Podcast team – Robohub

ep.208: Ladybird, with James Underwood

Podcast team — Sat, 21 May 2016 11:31:53 +0000

Transcript below.

In this episode, Ron Vanderkley interviews James Underwood from the Australian Centre for Field Robotics. Underwood discusses his work on an autonomous vegetable harvesting robot, Ladybird.

Ladybird is a lightweight omni-directional electric vehicle, inspired by the Coccinellidae insect (Ladybird or the ladybug insect). It is equipped with sensing, manipulation, communication hardware and software. Various user interfaces will be developed for the growers, contractors, and harvesters so that they can control the robot and use information derived from the system.

James Underwood

James Underwood is a senior research fellow at the Australian Centre for Field Robotics (ACFR) at The University of Sydney. James is an expert in the area of perception systems for field robotics – the study of how outdoor robots working in complex, unstructured environments can make sense of their world using science and technology in multi-modal sensing, data fusion and mapping.

Links:

Transcript has been edited for clarity.

Ron Vanderkley: Good morning James! Can you introduce yourself to our podcast listeners?

James Underwood: Hi, my name is Dr. James Underwood. I’m a researcher at the Australian center for field robotics, which is a robotics research group at the University of Sydney. I’ve been working there for the last several years, in applications of robotics to agriculture, specifically focused on ground-based crops like vegetables, and recently cereals and grains, and also tree crops.

Ron Vanderkley: Great. We’ve heard a lot about a particular robot you are working on. I don’t know if it’s the only one, but it’s the one that seems to be predominant, called Lady Bird. If you could describe the work that you’re doing on that particular machine.

James Underwood: Yeah, the Lady Bird is the robot, we custom designed it for the vegetable industry. Where we’ve also done a lot of research on a different platform called Trent, which we’ve used on tree crops. That was more of a general purpose. This one has really been designed specifically for the vegetable crop industry. We built this as a kind of research platform which would have a number of different senses, that are relevant in terms of a new wave of research in crop sensing, and so on. It’s also equipped with a general purpose manipulator arm, so we can actually interact with the crops.

In terms of the physical construction of the system, it has omnidirectional wheels so all four wheels point any direction. It’s a very maneuverable platform. It can go from one row to the next, without using very much of the headlamp, because we can kind of come out and just go straight sideways and back in. Another interesting feature of the platform, is it’s covered in solar panels. These actually have two functions. They have covers, so we can actually shield some of the senses underneath that, from the direct sunlight so we get better imagery of the crops that we are looking at.

Also, then of course we can cover up the solar panels, and use the energy that we are getting, in these typical, very open field applications. On a sunny day, getting a lot of energy into that all electric powered system that allows us to go for days on end without recharging.

Ron Vanderkley: You briefly talked about the senses on the Lady Bird, etc. The frequencies you were talking about were infrared, optical, there’s laser scanning, 3-D imaging involved. Are there any other type of sensory equipment involved in the machine itself?

James Underwood: We also do, we use, I don’t know if you mentioned stereo, that’s just a variation in general, allowing us to estimate the 3-D shape of instruction on the camera that we’re looking at. We also have a couple of senses, like in terms of GPS guidance and things like that, we have international sensor on board as well. The list that you’ve mentioned basically covers it. We’re looking at a lot of the different parts of the optical spectrum, as you say. From visual, to infrared and so on. We have high spectral senses to look at that spectrum in detail.

Also, with the femoral imaging, which is long wave infrared as well. So covering a large range of the electromagnetic spectrum, sense of approach there.

Ron Vanderkley: What are the difficulties in autonomous pest control, actually not just pest control, there’s weed control. Are you using other things apart from chemical sprays, steam, microwave? Mechanically, have you looked at things like that?

James Underwood: We have done a little bit of an explanation in terms of, as I mentioned, we have this general purpose manipulator robot arm on the platform. We can put a utensil on the end of that to actually mechanically remove weeds and some. But we haven’t really, at this stage, done extensive testing. There is quite a lot of work there to be done, in terms of particular, how fast could that type of thing be done. We could stop and then identify the weed, then position the arm in order to remove it.

Would that be fast enough for realistic commercial applications, is the question we don’t really know the answer to at this point. There are some other groups around the world who have looked at, for example, mechanical weeding mechanism, in particular using a stabbing mechanism. Which so rather than actually carefully hauling out the weed like that, you just sort of punch it directly from the barb. That type of technology looks like it might show some promise, and allow these sort of things to be done more rapidly.

Certainly our initial viewpoint on this, is using a rapid target and spray mechanism, which can be used even when the vehicle is in motion, for example, it can find weeds and shooting at them as it rolls past. While it is desirable to remove the chemical element all together, I think it’s probably a good first step. We can probably reduce the quantity of the chemical that is used, but maybe keep up the pace of the robot while it goes over and deals with these weeds. Certainly mechanical weeding is something that we’re rather interested in, because we can get rid of that chemical element all together. That may be a very interesting way to deal with herbicide resistance, and problems of that nature.

Ron Vanderkley: Great, I don’t know if I brought it up, but microwave was looked at at one stage. I don’t know how viable that is. Is that something that has been acknowledged?

James Underwood: I think there are a few groups who have looked into that. To my knowledge, I don’t know that there are any viable systems of that nature yet, but that is also something we are very interested in. There are many challenges that have to be solved with the microwave type application. For example, the power consumption that that device would require. Safety considerations in terms of actually having high voltages in the system, and things of that nature. I believe that the research shows that it can be an effective mechanism for dealing with weeds. Certainly in terms of constructing such a system with a robot and so on. They could be put together, there’s no reason why not.

I think that there’s more work to be done in that regard, to do a proof of concept of a useful whole system.

Ron Vanderkley: This is an interesting one for me. How do you create the section of a weed or a pest in an algorithm to create software to deal with it. Is it visual references, colors, leaf shapes, like in botany, or the location of it versus where the plant is?

James Underwood: Well this is an interesting question for us, too. This is exactly the type of algorithms that we’re interested in, and so on. A lot of the things that you mentioned are relevant. Obviously what you need to be able to do, is to detect those weeds reliably , so to minimize false detections where you think part of the crop is the weed, and you would then spray it. You want to avoid that kind of thing. Similarly, you want to have a sufficiently high rate of detection to actually deal with the weed infestation.

It’s no good if you go through a field and miss a large percentage of the weeds that are there. So the objective is to obviously do this reliably, with low error rates. Now, all of the things you mentioned can be used to detect weeds. So you can use the color camera, and in some cases, the weeds are a different color. You could use high spectral sensing, which let’s you, really the same sort of thing as a color camera, although maybe it tends to go into the infrared range as well. It’s a very detailed way of looking at color.

You where you might have two things that are almost the same shade of green, if there’s a kind of a statistically significant, albeit nuanced difference in the color pick that out more, then the cost of the sensor goes up. It may make the algorithms more simple, and the whole system may be more reliable , but of course if you can do it with the color camera, that’s a better approach.

The key with all of these things, where you’re using color, you’re using texture, all of those things together to try and separate the difference between weeds and the crop is that you have to be able to deal with the variability that you get. Not just in the different instance of the same species of weed will look different, but you also you have lot of variation just due to sunlight changes and things like that. So being able to do this reliably is really a key thing. It’s quite a challenging task.

In a lot of cases the approach that we take, are from state of the art in terms of computer vision, is to try not to specify hand coded rules. We try to avoid saying a weed is something that is this green, and it’s this size, or something like that. We try to get large data sets where we can, and learn directly from the data, what facets of that data from the senses really best eliminate the weed class and the crop class in question. It’s kind of a standard approach. It’s generally based on color, and it’s based on texture, but not necessarily in a human specified way, like a particular shape or a particular color or something like that.

You mentioned the position of the weeds location on the ground. That’s another really important one, because crops tend to be planted in straight lines with the seed. The probability of any vegetation that you may find off that seed line, the probability is much higher that it’s actually a weed. You can encode that knowledge into the system, and actually let it learn what weeds look like, by finding the examples that are off the seed line. Learning from those, and then learning automatically to find those same weeds amongst the seed line as well. There’s the kind of approach that we are taking.

There can be a lot of sophistication in how that’s done, and that’s kind of necessary in order to get those accuracies up, and to be able to do weeding once the field is no longer of color basically. When the field is basically fallow, detecting weeds is easy, because anything that’s green you just shoot with commercial applications with that already.

Ron Vanderkley: Cool, so what are the advantages and disadvantages of autonomous harvesting, fertilizing and planting today?

James Underwood: There are a number of different advantages. One of them is, obviously, labor saving and a lot of the growers that we talk to, that’s kind of the top of there list. They have difficulties with labor supply in Australia, and I understand there are similar issues in similar countries around the world. A lot of the work is done by temporary migrant workers.

We have an aging workforce. The average age of farm workers in this country is actually surprisingly high like 55 or 60 years old and the younger generation don’t seem to be showing as must interest to get involved in that area. When we talk to growers, the cost of labor and the security of the labor force is pretty much number one on their list. So clearly, autonomous systems have an advantage in that regard.

There are many other advantages you start to get when you have an autonomous system, such as the repeatability, the ability to operate 24/7 without getting tired and keeping that attention to detail at 100% capacity for the entire time that it’s working. There are advantages as far as buyer security, applications in terms of disease detection and management. And advantages having fewer instances where people handle the food that we eat. All these things have benefits for the quality of the produce and the safety of the food.

Whichever stem you pick up, you look on there and see a whole number of different advantages that might not necessarily be the top of the grower’s list but when you start to look at them all coming together in this one system that can provide many different advantages altogether, then it starts to look like a pretty good way to move.

Ron Vanderkley: What would be the ideal goal in crop management using multiple small robot tractors?

James Underwood: There are a number of advantages. One of the key things with using smaller autonomous systems, and so on is that you have a much lighter mass in terms of the vehicle. That has benefits in terms of soil compaction. Productivity in farming over the last few decades has really been driven by getting bigger and bigger equipment so that the one person driving a tractor can tend to normal hectares per day, simply by virtue of having a bigger machine. The cost of that is much greater, soil damage and soil compaction that that causes. This has been kind of mitigated to some extent by having control of traffic farming. The vehicle puts its wheels over exactly the same position so the extent of where the damage is caused is minimized. The size of these machines really does do a lot of damage to the soil. Smaller vehicles means really avoiding that problem.

As I said before, there are all these advantages jumping out at you. For example, if, by virtue of having a smaller machine, you might need to have several of them to replicate the same number of hectares per hour that you could do in a much bigger machine. But now, if one of your ten smaller machines breaks down completely, you’re still running at 90% capacity. Whereas, when that one big machine, which cost a fortune incidentally, breaks down, you’re down to 0% capacity and there’s very little that you can do about that. By having teams of smaller platforms you get a scalability and you get a resilience to malfunction, you can keep going with a subset of that team.

A small farmer could have just one of these systems. A really big farmer, property, could use a hundred of them or however many are required to scalable, better for breakages and things like that, better for soil compaction.

Ron Vanderkley: It’s also an approach to integrated farm management using farm bots both aerial and ground in the production, is that a viable option as well?

James Underwood: It doesn’t exist today as a system you can just buy and use. We’re talking in the research, where the technology is heading. There would definitely be scenarios where aerial vehicles could team up with ground vehicles to very effectively manage certain aspects of a farm. We haven’t seen it enough in practice to get a hands on view of what those benefits actually look like. It takes longer for a ground based vehicle to scan across an entire [inaudible 00:16:28] where it is much quicker for a flight vehicle to go over the top at a higher altitude and get a lower resolution snapshot of the status of the crop. If there was an identifier from that data, then they could go and do some sort of targeted management response based on what you saw from the air. You could then send vehicles specifically to the locations on the ground that need attention, whatever that might be. It is likely that there will be combinations of different bits of technology that work together and combine in that way.

Ron Vanderkley:
From the grass-root approach, What are interests local farmers? Where do they want us to go with robotics?

James Underwood: I mentioned land saving being the top of the list of the growers we have spoken to. I think they’d like to see more technology coming online that can … other assisted technology that allows greater areas to be managed in some sense using this technology rather than doing everything by hand or technology that in some cases can completely replace certain functions that are currently done now by manual labor. I think growers would like to see that. This could include a number of different things, for example, weeding is something that depending on the crop and the time of year, certainly there is a manual labor component involved in that. I have been to farms where they have to send people out to just look at the fields. They walk the whole field and look at the crop to make sure that there are no contaminants in the field. That could be leaves that blow in from adjacent, native trees and things like that. You don’t want gum leaves in your bag of spinach. As a consumer we’re fussy, you could have robots going out and doing that job.

There’s a lot of labor saving type approaches that tend to be high up on list. Where we are now we are doing some early prototypes. Growers are going to want to see the technology be actually ready to be used in a commercial sense. We still need to move in that direction. Early prototypes are based on functions. We need get a few more miles under our belt before we’re ready to sell the equipment.

Ron Vanderkley: Where to you see the future in robotics saw in the next ten or twenty years, for instance in agriculture?

James Underwood: Ten to twenty years is a very very long time, especially in terms of technological progress. It’s really hard to predict that far forward with any kind of accuracy.

Within that time frame, I think it would be good to see entire processes of the production, certain types of crops, could be done in a digital fashion. I don’t necessarily mean that there are no people involved. I mean that you have technology at all the right key points in the production cycle. All the information that’s relevant to growing the crop in an optimal kind of way. It’s all recorded and stored and used in terms of making optimal decisions and putting down the right inputs and someone to grow the best possible crop, that crop to be as resilient as possible, [inaudible 00:20:07] all using digital technology. That can be a big combination of different types of actual hardware like robotics is one part. It could also be stationary senses. It could be satellite data or UAV data. It could be handheld senses, senses mounted onto conventional vehicles, a whole number of things like that.

All that data is then coming together to really address all the information requirements across the whole production cycle. That, coupled with various automated and optimized processes, in terms of harvesting. If we’re saying in twenty years time then I hope by then that we manage to really digitize this whole system. In the near term, I think that we’ll start to see individual applications be kind of kicked off the list. Not a general type of robot, in the next five years, can do all of these things but maybe a package that you can add to a tractor that will specifically target weeds in a non fallow period. That’s a piece of technology that will come into commercial existence fairly soon. It could be integrated fairly easily into current practices.

You might then see certain crops that now are not harvested in a mechanized way, start to become solved in the mechanization. A lot of the crops are harvested in a mechanized way, like with spinach, you have a machine that has a sword in the front and cuts it off and on to a conveyor belt it goes. It’s all manually driven but it’s quite an efficient method for harvesting. Where those crops that are currently not mechanized, there is opportunities to kick them off the list. Not necessarily one special harvesting robot with arms that goes out and deals with all the different crops but say an asparagus harvester and it’s using modern robotics technology to do the job and it just does that one job very well. In the next five years or so we’ll start to see one by one these kinds of specific applications getting kicked off the list and eventually you start to get this kind of matrix of connectivity between all these different applications that start talking to each other and dealing with the whole production cycle in the bigger picture.

Ron Vanderkley: What do you think of the options for new players to robotics, for instance in agriculture, are there a lot of opportunities for a graduate be engineers?

James Underwood: Yeah, I guess that’s a fairly broad question. I think so. I think the industry by and large is sort of seeing the potential in this kind of technology. Throughout the whole chain we’re starting to see more funding in fundamental Blue Sky Research, more funding in applied research, leading towards commercialization opportunities, more commercialization funding to get those off the ground and go forth. There are more commercialization opportunities popping up all the time. There are brand new opportunities in building service companies that supply the services.

We’re sort of at the start of the ramp I think at this stage. We will start to see some of these companies become … their products will start to be used more universally and there will be the best practice in terms of farming. Then we will have hundreds and hundreds of these systems, whatever they look like, out there in the field. They will need servicing and maintenance, just like tractors do today. There is no magic behind robotics that somehow you don’t need to maintain them and look after them and always develop them. Every stage in the pipeline, there will be increasing opportunities from Blue Star Research all the way through to the actual filing practice.

We hope that actually … the demographics of those who work on the farm today is kind of an aging population and the younger people tend not to be so interested in farming as a career choice right now. There are kind of hopes that as it becomes more high tech, that it might actually attract again the younger generation into those sorts of roles and make those kinds of jumps, and fix that kind of demographic issue.

Ron Vanderkley: James, thanks on behalf of the Robots Podcast for a most interesting session.

ep.200: 200th Episode Special, with Rodney Brooks

Podcast team — Fri, 22 Jan 2016 22:12:21 +0000

Transcript below.

In this episode, we celebrate our 200th episode! That’s over 6000 minutes of robot goodness and nearly 8 years releasing interviews with your favorite roboticists. The podcast is all volunteer run, a special thanks to everyone on the team who’s made this possible! And thanks to all of you for listening in all these years.

To celebrate, our president Audrow Nash has invited a team of old-timers from the podcast team, and one of our favorite recurring guests, Rodney Brooks from Rethink Robotics.

The panel is composed of Sabine Hauert, Markus Waibel, and Peter Dürr, all co-founders of the podcast, and Per Sjöborg who’s been part of the team for many years now. They discuss their favorite episodes, what area in robotics is most interesting, their best memories, and lessons learned.

Rodney Brooks tells us about latest developments at Rethink Robotics, including their new robot Sawyer, and the Baxter Research Robot. He also tells us about the importance of science communication in a field that is prone to hype and disinformation.

Rodney Brooks
A mathematics undergraduate in his native Australia, Rodney received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford in 1981. From 1984 to 2010, he was on the MIT faculty, and completed his service as a Professor of Robotics. He was also the founding Director of the Institute’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and served in that role until 2007. In 1990, he co-founded iRobot (NASDAQ: IRBT), where he served variously as CTO, Chairman and board member until 2011. Rodney has been honored by election to the National Academy of Engineering, and has been elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Association of Computing Machinery, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is the now the founder, chairman, and CTO of Rethink Robotics.

Links:

Transcript

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Part One: Panel discussion with the Robots Podcast Team

Audrow: Our first question to the panel is: “What have been your favorite robots podcast episodes?”

Sabine: That was a really tough question. There have been so many episodes over the years – 200 of them – so it is pretty hard to choose. Dario Floreano was one of them; he’s one of the reasons the Robots Podcast exists and he started this all out of EPFL. I also really liked interviewing Bob Full about bio-inspired robots. I also interviewed Rodney Brooks a couple of times, including at the offices of Rethink Robotics. That was fun because I got to tour Rethink Robotics and have a chat with Rod over in his office.

Then there were things that were really outside the scope of what I was used to discussing or studying, like the interview with Ryan Calo, which was about the legal aspects of robotics. That’s something I hadn’t really thought about before, and talking to Ryan back then was quite helpful for me in terms of framing that discussion.

And also Radhika Nagpal – just because she’s in an area that I love and she’s a great researcher.

Audrow: What about you, Peter?

Peter: I’m with Sabine: it’s been really difficult to choose. As the audio editor for the podcast, I get to listen to all the episodes before anyone else and I’m always looking forward to each and every new episode. If you had to pin me down on one, I’m going to go for #166: Quest for Computer Vision, with Peter Corke. I work with computer vision in my day job and I really liked Peter Corke’s insightful interview and his overview over this super interesting field.

Sabine: That interview was one you did, Audrow!

Audrow: Yes, it is – thank you! … Per, what has been your favorite episode?

Per: I like the episode from the precursor to the Robots Podcast – Talking Robots – with Robin Murphy from Texas A&M, about rescue robotics. Designing robots that actually work and do the task they’re assigned to in a very hard environment – that was great content.

