BERT2, a humanoid robot assistant. Credit: University of Bristol

Making an assistive robot partner expressive and communicative is likely to make it more satisfying to work with and lead to users trusting it more, even if it makes mistakes, a new study suggests.

But the research also shows that giving robots human-like traits could have a flip side – users may even lie to the robot in order to avoid hurting its feelings.

These were the main findings of the study I undertook as part of my MSc in Human Computer Interaction at University College London (UCL), with the objective of designing robotic assistants that people can trust. I’m presenting the research at the IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN) later this month.

With the help of my supervisors, Professors Nadia Berthouze at UCL and Kerstin Eder at the University of Bristol, I constructed an experiment with a humanoid assistive robot helping users to make an omelette. The robot was tasked with passing the eggs, salt and oil but dropped one of the polystyrene eggs in two of the conditions and then attempted to make amends.

The aim was to investigate how a robot may recover a users’ trust when it makes a mistake and how it can communicate its erroneous behaviour to somebody who is working with it, either at home or at work.

BERT2, a humanoid robot assistant. Credit: University of Bristol

The somewhat surprising result suggests that a communicative, expressive robot is preferable for the majority of users to a more efficient, less error prone one, despite it taking 50 per cent longer to complete the task.

Users reacted well to an apology from the robot that was able to communicate, and were particularly receptive to its sad facial expression which is likely to have reassured them that it ‘knew’ it had made a mistake.

At the end of the interaction, the communicative robot was programmed to ask participants whether they would give it the job of kitchen assistant, but they could only answer yes or no and were unable to qualify their answers.

Some were reluctant to answer and most appeared very uncomfortable. One person was under the impression that the robot looked sad when he said ‘no’, when it had not been programmed to appear so. Another complained of emotional blackmail and a third went as far as to lie to the robot.

Their reactions would suggest that, having seen the robot display human-like emotion when the egg dropped, many participants were now pre-conditioned to expect a similar reaction and therefore hesitated to say no; they were mindful of the possibility of a display of further human-like distress.

The research underlines that human-like attributes, such as regret, can be powerful tools in negating dissatisfaction but we must identify with care which specific traits we want to focus on and replicate. If there are no ground rules then we may end up with robots with different personalities, just like the people designing them.

BERT2, a humanoid robot assistant. Credit: University of Bristol

“Trust in our counterparts is fundamental for successful interaction, says Kerstin Eder, who leads the Verification and Validation for Safety in Robots research theme at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory. “This study gives key insights into how communication and emotional expressions from robots can mitigate the impact of unexpected behaviour in collaborative robotics. Complementing thorough verification and validation with sound understanding of these human factors will help engineers design robotic assistants that people can trust.”

The study was aligned with the EPSRC funded project Trustworthy Robotic Assistants, where new verification and validation techniques are being developed to ensure safety and trustworthiness of the machines that will enhance our quality of life in the future.

The IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN), takes place from 26 to 31 August in New York City, and the study – Believing in BERT: Using expressive communication to enhance trust and counteract operational error in physical Human-Robot Interaction’ by Adriana Hamacher, Nadia Bianchi-Berthouze, Anthony G. Pipe and Kerstin Eder – will be published by the IEEE as part of the conference proceedings, available via the IEEE Xplore Digital Library.

A pre-publication copy of the research paper is available at: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1605.08817.pdf

Image: Messe München International

Industry 4.0 – the fourth industrial revolution – was the main theme at the largest robot and automation fair in the world, Germany’s AUTOMATICA, which took place in Munich throughout the last week of June. But what exactly is Industry 4.0 and how do developers and manufacturers big and small believe it will revolutionise production?

The signs and banners were everywhere throughout the gigantic conference arena: “The heart of Industry 4.0”, “Welcome to the 4th industrial revolution” and “Hello Industry 4.0, we go digital!”, trumpeted by leading German robotics supplier, KUKA. SMErobotics, the European Robotics initiative for strengthening the competitiveness of SMEs in manufacturing was also showcasing results from their 4.5-year project.

Industry 4.0, the next phase in the digitisation of the manufacturing sector, is predicted to drive up manufacturing’s share of GDP in Europe by 20 percent over the next five years. Consultants McKinsey say it is “driven by four disruptions: the astonishing rise in data volumes, computational power and connectivity, especially new low-power wide-area networks; the emergence of analytics and business-intelligence capabilities; new forms of human-machine interaction such as touch interfaces and augmented-reality systems; and improvements in transferring digital instructions to the physical world, such as advanced robotics and 3D printing.”

The coming changes are set to result in a host of new opportunities, say Industry 4.0  enthusiasts such as KUKA, which enticed the public onto its exhibition space with the showstopping Paulii Brothers – a pair of LBR robots perfecting, jointly, the fine art of pouring a German wheat beer. But the company’s massive orange-hued demonstration area also featured a smaller exhibit, a screen showing every one of the dozens of networked KUKA robots at AUTOMATICA, with the possibility of pulling down data on rate of operation, speed and more.

“KUKA is not just about robots,” Wolfgang Meisen, the company’s Head of Communications, pointed out. “It’s also an application provider and systems provider, with full automation assistance. The robot is one of the key elements.

Industry 4.0 is about more flexible production, processes and interconnection – machines, systems, software and devices working together. The robot is the junction between the digitalisation of the software and the mechanics.”

Experts believe that within two years the first wave of factories using smart technology will be fully operational, with widespread adoption throughout the world in the next decade. So the big manufacturers were out in force at AUTOMATICA, gearing up for what they see as the a major push for their products.

With an appearance by German goalie Jens Lehmann on its stand, clamping and gripping systems manufacturer Schunk, was clearly hoping for an additional push. But when in comes to Industry 4.0, the company believes the goal is “connectivity.” General Manager, Tomas Berg demonstrated this by comparing parallel exhibits. On the left, a scissor equipped pneumatic gripper and, on the right, a sensor studded version with all the corresponding connectivity on offer, such as putting output data on screen to inspect rate and speed and to highlight any broken links in the production line.

The key attraction, said Mr Berg, is the ability to deliver more productivity through the flexibility of being easily able to change production lines. Thus removing the need for multiple lines of production.

Industry 5.0 already?

Flexibility is also at the core of the approach taken by leading collaborative robot (cobot) manufacturer Universal Robots. Not satisfied with the promise of Industry 4.0, it wants to take things further, according to Regional Sales Director Per Kloster Pollster:

“We see a big future when we can start analysing all that information and that will increase the development of products and optimisation of production. We are talking the fifth industrial revolution already. When that happens, the automation business will change a lot because the next big thing will be flexibility.”

Collaborative robots, he maintains, make it so much easier to quickly and simply push though the development of products and deliver that flexibility. Universal’s strategy continues to rest on the enabling power of collaborative robotics which, they stress, offer the lowest return on investment, with no need for extra software or safety glass; the robot is used with ultimate simplicity, as a tool.

Image: Messe München International

Some were disappointed that Universal, arguably the stars of Automatica two years ago, were not launching any new products. Their range still consists of the UR robot in three different sizes, with a focus on selling out of the box. Instead, the Danish company is expanding the service it offers customers and developers with the free-to-use Universal Robots Academy, an e-learning facility, as well as Universal Robots Plus. Mr. Pollster described this as a robotics version of the App store, opening up the company’s products to developers.

Universal’s success is indicative of a trend toward smaller and lighter robots for pick-and-place applications, small-part assembly, machine tending, material handling and logistics.

And where two years ago the Messe Munchen arena was packed with caged robots, their liberated successors were out in force in 2016, inspecting parts and lifting cars but also making coffee and pouring beer.

In fact, the biggest launch at the fair was by Italian manufacturer Comau, which was showcasing the world’s first high payload collaborative robot, capable of lifting 110 kilograms.

The success of the collaborative formula is demonstrated by figures from the German automotive industry, unveiled at AUTOMATICA: the number of robots rose by 17% between 2010 and 2015, while the number of employees increased by 13%. Evidence that man can co-exist very effectively with machine, providing employment for both.

The belief at AUTOMATICA is that the potential of collaborative robots is so huge that we’re now just scratching the surface. Key to enabling the delivery of real time contextual knowledge to the enterprise, they pave the way toward hybrid factories with humans, robots and cobots – the future of manufacturing and Industry 4.0.

Acceptability and standardisation

British startup the Shadow Robot Company is also gearing up for Industry 4.0. “As the flexibility of manufacturing processes increases, the need for more general purpose automation also increases,” said the company CEO Rich Walker. “At present, humans step in to provide this flexibility. But highly flexible grippers derived from dexterous hands will allow Industry 4.0 systems to handle far broader ranges of parts and components than more traditional fixed automation.”

But if people think robots will replace them, persuading them to accept robotic solutions is one of the challenges for Industry 4.0, believes Maxime Banon, Business Analyst with Spanish startup PAL Robotics.

Several of the company’s award winning robots were in attendance at AUTOMATICA, including TIAGo, a flexible, configurable robot to assist people in repetitive, dangerous or annoying tasks, including light industry.

But just as challenging to achieve as acceptability is standardisation, says KUKA’s Wolfgang Meison. “If we want interconnection, that means solving the challenge of connecting systems that may be programmed in different languages, with different software platforms and communication standards. We need interface solutions and that means a broad alliance to establish new standards for real-time communications. We’re still not there yet and it’s why Industry 4.0 can’t be solved by a single provider. We need a model that we can push forward together.”

Altogether, German manufacturers have pledged €40bn a year to help support new smart factory initiatives, and €200m of state funds has been earmarked for specific areas like human-to-machine interaction and cyber physical production systems within Industry 4.0.

With manufacturing contributing 22 percent to Germany economy, their interest in Industry 4.0 is understandable. But worldwide, the phrase is a relatively unfamiliar one. Six in 10 UK manufacturing managers have never even heard of Industry 4.0 according to a recent poll.

Mike Fair, Application Sales Manager at Rethink Robotics, says that in the US, more commonly used buzzwords include agile, efficient systems and the Industrial Internet of Things. The company was one of the first to market collaborative technology and their current model, Sawyer, is still the only widely available robot that makes use of an expressive interface. The robot has eyes which look to where it is working and which frown to indicate that parts can’t be found. In his presentation at AUTOMATICA’s Forum, the company’s  Director of Sales for Manufacturing Solutions, Chris Harbert, said that research had shown that this was significant for people. “It gave comfort,” he said. “Emotion is important.”

Nestled in among the believers in Industry 4.0, there is also a caveat, that a slogan such as Industry 4.0 is not enough. In the words of Comau CEO Mauro Fenzi: “It’s a good framework for the industry to use in automating factories, but now we need to fill the empty box with good ideas to benefit customers.”

A step change is needed before robotics reaches its full potential, says Andrew Graham Technical Director of British startup OC Robotics. He issued a warning call to anyone believing that Industry 4.0 would herald the turning point in the robotics and automation marketplace: “The huge market is the consumer one. Perception and cognition are particular challenges, together with the interpretation of all that data. We need to get to the point where we don’t need technologists to work with the robots; the point where my Mum can get more out of it.”

Additional videos and materials are available on the AUTOMATICA website.

Read the previous article in the series here.

The ten-part series on European Robotics will be published every two weeks on the SPARC website and Robohub. Funding for the series was provided by RockEU – a Coordination and Support Action funded under FP7 by the European Commission, Grant Agreement Number 611247.

See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Robothespian welcomes visitors to Bristol Robotics Lab during #ERW2015. Image: RIF@Bristol

Bridging the gap between cutting-edge research in academia and the vibrant robotics startup ecosystem is no easy task. This Wednesday in the UK city of Bristol, a free public event titled “From Imagination to Market” — the centre piece of European Robotics Week 2015 — took on that challenge by bringing together leading innovators, researchers, startups and strategists. Below are the key moments and insights from the event.

Organised by euRobotics AISBL (which represents robotics stakeholders in Europe) and the Bristol Robotics Laboratory (BRL — one of the largest facilities of its kind in Europe), this event was packed insight, stories and advice.

The day kicked off with an introduction to robots in science fiction by Michael Szollosy and a look at the field of RoboLaw by Andrea Bertolini, before taking a deep dive into the BRL’s state-of-the art research on swarms, human-robot interaction and soft robotics. Then we heard from up-and-coming startups Open Bionics and Reach Robotics, we got an overview of the UK robotics landscape, followed up by inside info from two of the UK’s most successful corporations: Dyson and Ocado. In the middle of all this, we were whisked off to BRL to meet real-life robots before being brought back for a rousing panel discussion to bring all that freshly gained knowledge together.

There was more: the day finished with a robot build-a-thon, where kids aged 5-14 years helped researchers build 100 robots to ‘treat’ artificial cancer cells. Robot stations were also placed throughout Bristol’s Science Museum, showcasing a swarm of 200 coin-sized robots, Thymio and TiddlyBot robots to program, the latest robots from the Robogals team, and students from Digimakers.

Here is a taste of what we learned in just one day:

What could be going from imagination to market in the future

Control in human-robot interaction can take four forms, BRL’s Angelika Peer told us. First is bilateral control, where transparency, task performance, telepresence, robust stability and conflicting requirements need to be taken into account. Then we have shared control — the kind found in robotic assistive walking devices, or in the automation of assembly and transportation tasks, which can be performed either collaboratively with a human operator, or learned from humans by imitation. For the third category — supervisory control — Peer outlined the EU-funded project, VERE, which stands for Virtual Embodiment and Robotic Re-embodiment. Autonomous control makes up the fourth category, and this can be sequential, parallel, or parallel and symmetric.

Sabine Hauert speaking at ERW2015

Taking swarming into the real world through the simulation of basic rules forms the basis for Sabine Hauert’s research at the BRL. Her interest in robot swarms inspired her research in nanoparticles to cure cancer. The challenge is to design the behaviour of the nanoparticles. How do you synchronise them? How sticky should they be to deal effectively with cancer cells? Hauert’s research also translates to robot swarms that work in the thousands, and we’re just now reaching that stage. Watch her TEDx talk here.

BRL’s Jonathan Rossiter has just received a £2.5m UK grant to make trousers out of soft robotics — a futuristic aide to enable those with mobility issues. The limitations of rigid robots have inspired his research, which forms part of the EU’s Robosoft action. With applications in everything from mobile phones to alleviating deep vein thrombosis, soft robotics is really taking off. While it took 15 years to develop adequate motors, Rossiter believes work on materials will move much faster.

So when can we buy this stuff?

“It’s just starting,” said euRobotics road-mapping expert David Bisset. “We tend to use the phrase ‘on the cusp.’ There are a lot of products out there, but long way to go.” The UK landscape, he said, is composed of four different areas: manufacturing and agricultural goods, healthcare and consumer, transport and cities and energy, and utilities and the environment. The drivers are economic, societal (such as the crisis in care for the elderly), markets (which are concerned with efficiency) and, finally, getting robots to do things we don’t want to, such as vacuuming. But, crucially, the infrastructure needs to be in place for robots to become a valued part of activity. The biggest market is healthcare, with a value of £323bn. But it’s not the value of the robots themselves, it’s their impact that’s important, and for this we need strategy, assets, skills clusters and challenges — landing a UAV at Heathrow, mapping out North Sea pipelines, and driving though a town, for instance. Here, SMEs are a very important part of the mix.

Coming soon to a market near you are cutting-edge robotic technologies from two of these SMEs: Open Bionics and Reach Robotics, both originating from the BRL incubator.

Open Bionics is the first company to use 3D scanning and printing to fit a prosthetic limb. The startups’ CEO, Joel Gibbard, relayed how a handheld device that cost a couple of hundred pounds now makes it possible to customise every device, remotely and cost-effectively. The company took time to ask amputees what they wanted, and it turned out they would rather have a prosthetic that is comfortable, light weight, and that helps them celebrate their limb difference over a prosthetic that offers high functionality. To this end, Open Bionics focused on fashion and design, creating a Swarovski crystal-encrusted prosthetic arm, and partnering with Disney for Ironman, Elsa and Star Wars hands that light up (which produces additional benefits). Plus there’s a subscription model in the works so that children can have the size of their prosthetic adjusted as they grow.

Reach Robotics CEO Silas Adekunle at ERW2015

Reach Robotics CEO Silas Adekunle sees a future where video game characters will leap out of the screen into our world. Their robot, MekaMon, can do battle in both the real and virtual worlds, can be customised, and has its very own universe complete with epic battles. The company recently had its first round of VC funding, from Qualcomm and Techstars, among others. “When creating, startups are in the sausage-making business,” he said, “It’s lovely in front but a mess in the back.” Team members have left and been replaced, and there have been 17 grants and 24 product iterations, said Adekunle. MekaMon is on track and due on the market for Christmas 2016.

The startup ecosystem

Support for startups, how to raise the funding, and what infrastructure is needed to allow startups to be successful were covered by the next two speakers, BRL’s Farid Dailami and Renaud Champion of Robolution Capital.

“I’m looking for products that will solve a problem but not to replace someone,” said Champion, speaking of his investment policies.  “What I’m looking for is a bicycle for the mind, and project linked to robotics to solve any kind of issue: ethical, legal or societal.” He had further advice for would-be entrepreneurs:

• Know what’s at the core of your product, not just the IP. What is the service you give to users? What is your competitive advantage?
• Don’t confuse getting feedback with convincing people.
• Be able to name failure in your product development.
• A low [financial] burn rate does not mean you have time to waste.
• Don’t validate your customer hypothesis with investors.
• Start off with Indiegogo and Kickstarter rather than VCs; it’s a question of strategy.

Meanwhile, for those ready to develop and test products, services or processes, Farid Dailami outlined the facilities available at BRL’s Robotics Innovation Facility (RIF).

Robots in the real world

Next up were two success stories from industry. Note that neither Dyson nor Ocado are companies that have previously worked with robots. The former is best known for vacuum cleaners and the latter is an online grocer. Their stories were inspiring because they show the power of robotics when it enters everyday life.

“The only way you are going to get something to work in the real world is by putting it in the real world,” said Dyson’s Mike Aldred. His key take away message was “test test test.” Dyson’s 360 Eye robot vacuum cleaner was 16 years in development and went through 110,000 trials in real homes over more than eight years. Two person-years were spent just in creating a test tool that identifies outliers and anomalies. But Aldred was keen to point out that, since it went on sale in Japan four weeks ago, the 360 Eye has already saved customers 250,000 hours that they could spend doing something else. However, for a robot be taken up, it has to perform better than a human, he said. His advice for would-be innovators was: “Always try to do something that can never possibly work. Innovation comes from thinking broadly and thinking differently.”

Thinking very differently from the average grocer is what got online supermarket Ocado interested in robotics. The company’s robotics research team leader Graham Deacon outlined the two major projects the company is involved with (in collaboration with European research institutes): Secondhands and SoMa, both funded via Horizon 2020 grants. SoMa is about using compliant robotic mechanisms to handle deformable products without conventional geometry, and Secondhands is seeking to develop a humanoid robot to assist maintenance technicians in routine and preventative maintenance. It’s a hugely ambitious exercise in collaborative robotics to develop a safe robot that can work shoulder to shoulder with a human.

