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In its latest episode, the Robots Podcast interviews the lead researcher of the Distributed Flight Array and one of my colleagues at the ETH Zurich's IDSC, Raymond Oung. The Distributed Flight Array (DFA) is an aerial modular robot. Each individual module has a single, large propellor and a set of omniwheels to move around. Since a single propellor does not allow stable flight, modules move around to connect to each other. As shown in this video of the DFA, the resulting random shape then takes flight. After a few minutes of hovering the structure breaks up and modules fall back to the ground, restarting the cycle. As most projects at the IDSC, the DFA is grounded in rigorous mathematics and design principles and combines multiple goals: It serves as a real-world testbed for research in distributed estimation and control, it abstracts many of the real-world issues of the next generation of distributed multi-agent systems, and it provides an illustration for otherwise abstract concepts like distributed sensing and control to a general public. For more information on current work, future plans and real-world applications, read on or tune in!

Cooking is an art sometimes forgotten in the robotics world, but James, the PR2 robot, and Rosie, another robot from CoTeSys (Cognition for Technical Systems) in Munich have joined forces to show that robots can be of great use in the kitchen as well. They made some pretty successful-looking pancakes and used various tools around the Assisted Kitchen to show off their skills. The main chef in the experiment was Rosie, who used her broad arms and high levels of dexterity to flip and cook the pancakes. As you can see in the video, she is a bit on the slow side, but she’s also extra careful and gets it done right. She is capable of adjusting the way she pours the batter based on the weight of the bowl, demonstrating some impressive planning and a good use of her sensors, which allow the bot to recognize how much batter she has already poured.

Robots have revolutionized the factory. What about the field? Over the past century, agriculture has seen an explosion in productivity, thanks to things like mechanization, synthetic fertilizers, selective breeding, and, of course, pesticides -- lots of it. But it remains to be seen what role robots will play in working the fields. Automation was possible in factories because tasks were repetitive and the environment well-defined. A robot arm welding a car chassis does the exact same job over and over. When it comes to crops, though, everything changes: the environment is unstructured and tasks -- like picking a fruit -- have to be constantly readjusted.

The Nippon Institute of Technology, with Harada Vehicle Design, ZMP, and ZNUG Design, have developed a humanoid robot about the size of an elementary school student for educational purposes.  The university adopted 35 of ZMP’s e-nuvo WALK robots in 2004 for a 1:1 student-robot ratio.  Whereas the e-nuvo WALK (the educational version of NUVO) is quite small, the new robot is tall enough to interact with its environment in a more meaningful way.  Students will demonstrate the robot at elementary and junior high schools, as well as care facilities.  The goal is to improve student learning by raising awareness of bipedal robot technology and its connection to math and physics, while also giving them hands-on experience with the bot.  Additionally, by visiting care facilities the university students will come to understand the real-world needs and applications for robots.

Walking, swallowing, respiration and many other key functions in humans and other animals are controlled by Central Pattern Generators (CPGs). In essence, CPGs are small, autonomous neural networks that produce rhythmic outputs, usually found in animal's spinal cords rather than their brains. Their relative simplicity and obvious success in biological systems has led to some success in using CPGs in robotics. However, current systems are restricted to very simple CPGs (e.g., restricted to a single walking gait). A recent breakthrough at the BCCN at the University of Göttingen, Germany has now allowed to achieve 11 basic behavioral patterns (various gaits, orienting, taxis, self-protection) from a single CPG, closing in on the 10–20 different basic behavioral patterns found in a typical cockroach. The trick: Work with a chaotic, rather than a stable periodic CPG regime. For more on CPGs, listen to the latest episode of the Robots podcast on Chaos Control, which interviews Poramate Manoonpong, one of the lead researchers in Göttingen, and Alex Pitti from the University of Tokyo who uses chaos controllers that can synchronize to the dynamics of the body they are controlling.

If you're a long time reader, you may remember our mention in 2008 of Emanuel Diamant's provocatively titled paper "I'm sorry to say, but your understanding of image processing fundamentals is absolutely wrong" (PDF). Diamant is back with a presentation created for the 3rd Israeli Conference on Robotics, with the equally provocative title: "It's Cognitive Robotics, Stupid" (PDF). In it he laments the lack of agreed upon definitions for words like intelligence, knowledge, and information that are crucial to the development of robotics.

During the Google IO event, two new great features of the popular Android OS were announced. The most important from a robotics point of view is the Android Open Accessory standard that is Arduino based and enables Android devices to integrate with hardware via usb (or bluetooth in the near future). You can read more in the posts on engadget.com and robots-dreams.com (where the video is from). Also engadget reports on the Android @ Home framework that aspires to interconnect every home appliance, device or gadget to an integrated network. More information and details will be announced soon from Google but already the potential for various robotic applications that could take advantage of these projects looks promising.

Using robots, the two ETH architects, who run the Gramazio & Kohler design studio, have fabricated intricate building parts out of wood, concrete, bricks, and foam, and have used these parts to build complex, beautiful installations in Zurich, London, Barcelona, New York, and other locations.

