Jamie Paik with a robot. Credit: NCCR Robotics

Meet the NCCR Robotics Paik Lab (RRL, EPFL) – headed by Professor Jamie Paik, the lab is dedicated to creating interactive robotic systems using cutting edge manufacturing techniques. The lab specialises in creating soft, foldable robots for use in a variety of situations, including creating compliant robotic assistive devices for people with disabilities.

If you enjoyed this ‘meet the lab’ video, you can also watch another in the NCCR Robotics series below:

Over recent years the explosion in popularity of drones, both professionally and for amateur use, has inspired researchers to consider how to make flying robots as safe and robust as possible. Previous design methods have included producing bulky protective cages or making them as unlikely to crash as possible. Recently, researchers from Floreano Lab, NCCR Robotics and EPFL have presented a new approach to making crash resilient quadcopters – making them soft, so it doesn’t matter if they come into contact with their surrounding environment.

Improving on a previous iteration of a folding quadcopter, Stefano Mintchev, the lead researcher on the project, developed a quadcopter utilising the dual stiffness properties seen in insect wings. Insect wings are composed of sections made of cuticle, a stiff material that takes the load bearing portion of the wing, connected with flexible joints made of the protein resilin that have evolved to be shock absorbent and compliant. These two factors together allow insect wings to be both strong and load-bearing, and compliant and durable.

The presented drone is made of a central case and a thin fibreglass external frame with four arms held together by four magnetic joints. As this fibreglass frame is only 0.3mm thick, it is soft and flexible, making it able to withstand collisions without permanent deformation. The four magnetic joints connect the frame to the central case (modelled after hard insect exoskeletons, just to complete the inspiration from nature) and rigidly hold the frame in place during flight. Where these magnets come into their own, is that during a collision they break, meaning that the drone transition to a soft state where the frame becomes disengaged and can safely deform without damaging itself or the inner core. Soft elastic bands ensure that the frame is held close enough in place that the magnets snap back after the collision, allowing the frame to realign and thus ensuring that the drone is once again ready to fly.

The collision resistant drone was tested by dropping it from a height of 2m whereby it completely disengaged the magnetic joints and automatically restored to its pre-crash configuration. In fact, the drone was dropped over 50 times with no permanent damage. On top of that, the design means that the drones can have as many rotators as desired and is not limited to a quadcopter configuration.

Reference

S. Mintchev, S.D. De Rivas and D. Floreano. Insect-Inspired Mechanical Resilience for Multicopters, In IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 2017.

Source: École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)

Bioinspired robots that take their designs from biology has been a big research area in recent years, but a team from NCCR Robotics, Floreano Lab have just gone one step further and designed a feathered drone to fully replicate the agile flight of birds.

Small winged drones can experience sudden and extreme variations in aerodynamic conditions, for example from winds or air disturbances coming from passing obstacles or other moving objects. Birds adapt to these changing environmental conditions by changing the shape of their wings. Their feathered wings can quickly change shape mid-flight, for example, folding the outer layer of feathers, a bird significantly reduces the surface area of its wing and the aerodynamic drag allowing high-speed flight.

It is this folding and simple reduction of wing span that the team wished to exploit. By having a wing that can easily change size and shape, a drone can adapt to nippy manoeuvres (larger wing span required), or can reduce its drag at high speeds to fly in strong headwinds (short wing span required).

Birds can dramatically alter the shape and size of their wings because they are composed of an articulated skeleton controlled by muscles and covered with feathers that can overlap. Similarly, the presented drone has a wing equipped with artificial feathers that can be folded to actively change the surface. The wing contains two artificial tendons that can either rotate or straighten the front edge of the wing, thus splaying or storing the feathers. By enabling the drone to reduce its wingspan, the surface area is decreased by 41%, thus significantly reducing drag giving the possibility to fly against strong headwinds. On the other hand, when the wing is fully deployed, the drone can perform turns that are 40% sharper. Since the two foldable wings act independently of each other, the mechanism can also be used to control roll eliminating the need of additional ailerons with advantages in terms of reduced weight and mechanical complexity.

This new advent means that the drones of the future may not only manoeuvre like birds, but may also look like them too!

Reference:

M. Di Luca, S. Mintchev, G. Heitz, F. Noca, and D. Floreano, Bio-inspired morphing wings for extended flight envelope and roll control of small drones, Journal of the Royal Society, Interface Focus, 16 December 2016. DOI – http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2016.0092

A group from Floreano Lab, EPFL and NCCR Robotics has today published their novel variable stiffness fibre with self-healing capability.

Soft “hardware” components are becoming more and more popular solutions within the field of robotics. In fact softness, compliance and foldability bring significant advantages to devices by allowing conformability and safe interactions with users, objects and unstructured environments. However for some applications, the softness of components adversely reduces the range of forces those devices can apply or sustain. An optimal solution would be having components able to vary their softness according to the needed task.

The fibre has a metal core, consisting of low melting point alloys (LMPA), which is contained within a pre-stretched silicone tube. At room temperatures the LMPA is a solid, thus, the fibre is stiff and behaves like a thin metal wire. But when an electrical current is passed through a copper wire coiled around the tube, the LMPA inner core is warmed above 62 ^oC and melts, thus, the fibre becomes up to 700 times softer and 400 times more deformable.

The second advantage is that if the metallic core breaks it just needs to be heated and — voila! The fibre is fixed! And to top it off, the changing of states occurs in tens of seconds (depending on the current injected and the dimension of the LMPA core).

The fibre has a myriad of real-world applications in the fields of mobile robots, wearable devices and soft systems. Currently, the team is using the fibre to create multi-purpose foldable drones. In fact, the fibre can be morphed into different shapes that are preserved after cooling, ie the four arms of the drone can take different functional morphologies, i.e. deployed in a quadrotor-like configuration for aerial locomotion or bent towards the ground in a four-wheeled configuration for terrestrial locomotion.

Future applications that the team is investigating include in endoscopes and other medical applications, where instruments need to be soft and pliable as they are exploring delicate body cavities, but then need to be able to penetrate resistive biological tissues (e.g. for a biopsy) once they have reached their desired location.

Reference

Tonazzini, A., Mintchev, S., Schubert, B., Mazzolai, B., Shintake, J. and Floreano, D. (2016), Variable Stiffness Fiber with Self-Healing Capability. Adv. Mater.. doi:10.1002/adma.201602580

Last month we caught up with Dario Floreano, the head of the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland. Here we continue our discussion, covering acoustic sensing, multi-drone operations and more. Missed Part 1? Check it out here.

Last time we spoke, we discussed your work on visual perception, but you also mentioned acoustic research. So this means we’re talking about ‘listening drones’?

Yes, that’s right. This is particularly interesting in the area of drone swarming, whereby multiple robots need to coordinate their flights very carefully.

The first big problem with swarming is perceiving the other drones. If you have multiple drones in flight, each robot is only a very small spot in the other robots’ visual fields of view. They’re very hard to spot against the background. So we thought, what about sound detection?

The question is, how can a robot hear other robots when it is in flight? Well actually, this is a simple trick. You simply switch the engine off, very briefly, listen using three tiny microphones pointing in different directions, then restart the engine. Just like the eBee does when it is capturing aerial photos. Using this trick we developed drones that can detect the presence and relative direction of other drones acoustically.

Outside of the lab, what do you see are some of the potential end applications of your work?

Sticking with the acoustic approach, this could be useful in search and rescue, being used to detect people’s locations on the ground. If people are lost in snow or in a forest, they often have emergency whistles. We have shown that we can locate a person using a standard emergency whistle and broadcast its GPS coordinates to a rescue team.

With swarming, we’re also looking at using drones as relay networks for communication between rescue and security teams on the ground.

In the event of an earthquake, a fire or a landslide, the first thing an emergency team usually does is to set-up its communication infrastructure. This typically consists of a set of trucks with radio signal emitters and receivers, which operate on a specific frequency. It can take one or several hours to complete this set-up before rescuers can start working on the ground, using their receivers.