Bringing it back to the table

Panel roundup at ERW2015

During the panel discussion that followed, three of the speakers were joined by the BRL’s Innovation Manager Jill Burnet, and there was some final advice on bringing imagination to market.

Researching and manufacturing robotics can be hugely expensive. Dyson spent  £28m on research for the 360 Eye, and manufacturing ran into eight figures, said Mike Aldred. But although this amount of investment is a barrier to many SMEs, Jill Burnet pointed out that incubators, such as the one at BRL, can tackle niche market problems.

Champion’s advice was to identify the core of the product, which might lead you to rethink your manufacturing. If it’s not linked to manufacturing, the SME should sub-contract.

And their top advice?

Mike Aldred: The best person to follow your idea is you. Own your own idea.

Jill Burnet: Find a community to work in, with like minded people, as we’ve done at BRL.

Renaud Champion: It’s a matter of having an idea, but the difference is in having and implementing. You don’t have to the go to the US to develop, Europe is a great place to start your business.

Graham Deacon: The companies I know that continue have passion – so it’s about sticking to it.

“Robots and Society” panel discussion during European Robotics Week 2015. #ERW2015

A mouthwatering array of over 750 events has been taking place throughout Europe this week as the continent celebrates Robotics Week 2015. The festivities began with an eye-opening debate on “Robots and Society” in the UK city of Bristol on Tuesday, with experts versed in strategy, business, academia, law and policy. But, for many, the star of the show was Nao, in his guise as robot avatar.

The event was organised by euRobotics AISBL, which represents robotics stakeholders in Europe, and by Bristol Robotics Laboratory (BRL), one of the largest facilities of its kind in Europe. “We’re moving into a future where devices that interact with us are going to be part of our everyday experience,” said BRL’s director, Chris Melhuish, setting the scene.

The concern in Europe is that the continent should remain the number one robotics producer worldwide, said politician Mady Delvaux, who heads a European working group on robotics working on concrete proposals to steer European Union policy. The group is expected to issue a report in May next year.

But for the technology to reach its full potential, she told the audience, public acceptance and education are key. Investment is necessary to achieve these aims and encourage innovation in the region, she said, noting that EU nations benefit from SPARC, the largest civilian robotics programme in the world.

Delvaux was followed by a taste of what’s to come in the future: robot avatars. Part of an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) project, Being There focuses on robots and humans in public spaces. The project team is led by BRL’s Paul Bremner who, at a recent TEDx, presented the first talk using a tele-operated humanoid robot that replicates the movements of its human operator, showcasing the benefits of robotic avatars. The Bristol audience was able to see the experiment replicated with Nao.

Then came the main business of the evening — two panel discussions focussing on aspects underpinning the role of robots in society, the first focussing on economic considerations and the second on ethical implications.

Economics — The first panel featured Mike Aldred of Dyson’s Robotics unit, local council leader Amanda Deeks, London School of Economics professor Alan Manning, euRobotics road-mapping expert David Bisset, Phil Williams of the UK’s Knowledge Transfer Network, robolaw expert Andrea Bertolini, Technical Director of OC Robotics Andrew Graham, and Renaud Champion of Robolution Capital.

To put the enabling potential of robotic technologies into perspective, Amanda Deeks provided the audience with some eye-opening statistics. Over 60% of council work is in social care, she said, and as people live longer they need more and more help. The vast majority of adults live out a substantial part of their lives with some sort of disability. In the case of women, that’s an average of 18 years. For men, it’s 14 years, but only because they die earlier.

The KTN’s Phil Williams added some further figures to the mix, showing how much value many estimates placed on the robotics market: ranging from 15.5 billion euros to $25 billion, the widely differing figures had only one thing in common: they were huge. The question, as he sees it, is: why is the UK not taking more advantage of this?

Although the benefits of robotic technologies are demonstrable, the panel was keen to deal with the thorny question of robots replacing human jobs. In response to scaremongering reports, the LSE’s Alan Manning pointed out that, historically, everybody has ultimately benefited from past technological advances.

Issues of privacy (when it comes to data) and public perception were also touched on by the panel, particularly self-driving cars — a technological advance the UK is particularly keen to get behind. However, a recent survey by the UK’s Transport Systems Catapult, suggests that only 39% of UK citizens would allow themselves to be driven by an autonomous vehicle. The audience show of hands was roughly in accordance with this figure.

As with much else, the answer to this, in David Bisset’s opinion, is education. “Robots in research labs need to get out,” he said. “The problem with that is regulation and testing them. There are a stream of regulatory and ethical issues.”

Ethics — Ethical issues were at the heart of the second panel discussion, together with education. The panel featured robot ethics research specialists Alan Winfield of BRL and Fiorella Operto of the Genoa’s School of Robotics in Italy, as well as lawyer Andrea Bertolini of the Scuola Superiore, S. Anna in Pisa, Italy, Nikos Pronios from Innovate UK and David Bisset who was also on the prior panel.

Trust issues are at the core of the importance of robot ethics, said Alan Winfield. We have to define what kind of robot we don’t want in our lives. It’s also the start of the legislative process. It begins with ethics, which develop into standards and continue through to legislation. He urged the audience to look at BS8611 — the world’s first standard on robot ethics.

However, robots cannot be more ethical than humans. The ethics have to be predetermined by us and there has to collaboration with lawyers and ethicists, he said.

The panel were in accord that there will undoubtedly eventually be an accident with an autonomous vehicle or other robot, and the idea of a trusted robot commission that investigates accidents was put forward. Only through having a transparent process will we overcome the trauma of that first accident.

The importance of design in terms of interaction, to facilitate the right interfaces and experiences, was pointed out by David Bisset, who also advocated for lifelong education. “To be trained for second career in midlife needs to be a right,” he said. “There needs to be a sea change.”

EuRobotics acting President Uwe Haass provided further evidence for this. He told the audience about a scheme for giving educational robot kits to 45-year-old women returning to work after having had their children. It was very effective in helping these women develop a great sense of esteem, he said.

But learning about robots also holds great benefits early on in life, said Fiorello Operto. “Education in robotics is the best way to teach STEM.”

The audience had a great many questions, for instance: should you develop a robot that decides its own ethics? The panel was doubtful that this was advisable, or even likely, but it should be a public decision in any case. In a similar vein, another member of the audience wanted to know whether we should be able to design the ethics of our own car.

At this point the debate turned to data and privacy considerations that are likely to become commonplace with self driving vehicles. Putting this into perspective, David Bisset said that he believed that the larger ethical problems will arise from the data accruing from elderly care robots rather than from cars.

Echoing an earlier statement from Mike Aldred that the real benefit comes when things join up. “In robotics,” said Bisset, “ethics, law, engineering and design all need to interact together.”

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Drone registry

October 19, 2015. US Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx announces unmanned aircraft registration requirement.

With 1 million consumer drones expected to be sold this holiday season, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced a new task force to guide the development of a registration process for recreational UAVs. Until now, only commercial drone users were required to register their aircraft with the FAA, but hobbyists will now also be bound.  The task force comprises representatives from government and industry stakeholders, including Walmart, the world’s largest retailer and recent applicant for permission to test delivery drones. New registration rules are expected before Christmas.

Fast forward a decade or so, and here’s an inspirational glimpse of the future: the first concept for a drone port that Lord Norman Foster would like to build in Rwanda.

Central questions for robocars

Tesla Model S autopilot-software. Source: Tesla

Back on the ground, Volvo answered a hard and central question, saying it will accept “full liability” when its cars are operating autonomously, and Tesla announced the release of its anticipated highway cruise update for Model S cars from the last year. The update ushers in (almost) hands-free driving and lane changes, which the company believes the car’s owners will appreciate. But is it a “real” robocar? Then again, perhaps full autonomy is not all it’s cracked up to be.

Meanwhile, coming up from behind, lots of robocar trials hit the road: from driverless taxis in Japan to a driverless lorry, developed by Daimler in Germany and BMW and Mercedes are working on cars that deliver themselves to you. There were also exciting developments in the lab in the form of a experimental dashboard computer that even predicts behaviour.

But the fallout from the VW scandal continues, what does it mean for robocars?

Blub blub

subCulTron simulation

Jumping into the water, the world’s largest intelligent underwater monitoring system, the EU funded subCulTron project  demo’d in the murky waters of Venice Lagoon at #EXPO2015. And, with a mission to provide “An Underwater Drone for Everyone,” OpenROV Trident launched on Kickstarter. But a robot may soon be able to fly as well as swim underwater, with a demonstration of the first-ever aerial-aquatic robot by the Wyss Institute.

Report roundup

Source: IFR

Pride of place goes to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) annual Industrial Robots statistical review of 2014 which predicted 15% industrial robot growth through 2018, doubling the annual number of units sold to around 400,000 by 2018. But, while economic and technical barriers to wider industrial robotics adoption are beginning to fall, the advantage will belong to first adopters, says the Boston Consulting Group. There is also an urgent need to address resulting repercussions for employment and public policy according to a new Brookings Report.

Greasing the wheels

Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (South Korea). Source: Minseong Kim via Wikimedia Commons

Governments continued to support progress in robotics with South Korea funding Samsung to the tune of $14.8m to develop and manufacture industrial robots and US FDA approval for a new Corindus Vascular Robotics medical device.

Among the month’s venture capital investment was $22 million for CyPhy Works, to scale up building UAVs for the consumer market, and $3.3m for Righthand Robotics, to enable development of their smart robotic order-picking system.

Picking progress

Team’s silicone rubber gripper can pick up egg, CD & paper, and identify objects by touch alone

Robotic dexterity continued on an upward trajectory with the development of a soft robotic hand made out of silicone rubber that can lift and handle objects as delicate as an egg and an enticing sounding hand with “eyes.”

But progress can’t come quickly enough for a coalition of US blueberry farmers. They’re offering a $250,000 prize for automation solutions as they can’t keep up with the demand for blueberries.

Stimulating the body and the brain

Schematic diagram of the new BCI system (Iturrate et al. 2015)

Now that its robot challenge is complete, the US’ Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has turned its hand to an equally exciting project: a self-healing body initiative named ElectRx.

And human brain power gets a boost via a brain-controlled robotic prosthetic that learns from its mistakes and can help users operate a Brain-Machine Interface (BMI).

Oh là là

Jibo’s Roberto Pieraccini

Social robot Jibo wants to join your family, positioning itself somewhere under human members but over pets in the hierarchy. The company’s work with automatic speech recognition, as explained by Roberto Pieraccini, can surely aid this ambition.

Meanwhile, rival Pepper finally made its EU debut – in France.

Domesto-bots

Image: Dyson

Soon we may not have to fold the washing, put the kettle on or get up to dim the lights; exciting progress was made on a laundry-folding robot, albeit with a rather prohibitive cost (as much as small car),  a tea-brewing robot and a kit to connect home lighting with voice control.

And the multinationals drew swords: Dyson released its much heralded 360-Eye in Japan and at the same time filed legal proceedings against rival Bosch, accusing it of cheating EU energy efficiency ratings for its vacuums.

String, rocks and robotics

Rockprint

Robotics joined forces with string and rocks for “Rock Print,” a full-scale architectural installation demonstrating the capacity of a 3D printing process to create a geometrically-complex construction. And we took a look at developments in in-situ robotic fabrication – the goal of several research projects within the National Centre for Competence in Research (NCCR).

More than lip service

ICRA 2015 Organising Committee

In celebration of Ada Lovelace day, Robohub published its annual list of 25 Women in Robotics You Need to Know About, but we also cover great stories from women in tech all year round. Just this October we featured lifelong robot builder and developer, and CEO of Fetch Robotics, Melonee Wise,  Grishin Robotics’ Valery Komissarova, Georgia Institute of Technology Professor and Zyrobotics CTO Ayanna M. Howard and expert in bio-inspired robotics Radhika Nagpal.

Events we noted

This year’s ROSCon conference, dedicated to all research, development, and practice within the Robotics Operating System (ROS) completely sold out. How did ROS come about and what are the benefits of open source? Tully Foote, — ROS Platform Manager at the Open Source Robotics Foundation (OSRF) — explained.

Meanwhile, at the 2015 International Collaborative Robots Workshop, the thorny issue of safety once again dominated the agenda but just as pertinent were employees’ perceptions of new robots.

Early bird xmas shopping

Cannybot

Robot toys are gearing up for the festive season. A hybrid between a video and real-world game, Anki’s new robot car racing game promises to bridge the digital and real worlds. Or how about Cannybots: smart toy cars that teach kids to code while they play.

And there are also some fabulous reads, in Nature, Ken Goldberg reviewed Machines of Loving Grace, Rise of the Robots and Our Robots, Ourselves – all explore the nexus of people and robots but from very different perspectives

Happy birthday to us!

Finally, Robhub turned three this month but we wouldn’t be able go keep growing without your feedback, so keep it coming!

Events to watch out for this November:

• 15th IEEE RAS Humanoids Conference – Seoul, Korea – 3-5 Nov
• Robot Film Festival – Pittsburgh, USA – 7 Nov
• Maker Faire  – Ottawa, Canada – 7-8 Nov
• RE.WORK Connect Summit –  San Francisco, USA – 12-13 Nov
• Next:Economy – San Francisco, USA – 12-13 Nov
• ROBOT’2015 – Second Iberian Robotics Conference – Lisbon, Portugal – 19-21 Nov
• RoCKIn2015 Final Event – Lisbon, Portugal – 21-23 Nov
• European Robotics Week – throughout Europe – 23-29 Nov
• The Robot Performance Festival – Prague, Czech Republic – 23 Nov – 12 Dec
• dronetech conference – Bristol, UK – 26 Nov
• Maker Faire – Hong Kong, China – 28-29 Nov

Miss a previous digest? Don’t worry! Check out our archives. 

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum at the competition launch. Image: uae4goodawards/instagram

The first UAE Artificial Intelligence and Robotic Awards for Good aim to encourage research and development to meet challenges in the health, education and social services sectors. But less than two weeks remain to enter the contest, where individuals, teams, universities and companies from around the world can all compete for £1m in prize money.

The Robotics for Good Awards follow the UAE’s successful 2014 Drones for Good competition and were launched earlier this year by the Crown Prince of Dubai, Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who is also chairman of the Dubai Executive Council.

“The UAE’s journey in innovation is gaining a national momentum every day,” he said. “We are confident of our abilities and the vision of our leaders to achieving a leading position in the world in the field of innovation. Our goal is to harness science and technology to promote a better life for the people and enhance happiness in the communities.”

Mohammed Abdullah Al Gergawi, Minister of Cabinet Affairs, and chairperson of the Organising Committee, added: “The award aims to honour the best application of robotics and artificial intelligence in the service of humanity with a focus on three key areas: Education, Health and Social Services.”

Al Gergawi said the competition will be managed by a committee comprising specialists in robotics and artificial intelligence technology to assess the ideas and projects.

“The competing robots must be compliant with safety standards, incorporate latest technologies, and characterized by high reliability while assuring value-added services.

“The participants will propose the type of services that these technologies will provide, for instance in helping people with disabilities, treatment of patients, encouraging children in education, as well as complex tasks such as fire-fighting, construction work and social care.”
The competition forms part of the UAE’s plans to make 2015 the Year of Innovation. The winners will be announced at a ceremony in February 2016, ahead of the fourth Government Summit in Dubai.

More information can be found at www.roboticsforgood.ae
The deadline for entry is 31 October 2015

ICRA 2015 Organising Committee

Ada Lovelace was the world’s first computer programmer, and heralded symbolic logic by demonstrating future applications for the universal computing machine that Charles Babbage proposed. She was exceptional in her era for her mathematical brilliance, but though she imagined future applications for a multitude of technological innovations, women at that time were not encouraged to speak about or publish their work, so Lovelace’s genius was appended as ‘notes’ onto the work of others and not seen as a major contribution in its own right.

The fact that the contributions of women such as Lovelace have not been celebrated until recently gives us cause to remedy the situation. Now in its third year, our list of ‘25 Women in Robotics You Need to Know About’ is both a shoutout and a call to look at what all these women in robotics have achieved! 

This has been a year of extremes for women in robotics. We celebrated the news of a phenomenal ICRA — one of the premier academic robotics events worldwide, and this year brought to us by an all-female organising committee. But we also despaired that IROS, equally esteemed in academic circles, featured not a single woman delivering a keynote, plenary, or participating in many of the key discussions, such as the futurist forum or the citizen forum. The DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) Finals 2015 were similarly lacking; of the 444 robot builders representing 24 robot entrants, only 23 builders were women (though some of the most successful teams at the DRC had female team members). Given how multidisciplinary the field is, and how many different skills are required, we need to celebrate women who are achieving greatness in robotics until we are seeing more parity.

This list showcases women in a wide range of roles and career stages, from the early stage entrepreneur/academic to those who are at their peak. We’ve also featured women working in a wide range of fields: women who are inspiring young Africans, trailblazing the field of surgical robotics, and helping us beautify ourselves using technology.

The honourees on our list of 25 Women in Robotics You Need to Know About – 2015 have been chosen for the resilience, perseverance and sheer brilliance they had to demonstrate to get to the top of their particular tree. Whatever your field, we hope that you find a woman doing great things in robotics to inspire you!

Many thanks to Robohub’s contributors for all their great suggestions. Here are 25 women in robotics you should know about (in alphabetical order) for 2015:

Nancy Amato Professor at Texas A&M Nancy Amato is noted for her research on the algorithmic foundations of motion planning, computational biology, computational geometry and parallel computing, as well as her leadership in broadening participation in the industry. Her 1998 paper on probabilistic roadmap methods is one of the most important papers on this field. Among other awards, she was made an IEEE Fellow in 2010. She has been  a member of the Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research since 2000. She was also the Program Chair at ICRA this year.

Spring Berman Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Arizona State University Spring Berman is developing a system that would allow swarms of robotic machines to perform reliably in situations where there is little prior data about the environment they are operating in, and where GPS and radio communication are limited and unreliable. She is the recipient of the 2014 DARPA Young Faculty Award and the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship.

Kate Darling Research Specialist at MIT Media Lab Mistress of machines, robot ethics and intellectual property, Kate Darling is a Fellow at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet & Society and an Affiliate at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. She writes for Robohub and IEEE and is passionate about the near-term societal impact of robotic technology, rethinking copyright, and patent law.

Fei-Fei Li Director, Artificial Intelligence Lab and Vision Lab, Stanford University (SAIL) Fei-Fei Li is working to solve some of AI’s trickiest problems: image recognition, learning and language processing. Her work at SAIL has helped to create software capable of recognizing scenes in still photographs — and accurately describe them using natural language. It marks a significant step forward for AI research, and could lead to applications ranging from more intuitive image searches to robots able to make autonomous decisions in unfamiliar situations.

Propa Ghosh Medical Director of Robotic Surgical Services at Hunterdon Medical Center Propa Ghosh is the first female medical director of robotic surgery in the USA. She is an ambitious, forward-thinking physician with the ability to combine surgical expertise, compassionate 360 degree care, strong business acumen, and organizational skills to help develop and foster initiatives from the ground up. She is committed to excellence in medicine through the propagation of advanced surgical techniques, staying at the frontier of skill and knowledge.

