes, Certificates and Trophies are still to be dispatched to a few participants. The thing that keeps all going through the day is the joy we get from meeting kids over the weekend. It’s 5 O’clock on Saturday and I am here to meet the kids to find what they’ve been upto over the week following the World Record. I do the usual thing of waiting near the corner of the classroom and grab a student or two who’s rushing to his class after being late by a whisker.

The catch of today is an interesting extrovert. Meet Maahir Ali, the extrovert. He studies in class 8th of National Public School, Gopalapuram and immediately lights up on knowing that I did my schooling there too. Soon after his introduction, he is quite excited in sharing all the details I ask about him. He is pursuing his Advanced level here at Kidobotikz and has already notched up quite a few achievements to his name. He has already built Mopping robot, a soccer bot among others and he is just getting started. He wants to built a robot that is capable of washing dishes and he has already enrolled himself as a part of the team that is learning how to built Telepresence robots. Back at the world record he claims to have completed his ATV bot is 6 minutes and 50 seconds. He says his desire in the area of robotics is so much that he has already decided to make it his career. He wishes to pursue his B.Tech in IIT-Madras and M.Tech in Mechatronics from the same institution. He has already considered joining his JEE preparatory classes from next year. That’s a whole lot of vision from an 8th grader. I ask him what does he do in his spare time and he says he’s started reading a lot about Arduino because the applications with it are quite interesting. I ask him if he has planned anything beyond his IIT dreams and he says he wants to make a living by building Humanoid robots for daily use leaving me utterly dumbfounded. If anything, robotics does not just empower students, it makes them think in a whole  new level of holism.

Happy Roboting ! !

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Robotic glove tech developed for space station adapted by GM for newer applications

A robotic glove that was originally designed for use on the International Space Station (ISS) has been licensed for use back home, where it could be put to work helping manufacturing workers. Developed in partnership between General Motors (GM) and NASA, the RoboGlove is designed to provide the user with extra gripping strength.

The RoboGlove makes use of numerous sensors, tendons and actuators that are designed to mimic the muscles, nerves and tendons of the human hand. It was developed during a nine-year collaboration between GM and NASA, which included sending the Robonaut 2(R2) into space in 2011. Technology from R2, which was required to be able to operate tools made for humans, was incorporated into the RoboGlove.

The glove features pressure sensors in the fingers, with synthetic tendons retracting when a gripping motion is detected, holding the hand in place to reducing strain.

During the development of the RoboGlove, back in 2012, NASA spoke about how useful it might be in assisting users both in space and back home. The agency stated that while a factory worker, or an astronaut on a spacewalk, might have to exert 15-20 lbs (7-9 kg) of pressure when using a tool, the glove tech could lower that requirement to as little as 5-10 lbs (2.3-4.5 kg) of force.

With GM now eyeing up uses for the device back home, it could find a place in a number of settings, from manufacturing to health care. GM spent a little time testing out the current version of the glove in its plants, but has now licensed it out to Swedish medical tech company Bioservo Technologies for further development.

The company will work to refine the tech to fit varying hand sizes, while combining it with its own healthcare-focused servo glove technology. Its initial plan is to develop the grasp-assist device for industrial use, allowing workers to grip for extended periods of time without encountering muscle fatigue.

If all goes to plan, GM will be the first company to use the robotic glove, with plans to test the device out in its factories. If it proves successful, it could be used for practically anything that requires assisted or enhanced gripping capabilities, including medical rehabilitation applications.

Source: Gizmag, GM, NASA

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Geek Speak: A Chat with the record holders, Surya & Shailesh

It’s been a good 6 days since the record was set and some of our record holders were finally back at Kidobotikz after an exciting week at school. The record event had made these otherwise geeky mid-schoolers into celebrities back at school. Both teachers and classmates have been awed by the record set by these wunderkinds and many of these students have been heaped praises in front of the morning assembly. The ones that missed out on the praises this week probably have one due in the upcoming weeks.

I enter the lobby of Kidobotikz and find familiar faces all around. The guys who had taken part in the record last week are here to continue with their usual business of learning robotics. I see these guys hurriedly getting into their classes as they’re a couple of minutes late. I play spoilsport in their efforts by stopping a couple of them to get a few words out of them. That’s how I get to meet our focus for today- Surya and Shailesh.

Surya Yank Clement, a rather interesting name for an 8th grader, is the first of the two who is ready to forego a few minutes of his class. He is here to take part in his classes for the advanced level. He belongs to PSBB millennium and rather helps me spell out the word ‘millennium’ correctly as I scribble down on my notepad. Surya for all his silent demeanour is rather notorious back at Kidobotikz. He has already participated in KRG and says he made into 2 rounds. This young fellow is quite upbeat about his record, but he hasn’t told his teachers and peers that he was part of the world record event out of shyness. I ask him what he wants to be and i get the same unanimous answer i get here from every Kidobotikz student- Robotics engineer. For those of you who didn’t attend the event, Surya set a record within the world record. He was the first to complete the ATV Robot- his favourite kind of robot- at the event among all the 103 participants.

As I wave him off to his class, I talk our next friend Shailesh. Shailesh is a year younger to Surya and studies at Pon Vidyashram. He is also with Surya in the Advanced level and is rather excited about the record he has set. He says he’s been bragging about it all week at school. Says he’s quite excited about this record as he has desired to learn robotics from a very young age. He doesn’t wanna stop here. He wants to move onto win prizes at KRG in August and wants to pursue higher studies in robotics as well. He feels his ultimate desire is to build a line of Humanoid robots.

Robotics sure can change the face of the planet. If this World Record hasn’t brought us to the tipping point for robotics based education, it has definitely put us on the right path towards it.   

Happy Roboting ! !

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South Korea's nationwide IoT network completed six months early

The race to roll out a nationwide network for Internet of Things (IoT) devices may have come to a photo finish. When Dutch telecommunications company KPL announced last week that the Netherlands was the first country to switch on a nationwide IoT network, it seemed to beat South Korea to the punch. But SK Telecom reported on Monday that it has also completed its own network across South Korea, announcing prices for its IoT services and its future plans for the network.

SK Telecom completed construction of the nationwide LoRaWAN (Long Range Wide Area Network) servicing 99 percent of South Korea by the end of June, which puts the rollout six months ahead of schedule. It joins the existing LTE-M infrastructure that was completed in March. Together, the two technologies form the IoT network, which will allow public, private and commercial smart devices to capture and process data for various purposes.

Over the next few months, the company plans to focus on several applications for the service, including Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), a two-way communication system between a utility company and smart meters in customers' homes that means usage data can be gathered remotely, and services switched on or off without sending staff to the premises.

The service can host devices that track the location of people, vehicles, objects and assets, as needed. For instance, SK is working with local governments on Safe Watch, a smartwatch for children and the elderly that lets parents or carers keep track of the wearer, which launches later this month.

Monitoring is also a key focus, which will allow manufacturing and commercial facilities to manage the safety and efficiency of their equipment and environment. Temperature, humidity, CO2 concentration and hazardous materials in the soil and air can all be monitored to maintain desired levels.

A Partner Hub Program was also announced, with the goal of encouraging more businesses and startups to develop devices and services for the network. To that end, SK Telecom is providing 100,000 LoRa modules for free to developers, and running a program called IoT Open Testbed to offer consulting, training and marketing for partners.

Source: Gizmag, SK Telecom

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