However drones can be equipped with emitters and receivers. Therefore a swarm of drones could cover the area, pick up the signals of the rescue team on the ground, and relay these, connecting people via very low power, short-range emitters. Currently with this technique we can connect multiple people, and not only with audio but with video signals too.

We’re also experimenting with multiple people moving around on the ground, with robots following their movement, and we’re considering operations that last longer than a single battery duration of around half an hour. We’re developing an algorithm that allows drones to land for a battery change, while new drones with a full battery launch to continue the service.

So on one hand your work is bio-inspired research, but you’re obviously also thinking about the potential real-world applications of the technology you develop. Which point do you start from—do you look at biology first and then consider how to use the tech that comes out of that research, or do real-world problems drive the direction your biological research takes?

It’s a mix. When it comes to drones, 15 years ago it was more blue sky research. These days however I have more projects on flying robots that could solve problems that people might face, not necessarily next year but in five years’ time. For example, if you will have lots of drones all in the air, you then think about safety. That means thinking about AI and sensing.

The specific applications are not always there though. For example, when the Gimbal was designed we didn’t have an application in mind, just a problem: how to design a robot that could withstand falls and fly again. We started by adding retractable legs, as insects have, but this wasn’t optimal, so we came up with a rolling cage around the drone. Then we realised the application: being able to go where other drones couldn’t go.

Prof. Floreano’s work at the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems (LIS) is bio-inspired; he and his team develop flying robots with animal characteristics, which they also use to learn more about animals.

In swarming there are lots of interesting problems to think about. In the future, as I mentioned, we’ll have a very high number of drones sharing our airspace. We’ll have a lot of crowding in areas such as landing spots and drone airways.

The big question is this: how will these drones avoid each other? Commercial GPS isn’t good enough to enable this avoidance when you fly very close to other drones. So the question is: what are the best sensors and the best control algorithms, both for drones flying in cooperative conditions—meaning the same types of drone flying in the same area—and non-cooperative conditions featuring drones from different manufacturers using different sensors? This is a real problem that some of our research is addressing, regarding the sensors and algorithms we’re developing.

Another real problem comes in transportation: how can we transport parcels very safely? I can’t talk about the solution just yet, but our work there builds on a lot of the topics we’ve been discussing.

Which seems a logical place to wrap up! Thank you so much for all these insights. How can readers who are interested in learning more follow your lab’s work?

The homepage of the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems is at lis.epfl.ch. That page includes our most recent publications. We also have a LIS YouTube channel that people can subscribe to and I am on Twitter at @DFloreano. 

You are also involved with the RobotsPodcast, is that correct?

Well, I was involved in its creation, back when it was called Talking Robots, and I supported it from my lab for two years. The podcast grew and grew, and the students that were preparing it then set-up what is known today as theRobotsPodcast. Many members of LIS still work on this on a voluntary basis. It became so successful that it also spurned another, wider organisation, calledRobohub.

Thanks for your time!

You’re very welcome.

Watch Floreano’s ROBOTS14 presentation:

===========================
About Dario Floreano

Dario Floreano (M.A. 1988; M.S. 1992; Ph.D. 1995) is the director of the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems and director of the Swiss National Center of Competence in Robotics. He 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 (which later became RobotsPodcast).

He has been on the advisory board of the Future and Emerging Technologies division of the European Commission, vice-chair of the Global Agenda Council on Robotics and Smart Devices of the World Economic Forum, and on the board of governors of the International Society for Neural Networks. Floreano is a senior member of the IEEE and received several national and international awards for professional and cultural achievements. Floreano has published four books, more than 300 technical articles, and more than 10 patents in drone technologies.
===========================

As head of the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, Dario Floreano knows a thing or two about flying robots. In the first segment of a two-part conversation, Waypoint caught up with Floreano to discuss his team’s drone research, the potential applications of such innovations, and more.

Could you start by giving our readers a little background on the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems (LIS) at EPFL?

Yes of course. I started the laboratory in the year 2000 and today we have around 20 researchers. senseFly’s CEO [Jean-Christophe Zufferey] was actually one of my first PhD students. 

I had always been interested in bio-inspired artificial intelligence and robotics. I had two interests in particular. First was designing systems with animal characteristics; robust systems capable of solving problems that couldn’t be predicted in a changing environment. And the other interest, by contrast, is using these tools to better understand biology.

At LIS we work closely with biologists to extract principles from animals, such as how their vision works, then we translate these principles into control algorithms to manage a robot’s performance as the corresponding animal does. In other words, we use biology to design better robots and we use robots to understand more about biology.

Dario Floreano is a leading researcher in the field of flying robots, as well one of senseFly’s original co-founders.

Where does this bio-inspiration lead you in practice? What are some key themes?

Our activities focus on three core themes: flying robots, soft robots and evolutionary robots.

Since Waypoint is all about the professional use of flying robots, or drones, could we dig down into this area some more? Why flying robots? What’s the specific interest there?

Why flying robots? Because they’re very challenging!

They need to be very lightweight but at the same time you have to include energy, computing power, sensors… this is a really challenging job. This challenge is why I thought bio-inspired solutions would provide an advantage compared to traditional approaches. That’s the point we started from when Jean-Christophe Zufferey was working in my lab originally.

So what has your drone research typically looked into, and how do you see this work evolving in future?

If you want to have robots capable of flying in cluttered environments, they need to be able to ‘see’ in these spaces. So right now we’re looking at different sensor modalities: vision, in particular compound vision, which insects use, and acoustic sensing. The latter is mainly used for coordinating the flight of multiple drones, which we call swarming. We also do research in drone communication for coordinated flight and aerial telecommunication networks, but this work is less bio-inspired.

Other thing one needs to look at is how the body of a robot is designed. They need to be very agile to fly in cluttered environments so we’re looking at robots with adaptive morphology, drones that can change their shapes to transition between fixed wing and rotary formats, which each have their own pros and cons in terms of flight times and agility.

On this morphology front, you’ve been looking into folding drones?

Yes. So with morphology we’re also looking at size. In order to carry larger payloads, typically this means a larger drone. You have two choices when looking to carry larger payloads: either fly faster or accelerate propeller rotation, or increase the surface of the aerial surfaces. What people typically do is to increase the size of the props or the wings. This ends up with larger drones, which leads to problems transporting them and when making them fly through narrow passages. So we’ve been looking into the concept of foldability. We are looking at origami technology to make drones that you can easily carry on your pocket. There’s also the issue then of controlling such systems; how to make such drones stable after they open.

We’re also studying artificial muscles made of soft actuators, which could be used one day for foldable drones.

When you fly in really difficult situations— with things like cables around—then sooner or later there will be contact. This brings the question: how do you protect the robot, the environment and the people who come into contact with it?

One very simple way is to add a cage or a gimbal (such as Flyability’s Gimbal, which is another spin-off of my laboratory), and another way we’re now looking at is using new types of materials. Materials that minimise damage, absorb collision and then revert back to their original shape.

I’d like to go back to perception. You mentioned working on two sensor modalities: vision and acoustic sensing. Can we explore the first a little further?

Sure. When it comes to a robot’s perception, we’ve been working on vision for a long time. Most recently in this area we’ve been working on designing new types of vision sensors that mimic the compound vision of insects.

Conventional cameras are designed on the same principles of the vertebrate eye whereby an image is perceived via a very dense, high number of photoreceptors under a single lens. The advantage of this conventional approach is very fine picture quality, but on the downside you have a very limited field of view.

Now, when you have a drone, you want to have a very wide field of view because you need to see in many more directions than a terrestrial animal. But if you simply increase the number of cameras to achieve this, then you increase the weight. Insects on the other hand, with their compound eyes, cover a very wide field of view by using hundreds of simpler miniature eyes, with just a few photoreceptors under each lens pointing in the desired directions. Their perception is the mosaic image that results from these thin eyes.

