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Halodi Robotics uses Ansys to simulate humanoid robots

January 10, 2023 by Mark Allinson Leave a Comment

Halodi Robotics is using Ansys simulation software through the Ansys Startup Program to develop its humanoid robots designed to work among humans in everyday environments.

Humanoid robots can help alleviate the growing labour shortage, and free critical personnel to focus on tasks that require their high-level skills.

These robots will perform jobs such as patrolling buildings at night, stocking grocery shelves, and executing logistical tasks at hospitals. With Elite Channel Partner EDRMedeso, Ansys enabled Halodi Robotics to shorten development time by months. [Read more…] about Halodi Robotics uses Ansys to simulate humanoid robots

Filed Under: News, Software Tagged With: ansys, assistant, develop, development, engineers, eve, executing, free, halodi, high, hospital, human, humanoid, humans, interact, logistical, making, months, motors, people, personnel, power, robot, robotics, robots, safe, safety, simulation, software, spend, systems, tasks, time, work

Intel Labs introduces SPEAR: An open-source photorealistic simulator for embodied AI

December 25, 2022 by Mark Allinson Leave a Comment

By Mike Roberts, a research scientist at Intel Labs, where he works on using photorealistic synthetic data for computer vision applications

Interactive simulators are becoming powerful tools for training embodied artificial intelligence (AI) systems, but existing simulators have limited content diversity, physical interactivity, and visual fidelity.

To better serve the embodied AI developer community, Intel Labs has collaborated with the Computer Vision Center in Spain, Kujiale in China, and the Technical University of Munich to develop the Simulator for Photorealistic Embodied AI Research (SPEAR).

This highly realistic simulation platform helps developers to accelerate the training and validation of embodied agents for a growing set of tasks and domains.

With its large collection of photorealistic indoor environments, SPEAR applies to a wide range of household navigation and manipulation tasks. Ultimately, SPEAR aims to drive research and commercial applications in household robotics and manufacturing, including human-robot interaction scenarios and digital twin applications.

Figure 1. Scenes may be cluttered with objects that can be manipulated individually. A strong impulse can be applied to all objects at the start of the simulation to create the disordered environment. Messy room configurations could serve as initial states for a cleaning task.

To create SPEAR, Intel Labs worked closely with a team of professional artists for over a year to construct a collection of high-quality, handcrafted, interactive environments. Currently, SPEAR features a starter pack of 300 virtual indoor environments with more than 2,500 rooms and 17,000 objects that can be manipulated individually.

These interactive training environments use detailed geometry, photorealistic materials, realistic physics, and accurate lighting. New content packs targeting industrial and healthcare domains will be released soon.

By offering larger, more diverse, and realistic environments, SPEAR helps throughout the development cycle of embodied AI systems, and enables training robust agents to operate in the real world, potentially even straight from simulation.

SPEAR helps to improve accuracy on many embodied AI tasks, especially traversing and rearranging cluttered indoor environments. Ultimately, SPEAR aims to decrease the time to market for household robotics and smart warehouse applications, and increase the spatial intelligence of embodied agents.

Challenges in Training and Validating Embodied AI Systems

In the field of embodied AI, agents learn by interacting with different variables in the physical world. However, capturing and compiling these interactions into training data can be time consuming, labor intensive, and potentially dangerous.

In response to this challenge, the embodied AI community has developed a variety of interactive simulators, where robots can be trained and validated in simulation before being deployed in the physical world.

While existing simulators have enabled rapid progress on increasingly complex and open-ended real-world tasks such as point-goal and object navigation, object manipulation, and autonomous driving, these sims have several limitations.

Simulators that use artist-created environments typically provide a limited selection of unique scenes, such as a few dozen homes or a few hundred isolated rooms, which can lead to severe over-fitting and poor sim-to-real transfer performance.

On the other hand, simulators that use scanned 3D environments provide larger collections of scenes, but offer little or no interactivity with objects.

In addition, both types of simulators offer limited visual fidelity, either because it is too labor intensive to author high-resolution art assets, or because of 3D scanning artifacts.

Figure 2. SPEAR enables embodied AI developers to train a navigation policy on an OpenBot entirely in simulation.

Overview of SPEAR

SPEAR was designed based on three main requirements:

  1. support a collection of environments that is as large, diverse, and high-quality as possible;
  2. provide sufficient physical realism to support realistic interactions with a wide range of household objects; and
  3. offer as much photorealism as possible, while still maintaining enough rendering speed to support training complex embodied agent behaviors.

Motivated by these requirements, SPEAR was implemented on top of the Unreal Engine, which is an industrial-strength open-source game engine. SPEAR environments are implemented as Unreal Engine assets, and SPEAR provides an OpenAI Gym interface to interact with environments via Python.

Figure 3. The LoCoBot Agent is suitable for both navigation and manipulation in simulation. This agent’s realistic gripper makes it ideal for rearrangement tasks.

