Delivering the future: Autonomous courier bots take to the streets

From this month, pedestrians in the United Kingdom, Germany and Switzerland will begin sharing their sidewalks with robot couriers. The self-driving delivery droids are being rolled out as part of a pilot by Starship Technologies, working with a number of major industry partners.

Starship Technologies was set up in 2014 by Skype co-founders Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis, with the aim of revolutionizing local deliveries. The robots are designed for delivering packages, groceries and food to consumers in a 2-3-mi (3-5-km) radius and travel at a "brisk walking speed" of 4 mph (6 km/h) on average, but can travel at up to 10 mph (16 km/h).

They are built with off-the-shelf components, such as an Nvidia Tegra K1 processor, to keep the costs down. They also make use of a number of conventional cameras, a 360-degree camera, infrared and ultrasonic sensors to navigate autonomously, but are monitored by human operators in control centers who can take control at any time if required.

Starship has been testing the robots in 12 countries for nine months. Around 5,000 mi (8,000 km) are said to have been covered and over 400,000 people encountered without any accidents.

The pilot, however, will provide the first opportunity to test the robots for real deliveries and to introduce them to the general public. It will also allow Starship to better understand and design a robotic delivery service.

The partners for the pilot are food delivery companies Just Eat and Pronto.co.uk, German courier Hermes and German retailer Metro Group. Starship tells Gizmag that each partnership will work slightly differently, but that robot operation, maintenance and the provision of any human operation that is required will be handled in-house. It expects to hand over more responsibility to the partners as they learn more about the technology.

When a customer in one of the served pilot areas orders something from one of the partners online or via an app, they will be offered Starship delivery as an option. They will then be alerted via their mobile phone when their package is ready for delivery and they will be able to choose a time for the robot to make the delivery.

The robot will take between 15-30 minutes to arrive and, once it has arrived, the customer will be sent a unique PIN code with which to access the lid of the robot and take their goods. The robot will then return to its base.

Starship says the combination of PIN-only access and remote tracking makes the robot delivery system both safe and secure. There are also nine cameras in total that can capture the actions of any potential aggressors. In addition, they feature two-way audio so that operators in the control room can speak with people who might approach the robots. Location tracking is said to be to the nearest inch, so they could be easily found if stolen.

The robots are electric and have four motors that drive six wheels, with power coming from lithium batteries that last for about three hours. Starship Technologies says it could easily increase the battery capacity by a factor of 10, but that the robots are currently being transported a lot by plane and they can't fly on a plane with a battery any larger.

The program will see "dozens" of the robots deployed in London, Düsseldorf, Bern and one other German city to begin with. Several other European cities will then be added, as well as the first American cities. Starship says it will also continue testing its technology at its R&D facilities in Tallinn, Estonia.

Source: Starship Technologies

Read More

Get a Kit, nerd up a bit ! !

If you had read our previous post, you would’ve realized by now that the Kidobotikz kit is indeed a big deal. We at Kidobotikz cannot stop looking at it and wonder at the immense possibilities it offers to the world of education and the way kids learn their concepts. As we had covered in the previous posts, we had spent 3 months soft launching the product to the kids on our online platform and with the immense success received from the improvements received from the gamification of the entire classroom environment here at Kidobotikz on to an online platform, we have now decided to roll out the product to make it to hands of every student across the planet. This we believe is the next big thing in education.

So, what are we aiming for with this kit? After a long 3 months with the online tutored robotics training, our team decided to conduct a survey with the users of Kidobotikz kit and online platform- the students and their parents. The responses we received were so rich and full of praises. Parents here at Kidobotikz are a motivational factor for every change we imbibe into the way training is imparted.

The happiest of parents are our assets because the satisfaction received from making a parent realize that their ward is on the right path is something we cherish. So, when we wanted to conduct a survey, we were preparing for an outcome where parents were satisfied but yet would give us complaints. We were expecting a few complaints where parents felt their children were having a hard time understanding the concepts or where the parents felt the portions were not in accordance with their immediate scholastic needs.