So we decided to design new miniature sensors made from very simple cameras, each with between one and three photoreceptors, and a very narrow view lens. Only instead of three or four of these cameras we have hundreds of them. This insect-like approach gives a very wide field of view and the insect-inspired photoreceptors give us very fast reaction time; we can extract optic flow three times faster than insects can! However the drawback is that the images are not very fine, so these cameras are for navigation, not for taking pictures. (Read the paper: Miniature curved artificial compound eyes, or see the Robohub article here. )

The team at LIS has adopted an insect-like approach to vision – designing new miniature sensors made from very simple cameras, each with between one and three photoreceptors and a very narrow view lens.

What stage of development are you at with these multi-camera, insect-vision robots?

We have produced a few first prototypes. The cameras themselves are less than a millimetre thick and each weighs less than a milligram. We can also arrange them on fully flexible substrates, which I call “vision tapes”. These are packed full of sensors and you can wrap them around parts of the robot.

The challenge with our current prototype is that it has a very limited vision range—it can only see up to a maximum of 50 cm. So we’re working on designing of new type of sensor, which has a longer range but is still very simple to produce.

Thank you very much for your time!

You’re very welcome.

Read Part 2.

===========================
About Dario Floreano

Dario Floreano (M.A. 1988; M.S. 1992; Ph.D. 1995) is the director of the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems and director of the Swiss National Center of Competence in Robotics. He 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 (which later became RobotsPodcast).

He has been on the advisory board of the Future and Emerging Technologies division of the European Commission, vice-chair of the Global Agenda Council on Robotics and Smart Devices of the World Economic Forum, and on the board of governors of the International Society for Neural Networks. Prof. Floreano is a senior member of the IEEE and received several national and international awards for professional and cultural achievements. Prof. Floreano has published four books, more than 300 technical articles, and more than 10 patents in drone technologies.

Telepresence robots give the disabled a sense of independence (Photo: Alain Herzog, EPFL)

For those with extreme mobility problems, such as paralysis following spinal cord injury or neurological disease, telepresence can greatly help to offset social isolation. However, controlling a mobile telepresence device through obstacles like doorways can be difficult when fine motor skills have been compromised. Researchers from CNBI, EPFL and NCCR Robotics this week published a cunning solution that uses brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) to enable patients to share control with the robot, making it far easier to navigate.

The idea  is for patients to use BCIs to remotely control a mobile telepresence robot, through which the user can move and communicate with friends using a bidirectional audio/video connection.

The study tested nine end users and 10 healthy participants using a BCI and telepresence robot. The aim was to study both the BCI configuration and shared control of the robot when used in tandem with this.

The system was tested using a non-invasive BCI to record brain impulses from a cap placed over the head on the sensorimotor complex, with 16 electroencephalogram (EEG) channels transmitting to the robot via Skype. Healthy participants, who were at home, were then asked to remotely manoeuvre the robot in the CNBI lab along a set path with obstacles (such as doorways and tables) and under four separate conditions: BCI shared control; BCI no shared control; manual shared control and manual no shared control. Two separate conditions (BCI shared control and BCI no shared control) were used with end-users.

https://youtu.be/I1KvtNhv9Yc

In the shared control condition, the robot uses sensors to avoid obstacles without instruction from the driver, this has two advantages:

Firstly, inaccuracies in the system are reduced. For example, if a participant instructs the robot to turn left, this can result in a hard turn or a gentle turn; the system isn’t able to detect which. With shared control, if the user wishes to travel through a doorway to the left, they instruct the robot to turn in that direction, and the robot uses its sensors to avoid the doorframe and travels safely through it.

The second advantage is that less information needs to be communicated from the user, thus reducing the cognitive workload. In shared control, participants were able to complete tasks in shorter time periods and with fewer commands.

Of the 19 participants, all were able to pilot the robot after training. There was no discernable difference in ability between disabled and able-bodied users. “Each of the nine subjects with disabilities managed to remotely control the robot with ease after less than 10 days of training,” said Prof. José del R. Millán, who was in charge of the study.

Where possible, patients were also allowed to control the robot through small residual movements, such as head leans that someone might perform while playing a video game, or pressing a button with their head. It was remarkable that these movements were shown to be no more effective in controlling the robot than using the information transmitted over the BCI alone.

Reference:

R. Leeb, L. Tonin, M. Rohm, L. Desideri, T. Carlson and J. Millán, “Towards Independence: A BCI Telepresence Robot for People with Severe Motor Disabilities,” Proceedings of the IEEE, vol. 103, no. 6, pp. 969-982, Jun 2015. A

The foldable quadrotor is small enough to fit in a hand (Photo: LIS, EPFL, NCCR Robotics).

The use of robots to find victims after natural disasters is fast becoming commonplace, with well documented cases where robots have been sent into areas too dangerous for rescue workers.  While the issues surrounding robustness, control and autonomy are frequently cited as key areas for research, a  team from LIS, EPFL and NCCR Robotics is working on another important aspect, how to make flying robots easily transportable and quick to deploy.

In a paper, which will be presented at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2015, the team describes how they made a quadrotor with rapidly self-deploying, folding arms. Foldable aerial platforms currently use either beams or detachable appendages (e.g. DJI spreading wings series and SenseFly eBee), which require manipulation by the user, slowing the process down and introducing the possibility of human error. The presented prototype has self-deploying arms that go from completely stowed to ready-to-use in 0.3 seconds, meaning that multiple drones can be utilized at once in a very short period of time.

The origami arms are stored using a system of strategically placed magnets, which can use the torque and thrust generated by the propellers to break the magnetic seal, thus allowing the arms to deploy when the quadrotor is switched on. In order to make use of such a simple mechanism, the design team carefully considered the placement of the folds in the arms; to take advantage of the propeller’s torque, folds are parallel to the its axis.

The origami structures that make up the arms allow them to fold around the central core, reducing its volume to about a third of commercial quadrotors of a similar weight. To make the origami structures, the arms are constructed from a 0.3mm layer of fiberglass over Icarex, a lightweight and inextensible fabric. Two vertical folds in the 2D structure allow the arms to lie in the wrapped configuration. When the motor begins, the action of the propellers forces the magnets apart and allows the arm to straighten in its flat configuration, whereupon a second set of magnets attract and pull the horizontal fold (down the centre of the arm) closed, creating a stiff, 3D structure with no need for heavy locking mechanisms.

First author Stefano Mintchev holds the quadrotor (Photo: LIS, EPFL, Alain Herzog).

The folding quadrotor currently doesn’t have an automatic “putting away” mode, meaning that the arms must be manually returned to the wrapped configuration. However, at the deployment stage, where speed is of the essence when trying to locate vulnerable people, this mechanism may just be a lifesaver.

Reference

S. Mintchev, L. Daler, G. L’Eplattenier, L. Saint-Raymond & D. Floreano, “Foldable and Self-Deployable Pocket Sized Quadrotor,” In 2015 IEEE International conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2015), Seattle, Washington, USA, May 26-30, 2015.  A pdf of the full article can be downloaded from infoscience.

Sensory-Motor Tissues for Soft Robots

In this video, PhD student at LIS, EPFL and NCCR Robotics Jun Shintake explains his project “Sensory-Motor tissues for Soft Robots”.

For more information on this project please see:

The project’s website

New soft antagonistic actuator enables robots to fold

A foldable antagonistic actuator (academic paper)

Variable stiffness material based on rigid low-melting-point-alloy microstructures embedded in soft poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) (academic paper)

Ground-Air collaboration between robots (Photo: RPG and Alain Herzog).

Working in the field of rescue robotics, the Robotics Perception Group (UZH and NCCR Robotics) works on how to get air robots communicating with ground robots, with the aim of exploiting the strengths of each by working in a team.  In the video below, student Elias Müggler explains how he is doing this.

For further information:

Robotics Perception Group website

Aerial-guided Navigation of a Ground Robot among Movable Obstacles (paper by Elias Müggler)

Autonomous flying robots – Davide Scaramuzza at TedxZurich:

Demonstration of the project, winning the Kuka innovation award 2014:

The Pleurobot (Photo: Hillary Sanctuary & BioRob).

