Monthly Robot News (April)
Welcome to our monthly roundup of the most shocking and mindboggling news from the Robot
arena.
In this video, we’ll be covering all advancements in the Robotic world that have come about
this month, so let’s get right to it!
* Robot Now Able to Help Surgeons Treat Strokes Ahh, long have we been waiting for robots
to finally work in-field in the medical arena, and here it is!
MIT engineers this month developed their telerobotic system to help surgeons quickly and remotely
treat patients experiencing a stroke or aneurysm.
With a modified joystick, surgeons in one hospital may control a robotic arm at another
location to safely operate on a patient during a critical window of time that could save
the patient's life and preserve their brain function.
The robotic system, whose movement is controlled through magnets, is designed to remotely assist
in endovascular intervention -- a procedure performed in emergency situations to treat
strokes caused by a blood clot.
Such interventions normally require a surgeon to manually guide a thin wire to the clot,
where it can physically clear the blockage or deliver drugs to break it up.
One limitation of such procedures is accessibility: Neurovascular surgeons are often based at
major medical institutions that are difficult to reach for patients in remote areas, particularly
during the "golden hour" -- the critical period after a stroke's onset, during which treatment
should be administered to minimize any damage to the brain.
The MIT team envisions that its robotic system could be installed at smaller hospitals and
remotely guided by trained surgeons at larger medical centers.
The system includes a medical-grade robotic arm with a magnet attached to its wrist.
With a joystick and live imaging, an operator can adjust the magnet's orientation and manipulate
the arm to guide a soft and thin magnetic wire through arteries and vessels.
"We imagine, instead of transporting a patient from a rural area to a large city, they could
go to a local hospital where nurses could set up this system.
A neurosurgeon at a major medical center could watch live imaging of the patient and use
the robot to operate in that golden hour.
That's our future dream," says Xuanhe Zhao, a professor of mechanical engineering and
of civil and environmental engineering at MIT.
* iCub All Grown Up?!
Ahh, even robots grow up?
It’s a little weird to think that iCub, the first version of which was released in
2008, is now a full-on teenager—after all, the robot was originally designed after a
three year old child, and it hasn’t grown all that much.
But as it turns out, iCub has grown, at least a little bit, with the brand new iCub3, a
bigger, heavier, stronger upgrade that can also be used as a sophisticated immersive
telepresence platform.
You might not notice the difference between the old and new iCub unless they’re standing
side-by-side, but iCub3 is 25 cm taller and weighs 19 kg more, featuring more powerful
legs and rearranged actuators in the legs, torso, and shoulders.
The head is the same, but the neck is a bit longer to make the robot more proportional
overall.
In total, iCub3 is 1.25 m tall and weighs 52 kg, with 54 degrees of freedom.
Part of the reason for these upgrades is to turn iCub3 into an avatar platform—that
is, a humanoid robot that can embody a remote humanoid of the more biological type.
This is something that researchers at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) led
by Daniele Pucci have been working on for quite a while.
Now, a couple of the shots right at the beginning of the video they released look more like
drone videos than an actual representation of the user experience, or at least, it won’t
be accurate until iCub can fly, which they’re working on, of course.
It’s also, honestly, kind of hard to tell what the user experience actually is just
based on this very very fancy video, and very very fancy videos rarely inspire confidence
about the capabilities of a robotic system.
Fortunately, the researchers have published a paper on using iCub3 as an avatar which
fortunately includes plenty of detail.
* Moai Statues of Easter Island Inspire Robots Granted, humans take lots of inspiration from
their robotic counterparts in the search to develop better and better robots, but the
vice versa, that is robots taking inspiration from nature, that’s unheard of!
People around the world have long been captivated by the moai, a collection of statues that
stand sentry along the coast of Easter Island.
The statues are well known not just for their immense size and distinct facial features
(for example, very broad noses and chins), but also for the mystery that shrouds their
geographic location.
The question that piques everyone’s curiosity is: How did ancient Rapa Nui people move these
ginormous rocks—some weighing as much as 80 tonnes—across distances of up to 18 kilometers?
In 2011, a group of archaeologists made some progress in potentially unraveling this mystery.
They conducted an experiment whereby three hemp ropes were tied to the head of a moai
replica.
Using two of the ropes angled at the sides to rock the statue back and forth, and the
third rope for guidance, they were able to “rock and walk” the replica forward, demonstrating
at least one possible way that the Rapa Nui people may have moved the real moai so many
centuries ago.
In the experiment, 18 people were able to move a 4.35-tonne replica 100 meters in just
40 minutes.
More recently, a group of researchers sought to use robots to employ this “rock-and-walk”
technique further.
Jungwon Seo, an assistant professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology,
has previously used robots to study how to precisely move and place Go stones.
“Objects heavier than a Go stone, like the moai statue, may pose additional fresh challenges.
But we were motivated by the difficulty,” he says.
His team devised a “rock-and-walk” technique and implemented it four different ways using
single or dual robotic arms, or single or dual custom-made quadrotor aircrafts.