The favorite interview I did had to be the with Mark Tilden in Hong Kong in his amazing apartment. There were probably – I kid you not – 5000 robots there … everything from the Wowwee robots to his BEAM Robotics stuff. It was just amazing to hear his enormous experience and see all those robots, so that was the favorite one to record for me.

But as everyone else has said, there are so many good interviews and I’ve been fortunate enough to meet so many great people. It’s really impossible to choose.

Audrow: What about you, Markus?

Markus: I’ve not been able to pick a single episode either, but I have really enjoyed the business related episodes. I guess that’s how my personal interests have evolved over the years. When we started back in 2006 with Talking Robots, our first 40 or 45 interviews were almost entirely with academics. That was about 10 years ago, and that was what was out there, mostly. But if you look over the interviews we’ve done in the past year, it turns out to be about half industry and half academia, and I think that’s an interesting development for the field.

Sabine: What’s your favorite, Audrow?

Audrow: Like everyone has been saying, it’s really hard to pick. But I think one of my favorites was # 98 on self-organizing systems with Radhika. That episode gave a great overview of the field and it was interesting listening to her describe it. Also #101 on the history and outlook of robotics with George Bekey and Rodney Brooks, because it gave a big picture of what they had seen in field. It was interesting having the interviewer pick into their wisdom, to give me a better perspective on robotics. Those have been my favorite interviews so far.

My next question for everyone is what area of robotics do you think is the most interesting, and why?

Markus: I work with drones every day – small flying machines – so obviously I have a huge interest there.

Apart from that, one area I’ve been really very excited about from the very start is the field of exoskeletons and prosthetics. I think there’s so much potential to increase our independence as we age with these technologies, and as a hobby, I closely follow how these technologies are developing and being brought to market.

Another one is speech recognition. It’s really more AI [than robotics], but I think speech recognition will completely revolutionize the way we interact with technology. Right now data is mostly entered by keyboard or by mouse, and we can’t really communicate with machines in a natural way. I think speak recognition will revolutionize the way we interact with technology across the board if we manage to solve the privacy issues associated with it – which will not be easy.

Of course the next step is then doing something with that speech. I think the prevalent solution right now is to do some type of cloud processing. But with robots like Jibo or Amazon’s Echo, there’s always the big question of whether I really want Amazon or whoever else to listen in on all the conversations I’m having in my house or in my car or in my office. I think it will be difficult to role this kind of technology out in a major way before the privacy issue is resolved.

Audrow: What about you, Per?

Per: Everybody who knows me knows that I love modular robotics and self-reconfiguring modular robotics. There are so many modular systems coming out now (even if they are not self-reconfiguring) – practical systems that are available commercially … off the shelf … and that’s really exciting to me.

I agree with Markus that we’re seeing more startups, and more business being generated around robotics, and also value provided to the customer. That’s probably one of the most exciting things I see in field of robotics as a whole.

Audrow: Peter, tell us what is most interesting to you and why?

Peter: I’m really excited about artificial intelligence. The field has made huge progress over the last few decades. We’ve been able to create computers that can beat humans at chess, and that can not only recognize images (dogs, for example), but can differentiate between them (i.e. different kinds of dogs). They can surpass humans at recognizing human faces, and so on.

We cannot match the human brain (or even animal brains) at certain tasks, but I think we’ve made huge progress in artificial intelligence and I cannot wait to see how intelligent robots will be in the near future. That’s what really excites me.

Audrow: Sabine, what is most interesting and why?

Sabine: Ten years ago when we were starting the podcast, we were worried we wouldn’t have enough material to keep the podcast going every two weeks … that we’d somehow run out of topics. That definitely hasn’t happened. Looking at the topics from the past 200 episodes, they are all very different – it really shows the breadth of the field.

If I had to pick one (and I’m biased because this is the field I work in), I’m quite excited about swarm robotics. The reason is because we have finally reached a point where we can make a thousand plus robots and have them coordinate, and these are the sheer numbers that start to make swarm robotics interesting.

An obvious application is the biomedical field because, whether you’re talking about cells or nano-robots or molecules or chemistry, these are things that work in the trillions. In large swarm numbers, a very simple entity could be helpful for detecting cancers or doing something interesting in the body. That’s the field I’m excited about right now.

Audrow: What are your best memories with the Robots Podcast, Sabine?

Sabine: Starting up the whole podcast, and getting it going.

Markus was doing the episodes for Talking Robots, along with Peter, who has always been there doing the audio. We were all at Dario Floreano’s lab at EPFL in those days, and we used to move the couch against the wall to help soundproof the room so there wouldn’t be any echo. Peter is a professional musician, so he had this super sophisticated setup with real microphones, like the ones used in radio shows. We’d have this whole setup right in the laboratory. It was really fun.

In the beginning it took a lot of time. Audrow, you’ve done an amazing job in terms of continuing the podcast and making sure that we can keep going by having it run so nicely. What’s also fun is to see how it’s evolved into something that works, that’s efficient, and to see just how global it’s become. Per is in Tokyo, Markus is in Switzerland, I’m based in the UK, and Audrow, you’re in the US. Seeing that evolution from all of us in this office at EPFL, up to something that’s this global, that’s been great.

Peter: Now that Sabine is telling the anecdotes from the early days, I have to agree that was certainly fun. I think for me it’s seeing the team grow. I’ve been the constant dinosaur in the background with new people like Audrow stepping up to make the podcast better. It’s been really nice to see.

Audrow: Thanks, Peter! Per what have been your favorite moments?

Per: Being able to work with this amazing team, and being able to go out and meet the interviewees and talk to them about what they’re doing their field. I’ve met so many interesting people doing this, and I’m just amazed by all the people I’ve come to know through this work. If anyone out there is listening, doing interviews is an amazing experience: you should try it!

Markus: I’m with Per on this one. For me, it’s all about the people and the people on this team.

I’ve been deeply impressed and inspired by the excitement, energy, dedication and tenaciousness that people have put forward to make this project come alive stay alive for nearly 10 years. Everybody who’s here today has greatly contributed to making this happen and I’m honored to be part of it.

Sabine: What about you Audrow?

Audrow: It’s working with you all. It was an amazing experience going to the same conferences and seeing everyone in person. We were often on calls like this for our weekly meetings, but seeing you in person and connecting, that’s the best part for me.

The final question I have for everyone is: what have you learned from your involvement in the Robots Podcast?

Markus: I think the key thing I’ve learned is that it really matters what people you work with. I’ve long tried to work with people who are better than me, and I think I’ve been extremely fortunate in that respect and I would recommend that to anyone.

Per: Since I’m not a robotics researcher, what I learned from doing interviews is that, when you’re face to face with this person, you’re really trying to be the voice of the listener in that situation. When I listen to an interviewee speaking, I listen in a very focused, structured way – and that’s been tremendously beneficial for me in in general.

Peter: Listening to all the past episodes I notice that the best researchers and most interesting people have a talent for explaining their research in relatively simple terms. I think that’s extremely difficult and it’s a very useful skill to have. In my opinion, if you cannot explain something in relatively simple terms, you probably haven’t really understood it. It’s quite amazing how the best researchers can explain difficult things because they understand them so well.

Sabine: Tying back to what Peter is saying, what I learned is how valuable science communication is. Of all the skills I learned during my PhD, doing the podcast was probably one of the most valuable. Talking to so many researchers about their work opens your mind to all the different areas you might be looking at during your PhD. You have to learn how to ask questions and to master each topic very quickly so that you can talk to them about it. In terms of selling yourself in the real world afterwards, being able to communicate is a key skill, whether you’re in academia or in business.

Hopefully young PhD students will do the same, and will start blogging and podcasting and doing science communication of their own.

Audrow: Alright, thank you everyone. Happy 200^th episode!

Part Two: Interview with Rodney Brooks

Sabine: Hi Rod, welcome to the Robots Podcast.

Rodney: Thanks for having me. I’m honored to be on number 200! It’s great that you’ve had so many!

Sabine: Yeah, we’re pretty excited. The podcast has been running for nearly a decade now and it’s been great to have you on this show all these years.

How has robotics changed since that first interview when you were telling us about the subsumption architecture?

Rodney: Well, in the last ten years a bunch of things have changed.

In terms of subsumption robots, there are now at least 14 million of them out there in the world, so that’s pretty good. There weren’t anywhere near that many ten years ago. The iRobot Roomba is really a subsumption-based robot, and it’s been pretty successful in that niche.

I think the other big thing that’s changed is ROS. I love ROS, but it could have easily been another competitor. It’s sort of been a winner-take-all situation. The fact that so many people are using it means that people get to work together and exchange things, and it’s really taken off and grown the research arena. It has also let people see what robots could do, helping them move toward a lot more practical applications than we had ten years ago.

Sabine: I think a lot of our listeners might go back and re-listen to your more recent interview about Rethink Robotics. How is the company doing? Can you tell us about Sawyer and how it is different from Baxter?

Rodney: We had always intended to have more than one robot, but with a common software platform. When you buy most industrial robots, it’s like buying a smart phone. The manufacturer says, “If you want a camera, you can buy that as an extra, and if you want a microphone you can buy that as an extra. Oh, and by the way, it’s possible to write programs so that it can operate as a phone if you write the code.” In other words, most industrial robots come as empty shelves.

We decided to have a software stack with intelligence that works across multiple robots, and we use the analogy that iOS runs on iPads and runs on iPhones.

Baxter was our first robot. We learnt a lot from it, it’s a great robot, and we’re still selling a lot of them. At the same time, we saw an opportunity for a smaller robot, especially in China where it could work side by side in close proximity to people. A lot of people still think that China has so much labor they couldn’t possibly want robots, but if you look at the demographics in China, the absolute number of 19 year olds is dropping by 30% over a 10-year period. Nineteen year olds are where the manufacturing labor force comes from, so China is in desperate straits in terms of labor for manufacturing.

Really good, well-run companies that make electronics for the western world will have a labor turnover rate of 16% per month. You can imagine how hard it is to run a manufacturing company when there’s such high turnover. The nice thing about that problem, though, is that the electronics manufacturers in China have had to break down the manufacturing cost into a lot of simple tasks that a new person can be trained to do in just five minutes. That’s ideal for being able put a robot in there, because it’s not a complex task with lots of judgment involved. It’s a fairly simple task that we can train a Sawyer to do in just a few minutes also, and a Sawyer doesn’t quit after a couple of months.

Sabine: The markets are very different between USA and China. Does that warrant different types of robots?

Rodney: If you go into Chinese factories (and I’ve been going into them for over 20 years), people really are just two or three inches from the next person. A Baxter is way too large to sit at one of those work stations, so we had to build a much smaller robot to go after the Chinese market. We also saw that there was a need to be able to handle five kilograms, which is more than the Baxter payload.

Also, people have hips and can lean far forward, but the robot doesn’t have hips, so we needed a long reach on the arm too. Sawyer’s arm is actually longer than Baxter’s, and it’s longer than Universal Robots’ and the Kuka iiwa as well – this is so that it can do the task that a person with hips can do.

Sabine: It’s really great to see the evolution of these robots. We have a Baxter at the Bristol Robotics lab, and that’s the first thing we show everyone when they come into the lab.

Rodney: Yes, that lab at Bristol is great by the way.

Sabine: As we mentioned, it’s our 200^th episode and we’ve been doing science communication for a long time now at the Podcast and at Robohub. I was wondering why you think it’s important for roboticists such as yourself to go out there and spread the word about robotics?

Rodney: I think it’s important so that people can understand what robots can do. We’re seeing in the press a little bit of incorrect information coming from people who are outside robotics and misunderstanding what it can do. The fear of robots taking away all jobs – I think it’s misplaced.

What’s really misplaced is the fear that robots are going to rise up and decide to take over the world. That makes no sense at all to me. But people who are well-known scientists or technologists (but not roboticists) were saying that, and I think it’s doing the whole world a disservice because there’s no chance of anything like that happening anytime soon.

Anyone who works in robotics understands that we can barely get our robots to do most things. They’re not magic machines. I think it’s important for roboticists to talk to the regular press and help them understand that. And it’s important for roboticists to talk to people like you to reach the robot-loving audience and help everyone understand what the significant research problems are that still have to be solved – because there’s plenty of them, and there’s plenty of room for new people coming with new ideas.

I think my role these days is to talk about the plausible things that robots might do in the hope that it will encourage young researchers to come up with brilliant ideas on how to do it.

Sabine: What are these plausible things?

Rodney: I think the thing that’s really going to drive robotics for the next thirty years is eldercare. If you look at demographics in Europe, in North America, in China and even more so in Japan, the ratio of older people to younger people is increasing rapidly. I just saw a statistic yesterday that within a few years a third of all people in Japan are going to be over age 65, and the ratio of people paying into their social security system for every person being supported by social security is going to go from something like 9.5:1 down to less than 2:1 over the next few years.

There are a lot of people who will not be able to pay for the services that they might want, they are living longer, and they – I should include myself – we, we will want our dignity and our independence as we’re living longer, but we’ll need help.

I see the driver assist features of cars turning cars into eldercare robots because it lets people drive safely longer, which lets them have their independence and dignity longer. I also think robots in the home are going to be necessary to help older people.

I was just at iRex, the international robotics exhibition in Japan. There were lot of industrial robots, and a lot of emergency rescue robots following from DARPA Robot Challenge type applications. But it was also interesting to see a whole bunch of booths from various research institutes and universities with robots to help the elderly, to help them with mobility in the house, help them get into bed, out of bed, to help them wash. These robot demonstrations are not going to be deployable in real homes in the next year or three or five, but I think it’s great that researchers in Japan are now turning to this as a place where they can have a real impact.

I think we’re going to need lots of robots to help the elderly so that the rest of society is not completely swamped by this massive relative number of elderly to younger people.

Sabine: I agree that’s a great application. You mentioned the hype and the misinformation. Is that something that’s changed, or has that just always been the case? And what are some of the things that you need to be mindful with your company when you communicate about your robotics today?

Rodney: I think it has changed because of the high profile of some people who have come out and said rather silly things over the last year or two.

But let’s talk about my own obligations at this company. People see our robot and they imagine it can do any task in any factory, and that’s just not true. It can only do a relatively small number of tasks. Our constant thing is to train our sales representatives on what is possible versus what someone would like the robot to do. They have to be able to effectively communicate that, so that people buy the robot with their eyes open to what it really can do for them.

I remember when Baxter was first announced, a prominent blogger said to me, “I’m so disappointed. I thought I was going to be able to have Baxter steer my yacht.” I was thinking, why would you ever think our robot could take the helm and steer a yacht? There are unbelievable expectations of robots, but a general purpose robot – it’s just not going to be able to do something like that for a long, long time.

Sabine: Maybe in another eight years for our 400^th episode?! What can we expect to interview you about by that point in time?

Rodney: I think we’re going to start to see some companies really being in the elder care space. I’m a little more sanguine about all the companies in the social robotics space … I don’t know if there’s enough room for all the companies that are saying they’re going to have social robots in the home. I’ve taken issue with the idea of companion robots – I’m not sure that’s where it’s going to be. I think it’s going to be more about physical help robots. Hopefully in eight years we’ll start to see some of that.

I think the robots we’re building with arms that are safe to interact with will let more people do research in that area. One of the reasons I’ve really pushed the team to make Baxter available as a research robot was that I thought it was important to have a platform where people didn’t need to worry about the safety of the arms, so they could start doing work with the robot in whatever field they chose. And I was hoping some would choose elder care. There are quite a few university labs that are using Baxters to do things like help an elderly person get dressed or help someone in a wheelchair, or quadriplegic to feed themselves, etc. If you used a regular old industrial arm, that would be a pretty tricky and unsafe proposition for coming into contact with people.

Even though this company is aimed at putting robots in factories, I think the technology of these safe arms is going to enable the next wave of research and companies. Within the next eight years I think we’re going to see some startups in eldercare begin to appear.

Sabine: Excellent. Thanks, Rod, for joining our 200^th episode.

Rodney: Thank you for having me. Congratulations on doing this so well for so long!

Termite-Inspired Construction, with Justin Werfel

Podcast team — Fri, 04 Apr 2014 18:17:32 +0000

Link to audio file (28:48)

In this episode, we talk to Justin Werfel from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University about their latest paper published in Science on “Designing Collective Behavior in a Termite-Inspired Robot Construction Team”. This work was done with Kirstin Petersen and Radhika Nagpal, director of the Self-Organizing Systems Research Group.

Termites provide a beautiful example of how simple agents, using only local information, can build complex structures such as termite mounds. Taking inspiration from these swarm systems in nature, Werfel and colleagues have created TERMES robots that build three-dimensional structures without the need for any leader or prescribed roles. Such systems are typically scalable (i.e. you can add as many robots as you’d like) and robust to the failure of individual robots, making them ideal candidates for high-risk missions in space or disaster scenarios. The beetle-looking robots are able to carry and deposit blocks and navigate a structure. The challenge is to determine the simple rules the robots need to follow and that will give rise to the desired structure. To decide what rule to apply at a given time, the robots simply observe their local environment, checking if there is a block or not in front of them, and determining if they should add one as a result. This form of communication through the environment is called stigmergy and is an important concept in swarm systems. In the future, the authors hope to use their expertise to learn more about how termites are able to build their mounds.

Justin Werfel
Justin Werfel is a research scientist at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. His research interests are in the understanding and design of complex and emergent systems. He is currently working on the development of robotic systems motivated by biological collectives, such as ant colonies, termites, and cellular slime molds, with Wyss faculty including Radhika Nagpal and Rob Wood. He completed his Ph.D. at MIT in 2006, developing algorithms to allow swarms of simple robots to autonomously build user-specified structures. His postdoctoral research at Harvard included further exploration of collective construction, work on the evolution of cooperative and altruistic behaviors at the New England Complex Systems Institute, and cancer modeling at Harvard Medical School/Children’s Hospital Boston.

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EU Robotics Week, with Fiorella Operto, Douwe Dresscher and Roko Tschakarow

Podcast team — Sat, 22 Mar 2014 10:56:23 +0000

Link to audio file (41:00)

The European Robotics Week 2013 featured 334 robotics related events in 24 countries and attracted more than 55’000 participants spanning all ages. To give us a snapshot of the event, we talk to three organizers of robotics activities including Fiorella Operto in Italy, Roko Tschakarow in Germany, and Douwe Dresscher in the Netherlands.

Fiorella Operto
Fiorealla Operto is National Coordinator of the EU Robotics Week in Italy and president of the School of Robotics. As an expert in science dissemination and popularization, she tells us about using robots to get kids excited about engineering, their ability to address questions in roboethics, the impact of creativity and theater, and programs such as “Roberta, Girls Discover Robots”.

Douwe Dresscher
Douwe Dresscher is a graduate student at the University of Twente in Robotics and Mechatronics. He tells us about the “kids corner” he organized during the EU Robotics Week that involved parking parents in a waiting room while their children were allowed to play and interact with a range of robots from his laboratory including a Nao, a spider robot, and a robot arm. He also tells us what inspires him to communicate about robotics and his research on dike inspection robots.

Roko Tschakarow
Roko Tschakarow is Business Director of Mobile Gripping Systems at SCHUNK, one of the largest manufacturers for automation components, toolholders and workholding equipment. SCHUNK organized a robotics challenge for local high-school students during the EU Robotics week. The goal was to design a LEGO robot that could localize and navigate towards a goal, or pick-up and transport an object. He tells us about the excitement generated, and their hope to inspire future generations of roboticists.