The Pleurobot is a bioinspired robot being developed by the BioRob at EPFL and NCCR Robotics. Taking it’s cues from the salamander, the Pleurobot is a walking robot that can change its gait to help it to navigate uneven terrain, and is currently learning to swim.  Watch the video to see the researchers discuss what they are doing with the Pleurobot and how they hope to improve it in future.

For further information on the Pleurobot please see:

The project’s homepage

Introducing Pleurobot (video)

Flyability, a spin off company from LIS, EPFL and NCCR Robotics, has won the $1M inaugural UAE Drones for Good competition with Gimball, the world’s first crash resilient drone.

The award was initiated by Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai with the aim of “transforming these exciting technologies into practical solutions for improving people’s lives today”.  Referred to by some as “the World Cup of Drones”, the competition involved the 39 semi finalists showcasing their technology in front of a panel of international judges. Flyability impressed observers with its ability to fly in disaster tight and cluttered disaster zones, outside a pilot’s direct line of sight. Also noted was the Gimball’s unique design, which actively invites collisions rather than trying to avoid them. Its rotating gimbal system and protective wire cage not only keep the drone safe from crashes, but also protect humans working in close proximity to the device. The team was awarded $1M USD in prize money.

Flyability SA is one year old and its founders, Adrien Briod and Patrick Thévoz, are working to bring the Gimball to market. Their first aim is to use it for industrial inspection and to locate victims after natural disasters, but they plan to tackle the security and entertainment markets at some point too.

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

• UAE launches “Robotics for Good” competition on the heals of Drones for Good success
• Drones For Good Award announces semi-finalists
• Minesweepers 2014: Outdoor robotic competition on humanitarian demining
• Aerial drone maps show Philippine typhoon devastation, aid in reconstruction
• The latest in ultra-affordable robots: AFRON competition announces winners
• Fukushima photo essay: A drone’s eye view

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

Knee orthosis as worn by first author Mike Tucker (photo: ReLab, ETHZ and Alain Herzog).

Much has been made of the numerous advances in robotic prosthetics and orthotics (P/O) over recent years, and the question of how to control these devices so that they work in accordance with the intention of the user is a continuing dilemma for roboticists. 

A team from four labs within NCCR Robotics, across ETH Zurich and EPFL (ReLab, ETH Zurich; LSRO, EPFL; SMS, ETH Zurich and CNBI, EPFL) have recently published a joint paper in the Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation, in which 10 experts from the field review the state of the art in control approaches for active lower limb P/Os. They argue that for P/Os to be fully viable and to advance further, they must be treated as part of a framework whereby the control system becomes integrated with the user’s sensorimotor system.

Traditionally, the fields of orthotics and prosthetics have been viewed separately, with hardware and controllers developed with a specific portion of the body in mind (i.e. knee, ankle and hips). By taking a broad survey that includes research for all joints of the lower limbs across the different fields (rather than just looking at a small subset), it is hoped that future developments can blur the lines between fields and create technologies that can ultimately restore walking to those with physical or neurological impairments.

This open access review pieces together where the state of the art is now and what work still needs to be done, providing valuable background about the field.

The authors behind the paper have been working to enhance communication between research groups, and to promote a more holistic approach to P/O devices. One of the co-authors is organizing next year’s Cybathlon, where teams comprised of bionic technology developers and a pilot will compete in one of six races.The competition’s ultimate aim is to increase discussion between academia, industry and end users through friendly competition.

The DALER is a winged robot that can also walk.

The issue of how to use one robot across multiple terrains is an ongoing question in robotics research. In a paper published in Bioinspiration and Biomimetics today, a team from LIS, EPFL and NCCR Robotics propose a new kind of flying robot that can also walk. Called the DALER (Deployable Air-Land Exploration Robot), the robot uses adaptive morphology inspired by the common vampire bat, Desmodus rotundus, meaning that the wings have been actuated using a foldable skeleton mechanism covered with a soft fabric so that they can be used both as wings and as legs (whegs).

The DALER is being designed to be used in search and rescue operations, and its dual modes of locomotion will enable it to fly long distances to survey large spaces in a short timespan, and then to walk into dangerous or inaccessible areas.

One of the main problems in trying to get a flying robot to walk in small spaces is the surface areas of the wings. The wings of a flying robot must be wide in order to maintain flight, but this makes it difficult for them to fit into smaller spaces. After observing D. rotundus, the research team used a foldable actuator that allows the wings to fold into a smaller space, and to rotate around a hinge that attaches the whegs to the body in order to enable walking. D. rotundus doesn’t look very pretty when it walks, but it has certainly perfected the art of using all four limbs for two purposes.

The DALER using its wings to walk. Wingerons at the end of the wings rotate to facilitate walking.

To design the robot, the team had to first designate the primary mode of locomotion – in this case flight, as the DALER will cover the longest distances this way. The wings were then adapted for walking, taking into consideration the need to not add extra weight when the DALER is in flight mode. The resulting wing is equipped with wingerons, with an axis of rotation close to their centre of aerodynamic pressure and physical centre, so as to satisfy the constraints of both ground locomotion and flight. The best shape found for these wingerons is a triangular one.

The addition of wingerons poses a problem regarding the use of actuators. Flight maneuverability requires rapid wingeron movements and low torque, whereas walking requires the opposite conditions. To cope with this problem, the DALER uses a terrestrial actuator configuration, but with an optimized wingeron size, to force the working point of flight control inside the operating range of the terrestrial actuator, while not compromising flight maneuverability.

A second issue in creating a fixed wing drone capable of walking on the ground is with the morphology, thanks to the different centre of mass requirements for the two modes of locomotion. For this reason the DALER is equipped with foldable wings, so, much like the bat that inspired it, the DALER can walk on its haunches. These adaptations mean that the DALER can reach 20m/s in the air and 6cm/s on the ground, with a maximum step distance of 6cm.

Researchers hope that in the future the DALER might be used to find victims in dangerous areas after a natural disaster, for example. They envision the DALER being remotely deployed to fly to an affected area, and then walking through a disaster zone (e.g. a damaged building) to locate victims so that human rescue teams can concentrate their efforts where they are needed, rather than using time to search for victims in a dangerous environment. Future development of the DALER will include the ability to hover and to take off autonomously from the ground – necessary features if the robot is to return safely to its home base after a mission.

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

• Multi-purpose wings allow flying robot to walk across rough terrain
• Robots Podcast: Origami robots
• Robot bodies and how to evolve them
• ShanghAI Lectures: Josh Bongard “Morphological Change in Machines Accelerates the Evolution of Robust Behavior”
• Robots Podcast: Bio-inspired locomotion

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

Working out the mechanics of walking is a major step towards creating assistive technologies.

When thinking about robots that can be used to care for the elderly, most people imagine humanoid robots that are meant to help with cooking, cleaning and socializing. But what if robots could be used to keep elderly people from needing help in the first place? Walking assistive devices could be just the tool.

A key element of life quality for the ageing population is preservation of mobility. Being able to walk unassisted is essential for independent living and a crucial driver in maintaining quality of life and self-autonomy. In elderly populations, a wide variety of medical issues lead to loss of mobility, from stroke (CVA) to poorly healed fractures and general loss of muscle mass. Loss of mobility is therefore a key driver in the commonly reported issue of loneliness in elderly people – it makes sense that if it is a struggle to leave your house, you will do so less.

The first requirement for free walking is sufficient muscle strength, not just for walking but also for the associated tasks of day to day life, such as sitting-to-standing motions (and visa-versa) and ascending and descending stairs. For various reasons, the elderly population is subject to weakening muscular power and this is a larger driver in the difficulties that this population begins to face with such tasks.

LSRO (EPFL) in association with NCCR Robotics, propose an assistive device targeted for exactly this situation. Based on an exoskeleton, it is being designed to be usable at home, without permanent human assistance. It should allow normal walking without any impediment. It should provide assistive muscular power only when needed and without any specific command action other than natural motion of the legs.