They describe their work in their study published on 21st January in IEEE Transactions on Robotics.
* Robots and Cars Now Have Real Vision!
Ever imagined what it’d be like if robots could have the human vision we do?
Even though robots don't have eyes with retinas, the key to helping them see and interact with
the world more naturally and safely may rest in optical coherence tomography (OCT) machines
commonly found in the offices of ophthalmologists.
One of the imaging technologies that many robotics companies are integrating into their
sensor packages is Light Detection and Ranging, or LiDAR for short.
Currently commanding great attention and investment from self-driving car developers, the approach
essentially works like radar, but instead of sending out broad radio waves and looking
for reflections, it uses short pulses of light from lasers.
Traditional time-of-flight LiDAR, however, has many drawbacks that make it difficult
to use in many 3D vision applications.
Because it requires detection of very weak reflected light signals, other LiDAR systems
or even ambient sunlight can easily overwhelm the detector.
It also has limited depth resolution and can take a dangerously long time to densely scan
a large area such as a highway or factory floor.
To tackle these challenges, researchers are turning to a form of LiDAR called frequency-modulated
continuous wave (FMCW) LiDAR.
In a paper appearing March 29 in the journal Nature Communications, the Duke team demonstrates
how a few tricks learned from their OCT research can improve on previous FMCW LiDAR data-throughput
by 25 times while still achieving submillimeter depth accuracy.
* WayFAST For Field Robots A new method of Traversability Predictive
Navigation for Field Robots has been developed.
The team presents a self-supervised approach for learning to predict traversable paths
for wheeled mobile robots that require good traction to navigate.
Their algorithm, termed WayFAST (Waypoint Free Autonomous Systems for Traversability),
uses RGB and depth data, along with navigation experience, to autonomously generate traversable
paths in outdoor unstructured environments.
Their key inspiration is that traction can be estimated for rolling robots using kinodynamic
models.
Using traction estimates provided by an online receding horizon estimator, they are able
to train a traversability prediction neural network in a self-supervised manner, without
requiring heuristics utilized by previous methods.
They demonstrate the effectiveness of WayFAST through extensive field testing in varying
environments, ranging from sandy dry beaches to forest canopies and snow covered grass
fields.
Their results clearly demonstrate that WayFAST can learn to avoid geometric obstacles as
well as untraversable terrain, such as snow, which would be difficult to avoid with sensors
that provide only geometric data, such as LiDAR.
Furthermore, they also show that their training pipeline based on online traction estimates
is more data efficient than other heuristic-based methods.
* A New Sweet Mini Desktop Robot Ahh, the ever so adorable desktop robots,
here’s yet another one!
Peng Zhihui seems to have found some spare time and energy to crack out another sweet
robot build, this time it’s a much smaller, and cuter emoji-bot with the usual production-ready
levels of attention to detail.
With a lot of fine details in the 3D printed models, this is one for SLS printing in nylon,
but that can be done for a reasonable outlay, in China at least.
The electronics package consists of a few full custom, and tiny, PCBs designed with
Altium Designer, with off-the-shelf modules for the circular LCD and camera.
The main board hosts an STM32F405 and deals with the display and SD card, The reason for
this choice of STM32 was due to the requirement for connecting to an external USB3300 high-speed
USB PHY.
There is a sensor PCB which handles the gesture sensor, a USB hub, MPU6050 9-axis sensor,
and also the USB camera module.
This board attaches to the USB-C connector in the base, via a FFC cable, allowing the
robot to rotate on its base.
Peng clearly has exacting standards as to how things should work, and we guess wanted
to have the arms back-driveable in a way that enabled the host computer to track and record
the motor positions for replaying later on.
The connection back to the controller is via I2C, allowing all five servos to hang on the
same bus, saving previous resources.
Smart!
Getting a processor and motor driver in such a tiny space was a bit of challenge, but a
walk in the park for Peng as he demonstrated in his video which you might require English
subtitles for.
The arm mechanism is particularly interesting, and rather elegantly executed, and he does
seem rather proud of this part of the design, and so he should!
Like with Peng’s other projects, there is a lot to see, and plenty of scope for feature
explosion.
It was nice to see the ‘bot being used as an input device, not only with gesture sensing
via the dedicated sensor, but also using the camera with OpenCV to track user posture and
act accordingly.
This thing could act as genuinely useful AI device, as was a being darn cute at the same
time!
* The Robot Caretakers of the Lunar Gateway As they say, leave it to the robots!
An integral part of NASA’s plan to return astronauts to the moon this decade is the
Lunar Gateway, a space station that will be humanity’s first permanent outpost outside
of low Earth orbit.
Gateway, a partnership between NASA, the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), the European Space Agency
(ESA), and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), is intended to support operations
on the lunar surface while also serving as a staging point for exploration to Mars.
Gateway will be significantly smaller than the International Space Station (ISS), initially
consisting of just two modules with additional modules to be added over time.