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150th Episode Special, with Dario Floreano

Podcast team — Fri, 21 Feb 2014 16:54:10 +0000

Link to audio file (26:55)

Did you know that Robohub started right here, with the podcast? This is our 150th podcast episode, and to celebrate we brought together the original team to reenact our very first interview with Dario Floreano back in 2006. Floreano, who is director of the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at EPFL and of the Swiss NCCR Robotics tells us about the latest in Swiss robotics, his work in adaptive morphologies and flying robots, and his predictions for the future of robotics.

Some of our most loyal podcast listeners might know that before the Robots Podcast launched in 2008, there was another podcast called Talking Robots. Talking Robots launched in 2006 and was the brain child of Dario Floreano from EPFL and his then PhD students. Those students then went on to found the Robots Podcast and the accompanying Robots Association, a non-profit dedicated to providing free high-quality information about the robotics to the public. After nearly a decade dedicated to spreading the word about robotics, we’ve grown to include members from around the world, launched new projects (like Robohub!!), and we’ve continued to produce bi-weekly interviews with leaders in robotics. None of this would be possible without our loyal listeners, and we thank you for tuning in for all these years!

Talking Robots Team in 2008 (from left to right: Dario, Peter, Markus and Sabine).

In homage to our very first episode with Talking Robots, we’ve brought together the original team. Markus, who’s now a senior researcher at ETHZ interviews Dario Floreano, Director of the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at EPFL and head of the Swiss NCCR Robotics. Should be fun to see how robotics has progressed over the past 8 years! And we look forward to the future with our growing team of podcasters.

Dario Floreano
Dario Floreano is the director of the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at EPFL and director of the Swiss National Center of Competence in Robotics. He is member of the Global Agenda Council on Robotics and Smart Devices of the World Economic Forum, is co-founder of the company senseFly S.A., of the International Society for Artificial Life, and founder of the popular robotics podcast series Talking Robots.

Floreano has been on Talking Robots and the Robots Podcast several times in the past:
Swiss Robotics
New Years Special 2008
Evolutionary Robotics
Robotics and Artificial Intelligence

In this episode, he tells us about the latest activities of the Swiss NCCR Robotics, including a robotic prosthetic that can interface with the human nervous system to give users a sense of touch. He also talks about work done at his lab in adaptive morphologies (DALER) and flying robots (Gimball).

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Outdoor autonomous systems, with Jonathan Roberts

Podcast team — Fri, 26 Jul 2013 17:42:59 +0000

Link to audio file (44:12)

In this episode, we speak with Jonathan Roberts, research director of the Autonomous Systems Lab at the CSIRO ICT Centre in Brisbane Australia. Roberts leads a team of more than 45 scientists and engineers in wide variety of robotics and automation projects that feature flying, ground and underwater robots.

Jonathan Roberts
Jonathan Roberts is research director of Autonomous Systems Lab at CSIRO ICT Centre in Brisbane Outside CSIRO. His laboratory is developing automation technologies for applications in environmental monitoring, agriculture, mining, manufacturing, and for the energy sector. With research in field robotics and wireless sensor networks, his laboratory has produced new techniques for the autonomous control of machines, 3D perception and localisation, and for the setup and operation of large scale outdoor wireless sensor networks. These techniques are combined to produce novel solutions for industry.

In today’s episode we will touch on the following topics:

UAV Outback Challenge – an Australian UAV competition that features delivery and search and rescue missions.
Telepresence Robot – to help connect school kids and visitors in regional areas to the National Museum of Australia.
The Stealth Robot – for observing animals in their natural habitat.
StarBug AUV – an inexpensive, miniature autonomous underwater vehicle ideal for data collection and ecosystem surveys.
Robot Helicopter – an unmanned automatic helicopter designed to remotely inspect dangerous or hard to get to infrastructure such as powerlines, buildings and bridges.
Hexapod Robot – a multi-legged robot that can be used for monitoring and mapping uneven and unstructured terrain which can be difficult to navigate with wheeled robots.
Redirecting Manufacturing – a discussion on the future of manufacturing.

Jonathan Roberts is also Deputy Director of the Australian Research Centre for Aerospace Automation (ARCAA), Video Editor for the IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine and a member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Field Robotics.

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Mining Automation, with Martin Adams

Podcast team — Fri, 12 Jul 2013 16:01:30 +0000

Link to audio file (14:19)

In today’s episode we speak with Martin Adams from the University of Chile about using robots in the mining industry. Mining is a dangerous job that would strongly benefit from robotic helpers. To drive this effort, the mining industry funded the Advanced Mining Technology Centre (AMTC). As the principal investigator there, Adams explores the use of robotic technologies such as mapping and SLAM that would be essential in mining automation. He also tells us why he chose to do robotics in South America.

Martin Adams
Martin Adams is the principle investigator in the industrially sponsored Advanced Mining Technology Centre (AMTC). He is also Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Dept. of Electrical Engineering, University of Chile. In, 1988, he obtained his first degree in Engineering Science at the University of Oxford, U.K and continued to study for a D.Phil. at the Robotics Research Group, University of Oxford, which he received in 1992. He continued his research in autonomous robot navigation as a project leader and part time lecturer at the Institute of Robotics, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, Switzerland. From 1996 to 2000, he served as a senior research scientist in robotics and control, in the field of semiconductor assembly automation, at the European Semiconductor Equipment Centre (ESEC), Switzerland. From 2000 to 2010, he was Associate Professor at the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore.

His research work focuses on autonomous robot navigation, sensing, sensor data interpretation and control, and he has published many technical papers in these fields. He has been the principle investigator and leader of many robotics projects, coordinating researchers from local industries and local and overseas universities and has served as associate editor on various journal and conference editorial boards.

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Robotics Business Review, with Tom Green

Podcast team — Fri, 28 Jun 2013 13:15:25 +0000

Link to audio file (38:23)

In this episode we meet with Tom Green, editor in chief of the Robotics Business Review, to discuss current trends in robotics. Robotics Business Review is a global robotics news and information resource headquartered in metro Boston (USA).

Green shares his view on how the focus within the robotics community differs in different parts of the world, and what impact public funding has on this. According to him, it is not technology but people that hold development up at the moment. We also hear about some success stories, that show how robotics make a difference in people’s lives.

Tom Green

Tom Green is the Editor in chief of the Robotics Business Review, a global robotics news and information resource headquartered in metro Boston (USA).

Formerly, Green worked as print/online writer and video producer for the MITRE Corporation, an R&D facility specializing in computer engineering, avionics, robotics, RADAR, marine engineering, satellite communications, systems engineering and deep-space information systems for the U.S. federal government, NATO, World Radiocommunication Conferences and civilian projects worldwide (2000-2009). In 2010, Green published an Amazon best-selling history of the computer revolution: “Bright Boys: The Making of Information Technology 1938-1958″. He was also online editor/writer for Millipore/Merck Corporation; website developer and editor for JAZD Business Publications; and TV program developer for Gostelradio.

He is also an Emmy-nominated, award-winning writer, producer and playwrighter who utilizes online editorial and video content to report on and produce programs on science, technology and engineering. Green wrote and produced the forum-based TV pilot “Lifelines” for a local Boston network. His stage plays have been produced at Boston’s Next Move Theater and then reproduced as radio plays for National Public Radio.

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The OpenROV project, with Eric Stackpole and David Lang

Podcast team — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 16:46:39 +0000

Link to audio file (34:33)

In the episode, we speak with Eric Stackpole and David Lang from the OpenROV project about their challenge in developing Eric’s idea to find an easy way to explore a cave that was rumored to contain a sunken treasure near his home.

OpenROV (OPEN-source Remotely Operated Vehicle) is a telerobotic submarine built to make underwater exploration and education affordable. We will hear of their learning curve to turn a fun idea into a funded kick-starter project, on a shoestring budget and how they inspired the community to develop the project further. This has united the imagination of DYI beginners, amateurs, professional engineers and scientists from over 50 countries, with far more applications than were original conceded, from pollution monitoring to species identification in the Antarctica.

Eric Stackpole
Eric Stackpole is a Co-Founder of OpenROV and the original designer of the robot. He currently works part-time for NASA at the Ames Research Center and is finishing his masters thesis in mechatronics at Santa Clara University. Eric has always been an enthusiast of exploration technology, from building a telerobot to attend classes in college to lugging ham radios up mountains during backpacking trips.

David Lang
David Lang is a Co-Founder of OpenROV. He also writes the Zero to Maker column for the MAKE blog, where he chronicles his crash-course into the maker world. Prior to underwater robots, David managed OCSC Sailing in Berkeley where he helped hundreds of students learn to sail and led sailing adventures around the world.

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Curved Artificial Compound Eye, with Ramon Pericet Camara and Michal Dobrzynski

Podcast team — Fri, 31 May 2013 16:08:55 +0000

Link to audio file (22:01)

In this episode, we speak with Ramon Pericet and Michal Dobrzynski from EPFL about their Curved Artificial Compound Eye (CurvACE) published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Inspired by the fly’s vision system, their sensor can enable a large range of applications that require motion detection using a small plug-and-play device. As shown in the video below, you could use these sensors to control small robots navigating an environment, even in the dark, or equip a small autonomous flying robot with limited payload. Other applications include home automation, surveillance, medical instruments, prosthetic devices, and smart clothing.

The artificial compound eye features a panoramic, hemispherical field of view with a resolution identical to that of the fruitfly in less than 1 mm thickness. Additionally, it can extract images 3 times faster than a fruitfly, and includes neuromorphic photoreceptors that allow motion perception in a wide range of environments from a sunny day to moon light. To build the sensors, the researchers align an array of microlenses, an array of photodetectors, and a flexible PCB that mechanically supports and electrically connects the ensemble.

This work is part of the European Project Curvace which brings together a total of 15 people from four partners in France, Germany and Switzerland.

You can read our full coverage here.

Ramon Pericet Camara
Ramon Pericet Camara is the scientific coordinator for the CurvACE project and a postdoctoral researcher at the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at EPFL. His research interests are oriented towards bio-inspired robotics, soft robotics, and soft-condensed matter physics.

Ramon received a Masters degree in Physics in 2000 from the University of Granada (Spain) and a PhD in Multidisciplinary Research from the University of Geneva (Switzerland) in 2006. Subsequently, he was granted a fellowship for prospective researchers from the Swiss National Science Foundation to join the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz (Germany).

Michal Dobrzynski
Michal Dobrzynski is a PhD student at the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at EPFL. He obtained his master degree in Automatic Control and Robotics in 2006 from the Warsaw Technical University (Poland). He then joined the SGAR S.L. Company (Barcelona, Spain) as a Robot and PLC Software Engineer where his work focused on industrial robots and automatic lines programming and visualization. Next, in 2007, he joined a Numerical Method Laboratory at the University Politechnica of Bucharest (Romania) where he spent two years working in the FP6 “Early Stage Training 3″ project as a Researcher.

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Audio interviews about the controlled flight of insect robots, with Kevin Ma, Pakpong Chirarattananon and Sawyer Fuller

Podcast team — Fri, 03 May 2013 13:29:31 +0000

Link to audio file (25:02)

In this episode we hear from researchers at the Harvard Microrobotics Lab about the Science paper published today reporting on the first controlled flight of an insect-sized robot. The amazing high-speed video below shows the robot taking off, hovering in place and steering left and right. This work is part of the Robobees project that aims to make swarms of insect robots.

You can read our full coverage here.

Controlled flight of a robotic insect from Wyss Institute on Vimeo.

Kevin Ma, Pakpong Chirarattananon and Sawyer Fuller
Kevin Ma and Pakpong Chirarattananon are graduate student researcher at the Harvard Microrobotics Lab working with Prof. Robert Wood (listen to Wood’s podcast here). Kevin studies the design and manufacturing of very small-scale robots while Pakpong’s work focuses on flight control strategies for flapping wing robots. Sawyer Fuller is a postdoctoral researcher with experience in the control and sensing of biological and robotic flies.

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Software marketplace, with Celestino Alvarez Martinez and Lucia Fernandez Cossio

Podcast team — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 16:30:54 +0000

Link to audio file (31:43)

In this episode we hear how the Spanish robotic startup Adele is creating a marketplace for robotics software. Through their platform, robot developers can buy software components for their robots, and software developers can sell their code, in a practical way. Examples of the software components, Adele calls them sparks, are speech recognition, synthetic speech, vision systems and user interface components. Their flagship project FIONA (Framework for Interactive-services Over Natural-conversational Agents) allows users to create intelligent and interactive virtual avatars.

Celestino Alvarez Martinez
Celestino Alvarez Martinez is an Industrial Engineer, specialized in Electronics and Automation from the University of Oviedo and with a Diploma of Advanced Studies in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence from Polytechnic University of Madrid. In 2002 he began his PhD in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence, under the supervision of Professor Antonio Barrientos (DISAM, UPM) in the field of human-robot interaction.

Lucia Fernandez Cossio
Lucia Fernandez Cossio is a Computer Science Engineer from the University of Oviedo. She is specialized in artificial intelligence and social robotics and currently holds the position of Project Manager at Adele Robots. She has experience in management and direction of R & D related to different topics within the field of Information Technology and Communication.

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International standards, with Gurvinder Virk

Podcast team — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 17:17:37 +0000

Link to audio file (50:26)

In this episode we hear from Professor Gurvinder Virk from the University of Gävl about how international standards are created in the ISO. He also tells us why he thinks they are essential for robotics and how you can participate and contribute.

Gurvinder Virk
Gurvinder Virk is a Professor of Robotics and the Built Environment, at University of Gävle, Sweden as well as Professor of Robotics and autonomous systems at KTH, Sweden.

He is also Chairman of CLAWAR Association Ltd. in a voluntary capacity. CLAWAR is a UK registered charity with the mission to advance education and science for the public benefit in the field of robotics and associated technologies.

He is a technical expert in control theory and its applications with particular experience in service robotics and building management systems, and the use of advanced model-based control to a variety of applications. His current interests are in personal care robots, physical assistance exoskeletons, medical robots, olfactory navigation for mobile robots, and renewable energy systems for buildings. He has extensive experience of project management and leading large international projects. He has produced over 300 papers and 11 books.

Prof. Virk is a leading actor in international robot standardisation and the Convener of two robot safety work groups, ISO TC184/SC2/WG7 Personal care robot safety, and IEC TC62/SC62A & ISO TC184/SC2 JWG9 Medical electrical equipment and systems using robotic technology.

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Giving rights to robots, with Kate Darling

Podcast team — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 10:32:00 +0000

Link to audio file (22:47)

In this episode, we talk with Kate Darling from the MIT Media Lab, about giving rights to social robots. She tells us about a recent Pleo torture session she organized at the LIFT conference and the class she taught at Harvard Law School on “Robot Rights”.

Kate Darling
Kate Darling is an Intellectual Property Research Specialist at the MIT Media Lab. She recently wrote a paper on “Extending Legal Rights to Social Robots” where she asks if we should consider protecting robots that connect with us on a social level. In her paper, she says:

Assuming that our society wants to protect animals regardless of their capacities, because of our personal attachments to them, society may well also want to protect social robots regardless of their capacities.

To test our attachment to robot companions, Darling organized a workshop at LIFT which involved torturing and “killing” Pleo dinosaurs.

The task ended up being surprisingly difficult for the participants who had spent time bonding with the robots. In the end, only one Pleo was killed.

Darling asks if mistreating a social robot could be a precursor sign of abusive personality, and if certain limits should be set on what people should and shouldn’t be doing with robots. She tells us about the course she co-taught with Professor Lawrence Lessig at Harvard Law School on “Robot Rights”, and the questions legal experts should be tackling in the realm of robotics.

Kate Darling is also a Ph.D. candidate in the field of Intellectual Property and Law & Economics at the ETHZ in Switzerland and holds a law degree (B.A./J.D. equivalent) from the University of Basel, where she graduated with honors in 2008. Her research interests have previously revolved around innovation policy and the economic analysis of copyright and patent law. She gave a related talk at LIFT this year entitled “Innovation Drivers: XXX”.

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EU Robotics Week, with Thilo Brodtmann, Asim Ikram and Barbara Klein

Podcast team — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 18:56:23 +0000

Link to audio file (29:02)

In today’s episode we cover the EU Robotics Week that took place during the last week of November and featured robotics related activities across Europe for the general public, highlighting growing importance of robotics in a wide variety of application areas. More than 130 organizations (companies, universities, research institutes) in 19 European countries organized over 360 robotics related activities. About 80,000 people have been reached across Europe, many of them high school and elementary school students. We talk with Thilo Brodtmann, Director of EUnited Robotics, and Organizer of the event, about his first impressions following the EU Robotics week. Asim Ikram from the Danish Technology Institute tells us about logistic robots in the healthcare sector. Finally, we talk with Barbara Klein, Professor at the Fachhochschule Frankfurt, about emotional robots such as Paro and their therapeutic use for kids or the elderly.

Thilo Brodtmann
Thilo Brodtmann is Director of Robotics and Automation at VDMA and head of EUnited Robotics, the organizer of the EU Robotics Week. He began his career as economics expert in the VDMA Precision Tools Association before moving on to become Managing Director and then General Manager of the International Special Tooling and Machining Association in Frankfurt. More recently he was member of VDMA extended Executive Directorate and since 1999 has been Managing Director of the VDMA Robotics and Automation Association. Since 2000 he has been Managing Director of the VDMA Productronics Association and of the Micro Technology Association, as well as Deputy Executive Director of the German Engineering Federation. His main areas of expertise are Strategic Sales and Marketing, Customer Relationship Management, Innovative Business and International Trade. He studied Business Administration and Economics at the University of Bayreuth.

Asim Ikram
Asim Ikram is Senior Consultant in Robot Technology at the Danish Technology Institute. He tells us about the use of robots to transport material in hospitals and their workshop on “Logistics and automation with hospital robots” at the EU Robotics Week. The DTI organized several other events which you can see here. Ikram holds a B.Sc. in Avionics, a M.Sc. in Computer Systems Engineering (Robotics and Computer Vision) and many years of experience in industry as a Production Test Engineer, Project Chief and Consultant.

Barbara Klein
Barbara Klein is professor for organization and management in social work at the Fachhochschule Frankfurt am Main – University of Applied Sciences in Germany (FH FFM). She organized the workshop on “Emotional robots – PARO, PLEO and GIRAFF in the Healthcare Sector” during the EU Robotics week. Her research focuses on new technologies in the healthcare sector and she developed and implemented an independent living center displaying assistive technologies such as innovative light concepts, sensor-based assistive devices and emotional and social robots.

Barbara studied at universities in Mainz, Frankfurt and London and graduated as Dipl.-Soz. at the Goethe-University in Frankfurt in 1984. Here she completed her doctorate in 1994. For more than 20 years, Barbara worked at the Fraunhofer Society, Europe´s largest applied research institution. From 1994-1995 she had a Marie-Curie scholarship and did research and lecturing on quality assurance in the nursing care sector at the University of Stirling, UK. Coming back to Germany she established a market focus unit “Public Health” at the Fraunhofer IAO. Since 2007 she is professor at the FH FFM and was vice dean from 2009-2012.

Since 2007 she is awarded as international fellow at Northumbria University in Newcastle, England. She participates in the International Collaborative Network on Risk Construction and Management in Aging Populations and is member of the Ethics and Medical Committee of ATEGRIS Regionalholding GmbH.

Currently Barbara establishes a network on emotional and social robotics in order to generate and share knowledge on application fields and effects on well-being and quality of life.
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Robolution Capital, with Renaud Champion

Podcast team — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 11:52:01 +0000

Link to audio file (41:13)

In this episode Per talks to robotics enthusiast and investment fund manager Renaud Champion. Champion is co-founder of the professional investment fund Robolution Capital, that focuses on investing in service robotics in the European market.

