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From a garage to Swiss lakes and rivers: the story of Proteus, an underwater robot
Andrej Studer
01 Nov 2021
Know the story of Proteus, an underwater robot developed by a Swiss student spin-off who partnered up with real divers from the Swiss Explosive Ordnance Disposal to retrieve lost ammunition from Swiss lakes.
Making RL tractable by learning more informative reward functions: example-based control, meta-learning, and normalized maximum likelihood
BAIR Blog
30 Oct 2021
In our recent work, we design a reward specification technique that naturally incentivizes exploration and enables agents to explore environments in a directed way.
IEEE 17th International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering paper awards (with videos)
Daniel Carrillo-Zapata and IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS)
27 Oct 2021
The IEEE International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering (CASE) is the flagship automation conference of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society and constitutes the primary forum for c...
One giant leap for the mini cheetah
MIT News
23 Oct 2021
A new control system, demonstrated using MIT’s robotic mini cheetah, enables four-legged robots to jump across uneven terrain in real-time.
Sense Think Act Pocast: Erik Schluntz
Audrow Nash and Sense Think Act Podcast
19 Oct 2021
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Erik Schluntz, co-founder and CTO of Cobalt Robotics, which makes a security guard robot. Erik speaks about how their robot handles elevators, how they have hum...
A robot that finds lost items
MIT News
18 Oct 2021
Researchers at MIT have created RFusion, a robotic arm with a camera and radio frequency (RF) antenna attached to its gripper, that fuses signals from the antenna with visual input from the camera to locate and retrieve an item, even if the item is buried under a pile and completely out of view.
Robohub gets a fresh look
Daniel Carrillo-Zapata
17 Oct 2021
If you visited Robohub this week, you may have spotted a big change: how this blog looks now! On Tuesday (coinciding with Ada Lovelace Day and our ‘50 women in robotics that you need to know about‘ by chance), Robohub got a massive modernisation on its look by our technical director Ioannis K. Erripis and his team.
50 women in robotics you need to know about 2021
Women In Robotics and Andra Keay
12 Oct 2021
It’s Ada Lovelace Day and once again we’re delighted to introduce you to “50 women in robotics you need to know about”! From the Afghanistan Girls Robotics Team to K.G.Engelhardt who in 1989 ...
Join the Women in Robotics Photo Challenge
Women In Robotics
12 Oct 2021
How can women feel as if they belong in robotics if we can't see any pictures of women building or programming robots? The Civil Rights Activist Marian Wright Edelson aptly said, "You can't be what yo...
Sense Think Act Podcast: Melonee Wise
Audrow Nash and Sense Think Act Podcast
11 Oct 2021
In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks with Melonee Wise, former CEO of Fetch Robotics and current VP of Robotics Automation at Zebra Technologies. Melonee speaks about the origin of Fetch Robotics, her ...
Flying high-speed drones into the unknown with AI
NCCR Robotics
08 Oct 2021
When it comes to exploring complex and unknown environments such as forests, buildings or caves, drones are hard to beat. They are fast, agile and small, and they can carry sensors and payloads virtua...
Sense Think Act Podcast: Adrian Macneil
Audrow Nash and Sense Think Act Podcast
05 Oct 2021
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Adrian Macneil, Co-founder and CEO of Foxglove. Foxglove makes Foxglove Studio, an open source visualization and debugging tool for robotics. Adrian speaks abou...
To swim like a tuna, robotic fish need to change how stiff their tails are in real time
The Conversation
05 Oct 2021
Researchers have been building robotic fish for years, but the performance has never approached the efficiency of real fish. Daniel Quinn, CC BY-NC
By Daniel Quinn
Underwater vehicles haven’t ...
Sense Think Act Podcast: Dave Coleman
Audrow Nash and Sense Think Act Podcast
02 Oct 2021
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Dave Coleman, Chief Executive Officer at PickNik Robotics. Dave speaks at a high level about what MoveIt is and what problems it helps roboticists solve, they t...
Team CERBERUS wins the DARPA Subterranean Challenge
CERBERUS
01 Oct 2021
The DARPA Subterranean Challenge planned to develop novel approaches to rapidly map, explore and search underground environments in time-sensitive operations critical for the civilian and military dom...
What can I do here? Learning new skills by imagining visual affordances
BAIR Blog
27 Sep 2021
How do humans become so skillful? Well, initially we are not, but from infancy, we discover and practice increasingly complex skills through self-supervised play. But this play is not random - the chi...
Sense Think Act Podcast: Ryan Gariepy
Audrow Nash and Sense Think Act Podcast
21 Sep 2021
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Ryan Gariepy, Chief Technology Officer of both Clearpath Robotics and OTTO Motors. Ryan speaks about the origin of Clearpath, how Clearpath focuses on making re...
Surgeons to reach prostate with robot
Joost van de Loo
21 Sep 2021
Prostate cancer is the most common form of cancer in men. Every year about 13,000 Dutch men are diagnosed with this disease. According to the Prostate Cancer Foundation, about 1 in 10 men suffers from...