SPEAR currently supports four distinct embodied agents:

  • The OpenBot Agent provides identical image observations to a real-world OpenBot, implements an identical control interface, and has been modeled with accurate geometry and physical parameters. It is well-suited for sim-to-real experiments.
  • The Fetch Agent and LoCoBot Agent have also been modeled using accurate geometry and physical parameters, and each has a physically realistic gripper. These agents are ideal for rearrangement tasks.
  • The Camera Agent can be teleported anywhere, making it useful for collecting static datasets.

Figure 3. The LoCoBot Agent is suitable for both navigation and manipulation in simulation. This agent’s realistic gripper makes it ideal for rearrangement tasks.

By default, agents return photorealistic egocentric observations from camera sensors, as well as wheel encoder states and joint encoder states. Additionally, agents can optionally return several types of privileged information.

First, agents can return a sequence of waypoints representing the shortest path to a goal location, as well as GPS and compass observations that point directly to the goal, both of which can be useful when defining navigation tasks.

Second, agents can return pixel-perfect semantic segmentation and depth images, which can be useful when controlling for the effects of imperfect perception in downstream embodied tasks and collecting static datasets.

SPEAR currently supports two distinct tasks:

  • The Point-Goal Navigation Task randomly selects a goal position in the scene’s reachable space, computes a reward based on the agent’s distance to the goal, and triggers the end of an episode when the agent hits an obstacle or the goal.
  • The Freeform Task is an empty placeholder task that is useful for collecting static datasets.

SPEAR is available under an open-source MIT license, ready for customization on any hardware. For more details, visit the SPEAR GitHub page.

Filed Under: Features, Science Tagged With: agent, agents, ai, embodied, environments, goal, navigation, objects, photorealistic, physical, realistic, simulation, simulators, spear, tasks, training

North American robot sales on track for another record year for 2022

December 22, 2022 by Mark Allinson Leave a Comment

a3 automate 2

North American robot sales in the first nine months of 2022 reached record levels, with all indications pointing to 2022 ending with the highest number of robots sold in a year for the second year in a row.

According to the Association for Advancing Automation (A3), from January to September 2022, North American companies purchased 35,804 units valued at $1.875 billion, up 24 percent for units ordered and 27 percent for revenue over the same period in 2021.

Jeff Burnstein, president of A3, says: “Ongoing labor shortages, easier-to-use robotic solutions and new industries embracing robotics, such as restaurants, retail, construction and even agriculture, have led to record units sold here in North America this year. [Read more…] about North American robot sales on track for another record year for 2022

Filed Under: Manufacturing Tagged With: america, american, automate, automation, companies, customers, going, industries, industry, investing, non-automotive, north, ordered, percent, quarter, record, robotics, robots, solutions, tasks, third, units, year

ForwardX Robotics releases new fully autonomous forklift

November 4, 2022 by Mai Tao Leave a Comment

ForwardX Robotics, an autonomous mobile robot (AMR) and warehouse solutions provider, has added the Apex 1400-L to its list of AMRs available in the United States.

Apex 1400-L is a fully autonomous forklift which further enhances ForwardX’s capabilities in warehousing workflows including receiving, putaway, replenishment, raw material movement, and shipping.

Forklifts have always played an important role in the warehousing industry. With the acceleration of e-commerce in recent years, companies are facing new challenges that come with traditional manual forklift operations. [Read more…] about ForwardX Robotics releases new fully autonomous forklift

Filed Under: Logistics, News Tagged With: amrs, apex, autonomous, cameras, capacity, forklift, forklifts, forwardx, fully, including, increase, industry, mph, robotics, role, safety, sensors, tasks, warehousing

FRAI Robotic Technologies demonstrates mobile robotic work cell

November 3, 2022 by Mark Allinson Leave a Comment

Automation tasks are becoming ever more challenging. Using intelligent software in combination with the relevant automation solutions not only enables workpieces to be loaded and unloaded but also means that machine tools can be set up fully automatically through automatic replacement of tools and clamping devices.

FRAI Robotic Technologies, an Austrian company which specializes in building tailor-made automation solutions, is developing “highly flexible” robot systems to respond to this trend. Concepts such as the mobileCELL are a complete first and enable a wide range of expansion stages, making them as future-proof and competitive as possible.

Different industries, series production, small batch sizes, a wide variety of machine tools and the uncertainty of many manufacturers as to whether the current product will still be in vogue next year or become a slow seller – all this calls for flexibility in production. [Read more…] about FRAI Robotic Technologies demonstrates mobile robotic work cell

Filed Under: Features, Industrial robots Tagged With: advantages, automation, cell, customer, flexible, frai, gripper, hand, machine, machines, mobile, mobilecell, parts, production, requirements, robot, robotic, solution, solutions, tasks, tools, wide, workpieces

Start-up EEVE claims ‘thousands’ of customers already using its robots

September 27, 2022 by Mark Allinson Leave a Comment

Start-up company EEVE says it has “thousands” of home robots already working in customers’ homes, mowing their lawns.

And the company’s upcoming model X has two arms and can do multiple tasks, such as weeding, cleaning the patio, mowing, collecting fruit and nuts, collecting litter, serving drinks and even pouring a beer.