Cecile Huet Project Officer at European Commission Cécile Huet is Deputy Head of the Robotics Unit at the European Commission and instrumental to the success of the new wave of robotics projects funded under the multi-billion dollar Horizon 2020 funding programme. Her focus is on robots that can help people and drive applications forward.

Ayorkor Korsah Assistant Computer Science Professor at Ashesi University College | Co-founder of the African Robotics Network Growing up in Nigeria and Ghana, Ayorko Korsah has been a technology evangelist for as long as she can remember. In the US, she discovered her love for computer science and ultimately gained a PhD in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence from Carnegie Mellon University. Korsah co-founded the African Robotics Network (AFRON) in Ghana in April 2012. Ayorkor teaches robotics and computer science at Ashesi University College, and   coordinates the Ashesi Innovation Experience, a summer enrichment program that engages high school students in leadership, design, robotics and more.

Danica Kragic Professor, Computer Science, Vice Dean, School of Computer Science and Communication, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) Danica Kragic studies how robots interact with each other, how they sense things, and how they see and grasp objects. One of her goals is to build future systems that interact with humans and their surroundings in a natural way. A specialist in computer vision and robotics, Kragic coordinates several EU-projects in the area. She is director of the Center for Autonomous Systems and head of the Computer Vision and Active Perception Lab at KTH. She is also recipient of the European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant and the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Early Academic Career Award. She is a member of The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and Young Academy of Sweden.

Kavita Krishnaswamy Ph.D. Candidate at University of Maryland Baltimore County Born in Tamil Nadu, India, and raised in Columbia, MD, Kavita Krishnaswamy is both a Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellow and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. She has worked at the National Science Foundation’s Engineering Research Center – Quality of Life – Technology Center (QoLT) at Carnegie Mellon, the University of Pittsburgh and IBM Business consulting services. As a professional researcher with a severe physical disability, Krishnaswamy is motivated by a powerful, innate force: achieving autonomy and independent daily living through the advancement of technology. She develops robotic systems to provide assistance and increase independence for people with disabilities, to support transferring, repositioning, and personal care, with a focus on accessible user interfaces.

Hanna Kurniawati Lecturer at University of Queensland Hanna Kurniawati’s research interests include robotics, motion planning, planning under uncertainty, computational geometry applications, machine learning, and randomized algorithm. Before joining UQ, she worked with Nicholas M. Patrikalakis as a Research Scientist at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology. Recently she helped to create the Interactive-Ball (I-Ball) — a robotic soccer ball to improve social ball game participation for people with visual impairment that uses motion sensors, high-efficiency speakers and a small UQ-developed controller that can be programmed to suit the player.

Stéphanie Lacour Assistant professor at the School of Engineering, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) Stéphanie Lacour’s has pioneered the development of semiconductor devices that can stretch and still retain their electronic properties. Her goal is the fabrication of artificial skin — human-sized integrated circuits that can conform to a robotic or human body and communicate directly with the nervous system. Her research interests lie at the intersection of engineering, materials science and biotechnology. Lacour holds the Bertarelli Foundation Chair in Neuroprosthetic Technology at the School of Engineering at EPFL. A MIT TR35 winner in 2006, she also claims a University Research Fellowship from the Royal Society (UK), a European Research Council ERC Starting Grant, the 2011 Zonta award and the 2014 World Economic Forum Young Scientist award.

Cecilia Laschi Professor at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Italy Cecilia Laschi’s research interests are in the field of biorobotics and she is currently working on soft robotics, humanoid robotics and neurodevelopmental engineering. She has been, and currently is involved in many National and EU-funded projects, she was the coordinator of the ICT-FET OCTOPUS Integrating Project, leading to one of the first soft robots, and the European Coordination Action on Soft Robotics, RoboSoft. She is a member of the IEEE, of the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, and of the Robotics & Automation Society, where she served as elected AdCom member, and is Co-Chair of the TC on Soft Robotics.

Hagar Marzouk Engineering student at Nile University Hagar Marzouk is leader of the “Walross” team in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and first female leader of a team in the Egyptian underwater competition, ROV, 2014. She took her team to first place in Minesweepers 2014, both at the national and international competitions.

Barbara Mazzolai Deputy Director at Center IIT Barbara Mazzolai is the recipient of the 2010 “Marisa Bellisario” Award for her scientific and management activities in the EU DustBot project for improving the urban hygiene and the quality of life of citizens. In 2013 she was also awarded the Medal of the Senate of the Italian Republic for her scientific activities in biomimetics and biorobotics. Her current scientific activity focuses on bio-inspired soft robotics. She has project managed many European projects, including PLANTOID, and is Associate Editor of Micro-Bio Robotics, Frontiers in Bionics and Biomimetics and a member of the Editorial Board of Soft Robotics and Applied Bionics and Biomechanics. She is also a member of the IEEE, the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society and the Robotics and Automation Society.

AJung Moon PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia. AJung Moon is a Vanier Scholar and studies human-robot interaction and robot ethics. Currently she is a visiting student at the Learning Algorithms and Systems Laboratory (LASA) at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). She is a co-founder of the Open Roboethics initiative, an international roboethics think tank that investigates ways in which stakeholders of robotics technologies can work together to influence how robots should shape our future.

Yuki Nakagawa Founder and CEO at RT Corporation Fascinated by robots as a young child, Yuki Nakagawa has been involved in Japanese humanoid and home robotics for almost her entire career. Her life’s mission is to improve and enhance people’s quality of life through the use of robot technologies. Nakagawa’s company developed RIC90, which can wear an “animal suit” to achieve physical contact with people and can change forms. To date, RIC90 has hugged 3000 or more people and shared smiles all over the world. The company believes in the mantra: “No Physical Contact, No Service Robot” and wants to provide intelligence and sophisticated behaviour/motion animal-like robots that can work in close proximity to human beings.

Samantha Payne Co Founder at OpenBionics | Digital Marketer | Journalist Samantha Payne is co-Founder of Open Bionics, an award-winning startup developing low-cost effective and good looking bionic hands for amputees or those born without a hand. The company is now part of the Disney Accelerator, powered by Techstars. Payne, recently shortlisted for the ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’ at the Women and Business awards, focuses on building Open Bionics’ public profile, business model, network, and raising rounds. Open Bionics has won multiple awards for innovation, most recently the prestigious James Dyson Award and the RBA50.

Angelika Peer Professor at Bristol Robotics Lab Angelika Peer’s research interests are in human-robot interaction (HRI) with special focus on telepresence and teleaction systems, brain and body computer interfaces, physical/haptic HRI and human motor control. Her research combines methods originating from control, robotics, mechatronics, computer science, neuroscience, and psychology. She has won numerous awards and is chair of the RAS Technical Committee on Telerobotics, a Member of the RAS Technical Committee on Haptics, Secretary of the Eurohaptics Society, and a member of the program committee of several international conferences in the fields of robotics, HRI and multimodal human-system interaction.

Louise Poubel Software Engineer at Open Source Robotics Foundation When Louise Poubel was a little girl, she had as much access to computers as her brother, but her father refused to give her a remote-control car even though he gave her brother one. Now she is convinced that we should “give the girls the toys” — it’s important to let kids know it’s ok for them to pursue anything they like. Poubel, who grew up in Brazil, got her engineering degree in Japan and masters degrees in Poland and France; she is a truly global citizen. She now works on the robotics simulator Gazebo, a graphical user interface (GUI), at the Open Source Robotics Foundation, with the aim of knocking down complexity and price — barriers that she believes stand between robots and people.

Wendy Roberts CEO at future Skies | CEO at Five Elements In 2001, Wendy Roberts founded Future Skies, which primarily develops software for the US Department of Defense. In 2012, she created Five Elements Robotics to help further US personal robotics design and manufacturing. The company’s Budgee, a friendly robot that follows you around and carries your stuff, won two Gold Stevie Awards in 2015: Technical Innovation of the Year at the American Business Awards, and New Product Award for Consumer Electronics. Roberts is currently CEO for both Future Skies and Five Elements Robotics. Five Elements is the only commercial US firm manufacturing personal service robots domestically. Based on her work with the military, Roberts has made it part of Five Elements’ mission to serve the disabled and the aging.

Noriko Takiguchi Journalist and author Noriko Takiguchi covers the business and technology of robotics for various newspapers and magazines in Japan, including Newsweek Japan, Diamond Online, Nikkei BP, Toyo Keizai, Newspicks, President magazine, Harvard Business Review Japanese version and AXIS. Her most recent book on the culture of Silicon Valley — Why is Garbage Not Sorted in Silicon Valley? (President,Inc., 2008) — is a collection of her weekly columns on the Nikkei BP website. She has also translated into Japanese books such as Bringing Design to Software and Engineer Imagines. Watch for her at robotics conferences and trade shows around the world.

Pree Walia CEO & Co-Founder at Preemadonna Entrepreneur, risk-taker, beauty junkie, and business school graduate, Pree Walia has combined a political career with leading teams at early stage hardware startups, most recently starting her own venture at the intersection of beauty and tech. Walia is co inventor of the Nailbot — a nail decorating robot that lets you paint custom designs on your fingernails — and winner of the 2015 Robot Launch international startup competition. She supports causes that empower women and young girls.

Jing Xiao Professor at University of North Carolina at Charlotte Jing Xiao’s research spans robotics, haptics, and intelligent systems. She is Site Director of the US National Science Foundation Industry/University Cooperative Research Center on Robots and Sensors for Human Wellbeing. She has over 130 publications in major robotics conferences, journals and books, and holds one patent. She is an IEEE Fellow and has been elected twice as an AdCom Member of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society.

Yao Zhang Founder and CEO at Roboterra Yao Zhang’s company, Roboterra, makes tool kits that allow students to tap their imagination and creativity to design and build their own robots. Zhang earned her Ph.D. in Education Economics at Columbia University before working for McKinsey and Co. and the Soros Foundation. She has been working in the fields of education and technology for more than a decade, and won a “Best 10 Global Citizen Service Award” from the US State Department in recognition of her outstanding work in educational innovation.

ICRA 2015 Organising Committee – In 2015, the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) — one of the world’s largest robotics conferences — had an organising committee made up entirely of women. In order to broaden the field, early career women who may be less well-known outside of their specialties were selected to serve alongside senior women on the 2015 committee. This showed that there are women experienced in every aspect of conference organisation that could be part of future committees. ICRA may well have set a precedent; leading annual Computer Vision event, CVPR, is planning to follow suit next year with a female only committee.

Then and now

The celebration wouldn’t be complete if we did not share some of the recent achievements by women from our 2013 and 2014 honour rolls:

• Cynthia Breazeal has since launched Jibo with a massively successful crowdfunding campaign
• Helen Greiner has launched and successfully crowdfunded the LVL 1 Drone and keynoted at ICRA 2015
• Radhika Nagpal was named in 2014 among Nature’s 10 (scientists and engineers who made a difference).
• Lynn Parker chaired ICRA 2015 and was appointed as Division Director for the Information and Intelligent Systems (IIS) Division in the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Directorate at the National Science Foundation (since January 2015).
• Melonee Wise launched Fetch Robotics
• Ekaterina Bereziy’s ExoAtlet started clinical trials.
• Ayanna Howard  launched Zyrobotics and was a finalist in Robot Launch

Know of any great women in robotics who should be on this list next year? Check the lists from our previous years (2013 and 2014), and feel free to leave your nominations in the comments section below, or email us at info [at] robohub.org.

If you liked this article, you may also be interested in:

• 25 women in robotics you need to know about (2013)
• 25 women in robotics you need to know about (2014)
• Five women robotics experts from Silicon Valley share their stories
• Steffi Paepcke on Robots, women and design: Opportunities abound

See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

The IIIM’s new ethics policy has been unanimously agreed by its staff and Board of Directors and came into force at the end of last month. It aims for the peaceful use of artificial intelligence and draws a firm line against collaboration with any organisation “even partially funded by military means within the last five years.”

“It is only fitting that a research centre in Iceland should field such a policy – a nation without a standing army and virtually no history of war in its 1100 years”, said Kristinn R. Thórisson, IIIM’s Managing Director.

“Like any other technology, AI can be abused at everyone’s expense, escalating the dangers associated with tensions between groups, governments, and nations. Researchers stand at the threshold of new technology; they should actively participate by preventing the abuse of knowledge they produce. This is, in essence, what we are doing with our new policy.”

It’s clear that the non-profit IIIM has launched its policy not only to publicise its anti-military stance, but also to mobilise other researchers and R&D centres to take similar action.

At least 87 countries are now known to use military robotics of some sort and the IIIM’s Ethics Policy joins a growing opposition to what is seen by many as an inevitable development.

Many experts and various pressure groups, including the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, adamantly and publicly oppose autonomous weapons.

Last May, a meeting was organised at the UN to assess the ethical and sociological questions that arise from their development and deployment, as well as the adequacy and challenges to international law.

In July, the Future of Life Institute released an open document calling for a ban on autonomous weapons. Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak were among the prominent names on the list of those opposed.

There are, as yet, no agreements or even proposals to ban autonomous weapons, but discussions in the UN are ongoing.

Whether or not others will follow the IIIM’s lead remains to be seen but the institute has undoubtedly made a brave decision in rejecting the billions of dollars of contracts thrown at the military weapons industries.

The moral, ethical and legal arguments against weapons that can make decisions about who to kill will rubble on. But the exponential pace of change in robotics and AI calls for safeguards and controls to be put in place before the technology reaches fruition, so IIIM’s decision is surely a step in the right direction.

For more information about the IIIM visit http://iiim.is or email info@iiim.is.

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in:

• Clearpath’s public stance on Killer Robots sets precedence in corporate responsibility
• Robots Podcast: Autonomous lethal weapons
• Ron Arkin and Noel Sharkey debate lethal autonomous weapons at UN
•  Robots Podcast: Robot ethics (Part 1), with Noel Sharkey
•  Robots Podcast: Robot ethics (Part 2), with Ron Arkin
•  Robotics needs to get political
•  Robo-Wars: The regulation of robotic weapons

“Participatory design with the people and organisations who will be using the technology is critical to the way we are developing robots to support older adults in the future,” said Dr Praminda Caleb-Solly who is leading the new Bristol Robotic Laboratory (BRL) project. “All of our work is centred on a deep understanding of the needs of people so that we shape the technology to respond appropriately.”

The new space, on the site of the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol) campus, has been designed to resemble a typical single level home comprising an open-plan living, dining and kitchen area and a bathroom and bedroom.

It’s fitted with a network of wireless sensors linked to a Smart Home Controller Hub, wi-fi cameras and an ADSL connection. The team are using the sensor data to detect patterns of activity in the house to build adaptable algorithms that can be adapted to each person’s lifestyle to support independent living.

Sensor data is sent to a Cloud server and also processed locally, enabling a robot to react if something untoward happens, such as an elderly person not eating when they need to before taking medication.

Perhaps most importantly, the apartment comes with a telepresence robot that enables remote monitoring and an alert can also be sent to a carer who can then try and contact the person, via phone or text message. If there is no response from the person then the carer could activate the telepresence robot and see if there is a problem.

“If the person has had a fall or a heart attack for example appropriate emergency assistance can be deployed immediately and if they are able to, they can be reassured by the carer remotely while help arrives,” explains Caleb-Solly. “This technology could avoid expensive triggering of emergency services when they are not needed but also ensures that they are deployed faster if necessary.”

Elderly people have been recruited to help the lab scientists assess their work and the facility has been sponsored by The Anchor Society which supports elderly, frail and isolated people in Bristol. How do older people respond to an automated machine asking them if they want to play a game? What happens when Molly, the robot carer, talks to someone who has dementia? These are vital questions, and the new lab hopes that asking them in a real-life situation will improve their work.

Other European robot living labs

Robot populated living labs are springing up around Europe. The UK’s University of Hertfordshire even boasts a robot house, an ordinary semi with some extraordinary inhabitants.

Bought by University robotics professor Kerstin Dautenhahn 10 years ago in order to observe how ordinary people get along with machines in everyday life, the house is home to two prototype “care robots” – Care-O-Bot and Sunflower.

”When we first started investigating robots as home companions we had a proper lab, but we realised people felt very uncomfortable,” Prof Dautenhahn told the BBC. “They felt observed and studied… so, we moved into a more realistic environment where people feel more at home.”

The university also uses the environment to research robots such as Kasper, designed to interact with children with special needs.

But “Living Lab’s” are not a new concept. One of the first such facilities was Georgia Tech’s “Aware Home”, which dates back to 2008  This provided a testing environment for  care bots EL-E and PR2.

Particularly where they need to have contact with elderly users in their home environment which may be complex, unstructured and difficult for robots to navigate, living labs are proving a prerequisite.

European funded projects

The European Commission is funding a number of research, innovation and development activities for service robotics in assisted living environments:

GrowMeUp project: development of a self-training robot. Having begun in February 2015, this project seeks to develop a robot that is able to learn from older people’s routines and habits, enhancing and adapting its functionality so that it can compensate, for instance, for the gradual deterioration of cognitive ability. Trials with more than 60 elderly users are are planned by two end user organisations in the Netherlands and Portugal over the course of six months.

Accompany project: a robot companion for the elderly.
This project, now completed, developed a “social robot” using state of the art service platform Care-O-bot® 3 within a smart-home environment. Three interaction scenarios were developed and evaluated by elderly people and their carers in France, the Netherlands and the UK.
The project also drafted an ethical framework for care robotics stressing the autonomy of the user and their freedom to make their own choices.

Robot-Era project: integrating robotic services in an intelligent environment.
Robots to support independent living work in real life conditions with elderly people (and other robots) in Italy and Sweden. Trialled services include: taking the elderly person out shopping or to the pharmacy, reminding them to take their medicine, taking out the rubbish, monitoring their safety by alerting them if the front door is open or if there is a gas leak.

DOMEO project: the Kompaï robot
DOMEO, which finished in 2012, claims to be the first project to bring assistant robots into real homes with real people during the course of a year. The aim was to enable people to live at home for as long as possible thanks to the system’s internet access and dedicated applications.
Kompaï was developed by the French company Robosoft and tested by potential users there. It’s has now been absorbed by the recently launched Mario project, which aims to help those with dementia through the use of service robots.

The Jaeger-Lipson coffee balloon gripper. Its soft end effector adapts itself to the object it grasps. Source: John Amend

Soft robots are versatile, often much safer, more energy-efficient, robust and resilient than their more rigid counterparts. But one of the biggest challenges facing soft robotics is control – often, classical approaches don’t apply. The answer may lie in morphological computation, an idea that stems from biological systems using their bodies to control basic actions.

Industrial Networking and Engagement Day on Soft Technologies

Explore the possibilities of soft technologies and soft robotics in your field!