Champion believes that service robotics has great growth potential, both in the professional and the domestic market. With a target of 60 million euros in funding, he is actively trying to promote development by building an effective ecosystem for robotics, including entrepreneurs, investors, advisers and users. In this interview he shares some thoughts on what he looks for in a potential investment, as well as his views on the European robotics market, vs. that in the US and Asia.

Renaud Champion
Renaud Champion is co-founder and partner of Robolution Capital, the first investment fund dedicated to Service Robotics in Europe and the first worldwide fund in this sector. He is also an executive director of Syrobo, the French Federation of Service Robotics.

Since 2005, he works closely with the entrepreneur Bruno Bonnell (Infogrames, Atari, Robopolis) to identify future growth centers in the high tech sector. In 2010 he created Primnext, a consulting firm specialized in valuation, risk management, modelling and returns optimization of companies operating in disruptive technologies and services. Primnext’s major fields of expertise are Robotics, Cognitive Systems and Artificial Intelligence.

In 1997, Renaud Champion joined the quantitative financial engineering department of BNP Paribas CIB where he was in charge of modelling structured derivatives products on interest rates and equity. From 2001 to 2009, he was the head of equity derivatives trading desks in New York and Paris at BNP Paribas. He managed derivatives portfolios on indices, stocks and hedge funds.

Renaud Champion holds an MS degree in electrical engineering with emphasis on mathematics and signal processing (SUPELEC, University of Michigan).

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Curious & creative, with Rob Saunders

Podcast team — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 13:43:11 +0000

Link to audio file (36:25)

In today’s episode we speak with Rob Saunders about work done at the University of Sydney in computational creativity and curiosity.

Rob Saunders
Rob Saunders is Lecturer in Design Computing and Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Sydney where he joined the Design Lab. In 1995 he gained a BSc in Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science from the University of Edinburgh and in 2002 he was awarded a PhD from the University of Sydney for his work on Curious Design Agents and Artificial Creativity. From 2002 to 2006 he lived in London where he worked on a number of interdisciplinary projects with artists, designers, and scientists including biological simulations of stem cell systems, an intelligent logo design system and autonomous artworks that have been exhibited in galleries across the UK and the USA.

After his return to Sydney in 2006, Saunders focused his attention to exploring computational models of creativity. His research interest lies in understanding human creativity and producing tools that support it. His curious design assistants for example are interface agents that have been developed to support human creativity by filtering and exploring design spaces. Saunders also aims to build minimal and well rounded models of creativity at the individual, social and cultural level for autonomous systems that work independently from humans.

Curiosity is one of the driving forces behind creative activity. As such, Saunders creates curious agents that are computational models of self-motivated learning based on interest in novelty.

In this interview, Saunders tells us about his many projects in curious systems and his take on creativity.

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Autonomous Solutions, with Mel Torrie

Podcast team — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 09:34:54 +0000

Link to audio file (26:42)

In today’s episode we speak with Mel Torrie about work done at Autonomous Solutions, Inc. to make a large range of vehicles autonomous.

Mel Torrie
Mel Torrie is CEO and President of Autonomous Solutions, the company he founded in 2000 after his work at Utah State University (USU) managing robotics development programs for John Deere, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the U.S. Department of Energy. While at USU, he also received a Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering and worked on two NASA space shuttle payloads.

Autonomous Solutions, Inc. is a spin-off of the Center of Self Organizing and Intelligent Systems at USU. The company designs software and hardware solutions to make a wide variety of autonomous vehicles spanning industry, agriculture, and government/military applications. The technology developed allows for multi-vehicle command and control, mission planning, sensor fusion, obstacle detection and avoidance, tele-operation, and point-and-go ease of use.

Here is a video overview of the different types of autonomous solutions coming out of their company:

Torrie also tells us about challenges faced when translating results from research to the real world and creative solutions to autonomous control including attaching “dog-leashes” to control vehicle convoys.

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The Wambots Team, with Thomas Bräunl

Podcast team — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 13:53:22 +0000

Link to audio file (27:40)

In today’s episode, we speak with Thomas Bräunl from the University of Western Australia about the MAGIC 2010 Challenge, the Wambot team and work done at the Robotics & Automation Lab.

Thomas Bräunl
Thomas Bräunl is Professor at the University of Western Australia and leader of the Robotics & Automation Lab. He tells us about the first MAGIC Challenge (Multi Autonomous Ground-Robotics International Challenge) that took place in 2010 in Adelaide, South Australia. MAGIC is a 1.6 million dollar prize competition for autonomous mobile robots funded by the primary research organizations for Tank and Defense research in the USA and Australia-TARDEC and DSTO. The goal of the competition is to create multi-robot teams that can execute an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance mission in a dynamic urban environment. Tasks include mapping a 500 m x 500 m area in under 3.5 hours and identifying targets of interest. Bräunl tells us what it takes to make a robot for your first participation in a robotics competition, lessons learned from their 4th place and other work done in the lab on underwater robotics and the “not so Grand Challenge”.

Calum Meiklejohn
Calum is a mechatronics student working towards his final year project. He tells us about his work on the new UWA Wambot robot including an upgrade in software that now uses ROS (Robot Operating System) to coordinate sensors for SLAM (Simultaneous localization and Mapping). Their final aim is to have a swarm of these cooperate to build maps of an environment.

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Digital cultures, with Chris Chesher

Podcast team — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 15:08:05 +0000

Link to audio file (34:22)

In today’s episode we speak with Chris Chesher about how he views the emergence of robotics. He brings a new and interesting perspective as his approach mixes science and technology studies, media studies and ethnography in an effort to understand robotic technologies and everyday-life.

Chris Chesher

Dr Chris Chesher is Senior Lecturer in Digital Cultures working with cultures of contemporary robotics, in association with the Center for Social Robotics at the Australian Center for Field Robotics, University of Sydney Australia. He also writes a blog called FollowingRobots.

Grishin Robotics, with Dmitry Grishin

Podcast team — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 11:59:39 +0000

Link to audio file (35:56)

In today’s episode we speak with Dmitry Grishin about Grishin Robotics, his global investment company dedicated to helping robotics startups distribute already working products to the mass market.

Dmitry Grishin
Dmitry Grishin is co-founder and chairman of the Mail.Ru Group, the largest Internet company in the Russian-speaking world and one of the biggest in Europe. He joined the company in 2001 after graduating from the Faculty of Robotics and Complex Automation at Moscow State Technical University.

This background led him to believe that personal robotics, with a market potential estimated to be over $18 billion in 2015 (ABI Research), is ready to become mainstream and poised for massive growth, similar to the internet industry in the past decade. To help drive mass-market penetration of new robotics products, Grishin founded Grishin Robotics in 2012 with an initial personal investment of $25 million. His firm, located in New York, funds start-up companies that are ready to ramp-up production of already proven robotic prototypes. Grishin recently announced their first investment in Double Robotics, a company that makes telepresence robots.

Grishin tells us about the changes that are need in the robotics culture to start developing successful startups, including building simple robots that are need-driven rather than technology-driven and emphasize user experience.

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Space business, with Stephen Gorevan

Podcast team — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 12:08:33 +0000

Link to audio file (47:00)

Link to transcript

In today’s episode we speak with Stephen Gorevan from Honeybee Robotics about how he and Chris Chapman started the company and how his childhood dream of working for NASA got them into space robotics. The interview, which was recorded before the landing of Curiosity on Mars, gives us all the details about the equipment they built for the Mars Science Laboratory, including the Sample Manipulation System (SMS) and the Dust Removal Tool (DRT) which will enable the mission to explore and analyze the Martian environment. We also hear about their latest developments in small scale satellites called Cubesats.

Stephen Gorevan

Stephen Gorevan co-founded Honeybee Robotics in 1983 and currently serves as the company’s Chairman. He is principally responsible for guiding the company’s direction toward the application of advanced robotic and automation techniques to new applications in the aerospace sector. His responsibilities include new technology development, company and engineering management, design and systems engineering. Gorevan has over 25 years of experience in leading advanced robotics and automation design, development, and implementation efforts for NASA, defense and industry. He currently serves as a Co-Investigator on the science teams for the Mars Exploration Rovers and the Mars Science Laboratory SAM instrument and is a member of the Venus Science Definition Team.

Sample Manipulation System

Ncube-2, a Norwegian Cubesat

The Dust Removal Tool (DRT)

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Rethink Robotics, with Rodney Brooks

Podcast team — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 11:49:35 +0000

Link to audio file (34:39)

Link to transcript

In today’s episode we speak with Rodney Brooks at the offices of Rethink Robotics about their first product Baxter, his ambition to revolutionize manufacturing and latest tips for young entrepreneurs.

Rodney Brooks
Rodney Brooks built his career as Professor in robotics and former Director (1997 – 2007) of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and then the MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). In the 1980s, he revolutionized the field of robotics by introducing the idea that the world is its own best model, and that to be robust, robots should react to their environment (behavior-based robotics) rather than rely on complex models of the world. From this research in behavior-based robotics, Brooks then studied human-robot interactions with former graduate students, now well known researchers, such as Cynthia Breazeal and Maja Mataric. He is also a Founder, former Board Member (1990 – 2011) and former CTO (1990 – 2008) of iRobot.

In 2008, Brooks founded Rethink Robotics, a Boston-based company aimed at revolutionizing manufacturing and reducing offshoring by making low-cost robots that can easily be taught to help with different tasks on the work-floor by everyday employees. Their first product “Baxter” has five cameras and two arms, each with 7 degrees of freedom, a payload of 5 kg and equipped with interchangeable manipulators.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjPFqkFyrOY

In this interview, Brooks tells us about his vision for manufacturing and the design decisions that were taken to address challenges such as vision, manipulation, and human-robot interactions. Businesses will need to “rethink” their idea of automation before embracing adaptable, compliant and human-like robots rather than typical assembly-line super-performers.

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BEAM Robotics, with Mark Tilden

Podcast team — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 11:17:53 +0000

Link to audio file (34:52)

Link to transcript

In today’s episode we speak with Mark Tilden, about the history before WowWee‘s RoboSapien and FemiSapien and about his belief that bottom up BEAM robotics (which stands for Biology, Electronics, Aesthetics, and Mechanics) is essential in creating low cost, competent, robust and flexible robots.

Mark Tilden
Mark Tilden is a true robotics lover, having built thousands of robots of all shapes and sizes in the last few decades. During the first part of his career he pioneered BEAM robotics, a philosophy of building robots based on simple analog circuits and control instead of highly-complex systems, leading to low-cost and efficient systems. His bio-inspired bots manage to walk, crawl, roll or shake in complex environments using only a few transistors and basic sensors.

After working at the University of Waterloo in Canada and subsequently at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, Tilden’s research eventually evolved into toy design when he was hired as a consultant for WowWee robotics in Hong Kong. His RoboSapien humanoid robot was controlled using only 28 transistors, and has sold in the millions. We covered his work at WowWee in a previous version of the podcast about Robot Toys.

In this episode, Tilden gives us an intriguing glimpse into the future. He is currently working on taking the basic BEAM technology in his toy robots and adapting them to perform useful tasks. Using flexible robots, rather than many dedicated systems, is a powerful concept but it also brings with it some tough requirements ranging from look and feel to battery life and safety. He sums up the requirements nicely when saying “your robot has to perform its task quietly, elegantly and in conjunction with you”.

And if you are into picking things apart and building new things, the BEAM technology and RoboSapien and FemiSapien are definitely your thing. They are actually meant to be disassembled and the components are all labeled and documented so that you can use them for many things.

Future cities, with Matthias Kohler

Podcast team — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 12:12:36 +0000

Link to audio file (38:04)

Link to transcript

In today’s episode we speak with Matthias Kohler, faculty at ETHZ and renowned architect, about his work in robotic architecture at the Future Cities Laboratory (FCL) which is part of the Singapore-ETH Centre for Global Environmental Sustainability (SEC) in Singapore.

We hear how he first got interested in robotics and automated architecture, and what the future plans are for his lab.

Matthias also talks about how the design of buildings and the urban landscape will change when the construction process becomes automated. The history of modular and automated building is not exactly filled with success. We discuss why that is, and why it is likely to be different this time around.

The issues of safety, compliance with building codes and quality control are other interesting topics that we get to hear more about in this interview.

If you are interested in automated building, you might be interested in our previous interview with Radhika Nagpal, where she talks about the TERMES project that aims to develop an automated building system that mimics termites and how they build their impressive mounts.

Matthias Kohler
Matthias Kohler is an architect with multi-disciplinary interests ranging from computational design and robotic fabrication to material innovation. In 2000, he founded the architecture practice Gramazio & Kohler in conjunction with his partner Fabio Gramazio, where numerous award-wining designs have been realized, integrating novel architectural designs into a contemporary building culture. Trained at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zurich, his integral approach to practice and research focuses on the interplay of digital design and material processes through advanced construction methodologies.

Since 2005, Gramazio & Kohler hold the Chair for Architecture and Digital Fabrication at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zurich. Founding the world’s first architectural robotic laboratory, the pioneering investigations of Matthias Kohler concentrate on non-standardized architectural design and additive fabrication processes through the customized use of industrial robots. A significant amount of research has been accomplished addressing scales ranging from 1:1 prototypical installations to the design of robotically fabricated high-rise buildings. Currently Matthias Kohler’s research is focusing on adaptive design strategies for constructive material systems and in-situ robotic fabrication.

In Matthias Kohler’s practice, emphasis is placed on understanding construction and materialization as fundamental to the design of architecture. Gramazio & Kohler demonstrates a profound architectural expertise, considering the building process in all its cultural, constructive and sensual dimensions. Built work ranges from international exhibitions, private and public buildings to large-scale urban interventions. Projects include the Gantenbein vineyard façade, the Tanzhaus theatre for contemporary dance, the Christmas lights for Bahnhofstrasse, the sWISH* Pavilion at the Swiss National Exposition Expo.02 and the Private House in Riedikon.

Matthias Kohler’s innovative explorations have contributed to numerous exhibitions around the world such as the 2008 Architectural Biennial in Venice and the Storefront Gallery for Art and Architecture in New York 2009. His work has been published in a large number of journals, books and mass media and is further documented in the book Digital Materiality in Architecture, which outlines the theoretical context for the full synthesis of data and material in architecture.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnkMyfQ5YfY

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Robotics festival, with Francesco Mondada

Podcast team — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 12:31:48 +0000

Link to audio file (35:00)

Link to transcript

In today’s episode we speak with Francesco Mondada, organizer of the Robotics Festival at EPFL that gathers over 15’000 visitors for hands-on workshops and demonstrations. We also walk you through the many exhibits showcasing multi-robot systems, flying robots, rehabilitation robots and robotic salamanders.

Francesco Mondada
Francesco Mondada is the director of the Miniature Mobile Robots Group at EPFL in Switzerland. We spoke with him last fall about his work in Educational Robotics. An expert in education, he received the Credit Suisse Award for Best Teaching last year. Some of his most popular robots used in schools and labs around the world include the Khepera, the S-bot and marXbot, the e-puck and more recently the Thymio and Thymio II. He also founded and was CEO of K-Team, a Swiss based company that develops, manufactures and markets mobile robots for use in advanced education and research. In this interview we catch his first impressions after the 5th edition of the Robotics Festival that took place at EPFL. A success from the very beginning, the Robotics Festival managed this year to draw 15’000 visitors in a single day of interactive workshops, demos, and robotic shows and featured demonstrations of Festo’s AirJelly.

Robotics Festival
The Robotics Festival aims to demystify engineering for the general public and especially kids. Of the 15’000 visitors, 1994 attended workshops where they learned to make robots, program and do electronics, while 6091 attended robotics shows. The rest walked around the many exhibits showcasing latest advances in robotics by research institutions and industry. In this episode, we take you to some of the demos:

Here are some of the robots mentioned.

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Field robotics, with Salah Sukkarieh

Podcast team — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 11:32:54 +0000

Link to audio file (29:22)

Link to transcript

In this episode, we talk to Salah Sukkarieh, Director of Research and Innovation at the Australian Centre for Field Robotics (ACFR). He gives us an overview of the centre’s past and present projects, many addressing the special conditions robotics faces in Australia.

Salah Sukkarieh

Salah Sukkarieh is the Director of Research and Innovation of the Australian Centre for Field Robotics (ACFR) and the Professor of Robotics and Intelligent Systems at the University of Sydney in the School of Aerospace. He received his Honours in BE Mechatronics Engineering in 1997 and his PhD in 2000 at the University of Sydney.

Field robotics focuses on systems that work in outdoor environments. Having been the principal research and development lead on many of the autonomous systems projects, Sukkarieh tells us about work done at the ACFR in aerospace, aviation, agriculture, mining and autonomous transport. Given the ripeness of the field, he also tells us about remaining future work and the potential for collaborations with industry.

For more information, visit the centre’s youtube channel.

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JPL Open House 2012, with Tod Litwin, Megan Richardson, Kit Kennedy, Mike Watkins and Dimitri Zarzhitsky

Podcast team — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 12:22:27 +0000

Link to audio file (28:07)

In today’s show we bring you to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) Open House, just in time to prepare for the landing of the Curiosity Mars Rover in less than 10 days.

Every year, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory opens its doors to over 38,000 visitors. This year’s theme was “Great Journeys”, inviting visitors to share in the wonders of space through high-definition and 3-D videos, live demonstrations, interactions with scientists and engineers and a first look at JPL’s new Earth Science Center.

As we walk you through the JPL mission control center, clean rooms and facilities, we stop to chat with JPL engineers and developers about the many space systems we encounter including the rovers Athlete, Spirit & Opportunity and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. This year’s highlight was the Mars Rover Curiosity, scheduled to land on August 5th. Curiosity, which is part of the the Science Laboratory Mission, will assess whether Mars ever was, or is still today, an environment able to support microbial life.

People we had a chance to speak with include Tod Litwin & Megan Richardson (Mars Exploration Booth), Kit Kennedy (Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter), Mike Watkins (MSL Rover Curiosity) and Dimitri Zarzhitsky (Mobility and Robotic Technologies).

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Launching startups, with Andra Keay

Podcast team — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 11:40:23 +0000

Link to audio file (40:32)

Today we talk with Andra Keay, founder of Robot Launch Pad, robotics startup accelerator based in Silicon Valley, about latest events, lean startup methodology, funding, and gender.

Andra Keay

Andra Keay is a Robot Startup Evangelist passionate about growing robotics, one startup at a time. Supported by key actors in the field including Erin Rapacki and Ryan Calo, Robot Launch Pad aims to bridge the software, web and mobile startup worlds of Silicon Valley and San Francisco with the robotics community and the flourishing local maker sphere. In this interview, Keay tells us about the excellent startup events organized by Robot Launch Pad in April including the Robot Retreat, the Robot Block Party, Mega Startup Weekend and a Cloud Robotics Hackathon. She brings us into her world of lean startup methodology, minimum viable products and tells us about the importance of women in science.

Before launching Robot Launch Pad, Keay completed her Master of Digital Cultures in the area of Human-Robot Interactions at the University of Sydney. Her project on “the Naming of Robots” explored how roboticists express identity and gender through their technology. Passionate about robotics for a long time, she has also been running science and robot workshops for children since 1995, including coaching competition teams in Moonbots, First Lego League and RoboCup Jnr.

Finally, don’t miss Andra Keay’s other blogs, Robot State and Andragy.

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Knowledge engineering, with Mary-Anne Williams

Podcast team — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 12:16:46 +0000

Link to audio file (31:50)

In this episode, we talk to Mary-Anne Williams, knowledge engineer and roboticist from the University of Technology in Sydney Australia (UTS). Her work focuses on cognitive models of decision making and behaviour in complex and dynamic environments, including applications in mobile robotics.