But to the wildest of our surprises, all parents were unanimously positive in their feedback for the kits. While we at Kidobotikz were looking at the kits as empowering the students with technologies which could be useful for their future career as engineers, we had rather overlooked a major positive outcome of undergoing training with the kits. One that was more grassroots and had a much more immediate impact on their academics- their school education. Hundreds of parents have come back to us with the feedback that after undergoing training on the Kidobotikz kits, especially the Foundation level kits, the behaviour of their kids has now seen a marked shift. The perspective through which their kids now view the world has completely changed.

In the foundation course, kids engage themselves in learning the various concepts of basic science such as basic electrical concepts, engineering drawing concepts. All of this makes kids well verse in the subjects that they would otherwise learn in subjects in the classroom. The kids learn these concepts as a part of the courseware that enables them to build a robot. This means that the practical understanding of some of the boring subjects of high school are now learnt in a fun way which facilitates in their retention and leaves room for more concepts to understand and experiment. This is the sweetest benefit from learning through the robotic kits- improvement in academic performance. If you’ve already been with us up until this point on the blog, I’d suggest you to try one for yourself and see the wonders that your kid will be able to perform after learning his subjects the right way.

Happy Roboting ! !

Read More

Introducing : The Kit of possibilities

This week marks the beginning of an exciting era at Kidobotikz. After the soft launch of our product, we had awaited feedbacks from the initial community of students who bought the Kidobotikz Kit. Now with the feedbacks pouring in, we have come to a sweet conclusion- The Kidobotikz kit is a marvellous piece of wonder. Countless man-hours and thought processes put into the design of the Kit had finally paid off. Our early users have come back to us with anastounding inference- The Kidobotikz Kits in themselves are highly engaging and intuitive. Parents who've observed their ward's learning cycle have given us overwhelmingly positive comments. 

The students who had enrolled with us received the Kit and an online learning platform designed specifically for the kids. This platform which includes the entire gamut of tutorials, videos and mock tests has been designed with the intention of emulating an offline classroom environment in the virtual world. It keeps track of every activity a student does while he is logged onto the platform and uses dedicated algorithms to evaluate the calibre and capabilities of the student in his learning process. It even segregates the activities into areas where a student displays more interest and is more well versed compared to other subjects.

Parents and teachers who have have been constantly awatch about the performance of students have come back to us with rich feedbacks which suggest that Kids are quite adept and at ease while using the Foundation Kit of Kidobotikz. It was also observed that away from the watchful eyes of an instructor and with no pressure on them to learn, Kids actually learn faster on the online platform. The entirety of the foundation course which usually takes close to 2 months (or 16 teaching hours spread across one weekly class for 3 hours ) was completed online within a day or two by the kids. This kind of a performance was unheard of. And this was not a unique occurrence. Almost all the kids who underwent the training in the course took an average of just 2 or 3 days from receiving the kit to completing the courseware. Upon inquiry parents revealed that the kits were so engrossing that kids usually end up binge watching all the training videos and learn the entire all the required concepts in a very short time span.

With the confidence given to us by the effectiveness of  the kit and with the support offered by the community of parents and students, we are now moving forward towards the more grandiose goal of disrupting education in the country. We are now introducing the Kidobotikz kits in the retail market where any parent gets to purchase one for their kids and introduce them to something that will impact their lives forever.

To talk more about the kit, it is a well designed kit which is a treasure trove filled with possibilities. It is furnished in such a way that when any kid opens it, it kicks off that primal instinct in him- the desire to innovate. The same desire that moved us as a species from the invention of fire, to the invention of wheel to the modern age of computing and robotics. So, waste no further time and check out the kits here.

Happy Roboting ! !

Read More

Electronic "tattoo" muscles in on emotion mapping

Electromyography procedures, which record the electrical signals of muscles to diagnose neuromuscular disorders, usually require the insertion of a needle electrode into the muscle itself. Obviously, that isn't exactly a pleasant experience, so a team at Tel Aviv University's (TAU's) Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology have developed a more comfortable and accessible alternative in the form of an electronic "tattoo" that unobtrusively monitors muscle activity, for a range of medical and commercial purposes.