The first pieces of the station to reach lunar orbit will be the Power and Propulsion Element
(PPE) attached to the Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO), scheduled to launch together
on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket in November 2024.
The relatively small size of Gateway is possible because the station won’t be crewed most
of the time—astronauts may pass through for a few weeks, but the expectation is that
Gateway will spend about 11 months out of the year without anyone on board.
This presents some unique challenges for Gateway.
On the ISS, astronauts spend a substantial amount of time on station upkeep, but Gateway
will have to keep itself functional for extended periods without any direct human assistance.
“The things that the crew does on the International Space Station will need to be handled by Gateway
on its own,” explains Julia Badger, Gateway autonomy system manager at NASA’s Johnson
Space Center.
“There’s also a big difference in the operational paradigm.
Right now, ISS has a mission control that’s full time.
With Gateway, we’re eventually expecting to have just 8 hours a week of ground operations.”
The hundreds of commands that the ISS receives every day to keep it running will still be
necessary on Gateway—they’ll just have to come from Gateway itself, rather than from
humans back on Earth.
So Gateway sounds pretty robotic, doesn’t it?!
* iRobot Finally Launched Create 3 iRobot has finally seen fit to announce a
brand new robot that is guaranteed to have you swooning!
Yup, you heard that right, there was much rejoicing, because this is not a mop or a
vacuum, but instead a new and updated version of iRobot Create: the Create 3.
Not only is the Create 3 based on a much more modern Roomba platform, it’s also compatible
with ROS 2, the unexpectedly mature software that a surprising number of robots are now
using to do cool stuff.
If this mainstream vote of confidence in ROS 2 by a company like iRobot surprises you,
well then maybe a Create 3 should be the next robot in your life!
Create 3 comes equipped with Wi-Fi, Ethernet-over-USB host, and Bluetooth.
Create 3 is also equipped with a suite of intelligent technology including an inertial
measurement unit (IMU), optical floor tracking sensor, wheel encoders, and infrared sensors
for autonomous localization, navigation, and telepresence applications.
Additionally, the robot includes cliff, bump and slip detection, along with LED lights
and a speaker.
What’s more, Create 3 brings a variety of new functionalities to users, including compatibility
with ROS 2, an industry-standard software for roboticists worldwide.
* Robot to Sniff Out the Good Whiskey?!
A whiskey connoisseur can take a whiff of a dram and know exactly the brand, region,
and style of whiskey in hand.
But how do our human noses compare to electronic noses in distinguishing the qualities of a
whiskey?
A study published 1st February in IEEE Sensors Journal describes a new e-nose that is surprisingly
accurate at analyzing whiskies—and can identify the brand of whiskey with more than 95 percent
accuracy after just one “whiff.”
E-noses have been gaining in popularity over recent years thanks to their range of valuable
applications, from sensing when crops are ready for harvest to identifying food products
on the cusp of expiring.
It is perhaps unsurprising that many e-noses have also been developed to analyze alcoholic
beverages, including whiskey, which had an estimated international market worth US $58
billion in 2018 alone.
“This lucrative industry has the potential to be a target of fraudulent activities such
as mislabeling and adulteration,” explains Steven Su, an associate professor at the Faculty
of Engineering and IT, University of Technology Sydney.
“Trained experts and experienced aficionados can easily tell the difference between whiskies
from their scents.
But it is quite difficult for most consumers, especially amateurs.”
Therefore, Su and his colleagues sought to adapt one of their e-noses so that it could
analyze some key qualities of whiskey.
Their original e-nose was designed to detect illegal animal parts sold on the black market,
such as rhino horns, and they have since also adapted their e-nose for breath analysis and
assessing food quality.
* Can You Compete With Robots?
When it comes to the future of intelligent robots, the first question people ask is often:
how many jobs will they make disappear?
Whatever the answer, the second question is likely to be: how can I make sure that my
job is not among them?
In a study just published in Science Robotics, a team of roboticists from EPFL and economists
from the University of Lausanne offers answers to both questions.
By combining the scientific and technical literature on robotic abilities with employment
and wage statistics, they have developed a method to calculate which of the currently
existing jobs are more at risk of being performed by machines in the near future.
Additionally, they have devised a method for suggesting career transitions to jobs that
are less at risk and require smallest retraining efforts.
The result is a ranking of the 1,000 jobs, with "Physicists" being the ones who have
the lowest risk of being replaced by a machine, and "Slaughterers and Meat Packers," who face
the highest risk.
In general, jobs in food processing, building and maintenance, construction and extraction
appear to have the highest risk.
"The key challenge for society today is how to become resilient against automation" says
Prof. Rafael Lalive.
who co-led the study at the University of Lausanne.
"Our work provides detailed career advice for workers who face high risks of automation,
which allows them to take on more secure jobs while re-using many of the skills acquired
on the old job.
Through this advice, governments can support society in becoming more resilient against
automation."
That’s all for the monthly robot news, folks!
See you another time!