Mary-Anne Williams

Mary Anne Williams and the PR2

Mary-Anne Williams is the director of the Innovation and Enterprise Research laboratory at UTS, where researchers are investigating the process of innovation and the role of the law, as well as IT, in the adoption of innovative and entrepreneurial practice.

Mary-Anne has a passion for innovation, science, technology and engineering. She is coach of the Robot Soccer team UTS Unleashed! and the 3D simulation team the Karachi Koalas and has lead seven robot soccer teams to outstanding success at the International Robot Soccer World Cup. She is Program Chair of the International Conference in Social Robotics this year, and works with her research team at UTS to engineer knowledge; together they explore robot learning, social robotics, human-robot interaction, robots in society, robot-robot collaboration, and bio-inspired robot cognition.

In this interview, she talks about her work, her involvement with the International Conference in Social Robotics and the PR2 robot.

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Swiss robotics, with Dario Floreano

Podcast team — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 11:34:07 +0000

Link to audio file (20:20)

In this episode we talk to Dario Floreano, director of the Swiss National Center of Competence for Research (NCCR) in Robotics that gathers leading experts in the field working at Swiss institutions.

Dario Floreano

Dario Floreano is the director of the Swiss NCCR Robotics which gathers leading robotic experts in Switzerland from EPFL (home institution), ETH Zurich, University of Zurich and Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence. The center was launched in December 2010 and will run for up to twelve years.

The center aims to develop human-oriented robots that assist people in their daily lives and improve their quality of life. Examples include “care robots”, “neuroprosthetic”, “exoprosthetic”, “educational robots” and “environmental robots”. Their research is currently organized into 5 projects that they hope will result in new design principles, approaches, and technologies required for the conception and design of human-oriented robots, the materials and components they are made of, and the control methods that enable them to interface and operate with humans:

Project 1: Bio-mimetic sensing, actuation, and mobility
Project 2: Interaction and Manipulation
Project 3: Prosthetic Robotics
Project 4: Distributed Robotics
Project 5: Robots for Daily Life

Floreano tells us about the role of Swiss robotics in the world, how to manage a large research center, the importance of education, and their cross-disciplinary and translational work.

Finally, he shares the latest developments from his Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at EPFL, including flying robots that physically interact with their environment (see video below) and soft “cells” that can assemble in air.

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Robotic fish and mannequins, with Maarja Kruusmaa and Diana Saarva

Podcast team — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 13:18:12 +0000

Link to audio file (53:13)

In today’s episode we talk to Maarja Kruusmaa about robotic fish and the robotic mannequin they are developing at Fits.me, alongside with Diana Saarva, the COO of Fits.me.

Maarja Kruusmaa

Professor Maarja Kruusmaa is the head of the TUT Center for Biorobotics in Estonia and the R&D Director of Fits.me. She accomplished her PhD in 2002 in Computer Engineering in Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, before becoming professor in 2008 at Tallinn University of Technology in Estonia.

She is now involved in the FILOSE, robotic fish locomotion and sensing project, whose team attempts to build robots that mimic how fish react and adapt to the water flow around them. In the first part of the interview Professor Kruusmaa talks about why they are using a novel, soft and compliant body approach for robotic fish rather than the more common linked chain. She describes how this embodiment helps reduce the computational load and how it allows them to make a simpler and cheaper robot that is more reliable than a more rigid version would be. We also hear about opportunities that come from sensing and adapting to the flow and the advantages of robotic fish compared to conventional UAVs, before talking about possible applications, such as underwater archeology.

Professor Kruusmaa is the R&D Director of Fits.me since 2009, working alongside COO Diana Saarva. They have created a virtual fitting room which enables users to virtually try on clothes before buying them, with the help of shape-shifting robotic mannequins which can grow from slim to muscular in just a few moments. This allows buyers to enter their measurements and see what clothes would look like on them.

Fits.me robotic mannequin

In the second part of the interview, Professor Kruusmaa and Diana Saarva talk about the Fits.me idea. It is particularly interesting to hear about how they developed the cooperation between the technology/research side and the entrepreneurs/business side.

Diana Saarva

Diana Saarva joined Fits.me in September 2009, and became the COO in 2011. She is responsible for supervising and coordinating all client operations and developing new business development.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFxGrkfOM0o

Links:

Thanks David!

The future of robot companions, with Paolo Dario

Podcast team — Fri, 18 May 2012 17:07:39 +0000

Link to audio file (29:34)

In this interview recorded at the Robotdalen Robotics Innovation Challenge, Professor Paolo Dario talks to Per about 3 conceptual waves of innovation, starting with industrial robots, then adding artificial intelligence and finally the third wave, which is coming, where convergence between different fields of science and interdisciplinary teams become increasingly important.

Dario also gives his perspective on ethics and legal issues in robotics, and how robots can evolve based on ambient intelligence. Robots can basically take advantage of being a part of an interconnected system, where not all the intelligence is necessarily part of the robot itself.

Finally, Dario shares some learnings from his time as President of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, before telling us more about the FET project Robot companions for citizens.

Paolo Dario

Paolo Dario received his Dr. Eng. Degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Pisa, Italy, in 1977. He is currently a Professor of Biomedical Robotics at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa and teaches at the School of Engineering of the University of Pisa and at the Campus Biomedico University in Rome.

Prof. Dario was the founder of the Advanced Robotics Technologies and Systems Laboratory and is currently the Co-ordinator of the Center for the Research in Microengineering Laboratoryof the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, where he supervises a team of about 70 researchers and Ph.D. students. His main research interests are in the fields of medical robotics, bio-robotics, mechatronics and micro/nanoengineering, and specifically in sensors and actuators for the above applications, and in robotics for rehabilitation.

He is the coordinator of many national and European projects, the editor of two books on the subject of robotics, and the author of more than 200 scientific papers. Prof. Dario has served as President of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society in the years 2002-2003, and he is currently Co-Chair of the Technical Committees on Bio-robotics and of Robo-ethics of the same Society. Prof. Dario is an IEEE Fellow, a Fellow of the European Society on Medical and Biological Engineering, and a recipient of many honors and awards. He is also a member of the Board of the International Foundation of Robotics Research (IFRR). Right now Professor Dario works on the FET Flagship initiative Robot Companions for Citizens, with the goal to realize a unique and unforeseen multidisciplinary science and engineering program supporting a radically new approach towards machines and how we deploy them in our society.

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Robopocalypse, with Daniel Wilson

Podcast team — Fri, 04 May 2012 12:45:14 +0000

Link to audio file (26:18)

In this episode we talk to New York Times best selling author Daniel Wilson about one of his latest books, Robopocalypse.

Daniel H. Wilson

Daniel Wilson is a roboticist turned novelist. His PhD in robotics from Carnegie Mellon University set him on a path to success, with inside knowledge about robot capabilities leading him to write his first book in 2005 about How to Survive a Robot Uprising. In this interview he gives us an update on his more recent books since we talked in 2007. In particular, we dive into his latest thriller recently released in paperback, Robopocalypse. Here is the plot from Wilson’s website:

Not far into our future, the dazzling technology that runs our world turns against us. Controlled by a childlike—yet massively powerful—artificial intelligence known as Archos, the global network of machines on which our world has grown dependent suddenly becomes an implacable, deadly foe. At Zero Hour—the moment the robots attack—the human race is almost annihilated, but as its scattered remnants regroup, humanity for the first time unites in a determined effort to fight back. This is the oral history of that conflict, told by an international cast of survivors who experienced this long and bloody confrontation with the machines. Brilliantly conceived and amazingly detailed, Robopocalypse is an action-packed epic with chilling implications about the real technology that surrounds us.

It’s the robots’ world, we just live in it…for now.

The novel is currently being adapted to the big screen by Steven Spielberg, and is scheduled for release on July 4th 2013. Daniel’s next novel, Amped, will be released by Doubleday on June 5th, 2012. In the mean time, you can already follow its main character, Samantha Blex, on Facebook and twitter.

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Bringing them to market, with Steven Cousins and Roland Siegwart

Podcast team — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 12:15:59 +0000

Link to audio file (26:07)

Following up on Episode 99, this episode features Steven Cousins and Roland Siegwart, whom we had the pleasure to meet at the SCHUNK Expert Days, organized by SCHUNK GmbH this spring. Our interviews bring to surface the dynamic interplay of academia and industry – we talk about the transition from the research lab to the market. Listen in and find out which robotic applications are bound to make great breakthroughs soon!

Steve Cousins

Steve Cousins is the President and CEO of Willow Garage. He earned his PhD in Computer Science at Stanford University, and has gained experience as a researcher and manager in both academic and industrial research labs. Prior to joining Willow Garage, Steve was the senior manager of the User-Focused Systems Research Group at the IBM Almaden Research Center, one of the top human-computer interaction research groups in the world. Earlier, Steve managed the Advanced Systems Development Laboratory at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Willow Garage is an unusual company set up to make robots help people. Human-scale “personal robots” will perform tasks in natural human environments, ranging from helping around the home to assisting in flexible manufacturing. Willow Garage’s role has been to help accelerate progress in this field. The PR2 robot combined with the open source Robot Operating System (ROS) enables researchers to more quickly explore applications of personal robots.

Roland Siegwart

Roland Siegwart is the Vice President of Research and Corporate Relations at ETH Zurich, and the director of the Autonomous Systems Lab. He received both his Diploma in Mechanical Engineering and his Doctoral Degree in 1989 from ETH Zurich. He then spent one year as postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University. Back in Switzerland, he worked part time as R&D director at MECOS Traxler AG and as lecturer and deputy head at the Institute of Robotics, ETH Zürich. In 1996 he was appointed as professor for autonomous microsystems and robots at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) where he served among others as member of the direction of the School of Engineering (2002-06) and funding chairman of the Space Center EPFL.
Roland Siegwart is a member of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences, IEEE Fellow and officer of the International Federation of Robotics Research (IFRR). He served as Vice President (2004/05) and AdCom Member (2007/10) of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, and was a member of the final decision body of the German Excellence Initiative. He is co-founder of multiple successful spin-off companies in robotics and related fields and board member of various Swiss institutions and foundations, including CSEM and inspire AG. He is a strong promoter of project based learning as a key asset in engineering education and sustainable industrial alliances for accelerating technology transfer and innovation.

Roland Siegwart’s research interests are in the design and control of robots and systems operating in complex and highly dynamical environments. His major goal is to find new ways to deal with uncertainties and enable the design of highly interactive and adaptive systems. Prominent application examples are walking quadrupeds, personal and service robots, planetary exploration robots, autonomous micro-aircrafts and driver assistant systems.

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History and outlook, with George Bekey and Rodney Brooks

Podcast team — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 10:02:05 +0000

Link to audio file (56:00)

In today’s episode we speak with two authorities in robotics, George Bekey and Rodney Brooks about the last 50 years of robotics, the ongoing robot revolution and future prospects.

George Bekey

George Bekey is one of the father of robotics. In the 1960s, he designed and built the first four-legged robot in North America. He later founded the Biomedical Engineering Department and the Robotics Research Laboratory at the University of Southern California.

His laboratory designed and built several five-fingered robot hands and developed grasping theory. Their work included a knowledge-based approach to grasping and the use of robot hands as models for prosthetic hands. He also worked with his students to develop an autonomous helicopter, study gait control in legged robots and create a walking machine governed by genetic algorithms. His experience led him to write a book on Autonomous Robots published in 2005.

A member of the National Academy of Engineering, Bekey was chosen by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to lead a 2005-2006 assessment of the state of robotics in the United States, Western Europe and the Pacific Rim. The team’s findings culminated in a report to its federal sponsors on American competitive advantages and weaknesses on the international stage.

He retired after 40 years as a full-time faculty member at USC and continues to be active in his community and in his profession. He currently serves on the advisory boards of several robotics and high-tech companies.

In this interview, we discuss the history of robotics and his vision of the future with emphasis on bio-inspiration, learning, human robot interactions and ethics.

Rodney Brooks

Rodney Brooks has been one of the main actors in the field of robotics over the past 30 years. He received degrees in pure mathematics from the Flinders University of South Australia and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University in 1981. He held research positions at Carnegie Mellon University and MIT, and a faculty position at Stanford before joining the faculty of MIT in 1984 where his work focused on computer vision, artificial intelligence, robotics, and artificial life.

Brooks was the director of the MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (C-SAIL) Laboratory until 2007 and one of the founders of iRobot. He is currently the founder, chairman and CTO of Heartland Robotics that aims to revolutionize manufacturing and increase productivity of industries using robots that are teachable, safe and affordable.

Per was able to briefly meet with Brooks at the RobotDalen conference in Sweden. A video of Brooks’ keynote can be found below.

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ep.100: Dynamic systems, with Raffaello D’Andrea

Podcast team — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 10:37:28 +0000

Link to audio file (31:06)

Link to transcript

To celebrate our 100th episode, we welcome Raffaello D’Andrea, Professor at ETHZ and co-founder of Kiva Systems.

Raffaello D’Andrea

Raffaello D’Andrea is Professor of Dynamic Systems and Control at ETH Zürich, and co-founder and chief technical advisor for US company Kiva Systems. His research focus is pushing the boundary of autonomous systems capabilities, with an emphasis on adaptation and learning.

He tells us about his first impressions following one of the biggest deals in the history of robotics, the acquisition of Kiva Systems by Amazon for an estimated USD 775M. D’Andrea was on the show in 2008 to talk about Kiva’s pioneering warehouse automation solution, which uses fleets of up to 1000 mobile robots to streamline the process of picking, packing, and shipping e-commerce products. We also look at work in dynamic systems out of his lab, including projects from the Flying Machine Arena (listen to a previous interview on the Distributed Flight Array) and a recent collaboration with Gramazio & Kohler on the construction of undulated brick walls using quadrocopters. We then dive into the Art scene with projects such as the Blind Juggling Machine, the Robotic Chair and Table and finally take a step back to discuss the importance of fundamental research in engineering and strategies for translating knowledge in complex systems to industry.

D’Andrea is the recipient of the Wilson Medal, the Invention and Entrepreneurship in Robotics and Automation Award, the National Science Foundation Career Award, and the United States Presidential Early Career Award for Science and Engineering. As the faculty advisor and system architect of the Cornell Robot Soccer Team he was also four-time world champions at the international RoboCup competition. His work has been exhibited at numerous international venues, including the Venice Biennale, Ars Electronica, the Smithsonian, and the Spoleto Festival, and two of his robotic art pieces have become part of the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Canada.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvN9Ri1GmuY

Join the Team
The ROBOTS podcast is run by an international team of researchers and robot enthusiasts based in seven countries on four continents. To join the team, send us an email with your interests (audio or video editing, interviewing or blogging) at jointheteam@robotspodcast.com.

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ep.099: Dexterous manipulation and morphogenesis, with Bruno Siciliano and Rolf Pfeifer

Podcast team — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 10:51:10 +0000

Link to audio file (31:20)

The 5th edition of the SCHUNK Expert Days, organized by SCHUNK GmbH from February 29 – March 1, once again brought together renown roboticists, and culminated in enriching discussions and insights. In the course of the last editions, this exclusive convention has gathered 79 speakers from 14 countries worldwide, and has caught our attention due to its cutting edge focus on service robotics.

Today’s episode features two of this year’s key speakers, Bruno Siciliano and Rolf Pfeifer – we took advantage of the stimulating conference atmosphere to ask them more!

Bruno Siciliano

Bruno Siciliano is Professor of Control and Robotics, and Director of the PRISMA Lab in the Department of Computer and Systems Engineering at University of Naples Federico II. His research interests include force and visual control, human-robot interaction, cooperative manipulation and aerial robotics.
He has co-authored 7 books, 70 journal papers, 180 conference papers and book chapters. He has delivered 90 invited lectures and seminars at institutions worldwide, and he has been the recipient of several awards. He is a Fellow of IEEE, ASME and IFAC. He is Co-Editor of the Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics, and of the Springer Handbook of Robotics which received the PROSE Award for Excellence in Physical Sciences & Mathematics. His team is currently involved in six FP7 European projects. Professor Siciliano is the Past-President of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society.

Rolf Pfeifer

Rolf Pfeifer has been a professor of computer science at the Department of Informatics, University of Zurich, and director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory since 1987. His research interests are in the areas of embodiment, biorobotics, artificial evolution and morphogenesis, modular robotics, self-assembly and educational technology.
He worked as a visiting professor and research fellow at the Free University of Brussels, the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in Cambridge, Mass., the Neurosciences Institute (NSI) in San Diego, the Beijing Open Laboratory for Cognitive Science, the Sony Computer Science Laboratory in Paris, and was elected “21st Century COE Professor, Information Science and Technology” at the University of Tokyo. He was also a visiting professor at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa, at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China, and he was appointed “Fellow of the School of Engineering” at the University of Tokyo. Currently, he is the Deputy Director of the NCCR Robotics, the “National Competence Center for Research in Robotics” in Switzerland.

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ep.098: Self-organizing systems, with Radhika Nagpal

Podcast team — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 12:44:08 +0000

Link to audio file (43:40)

In today’s episode we focus on self-organizing systems in modular and swarm robotics with Radhika Nagpal, director of the Self-Organizing Systems Research Group at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard.

Radhika Nagpal

Whether you’re looking at multicellular organisms or social insects such as ants and termites, nature has found powerful ways to make systems self-organize. In these collectives, individuals that are typically simple, unreliable, and limited, cooperate through local interactions to achieve complex behaviors.

Radhika Nagpal has been building on these principles to make modular and swarm robots that are able to work together in a decentralized manner. She tells us about a self-balancing modular table that is able to adapt to terrain while balancing your cup of coffee. In the TERMES project, robots work together to build the environment in which they evolve, creating the very staircase that will allow them to build a structure. We also look at how her group has made large-scale swarm robotics a reality with the kilobot project and its 1024 quarter-sized robots previously featured on our podcast.

Finally, Nagpal tells us about how her insights in mathematics and the theory of self-organization can also help us learn something about biological systems.

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ep.097: Senseable robots, with Carlo Ratti,

Podcast team — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 12:33:33 +0000

Link to audio file (31:22)

In today’s episode we look at some of the work done by the Senseable City Lab. We’ll be talking to Carlo Ratti, the director of the Lab, about two of the Lab’s many projects – namely Flyfire and Seaswarm.

Carlo Ratti

An architect and engineer by training, Carlo Ratti practices in Italy and teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he directs the Senseable City Lab. He graduated from the Politecnico di Torino and the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées in Paris, and later earned his MPhil and PhD at the University of Cambridge, UK.

As well as being a regular contributor to the architecture magazine Domus and the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, Carlo has written for the BBC, La Stampa, Scientific American and The New York Times. His work has been exhibited worldwide at venues such as the Venice Biennale, the Design Museum Barcelona, the Science Museum in London, GAFTA in San Francisco and The Museum of Modern Art in New York. His Digital Water Pavilion at the 2008 World Expo was hailed by Time Magazine as one of the ‘Best Inventions of the Year’. Carlo was recently a presenter at TED 2011 and is serving as a member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council for Urban Management. He is also a program director at the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design in Moscow and a curator of the 2012 BMW Guggenheim Pavilion in Berlin.

Carlo founded the Senseable City Lab in 2004 within the City Design and Development group at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, in collaboration with the MIT Media Lab. The Lab’s mission is to creatively intervene and investigate the interface between people, technologies and the city. Whilst fostering interdisciplinary, the Lab’s work draws on diverse fields such as urban planning, architecture, design, engineering, computer science, natural sciences and economics to capture the full nature of urban problems and deliver research and applications that empower citizens to make choices that result in a more liveable urban condition.