‘Black in Robotics’ special series
Daniel Carrillo-Zapata
13 Sep 2021
Apart from the IEEE/RSJ IROS 2020 (International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems) original series Real Roboticist that we have been featuring in the last weeks, another series of three v...
Should a home robot follow what the mom says? Recap of what happened at RO-MAN Roboethics Competition
Open Roboethics Initiative
09 Sep 2021
On August 8th, 2021, a team of four graduate students from the University of Toronto presented their ethical design in the world’s first ever roboethics competition, the RO-MAN 2021 Roboethics to De...
When humans play in competition with a humanoid robot, they delay their decisions when the robot looks at them
Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia
06 Sep 2021
Gaze is an extremely powerful and important signal during human-human communication and interaction, conveying intentions and informing about other’s decisions. What happens when a robot and a human...
When mud is our greatest teacher
Fay de Grefte
03 Sep 2021
On 25 March, a small RoboHouse team went out in the fields of Oldeberkoop in East Friesland with gas leak detector Waylon and mechanic Rob. They began by checking the calibration to prevent malfunctio...
What is the future of Agri-Food Robotics in the EU and beyond?
euRobotics AISBL and the European Commission
30 Aug 2021
By Kees Lokhorst, Project Coordinator of the agROBOfood project
During the last decades robots are transforming from simple machines to cognitive collaborators. The distance that has been covered i...
2021 IEEE RAS Publications best paper awards
Daniel Carrillo-Zapata
27 Aug 2021
The IEEE Robotics and Automation Society has recently released the list of winners of their best paper awards. Below you can see the list and access the publications. Congratulations to all winners!
...
Fish fins are teaching us the secret to flexible robots and new shape-changing materials
The Conversation
20 Aug 2021
By Francois Barthelat
Flying fish use their fins both to swim and glide through the air. Smithsonian Institution/Flickr
The big idea
Segmented hinges in the long, thin bones of fish fins are...
Three new helper robots at the Hsinchu National Taiwan University Hospital
Zachary Silver and Jonathan Peng
13 Aug 2021
ADATA Technology has collaborated with researchers at Hsinchu National Taiwan University Hospital (NTUH) to introduce the C-Rob Autonomous Mobile Robots. These robots use Artificial Intelligence (AI) ...
Swimming robot gives fresh insight into locomotion and neuroscience
NCCR Robotics
12 Aug 2021
Scientists at the Biorobotics Laboratory (BioRob) in EPFL’s School of Engineering are developing innovative robots in order to study locomotion in animals and, ultimately, gain a better understandin...
RO-MAN Roboethics Competition: What is an ethical home robot to you?
Open Roboethics Initiative
10 Aug 2021
So what does it mean for a robot to act ethically within a home environment? Researchers have been thinking about this question from different perspectives for the past couple of decades. Some look at...
We used peanuts and a climbing wall to learn how squirrels judge their leaps so successfully – and how their skills could inspire more nimble robots
How do they stick their landings? Alex Turton via Getty ImagesTree squirrels are the Olympic divers of the rodent world, leaping gracefully among branches and structures high above the ground. And as ...
Mobile robots revolutionize industry
International Federation of Robotics (IFR)
06 Aug 2021
Robot mobility is booming worldwide: Unit sales of Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) in the logistics sector e.g. will increase by 31% between 2020 and 2023 annually. At the same time, the use of AMRs i...
A robotic cat can teach us how real animals move
Frontiers Journals & Blog
03 Aug 2021
By Mischa Dijkstra, Frontiers science writer / Toyoaki Tanikawa, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Osaka University
In the young discipline of robotics-inspired biology, robots replace experime...
r/Robotics showcase
reddit
30 Jul 2021
The first Reddit Robotics Showcase will take place online this weekend (31st July - 1 August). Multitude of projects underway in the r/robotics reddit community will be showcased. There will be nearly...
RO-MAN 2021 Roboethics Competition: Bringing ethical robots into the home
Open Roboethics Initiative
23 Jul 2021
In 1984, Heathkit presented HERO Jr. as the first robot that could be used in households to perform a variety of tasks, such as guarding people’s homes, setting reminders, and even playing games. Fo...
New algorithm flies drones faster than human racing pilots
NCCR Robotics
22 Jul 2021
To be useful, drones need to be quick. Because of their limited battery life they must complete whatever task they have – searching for survivors on a disaster site, inspecting a building, deliverin...
What is the best simulation tool for robotics?
Silicon Valley Robotics
20 Jul 2021
What is the best simulation tool for robotics? This is a hard question to answer because many people (or their companies) specialize in one tool or another. Some simulators are better at one aspect of...
Sniffy Bug: a fully autonomous swarm of gas-seeking nano quadcopters in cluttered environments
Bart Duisterhof and Guido de Croon
15 Jul 2021
Tiny drones are ideal candidates for fully autonomous jobs that are too dangerous or time-consuming for humans. A commonly shared dream by engineers and fire & rescue services, would be to have swarms...
