Robotics & Automation News

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Reinforcing the value of simulation: Teaching dexterity to a real robot hand

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Nvidia researchers show how training in simulation enables the transfer of complex manipulation skills to a robot hand with project DeXtreme

The human hand is one of the most remarkable outcomes of millions of years of evolution. The ability to pick up all sorts of objects and use them as tools is a crucial differentiator allowing us to shape the world around us.

For robots to work in the everyday human world, the ability to deftly interact with our tools and the environment around them is critical. Without that capability, they will continue to be useful only in specialized domains such as factories or warehouses.

While it has been possible to teach robots with legs how to walk for some time, robots with hands have generally proven to be much trickier to control. A hand with fingers has more joints, and they must move in specific coordinated ways to accomplish a given task. [Read more…] about Reinforcing the value of simulation: Teaching dexterity to a real robot hand

Ritsumeikan University develops ‘soft microfingers’ for robots

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Ritsumeikan University researchers develop a soft robotic microfinger that enables interaction with insects through tactile sensing

Human-robot interactions not only allow robots to interact with humans but also with the environment. Microrobots, for instance, can interact with insects and measure the force exerted by them during flight or walking.

However, this interaction is not direct, with the microrobots measuring insect behavior primarily. Now, researchers from Japan have developed a soft micro-robotic finger that allows humans to directly interact with insects. This could enable human-environment interaction at previously inaccessible scales.

Humans have always been fascinated by scales different than theirs, from giant objects such as stars, planets and galaxies, to the world of the tiny: insects, bacteria, viruses and other microscopic objects. While the microscope allows us to view and observe the microscopic world, it is still difficult to interact with it directly. [Read more…] about Ritsumeikan University develops ‘soft microfingers’ for robots

MIT demonstrates reprogrammable materials that ‘selectively self-assemble’

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By Rachel Gordon, MIT CSAIL

While automated manufacturing is ubiquitous today, it was once a nascent field birthed by inventors such as Oliver Evans, who is credited with creating the first fully automated industrial process, in a flour mill he built and gradually automated in the late 1700s.

The processes for creating automated structures or machines are still very top-down, requiring humans, factories, or robots to do the assembling and making.

However, the way nature does assembly is ubiquitously bottom-up; animals and plants are self-assembled at a cellular level, relying on proteins to self-fold into target geometries that encode all the different functions that keep us ticking. [Read more…] about MIT demonstrates reprogrammable materials that ‘selectively self-assemble’

NCKU researchers develop ‘first’ dual-mode piezotronics-based force sensor

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With the rise of Internet of Things and Industry 4.0, piezoelectrics, or materials that generate electric charge when a strain is applied to them, are becoming extremely useful as compact and energy-efficient force sensors.

Accordingly, piezotronics has emerged as a new technological frontier with applications in structural health monitoring in civil engineering and human-machine interface devices.

Piezotronic force sensors are typically governed by either a strain-induced “Schottky barrier height (SBH) modulation” or by a “piezo-gating effect” that redistributes the charge carriers in an induced piezoelectric field. [Read more…] about NCKU researchers develop ‘first’ dual-mode piezotronics-based force sensor

Columbia University engineers build robot that ‘learns to imagine itself’

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Columbia Engineers build a robot that learns to understand itself, rather than the world around it

As every athletic or fashion-conscious person knows, our body image is not always accurate or realistic, but it’s an important piece of information that determines how we function in the world. 

When you get dressed or play ball, your brain is constantly planning ahead so that you can move your body without bumping, tripping, or falling over.

We humans acquire our body-model as infants, and robots are following suit. A Columbia Engineering team has created a robot that – for the first time – is able to learn a model of its entire body from scratch, without any human assistance. (See video below.) [Read more…] about Columbia University engineers build robot that ‘learns to imagine itself’

Chalmers University selects Lenovo and Nvidia to build Swedish national supercomputer

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Chalmers University of Technology is using Lenovo and Nvidia’s technology infrastructure to power its large-scale computer resource, or supercomputer, Alvis.

The project has seen the delivery and implementation of a clustered computing system for artificial intelligence and machine learning research, in what is Lenovo’s largest high-performance computing cluster for AI and ML in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region.

Alvis – old Norse meaning “all-wise” or “all-knowing” – is a national supercomputer resource within the Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC). [Read more…] about Chalmers University selects Lenovo and Nvidia to build Swedish national supercomputer

UAE scientists figure out way to get swarm robots to split up tasks efficiently

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Researchers at the Technology Innovation Institute in the UAE are developing a new paradigm for teaching robot swarms how to allocate themselves to tasks efficiently. 

The ideas – published in the paper, Group-Size Regulation in Self-organized Aggregation in Robot Swarms – could spark interest in better ways of controlling lots of simple robots to do more complicated tasks independently, with little or no outside communication.

Much prior work has been done to organizing swarms of drones to perform impressive tasks, such as a coordinated light show. But these approaches often relied on centralized coordination, expensive equipment in each drone, or both. [Read more…] about UAE scientists figure out way to get swarm robots to split up tasks efficiently

Purdue scientists build a chip that makes connections like a human brain

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An electronic chip that can be reprogrammed on demand may enable artificial intelligence to learn more continuously like the human brain does, researchers have discovered.

When the human brain learns something new, it adapts. But when artificial intelligence learns something new, it tends to forget information it already learned.

As companies use more and more data to improve how AI recognizes images, learns languages and carries out other complex tasks, a paper published in Science this week shows a way that computer chips could dynamically rewire themselves to take in new data like the brain does, helping AI to keep learning over time. [Read more…] about Purdue scientists build a chip that makes connections like a human brain

How robots learn to hike: ETH researchers look to improve four-legged ANYmal’s mobility

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By Christoph Elhardt

ETH Zurich researchers led by Marco Hutter have developed a new control approach that enables a legged robot, called ANYmal, to move quickly and robustly over difficult terrain.

Thanks to machine learning, the robot can combine its visual perception of the environment with its sense of touch for the first time.

Steep sections on slippery ground, high steps, scree and forest trails full of roots: the path up the 1,098-​metre-high Mount Etzel at the southern end of Lake Zurich is peppered with numerous obstacles. [Read more…] about How robots learn to hike: ETH researchers look to improve four-legged ANYmal’s mobility

Eavesdropping on our thoughts helps create robots like us

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Can intelligence be taught to robots? Advances in physical reservoir computing, a technology that makes sense of brain signals, could contribute to creating artificial intelligence machines that think like us.

In Applied Physics Letters, from AIP Publishing, researchers from the University of Tokyo outline how a robot could be taught to navigate through a maze by electrically stimulating a culture of brain nerve cells connected to the machine.

These nerve cells, or neurons, were grown from living cells and acted as the physical reservoir for the computer to construct coherent signals. [Read more…] about Eavesdropping on our thoughts helps create robots like us