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ep.096: Advances in bipedal locomotion, with Subramanian Ramamoorthy and Felipe Brandão Cavalcanti

Podcast team — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 12:45:24 +0000

Link to audio file (17:09)

In this episode we talk to Subramanian Ramamoorthy from the University of Edinburgh about the recent progress in walking robotics. We then speak with Felipe Brandão Cavalcanti who is an Electrical Engineering student working on bipedal walking at the LARA lab at the University of Brasilia with Professor Geovany Borges.

Subramanian Ramamoorthy

Subramanian Ramamoorthy is a Lecturer in Robotics at the School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh. Previously, he received a PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from The University of Texas in Austin.

His current research work focuses on autonomous decision making over time and under uncertainty, by long-lived agents and agent teams interacting with continually changing worlds. He has twice been a finalist for the Best Paper Award at major international conferences in the field of robotics – ICRA 2008 and IROS 2010. His team Edinferno, was the first UK entry in the Standard Platform League at the RoboCup International Competition.

Ramamoorthy tells us about the recent advances in humanoid bipedal walking illustrated by Petman and the latest version of Asimo. In particular, we look at the history of the field with work from Mark Raibert, Russ Tedrake and Daniel Koditschek and how different areas, such as machine leaning and motion capture, come together to accelerate progress.

Felipe Brandão Cavalcanti

Felipe Brandão Cavalcanti is an Electrical Engineering student who works with humanoids at the LARA lab at the University of Brasilia with Professor Geovany Borges. The project focuses on the study and implementation of gait generation and stabilization algorithms for small humanoid robots.

He tells us how they hacked a humanoid toy to improve its balance and the importance of math in his work.

Links:

Stéphane Magnenat

ep.095: From research to industry in the AUV market, with David Lane

Podcast team — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 16:16:32 +0000

Link to audio file (52:21)

Today David Lane from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh talks about his journey from research to business and back. He talks about how he got started in offshore work and robotics research and how that led him to develop new smarts for existing hardware. David shares his personal view on how the Thunderbirds, diving and the space race contributed to his focus on underwater technology. He also discusses his research on autonomous underwater vehicles, involving software architecture for decision making as well as complex sensors for understanding the world around you and underwater communication.

Further, David shares his experience of starting the company SeeByte, including the important first customer acquisition. In developing a working commercial solution, bridging the gap between where the university stops and industry starts, was an essential component.

David in the Ocean Systems Laboratory

David Lane

David Lane graduated in 1980 with a BSc in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, and again in 1986 with a PhD in Underwater Robotics. In 1979 he worked offshore in the North Sea as diver/maintainer for British Oceanics Ltd, and from 1980-82 as a Development Engineer at Ferranti Ltd. From 1982 he held a series of research and academic appointments, culminating in a Professorial Chair at Heriot-Watt University in 1998. In 2001 he founded SeeByte Ltd and as CEO until 2010 led the company’s organic evolution from startup to a multi-million dollar organization. He is now at the Ocean Systems Laboratory.

His technical interests are in autonomous systems, sensor processing and underwater robotics. Over a 30 year period he has published widely in the scientific literature, making contributions in underwater vehicle control, servoing, docking and obstacle avoidance. He has developed flexible actuator sensing and control technology for novel robot gripper and biomimetic underwater propulsion applications. In sensor processing, he has led projects applying novel signal processing and data fusion methods using sonar and video systems to marine science and mine countermeasures detection and visualization. He has also led work on robot architecture, autonomous planning and SLAM navigation, culminating in practical automated systems working offshore performing inspection, repair and maintenance.

This interview focuses a lot on the business side of robotics and Davids journey from research to industry and back.

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ep.094: Best of 2011, with the Robots Podcast team

Podcast team — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 11:44:34 +0000

Link to audio file (15:49)

In this episode, the Robots Podcast team looks at the robots and technologies that shaped 2011. We’ll be discussing industrial robots, cloud robotics, soft robots, service robots, aerial robots, autonomous cars, agriculture robots, bio-inspired robots, human-like walkers and swarm robotics.

To see the robots highlighted in our special, check out the YouTube channel below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL2F6BD44D2DBEE57E&v=Q-51CkuCw14

Tell us about your favorite robots of 2011 in the comment section of this post!

We’d also like to thank you for all the amazing holiday robot videos we received. Check them out below for one last pinch of Christmas spirit before 2012. We wish you all a wonderful New Year!

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ep.093: Turning robots into products, with Erin Rapacki

Podcast team — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 12:22:32 +0000

Link to audio file (59:06)

In today’s episode we look at robots made by Adept Technology Inc. with Product Marketing Manager, Erin Rapacki. She tells us about what it takes to make robots a product.

Erin Rapacki

Erin Rapacki has had a dream career, setting foot in many top robotics companies, including DEKA, iRobot, Anybots and now Adept Technolog Inc. where she is Product Manager.

Adept has been around for 28 years and is mostly known for its robot arms. She tells us about the future of manufacturing and current developments in soft manipulators.

Beyond the industrial world, Adept has been building expertise in mobile robotics. Their main platform, the Adept MT series, is able to autonomously navigate in human environments. The idea is to provide partners with a platform that solves core navigation challenges and can be extended with specialized payload. Example applications include transporting samples in hospitals, providing telepresence for specialists, and industrial scenarios.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNu528EaW1Q

Finally, Rapacki develops on her recent article on the Automaton blog entitled Dear Reader, I Have News for You: Robots Are Boring. In particular, she discusses the media hype surrounding robotics and the need to give people respect for robotics by showing them useful “boring” systems. We’ll also be thinking about the need for researchers to ask real world questions and the potential for cloud robotics.

Holiday Robots

Like last year, we ask our listeners to submit videos or audio related to robotics and the holidays! Content can be fictional, scientific or business oriented. We’ll be posting the material on our dedicated YouTube channel and select segments will be featured in the episodes until the end of the year. To submit material, simply go to www.robotspodcast.com/christmas or send us your material by email to christmas@robotspodcast.com.

Check out our first submissions below or go to our YouTube Channel.

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ep.092: Robotics roadmaps – USA, with Henrik Christensen

Podcast team — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 12:10:48 +0000

Link to audio file (13:04)

In today’s episode we discuss the national funding strategies of the USA, as a part of our special series on Robotics Roadmaps worldwide. Our first episode on the subject looked at funding in Japan with Tomomasa Sato. Today we’ll be focussing on the Robotics Roadmap in the USA with one of its main creators, Henrik Christensen.

Henrik Christensen

Henrik Christensen is the KUKA Chair of Robotics at the College of Computing Georgia Institute of Technology. He is also the director of the Center for Robotics and Intelligent Machines. His research focuses on systems integration, human-robot interaction, mapping and robot vision.

Christensen has been a major actor in building the Robotics Roadmap for the USA which was sponsored by the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) and led by 12 world class researchers from the leading robotics academic institutions in the United States.

The results of the workgroup were presented to congress in May 2009, and have led to a shift in robotics priorities in the US. The roadmap emphasizes three application oriented directions, namely manufacturing, healthcare/medical, and services robotics markets; plus a research core that addresses a number of enabling technologies that must be the focus of R&D in order for the US to remain a leader in robotics and commercial development.

In this interview, Christensen summarizes the current state of robotics in the US and worldwide, funding sources, and the balance between research, industry and the military. The interview was recorded at the International Conference on Human-Robot Interactions in Switzerland this spring. For latest updates about robotics roadmaps in the US, people can follow Christensen’s blog.

Holiday Robots

Like last year, we will be asking our listeners to submit videos or audio related to robotics and the holidays! Content can be fictional, scientific or business oriented. We’ll be posting the material on our dedicated YouTube channel and select segments will be featured in the episodes until the end of the year. To submit material, simply go to www.robotspodcast.com/christmas or send us your material by email to christmas@robotspodcast.com. To get in the spirit, check out the videos from last year, some of which gathered millions of views!

Links:

ep.090: Made in Brazil, with Marcelo Becker and Marcel de Sena Dall’Agnol

Podcast team — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 10:46:29 +0000

Link to audio file (28:29)

In today’s show, we take you all the way to Brazil. Marcelo Becker from the University of São Paulo (USP) talks to us about how mobile robots are going to help change agriculture, manufacturing and driving in his country. We then speak with Marcel de Sena Dall’Agnol a student at USP about the excellent robotics competition they organized at SEMATRON, which is a mechatronics conference organized by USP undergraduates.

Marcelo Becker

Marcelo Becker is Professor at the University of São Paulo, one of the top universities in Brazil. He directs the Mobile Robotics Lab that aims towards real-world applications with potential positive impact. His projects focus on agricultural mobile robots, educational robots, intelligent warehouses forklifts, quadrotors and autonomous cars with partner FIAT. More broadly, Becker discusses the growing interest for robotics in Brazil, public perception and the future of the field.

Before joining USP, Becker was Professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais (PUC Minas) where he was also the co-head of the Mechatronics Engineering Department and of the Robotics and Automation Group (GEAR). He also was visiting Professor at the Autonomous System Lab (ASL) at the EPFL in 2006.

Marcel de Sena Dall’Agnol

Marcel is a third year student in EECS at the University of Sao Paolo. This year he was one of the organizers of SEMATRON VII, a week-long series of activities directed towards students in Mechatronic Engineering in São Carlos and nearby cities. During the week, students at the University of São Paulo have their lessons suspended in order to fully participate in the event which offers lectures, courses, a cultural activity and technical visits to companies. The event is one of the largest of the kind in Brazil, with around 500 participants. Internationally renowned companies such as FIAT, National Instruments, Embraer and Petrobrás have sponsored the event in past editions.

In this interview, we will be talking about one of the main attractions, the robotics competition. During the one-day event, students gather around robotic kits made by local company PNCA. The kits let students build robots from scratch and come with an easy-to-use programming interface. The task this year, inspired from the Fukushima disaster, was to retrieve victims from a nuclear power plant while avoiding hazards.

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ep.089: Demonstrations at IROS, with Péter Fankhauser and Mike Rubenstein

Podcast team — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 12:17:14 +0000

Link to audio file (28:47)

In today’s show, we hear about two demonstrations that caught our attention at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS). Péter Fankhauser from the ETHZ in Zurich tells us about the Rezero ballbot, a balancing robot that speeds around on a sphere. Mike Rubenstein from the Self-organizing Systems Research Group at Harvard then tells us about their efforts to make swarms of 1024 robots a reality with the kilobot project.

Péter Fankhauser

Péter Fankhauser is the leader of the Rezero ballbot project. The Rezero project was one of last year’s “Focus Projects” during which Bachelor students in Mechanical Engineering at ETHZ have the opportunity to develop a product from scratch. The project was supervised by Prof. Siegwart from the Autonomous Systems Laboratory. Rezero brought together eight future mechanical engineers, two electrical engineers studying at the ZHAW as well as Industrial Designers from ZHdK.

The interdisciplinary team developed the ballbot, a robot that balances and drives around on a ball. Using a single ball instead of wheels allows the robot to move spontaneously in any direction, fit into tight spaces, and achieve high speeds. The robot was often seen zipping through the hallways at IROS earlier this month.

Fankhauser tells us about his learning experience, challenges in working in large crossdisciplinary teams, the secret behind the ballbot capabilities and the future steps in making the ballbot a commercial reailty.

Mike Rubenstein

Mike Rubenstein is a postdoctoral researcher from the Self-organizing Systems Research Group at Harvard. In an effort to make large swarms of robots a reality, he’s been building 1024 coin-sized robots dubbed kilobots. Challenges include making the robots low-cost and easy to assemble, recharge, reprogram and control. The final system is made with only $14 worth of parts, takes 5 minutes to assemble and can be operated in less than a minute. The open source release of all the electronics and assembly documents is expected near the end of this year.

After bording a plane with 100+ robots, Rubenstein was able to demonstrate the system at IROS.

In the future, Rubenstein hopes to implement his thesis work on “Self-assembly and self-healing for robotic collectives” on the kilobots. An example of such a system is show in the video below.

Links:

ep.088: IROS exhibit hall, with companies at IROS 2011

Podcast team — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 14:33:43 +0000

Link to audio file (01:02:42)

In today’s show we take you around the Exhibit Hall of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) that took place in San Francisco last week. IROS is one of the main conferences in robotics, attracting thousands of roboticists from around the world. This year’s edition celebrating 50 years of robotics received a record number of submissions. The conference, that spans over 6 days, featured workshops, tutorials, interactive presentations, live robot demonstrations and keynote talks from world-leading roboticists on design, bio-robotics, and Google’s autonomous cars.

By bringing you around the permanent exhibit hall, we hope to give you a feel for what it was like to be there. We’ll be stopping at nearly every booth, talking to leaders in the field, asking about the robots we see, listening to robots present themselves, and even doing some demos along the way.

Companies we had a chance to chat with include:
– Intuitive Surgical
– Robotiq
– SimLab
– Robotis
– National Instruments
– Adept
– Barrett
– Shadow Robot
– Schunk
– Kuka
– Butterfly Haptics
– BioRob
– Bosch Research
– Festo
– Aldebaran
– Hokuyo
– Willow Garage
– Skybotix
– Cyberbotics
– Care-o-bot
– iCub

Links:

ep.087: Educational robotics, with Francesco Mondada, Stéphane Magnenat and Fanny Riedo

Podcast team — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 15:57:48 +0000

Link to audio file (35:16)

In today’s show, we look at the playful field of educational robotics. We start by talking to Dr. Francesco Mondada, the leader of the MOBOTS group at EPFL, about his group’s efforts in this field. Focus is given to the Robotics Festival, an annual event he started back in 2008. We then talk with Stéphane Magnenat, a former member of the group and current member of the Autonomous Systems Lab at ETHZ. Stéphane developed ASEBA, a straight-forward software package that allows beginners to program robots easily and efficiently. Finally, Fanny Riedo, PhD student in the MOBOTS group, presents the low-cost educational Thymio II robot.

EPFL Robotics Festival

Francesco Mondada

Founder and former CEO of K-Team, currently the head of the Miniature Mobile Robots Group (MOBOTS) at EPFL, Francesco Mondada has been one of the main people behind such popular research and educational robots as the Khepera, the S-bot, the e-puck and more recently the Thymio and Thymio II.

In this episode, he tells us about the work that MOBOTS is doing in educational robotics and then presents the popular Robotics Festival, held every year at EPFL. A success from the very beginning, the Robotics Festival managed this year to draw 13’000 visitors in a single day of interactive workshops, demos, and robotic shows.

Stéphane Magnenat

Currently working as senior scientist in the Autonomous Systems Lab at ETHZ, Stéphane did his PhD within the MOBOTS group, where he developed ASEBA.

ASEBA is an event-based architecture for distributed control of mobile robots. It includes a user-friendly scripting language and a tightly integrated development environment which allows novices to rapidly start programming robot behaviors.

ASEBA has been used with success in the Robotics Festival for teaching children basic robot programming.

Fanny Riedo

Fanny Riedo is doing her PhD on educational robotics with the MOBOTS group and presents the project she is currently focusing on: the Thymio II robot.

The Thymio II is an affordable children-oriented educational robot. It has a large amount of sensors and actuators, a specific interactivity based on light and touch, which is aimed at increasing the understanding of the robot functionalities, and can be programmed easily by using ASEBA.

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Stéphane Magnenat

ep.086: Robot art (Part 3), with Leonel Moura and Ken Rinaldo

Podcast team — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 10:35:33 +0000

Link to audio file (54:28)

This episode is the last of this three part special series about robot art with guest interviewer David St-Onge, an engineer working at the interface of visionary arts and creative science. David was our guest in a previous episode of the Robots Podcast about robot art. He now brings us into his world through in-depth conversations with 6 world renowned experts in the field.

In today’s show, we talk to Leonel Moura, a European artist born in Lisbon, Portugal, and Ken Rinaldo, Director of the Art and Technology program in the Department of Art at The Ohio State University. Both artists are well known for their dual talent as artist and robot engineer, having built most of their systems themselves.

Leonel Moura

Leonel Moura is an independent artist from Lisbon, Portugal and European Ambassador for Creativity and Innovation since 2009.

His work revolving around robotics and AI started in 2003 with his first swarm of “Painting Robots”, able to produce original artworks based on emergent behavior inspired from ants. Since then he has produced several artbots, each time more autonomous and sophisticated. In 2006 he created a Robotic Action Painter “RAP” for a permanent exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History in New York which is able to generate highly creative and original art works, to decide when the work is ready and to sign it, which it does with a distinctive signature (see video below). In the same year, he built a poet Robot “ISU” that generates random poems in the style of the Lettrist Movement and of Concrete Poetry. He also worked towards the creation of a zoo for robots and AI in Alverca in 2007 and then curated the portuguese show “INSIDE [art and science]“.

In this episode he describes his hope of seeing robotic artificial creativity produce artworks of tomorrow for living and artificial art lovers.

Ken Rinaldo

Ken Rinaldo directs the Art and Technology program in the Department of Art at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. As an artist and theorist, he creates interactive multimedia installations that blur the boundaries between living and artificial systems. He has been working at the intersection of art and biology for over two decades in the categories of interactive robotics, biological art, artificial life, interspecies communication, rapid prototyping and digital imaging.

His artworks have been displayed nationally and internationally at leading museums, galleries and festivals. His latest piece, the “Living Robotic Tongue Installation”, is an artificial tongue that performs massages based on activity of an artificial stomach filled with living bacteria. Other recent work includes the “Edible Ecosystem Sculpture”, “Paparazzi Bots”, “Augmented Fish Reality”, “Autopoeisis” and the “Autotelematic Spider Bots”, an artificial life robotic installation that consists of 10 spider-like sculptures that interact with the public in real-time and self-modify their behaviors, based on their interaction with the viewer, themselves, their environment and their food source.

Rinaldo comes from a family of artists and inventors. Both his parents are contemporary artists. His French Grandfather Jean Vincent Rinaldo was a painter and a member of the Salon Des Independent in Paris. His Scottish Grandfather was an electronics inventor. His Great, Great, Great Uncle was Robert Fulton the American inventor of the steamboat. Born in 1958, Ken Rinaldo studied biology as a teen, ballet in New York City until the age of 20. He has an Associates in Science in Computer Science from Canada College, a Bachelors of Art in Communications from The University of California at Santa Barbara and a Masters in Fine Arts in Conceptual and Information Arts from San Francisco State University.

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ep.085: Robot art (Part 2), with Bill Vorn and Louis-Philippe Demers

Podcast team — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 08:33:42 +0000

Link to audio file (54:53)

This episode is the second of a three part special series about robot art with guest interviewer David St-Onge, an engineer working at the interface of visionary arts and creative science. David was our guest in previous episode with the Robots Podcast about robot art. He now brings us into his world through in-depth conversations with 6 world renowned experts in the field. In today’s show, we talk to Bill Vorn from the University Concordia in Montreal and Louis-Philippe Demers from the Nanyang Technological University in Singapour. Both artists started their carreer together in Montreal where they worked on state of the art robotic projects for more than 10 years. One of their most famous projects, ‘La cour des Miracles’ can be seen below.

Bill Vorn

Bill Vorn is Professor at the Departement of Studio Art at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada where he directs a Robotic Art research-creation lab called “alab”. He has been active in the field of Robotic Art since 1992 with peformances that build on motion control, sound, lighting, video and cybernetic processes and explore questions about artificial life. In this interview he tells us about art work that will make you think about what it means to be human through miserable robots or ones that laugh hysterically.

