When the pandemic stopped Sam Seifert from going into the office, he, like millions of other Americans, was forced to bring his work home with him. His work, though, wasn't exactly suited to the domestic environment. It was big and loud. It stomped about his apartment and upset the neighbors. But that's robots for you — never the most socially graceful of creatures.
As an engineer at Boston Dynamics, Seifert's job is to upgrade the company's star robot, the four-legged Spot. Since the firm began leasing Spot to customers last year , it's been deployed on construction sites, factory floors, and off-shore oil rigs. But quadrupedal robots are an unfamiliar addition to any workplace, and Boston Dynamics is still upgrading Spot's ability to deal with challenging environments, from steep stairs to oil-slicked floors.
Other things to check out:
WiBotic raises $5.7M to boost wireless charging systems
Seattle-based Wibotic says it's secured $5.7 million in fresh investment to ramp up development of its wireless charging and power optimization systems, five years after being spun out from the University of Washington.
Investors in the Series A funding round include Junson Capital, SV Tech Ventures, Rolling Bay Ventures, Aves Capital, The W Fund and WRF. The latest round brings WiBotic's total investment to nearly $9 million.
WiBotic was founded by Waters and Joshua Smith , a computer science and electrical engineering professor who had Waters as a Ph.D. research assistant. The company's charging stations take advantage of near-field antennas to beam power wirelessly to receivers that can be hooked up to batteries on robots, drones or other devices.
Dex-Net AR uses Apple's ARKit to train robots to grasp objects | VentureBeat
UC Berkeley AI researchers are using an iPhone X and Apple's ARKit to train a robotic arm how to grasp an object. It's part of Dex-Net AR, a pipeline for using commodity smartphones for robotic grasping. ARKit creates point clouds from data generated by moving an RGB camera around an object for two minutes.
Robotic grasping is a particular robotics subfield focused on the challenge of teaching a robot to pick up, move, manipulate, or grasp an object. The Dexterity Network, or Dex-Net , research project at UC Berkeley's Autolab dates back to 2017 and includes open source training data sets and pretrained models for robotic grasping in an ecommerce bin-picking scenario.
Robot vending machines rise in Silicon Valley - Los Angeles Times
"If you're an N95 mask company or a ventilator company, and you happen to be in a business that was driven up as a result of the epidemic, it's pure luck," he says. "I can't call it good luck. But [we have] a solution that fits into the world as it's happening today."
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Given Silicon Valley's enthusiasm for burger robots and (failed) robotic pizza delivery vans, it was inevitable that tech companies would turn their attention to the vending machine, maligned savior of the hangry and foe of the dietitian. According to the National Automatic Merchandising Assn., more than 4 million vending machines are deployed around the United States, serving 40 million people a day.
Quite a lot has been going on:
Do You Like Tom Clancy Novels? Add Robots And Liberal Politics And You Get 'Burn-In'
A: I knew the tech stuff would come true. The pandemic made a lot of it come true more rapidly because of rapid roll-out of A.I. and surveillance, policing 'bots … but i did not expect the scenes with a high fence thrown up beyond an extended militarized perimeter of the White House—or what I thought would be pretty iconic dystopian scenario with police surrounding the Lincoln Memorial—to come true.
A: The format of blending novel and nonfiction research is akin to a parent sneaking fruit and veggies into a smoothie. It's the idea that you can share important lessons and research in a manner more effective than a white paper or a Powerpoint.
A new approach to control the stiffness and position of inflatable robots
Robots that are made of flexible materials that can be inflated have a number of desirable properties, including their light weight and high levels of compliance (i.e. the ability to undergo elastic deformation). These qualities make them ideal for completing tasks in unstructured environments or in settings where they are bound to operate very close to humans.
Researchers at Brigham Young University have recently carried out a study aimed at evaluating and comparing different methods for simultaneously controlling the stiffness and position of inflatable robots. Their paper, published in The International Journal of Robotics Research , introduces a model that represents stiffness as a state variable. This model could ultimately be used to control the stiffness and position of inflatable robots more efficiently.
The Global Construction Robots Market is expected to grow from USD 75.05 Million in 2019 to USD
Kobe to use robots to combat Covid-19 - CMW
Kobe, Japan, is turning to robots to help increase the city’s PCR testing capabilities for Covid-19.
This use of robots for PCR testing will be the first of its kind in Japan and will allow doctors to control the robots remotely to collect saliva samples while communicating with patients via an attached monitor. The robots will also be capable of to delivering/removing meals and taking body temperature readings.
Medicaroid President, Yasuhiko Hashimoto, said: "Robotics is one industry in which Japan excels. The testing system that we are starting in Kobe has the potential to benefit the rest of the world."
Happening on Twitter
How American power dynamics have shaped perceptions of looting, from the Boston Tea Party to today https://t.co/ylGDkiVopp TIME Thu Jun 11 22:31:57 +0000 2020
Working from home, with robots https://t.co/uuL8ecCRQB https://t.co/KRqXi7gkCC verge (from New York) Thu Jun 11 13:50:17 +0000 2020
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