A rather geeky/technical weblog, est. 2001, by Bramus
SqUID consists of a synchronized autonomous robotic fleet that has 3-dimensional movement capabilities, allowing a fully flexible operation. A high-end embedded control system and smart real-time data analysis allow BionicHIVE’s algorithmic engine to dynamically learn problems created in one warehouse and apply resolutions to all warehouses in the network.
Cool.
An update on Spot / SpotMini, by The Verge:
Boston Dynamics is putting Spot to work. The company has announced a new leasing program for its Spot robot (formerly SpotMini), which is aimed at construction, entertainment, and other automation-friendly industries. But is the world ready for this semi-autonomous quadruped?
TossingBot, a robotic arm that picks up items and tosses them to boxes outside its reach range. It is double the speed and dexterity of other state-of-the-art picking systems achieving 500+ mean picks per hour, and is better at throwing than most of the engineers on the team. The key to TossingBot is a self-improving artificial intelligence algorithm that uses a combination of both physics and deep learning. This enables it to learn quickly — starting with just grasping objects in the morning, and eventually learning to toss them by the evening. The system is also general — capable of handling objects it has never seen before, and adapting to new target landing locations.
Here’s a more in-depth video:
During its first rodeo, the mechanical arm didn’t know what to do with the pile of objects it was presented with. After 14 hours of trial and error and analyzing them with its overhead cameras, it was finally able to toss the right item into the right container 85 percent of the time.
TossingBot: Learning to Throw Arbitrary Objects with Residual Physics →
(Via Sara, a former student of mine)
Scribit is a vertical plotter that can draw any content sourced from the web – and update it in real time.
It is mounted on a wall using only 2 plugs and a wire in between. You send it an image from within the app and it will start drawing (with support for 4 colors at a time).
Shipping is expected June 2019, but like with all Kickstarter-funded projects that may vary 😉
Cheetah can now run blind amongst a few other new tricks:
Also notice how small this thing has become when compared to three years ago 😱
Latest new trick from one of Boston Dynamics’ robots:
HODOR.
Nigel Stanford has created an installation sporting industrial robot arms to play a song named “Automatica”
A behind the scenes is also available:
Also worth checking out is his “CYMATICS: Science Vs. Music”
Orange robots at the company’s sorting stations are able to identify the destination of a package through a code-scan, virtually eliminating sorting mistakes. Shentong’s army of robots can sort up to 200,000 packages a day, and are self-charging, meaning they are operational 24/7.
Again great stuff by the Boston Dynamics team. It looks like their Atlas robot with wheels underneath it.
(fragment starts at 3:45)
It’s satisfying to see how smooth this thing goes and jumps, all whilst remaining in perfect balance. It’s also pretty scary to know that this thing can outrun me any time … I, for one, welcome our new Robot overlords.
Not familiar with Boston Dynamics and their robots? I’ve linked to a few before.