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Carnegie Mellon awarded $150 million to develop robotics research facility

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The Richard King Mellon Foundation has awarded Carnegie Mellon University $150 million to support science and robotics research through the building of a new facility. 

Farnam Jahanian, CMU president, says: “Pittsburgh’s future – and the future of US innovation and global competitiveness – are inextricably linked to scientific and technological advances, and how well organizations, communities, and industries can stay ahead of the rapid pace of change.

“Carnegie Mellon is positioned at the forefront of science and innovation’s great promise, and this visionary grant will fuel the research and activities that will build this exciting future. [Read more…] about Carnegie Mellon awarded $150 million to develop robotics research facility

Texas university students win $10,000 SICK challenge

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For the third year, SICK invited students from universities around the country to participate in the TiM$10K Challenge. The challenge started in 2018 to support innovation and student achievement in automation and technology.

Teams were supplied with a 270° SICK LiDAR sensor (TiM) and accessories and challenged to solve a problem, create a solution, or bring a new application to any industry that utilizes the SICK LiDAR. [Read more…] about Texas university students win $10,000 SICK challenge

Darpa selects eight teams for $3.5 million prize competition

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Darpa has selected eight teams to compete for a prize competition in which the winner will receive $2 million, the runner-up will get $1 million, and third place will earn half a million dollars.

The Darpa Subterranean (SubT) Challenge Systems Competition Final Event will be held on September 21-23, 2021, when the teams’ robots will have to quickly navigate unfamiliar underground environments at the Louisville Mega Cavern in search of common items including backpacks, cell phones, trapped survivors, and even invisible gas.

Those who find and identify the most items will win prizes of $2 million for first place, $1 million for second place, and $500,000 for third place. [Read more…] about Darpa selects eight teams for $3.5 million prize competition

CMU’s Snakebot goes for a swim: Biorobotics Lab builds submersible robot snake

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Carnegie Mellon University’s acclaimed snake-like robot can now slither its way underwater, allowing the modular robotics platform to inspect ships, submarines and infrastructure for damage. 

A team from the Biorobotics Lab in the School of Computer Science’s Robotics Institute tested the Hardened Underwater Modular Robot Snake (HUMRS) last month in the university’s pool, diving the robot through underwater hoops, showing off its precise and smooth swimming, and demonstrating its ease of control.

“We can go places that other robots cannot,” said Howie Choset, the Kavčić-Moura Professor of Computer Science. “It can snake around and squeeze into hard-to-reach underwater spaces.” [Read more…] about CMU’s Snakebot goes for a swim: Biorobotics Lab builds submersible robot snake

A robot that senses hidden objects

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In recent years, robots have gained artificial vision, touch, and even smell. “Researchers have been giving robots human-like perception,” says MIT Associate Professor Fadel Adib.

In a new paper, Adib’s team is pushing the technology a step further. “We’re trying to give robots superhuman perception,” he says.

The researchers have developed a robot that uses radio waves, which can pass through walls, to sense occluded objects. The robot, called RF-Grasp, combines this powerful sensing with more traditional computer vision to locate and grasp items that might otherwise be blocked from view. [Read more…] about A robot that senses hidden objects

Scientists develop soft robot for exploration in the deepest underwater place on Earth

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Scientists at Zhejiang University in China have developed a soft robot which has been able to navigate the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the Earth.

The research team led by Professor LI Tiefeng from the Center for X-Mechanics at the Zhejiang University School of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Zhejiang Lab conducted inter-disciplinary research with its partners and pioneered in proposing the principle of pressure adaptation in mechatronic systems, and their findings were reported in the journal Nature.

Typically, at such depths in the oceans, a vessel without a pressure-resilient “armor” would be “destroyed by the overwhelmingly hydrostatic pressure”. [Read more…] about Scientists develop soft robot for exploration in the deepest underwater place on Earth

Scientists use ‘swarmalation’ to design active materials for self-regulating soft robots

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During the swarming of birds or fish, each entity coordinates its location relative to the others, so that the swarm moves as one larger, coherent unit.

Fireflies on the other hand coordinate their temporal behavior: within a group, they eventually all flash on and off at the same time and thus act as synchronized oscillators.

Few entities, however, coordinate both their spatial movements and inherent time clocks; the limited examples are termed “swarmalators”, which simultaneously swarm in space and oscillate in time. [Read more…] about Scientists use ‘swarmalation’ to design active materials for self-regulating soft robots

Cost reduction in aerospace through additive manufacturing

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Spacecraft are developed on Earth, tested, fully assembled and transported in one piece by a launch vehicle to their respective places of operation. Each component must be designed to withstand the high loads of the launch phase.

In most cases, in addition to complex test procedures, this leads to an oversized structure of the spacecraft components, because in orbit they experience only a fraction of the stresses they must endure during rocket launch.

The maximum take-off mass required for transport with the launch vehicle and the volume of satellites, for example, thus cause high space transport costs. [Read more…] about Cost reduction in aerospace through additive manufacturing

Norway’s Global Seed Vault reopens for first deposit of 2021

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The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, located on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, has reopened for the first deposit of 2021.

Sometimes referred to as a “doomsday vault”, it is a long-term seed storage facility with the capacity to store almost 5 million different seed samples from all over the world.

When construction began in 2006, the concept behind the seed vault was to ensure that Earth’s plant life can be replenished in the event of natural or manmade catastrophe. [Read more…] about Norway’s Global Seed Vault reopens for first deposit of 2021

Robots sense human touch using camera and shadows

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Soft robots may not be in touch with human feelings, but they are getting better at feeling human touch.

Cornell University researchers have created a low-cost method for soft, deformable robots to detect a range of physical interactions, from pats to punches to hugs, without relying on touch at all. Instead, a USB camera located inside the robot captures the shadow movements of hand gestures on the robot’s skin and classifies them with machine-learning software.

The group’s paper, ShadowSense: Detecting Human Touch in a Social Robot Using Shadow Image Classification, published in the Proceedings of the Association for Computing Machinery on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies. The paper’s lead author is doctoral student, Yuhan Hu. [Read more…] about Robots sense human touch using camera and shadows