Anyone who ever put on and forgot about a temporary tattoo as a kid will understand how unobtrusive the device is to wear, but this is a little more involved than the Road Runner rub-on that came with your cereal.

"Our 'electric tattoo' consists of three parts," explains Yael Hanein, the TAU professor who led the study. "A carbon electrode, an adhesive surface that sticks temporary tattoos to the skin and a nanotechnology-based conductive polymer coating, with special nano-topography, that enhances the electrode's performance."

That allows the user to attach the device onto the skin over the muscle that needs to be tracked, and forget about it. While they go about their day as usual, the electrode measures and records muscle activity, and is apparently able to pick up strong and steady signals from for several hours without irritating the skin.

Researchers at TAU have used the skin electrode to monitor the muscles of patients suffering from neurodegenerative diseases, and in future, the device could be used in rehabilitation for victims of stroke or brain injury to help regain muscle control, enabling amputees to control artificial limbs using remaining muscles, monitoring driver drowsiness and possibly even to map emotions.

"Advertisers, pollsters, media professionals and others – all want to test people's reactions to various products and situations," says Hanein. "Today, with no accurate scientific tools available, they rely mostly on inevitably subjective questionnaires. To address this need, researchers worldwide are trying to develop methods for mapping emotions by analyzing facial expressions, mostly via facial photos and smart software."

The electrodes could provide an alternative solution, by being placed on the face to monitor the electrical signals of the wearer's facial muscles to provide data about a subject's subconscious reactions that they may not otherwise share or be aware of.

The research was published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Source: Gizmag

Read More

Inducing tectonic shifts in pedagogy through robotics. . . !

When we think of the components of a child’s life, the broadest categorisation of it can be considered as Study, Play and Character Building. Among the 3, the latter two can be influenced by the parents and taken care of by them. Both Play and Character Building have their roots in childhood and the amount of time a child spends in these activities directly influences his happiness quotient. However, parents do not have an influence over the education that a kid receives in school. After a few initial years, the parents always experience a waning influence over the kid’s learning habits and methodologies. This means that kids are always under pressure to remember the concepts even when they don’t understand them. More often than not this leads to kids resorting to unhealthy learning practices such as rote memorising, learning by heart etc. This has a bad influence over the kids scholastic abilities. The desire to achieve better scores would drive kids towards these bad learning habits and their knowledge assimilation usually takes a hit.   

The way education is looked at always in a constant change. The current system does not deliver the result we as parents would love to see. It only promotes more aversion towards subjects rather than making kids love them.Equally sad is the fact that traditional classroom education fails to cater to the variation in learning ability of different kinds of students. Students cannot learn at their own pace in a classroom –  the practices adopted by teachers may be conducive for a few while the rest may be left behind. With the advent of Internet and the maturation of online or e-learning platforms, quality and engaging education is only a few clicks away. This means that the traditional content delivery methods adopted by teachers can now be supplemented by online platforms which offer a classroom. The learning speed of a kid becomes immaterial as he can always revisit the entire classroom experience online. An interesting outcome of this exercise is the fact that Kids tend to learn faster online than in the traditional environs of a classroom because the content is engaging.

We at kidobotikz have learnt through our experience that when the content is engaging, the course is absorbed faster. From a few of our surveys we have now observed that compared to the previous scenarios when kids had to spend their time in the classroom to learn robotics, kids who learnt via an online courseware are faster in completing the course. The best manifestation of this observation is the fact that parents have noted kids binge watching our courseware and completing a rather complex learning course within a span of days. We at kidobotikz believe that this is taking us somewhere revolutionary. We would like our readers to stand by us while induce a major tectonic shift in the way concepts are learnt in the classroom.

Happy Learning and Happy Roboting!

Read More

Scientists develop new Robo-Salamander to study locomotion

Scientists have developed a new robot that mimics the way salamanders walk and swim. The amphibious machine, which has been developed with the help of X-Ray videos, could shed light on the evolutionary leap that vertebrates made from the water to the land, the researchers said. The salamander-inspired robot could also one day be used for search-and-rescue missions or inspection operations, the scientists added.