October 8, 2015
Bristol, UK

Novel designs in soft robotics reference simplicity as well as versatility. The Jaeger-Lipson coffee-balloon gripper is one example. Essentially a balloon, it’s filled with ground coffee and can be either soft or hard depending on the air pressure within it. It can grasp objects using a simple one-dimensional control variable (switching the vacuum on or off). By exploiting its soft morphology, the end effector adapts itself to the object without the need for any explicit modelling or control.

Morphological computation proposes that at least some aspects of control (such as walking or grasping) can be outsourced to the body as these functions are already “encoded” within it. Another way to see it is that the body can be exploited as a computational resource. This makes a task much easier, since part of the “work” will already have been done by the body, reducing the complexity of the robot’s computational problems and the corresponding control and learning tasks.

The soft body of the octopus has potential as a computational resource.

So what kind of computation can we carry out in the physical bodies of robots? Biological systems have to take sensory information and interpret or transform it into sensible actuation signals. The computational process is a dynamic mapping of continuous input streams onto output streams, with a feedback loop through the environment. This could be, for example, a nonlinear controller that is implemented in the morphology to stabilize running – a controller is nothing other than a dynamical system, after all. In the case of morphological computation, this system is simply part of the body instead of an algorithm in some external, digital computational unit.

Fundamentally different from digital computing processes, morphological computation is not based on a Turing machine with discrete steps and finite time; it takes place in the continuous, analogue realm and is carried out directly in the body.

It can also be broadened out beyond the shape and form of body parts, into parameters that describe its dynamics, such as stiffness, friction, or damping. The dynamic parameters of the environment also shape the type of computation. For example, a compliant leg interacts with the ground (when it impacts), and a soft hand deforms by grasping an object.

Some background

Asimo has rigid body parts. While it is an ingenious piece of hardware, its body is not useful for morphological computation.

Recent studies in morphological computation [1][2] suggest that a computationally powerful body needs to exhibit highly complex dynamics (i.e. high-dimensional state space, nonlinearities and under-actuation). But in most classical robot designs, such as the Asmio robot and many industrial robots, these properties are deliberately suppressed as complex dynamics can interfere with modelling and control.

The concept of morphological computation has been widely used in robotics for some time now. Some nice examples are listed by Pfeifer and Bongard in their influential book “How the body shapes the way we think” [3].

Many of these robots were built using a combination of bio-inspiration, intuition, and clever engineering. Until recently, there were no clear guidelines for their design.

To fill this gap, we developed two theoretical, mathematical models [1],[2] that attempt to describe how bodies can be exploited as computational resources. In order to provide a descriptive generic model, we used networks of simple mass-spring damper systems – a good approximation for biological, but also soft, robotic bodies.

Caption: (a) The Cornell passive dynamic walker (Collins et al., 2001); (b) Wanda by Ziegler et al., 2006; (c) Puppy and (d) Stumpy by Fumiya Iida (Source: Iida and Pfeifer, 2004)

The underlying idea is to use morphology as a computational resource to emulate complex behaviours. The range of possible computation is impressive. Theoretically, there are almost no limits.

We were able to show that physical bodies can be used to emulate complex nonlinear differential equations (e.g. nonlinear controllers). We demonstrated setups to emulate nonlinear limit cycles that are highly robust and are even able to generalize beyond their learned data sets. Such limit cycles can be used to produce a control signal for locomotion. We were even able to demonstrate the use of the body as a switch between different limit cycles (behaviours) based on physical inputs (forces applied to the system) that could come from the environment. The implications are that the body can also serve as a type of sensor, enabling the robot to sense change through its soft body and react appropriately.

One possible application could be a robot that is able to “feel” the weight on its body, enabling it to adapt its locomotion by producing (computing) different limit cycles accordingly.

A robot that is able to “feel” the weight on its body and react appropriately by producing different limit cycles depending on the situation. Source: Hauser, H and Füchslin. RM and Nakajima, K. [4]

Building real robots

Theoretical results aside, a number of real-world platforms have exploited soft complex bodies as a computational resource. For example, in the EU project OCTOPUS we showed that a passive silicone arm (inspired by the octopus) can be used to carry out complex computational tasks [5 and 6].

Caption: (a) Passive soft silicone arm from [6]; (b) modular pneumatically driven robot arm, by TUM; (c) Kitty, a robot with compliant spine [7] (d) NASA’s superball robot [8]

We built a quadruped robot with compliant spine that we used as a computational resource to control its locomotion [7]. We also demonstrated, in a more industrial setting, that a modular, pneumatically-driven robot arm (developed at TU Munich by Martin Eder) can be exploited via morphological computation [paper close to submission]. Another example is NASA’s tensegrity robot “SuperBallBot,” with applications in exo-planetary exploration [8].

Implications and outlook

Morphological computation provides us with a new viewpoint: instead of perceiving their complex dynamics as a problem, we can instead embrace and exploit this hidden superpower of soft bodies. There are some interesting implications:

• Soft robots can exploit their bodies for computational tasks that can make them more robust, faster (they respond in real time) and, potentially, more energy efficient than their hard counterparts, as they work with rather than against their body dynamics.
• The addition of smart materials enables body parts to take over not only actuation, but also the task of sensing the environment and processing this information. This may even extend to situations where parts of the robot break down, resulting in highly resilient, adaptive and intelligent machines.
• A morphological computation approach will allow us to design robots that can easily switch from one behaviour to another. For example: from a stable limit cycle (during locomotion) to an exponentially stable equilibrium point (for a reaching task), e.g. [10].
• The concept can be applied to a range of intelligent structures. For example: smart furniture that adapts to the movement of its user, haptic interfaces and wearable soft devices for rehabilitation or teaching novel movements (e.g. a new sport). Even smart architecture that reacts to environmental changes.
• In the future, self-assembling systems could also exploit morphological computation. Since the morphology defines the function/computation, by changing the morphology, we can “reprogram” the machine.

Because of their complex dynamics, soft robots potentially have a more computationally powerful body than rigid robots. Morphological computation turns the complexity, which has been perceived as a disadvantage in robotics, into a powerful benefit. Looking at the work done so far, we believe there is great potential for other applications and novel ideas and we are looking forward to the future.

Want to learn more about soft robotics? Come to the  Industrial Networking and Engagement Day on Soft Technologies on October 8, 2015 in Bristol, UK. This is event is geared toward people from the private sector who want to explore the possibilities of soft technologies and soft robotics in their field.

If you liked this article, you may also be interested in Helmut Hauser’s presentation on Morphological Computation at the ShanghAI Lectures 2013. You may also enjoy:

• Soft robotics for adaptive building facades
• Two new soft robotics competitions announced by Soft Robotics Toolkit
• Robots Podcast: Soft Robotics Toolkit, with Donal Holland
• Robot Startup Series #7: Interview with Soft Robotics’ Carl Vause
•  Soft robotics in space

References

[1] Hauser, H.; Ijspeert, A.; Füchslin, R.; Pfeifer, R. & Maass, W. “Towards a theoretical foundation for morphological computation with compliant bodies” Biological Cybernetics, Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, 2011, 105, 355-370 http://www.springerlink.com/content/j236312507300638/

[2] Hauser, H.; Ijspeert, A.; Füchslin, R.; Pfeifer, R. & Maass, W. “The role of feedback in morphological computation with compliant bodies” Biological Cybernetics, Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, 2012, 106, 595-613 http://www.springerlink.com/content/d54t39qh28561271/

[3] Pfeifer, R. and Bongard J. “How the body shapes the way we think: a new view of intelligence” MIT press, 2006.

[4] Hauser, H and Füchslin. R.M. and Nakajima, K. “Morphological Computation – The Physical Body as Computational Resource” in e-book on “Opinions and Outlooks on Morphological Computation”, Chapter 20,
ISBN 978-3-033-04515-6, 2014, – http://tinyurl.com/pjvey43

[5] Nakajima K.; Li T.; Hauser H.; and Pfeifer R. “Exploiting short-term memory in soft body dynamics as a computational resource” Journal Royal Society Interface, 6 November, 2014, vol. 11, no. 100, 20140437 – DOI: 10.1098/ rsif.2014.0437 http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/11/100/20140437.short

[6] Nakajima, Kohei, Helmut Hauser, Tao Li, and Rolf Pfeifer. “Information processing via physical soft body” Scientific Reports 5 (2015) Article number: 10487, doi:10.1038/srep10487 http://www.nature.com/srep/2015/150527/srep10487/full/srep10487.html

[7] Q. Zhao, K. Nakajima, H. Sumioka, H. Hauser, and R. Pfeifer “Spine Dynamics as a Computational Resource in Spine-Driven Quadruped Locomotion”  IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2013), 1445 – 1451, 2013

[8] Caluwaerts, Ken, et al. “Design and control of compliant tensegrity robots through simulation and hardware validation.” Journal of The Royal Society Interface 11.98 (2014): 20140520 http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/11/98/20140520

[9] McEvoy, M. A., and N. Correll. “Materials that couple sensing, actuation, computation, and communication.” Science 347.6228 (2015): 1261689.

[10] “, F. Corucci, M. Calisti, H. Hauser, and C. Laschi “Novelty-based evolutionary design of underwater morphing robots” International Conference on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation (GECCO 2015) [accepted]

[11] Hermans, Michiel, et al. “Trainable hardware for dynamical computing using error backpropagation through physical media.” Nature Communications 6 (2015).

The MIT Technology Review’s annual list of 35 Innovators Under 35 aims to illustrate the most important emerging technologies of the moment. Released this August, the 2015 list features a number of robotics and AI visionaries. Check them out.

Lars Blackmore, Visionary, 34: SpaceX engineer, working on reusable rockets that could be flown back to Earth in reverse.

Yunji Chen, Inventor, 32: designing dedicated deep-learning processors, optimized “to compute the basic blocks of machine learning.”

Adam Coates, Visionary, 34: designing artificial intelligence for Chinese search company Baidu, to make the Internet more useful to millions.

Canan Dagdeviren, Inventor, 30: working on flexible sensors and batteries for a new class of medical device.

Travis Deyle, Inventor, 32: builder of robots that can be powered wirelessly. Now at Google X working on tech to improve health care.

You may remember our Robots Podcast interview with Travis about his research on Finding objects with RFID.

Rikky Muller, Entrepreneur, 34: designing the implantable hardware intended to interact directly with the brain and help treat mental disorders.

Jaime Shotton, Inventor, 34: computer visionary at Microsoft Research. Giving computers a new way to see the world.

Ilya Sutskever, Visionary, 29: pushing the frontiers of deep-learning for the Google Brain.

You may remember the Talking Machines Podcast interview with Ilya about Machine Learning and magical thinking.

Benjamin Tee, Inventor, 33: developing medical diagnostic and treatment technologies using a synthetic sense of touch.

Conor Walsh, Inventor, 33: working on robots that are soft, lightweight, and flexible so people can wear them to enhance their abilities.

You may remember our Robots Podcast interview with Conor’s colleague Donal Holland about their Soft Robotics Toolkit.

Melonee Wise, Entrepreneur, 33: Fetch Robotics CEO wants affordable robots for the warehouse and beyond.

Check out our coverage of Melonee and Fetch Robotics on Robohub.

Credit: Illustration by Magoz; Color portraits by Matthew Hollister; black-and-white portraits by Ping Zhu. Source: MIT Technology Review.

Savioke Relay Dash delivery robot. Source: Savioke

Leading hotel operator the InterContinental Group is introducing delivery robots at its Crowne Plaza San Jose-Silicon Valley property. The robots, made by local startup Savioke, will deliver snacks, toothbrushes and other amenities to guests in their rooms.

The success of the new service, announced by the hotel group on Monday, will determine whether robot delivery will be introduced in other Crowne Plaza branded properties. The brand has almost 400 hotels in 65 locations.

Named Dash, the Crowne Plaza’s new autonomous service has been created by Savioke, specialists in robot solutions for the hospitality industry. The system is based on the company’s latest autonomous service, Relay. Approximately 3-feet tall and weighing less than 100 pounds, Dash is designed to travel at a human walking pace, can independently navigate between floors and summon the hotel elevator using a wifi connection.

Savioke unveiled its first delivery robot, SaviOne, almost a year ago and announced a new pilot scheme at the Aloft Hotel in Cupertino, California, which became the first major hotel brand to hire a robot for both front and back of house duties.

Savioke’s new partnership with the InterContinental Group, will utilise the latest version of its autonomous delivery service featuring automatic docking, improved autonomy, and an all new design enabling Savioke to scale in response to demand.

“With more than 300 guest rooms, this is the largest hotel to use our robot technology,” said Steve Cousins, CEO of Savioke. “We’re excited to see the updated version of our Relay robot find a home at this Crowne Plaza hotel.”

With its location in Milpitas, in the very centre of Silicon Valley, it’s apt that the Crowne Plaza Hotel is showcasing some of the cutting edge talent that is so associated with this part of the world.

“Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, our hotel is making use of the best technology innovation that Silicon Valley has to offer,” said Crowne Plaza General Manager, Winnie Kwok.

Robothespian. Source: National Geographic

Narrator ‘RoboThespian’ (borrowing the voice of Simon Pegg), takes us on a whistle-stop tour of what’s going on in robotics labs around the world, where researchers are putting robots through their paces. We’re party to the successes as well as the failures of a menagerie of humanoids including CHIMP, ATLAS, PR2, Herb the Butler, iCub, and others.

Introducing them one by one, the film highlights how the vast majority of robots featured must focus on achieving just a single, specific task. This is intercut with footage showing just how nimble, adaptable and all-round amazing the human body is, and how robotics struggles to emulate this. Take Herb, for instance; the robot butler’s current level of success in clearing a table is remarkable only for its comedy value. Rollin’ Justin, developed by the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics in Germany, fares somewhat better with its 90 per cent success rate in catching balls. It’s notable that it has taken Honda more than 15 years of development to get ASIMO, dubbed “the world’s most advanced humanoid robot,” to the stage where it can perform multiple actions such as running, jumping and recognising voices.

Directed by Mike Slee and produced by Jini Dürr (both National Geographic documentary veterans) and enhanced with a dramatic soundtrack, Robots 3D provides a rare glimpse behind the scenes. What comes across with searing honesty is just how hard it is to recreate the most basic human actions such as walking, catching a ball and clearing up after dinner. So, while the movie tells us how we as a society might benefit from robots, we also see them failing the most simple of tasks.

Robonaut. Image: National Geographic

They’re impressive nonetheless and the film brings out some strangely likeable personalities. There were also a few robots I’d not yet encountered, including the highly dexterous Robonaut, used to help astronauts on board the International Space Station. It can handle the same tools as humans and perform tasks such as changing an air filter. And COMAN, a headless wonder with flexible joints that refuses to be knocked down.

We saw Robots 3D at London’s Science Museum, where it’s showing at the IMAX cinema. The kids in our party pronounced it “mind blowing” and “dead interesting” – surely the highest accolades for a movie that is just as much about how far the science of robotics still has to go as its recent progress.

NAO and iCub both scored highly in the cuteness stakes, but it was ASIMO that emerged as the kids’ overall favourite in the show.

The children also declared themselves impressed by HRP-2 (a bipedal bot that can crawl, as well as walk), Rollin’ Justin (of ball-catching fame), and CHIMP (for its ability to scan its local area using laser light and sending out pulses that bounce back). They were intrigued that some of the robots could upload information to the cloud for others to share.

The ATLAS rescue robot, designed by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for use in emergency situations, is also featured in the movie, as was footage of the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) trials. But, somewhat tellingly, despite DARPA’s efforts to stress their humanitarian applications, the kids wanted to see “a bit more of the military robots.” Perhaps ATLAS needs to take on some of iCub’s cuteness to dispel these kinds of conceptions.

In fact, the kids wanted to see more generally and weren’t satisfied by the 40 odd minute length of the film. They also wanted the robots to do more dancing and climbing.

However, as a vehicle for changing public perception towards robotics, Robots 3D is without doubt a great success. It’s a way for people to learn about humanoid robots from the scientists who make them, rather than from movies like iRobot and Terminator, where they’re portrayed as violent and terrifying.

At Robohub, we’re also proud of our own small contribution to the Robots 3D project, in providing some of the educational material to supplement the documentary.

Robots 3D is a refreshingly realistic take on the current state of humanoid robotics, without minimizing the great strides that have been made to date. But although the movie introduces viewers to some of the most incredible humanoid robots out there today, like any snapshot of a fast developing technology, this portrait won’t be state-of-the-art forever. So go out and see it while it’s fresh!

A quick, hassle-free way to stay on top of robotics news , our robotics digest is released on the first Monday of every month. Sign up to get it in your inbox.

DRC denouement

The robots may have been falling down, but DARPA left a brilliant PR legacy for robotics. Image source: DARPA.

Kicking off the month was the climax of the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) – possibly the most anticipated robotic contest ever. The competition to develop a mobile robot capable of operating in hazardous environments saw 25 finalists compete for $3.5M in prize money, with KAIST (the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) crowned as ultimate victors. Although we did see a lot of robots falling down and staring at locked doors, the contest was deemed a success in community building and public relations. Rethink Robotics’ Rodney Brooks came up with what has to be the quote of the contest: “Anyone who is worried about the robot apocalypse just needs to keep their doors closed.”

That’s somewhat reassuring considering the Moscow Times reported that Russia is building a humanoid combat robot, which it says will be able to run and complete an obstacle course by the end of this year.

In the end, though, are humanoids are finally leaving the lab and doing useful things? SRI’s ultra-efficient DURUS robot (which was demoed at the DRC), and recent major funding announcements for Fetch and the developer of the Pepper robot Softbank (see below) suggest that may soon be the case.

Asian dragons

Chairmen from SoftBank, Foxconn and Alibaba pose with Pepper during the announcement of .

In June, Fetch announced new funding of $20M from Japanese multinational SoftBank, as well as O’Reilly AlphaTech and Shasta Ventures. Then Softbank itself received funding injections from Foxconn and Alibaba, who each invested $118m, providing further evidence that Asian forces are gearing up to dominate the robotics industry. This builds on news from April that Russia’s Skolkovo Foundation and the Chinese Cybernaut Investment Group signed an agreement to create a joint Russian-Chinese business incubator, a robotics accelerator program, and an investment fund worth $200m — essentially to import Russian tech and know-how into Chinese production facilities.

Currently, Japan leads in industrial robots, with the US second, according to figures from the Robotic Industries Association. But by 2017, China will have more factory robots than any other country. For more facts and figures on the rise of industrial automation, take a look at the Wall Street Journal, which devoted a whole section to the topic last month.

Funding and IPOs for medical robotics

Transenterix’s SurgiBot system is presently awaiting FDA approval. They plan to use the $50M raised in their IPO to ramp up a sales force to market the new system.

Funding and IPOs for medical robotics this month: Corindus Vascular Robotics raised $42M, not to be outdone by surgical device maker Transenterix, which raised $50M from their IPO. The two join a growing list of publicly-traded robotic healthcare companies such as Accuray, Cyberdyne, Mazor Robotics, Hansen Medical, Stereotaxis, Intuitive Surgical, Titan Medical, Stryker and Johnson & Johnson.