Louis-Philippe Demers

Louis-Philippe Demers is Professor at the School of Art, Design and Media at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapour. Before joining the NTU, he was the president of Kunst Macchina Production Company; a group specialized in the commercialization and the R&D of software solutions for the entertainment from 1994 to 1998. From 2001 to 2005, Demers was a Full Professor of Digital Media and Exhibit Design at the Hochschule fuer Gestaltung affiliated to the world renowned ZKM (Zentrum fuer Kunst und Medientechnologie).

Over the years, he has realized several large-scale interactive robotic installations and over 225 machines for the theatre, opera, subway stations, art museums, science museums, music events and trade shows. His collaborations include artists such as Bill Vorn, Christian Möller, Stelarc, Robert Lepage, Peter Gabriel and Le Cirque du Soleil.

His work has been primed with several prizes and featured at major international venues such as Lille 2004, Expo 92, Expo 2000, Sonambiente, ISEA, SIGGRAPH and Sonar. He received three Interactive Kunst prizes Ars Electronica (Distinction 96) and one honourable mention in digital musics in 2005. He received the first prize of artificial life Vida2.0 and the prize for Interactive Lighting at Lightforms 98. His latest work, Devolution, received six prizes in 2006 including the Ruby Innovation award in South Australia, Outstanding Performance from Australian Dance Awards and two Helpmann Awards, the Australian equivalent of the Broadway’s Tony.

In this episode he’ll be telling us about many of his artistic projects, including Tiller Girls, a group of 12 small autonomous robots shown in the video below.

Links:

ep.084: Robot art (Part 1), with Nicolas Reeves and Stelarc

Podcast team — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 15:49:55 +0000

Link to audio file (01:01:58)

This episode is the first of a three part special series about robot art with guest interviewer David St-Onge, an engineer working at the interface of visionary arts and creative science. You might remember David from a previous interview with the Robots Podcast. He now brings us into his world of robot art through in-depth conversations with 6 world renowned experts in the field. In today’s show, we talk to Nicolas Reeves from the University of Quebec in Montreal, Canada and Stelarc from Brunel University in the UK and the University of Western Sydney. Both have worked together in the past on the floating head experiment.

Nicolas Reeves

Nicolas Reeves is full professor at the School of Design at the University of Québec in Montréal (UQAM), Canada. He received Bachelor degrees in architecture and then physics before finishing his Master of Science degree in architecture at MIT.

David and him are now forming the NXI GESTATIO collaborative for research and creation in art, computer sciences and architecture. In this interview, we’ll be hearing about several of Reeves ambitious projects, including musical clouds with “La Harpe à Nuages” which is “a physical sculpture containing a technological system that, thanks to a series of infrared lasers, reads the structure of clouds and then transforms this reading into sound or music. The melodies or noise varies depending on factors such as altitude, cloud density and meteorological conditions”.

We then hear more about the idea behind the [ VOILES | SAILS ] project which provides a new dimension to multimedia performances with cubic aerial robots that can perform self-organizing ballets which will eventually be “directed” by human performers.

Stelarc

Stelarc is Chair in performance art at Brunel University in the UK and Senior Research Fellow and Visiting Artist at MARCS Auditory Labs at the University of Western Sydney. Over the years, he’s explored interactions between his body and technology using medical instruments, prosthetics, robotics, virtual reality systems, the Internet and biotechnology. Starting out in 1976, he completed 25 body suspensions performances with hooks into his skin and made 3 films of the inside of his body. He’s been extended with a “third hand”, a “virtual arm”, a “stomach sculpture”, an “exoskeleton” a “hexapod” and now a “third ear” from which people can hear through the internet. Other projects such as “fractal”, “flesh”, “ping body” and “parasite” explore involuntary, remote and internet choreography of the body with electrical stimulation of the muscles. He’s also performed as a virtual avatar on Second Life.

In this episode, we focus on Stelarc’s interest in robotics with the Exoskeleton, Walking Head, Third Hand and his most recent Mouth Robot project.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuzGraK_ldI

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ep.083: Our favorite robots, with The Robots Podcast team

Podcast team — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 11:02:06 +0000

Link to audio file (26:59)

The ROBOTS team has grown steadily over the years, filling its ranks with robot enthusiasts from Switzerland, USA, Greece, UK, Brazil and Japan. We take care of everything, from digging out the latest news, to interviewing main actors in robotics, animating the episodes, maintaining the website, and mixing the podcasts. We’re students, roboticists, hobbyists, musicians and journalists.

In today’s summer episode we decided it was time to share our two cents about 1) why we love robotics and 2) what robots spark our enthusiasm. We’d love to hear your opinion too so please let us know how you feel about these two questions in the comments section below.

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ep.082: Demining and defusing, with Frédéric Guerne and Paul Bosscher

Podcast team — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 08:45:04 +0000

Link to audio file (46:31)

In this episode we speak with Frédéric Guerne, director of Digger DTR, and with Paul Bosscher, chief robotics engineer at Harris Corp., about robots which assist us in demining land-mine fields and defusing IEDs.

Frederic Guerne

Frederic Guerne is passionate about building machines. An engineer by training, he spent several years building motors for Sonceboz SA. In 1994, he became ardently aware of land-mine problems. Convinced to help eradicate land-mines, he joined Prof. Nicoud at the EPFL, who was at the time working on state-of-the-art demining technologies. For two years, they worked on the detection of mines, until one day Frederic Guerne was contacted by the founder of the Swiss Foundation for Mine Action. This meeting led to the creation of Digger, which is now a major, non-profit demining company based in Switzerland. In our interview, we will talk about the process of demining, Digger’s D-2 and D-3 demining robots, and also about the challenges of running a non-profit based humanitarian company.

Paul Bosscher

Paul Bosscher is a chief robotics engineer at the Government Communication System Division at Harris Corp. in the USA. Dr. Bosscher received the B.S. degree in mechanical and electrical engineering from Calvin College, Grand Rapids, MI, in 2001, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), Atlanta, in 2003 and 2004, respectively.
Before joining Harris Corp., Dr. Bosscher was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Ohio University, Athens.
In our interview, we talk about the unmanned ground vehicle he is currently developing together with his team at Harris Corp., with the goal of providing the intuitive dexterous manipulation capabilities necessary to surgically defeat IEDs remotely.

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ep.081: The Mind Machine Project, with Newton Howard

Podcast team — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 10:48:21 +0000

Link to audio file (41:58)

In this episode we speak with Newton Howard, director of the Mind Machine Project and research scientist at MIT.

Newton Howard

Newton Howard is the director of the Mind Machine Project (MMP) started in 2009 to revisit fundamental assumptions about the nature of the brain, cognition, computing, and intelligence. The project focuses on four areas of expertise including Mind, Memory, Body, and Brain/Intent with world renowned experts from a wide range of fields joining forces to create Artificial Intelligence (AI).

In our conversation, we look at mistakes made in the field of AI up to date, smart materials, the importance of understanding the brain to recreate intelligence, and hopes that this understanding will lead to breakthroughs in the medical field.

Over the years, Newton has studied the “physics of cognition”, the “theory of intention awareness” and Psychiatry at universities around the world including the University of Paris 1 – La Sorbonne, Oxford and George Washington University. He currently holds a position at the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms where his research interests include wet computers, brain language and brain interfaces.

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ep.080: Schunk manipulators, with Henrik Schunk

Podcast team — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 10:14:33 +0000

Link to audio file (23:21)

In this episode we speak with Henrik Schunk, Managing Partner of SCHUNK GmbH & Co. KG and Chairman of EUnited Robotics.

Henrik Schunk

Henrik Schunk is managing partner of SCHUNK GmbH & Co. KG, family run business out of Germany with over 1800 employees and presence in 50 countries. As such, he is responsible for the Business Unit Automation and the cross-divisional departments Sales, Marketing, Continuous Improvement and IT. SCHUNK is one of the leaders in clamping and gripping technology featuring more than 10’000 specialized products.

In this episode, we look at recent developments in gripping technology, challenges that still remain after over 70 years of development, and the need for task-adapted systems and high-end products including anthropomorphic robotic hands.

Henrik Schunk also discusses his hopes for service robotics as one of the main areas of development in automation. To drive the field forward, his company organizes the SCHUNK Expert Days that bring together some of the main actors in service robotics. He also presents his view on European Robotics as Chairman of EUnited Robotics.

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ep.079: The Bilibot Project, with Garratt Gallagher

Podcast team — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 10:54:44 +0000

Link to audio file (24:12)

In today’s episode we talk about a new generation of affordable robots with the Bilibot project and its leader Garratt Gallagher from MIT.

Garratt Gallagher

Garratt Gallagher joined MIT in 2009 as a research engineer after a Masters of Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University. During his day job, he works with the PR2 robots from Willow Garage. On the side however, Gallagher has been developing the Bilibot, a cheap hobbyist/research robot that merges the capabilities of ROS, iRobot’s iCreate, the Kinect and a robust manipulator. The end result is an excellent platform with state-of-the-art sensing technology that has the potential to achieve a variety of service tasks, such as picking up your room or fetching a beer from the fridge.

To bring the Bilibot project to the next level, Gallagher partnered-up with two master students in Operations Management at MIT. The company they recently founded is now selling Bilibots for 1200$ with a cash return of $350 if you make a video of the Bilibot doing something cool, you share the code on ROS and collaborate with other developers. With this step, his team hopes to build a user community excited about the robot and prepare for their next big step, a robot app store.

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ep.078: Blended reality, with Natalie Freed, David Robert and Adam Setapen

Podcast team — Fri, 20 May 2011 12:28:38 +0000

Link to audio file (24:44)

In today’s episode we meet with Natalie Freed, David Robert and Adam Setapen from Cynthia Breazeal’s Personal Robots Group at the MIT Media Lab. They’ll be telling us about the Playtime Computing System, a playground where kids can interact with the physical world and its virtual extension.

The playground looks like a dream-like play-area with objects kids can interact with, including a robot that looks like an alphabet block and can be decorated with letters, shapes and even a mustache. The physical playground is surrounded by an engaging virtual world projected on a set of screens. Robot characters can seamlessly transition from the real world to the virtual world by entering a portal (which is basically a robot garage). Since anything is possible in the virtual world, robots can gain new capabilities, such as flying, and kids can rearrange the world or add their own virtual objects to the mix using a Creation Station. The children’s behavior is tracked using 3D motion capture as well as other sensors such as cameras and audio inputs.

The playground brings a whole new dimension to the idea of play, getting kids off the couch, engaging in creative activity that could bring them to a virtual cafe in France to learn french or allow them to build a whole new world to share with other kids around the world. In the interview, David, Adam and Natalie tell us what they learned from experiments with the Playtime Computing System, the fun anecdotes that come-up when working with kids, and the future of interactive media.

So when do we get one of these at home?

Natalie Freed

Natalie Freed finished her Masters in Computer Science at Arizona State University with a concentration in Arts, Media, and Engineering. She joined the MIT Media lab last summer as a graduate student and has since been interested in studying human-robot interactions with kids.

David Robert

David Robert has a decade of expertise in the film industry working as a Technical Director and Animator. Over the years he’s consulted and worked with the world’s top animation studios including PIXAR, Dreamworks, LucasArts, ILM and Disney Imagineering. He also taught at The Academy of Art, Walt Disney Feature Animation, Pixar University and gave lectures around the world. He’s currently doing a PhD at the Personal Robots group as a first step in showing that the “future of animation is off the screen”.

Adam Setapen

Adam Setapen has a Masters in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin and a strong background in AI. He joined the Personal Robots Group as a graduate student with the hope of developing robots for children that support long term interaction.

Links:

ep.077: European robotics (Part 2), with Bernd Liepert and Rich Walker

Podcast team — Fri, 06 May 2011 10:10:22 +0000

Link to audio file (25:05)

The European Robotics Forum, jointly organized by the European Robotics Technology Platform (EUROP) and the European Robotics Research Network (EURON), was hosted this year on April 6-8, in Västerås, Sweden by Robotdalen. Thanks to an invitation by EUnited Robotics, we got a chance to be there and talk to some of Europe’s major players in the field, from both industry and research.

Today’s episode is the second of a two part series on the event, in which we talk to Bernd Liepert CTO of KUKA AG and president of EUROP and Rich Walker from Shadow Robot.

Bernd Liepert

Bernd Liepert is the Chief Technical Officer of KUKA AG, a german company founded over 100 years ago. It is now one of the world’s leading suppliers in the field of robot technology as well as in plant and systems engineering. Most well known for its industrial robots initially used in the automotive industry, KUKA is now exploring next generation industrial and service robots. The company has 5,700 employees and generates a business volume of around EUR 900 million.

Liepert joined KUKA Roboter in 1990 as a Mathematician and Software Developer. In 1996 he became the Head of Control Development and in 1998 he was a member of the Board of Management responsible for Development and Design. In 2000, Bernd Liepert served as the CEO of KUKA Roboter and recently in 2010 he joined KUKA AG as its Chief Technical Officer.

Liepert is also the and the President of the European Robotics Technology Platform (EUROP) as of May 2010. EUROP is an industry-driven framework that aims at strengthening Europe’s competitiveness in robotic R&D, as well as global markets, and to improve quality of life.

Rich Walker

Rich Walker is the managing director of Shadow Robot, a UK based company. He tells us about the beautiful history of Shadow Robot, starting from bipedal robots 20 years ago, to carving robot hand prototypes out of maple wood and finally developing dexterous human-like manipulation. Shadow robot now has one of the worlds most advanced robot hands, the Shadow Dexterous Hand, currently in version C6. It provides 24 movements that allow for a direct mapping from a human to the robot, has integrated sensing and position control and can be fitted with touch sensing on the fingertips. To make their hands compliant and user-friendly, Shadow has been investigating new actuation such as pneumatical artificial muscles and artificial tendons driven by a single motor. Mostly research oriented, the robot has been used to study cognitive science, brain computer interfaces, and prosthesis. Some of its famous clients include NASA and BBC.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GG_nEZD9pFQ

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ep.076: European robotics (Part 1), with Jessica Karlsson, Ola Svanström and Moshe Shoham

Podcast team — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 12:05:39 +0000

Link to audio file (26:48)

Today’s episode is the first of a two part feature on the event, in which we talk to Jessica Karlsson from Robotdalen, Ola Svanström from ABB Robotics and Professor Moshe Shoham, founder of Mazor Robotics.

Jessica Karlsson

Jessica Karlsson is the Communications Manager for Robotdalen, the host of this year’s European Robotics Forum. Robotdalen represents a Swedish initiative aimed at enabling commercial success of new ideas and research in robotics. It is currently focused on three areas: field robotics, industrial robotics and technology for independent life. Jessica explains the vision of the initiative and gives some examples of success stories in each of their target domains.

Ola Svanström

Ola Svanström is the Head of Product Management for ABB Robotics, a leading supplier of industrial robot solutions. He talks to us about ABB‘s activities in the field of robotics, the current state of the robotics market and the importance of human-robot interaction research for future robotic applications.

Moshe Shoham

Professor Moshe Shoham is the head of the Robotics Laboratory at Technion, Israel’s Institute of Technology. His main research focus is on medical robots. He talks to us about two medical robotic systems. The first one, SpineAssist, is a robotic guidance system which enables surgeons to perform safer and more accurate spine surgeries. It is commercialized by Mazor Robotics, a company he founded and is currently CTO of. He then talks about ViRob, a micro-robot currently in development, that will be able to crawl into hard to access parts of the human body and deliver pharmaceutical payloads or drag a micro-catheter in a minimally invasive way.

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ep.075: Robotic arts, with David St-Onge

Podcast team — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 08:43:12 +0000

Link to audio file (29:25)

Our episode today features David St-Onge, an engineer working at the interface of visionary arts and creative science. Having participated in numerous robotic-art projects (including the Cloudharp, SAILS/Mascarillons) he talks about the opportunities and challenges of undertaking projects combining the contrasting domains of arts and science/engineering.

David St-Onge

David St-Onge is an is an ‘engineer in arts’, and works for visionary artists to give them the technological tools they need to express their talent and vision. At Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal and then at Universite Laval, he trained as a mechanical engineer (specialised in buildings’ structure) and roboticist, and also followed graduate studies in project management to acquire the necessary tools to work in such a multidisciplinary context. More recently, he chose to exclusively specialise in artistic projects involving robotics. The most prominent of his projects includes the flying cube project dubbed ‘SAILS’, which is an art/science/technology, research-stimulating platform initiated by Nicolas Reeves, director of the NXI Gestatio Laboratory at the design school UQAM in Canada, with whom David collaborates closely.

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ep.074: Mind control, with Raul Rojas and Geoffrey Mackeller

Podcast team — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 11:19:33 +0000

Link to audio file (29:18)

In today’s episode we look at a novel way to interact with your robot: through mind control. Raul Rojas returns to our show to talk about how his AutoNOMOS team used brain waves to give commands to their autonomous vehicle, MadeInGermany. We then talk to Geoffrey Mackeller, CTO of Emotiv Systems, the producer of the EEG headset used as an interface for this project.

Raul Rojas

Raul Rojas from the Artificial Intelligence Group of the Free University of Berlin, joins us for a second time on our podcast to talk about BrainDriver, a project in which they used a commercially available EEG interface called the Emotiv EPOC to interpret bioelectric signals as patterns associated with directions. These patterns are then used to send inputs to the drive-by-wire system of the MadeInGermany autonomous vehicle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDV_62QoHjY

Geoffrey Mackellar

Geoff Mackellar, CTO and Research Manager of Emotiv Systems, talks to us about their innovative low-cost wireless EEG headset, the Emotiv EPOC. He gives us some insight into the sensing platform and the training process and also tells us about the different applications that can be approached through such an interface.

A couple of impressive demos can be found here and here.

Links:

http://www.emotiv.com/

ep.073: Future manipulators, with Heinrich Jaeger and Andrzej Grzesiak

Podcast team — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 08:34:47 +0000

Link to audio file (38:28)

In today’s show we’ll be talking about futuristic manipulators that look nothing like the typical industrial robot arms you’ve seen in factories. Our first guest, Heinrich Jaeger from the University of Chicago tells us about the soft universal gripper that was published in PNAS. Our second guest, Andrzej Grzesiak, presents the bio-inspired manipulator he created with Festo and that won the German Future prize last year.

Heinrich Jaeger

Heinrich Jaeger is Professor of Physics at the University of Chicago where he explores how particles can interact to form soft or highly condensed matter. The jamming phenomenon they base their work on can be observed in your every day life with a bag of coffee. When the coffee bag is closed, it is rock hard because the coffee grains are jammed. When you open it, the grains are able to flow and the bag becomes soft.

As part of an interdisciplinary team with chemists, roboticist and the company iRobot, he is now thinking of ways he could use jamming technology to create soft robots. One of the first ones developed, the JamBot, was covered in a previous episode.

Jaeger focuses on the use of jamming to create a universal gripper that can manipulate objects of varying shape and size. A video below shows the gripper in action. The results of this work were published in PNAS.

Andrzej Grzesiak

Andrzej Grzesiak is the head of the Additive Technologies and Printing research group at Fraunhofer IPA. The group studies 3D printing and product design and engineering. Beside his activities at Fraunhofer IPA, Grzesiak is the coordinator of the Fraunhofer Additive Manufacturing Alliance including 10 Fraunhofer Institutes.

Last year he won the German Future Prize 2010 along with Festo for his bio-inspired manipulator that looks like an elephant trunk and grips using a mechanism inspired from the tail fin of fish briefly covered in a previous episode. The robot is made of plastic instead of the usual bolts and screws, is light weight and compliant. This makes it safe for humans and opens the way towards new types of human-robot interactions in factories.