Increasingly, scientists are creating robot copies of animals to perform such investigations of animal locomotion. One of the benefits of using robots is that the machines' actions are relatively easy to repeat, Ijspeert and his colleagues said. In addition, researchers can tinker with robot shapes in a methodical way, and the bots can perform movements that are unnatural or dangerous for animals, the scientists added.

The researchers focused on salamanders to shed light on the evolution of animal locomotion. To create robo-salamanders, the researchers began by studyingPleurodeles waltl, a salamander about 7 inches (18 centimeters) long that moves both on land and in the water. The scientists took X-ray videos of two P. waltl specimens from the top and sides, tracking up to 64 points along the skeletons of the salamanders as they performed a variety of motions, such as walking on the ground, crawling underwater and even swimming.

The scientists then used a 3D printer to manufacture the skeleton of the robot. Onto this machine, they added 27 motors and a waterproof dry suit that was tailor-made to keep the robots' electronics from getting wet.

The so-called Pleurobot has fewer bones and joints than real-life salamanders. For instance, whereas the real amphibian has 40 vertebrae, the robot has only 11 segments along its spine mimicking vertebrae.

Still, the researchers said Pleurobot could imitate many salamander movements, especially at the limbs. This is because during the design of Pleurobot, the research team's computer models identified the minimum number of motorized segments needed to copy salamander motions, as well as the optimal placement of these parts along the robot's body.

In addition to providing insights on the evolution of animal locomotion, Pleurobot may also show how robots can move well in disorderly environments, Ijspeert said. "With improved control and sturdier mechanics, I hope to see Pleurobot helping in search-and-rescue scenarios in the near future," he said.

The scientists detailed their findings online June 29 in the journal Interface.

Source: Livescience

Read More

Kidobotikz- Where Kids work the ART in SMART ! !

Ever since Isaac Asimov dazzled the world with his line of books which offered a glimpse of futurism, the world has been fascinated by Robots. For a long time time since the past century the world has been awed when any news related to the field of robotics turned up. However, this in itself has created a cliched image of the whole field of robotics. Whenever we hear the word "robot", our minds immediately turn up images of tiny miniature humanoid robots carrying a tray and serving us beverages. We have been put in the mental mould where the general populace across the planet knows the only kind of robots- ASIMO line of humanoids developed by Honda.

The one big drawback of this effect is the fact the field of robotics has always remained in our minds as the domain of a very select few of people who are invariably geniuses with fancy degrees from ivy league unversities. This stigma is neither valid in the current parlance nor does it offer a correct picture of the field of robotics. It is high time we realized that robotics is a much wider field than we assume. The field of robotics is at the confluence of various branches of engineering and sciences, namely computer science that deals with the programming, the processing systems for their control, sensory feedback, and information processing as well as mechanical engineering and electrical engineering which deal with the construction, design and the physical operation of the robots.

With this being the case, it is more likely that every graduate who leaves the college with an engineering degree has likely learnt one of the many facets of engineering. However, he or she is already late by the time they realize that their curriculum had taught them the one of many approaches to the field of robotics. If only they had approached the field of engineering with the level of holism it warrants to be able to explore the many applications of their courses.

This approach to the subjects cannot be inculcated by just adopting newer methods of pedagogy. The change should be introduced earlier in a student’s academic grooming. Thanks to the age of information explosion and the maker revolution, Robotics no longer needs to be a domain of the elitist of high achieving academics. It’s intricacies are not tough nuts to crack. They’re just tougher to peel compared to an average subject. With efforts from Kidobotikz, this is already happening. Back at Kidobotikz, we are hard at work adapting the various concepts behind robotics to suit the understanding of an average mid-schooler. With the online courseware that Kidobotikz offers, a student, whatever may be his academic acumen, will be capable of mastering the techniques and sciences behind building a robot. The only pre-requisite a student needs while enrolling himself with Kidobotikz would be the love for learning and innate curiosity.

Happy Roboting ! !   

Read More