Good news and bad for robots in space

There was jubilation at the European Space Agency when unmanned comet lander Philae made contact after seven months of hibernation, having finally recharged its batteries after a bumpy landing left it on its side where sunlight had a hard time reaching its solar panels. The mission is now set to resume.

But the challenges of space flight were once again thrown into sharp relief when an unmanned SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, bound for the International Space Station, exploded over the Atlantic, and a number of planned commercial operations were placed under threat.

European attitudes to robots

The Special Eurobarometer 427 on Autonomous Systems shows a slight decline in people’s attitudes towards robots since 2012, when the study was first conducted.

Back on the ground a major study reported that public perception of robots in the EU, while overall positive, is in decline. However, the study also showed that people’s exposure to robots is on the rise, and the more personal experience they have with robots, the more favourably they think of them.

Robocar news

This June the New York Times informed us that the future of transportation is already here and agricultural equipment manufacturer John Deere said nevermind Google’s small fleet of autonomous cars, it already has tens of thousands of self-driving tractors in service around the world.

Meanwhile Google appeared to be taking liability concerns head on by announcing it would release regular accident reports, while the head of its autonomous car programme, Chris Urmson, told the world in his TED talk that, statistically speaking, the least reliable part of the car is the driver. And keynoting at the Field and Service Robotics conference this month Urmson said his goal is to get the project on the road before his 12-year-old son needs to take a driving test.

Meanwhile, Chinese web services company, Baidu, announced a collaboration with BMW.

Research roundup

Controlling a mobile telepresence device through obstacles like doorways can be difficult when fine motor skills have been compromised, but this BCI device has shared control, making it far easier to navigate. (Photo: Alain Herzog, EPFL)

A shared-control BCI telepresence robot held out the promise of increased independence for those with mobility problems; robots learnt to push heavy objects with their bodies and a new algorithm helped a “Tailsitter” flying robot hover and recover easily.

Summer entertainment

Gemma Chan plays the synth Anita in Humans. Source: Channel 4

We were left unsettled but gripped by the new UK robot drama Humans, enlightened by 2015’s summer reading list, open-mouthed at the Yaskawa robot learning the art of the samurai, and fascinated by Andrew Whitehurst’s account of the visual effects in Ex Machina.

Robot Launch 2015

Last but by no means least came the good news that the deadline for applications for Robohub’s and Silicon Valley Robotics’ very own startup competition – Robot Launch 2015 – has been extended to 12 July 2015. With a prize pool of more than $50K, what are you waiting for?! Get those entries in!

Events this July

• International Conference on Computer Vision Systems (ICVS) – July 6-9 -Copenhagen, Denmark
• CIROS 2015 – July 8-9 – Shanghai, China
• 2015 Robotics: Science and Systems Conference – July 13-17 – Rome, Italy
• IEEE CIS and RAM Conference – July 15-17 – Angkor Wat, Siem Reap, Cambodia
• International Conference on Advanced Robots (ICAR) – July 27-31 – İstanbul, Turkey

Source: Special Eurobarometer 427 – Autonomous Systems

A major study into European attitudes toward automation has found that while almost two thirds of people polled feel generally positive about robots, public acceptance of them in the EU is in decline. This comes despite the finding that personal experience with robots is on the rise, and the more personal experience people have with robots, the more favourably they tend to think of them.

The study looks at ways in which public attitudes about robotics may have changed over the last two years. In the last quarter of 2014, the Special Eurobarometer polled some 27,801 people from the 28 Member States of the European Union to gauge public attitudes and acceptance in regard to robots and automation. While 64% of people interviewed in the recent poll have a positive view of robots, this is down from the 70% reported in the previous 2012 study. With the exception of Malta, where figures remain at 2012 levels, all countries experienced a decline in the proportion of respondents who have a positive view of robots.

Views about robots, by country. Source: Special Eurobarometer 427 – Autonomous Systems

Though the public continues to see robots as beneficial, regulation and jobs remain key issues 

While 85% agreed that robots are necessary to do dangerous or difficult jobs, this has declined 3% since 2012. Similarly, while 72% now think they are a good thing for society, 76% believed this to be the case in 2012.

A vast majority (89%) of respondents believe that robots are a form technology that requires careful management, similar to 2012 levels (91%). Likewise, 70% of respondents believe that robots steal people’s jobs – the same as in the previous study.

Source: Special Eurobarometer 427 – Autonomous Systems

Mixed feelings on workplace assistants

People’s attitudes are shifting on the acceptance of robots as workplace assistants. Since 2012 several countries have recorded a sizeable decline in the proportion of respondents who say they would feel comfortable using this technology at work, including Slovakia (61%, -19 pp.), Finland (55%, -11 pp.), Slovenia (52%, -8 pp.), Denmark (65%, -8 pp.) and the Czech Republic (63%, -8 pp.). However, noticeable increases were also recorded in Luxembourg (49%, +12 pp.), Austria (49%, +8 pp.) and Malta (42%, +5 pp.).

Greater acceptance of autonomous cars for transporting goods than for people

The study also looked at whether respondents would be willing to accept self-driving vehicles in the future. While only 35% of respondents reported that they would feel comfortable travelling in an autonomous car themselves, 42% were warm to the idea of having goods transported this way.

Comfort level (1-10) with travelling in an autonomous car. Source: Special Eurobarometer 427 – Autonomous Systems

Comfort level (1-10) with transporting goods in an autonomous car. Source: Special Eurobarometer 427 – Autonomous Systems

Drones seen as bad for privacy but good for delivery

While 66% of respondents are concerned that civil drones are a threat to privacy, a majority (57%) also believe that they are an efficient way of transporting and delivering goods.

Attitude to civilian drones. Source: Special Eurobarometer 427 – Autonomous Systems

Divided continent?

The study makes use of extensive comparisons: between European states, in terms of age, employment, income and internet use. Geographically, analysis shows that people polled in southern European countries tend to be more negative and less engaged with robotics than their northern counterparts. And certain social groups also emerge as more negative and less engaged: “house persons” (42%), retirees (37%), unemployed respondents (35%) and manual workers (29%).
Robot use is on the rise, and the more people know them the more they like them

One European in seven has now used a robot either at home, at work or elsewhere; up from one in eight in 2012. Overall, when looking at the total use of robots, 24 Member States recorded an increase in the level of use of robots since 2012, with the largest increases occurring in the Czech Republic (21%, +7 pp.), Luxembourg (17%, +7 pp.) and Italy (24%, +6 pp.). Only Germany (7%, -2 pp.) registered a fall in the level of use.

The research shows that the more exposure to robots you have, the more positively you feel about them ; 82% of respondents have a positive view of robots if they have experience with them, where as only 60% of respondents have a positive view if they lack robot experience.

And experience with robots maps to consumer interest, too: 29% of respondents say they would purchase a robot if they have used one already, but only 7% of respondents would do so if they have no experience.

Access the full report: Special Eurobarometer 427: Autonomous Systems

If you liked this article, you may also be interested in:

• Europeans attitudes towards robots 2012

• A crisis of expectations

• What does the UK public think about robots? Sciencewise wants to know

• Driven by care needs, will it be the booming senior population that spurs wider acceptance of robots?

See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Japanese robotics company Yaskawa Electric Corporation pitted one of the most skilled swordsmen in the world against one of their machines and the results are incredible.

The movements of Isao Machii, record-holding master of the Iaijyutsu sword style, were first recorded and analysed in 3D, via motion capture, and then mimicked exactly by the MOTOMAN-MH24 robotic arm.

In a video released by the robotics company, the sword-wielding robot can be seen slicing through flowers and fruit with ease and precision and then attempting to replicate Machii’s 1,000 cut challenge.

Although it’s powerful and agile, the robot doesn’t automatically adapt mid-swing. But while Machii is visibly spent after the 1,000 cut challenge, the robot is ready for more.

In this well crafted video, we only see a small glimpse of the tweaking that was needed for the robotic arm to perform all the tasks (2:53 on the video). Certainly, much more effort went into this than meets the eye.

You’ll need to watch the video to find out who won, but what we can tell you is that robot challengers facing up to feat masters, such Machii and tennis ace Timo Boll, are on the rise.

Gemma Chan plays the synth Anita in Humans. Source: Channel 4

There are two very good reasons to watch Humans, the new robot-themed drama series that premiered in the UK on Sunday. Firstly, it’s a well-made high-energy thriller with a pacy storyline, focusing on a domestic future not unlike the present –  only with robots. Secondly, it tackles the questions we should be asking about that future.

“Should we get one?” That’s the initial poser for the Hawkins family, who are living in a parallel present where the latest labour-saving gadget is a life-like humanoid. And, when they do, much to working Mum Laura’s (the IT Crowd’s Katherine Parkinson) dismay, things go predictably awry. Because the synth, as its called, turns out to have emotions.

And that’s not the only issue. Anita, the Hawkins’ synth (played artfully by Gemma Chan) is rather gorgeous, as stay-at-home dad Joe Hawkins (Tom Goodman-Hill) can’t help noticing. She has an altogether different effect on teenage daughter Mattie (Lucy Carless), who believes her generation are being supplanted by robots. It’s a theme that will be interesting to see unfold as the series progresses.

Humans, adapted by a team of Spooks writers from a Swedish TV drama, also has a number of other strands. Merlin star Colin Morgan is the leader of a band of renegade “emotional” synths and an aged George Millican (William Hurt) forms an attachment to his dysfunctional unit, Max (beautifully played by Ivanno Jeremiah).

It’s not difficult to see why Millican feels this way: the ailing Max is not only attuned to his owners comforts and preferences, but is also a receptacle for his memories, recalling the past even better than Millican is able to himself.

Conundrums of this nature are scattered throughout the drama, where robots are seen to perform all manner of jobs, from street cleaning to sex work, their status akin to immigrants or even slaves. It’s remarkably easy to feel sorry for their lot.

Humans has had an excellent reception, “electrifying” four million viewers and setting a new record for Channel 4 drama.

But UK broadsheet the Telegraph was less than impressed and accused the series of conceptual overload, which is perhaps a little short sighted.

Humans is not easy watching. It forces you to ask: what is emotion? Is it something we’re born with, or can it be learnt? And what about the darker emotions … are we still human without them?

These are just two of the questions we need to explore. If we don’t begin to consider them soon, ‘conceptually obsolete’ may be more appropriate than ‘conceptually overloaded’. That’s why Humans is a timely step in the right direction.

If you like this you may also be interested in:

• Ex Machina: When Turing meets Bechdel test
• Ability to self-repair isn’t the same as consciousness: Analyzing Automata from a tech standpoint
• Human-robot emotional and musical interactions: Lecture by Massimiliano Zecca
• Teaching robots to behave ethically
• While most robots are either geek or jock, CHAPPiE is a lesson in sexy

See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

S​elf-driving car keeping track of multiple moving objects at once, in this instance two cyclists, depicted as red rectangles. Source: Google.

Google has started publicly disclosing details of accidents involving its self-driving cars.

In the past weeks reports of incidents involving the company’s autonomous vehicles looked to be multiplying. Under Californian law, details of car accidents remain confidential. But, in its May Monthly Report, Google claims that its vehicles were not responsible for any of the 12 accidents they’ve been involved in since testing began in 2009.

Google released the first of what it says will be monthly reports last week. It summarises accident data and highlights from testing, and includes a synopsis of all 12 accidents. Most involved the autonomous vehicles being either rear-ended, sideswiped, or hit after another vehicle failed to follow basic traffic safety laws, such as stopping at a stop sign, according to Google.

The report also gives illustrations and examples of how the driverless cars, which average 10,000 autonomous miles per week on public streets, are able to adapt to traffic situations.

The reports are available to download on a dedicated website: www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/reports

Illustration: James Provost & Erik Vrielink. Source: Automaton Blog.

DARPA’s latest Challenge reaches its climax on 6 June 2015, when 25 finalists compete for $3.5m of prize money in what’s possibly the most anticipated robotic contest ever. Since its inception in 2012, the event has lost its top competitor and the challenge is now even tougher. Here’s what you need to know to enjoy the event, in one handy guide.

The purpose 

In the past three years, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has invested $96.6m in the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) – a hugely ambitious program to develop robots capable of assisting humans in responding to natural and man-made disasters.

The DRC was inspired by the Fukushima disaster, and the US Department of Defense identifies disaster response as a priority area. In DARPA’s most recent briefing in mid-May, Programme Manager Gill Pratt broadly described the contest’s aims: “We really want to develop better tools, better techniques, ways of amplifying the effectiveness of our response to both natural and to manmade disasters.”

“If we could only better intervene from a distance in places where it’s too dangerous for human life, that would significantly add to our capabilities to mitigate the extent of disasters. That’s the problem that we’re trying to solve.”

In a disaster, one of the most problematic elements is a degradation of communication, and Pratt stressed that this is the most important aspect of the competition: “When you think about the DARPA Robotics Challenge, try to think beyond the physical robots, and focus on this very sporadic, very degraded communication between people and machines working together as partners.”

Why humanoids?

CHIMP. Source: Carnegie Mellon

According to DARPA’s research with first-response experts, the key capability requirements point to a humanoid solution – the ability to go through doors, climb steep stairs, walk on rough terrain and to use the tools on hand – are all only really achievable by a humanoid robot.

So most of the robots have bipedal designs and are humanoid in appearance, with a couple of exceptions: Tartan Rescue‘s Chimp (CMU Highly Intelligent Mobile Platform), the long armed robot that finished third in the 2013 Trials, and NASA’s RoboSimian, which has four limbs for increased stability. There’s also Team NimbRo Rescue, which has a anthropomorphic upper body on a flexible hybrid mobile base.

Human-robot interfaces must be intuitive and simplicity of use is also a primary reason why so many of the teams use bipedal, human-like forms, including DARPA’s Atlas robot model.

The challenge

This will be the final challenge in a long process that started with a virtual event in 2013 and a physical trial run later that year. Through these two preliminary rounds of competition, DARPA and the DRC teams have redefined what is possible in robot power efficiency, supervised autonomy, physical adaptability and human-machine control interfaces.

The final challenge takes place in a simulated disaster zone. It will involve two attempts at eight tasks; seven of these will be derived from the challenges of the last round, and one surprise task will be introduced at the competition.

The robots will start in a vehicle, drive to a simulated disaster building, and then they’ll have to open doors, walk on rubble, and use tools. Finally they’ll have to climb a flight of stairs. The fastest team with the same amount of points for completing tasks will win.

The main issues teams will face are communications with their robot and battery life: “Even the best batteries are still roughly ten times less energy-dense than the kinds of fuels we all use to get around,” said Pratt.

What’s happened since the last phase?

The Programme has been extended and is now truly international. Half of the teams are from the US, but Japan, Korea and the EU have invested funds. Says Pratt: “It’s a really global challenge.” 

SCHAFT

The biggest change is, however, the withdrawal of Team SCHAFT, head-and-shoulders winners of the last phase of the challenge. SCHAFT, developed by a Japanese start-up, was acquired by Google in December. Their withdrawal last June underlines both Google’s claims that it has no interest in seeking funding from the military, and the US government’s need to not be seen as funding a major corporation.

The new emphasis on the communications aspect of the challenge means DARPA will be purposefully sabotaging the link between teams and their robots. During the Fukushima nuclear disaster, it was communication issues caused by heavy radiation shielding and power outages that proved most problematic for the robots tasked with entering the site. The DRC communication outages will last up to one minute to test how well these robots deal with similar situations.

The teams are provided with situation awareness to help them visualise what the robots are up to. A change in the rules forces teams to rely less upon the remote control of individual joints and motions and instead implement task-based interfaces that incorporate advanced perception, minimal human guidance, and complex autonomous behaviour.

DARPA has also decided that the robots will operate completely untethered. There won’t be cables to provide power and data, or keep the robots upright. In view of this, DARPA has swapped the ladders used in the last challenge for stairs, making it a little easier.

The Atlas robot, created by Bostron Dynamics and DARPA, was used by several teams in the DRC Trials. Source: DARPA

The ATLAS robot, used by the seven teams that are concentrating on software instead of hardware, has had an upgrade.The platform is manufactured by Boston Dynamics – another company recently acquired by Google.

Among the improvements to ATLAS is increased energy efficiency, with some teams now able to achieve several hours of functionality without the need for a recharge.

“We’ve provided these new robots with a very large, high-performance computer now, at least for the Atlas machines,” says Pratt. “But primarily what the robot is doing is perception, and I think that’s actually the hardest part of the job that it has. So it’s using the LiDAR sensors and the visual sensors that it has and it’s trying to decide what it is that it sees.”

DARPA is being fairly secretive about the specifics of the tasks the robots must perform: “We’ve been very purposefully not giving blueprints out to any of the teams to say this is exactly what the door handle will be like or what the valve will be like,” says Pratt. “I want to push the teams far away from trying to have scripted responses.”

The teams

There will be 25 teams competing in total, half of them from the United States. Japan, Korea and Germany are well represented with a total of 10 teams between them.

Out of the 25, a total of 14 new teams from seven different countries have been added, qualifying to participate in the DRC Finals. And 11 teams previously qualified during the DRC Trials.

Seven teams are using Atlas and the other teams have developed their own robots, which come in a variety of sizes and shapes.

Speaking about the differing capabilities of the teams, Pratt said: “We don’t know exactly what all the teams are bringing to bear, but I would expect tremendous diversity in the amount of autonomy that you’re going to see there. In addition, there’s also a variety of different user interfaces. The most primitive one just leaves it to the human being to use their brain to do the imagination of what is taking place on the other side. The best of them is actually gathering all of the data since the beginning of the run and putting together a statistical view of what the most likely scenario is at the other side.”

Team KAIST. Source: DARPA

Teams tipped for top spots include: KAIST, from South Korea and US challenger, Chimp.

What you can expect: 

The robots will compete simultaneously across four courses during hour-long runs throughout the two days.

At the DRC Trials held last December, the robots often moved excruciatingly slowly and depended upon the careful control of remote human operators. At the June final, the robots will be “at least four times faster than in the trials, and perhaps even faster,” says Pratt.

However, some would disagree, in The NY Times, John Markoff writes:

“Nobody needs to worry about a Terminator creating havoc anytime soon. Given a year and a half to improve their machines, the roboticists who shared details about their work in interviews before the contest in June appear to have made limited progress.”

However, in the December trials, organisers thought it unlikely that the winning team could score more than 15 points, but four teams exceeded that number and SCHAFT won a total of 27. So expect the unexpected!

In the trials, driving appeared to be a particular challenge, with only a few contenders even attempting it. In the DRC Finals, driving will be the first task that teams will have to tackle. “With the driving challenge coming first before anything else, we will see immediately who is serious about the competition,” says Andra Keay from Silicon Valley Robotics. “It’s a big fence first up.”

Adequate power will also present a problem. DARPA are not allowing any recharging of the robots during the event. In fact, Pratt warned reporters that the challenges in June will be even harder and told them that the “degradation of communications is a fundamental part.”