For a first prototype, the focus has been on the hip joint, a key joint for walking assistance, and an assumption has been made that ankles and knees can still perform their normal functions. “Partial devices” such as those proposed by the Swiss team may offer promising solutions to issues faced by the elderly, who may experience excessive weakness in one joint (here, the hips), by providing a lighter weight and less invasive solution to full exoskeletons. Translating these needs into engineering specifications leads to the following requirements: A single motorised degree of freedom (pivoting of the femur in the sagittal plane), preserving the full mobility of the remaining degrees-of-freedom, high power and low weight, “transparency” for normal walking, no specific control action (such as a “joystick” command) of any kind.

The exoskeleton is designed to be easy to wear, without impeding movement.

The kinematic design of our device is such that torque is intrinsically high around the horizontal position of the femur (typical for sitting-to-standing, stair climbing) and is backdrivable in standing or walking posture (high compliance, “transparence”), thus allowing effortless and swift walking motion. The transmission ratio between motor and end-effector is thus intrinsically, by design, continuously adapted at an optimal value.

Our new types of actuators have been developed so as to fit the requirements of common activities of daily life. For instance, a variable reduction using a ball-screw and bar mechanism to assist different activities such as standing up from a sitting position or standard walking has been evaluated. A high torque is required during the sit-to-stand transitions when the flexion angle of the hip is around 70° from vertical. During walking, less torque is required but higher dynamics is needed. A smaller reduction ratio is therefore better adapted when the flexion angle is less important (i.e. in the walking range of motion). In order to create this specific transmission a ball-screw with an excavator-like mechanism was implemented.

The influence on gait of this kind of robotic hip orthoses are now being assembled and tested in a collaboration between LSRO at EPFL, SMS Lab at ETH Zurich and several clinical centres of elderly care. As the users are able to move on their own, it is very important that the exoskeletons do not. Indeed the added limitations imposed by a sub-optimally designed device may overshadow the benefits that it is intended to provide. The influence of different design parameters such as kinematic configuration, overall mass or user interface are therefore evaluated in collaboration with the Sensory-Motor Systems Lab (SMS) at ETH Zurich.

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

• 3 exoskeleton companies go public
• Exoskeleton with haptic sensors helps paralysed man to kick off World Cup
• Rehab robots, smart prostheses and exoskeletons to reach $1.8 billion by 2020

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

A new foldable actuator has been successfully used to fly a MAV.

Traditionally, many key robot components (including sensors and actuators) are rigid, and this makes it difficult for researchers and industry to make them truly compliant with their surroundings. It’s with this problem in mind that a team from NCCR Robotics in the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems and the Microsystems for Space Technologies Laboratory both at EPFL in Switzerland have developed a new soft actuator that enables robots to fold.

To use hard actuators requires a complex design and can make the final structure fragile – and this is a problem when developing robots for use in cluttered environments such as search and rescue or surveying. Recent solutions have used shape memory alloys (SMAs), pneumatic actuators and electroactive polymers – each with their own advantages but also with disadvantages.

The actuator uses two DEAs

To get around these issues, the NCCR team placed two stacked or single dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) on top of each other in an antagonistic configuration in order to create an actuator that allows bidirectional actuation and passive folding. Each DEA consists of a thin elastomer membrane between two compliant electrodes – the opposing charges on each electrode generate an electrostatic force (Maxwell stress), which squeezes the membrane causing thinning and expansion in the direction of free boundary conditions and therefore results in actuation stretch.

The actuator itself consists of two rigid arms connected via elastic hinges, and two sets of DEAs in an antagonistic configuration. When an electric current is applied to one of the DEAs it creates a biased stress between the two DEAs, thus bending the actuator. What is particularly exciting is that this actuator can be literally bent in half without being damaged in any way .

The actuator can be folded completely in half without being damaged

As a result of this robustness, the team behind the actuator have tested it as an elevon (surface used to control pitch and roll) on a remotely controlled, fixed-wing MAV. The elevons were used successfully for numerous flights, with a hand launch and a ground landing (landing is a particularly dangerous time for hardware). The elevon must sustain an angle during flight, meaning that the aerodynamic force acts on its surface, another a common reason for failure in flying robots. A good correlation found between the control signal and movement of the robot illustrates the high performance of the actuator.

What is particularly striking about this actuator is how simply it can be designed and made. By using this structure without additional mechanical parts, transmission loss is prevented. Further, by using a silicon type elastomer, a fast response speed and good positioning control can be achieved.

Fully foldable machines
The possibilities for this kind of compliant actuator are endless – from handling fragile goods in manufacturing to safe human-robot interactions. Future uses may also enable robots to self-deploy without the need for further actuation, leading to a generation of robots capable of programmable shape change and reconfiguration.

The full paper by Shintake, J., Rosset, S., Schubert, B. E., Floreano, D. and Shea, H.R. will be published in an upcoming edition of IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics and can be downloaded ahead of printing here.

Search and rescue operations are increasingly using drones, and the speed and ease with which UAVs can be launched is especially important when applying them as an emergency response tool. Jonathan Cheseaux, a masters student from Switzerland has developed a system to help drones home in on the location of people in need of rescue, and Dronologista had an opportunity to discuss the project with Jonathan via email. Here is what he says:

Dronologista: How did you come up with the idea?

Jonathan: The main goal of the project was to provide WiFi connection to people on the ground (in disaster areas, where there is no more connectivity), using swarms of flying robots. By analyzing the data collected by the WiFi antenna embedded in the plane, we thought about using this information to localize people and moving the plane around so that the connection is better.

Dronologista:  Have you been working on it alone or it was a team effort?

Jonathan:  A team effort. I was working with two people, Stefano Rosati, a postdoc, and Karol Kruzelecki, a graduate student. They helped me a lot to fulfill the project’s goals.

Dronologista:  How does this system work?

Jonathan:  The UAV sniff WiFi packets periodically broadcast by smartphone (if WiFi is switched on). The smartphone broadcast so-called “probe requests” to discover which WiFis are in range. We extract the signal power of these packets (RSSI) and use the GPS position of the plane to localize the users.

Dronologista:  Has it been tested, and if yes, how?

Jonathan: We flew the UAV around EPFL‘s campus and tried (and succeeded) to find the position of a smartphone randomly placed somewhere on a building with a satisfying precision.

Dronologista: What are potential problems?

Jonathan: If the WiFi of the smartphone is not switched on, we cannot localize the user. Also the signal can get scrambled by a lot of factors, such as buildings reflecting the signal, weather conditions, plane’s orientation, etc. In the case of an earthquake for example, if the victim is buried under several meters of concrete, the WiFi signal will not be detectable. Also Apple announced that they will randomize the MAC address while sending probe requests in iOS 8, and this will make the localization quite impossible because now we rely on the fact that a MAC address is unique for a user, and can thus fully determine which person we are localizing.

http://youtu.be/7ysg-m7kV14

Dronologista: Were you contacted by any organization yet?

Jonathan: I’ve been invited to the UAV Show 2014 (London), they want me to give a small speech about my project during the conference. I’ve also been contacted by several companies that want to commercialize search and rescue drones.

Dronologista: What are future steps for this system?

Jonathan: Enhance precision by conducting more real life testing, maybe use GSM data as well (IMSI catcher), but due to legal concern it could be difficult to implement. The real improvement will be to use avalanche transceivers to find avalanche victims. I really want to work on that after my internship.

Dronologista: What are other projects you are working on, that you want to share?

Jonathan: During my bachelor studies, I implemented a virtual reality project using Kinect and some physics engine. The goal was to project the user in a virtual environment and allow him to interact with [the environment] (shoot a virtual ball, smash a wall), as well as draw interactive shapes with the only use of hand gestures (drawn shapes we bound to the physics engine so that it also falls/bounces etc.). Last semester, I lead a project on Bitcoin trading. We’ve implemented sentiment analysis on tweets talking about bitcoin to probe the market’s mood and used time-series analysis to work directly on the bitcoin stock market. That was a really cool project. I’m going to start my master thesis soon, in which I will develop a smart search engine that will automatically classify documents, display augmented information, context, etc. I’m not sure yet what the project will be exactly, but it is definitely about machine learning.