EEVE has released a video of its latest prototype doing all of those things. This model is known as Willow X and is sold at a price point of $4,000. [Read more…] about Start-up EEVE claims ‘thousands’ of customers already using its robots

Filed Under: Features, Humanoids Tagged With: company, customers, eeve, lawn, model, mowing, robot, robots, tasks, tool, tools, willow

Aerobotix partners with FerRobotics to develop ‘first-of-its-kind’ end-of-arm-tool automated sander for flammable dust

September 15, 2022 by David Edwards Leave a Comment

Aerobotix and FerRobotics, two robotics companies based in the US and Austria respectively, have partnered to create what they say is the first Class II, Division 1 (C2D1) End of Arm Tool (EOAT) automated sander.

Meeting industry demand for a hazardous-environment solution that will achieve time and cost efficiencies, and enable much safer work environments, this special orbital sander – based on the industry-proven Active Orbital Kit (AOK) with patented Active Compliant Technology – lessens human involvement in hazardous tasks.

Each year, according to the International Labour Organization, tens of millions of workers globally are afflicted with silicosis, an incurable lung disease caused by crystalline silica dust inhalation, leading to thousands of deaths. [Read more…] about Aerobotix partners with FerRobotics to develop ‘first-of-its-kind’ end-of-arm-tool automated sander for flammable dust

Filed Under: Industrial robots, News Tagged With: active, aerobotix, aerospace, automated, combustible, created, defense, disease, dust, environments, equipment, ferrobotics, hazardous, human, ignited, industries, involvement, lung, orbital, sander, sanding, tasks, tool

Peer Robotics raises $2.3 million in seed funding round

September 14, 2022 by Mark Allinson Leave a Comment

Peer Robotics, a new mobile robotics solution for manufacturing, has raised $2.3 million in seed funding led by Kalaari Capital, with participation from existing investors Axilor Ventures, Connecticut Innovations and Innopact VC.

Rishabh Agarwal, co-founder, and CEO of Peer Robotics, says: “Small and medium-size companies are struggling with the labor shortage today, not to mention high turn-over.

“Also, many operations are still manual with employees operating at a high risk of injuries and fatigue. Solutions to date have been too expensive and complex. [Read more…] about Peer Robotics raises $2.3 million in seed funding round

Filed Under: Logistics, News Tagged With: assembly, capital, employees, floor, high, humans, include, injuries, kalaari, labor-intensive, led, low, manufacturers, manufacturing, operations, peer, repetitive, robot, robotics, robots, seed, shop, solutions, tasks, time

3 Capabilities of an Electronic Manufacturing Services Company

August 31, 2022 by Mark Allinson Leave a Comment

The process of manufacturing in-demand gadgets like phones and TVs follows several phases. In effect, the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) has to research and develop a design that meets current consumer needs.

Because of these current demands, most manufacturers build their products in-house or outsource related tasks. The latter has become a standard option for most OEMs as they focus on researching possible product improvements.

The subcontractors who handle these tasks do so in what’s referred to as electronic manufacturing services (EMS). Specialized engineering experts like Nortech Systems help OEMs attain their project goals.

The cost will depend on the complexity of the tasks and the current stage of product development. [Read more…] about 3 Capabilities of an Electronic Manufacturing Services Company

Filed Under: Manufacturing Tagged With: capabilities, companies, contract, demand, design, development, electronic, ems, engineering, growing, manufacturers, manufacturing, oem, oems, offer, pcb, process, product, provider, services, tasks, testing

Why Streamlining Your Business with Automation Could Change the Game

August 17, 2022 by Mark Allinson Leave a Comment

When you think about it, business automation is a bit of a no-brainer. After all, automating routine tasks can help to improve efficiency and free up your time to focus on more important things.

Not only that, but it can also help to improve the bottom line by reducing costs. In this blog post, we will discuss the benefits of business automation and how it can help to streamline your operations.

We’ll also look at some of the best tools and platforms for automating your business processes. So read on to discover why automation could be the key to taking your business to the next level. [Read more…] about Why Streamlining Your Business with Automation Could Change the Game

Filed Under: Automation Tagged With: automation, business, improve, platforms, project, tasks, tools

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Latest articles

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Latest news

  • Scythe Robotics secures $42 million new financing to accelerate production of zero-emissions autonomous mower
  • Mining robotics company Nabors acquires digital twin developer MindMesh
  • Lockheed Martin Ventures invests in on-demand manufacturing startup Machina Labs
  • Unlocking the Benefits of Static Residential Proxies for the AI revolution
  • 2023 Predictions & Forecasts: Five challenges for warehouse management, according to AutoStore
  • Mercedes-Benz becomes ‘world’s first’ automotive company to certify SAE Level 3 system for US market
  • Universal Robots reports record annual revenue of $326 million
  • Berkshire Grey and Locus Robotics combine to offer ‘industry-first’ cross-platform robotic automation
  • Fox Guest Posting: The Best Service Providers for Your Blogging Needs
  • 16+ Best Business Card Templates for Google Docs (Word) & Slides

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