Artist’s concept of robots competing in the DARPA Robotics Challenge. Source: DARPA

The planned interruptions in communications will mean that, “a substantial fraction of the teams will have difficulties here.” Although, whenever the robots do have a network connection, they’ll have significantly more computing resources than were available in the last round.

The teams have had to move a lot of the low-level mobility and manipulation skills from the human operators to the machines; the robots will need enough autonomy and intelligence to do tasks in a fraction of a minute. “You should expect to see a lot of robots falling down, and a lot failures of different sorts,” said Pratt.

This is largely due to the planned communications failures and the lack of hoists or safety ropes. If a team becomes stuck and the robot can’t get up, they can elect to take a 10-minute penalty during which a simulation is made of what it would be like to send in a second robot in to continue the mission after the first one has got stuck. “The simulation of that will be done by the team retrieving the first robot, bringing it back to the starting line, and, if it’s still in working condition, starting it over with a 10-minute penalty,” said Pratt.

It seems the DRC finalists are currently still at task level rather than mission level.

“I want to be very realistic about what stage we’re in right now,” said Pratt. “These are prototypes that are meant to advance the technology and it might be 10 years from now until they’re out in the field. There’s a huge difference between science fact and science fiction. Robots in science fact are more modest because the technology isn’t anywhere near what science fiction would have us believe – but they’re also more exciting because they point the way to what may be possible in the future.”

Want to go, or just watch?

The event is free and open to the public, who will watch from the Fairplex grandstands in Pomona, California on 5 and 6 June; several thousand people are expected to attend. To complement the competition, an on-site robotics exhibition and technology demonstrations from around 70 different robotics and disaster response groups is planned. All kinds of robotics hardware and software companies will be exhibiting. To attend the event, you only need to register: http://www.theroboticschallenge.org/media.

The whole Finals event will be webcast in realtime HD on YouTube. The best time to watch will be towards the end of each competition day, as that’s when the finest of the machines will be directly competing with each other, each on their own course.

What happens afterwards

The closing ceremony on 6 June will be be followed by a workshop on 7 June. The three winning teams will present the strategies and techniques that they used to gain the top spots. This won’t be open to the public, but it will be webcast.

There will also be talks about the international efforts in the field, other competitions that are coming up in the future, the different investments that are being made in various countries. Experts will also discuss the future of the industry.

Part of the day will be given over to “Robots 4us” – a DARPA competition for high school students who were given the opportunity to produce a winning video on the role of robots in society in the years ahead.

DARPA sees the DRC as an opportunity to lay the technological foundations for more autonomous and capable robots in the commercial market. In fact, the success of the competition lies in part in the commercial investments in robotics that it inspires. To this end, DARPA and some of the teams plan to publish their experiences academically.

And Atlas? What of him? The simple answer is that the DRC organisers have not yet reached a decision about Atlas’ future.

Could we see some of the resulting technology put to military use? “The key answer is that the technology is by its nature generic,” said Pratt. “It could be used in future systems for defense, or it could be used in a number of fields, like healthcare.”

Why it’s important

In short, the stellar progress we’ve seen in driverless cars in the last decade owes everything to DARPA’s 2004 Autonomous Vehicle Grand Challenge.

The sale of the DRC Trials favourite SCHAFT and Atlas software manufacturers Boston Dynamics to Google would suggest history repeating itself.

The DRC has also helped in the development of tools; the organisers funded the development of the Open Source Robotics Foundation (OSRF) simulator, which was first used in the virtual challenge.

It can also take some of the credit for the amount of investment the robotics industry has seen lately. Says Pratt: “DARPA’s job is to show what’s possible. We do those early investments… and the best case is that the private sector picks that up.”

If you liked this article, you may also be interested in:

• Beginner’s guide to the humanoid robot challenge (DRC)
• DARPA’s Virtual Robotics Challenge a practical step forward on the long road toward disaster-response capable humanoids
• DARPA’s legacy: Open source simulation for robotics development and testing
• DARPA’s Gill Pratt on Google’s robotics investments
• DARPA’s HAPTIX project hopes to provide prosthetic hands with sense of touch

See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

A quick, hassle-free way to stay on top of robotics news 

Let’s get down to business

Danish co-bot maker Universal Robots sold to Teradyne for $350 million.

Plenty of business news this month. Big stories included the sale of the privately-owned Danish collaborative systems pioneer Universal Robots to Massachusetts-based Teradyne, a provider of electronic testing equipment. And another European robotics manufacturing pioneer, Swiss-based ABB, opened its first US plant.

But it wasn’t all about the manufacturing sector: social robotics startup Jibo got a new high-profile CEO, Steve Chambers, who previously headed sales, marketing, and business development for Nuance, the publicly held speech recognition company. Jibo’s former CEO and founder, Cynthia Breazeal, is returning to her roots as Chief Scientist at Jibo. Chambers helped Jibo raise a handy $25m in new funding earlier this year.

Drones taking off

CyPhy Works raised 230K in first two days of the crowdfunding campaign for their new autopilot drone, LVL 1.

Drone startups had a stellar month with CyPhy Works raising over half a million in crowdfunding for their new autopilot drone – and still two weeks of the campaign to go. Learn more about the campaign and the technology behind it in Robohub’s upcoming podcast with CyPhy Works founder Helen Greiner, who we nabbed after she delivered her plenary at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) last week.

But CyPhy Works was surely dwarfed by the funding received by fellow drone makers DJI, 3DR, and Airware – who raised $75m, $64m, and  $40.5m respectively. With this kind of financial interest, surely no further market validation is required to prove this industry is taking off. Meanwhile, on the research side, multiple tethered quadrocopters, foldable quadrotors and autonomous airborne docking all made headlines.

Car-eering around

Mercedes/Daimler and Freightliner are testing a self-driving truck in Nevada.

Back on the ground, Tesla was purporting to be solving liability issues for self-driving vehicles with clever software this month. Commenting on Robohub, Bryant Walker Smith was doubtful of the legal validity of the approach, but manufacturers surely need to get their heads round this tricky issue, particularly with the news that Google’s self-driving cars have crashed 11 times in recent years (even if it’s because humans keep driving into them, as the company claims). So watch out if you’re in California, as Google plans to begin testing on public roads there this summer. And pay attention if you’re in Nevada, as a combined Mercedes/Daimler and Freightliner project is testing a self-driving truck in the state.

With all the action on the autonomous car front, you might be thinking of a career in this area … Last February the ride share service Uber announced a strategic partnership with Carnegie Mellon University to undertake autonomous car research. Now, according to an article in the Verge, Uber is recruiting from CMU’s robotics center, with whole research teams decamping to the Uber Advanced Technologies Center just down the road – though publicly both Uber and CMU are maintaining a positive spin about the relationship. While we can’t be certain where Uber is looking for hires, we can say for certain that they are looking; they were seen actively recruiting at the ICRA career fair last week in Seattle.

We’re getting excited about the DRC Finals

Three years in the making, the DRC finals are nearly upon us and it all comes to head on 6 June. DARPA says it wants to create a “lasting legacy,” not only for robot hardware capabilities, but also for robotics simulation software. But what will DRC software contractor OSRF do now that the DRC Finals are coming to an end? IEEE Spectrum’s Evan Ackerman and Brian Gerkey have been finding out.

Meanwhile OSRF and DARPA have launched a Robotics Fast Track program for projects that could deliver prototypes and proofs of concept in six to 12 months.

Be sure to check out Robohub for a live stream of all DRC Finals in action – you can see all the Robohub coverage about the DRC here.

Picking your way to the top

RBO Team from TU Berlin wins the Amazon Picking Challenge at ICRA 2015. Photo Credit: RBO.

There was action aplenty during Amazon’s picking challenge at ICRA and two things stood out: how many different arm grippers there are, and just how difficult the challenge still is. But that hasn’t stopped Amazon, eBay, and Google ramping up the development of their own speedy warehousing operations to satisfy an increasing customer expectations. UK online retailer Ocado has now also joined the gang.

Shaping our robotic future

Audi is testing the Noonee “chairless chair” exoskeleton at their production facilities. AdPhoto: Courtesy Audi.

There was a revolutionary flavour to May. For the developers behind SIRI, Apple’s smart talking phone was never going to be the end of the story – now they’re on the verge of releasing Viv, their bid for world domination. Meanwhile in China, they’re playing supercomputer trumps, and Baidu’s Minwa system has just produced the best image recognition scores to date. Deep learning is clearly here to stay.

This has obvious implications on the job front: one Chinese company this month reported that it’s replacing 90 per cent of its workers with robots. If this leaves you feeling uneasy, head on over to Forbes, where the verdict is that you will need to get close and friendly robots if you want to have a job in the future; take for example Audi, who are busy testing a wearable sitting exoskeleton to ease the strain of people working on construction lines.

Meanwhile John Markoff brings some pragmatism to the AI and robot debate. Not to be outdone, Huffington Post columnist Robert Kuttner outlines what we need to do to secure our future. And, in Nature, Robohub’s own Sabine Hauert explains why we need to shape this debate and not shy away from it.

Startup opportunities abound

Robot Launch, the global robotics startup competition by Silicon Valley Robotics and Robohub, opens June 1.

On that cheery note, let’s turn our attention to new opportunities for improving the future: The Soft Robotics Toolkit announced two competitions for robotics research and design; the Techstar-powered Qualcomm Robotics Accelerator declared their first intake of 10 startups; and IdeaHub went public with an accelerator programme run on behalf of ABB Robotics. And for the agriculturally inclined, the 2016 agBOT Robotic Seeding Challenge is now open.

But what’s the one contest you cannot miss? Today Silicon Valley Robotics and Robohub announced the 2015 edition of Robot Launch, a global competition for robotics startups with innovative technologies and strong business models. So get your application together – we want to hear from you!

Events

ICRA took place May 26-30 in Seattle.

ICRA was the big robotics event this May, and Robohub ran a social media workshop, tweeted about the plenaries, and clocked up some impressive footage of the Best Paper Finalists – coming to Robohub soon under the tag: ICRA 2015. And in case you missed them, you can catch all the ICRA plenaries and keynotes here.

On the whole, while 2014 set new records for all types of robotics events, 2015 is set to be even better. Coming up this month alone:

• DRC Finals – Pomona, CA, US – June 5, 2015 – June 6, 2015 – Check out our coverage here.
• Innovation in Autonomous Systems – London, UK – June 22, 105
• Haptics 2015 – Evanston, IL, US – June 22, 2015 – June 25, 2015
• Solid Con 2015 – San Francisco, CA, USA – June 23, 2015 – June 25, 2015
• RoboUniverse Seoul – Seoul, South Korea – June 24, 2015 – June 26, 2015
• Robot Ethics: Personal Perspectives – London, UK – June 24, 2015 – June 24, 2015
• Field and Service Robotics (FSR) 2015 – Toronto, Canada – June 24, 2015 – June 26, 2015
• Bioinspired Robotics: Softer, Smarter, Safer – Wyss Institute, Boston, MA, US – June 29

Rich Walker, Managing Director, The Shadow Robot Company

The Shadow Robot Company has been perfecting its robot hands for almost two decades, but it took just a short demo by the world’s first robot chef last month to propel this small, London-based startup into the global limelight. Despite the chef’s obvious attractions, Robohub’s Adriana Hamacher wanted to delve deeper: to discover what future robot hands have in the manipulator market and why they could soon turn up in a strawberry patch.

With his waist-length dreadlocks and goatee, Rich Walker certainly stands out at the funding and robo-business events, where I’ve often bumped into him. His workshop is just down the road from my house, so when the robot chef was unveiled at Hannover Messe last month, cooking up a storm for the world’s media, it seemed like a good time to pay Rich a visit.

Despite its prowess at making crab bisque, it’s fair to say that the robot chef is defined by its highly sophisticated manipulators – the “Dexterous Hands” in which Shadow specialises.

But the project is actually a collaboration between Shadow and Moley Robotics, the company funding the venture. Last year, in order to fulfil his vision of creating a chef replicator, Moley’s Russian-born founder, scientist and engineer Mark Oleynik, went on the hunt for a company to build the hands for his robot kitchen. He found there was a fairly short list, and it really only came down to one company: Shadow.

“What we built was almost a classic piece of industrial automation,” says Rich, taking up the story. “It’s a couple of robot arms with tooling on the end to be able to interact with a set of well-defined, fixed objects and perform a complex procedure with them. It just happens they’re in a kitchen, the tooling is a pair of fully human-like robot hands and the procedure they’re performing is cooking a crab bisque – it takes 26 minutes. The things you start with are not nuts and bolts and metal flanges, they’re chopped garlic and chicken stock, and the end result is a bowl of soup, plated up exactly as a chef would do it.

“And it’s worth noting that every single person in this company now knows how to cook a crab bisque, because we’ve seen it done seven million times!”

Masterchef winner Tim Anderson, preparing crab bisque. Source: Moley Robotics

The now infamous crab bisque recipe was prepared copying the exact movements of 2011 BBC MasterChef winner Tim Anderson. The robot switches on a hob, scrapes butter into the pan and adds prepared and measured ingredients – from a specific place on the worktop. But, it doesn’t do the chopping… That, says Rich, is an AI problem.

For Rich, corner cutting or finding ways around the problem is second nature, as becomes increasingly obvious in our conversation. Not only is he able to solve problems, he’s also able to turn them to his advantage. Rich believes that supermarkets will want to supply ingredients for the robot kitchen – at a cost, of course – and it’s already becoming common to see chopped salad, vegetables and meat on a shop’s shelves.

Even without the chopping there’s still a lot to do, to get the chef ready by 2017 and by far the biggest challenge is that something like this has never been done before.

“Nobody has built a mass manufacturable humanoid hand,” says Rich. “We have to go from making a small number a year, for state-of-the-art research to something we could have a factory producing in large numbers. So that’s the longest arch of the project, the critical path.”

The robot chef in action. Source: Moley Robotics

The team is also looking at equipment options and trying to keep costs down. But there’s no denying that at around £10,000 ($14,000) – the robot chef will have a hefty price tag, although it’s effectively a complete kitchen, comprising an integrated oven, hob, dishwasher and sink. The market for consumer and office robots is predicted to  grow at a CAGR of 17% between 2014 and 2019, seven times faster than the market for manufacturing robots, so does Shadow’s boss think it’s an area ripe for disruption?

“It’s interesting that domestic robotics has been the thing that inspires people,” says Rich. “But there’s never been anything above the level of the vacuum cleaner. Part of the reason for this is that, when you talk about unstructured environments, homes are about as unstructured as you can imagine. They’re full of random things, things are never where anybody left them, there are small animals running around, there are children, there’s jam – all kinds of things that are really difficult for a robot to see, interact with and understand. And it’s very hard to paint a white line around it and say ‘nobody cross that white line while the robot’s running.’ A factory’s actually a really nice clean, safe, structured environment, when compared with a domestic one.

“Frankly, we’re still a long way from solving the really big problems there. The kitchen is interesting because, there, we’ve constrained it down and said: ‘we’re going to put this robot in the kitchen, above the kitchen, as part of the kitchen; it’s going to be part of the equipment, not wandering around the house. It doesn’t have to find things, it doesn’t have to avoid people, it’s just either the robot is running, in which case the kitchen is closed, or the kitchen is open and the robot is tucked away. So that’s a fantastic simplification, it kind of eliminates all the real challenges of robots in the home.”

“Nobody has built a mass manufacturable humanoid hand. We have to go from making a small number a year, for state-of-the-art research, to something we could have a factory producing in large numbers”

Rich Walker started off as a computer scientist and joined Shadow in 1989 to write software for robots, but he discovered the robots needed building first. He now leads the company, having taken over from founder and non-executive director Richard Greenhill. In the early days, in the mid-90’s, Shadow were primarily working on biped robots and soft pneumatic muscles, but it became apparent that things weren’t working out.

“Bipeds are, I hesitate to say, useless,” says Rich cautiously. “It’s very hard to see an application for a biped that’s commercially viable at any point in the next 10 years. Twenty years ago even more so, because you just need so much infrastructure and ecosystem and capability to make it worth having a hugely expensive biped robot that is risky and might fall over.”

So, they put their heads together and the concept of the human hand came up. That was nearly twenty years ago. So why has it taken them so long?

The Dexterous Hand. Source: The Shadow Robot Company

“We’ve been looking around at ways to get additional resources,” explains Rich. Shadow has become adroit at not only slotting its technology into the supply chain, but also fitting it into funding schemes in both the UK and the EU.

Some of the first applications for their hand included assistive technology. But, fifteen years ago, most of the other elements necessary – for the hand to be able to see, to navigate, to interact with objects and to communicate – were simply not there, which was a big problem.

Recently, Shadow has revisited this space; it’s involved in a European project, RAMCIP, building an assistive robot for people with mild cognitive impairment. With advanced infrastructure, it’s now possible to enable a mobile robot, with a hand, to navigate via 3D mapping, to sense people’s emotions and handle objects. No one calls them crazy anymore.

Applications in manufacturing are looking equally attractive, with the possibility of integrating the Dexterous Hand in a new generation of lightweight, relatively mobile, flexible and safe factory robots. The price point works too, as it’s comparable to the two-year fully loaded labour cost of an employee on a factory line.

“There’s a lot of people with automation type problems who are solving them by having humans do the work,” says Rich, “because you can’t get a traditional robot to do them. But this next generation, of flexible, dexterous, manipulation capable robots, should be able to make an impact on that.”

With both the domestic and industrial markets to consider, you’d think Shadow would have its hands full (pardon the pun), but there’s another sector beckoning too.

“If you can pick the fruit then all the other things can be improved and adapted, but today, there are no machines that you can use in the UK to pick fruit.”

Shadow’s business model is opportunistic in that the company looks for strong partners who have problems and European or UK funding calls to provide the finance to solve those issues. The big challenges are addressed, largely, with EU funding. For shorter term, more commercially focussed or more manageable problem areas, they target government agencies such as Innovate UK, assuming the partner organisation is UK-based.

A recent example is a joint Innovate UK and Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council-funded agri-tech project the company is involved in, AUTOPIC. Led by the UK’s Harper Adams University, the project consortium includes BerryWorld, which  is the leading supplier of berries to UK supermarkets.

Modern strawberry trestles. Source: AUTOPIC Consortium

As might be expected, BerryWorld suffers from seasonal labour issues. The company is also very open to new technology. It’s already using innovative techniques that involve raising the growing area so that the strawberries are now waist height and rest on substrates instead of soil. Rich believes that this is a game changer; it’s opened the door to automatic harvesting.

“We actually focused on the commercial step changes,”he says. “If you can pick the fruit then all the other things can be improved and adapted, but today, there are no machines that you can use in the UK to pick fruit.”

He believes that previous solutions have over complicated the process. “They’ve been very interested in problems like: ‘how do you see the berry in a complex space?’ The whole research challenge.”

But modern day farming means that strawberry trestles are now managed in such a way that it should be – not easy – but more possible for a robot hand to access the fruit:

“The leaves are raised up so they’re out of the way and the berries hang down so they’re very, very visible. The challenges are getting to the less accessible fruit at the back, not damaging the plant and not colliding with things, while doing it all at speed – picking a strawberry every four or five seconds – to have a chance of being commercially viable.”