Links:

ep.072: Telepresence, with Jean-Christophe Baillie and Trevor Blackwell

Podcast team — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 10:40:17 +0000

Link to audio file (37:08)

In today’s show we’ll have a look at the next killer application in robotics, telepresence. The idea is simple, instead of planning a bothersome phone or video conference meeting with all your colleagues, you communicate through a telepresence robot that can move around your workplace while you stay at home. Our first guest, Jean-Christophe Baillie, is the CEO of Gostai which just commercialized the Jazz robots this year. Our second guest, Trevor Blackwell, presents his company’s Anybots.

Jean-Christophe Baillie

Jean-Christophe Baillie received a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from University of Paris 6 and the Sony Computer Science Lab and then founded the Cognitive Robotics Lab in ENSTA/ParisTech. He is now the CEO of Gostai, father of the URBI software platform which was the subject of a previous episode.

Today he tells us about his company’s move to hardware. Building on their knowhow in robot software, and after two years of working in the dark, they just released their Jazz telepresence series. The series includes the “Jazz Connect” robot for mobile telepresence, the “Jazz Icon” for entertainment & events and the “Jazz Security” for surveillance. The head can be embedded with an LCD screen or two round LED eyes.

Finally, Baillie tells us about his hopes for telepresence, what the market looks like, the importance of design when making personal avatars and his ideas for the future.

Trevor Blackwell

Trevor Blackwell is the founder and CEO of Anybots Inc., a Silicon Valley startup developing telepresence robots. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from Harvard and then became a principal at Viaweb specialized in e-commerce software, later acquired by Yahoo. He’s also the inventor of all sorts of vehicles that balance in a way similar to the Segway, including a two-wheeled balancing scooter and the self-balancing Eunicycle which only has one wheel.

Blackwell presents his Anybots, two wheeled balancing telepresence robots that have been seen in local cafes ordering scones. He addresses questions regarding WiFi dependency, design, and tells us how these robots are typically being used in the work place. Finally, he mentions the future where telepresence robots well be able to do more than just communicate.

Links:

ep.071: Robotics roadmaps – Japan, with Tomomasa Sato

Podcast team — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 10:06:07 +0000

Link to audio file (22:19)

In today’s episode we discuss the national funding strategies of Japan, as a part of a series on funding strategies worldwide. In particular, we’ll be talking to an expert and leading figure in Japanese Robotics, Tomomasa Sato, who will give us insights into the Japanese robotics roadmap – for the past, present and future!

Tomomasa Sato

Prof. Tomomasa Sato received his bachelor, master and PhD degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Tokyo. After completing his PhD, he joined the Electrotechnical Laboratory of the Ministry of Industrial Science and Technology. In 1991, he then moved to the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology of the University of Tokyo, where from 1998 onwards, has was Professor of the Department of Mechano-Informatics where he directed the Intelligent Cooperative Systems Laboratory.

His research interests include intelligent machines, robots and environments. He is an active member of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers, Society of Instrument and Control Engineers, and Robotics Society of Japan, which he presided from 2007 to 2008 and lead the creation of the Academic Roadmap on Robotics.

He currently is a project manager for intelligent robot projects supported by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, otherwise known at METI.

During this interview, Tomomasa Sato tells us about the money spent in robotics, the differences between industry and government funding and developments and the cultural differences that make Japanese people accept robots into their daily lives.

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ep.070: Odor source localization, with Hiroshi Ishida and Thomas Lochmatter

Podcast team — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 08:39:34 +0000

Link to audio file (29:47)

In this episode we revisit robot olfaction and take a closer look at the problem of odor source localization. Our first guest, Hiroshi Ishida from the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology is an expert in the field, whose sniffing robots range from blimps to ground and underwater robots. Our second guest, Thomas Lochmatter from EPFL talks about tradeoffs between biologically inspired and probabilistic approaches to navigate a gas plume.

Hiroshi Ishida

Hiroshi Ishida is Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Systems Engineering, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Japan.
The focus of his research group is to develop robots that can find sources of airborne gas plumes or underwater chemical plumes. To this end, they developed the Active Stereo Nose (see figure below), a differential gas sampling system inspired by the dog’s nose, and the Crayfish robot that mimics the mechanism used by crayfish in nature to create unidirectional water currents.

Thomas Lochmatter

image credit: SNF

During his PhD at the Distributed Intelligent Systems and Algorithms Lab at EPFL in Switzerland, Thomas Lochmatter developed a modular odor system for the Khepera III robot. His research focused on the pros and cons of biologically-inspired and probabilistic algorithms for odor localization, while dealing with both single and multi-robot systems.

Links:

ep.069: Robots Podcast: Harvest automation, with Joe Jones

Podcast team — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 10:05:24 +0000

Link to audio file (26:01)

In today’s episode we look at a new market in robotics with huge potential, agriculture. With us, Joe Jones, co-founder of Harvest Automation and father of the Roomba.

In addition, you might have noted that we’re starting the new year with an upgrade to our website. Our partner, robots.net, will now provide us with news. You can access each episode’s news items, along with many others, via the website’s new NEWS tab, which replaces the former Forum. We think that this will increase both the quality and accessibility of our news content, and look forward to your comments in the improved comments section under each post.

Joseph Jones

Joe Jones is a robotics visionary with 24 years in the field. As proof, he was the first employee of iRobot, where he invented the Roomba that has sold over 3 million units. He also spent 9 years in robotic research at the MIT AI Lab, authored three books on robotics, and holds 15 patents. Today we have him on our show to talk about Harvest Automation, company that he co-founded with a team of robotics experts and ex-iRobot employees. Tapping into the huge agriculture market, Harvest will start by deploying thousands of robots to nurse potted plants. To give you an idea, here’s a short video.

The nice thing with agriculture robots is that incremental improvements to the robot can open a huge range of new applications. With that in mind, Harvest hopes to eventually deploy robots in real fields, doing all the large-scale dirty work challenging today’s farmers.

Finally, Jones also gives us a glimpse at the market and some of his secrets to bridge the gap between academia and business.

Links:

Latest News:
For the latest news from CES, have a look at our new NEWS tab.

ep.068: Multi-robot teams, with Vijay Kumar and Daniel Mellinger

Podcast team — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 06:37:13 +0000

Link to audio file (52:46)

Happy New Year from the whole Robots Podcast team! Don’t miss our amazing holiday robot videos!

For this last episode of 2010 we look at multi-robot teams and impressive quadrotor capabilities with Vijay Kumar from the GRASP Lab at the University of Pennsylvania and one of his PhD students, Daniel Mellinger.

Vijay Kumar

Vijay Kumar is Professor at the GRASP Lab and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at UPenn.

As an expert in networked multi-agent systems, he’ll be telling us how he sees robot teams of tomorrow being deployed in real-world missions. Challenges include keeping the robots networked, selecting the right level of autonomy and figuring out how to deal with large swarms of heterogenous robots.

Among the robots he sees doing team work are flying robots including quadrotors that use SLAM to get around or that can perform impressive aggressive maneuvers.

Daniel Mellinger

Daniel Mellinger is a PhD student at the GRASP Lab. He’s a rising star in dynamic control and has been featured in the media and on YouTube for his work with quadrotors passing through hoops and performing amazing motions.

We also speak about his latest work on transporting large objects using cooperative teams of quadrotors. This work got him the best paper award during the recent International Symposium on Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems at EPFL.

Links:

Latest News:
For a review of 2010 in robotics, have a look at the Robots Forum!

ep.067: Robots Podcast: Science fiction (Part 2), with Greg Bear

Podcast team — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 11:45:18 +0000

Link to audio file (42:37)

In this episode we dive into the world of famous science fiction writer Greg Bear. Christine then takes us on an audio journey through one of his books, Mariposa. Finally don’t forget to send us your YouTube holiday videos featuring robots.

Greg Bear

Greg Bear is a famous writer, author of more than thirty books of science fiction and fantasy. Over the years he’s been awarded two Hugos and five Nebulas for his fiction and has been called the “Best working writer of hard science fiction” by “The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.” His expertise in science has gotten him writing about topics from evolution to robotics, owing him reviews in Nature. One of his books, Darwin’s Radio even provided useful insights to biologists.

Regarding robotics, we’ll look at self-awareness, robots as mirrors for the human condition and the extent at which AIs should be given responsibility. We then dive into Isaac Asimov’s work, since Bear is an expert after writing a sequel to the foundation series. He tells us a few of Asimov’s secrets to make popular science fiction and how Asimov’s rules should be applied to robotics, if we don’t want to loose control.

Finally, Bear gives us his vision of the world and tells us how his talent in bringing pieces together within one story has gotten him helping the U.S. Army, the CIA and Homeland Security.

To give you a taste of his work, Christine will read an excerpt from Mariposa describing the early Mind Design artificial intelligence called Jones, which leads to the AIs in Queen of Angels, Slant, and Moving Mars. Check out the Promo for his latest book below.

Holiday Videos

To get into the holiday mood, what better than watch some crazy robot videos. Make a holiday video featuring any robot, real or not, and put it on YouTube. Send us a link and we’ll feature it on our dedicated playlist and on our website!

Links:

Latest News:
For a video of the anthrophomorpic running robot’s first dash, or to request a gig of “The Trons” for your XMas or New Year’s celebration, have a look at the Robots Forum.

ep.066: Personal helpers, with Steve Cousins and Moritz Tenorth

Podcast team — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 11:10:20 +0000

Link to audio file (44:07)

In today’s episode we take a look at the status and progress of the personal robotics domain — a research field which is about to change our lives! We talk to Steve Cousins, CEO of Willow Garage and a major player in the field. We then talk to Moritz Tenorth to get a fascinating insight into the technological details which the work in this domain entails.

Steve Cousins

Steve Cousins is the President and CEO of Willow Garage. He earned his PhD in Computer Science at Stanford University. He has experience as a researcher and manager in both academic and industrial research labs, from the Washington University medical school and Stanford University, to Interval Research Corporation, Xerox PARC, and IBM Almaden.

Willow Garage is an unusual company set up to make robots help people. Human-scale “personal robots” will perform tasks in natural human environments, ranging from helping around the home to assisting in flexible manufacturing. Willow Garage’s role has been to help accelerate progress in this field. The PR2 robot combined with the open source Robot Operating System (ROS) enables researchers to more quickly explore applications of personal robots.

In this interview, Steve Cousins talks about the past and future of personal robotics, where the major challenges lie and what his personal picture of the future is!

Moritz Tenorth

Moritz Tenorth is currently finishing his PhD at the Intelligent Autonomous Systems Group at the TU Munich where he works on making robots understand human environments, such as kitchens. In the memorable demonstration shown in the video below, three robots, including the Willow Garage’s PR2 work together to whip up a batch of pancakes.

To achieve this impressive result robots needed to have a high-level understanding of their world so that they can recognize useful objects and figure out what to do with them in order to follow recipes. For this purpose, Tenorth created KnowRob which is now implemented for ROS and can be used for a variety of different robots. He also explains how the Web can be a huge source of information for robots.

Finally, Tenorth tells us about the importance of unified operating system for robots and his experience in working with the PR2 and ROS.

Links:

Latest News:
For pictures and videos of Shelley racing up Peak Hill and the WheeMe Massage Robot, have a look at the Robots Forum.

ep.065: Dependable swarms, with Alan Winfield

Podcast team — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 10:20:27 +0000

Link to audio file (41:28)

In today’s episode we take a close look at swarm robotics and its potential use in real-world applications with expert Alan Winfield, co-founder of the Bristol Robotics Lab in the UK.

Alan Winfield
Alan Winfield is professor at the University of Bristol where he conducts research at the Bristol Robotics Lab. As a pioneer in the field of Swarm Robotics, he’s been looking at how large numbers of simple robots with local information can self-organize to achieve seemingly complex tasks. In such systems, inspired from social insects such as ants and termites, the intelligence of the group emerges from the actions of the individual robots.

Beyond simply showing that swarm systems can work in the lab, Winfield has been considering ways to make swarming a reality in applications. The main challenge is that it is typically difficult to prove that swarm systems will work, which is something desirable for real-world tasks. Furthermore, increasing the number of robots in the system also increases the probability of robot failures that might be disruptive to the swarm’s purpose. To overcome these challenges, he created a new field of research called “Swarm Engineering”.

Winfield is also a follower of the Open Science movement, meaning that he often publishes data, source code and project updates as science progresses. In his effort for transparency, Winfield is also Senior Media Fellow for the EPSRC which has gotten him blogging and tweeting about robotics.

Finally, we also discuss ethics with a focus on robots that make us believe they have feelings and the emphasis on ethical roboticists rather than ethical robots.

Links:

Latest News:
For videos of the robotic sailboat and sponge-wielding robot arm, have a look at the Robots Forum.

ep.064: Robots Podcast: Autonomous vehicles, with Alberto Broggi and Raul Rojas

Podcast team — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 14:17:43 +0000

Link to audio file (51:04)

In today’s episode we take a deeper look at what’s behind the hype over autonomous vehicles, and talk to two experts in the field, Alberto Broggi, leader of the Vislab Intercontinental Vehicle Challenge, and Raul Rojas, leader of the Made in Germany autonomous vehicle project.

Alberto Broggi

Alberto Broggi is the Director of the Artificial Vision and Intelligent Systems Lab at the University of Parma.His main milestones are the ARGO Project (a 2000+ km test done on Italian highways back in 1998 in which the ARGO vehicle drove itself autonomously) and the setup of the Terramax vehicle who reached the finish line of the DARPA Grand Challenge 2005. The Vislab Intercontinental Vehicle Challenge was accomplished when the vehicle expedition recently reached Shanghai on October 28th after crossing two continents in a journey more than 3 months long.

Raúl Rojas

Raúl Rojas is a professor of Computer Science and Mathematics at the Free University of Berlin and a renowned specialist in artificial neural networks.The FU-Fighters, football-playing robots he helped build, were world champions in 2004 and 2005. He formerly lead an autonomous car project called Spirit of Berlin and is now leading the development of the Made in Germany car, a spin-off project of the AutoNOMOS Project. Although most of his current research and teaching revolves around artificial intelligence and its applications, he holds academic degrees in mathematics and economics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kyk1VLTSH_U

Links:

Latest News:
For more information on this week’s news, including pictures and videos of the two new robotic grippers, have a look at the Robots Forum.

ep.063: Amateur UAVs, with Chris Anderson

Podcast team — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 08:07:27 +0000

Link to audio file (51:48)

In today’s episode we speak about flying robots with Chris Anderson, founder of DIY Drones which is now the largest amateur UAV community in the world, and one of the largest robotics communities.

Chris Anderson

Chris Anderson is Editor-in-chief of the very well known magazine WIRED. In his free time, he discovered a passion for making flying robots with his son and launched the internet blog DIY Drones which now has nearly 12,000 members and about 1 million page views per month. The goal of the blog is to give you all the necessary tools to build your blimp, plane or quadrotor in a low cost, safe and easy way. The community relies on a development team of more than 100 active developers contributing to about a dozen projects, both hardware and software. One of their products, the ArduPilot autopilot, can be strapped to your flyers for autonomous control. In a rather new twist in the industry, DIY Drones focusses on making open source hardware that can be used by all in the same spirit as open source software.

Anderson covers all the questions you ever had about making flying robots, including safety and legal aspects. He also discusses risks in putting this technology in the wrong hands and some anecdotes of crazy projects coming out of the community.

Contest

Last week we asked you to describe a robotic character you would like to see on Futurama. Check out the cool ideas here! Congratulations to winner “occorled” for imagining our favorite robot “Outlook”:

A blocky humanoid robot which takes the role of Microsoft Outlook for the Futurama crew. He has the Outlook symbol on his chasis, and the Windows startup sound plays when he enters the room.
Consider a scene at the morning meeting, the crew is just sitting down, getting coffee, etc.
Outlook enters and starts handing out letters to everyone individually (symbolizing everyone checking their daily email). Some of the letters have attachments (literally polaroid pictures or notes attached with a paperclip).
Leela is flipping through hers, mumbling “spam, spam, ooooh what’s this”.
Outlook finishes and starts walking out the room.
Outlook: “OK people, remember we’ve got a meeting at 1:30 in the conference room.”
Everyone sighs. Mumbling is heard.
Hermes’ voice: “Notify me 5 minutes prior.”
Bender’s voice: “Declined!”

Links:

Latest News:
For more information on Turkey’s SURALP humanoid and Berkeley Bionic’s eLEGS, have a look at our forum.

ep.062: Futurama, with David X. Cohen

Podcast team — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 07:55:14 +0000

Link to audio file (24:37)

In today’s episode we speak with David X. Cohen, the head writer and executive producer of Futurama!

David X. Cohen

In addition to becoming one of TV’s best known writers, David X. Cohen has always had a vested interest in the sciences, receiving his Bachelor in Physics from Harvard University and a Masters degree in Computer Science from Berkeley. During graduate school David started writing for television, eventually writing for The Simpsons with creator Matt Groening. From their collaboration was born Futurama.

Futurama portrays society in the 31st-century. The show provides a very funny account of the ever increasing incorporation of technology into our lives. True to science-fiction tradition, the future is filled with robots albeit those with terrible personalities and odd responsibilities including growing replacement hair for humans.

In this episode, Cohen tells us about how he creates robots for television and describes his vision of the future of human society.

Contest

Describe a robotic character you would like to see on Futurama in the comments section below. Make your character funny, moving, crazy or sad and as graphical as possible! If we like your character most, we’ll send you a Futurama DVD of your choice. The contest ends on the 22nd of October.

Links:

Latest News:
More information on this week’s news (the thought-controlled rat wheelchair and the new field of robot anesthesia) can be found in the Robots forum.

ep.061: Robots Podcast: Olfaction, with Achim Lilienthal and Lino Forte Marques

Podcast team — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 09:37:54 +0000

Link to audio file (49:12)

In this episode we look at how robots can use smell to navigate and map their environment or detect hazards. Our first guest, Achim Lilienthal from Örebro University in Sweden focuses on mapping gas clouds and localizing their source. Our second guest, Lino Forte Marques from the University of Coimbra in Portugal tells us about applications and sensors.

Achim Lilienthal

Achim Lilienthal is Associate Professor at the AASS Research Centre, Dept. of Technology, Örebro University in Sweden where he leads the Learning Systems Lab.

One of his main research goals is to use mobile robots equipped with gas sensors to map chemical clouds or localize their source. This requires making models of how gas diffuses in different environments based on many factors including wind. More unexpected however, is the use of smell for localization. For this purpose, Lilienthal who is also an expert in Self-Localization and Mapping techniques (SLAM) suggests that robots could figure out where they are by recognizing an odor previously encountered… say the smell of bacon frying in the kitchen. Finally, he discusses differences in natural and artificial smell and possibilities for 3D gas mapping.

Lino Forte Marques

Lino Forte Marques is an Assistant Professor in the Electrical Engineering Department of the University of Coimbra, Portugal, and Head of Research of the Embedded Systems Lab within the Institute of Systems and Robotics.

His research group wants to use teams of smell-endowed robots to research techniques that could be used for real-world applications like humanitarian demining, search and rescue operations, detecting fire hazards and counter-terrorism.
In order to achieve this, they have developed a cheap, small and modular odor sensing system called the kheNose for the popular Khepera III robot. An attractive feature of this system is that it is capable of odor discrimination, an ability often overlooked with other research modules that focus on detecting one particular substance in an otherwise odor clean environment. This makes it more suitable for realistic scenarios for which a clean environment is not necessarily a given.

Links:

Latest News:
More info on this week’s news, in particular on UC Berkeley’s new type of artificial skin and UC Berkeley’s laser mapping backpack, can be found at the Robots Forum.