***

Dronologista wishes Jonathan and his team great success with their projects, and expects to hear more good news about their endeavors soon. And so should you.

For further reading check EPFL news, SkyNews, and the Swarming Micro Air Vehicle Network (SMAVNET II) project page.

VIDEO UPDATE 06/13 It’s June 2014 and all eyes are on Brazil. If you’re a football fan then June 12^th is the day you’ve been waiting for, but eagle-eyed technophiles are likely to have noticed one very exciting addition to the opening ceremony.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZrvdODe1QI

Given that the World Cup is a celebration of all things football, it seems only right that this event should showcase some emerging technologies that could help a disabled patient to achieve a dream that so many have – taking the first kick at the World Cup.

The Walk Again Project is a large collaborative project headed by Prof. Miguel Nicolelis of Duke University and featuring researchers in the USA, Brazil, Germany and Switzerland. It aims to give movement back to a paralysed person by means of an exoskeleton using a wide range of technologies.

The exoskeleton is controlled through an EEG (Electroencephalography) cap placed over the head – the sensors on the cap read brain activity from the scalp. The cap then deciphers the intention of the user and transmits the instruction to the exoskeleton, which produces the gait movement using a set of hydraulic actuators. While EEG is less sensitive than implanting sensors on the brain, it has the advantage of being non-invasive, meaning that the teenager was not required to undergo surgery for this one-off event.

Despite being made from alloys and polymers to make it as light and flexible as possible, the exoskeleton weighs in at around 60kg.

For someone who is paraplegic, a major issue when using an exoskeleton is that the person is not able to feel their legs and therefore cannot know what position they are in. Think for a second how hard walking would be if you had absolutely no sensation in your legs – even if your muscles were able to do it, the physical stimuli that we all receive and process without active thought would not be there – so the mental struggle that you would feel – along with the lack of haptic feedback that able-bodied people take for granted – would probably stop you from being able to walk effectively.

This is where the haptic sleeve system comes in to play. The exoskeleton user wears sleeves created by a team lead by Prof. Hannes Bleuler at LSRO, EPFL and NCCR Robotics and stemming from the ongoing PhD work of Simon Gallo. The sleeves are embedded with vibrators that are spread over the forearm – these vibrators then give a haptic feedback to the wearer as they indicate not only if the foot is on the floor (from sensors on the foot), but which part of the foot is on the floor, giving a proprioceptive effect and allowing the user to walk upright. Thus the wearer can sense what feels like an artificial footprint on their arm as the sensors roll from heel to toe. It is for this part of the technology that the team have spent months training with volunteers, trying out different arrangements of actuators on the arms, trying epsilateral and contralateral arrangements and using virtual reality and an avatar to allow the user to see real time limb positioning.

One of the major challenges of the project was the training process for the eight volunteers (males and females), to enable them to master control of an exoskeleton directly with their brain in a stressful environment like a stadium. The hopeful volunteers have trained in a realistic virtual environment mimicking the real stadium while receiving feedback from the tactile sleeves for the past 8 months with the final decision on who would take the kick made only last week.

The second worry for the project was that electromagnetic fields from cell phones carried by people in the stadium would block electronic signals in the exoskeleton – however testing in a comparable stadium showed that this would not be a problem.

The researchers hope that by using such a high profile event as the World Cup, the general public will gain a greater understanding and a greater tolerance of what wearable technologies can do, along with giving those with disabilities a hope for the future.

To keep up to date with NCCR Robotics, please sign up to our monthly infoletter and news bulletins, and follow us on Twitter @NCCRRobotics.

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

• A random walk with HAL the friendly Exoskeleton
• Rehab robots, smart prostheses and exoskeletons to reach $1.8 billion by 2020
• Introducing the Cybathlon
• Ekso Bionics goes public for $20.6 million

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

The ShanghAI Lectures are a videoconference-based lecture series on Embodied Intelligence run by Rolf Pfeifer and organized by me and partners around the world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFL2GxVBWC4

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-10-29

Auke Ijspeert is a SNF (Swiss National Science Foundation) professor at the EPFL (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Lausanne), and head of the Biologically Inspired Robotics Group (BIRG). He has a BSc/MSc in Physics from the EPFL, and a PhD in artificial intelligence from the University of Edinburgh. He carried out postdocs at IDSIA and EPFL (LAMI), and at the University of Southern California (USC). Before returning to the EPFL, he was a research assistant professor at USC, and an external collaborator at ATR (Advanced Telecommunications Research institute) in Japan. He is still affiliated as adjunct faculty to both institutes. His research interests are at the intersection between robotics, computational neuroscience, nonlinear dynamical systems, and applied machine learning.

He is interested in using numerical simulations and robots to get a better understanding of the functioning of animals (in particular their fascinating sensorimotor coordination abilities), and in using inspiration from biology to design novel types of robots and adaptive controllers (see for instance Ijspeert et al, Science, 315(5817):1416-1420, 2007). He is regularly invited to give talks on these topics. With his colleagues, he has received the Best Paper Award at ICRA2002, the Industrial Robot Highly Commended Award at CLAWAR2005, and the Best Paper Award at the IEEE-RAS Humanoids 2007 conference. He is associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics, has acted as technical program chair of 5 international conferences (BioADIT2004, SAB2004, AMAM2005, BioADIT2006, LATSIS2006), and has been a program committee member of over 40 conferences.

The ShanghAI lectures have brought us a treasure trove of guest lectures by experts in robotics. You can find the whole series from 2012 here. Now, we’re bringing you the guest lectures you haven’t yet seen from previous years, starting with the first lectures from 2009 and releasing a new guest lecture every Thursday until all the series are complete. Enjoy!

Generally, flying robots are programmed to avoid obstacles, which is far from easy in cluttered environments. At the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems, we think that flying robots should be able to physically interact with their surroundings. Take insects: they often collide with obstacles and continue flying afterwards. We thus designed GimBall, a flying robot that can collide with objects seamlessly. Thanks to a passively rotating spherical cage, it remains stable even after taking hits from all sides. This approach enables GimBall to fly in the most difficult places without complex sensors.

The concept
The inner frame comprises everything a flying robot needs to stabilize in flight: a coaxial motor, two control surfaces, the battery, an IMU and control electronics. In case of collision, GimBall’s spherical protective frame prevents obstacles from touching the inner frame and can passively rotate thanks to a gimbal system (hence the name). This way, the contact force does not affect the orientation of the inner frame, whose center of mass is also carefully centered. This allows the inner frame to always stay upright, and maintain the robot in stable flight.

The story
We have been designing flying robots capable of interacting with the environment for a while now. Our previous prototype, the AirBurr, was equipped with a protective cage and legs for uprighting.

This platform allowed us to realize that autonomous navigation was much simpler once you can afford collisions: advanced sensors are not required, and the obstacles can even be used to guide the robot. This idea of exploiting collisions was pushed further by integrating contact sensors to the structure itself. This way, the robot can be programmed to change direction once it detects a contact. We demonstrated that the robot could fly completely autonomously just based on tiny touch sensors (no other exteroceptive sensors whatsoever), as featured in the video below.

While the AirBurr worked well in the lab, where the environment is nicely flat and structured, we are now targeting much harder environments with the GimBall. For example, the robot could fly autonomously through a forest with a very simple strategy: fly straight. It made its way through the forest without any obstacle avoidance technique while experiencing multiple collisions.

We think that research on flying robots capable of interacting with the environment will enable new uses for UAVs. Currently, options for flight in cluttered spaces are limited, because obstacle avoidance methods cannot be trusted all the time. A robot that can survive collisions will be useful in cluttered disaster zones to find survivors or to inspect semi-collapsed buildings for example. Thanks to less stringent sensor requirements, these robots are lighter, faster and more robust than conventional platforms. Finally, they are very safe for operation close to people, since they won’t crash if you bump them and the propellers are enclosed in the protective cage.