The system must also only pick grade one fruit, because, unlike apples, for instance, strawberries won’t ripen after they’re picked.

There’s an impressive amount of technology involved in Shadow’s hand: 20 motors, 26 micro-controllers, 24 movements and 129 sensors. So, just how close is it to a real human one?

“We’ve managed to capture almost all of the interesting capabilities,” says Rich.  “Human joints have a property of dislocating and relocating and we don’t do that. The human hand, because of the way the bones run through the palm, can do this kind of wrapping and curling activity. What we do on our robot hand is just a finger bend that comes up to oppose the thumb, rather than a natural wrapping and curling. But, other than that, we think we’ve pretty much captured all of the detail of the way the human hand works. We haven’t yet got anything like the sensitivity of human skin and finger tip sensing. I think it’s going to be another decade before you have all-over high resolution sensing. But, in terms of the mechanical movement and operations, we seem to have about the same sensitivity, the same precision and better repeatability, because it’s a robot. We haven’t found any manipulation task that, if we could program it, we couldn’t use it so for.”

What stands out from talking to Rich is just how multidisciplinary the work Shadow does is; it’s not just about the hands, the software, the hardware, 3D navigation and AI, it’s about supply chains, dealing with chefs, users and funding bodies. How would Rich advise a young start-up to approach all the work that needs to be done to get something like this off the ground?

The Dexterous Hand. Source: The Shadow Robot Company

“We’ve already done robot kitchens so find a different problem,” he quips. “There is a lovely concept that you get taught in business school: it’s the cycle of resources and the cycle of constraints. You say: ‘I want to do something, what have I got to make available to me? How well do I understand the problem I’m trying to solve?’ If you don’t have enough resources, there are two things you can do. You can either go out and raise money, bringing partners in, developing technologies… or you can iterate on a loop of understanding the constraints and refining them around the problem. That means saying things like: ‘suppose the ingredients are supplied in package form, so that we don’t have to chop them. Is that feasible? Yeah, great. So, we’ll do that.’

“So you simultaneously increase the amount of capability that you have and decrease the problem, until you hit the sweet spot, where you say: ‘I have enough resources and the problem is well enough constrained.’ It’s iterating on those two loops that gets you from: ‘I have an idea and I’m going to need £100 million to do it and I don’t know who the customer is,’ to: ‘I can see all the customers, I’ve actually met most of them, the problem is well constrained, I only need two external partners, I know who they are and I’ve got some funding to execute the project.’ It’s all achievable and everyone we need is in the room.”

He makes it sound so easy. But anyone who’s attempted to build a robot of any complexity will know that it’s not. However, it is possible, and the robot chef, with his hands that were nearly twenty years in the making, is testament to that.

If you liked this article, you may also be interested in:

• 2015 sees mobile manipulators coming to market
• Governmental funding of strategic robotic projects
• OpenBionics prosthetic hands: Open source, affordable, lightweight, anthropomorphic
• DARPA’s HAPTIX project hopes to provide prosthetic hands with sense of touch
• Grasping objects in a way that is suitable for manipulation

See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

This is the second part of a three-part series, check out the first five videos here.

You can also read about all the approved projects here.

FLOBOT
Title: Floor Washing Robot for Professional Users
Duration (months): 36
Presenter: Thomas Moerwald, Technische Universitaet Wien, AT
Partners: Cyprus Research And Innovation Center Ltd, CY | Fimap Spa, IT | Robosoft Services Robots, FR | University Of Lincoln, UK | Technische Universitaet Wien, AT | S.s.c. Societa’ Sviluppo Commerciale, IT | Manutencoop Facility Management Spa, IT | Ridgeback S.a.s. Di Paolo Barattini & C., IT | Groupe Services France, FR

RETRAINER
Title: REaching and grasping Training based on Robotic hybrid AssIstance for Neurological patients: End users Real life evaluation
Duration (months): 48
Presenter: Maria Bulgheroni, Ab.Acus srl, IT
Participant: Ab.Acus srl, IT | Politecnico Di Milano, IT | Technische Universitaet Wien, AT | Ecole Polytechnique Federale De Lausanne, CH | Otto Bock Healthcare Products Gmbh, AT | Congregazione Delle Suore Infermiere Dell Addolorata, IT | Asklepios Klinik Alsbach Gmbh, DE | Technische Universitaet Berlin, DE | Hasomed Hard-und Software Fuer Medizin Gesellschaft Mbh, DE

WiMUST
Title: Widely scalable Mobile Underwater Sonar Technology
Duration (months): 36
Presenter: Giovanni Indiveri, Università del Salento, IT
Partners: ISME (Inter-university Center of Integrated Systems for the Marine Environment), IT | Associacao Do Instituto Superior Tecnico Para A Investigacao E Desenvolvimento, PT | Cintal – Centro Investigacao Tecnologica Do Algarve, PT | The University Of Hertfordshire Higher Education Corporation, UK | Evologics Gmbh, DE | Graal Tech Srl, IT | CGG, Fr | Geo Marine Survey Systems Bv, NL | Geosurveys – Consultores Em Geofisica Lda, PT

AEROARMS
Title: AErial RObotic system integrating multiple ARMS and advanced manipulation capabilities for inspection and maintenance
Duration (months): 48
Presenter: Anibal Ollero, Universidad de Sevilla, SP
Partners: Universidad De Sevilla, ES | Deutsches Zentrum Fuer Luft – Und Raumfahrt Ev, DE | Centre National De La Recherche Scientifique, FR | Consorzio Di Ricerca Per L’Energia e Le Applicazioni Technologiche Dell’elettromagnetismo, IT | Fundacion Andaluza Para El Desarrollo Aeroespacial, ES | Tüv Nord Systems Gmbh & Co. Kg, DE | Universitat Politecnica De Catalunya, ES | Elektra Uas Gmbh, DE | Alstom Inspection Robotics Ag, CH | Sensima Inspection Sarl, CH

All the #ERF2015 videos can be found here.

Check out the first videos below and stay tuned for the rest of the series. You can also read about all the approved projects here.

Flourish
Title: Aerial Data Collection and Analysis, and Automated Ground Intervention for Precision Farming
Duration (months): 42
Presenter: Roland Siegwart, ETHZ
Partners: Eidgenoessische Technische Hochschule Zurich, CH | Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universitat Bonn, DE | Albert-ludwigs-universitaet Freiburg, DE | Robert Bosch Gmbh, DE | Centre National De La Recherche Scientifique, FR | Universita Degli Studi Di Roma La Sapienza, IT | Agenzia Servizi Settore Agroalimentare Delle Marche, IT

Centauro
Title: Robust Mobility and Dexterous Manipulation in Disaster Response by Fullbody Telepresence in a Centaur-like Robot
Duration (months): 42
Presenter: Sven Behnke, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universitat Bonn, DE
Partners: Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universitat Bonn, DE | Fondazione Istituto Italiano Di Tecnologia, IT | Scuola Superiore Di Studi Universitari E, IT | Perfezionamento Sant’anna, IT | Kungliga Tekniska Hoegskolan, SE | Linkopings Universitet, SE | Rheinisch-westfaelische Technische Hochschule Aachen, DE | Progenox Gmbh De, DE | Kerntechnische Hilfsdienst Gmbh, DE

AEROWORKS
Title: Collaborative Aerial Robotic Workers
Duration (months): 36
Presenter: Margarita Chli, University of Edinburgh, UK, Kostas Alexis, ETHZ, CH
Partners: Lulea Tekniska Universitet, SE | Eidgenoessische Technische Hochschule Zurich, CH | Kungliga Tekniska Hoegskolan, SE | Universiteit Twente, NL | The University Of Edinburgh, UK |University Of Patras, EL |Ascending Technologies Gmbh, DE | Skybotix Ag, CH |Alstom Inspection Robotics Ag, CH | Skelleftea Kraft Ab, SE

CogIMon
Title: Cognitive Interaction in Motion
Duration (months): 48
Presenter: Jochen Steil, University of Bielefeld, DE
Partners: Universitaet Bielefeld, DE | Ecole Polytechnique Federale De Lausanne, CH | Fondazione Istituto Italiano Di Tecnologia, IT | The University Of Birmingham, UK | Fondazione Santa Lucia, IT | Imperial College Of Science, Technology And Medicine, UK | Eberhard Karls Universitaet Tuebingen, DE

Smokebot
Title: Mobile Robots with Novel Environmental Sensors for Inspection of Disaster Sites with Low Visibility
Duration (months): 42
Presenter: Achim Lilienthal, Orebro University, SE
Partners: Orebro University, SE | Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Universitaet Hannover, DE | Fraunhofer-gesellschaft Zur Foerderung, DE | Angewandten Forschung E.v, DE | The University Of Warwick, UK | Taurob Gmbh, AT | Stadt Dortmund, DE

European Robotic Forum 2015. Credits: Viennamotion KG.

The importance of allaying public fears that robots will create mass unemployment was the theme of the opening session at the 2015 European Robotics Forum (ERF), which kicked off in Vienna on Tuesday.

ERF is the largest robotics networking event in Europe and this year attracted a record number of delegates. Over 600 were in attendance, including industrialists, researchers, investors, politicians and media.

The opening session featured a panel discussion entitled Robots or Jobs? The issue was introduced by Bernd Liepert, President of the European stakeholders association, euRobotics and CTO of industrial robotics manufacturer, KUKA.

“There are fears from economists that robots are replacing jobs in large numbers,” he said, quoting statistics indicating that up to 50% of jobs could be lost to automation.

Zoran Stancic, Deputy Director-General at the European Commission, DG CONNECT, followed Mr Liepert on the podium and was quick to point out that “there is clearly information that robots don’t steal jobs. We have to make this information freely available to all stakeholders.”

Jorg Hofmann, who is on the board of car manufacturer Daimler, and Vice Chairman of the German Metalworker’s Union (IG Metall), followed up, saying that “past waves of innovation have been counterbalanced by gains in other sectors.”

“It’s not a question of jobs, it’s a question of quality of jobs…” he said. “And how we qualify our workforce to manage this change.”

The session developed into a wider panel discussion with the addition of Mady Delvaux-Stehres, MEP, Vice-Chair of the European Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee and Maarten Goos of Leuven University’s Research Centre of Monetary and Information Economics.

Mr Goos was introduced as one of the leading researchers in this area, and spoke about the “complimentary effect” of robotics.

“If you look at the academic literature, you have to conclude that, in general, introducing robotics increases employment,” he said, explaining that, as we work with robots, productivity goes up and generates income.

He pointed out that the studies warning of up to 50% in job losses use a specific methodology, which he called “a set of subjective guesses.” His view is that we should move away from that methodology.

However, a number of challenges need to be addressed, he believes. One of these is the nature of work, which will undoubtedly change. Pushing people into programming is, he said, not the only solution to this. We should also develop more creative, communicative skills, which can compliment robotics.

But he warned that we may be lacking the right institutions to support these upcoming changes. In addition, we need to change from top down to bottom up policy in order to deal with the issues robotics will present.

European Robotic Forum 2015. Credits: Viennamotion KG.

The European Commission is, however, determined to play a leading role in developing a framework that national institutions will be able to emulate when they come to legislate on the changes jn employment and society brought about by robotics.

To this end, a new working group has been established to develop concrete proposals that it hopes to present to the European Parliament next month, Mady Delvaux-Stehres informed delegates.

The group will address topics including liability for damage, social impact and data privacy. The overall goals are to strengthen the European economy, protect the social and fundamental rights of the citizen, and bridge the gap between politicians and the scientific community.

But, on the ground level, developing systems that are easy for people to use is key to public acceptance of robotics , a view shared by many on the panel.

“We need the human being, we need smart factories, not dark factories. We need to train people to work in these factories, with increased skills,” said Mr Liepert.

“A new generation R [for robots] is growing up with vacuum cleaning robots, autonomous cars and co-working robots.  To develop robot systems that are easy to use by people – that’s a key driver.”

Co-working with robots, the panel agreed, is a necessary part of our community in Europe and we need to develop strategies to convince the general public about the benefit of robotics.

The panel offered a number of solutions as to how this may be achieved:

“We can only solve the problem if we address the usability,” was the view of Mr Liepert. He used the smartphone as analogy, saying people have no fear of it because they understand it and robotics could benefit by emulating similar ease of use, which would in turn promote acceptability. On the academic front, he believes there is a lot of work to be done to achieve this objective.

Mr Stannic believes that communication with the wider public is key, particularly when it comes to older users. He urged delegates to view an inspirational video of a 94-year-old describing the difference technology has made to her life. The commission has made the video available on You Tube.

“We all have prejudices,” he said. “We need to address our fears and problems. When you can see concretely how you can benefit, it helps.”

Mr Goos pointed out that public mistrust of technology is nothing new; similar issues were present at the dawn of the industrial revolution. The answer then was mass education, teaching people how to read and write. He believes that we haven’t yet pinned down strategies to reassure the public in respect of robotics. “Dealing with their fears,” he said, “should be part of the overall policy.”

Nuclear decommissioning

Decommissioning nuclear sites may not at first glance have a great deal to do with dirty dishes, but add a robot called Boris – which started life perfecting its dexterity through loading dishwashers, and is now to begin trialling at Sellafield – and it all begins to make sense.

Decommissioning of a nuclear plant, the containment is shown in the picture and is half deconstructed. Source: National Regulatory Commission.

A product of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory at the UK University of Birmingham, Boris is one of the first robots in the world capable of intelligently manipulating unfamiliar objects with a humanlike grasp.  His skills were first demonstrated in a dishwasher loading task that hit headlines worldwide.

Team member Krzysztof Walas explained that Boris’s new Sellafield role is less of a promotion and more of a progression.

“The first project was on grasping, the follow up was on dishwasher loading – those projects were FP7 [EU Funding Programme Seven}. Now [we’re working on] a Horizon 2020 project on nuclear waste decommissioning, which is in collaboration with nuclear waste companies and laboratories across Europe.”

Collaborations such as the one between the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory and nuclear waste companies are a major source of growth for robotics and autonomous systems (RAS), according to RAS Special Interest Group Chair, David Lane.

“RAS has a role to play in decommissioning, re-commissioning and long-term waste management, with positive implications for both safety and cost,” he beleives. “The total cost of nuclear decommissioning in the UK alone, mostly at Sellafield, is currently estimated at £60 billion. Owing to the high levels of radiation, all stages of the nuclear fission and fusion life cycle will require the use of advanced RAS tools and techniques.”

Sellafield is working with a number of small businesses – including snake robot arm developers, OC Robotics – to develop these tools. Sellafiled is investing over £70m per annum on R&D to deploy new technologies that reduce the risks and costs associated with nuclear waste. It’s an investment likely to increase year on year as the decommissioning objective becomes an imperative.

Find out more about collaboration opportunities in nuclear decommissioning via the NDA website.

Transporting London

Providing smooth and reliable transport for London’s burgeoning population is already a challenge, but what will happen when another million people enter the equation? This is the challenge faced by John Downes, Head of Engineering Governance & Services at London Underground. Transport for London (TfL), which oversees the Underground, is on the hunt for innovative proposals to help solve the capital transport conundrums.

“The challenge is moving towards London,” Downes told delegates at last month’s RAS in Horizon 2020 event. “London will have one million additional inhabitants by 2030, it’s as if the current population of Birmingham moved to the capital.” To deal with this population surge, the city has to have a very efficient network in palace and we must lever off the technology, he stressed.

To encourage companies to work with TfL, the organisation has established a Technology Innovation Portal allowing users to speedily input ideas and solutions that meet key challenges. These are grouped into six categories:

• Customer
• Value and sustainability
• People
• Delivery
• Reliability and dependability
• Safety

Each category has specific challenges such as: to deliver faster, more frequent services, improve energy efficiency and sustainability, increase workforce flexibility, improve safety and asset condition monitoring.

For a flavour of the improvements already in hand, earlier this year TFL released digitally simulated video of improvements to tube lines that are expected over the next decade.

Designed by PriestmanGoode, The “New Tube for London” features a futuristic design that abandons the traditional multi-carriage layout for a walk-through car that will provide passengers with air-cooling and onboard Wi-Fi for the first time. TfL plans to deploy 250 of these next-generation tube trains on the Piccadilly, Bakerloo, Central and Waterloo & City Lines over the next decade.

Although the new trains will be driver enabled, they are also designed to run automatically and intended to last for 30 years, running 24 hours a day. The new trains would boost capacity on the Piccadilly line alone by around 60%. That sounds a lot, but when 10 million extra people are factored in, it becomes obvious that simply improving train efficiency is not enough. That’s why your ideas are vital.

TfL’s Technology Innovation Portal is designed to act as a premier resource but you can also email Innovation.Office@tfl.gov.uk with your query.

Robotics in healthcare

Developed by US company Rethink Robotics as a highly adaptable tool in manufacturing, Baxter is not the first automaton that comes to mind when considering the needs of the healthcare industry. But the news last week of Rapid Response Research awards for researchers working with Baxter on a human-robot system for removing the necessary protective clothing that workers caring for patients with Ebola require, shows how varied the opportunities in this space can be.

“The challenges in the field are so varied, you need to think laterally,” counselled Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) Director Karen Livingstone, who is also Head of Partnerships and Industry at the Eastern Academic Health Science Network. She was speaking to delegates at an event centred on the latest Horizon 2020 funding call at the end of last year, and wished to draw attention to the myriad possibilities available in healthcare.“ The fact that it may not be a natural space for robotics doesn’t mean it’s not a good opportunity,” she said.

Researchers are trying to prove Baxter could be used to dispose of contaminated clothes. Source: BBC News

An NHS England initiative, SBRI healthcare is championed by the UK’s Academic Health Science Networks. The aim is to promote economic growth whilst addressing unmet health needs. SBRI gives SMEs an opportunity to connect with public sector procurement by inviting them to present innovative solutions to specific problems in a competition format. Winning proposals can result in 100 percent funded government development contracts.

So what is the healthcare industry looking for from robotic and autonomous technologies? Challenges highlighted by Livingstone in her presentation include self care, management of care, remote monitoring, data management, wound management and diagnosing on the spot. Outlining the support that SBRI healthcare can offer business initiatives she said:

“Clinicians working together with entrepreneurs and technology specialists gives us an exciting mix that leads to real innovation.”

“The NHS has many challenges to tackle. Through the SBRI healthcare programme, we are building long-term partnerships with industry to create new products that will save lives and deliver economic value to the UK economy.”

Traditionally, robots have played a key role in the manufacturing sector, but with advances in what’s known as social robotics they could also play a fundamental part in improving quality of life, particularly in the home and non-industrial environments. And healthcare is one area where there is a lot of interest. The technology can greatly help surgical procedures, as seen with the Da Vinci Robot, and there have been moves into the bionics space with prosthetics and rebuilding damaged limbs.