Humans aren't the only ones playing soccer right now. In just two days, robots from world-renowned universities will compete in Singapore for RoboCup 2010. This is the other World Cup, where players range from 15-centimeter tall Wall-E-like bots to adult-sized advanced humanoids. The RoboCup, now in its 14th edition, is the world’s largest robotics and artificial intelligence competition with more than 400 teams from dozens of countries. The idea is to use the soccer bots to advance research in machine vision, multi-agent collaboration, real-time reasoning, sensor-fusion, and other areas of robotics and AI. But its participants also aim to develop autonomous soccer playing robots that will one day be able to play against humans. The RoboCup's mission statement:

Later this month, Carnegie Mellon's CMDragons small-size robotic soccer team will be competing again at RoboCup, to be held in Singapore. CMDragons has tended to find their edge in their software as opposed to their hardware. Their latest software advantage will be their new "physics-based planning", using physics to decide how to move and turn with the ball in order to maintain control. Previous control strategies simply planned where the robot should move to and shoot from, assuming a ball placed at the front center of the dribbler bar would stay there. The goal of Robocup is to create a humanoid robotic soccer team to compete against human players in 2050. Manuela Veloso, the professor who leads the Carnegie Mellon robotic soccer lab, "believe[s] that the physics-based planning algorithm is a particularly noteworthy accomplishment" that will take the effort one step closer to the collective goal.

As Paolo Robuffo Giordano and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, in Tübingen, Germany, would have it, scientific research means riding the business end of a giant industrial robot arm while playing video games. But hey -- they produced some serious research on it, which was presented at ICRA 2010.  The CyberMotion Simulator is basically a full motion simulator adapted to a racing car game. Players (or subjects, the researchers prefer to call them) sit in a cabin on a robot arm some 2 meters off the ground and drive a Ferrari F2007 car around a projected track with force-feedback steering wheel and pedals. The aim is to make the experience as realistic as possible without having to buy a real F2007, and to test the simulator with an environment that requires sudden, massive acceleration.

Ranger, a four legged bi-pedal robot, set an unofficial record at Cornell last month for walking 23 kilometers (14.3 miles), untethered, in 10 hours and 40 minutes. Walking at an average pace of 2.1 km/h (1.3 miles per hour), Ranger circled the indoor track at Cornell’s Barton Hall 108.5 times, taking 65,185  steps before it had to stop and recharge. Ranger walks much like a human, using gravity and momentum to help swing its legs forward, though its looks like a boom box on stilts. Its swinging gait is like a human on crutches since the robot has no knees, and its two exterior legs are connected at the top and its two interior legs are connected at the bottom.

The latest episode of the Robots Podcast looks at the following scenario: Imagine being able to throw a hand-full of smart matter in a tank full of liquid and then pulling out a ready-to-use wrench once the matter has assembled. This is the vision of this episode's guests Michael Tolley and Jonas Neubert from the Computational Synthesis Laboratory run by Hod Lipson at Cornell University, NY. Tolley and Neubert give an introduction into Programmable Matter and then present their research on stochastic assembly of matter in fluid, including both simulation (see video above) and real-world implementation. Read on or tune in!

NI LabVIEW Robotics is a software package that provides a complete suite of tools to help you rapidly design sophisticated robotics systems for medical, agricultural, automotive, research, and military applications. The LabVIEW Robotics Software Bundle includes all of the functionality you need, from multicore real-time and FPGA design capabilities to vision, motion, control design, and simulation. Watch an introduction and demonstration of LabVIEW Robotics.

Space robotics may appear to be a purely scientific endeavor -- brave little rovers exploring planets in search of life -- but it turns out there's a multi-million dollar market in space just waiting for the right kind of robot. This market is satellite servicing. Geostationary communication satellites fire small thrusters to stay in orbit. When they run out of fuel (typically helium or hydrazine), or when a battery or gyroscope fails, these expensive satellites often have to be abandoned, becoming just another piece of space junk, even though their mechanical systems and electronics work fine.

German researchers have built an anthropomorphic robot hand that can endure collisions with hard objects and even strikes from a hammer without breaking into pieces. In designing the new hand system, researchers at the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics, part of the German Aerospace Center (DLR), focused on robustness. They may have just built the toughest robot hand yet. The DLR hand has the shape and size of a human hand, with five articulated fingers powered by a web of 38 tendons, each connected to an individual motor on the forearm.

Android Robotics Projects

Setting up a development environment ready for Android robotics code Learning how to program for the AVR microcontroller Connecting servos and sensors Home-brewing your own PCB design, and choosing PCB suppliers Mounting the phone as a robot brain and teaching the robot to obey touch commands Approaching and designing different robot architectures

The Balancing Cube is a robotic sculpture that can stand on any of its corners. Pendulum-like modules, located on the inner faces of the cube, constantly adjust their positions to shift the structure's center of gravity and keep it balanced. The cube remains stable even if you poke it. But not too hard! Created by Raffaello D'Andrea, Sebastian Trimpe, and Matt Donovan at ETH Zurich, the contraption is half art and half technology. They got their inspiration from a Cirque du Soleil performance in which acrobats use their bodies to support each other and balance together in seemingly impossible positions.