You can find all relevant publications and more pictures or videos on our project webpage.

Coming to IROS next week? Comme see us at iRex, we’ll be running demos from Wednesday 6 to Sunday 9.

This research was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation through the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) Robotics.

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

• Fully autonomous flapping-wing micro air vehicle weighs about as much as 4 sheets of A4 paper
• First controlled flight of an insect-sized robot
• Parrot AR.Drone app harnesses crowd power to fast-track vision learning in robotic spacecraft
• Robots Podcast: Origami robots

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

In applications such as exploration, search-and-rescue, or environmental monitoring, robots must be able to deal with very complex terrains, such as semi-collapsed buildings, deep caverns, or forests with heavy vegetation. Autonomous robots that can operate both in the air and on the ground are ideal for navigating these kinds of locations — for example, a robot may be needed to fly over a large forest, and then explore areas below the tree canopy. While many dual-locomotion systems already exist, most of these simply add specialized hardware for each locomotion method used (such as wings and wheels), adding both infrastructure and weight to the overall system, and hindering flight performance. Instead, DALER uses just one structure — the wing — to both walk and fly. This design approach is an example of “adaptive morphology”, where one part of a robot’s structure is adaptable and shared between different modes of operation.

The DALER is currently optimized for ground speed. The prototype shown in the video above can move forward at 0.2 m/s (0.7 BL/s), can rotate on spot at 25°/s, and is capable of walking with different gaits. Future iterations of the robot will focus on increasing the adaptability of the wings to improve forward flight, hover flight and displacement on the ground. For example, wings could be fully deployed for flying outdoors and reduced for hover flight and ground modes.

The DALER was developed at the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland, where researchers investigate bio-inspired artificial intelligence, develop autonomous robotic systems, and address biological questions using computational and robotic models.

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

• Insect-inspired flying robot handles collisions, goes where other robots can’t
• First controlled flight of an insect-sized robot
• Parrot AR.Drone app harnesses crowd power to fast-track vision learning in robotic spacecraft
• Robots Podcast: Origami robots

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

Flies have small brains that would not be able to process high-resolution images such as those that we see with our own eyes. Instead, they’ve perfected the use of compound eyes, composed of a dense mosaic of tiny eye-like structures called ommatidia. Each ommatidium consists of a microlense that focuses light from a specific section of the insect’s field of view onto an independent set of photoreceptors. Think of it as having many low-resolution cameras pointing in different directions. The result is a vision system with low spatial resolution (i.e. it can’t see details), but a wide field of view (i.e. it can see all around). By comparing information across the different ommatidia, flies can extract temporal information useful for detecting motion. This motion information, also called optic flow, is what allows flies to navigate, take-off, land and avoid obstacles while using very little processing power.

Inspired by the fly’s vision system, the Curved Artificial Compound Eye (CurvACE) published today in the prestigious journal PNAS 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. The panoramic field of view is provided by dicing the rigid parts of the ommatidia, thereby allowing the mechanical bending of the sensor. The necessary components for signal readout and processing are embedded in the curvature of the sensor.

CurvACE is a European project bringing together the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems in EPFL (Switzerland), the Laboratory of Biorobotics in the University of Aix-Marseille (France), the Fraunhofer Institute of Applied Optics and Precision Engineering (Germany), and the Laboratory of Cognitive Sciences in the University of Tübingen (Germany).

Don’t miss the next ROBOTS podcast for my interview with the researchers behind this new artificial compound eye.

The Airburr, a light-weight flying robot from the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems (my PhD lab) at EPFL, was designed to fly in cluttered environments. Unlike most flying robot, which avoid contact at all cost, the Airburr interacts with its environment to navigate. Just like you might trail your hand along a wall to find your way in the dark, the robot can bounce of walls or follow them without crashing to the ground. In case of a crash, it also has a mechanism to pick itself back up and fly away. I’ve added past videos of the Airburr in action below.

The Airburr can now perch, thanks to a gecko-inspired adhesive pad that is mounted on a mechanism within the structure of the robot. This work was presented last week and ICRA (read the paper here). The gecko pad can be deployed on demand when perching is initiated. Perching allows the robot to power down and save energy, while still providing an aerial perspective that is useful for real-world missions such as search and rescue.

The work was done in collaboration with Mettin Sitti from Carnegie Mellon University, an expert in dry adhesive materials, and was inspired by the hairy feet of geckos. Rather than using claws or sticky substances to climb up walls, geckos use van der Waals forces between the tip of each hair and the surface to cling to. The artificial hairs used on Airburr have a diameter of 40um and a height of 100um with mushroom tips of 80um.

Airburr Crash Recovery

Uprighting Mechanism

This concludes the ShanghAI Lecture series of 2012. After a wrap-up of the class, we announce the winners of the EmbedIT and NAO competitions and end with an outlook of the future of the ShanghAI Lectures.

Then there are three guest lectures: Tamás Haidegger (Budapest University of Technology and Economics) on surgical robots, Aude Billard (EPFL) on how the body shapes the way we move (and how humans can shape the way robots move), and Jamie Paik (EPFL) on soft robotics.

The ShanghAI Lectures are a videoconference-based lecture series on Embodied Intelligence run by Rolf Pfeifer and organized by me and partners around the world.

Tamás Haidegger: Human Skills for Robots: Transferring Human Knowledge and Capabilities to Robotic Task Execution in Surgery

Almost 90 years ago, the idea of telesurgery was born, along with the initial concept of robots. From the early 1970s, researchers were focusing on robotic telepresence, to empower surgeons to treat patients at a distance. The first systems appeared over 20 years ago, and robotic surgery has quickly become a standard-of-care for certain procedures—at least in the USA. Over the decades, the control concept remained the same; a human surgeon guiding the robotic tools based on real-time sensory feedback. However, from the beginning of the development, the more exciting (and sometimes frightening) questions have been linked to machine learning, AI and automated surgery. In the true sense of automation, there have only been unclear reports of one single robotically planned and executed surgery so far, despite the fact that many research groups are working on the problem. This talk introduces the major efforts currently undertaken in centers of excellence around the globe to transfer the incredibly diverse and versatile human cognition into the domain of surgical robotics.

References

• P. Kazanzides, G. Fichtinger, G. D. Hager, A. M. Okamura, L. L. Whitcomb, and R. H. Taylor, “Surgical and Interventional Robotics: part I,” IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine (RAM), vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 122–130, 2008.
• G. Fichtinger , P. Kazanzides, G. D. Hager, A. M. Okamura, L. L. Whitcomb, and R. H. Taylor, “Surgical and Interventional Robotics: part II,” IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine (RAM), vol. 15, no. 3, pp. 94–102, 2008.
• G. Hager, A. Okamura, P. Kazanzides, L. Whitcomb, G. Fichtinger, and R. Taylor, “Surgical and Interventional Robotics: part III,” IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine (RAM), vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 84–93, 2008.
• C. E. Reiley, H. C. Lin, D. D. Yuh, G. D. Hager. “A Review of Methods for Objective Surgical Skill Evaluation,” Surgical Endoscopy, vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 356–366, 2011.

Aude Billard: How the body shapes the way we move and how humans can shape the way robots move

In this lecture Aude Billard advocates that it is advantageous to have robots move with a dynamics that resembles the dynamics of motion of natural bodies, even if the robots do not resemble humans in their physical appearance (e.g. industrial robots). This will make their motion more predictable for humans and hence make the interaction safer. She then briefly presents current approaches to modeling the dynamics of human motion in robots.

A survey of issues on robot learning from human demonstration can be found at:
http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Robot_learning_by_demonstration

Jamie Paik: SOFT Robot Challenge and 
Robogamis

In this 8th part of the ShanghAI Lecture series, Rolf Pfeifer looks into differences between human and computer memory and shows several types of “memories”. In the first guest lecture, Vera Zabotkina (Russian State University for the Humanities) talks about cognitive modeling in linguistics; in the second guest lecture, José del R. Millán (EPFL) demonstrates a brain-computer interface.