A big attraction is socially assistive robots in healthcare and Baxter’s new role is a good example. Others include Aldebaran’s Nao, which has been successful with autistic children in helping to develop communication and social skills and the Japanese-invented PARO-Seal robot is being used with NHS dementia patients.

In fact, the realm of the healthbot could include anything from monitoring patients’ movements to assisting with care tasks, although that’s not tot say that there aren’t substantial challenges specific to this sector.

Focusing on technological innovation but with a strong emphasis on clinical translation and direct patient benefit, the UK’s Hamlyn Centre is at the forefront of research in imaging, sensing and robotics for addressing global health challenges.

The centre hosts outreach activities, and is active in its support for the healthcare business and the training of surgeons and engineers in robotic technologies, It also aims to overcome global health challenges by harnessing Imperial’s interdisciplinary research strengths and its expertise in safe, effective and accessible technologies. At the Horizon 2020 event, a demonstration of the centre’s research by its Director, Professor Yang, (pictured above with Minister of State for Universities, Science and Cities, Greg Clark) provoked much interest.

Markets and Markets research predict that the medical robotics market will grow to $3,764m by 2018. With the necessity of major changes in the way healthcare is delivered, there’s never been a better time for developers working in robotics and automation to present solutions.

This article was originally published on RAS SIG – the Robotics and Autonomous Systems Special Interest Group, part of Innovate UK’s Knowledge Transfer Network.

If you liked this article, you may also be interested in:

• Dmitry Grishin on evaluating robotic investment opportunities
• Loving your #startup to death
• Guiding technology through uncertain valleys: SRI’s Rich Mahoney on risks, rewards, and the future of robotics
• Why fostering high-tech innovation and entrepreneurship matters to the economy, and what universities can do about it

See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

RE.WORK’s Future Robotics Forum – which took place in London on Tuesday – was an opportunity to hear the stories of the developers of these and other transformative robotic services and devices, a melting pot of key influencers in this most versatile of technologies, and an opportunity to gather a great many take-home points on the challenges involved in commercialisation.

Perhaps the most important of these, it emerged, is the necessity of putting the emphasis on what you can do with the technology, rather than selling the robot itself.

This was certainly the philosophy of Matthew Holloway, managing director of Q-Bot, which supplies robots to the construction industry. While other developers looked on enviously, Holloway related how the company had achieved six figure orders in just 12 months, the majority from local authorities.

Task focussed

q-bot helps to insulate hard to reach areas with minimal disruption.

Holloway’s company is currently focussed on robots that can squeeze through a brick-sized vent to apply insulation under floorboards and map what they see in the process.

For Camden Council, faced with the difficulty of insulating homes that are often in conservation areas and have limited access points, this technology is particularly attractive. According to Holloway, some 20% of heat loss occurs through the floor and their bot-installed insulation can reduce drafts by 45% and save around £200 per annum per dwelling.

Holloway spoke of the importance of challenging people’s perceptions, in his company’s case proffering a solution with “intelligent devices that turn dirty jobs into clean cost effective tasks.”

This task-specific mantra was echoed by VC Ilian Iliev, CEO of the EcoMachines Incubator, who counselled developers to “focus on areas where payback is measurable.”

In his presentation, he also pointed out that hardware startups take a lot more money and time to develop than those focussing on software, so it’s important to demonstrate and validate return on investment (ROI) to clients as well as the scalability of business models across existing industrial infrastructure. He also advocated transferring “template” business models and emphasised the importance of precisely defined needs as opposed to hyping the technology.

Not just hype

Drones are one area of robotics that has been the subject of much hype recently. In fact, according to Mirko Kovac, Director of the Aerial Robotics Laboratory at London’s Imperial College, the market for drones will be worth $90bn in the coming years. Rather than focussing on money-making possibilities, Kovac pointed out the huge potential drone networks hold for parts of the world that lack a developed infrastructure, such as large parts of Africa.

But he also highlighted the challenges that need to be overcome for the technology to progress: drones still have problems with landing in a city or in forests, and there are issues with moving in complex cluttered environments, close to water and in adapting to different media.

Kovac was followed onto the podium by drone developer Glenn Smith of Maplebird. The challenges that still need to be overcome mean that the technology won’t bear fruit tomorrow, he said, but it will happen within the next 5-10 years.

And it’s largely companies such as Amazon that are doing the groundwork to prepare people for drone deliveries. Their ambition, he stressed, is a real one. Underlining how seriously the mega-corporations, such as Amazon, Google and – most recently – DHL are taking drone delivery, he joked: “You know it’s serious when the Germans get involved!”

MapleBird says it has “benefited from the rapid advances in electronics driven by the smart phone industry, as both have common requirements for high processing power of data and images coupled with the need for very low power consumption, size and weight.”

So, just how is Maplebird planning to make products that stand out in the face of such competition? The company’s principle, outlined Smith, is the smaller the better. Miniature drones have many advantages, he stressed, including reducing regulatory hurdles. They’re also safer for cities in tasks such as monitoring buildings or traffic, and they’re fast and easy to deploy.

The company has been using biomimetic principles in the development of its technology. One of the most fascinating is a practical engine, designed to power flapping wing flight at the insect scale. In order to mimic this to the highest degree, they’ve even used the wings of real bees.

No insects were killed in the process of carrying out their experiments, Smith assured the audience; the bees concerned died of natural causes.

A world of opportunities 

Altruistic applications, smart city opportunities and a game of table tennis with a robot were features of other presentations. With so much to impart, coordinator Phil Williams from the Knowledge Transfer Network’s Robotics & Autonomous Systems Group was forced to keep question and answers sessions brief.

Leka’s Moti was the winner of Robohub’s 2014 Robot Launch competition.

Trevor Dowling of Greenwich City Council spoke of the need for robotics in the cities of the future; Nikos Pronios, Lead Technologist at Innovate UK, outlined funding opportunities; Ladislas de Toldi, CEO of Leka, impressed with his desire to help autistic children achieve their potential with the aid of robotics; and Jan Peters, a Professor working with Intelligent Autonomous Systems at the Technische Universitaet Darmstadt, showed the audience his team’s progress with artificial intelligence in the learning of complex tasks such as table tennis.

“A key bottleneck in manufacturing is the high cost of robot programming and slow implementation,” he said.  However, “motor skill learning is a promising way to avoid programming all possible scenarios and continuously adapt to the environment.”

He made reference to research from Bosch, which has established that: “If a product costs less than 50 euros or is produced less than 10,000 times, it’s not competitive with manual labour” and pointed out that the robotics market in manufacturing is still at a relatively early stage. “Industry,” he emphasised, “is just starting to profit from this work!”<

Game changing collaboration

A major focus of the forum was that collaboration between industry and academia is vital to fully exploit the opportunities on offer. Two presentations in particular demonstrated how their potentially game-changing collaboration threatens to give Dyson and Apple a run for their money.

The partnership between Sheffield University academic Tony Prescott, Director of the University’s Centre for Robotics, and established designer Sebastian Conran is possibly unique to the field, with Prescott bringing the power of decades of research into human-robot-interaction and Conran brand-conscious design know-how.

Prescott was keen to point out that robots, although they have powerful applications to assist the elderly and infirm, should never be viewed as people substitutes. Instead he likened them to facilitators. One example of this, he said, is in encouraging social interaction among people. To illustrate his point, he indicated a furry bundle on the table: Paro, a Japanese robot resembling a baby seal, which has long been used in care homes and has proved very popular among residents.

In reference to studies that have highlighted the fears and preconceptions people have about robots’ involvement with the elderly and young, he pointed out that the way the questions had been phrased was an important factor. Turning to philosophy and psychology, his intrinsic message was that there are a number of different selves, robots haven’t yet mastered many – if any of them – yet and certainly won’t be taking over the world anytime soon.

But he maintained that in order to satisfy humanity, it is important that robots develop human-like traits. “Empathy,” he said ‘is very useful, to enable them to see the human perspective’.

Although Prescott is currently involved in a number of projects – including WYSIWYD a major EU-funded study to create a new transparency in human robot interaction – his collaboration with Conran took centre stage here. The duo are in the process of forming a startup to commercialise their work.

MiRo is an intelligent biomimetic robot that you can assemble yourself.

From here, Conran took up the baton, outlining products the team have been working on, such as MiRo – a mimetic robotic companion, which is a teachable ‘digital pet’. The device sells for around £400, with costs kept low by self assembly. It was important, says Conran, that HRI design principles were considered and he gives the example of blinking, which has been shown to have great impact on user experience.

Delving into the design process behind other products in the pipeline, such as iHelp or MIA (Mobile Intelligent Appliance), Conran explained that he had tried to think in terms of “what if Steve Jobs designed a robot?”

But perhaps the most original of the pair’s designs is the intelliTable. Part funded by an Innovate UK grant, it’s not so much a robot as a gesture- or voice-activated, self-navigating and self-adjusting platform that sees through optical navigation, not dissimilar to Dyson’s vacuum cleaning robot.

Conran believes its applications are diverse: the device can deliver things, act as a shopping trolley or work table. A telepresence screen gives additional functionality and there’s the possibility that, in future, it may also feature a mechanical arm.

The device has had a very good reception, says Conran. There’s been plenty of interest from hotels, for instance, and it’s easy to imagine it being used in hospitals.

Production of the intelliTable is imminent and the team have sourced an ex Ford/Nissan factory for the mechanical development. With the material costs estimated at £1300, the product is expected to retail at around £2500.

Enthusiasm and edutainment

Reach Robotics dubs its Mecha Monsters as the “world’s first gaming robots.”

Aiming at a different market sector and retailing for considerably less, was another product nearing its commercial goal. Silas Adekunle and his team at Reach Robotics believe they have designed the world’s first robotic game system. Dubbed Mecha Monster, the device launches on IndieGogo in November and Adekunle believes it’s truly unique as a programmable toy which you can learn with while creating and having fun through play.

To date, his product had won funding from 11 different sources,  “Money,” he said, “creates money. Getting over that first  hurdle, so that you can start prototyping, is the hardest part.”

By 2016, he predicts there will be a massive surge in edutainment robotics, with “robot this, robot that – everyone will slap a label on it.”

But Adenkunle is planning to be in the vanguard. A young developer working out of the University of the West of England’s (UWE) Bristol Robotics Laboratory Incubator, his enthusiasm for robotics was palpable. “It’s a very exciting time,” he said, finishing his presentation. Many in the room would certainly agree with him.

This article was originally published on RAS SIG – the Robotics and Autonomous Systems Special Interest Group – part of Innovate UK’s Knowledge Transfer Network.

Hollywood has already been quick off the mark to explore issues thrown up by robotics, in movies such as Simulation and Robot & Frank. Automata, by Spanish director Gabe Ibanez, promises to provide not a little food for thought and throw a more immediate moral debate into the mix.

The film stars Antonio Banderas as an insurance agent living in the year 2044, where robots are now a common sight. To keep these metallic slaves under our control, there’s a law that expressly forbids them from modifying themselves – but nothing, it seems, can stop the rise of artificial intelligence.

The ability to self repair and optimise, it’s argued, is what distinguishes robots from mere machines as it implies some degree of consciousness.

Self-repair

In fact, robots with the ability to self-repair are not actually that far off and there are systems that are already able to do this – albeit in a basic form.

Bristol Robotics Laboratory researcher Alan Broun has spent the past couple of years working on artificial intelligence that will enable a robot to recognize itself, specifically to enable it to identify its own hand. He likens the process to that of a newborn baby building a mental model of itself over time and adapting that model as its body changes and its capabilities improve. It’s an area of research that has been termed “active vision.”

“It’s the view that a robot can’t be passive, it needs to interact to learn about itself and its world,” says Broun. “An adaptive system can work out its own dimensions, for example. Currently, if you change a robot’s arm, someone has to reprogram the whole system.”

Giving a robot the ability to learn about itself is, Broun believes, the first step towards being able to self repair.

“The foundations for it are there,” he says. “As a system becomes more capable, we’ll see the technology integrated, and it will be able to operate for longer without human interference.”

Broun believes that it’s only the commercial value that’s presently holding this in check, but research is moving fast.

If this is true, and self repairing robots are literally around the corner, debate is needed – and now – about the values, status and allowances we should accord these new systems.

Addressing preconceptions

The general public’s ideas about robots and their capabilities also need to be urgently addressed. A number of major studies have recently found that despite optimism about the technology’s potential, public perceptions of robots are often influenced by misconceptions and fears. In order to improve the image of robots and to increase public acceptance, we need to better understand public opinion and even take robots out onto streets, into schools and hospitals, to show people what the technology is capable of.

The creative arena is good one within which to explore the ethical challenges robotics will throw up. A Hollywood movie, such as Automata, has the potential to reach millions and provoke much needed debate. It may provide a springboard – the first step towards developing a regulatory framework, which must be in place before advanced robotic technologies can really take off.

The Japanese have for a while been way ahead of the rest of the world in their interest and acceptance of the issues robotics raises. Much of this has been due to the all pervading nature of the technology in Japan. Automation is de rigueur and the issues it raises have long been of interest to artists in the form of anime and other popular art forms.

In the rest of the world, grass roots awareness of the massive changes that robotics will throw up is evolving slowly, but workshops and seminars are introducing robots to a public that may have, until recently, given them a purely fictional status.

At Brighton’s Digital Festival, taking place throughout this month, artists Lorenza Ippolito, Anna Dumitriu and Alex May are investigating the philosophical and practical questions behind robotics.

Their event, My Robot Companion, is aimed at older audiences wanting to look at the technology and consider what the future might hold for us.

By introducing their audience to HARR1 (Humanoid Art Research Robot 1, made in collaboration with the University of Hertfordshire’s Adaptive Systems Research Group), the artists aim was to stimulate questions about the uses and functions of robots, and to explore the ethical implications of how they could be used in the future in a range of social settings.

Prone to malfunction

Such social robots hold a great deal of promise for society, but it’s also crucial to manage public expectations. The first systems are likely to be basic and could be prone to malfunction. But it’s what are perceived as failed interactions that can actually provide valuable data for the designers of future systems.

These themes are explored in a workshop that is part of next month’s International Conference on Social Robotics (in Sydney, Australia). Misbehaving Machines hopes to promote interaction and allow confrontation in robotics but, just as importantly, it seeks to bring engineers and scientists together with artists to look at how unexpected behaviour impacts on user perceptions and how this can be explored in the medium of art.

As is becoming clear, this is a field ripe with opportunity, not just for engineers and computer scientists, but also creatives – whether they work in the movie industry, the media or design. Robotics has got to be the most multidisciplinary technology known to man. Previously, largely the domain of engineers and computer scientists, now it’s pulling in psychologists to draw up the interaction boundaries that humans and robots must traverse, legislators and the creative industry – as a whole – to alert the public to the fact that major change is most definitely afoot. And that the sooner we make way for it and equip ourselves to face the physical and emotional obstacles robotics will throw up, the more successful that transition will be.

Automata is premieres in the US on 23 September 2014 and is released ion 10 October. There is no UK release date yet.

The Brighton Digital Festival runs to 28 September 2014: http://www.brightondigitalfestival.co.uk

The Misbehaving Machines workshop takes place on 27 October 2014 in Sydney Australia, part of the International Conference on Social Robotics.

This article was originally published on RAS SIG – the Robotics and Autonomous Systems Special Interest Group – part of Innovate UK’s Knowledge Transfer Network.

Has Dyson finally cracked its 16-year mission to create a robot vacuum cleaner?  The company’s  teaser video hints at a new release which looks a lot like a rival for the best-selling Roomba, and perfectly illustrates how fast the conditions necessary to create viable robotic products are evolving. 

Dyson’s mysterious video, posted on YouTube (below), heralds a 4 September release. The only piece of information to accompany it reads: ‘16 years. 200 engineers. £28 million investment. The result? Tell us what you think it is.’

The device moves around a bit and zooms in and out—interesting, but not as interesting as the glimpse of what looks like its location-analysis technology. It hints at a number of other interesting features too.

What’s certain is that, with one of the best-known brand names around, Dyson has done its research before going public in a market as hot as robotics is right now.

Earlier this year, the company invested £5m in a lab at Imperial College London designed to help robots ‘understand and adapt to the world around them,’  Then, in an interview in February, company founder Sir James Dyson (pictured) suggested a robotic cleaner might be in the pipeline and would use computer vision to navigate a room.

Imperial’s Professor Davison has also spoken about the importance of  location tracking: “We will research and develop systems that allow machines to both understand and perceive their surroundings – using vision to achieve it,” he said. “A truly intelligent domestic robot needs to complete complex everyday tasks while adapting to a constantly changing environment.”

Dyson is also planning a £250m expansion of one of its UK sites, at Malmesbury, which could provide up to 3,000 new jobs.

Prime time for consumer robotics

More than anything, Dyson’s upcoming launch proves that consumer robotics is finally ready for prime time. In a great up-sum of why,  published on TechCrunch, computer scientists Rudina Seseri and Wan Li Zhu, who both work for VC ’s Fairhaven Capital, explain why the conditions now are perfect.

“In recent years,” they say, “we have seen accelerated levels of innovation in both software and hardware that are now driving new possibilities for consumer readiness and adoption of personal robotics.”

This as happened on a number of levels:

Proliferation of devices, compute, and bandwidth. Instead of requiring expensive custom onboard computing, robots are now able to leverage hardware, smartphones and cloud computing for processing and storage. This has implications on both cost and availability of data for machine perception and learning.

Progress in natural language processing, speech, vision and machine learning – a self-reinforcing loop: As machines can better understand the real world, they learn at a faster rate.

API-fication of online services. The ability for machines to tap into multiple online data sources and services allows them to quickly stitch together value, reducing time and cost to go to market. Location-based data, financial and weather, and increasingly healthcare data are all examples.

They and many others active in the field, also believe that the robotics future won’t look much like the current mass-visage of the technology and that, instead, “artificially intelligent devices will take on a multitude of forms where the form factor will more closely match its functions and use case.”

Many more will be in the form of embedded intelligence within everyday systems we are already familiar with. And soft robotics further promises to open up the number of applications the technology will have.

The key, according to Suseri and Zhu, is market acceptance, which will be  driven by reliability and safety. In lieu of this, the technology’s advance will progress slowly, with  interim solutions to pave the way.  Cars are in the front line, with incremental modifications such as the sensory-enabled brakes already in the market.

With a product launch that has many in the industry on the edge of their seats, Dyson is positioning for a leading part in the coming automation of the home  and a major slice of the ripening consumer robotics market. It’s also an opportunity for a major UK-based company to show some robot muscle.

http://youtu.be/L6ReNFlxqJc

This article was originally published on RAS SIG – the Robotics and Autonomous Systems Special Interest Group – part of Innovate UK’s Knowledge Transfer Network.

If you liked this article, you may also be interested in:

• Why is Japan the first to get Dyson’s new 360 Eye?
• Recent robotic vacuum launches change industry from niche to mainstream
• Housework 2.0: The battle of the robot vacuum cleaners begins!
• Dyson launches new robotic vacuum cleaner
• Dyson invests £5m in robot lab

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