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 the question from a labor perspective while others focus on the technology’s impact on different stakeholders. Inspired by these lines of work, we are interested in further understanding your (the public’s) perspective on one team’s proposed solution for a service robot ethical challenge.

As robots become more affordable and feasible technically, the challenge of designing robots that act in accordance with context-specific social norms becomes increasingly pronounced. Researchers in human-robot interaction and roboethics have attempted to resolve this issue for the past few decades, and while progress has been made, there is an urgent need to address the ethical implications of service robots in practice. As an attempt to take a more solution-focused path for these challenges, we are happy to share a completely new competition.

Results from the DOTS competition were released yesterday, after an intense month with teams from around the world designing new algorithms for robot swarms tasked with delivering emergency food parcels.

On the 27th of January, DIHNET revealed the winners of the 2020 DIH Champions Challenge at the virtual EDIH Conference 2021. DIHNET.EU was pioneer in launching the annual DIH Champions Challenge for identifying mature Digital Innovation Hubs in Europe.

Kate speaks with Anni Kern, Head of Communication, strategy, and teams at Cybathlon for over four years. She describes the motivation and concepts for the Cybathlon organizations to develop a common platform to remove barriers between people with disabilities, technology developers, and the public. Anni also describes the specifics of Cybathlon competitions and the organization and planning.

Silicon Valley Robotics is pleased to announce that we are a Connector organization for the E-ROBOT Prize, and other DOE competitions on the American-Made Network. There is \$2 million USD available in up to ten prizes for Phase One of the E-ROBOT Prize, and \$10 million USD available in Phase Two. Individuals or teams can sign up for the competition, as the online platform offers opportunities to connect with potential team members, as do competition events organized by Connector organizations. Please cite Silicon Valley Robotics as your Connector organization, when entering the competition.

Finishing this series of CYBATHLON 2020 winners, today we feature the victory of the startup Circleg from Switzerland. We also had the chance to interview them (see the end of this post).

In continuation to this series of CYBATHLON 2020 winners, today we feature the victory of PULSE Racing from VU University Amsterdam. We also had the chance to interview them (see the end of this post).

In continuation to this series of CYBATHLON 2020 winners, today we feature the victory of the HSR Enhanced team from the Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences (OST). In addition, we interviewed their team leader of this year, Christian Bermes.

The last edition of CYBATHLON took place on 13-14 November, 2020. This competition, created by ETH Zurich and run as a non-profit project, aims to advance in the research and development of assistive technology by involving developers, people with disabilities, and the general public. We had the chance to interview the winning team of the powered exoskeleton race, Angel Robotics from South Korea.

IIT’s teams will compete in the “Powered Arm Prosthesis” category showing two different robotic arm prostheses made in Italy: SoftHandPro and Hannes. The race course is about 30 metres long and will see the pilots compete in three races on 6 stations reproducing daily tasks. 60 teams from 23 countries will be involved in the event “remotely”, streamed on Cybathlon website starting from November 13th.

Involving potential users of a particular technology in the research and development (R&D) process is a very powerful way to maximise success when such technology is deployed in the real world. In addition, this can speed up the R&D process because the researchers’ perspective to the problem is combined with that of end-users. The non-​profit project CYBATHLON was created by ETH Zurich as a way to advance R&D of assistive technology through competitions that involve developers, people with disabilities, and the general public.

In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Shuo Yang about DJI’s RoboMaster first-person shooter (FPS) competition, a competition designed to get people excited about robotics. For the competition, university teams build and program a robot to go against DJI’s robots in a shooting battle. Each robot has a way of propelling marble-sized plastic balls and pressure sensors on their sides to register if they’ve been hit by an opponent’s projectile. Shuo speaks about the goals of the competition, the teams that are involved, what strategies the teams use, the difficulties the team had in making their robot’s good competitors, the future of the challenge, and how people can get involved.

In this interview, Audrow Nash interviews Marco Hutter, Assistant Professor for Robotic Systems at ETH Zürich, about a quadrupedal robot designed for autonomous operation in challenging environments, called ANYmal. Hutter discusses ANYmal’s design, the ARGOS oil and gas rig inspection challenge, and the advantages and complexities of quadrupedal locomotion. 

The European Robotics League (ERL) announced the winners of ERL Emergency Robots 2017 major tournament, during the awards ceremony held on Saturday, 23rd September at Giardini Pro Patria, in Piombino, Italy.

In addition to the Competition Awards, Marta Palau Franco from Bristol Robotics Laboratory and ERL Emergency project manager introduced the referees’ special awards.