The ShanghAI Lectures are a videoconference-based lecture series on Embodied Intelligence run by Rolf Pfeifer and organized by me and partners around the world.

Vera Zabotkina: Cognitive modeling in linguistics: conceptual metaphors

The concepts that govern our thought are not just matters of the intellect. They also govern our everyday functioning, down to the most mundane details. Our concepts structure what we perceive, how we get around in the world, and how we relate to other people. Our conceptual system thus plays a central role in defining our everyday realities. If we are right in suggesting that our conceptual system is largely metaphorical, then the way we think, what we experience, and what we do every day is very much a matter of metaphor… (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980)

In this lecture, Vera addresses the integration challenge facing cognitive science as an interdisciplinary endeavor. She highlights the interconnection between AI and Linguistics and discusses conceptual metaphors.

José del Millán: Brain-Computer Interfacing
In this lecture, José del R. Millán (EPFL) demonstrates the use of human brain signals to control devices, such as wheelchairs, and interact with our environment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Z6HRD9KAnY

Related links:

• Slides (4.06 MB)
• ShanghAI Lectures website
• Book: How the Body Shapes the Way We Think
• George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980.
• Cliff Goddard, Semantic Analysis. A practical Introduction. Second edition. Oxford University Press, 2011.
• James Pustejovsky. The Generative Lexicon. Cambridge, MIT Press, 1995.

In this sixth part of the ShanghAI Lecture series, Rolf Pfeifer introduces the topic “Artificial Evolution” and gives examples of evolutionary processes in artificial intelligence. The first guest lecture, by Francesco Mondada (EPFL) is about the use of robots in daily life; in the second guest lecture, Robert Riener (ETH Zürich) talks about rehabilitation robots.

The ShanghAI Lectures are a videoconference-based lecture series on Embodied Intelligence run by Rolf Pfeifer and organized by me and partners around the world.

Francesco Mondada: Toward Robots For Daily Life

In a recent survey from the European Commission, 60% of the participants said that robots should be banned from the application area “care of children, elderly, and the disabled”, 34% would like to ban robots from “education”. Within this framework, what is the future of robotics in daily life services? Two research projects answering this question are presented in this talk: education using specific robotics tools and a new form of embodiment for service robotics. Some preliminary results are illustrated, showing a very interesting potential demonstrated by a high acceptance of the proposed approaches.

Robert Riener: Design Principles for Intelligent Rehabilitation Robots

Integrating the human into a robotic rehabilitation system can be challenging not only from a biomechanical view but also with regard to psycho-physiological aspects. Biomechanical integration involves ensuring that the system to be used is ergonomically acceptable and “user-cooperative”. Psycho-physiological integration involves recording and controlling the patient’s physiological reactions so that the patient receives appropriate stimuli and is challenged in a moderate but engaging way. In this talk basic design criteria are presented that should be taken into account, when developing and applying an intelligent robotic system that is in close interaction with the human subject. One must carefully take into account the constraints given by human biomechanical, physiological and psychological functions in order to optimize device function without causing undue stress or harm to the human user.

References:

• Robert Riener, Lars Lünenburger, Gery Colombo: Human-centered robotics applied to gait training and assessment, Journal of Rehabilitation Research and Development, 43(5), August/September 2006, p. 679-694.
• Alexander Koenig, Ximena Omlin, Lukas Zimmerli, Mark Sapa, Carmen Krewer, Marc Bolliger, Friedemann Müller, Robert Riener:Psychological state estimation from physiological recordings during robot-assisted gait rehabilitation, Journal of Rehabilitation Research and Development, 48(4), accepted for publication, 2011
• Robert Riener: What Has to Be Known about Human Physiology to Develop Wearable Robots? Workshop on Wearable Robotics, IEEE ICRA 2012, St. Paul, USA

Related links:

• Slides (9.7 MB)
• ShanghAI Lectures website
• Book: How the Body Shapes the Way We Think

This is the fourth part of the ShanghAI Lecture series, where Rolf Pfeifer starts introducing a set of “Design Principles” for intelligent systems, as outlined in the book “How the Body Shapes the Way We Think”.

In the first guest lecture, Dario Floreano (EPFL) talks about biologically inspired flying robots, and then Pascal Kaufmann (AI Lab, UZH) gives a short overview of the “Roboy” project.

The ShanghAI Lectures are a videoconference-based lecture series on Embodied Intelligence run by Rolf Pfeifer and organized by me and partners around the world.

Dario Floreano: Bio-inspired Flying Robots
Most autonomous robots operate on the ground, essentially living in 2 dimensions. Taking robots into the 3rd dimension offers new opportunities, such as performing exploration of rough terrain with small and inexpensive devices and gathering aerial information for monitoring, security, search-for-rescue, and mitigation of catastrophic events.

However, there are several novel scientific and technological challenges in perception, control, materials, and morphologies that need to be addressed. In this talk, Dario Floreano presents the long-term vision, approach, and results obtained so far to let robots live in the 3rd dimension. Taking inspiration from nature, he starts by describing how robots could take off the ground by jumping and gliding. He then moves on to autonomous flight in cluttered environments and on the issue of perception and control for small flying systems in indoor environments. This will lead to the next step resulting in outdoor flying robots that can autonomously regulate altitude, steering, and landing using only perceptual cues. He then expands the perspective by describing how multiple robots could fly in swarm formation in outdoor environments and how these achievements could possibly lead to fleets of personal aerial vehicles in the not-so-far future. Finally, he closes the talk by going back indoor with current work on radically new concepts of flying robots that collaborate with teams of terrestrial and climbing robots and of flying robots designed to survive and even exploit collisions. Throughout the talk, Dario Floreano also emphasize bi-directional links between biology as a source of inspiration and robotics as a novel method to explore biological questions.

• J.-C. Zufferey, A. Beyeler and D. Floreano. Autonomous flight at low altitude using light sensors and little computational power, in International Journal of Micro Air Vehicles, vol. 2, num. 2, p. 107-117, 2010.
• M. Kovac, M. Schlegel, J.-C. Zufferey and D. Floreano. Steerable Miniature Jumping Robot, in Autonomous Robots, vol. 28, num. 3, p. 295-306, 2010.
• S. Hauert, J.-C. Zufferey and D. Floreano. Evolved swarming without positioning information: an application in aerial communication relay, in Autonomous Robots, vol. 26, num. 1, p. 21-32, 2009.

Pascal Kaufmann: Roboy

Related links:

• Slides (7.1 MB)
• ShanghAI Lectures website
• Book: How the Body Shapes the Way We Think

Jamie Paik describes origami robots and their ability to fold into a variety of shapes. The concept, originally designed at the Wyss Institute at Harvard and at MIT, enables a new type of programmable matter whose properties can be programmed to achieve specific shapes or stiffnesses on command. Such soft robots have gathered attention in recent years for their potential to shift the mindset from rigid robot bodies made of metal, screws and bolts to robots with deformable and compliant bodies, which like most biological systems contain many degrees of freedom.

Stéphanie Lacour was selected as Technology Review’s annual list of 35 Innovators under 35 for her work on the development of semiconductor devices that can stretch and still retain their electronic properties. Such materials could be used in the future to create artificial skin that interfaces with the nervous system of a patient to feed control signals to prosthetics or for the design of flexible electronic circuits for soft robots.

Thymio II was introduced at the 2011 EPFL Robotic Festival. Now, with the introduction of Aseba, the creative toolset associated with it is complete. Aseba allows even younger children to animate their creations by programming Thymio II. Developed within the framework of the Swiss National Center for Competence in Research Robotics, by a team of the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), the Ecole d’Art de Lausanne (écal), the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETHZ) and the Mobsya association, Thymio II has been distributed to more than 1000 Swiss children. Examples of what they’ve done with it can be found on the Aseba website. Thymio II is available for 99 Swiss Francs, plus 32 Francs for shipping and administrative costs (totaling just over US $140), from the mobsya association.