and their battery life only allows for short flights. To increase the range of a small UAV one idea is to pair it with an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) that can carry it to a site of operation and transport heavier cargo.
Having both ground and aerial perspectives can also be useful during a mission. One challenge is to make sure the vehicles have the ability to rendezvous
and perform coordinated landings autonomously. To this end a paper by Daly et al. in Autonomous Robots presents a coordinated control method
and experimental results for landing a quadrotor on a ground rover. The two robots communicate their positions converge to a common docking location and the dock successfully both indoors and out.
The controller handles the nonlinearities inherent in the motions of the two vehicles and is stable in the face of multi-second time delays allowing unreliable wifi communication to be used in the landing.
Both indoor and outdoor experiments demonstrate the validity of the approach and also reveal the major disturbance caused by the ground effect
when hovering over the ground vehicle. For more information you can read the paper Coordinated landing of a quadrotor on a skid-steered ground vehicle in the presence of time delays (John M. Daly Yan Ma Steven L. Waslander Autonomous
Robots Springer US July 2014) or ask questions below! Robohub is an online platform that brings together leading communicators in robotics research start-ups business and education from around the world o
#Thousand-robot swarm self-assembles into arbitrary shapes There is something magical about seeing 1000 robots move
Self-assembly of this kind can be found in nature#from molecules forming regular crystals
No GPS-like system was available for them to know their location in the environment.
With the robots ready the Nagpal team had to develop an algorithm which could guarantee that large numbers of robots with limited capabilities
and local communication could cooperatively self-assemble into user-specified shapes. This is what they came up with.
The algorithm had to account for unreliable robots that are pushed out of their desired location or block other robots performing their functions.
Nagpal#s team overcame this challenge by implementing strategies that allowed robots to rely on their neighbours to cooperatively monitor for faults.
This is the second Science paper this year on swarm robotics from Nagpal#s lab. Their previous work looked at construction of three-dimensional structures without the need for any leader using termite-inspired robots.
After years of research in this area it looks like we are finally reaching a tipping point where both hardware
and algorithms can build large-scale robotic swarms at least in the labs. These swarms have the potential to help us understand natural self-organised systems by providing fully engineered physical systems on which to do experiments.
They also enable the first steps towards creating artificial swarms for real-world applications including disaster relief environmental monitoring and maybe even art.
Robohub is an online platform that brings together leading communicators in robotics research start-ups business and education from around the world.
Aloft hotels are a boutique brand of Starwood hotels that focusâ on techie features such as Apple TV in-roomâ services and the needs of the#always on#generation of traveler.
and various hotel platforms as well asâ efficiently navigating throughout the property#including the elevator#with speedsâ up to 4 mph.
#The Times article went on to say that Savioke wasâ interested in a range of service industry applications like assisted living facilities and hotels.
Although not one of the Willow Garage spin-off companies many ex-Willow Garage employees now work at Savioke m
and Energy held the robot industry policy meeting at the Korea Technology Center in Seoul
The current five-year intelligent robots master plan based on the#Intelligent Robot Development and Dissemination Promotion Law#was established in April 2009.
conducting robot research and development (R&d) and building comprehensive capabilities; expanding robot demand across all industries; constructing an open robot industry ecosystem;
and pursuing robot fusion networking through a private#public investment of $2. 6b US over the next five years.
The Korean government will enhance global cooperation through its Seven Robot Fusion Business Strategies roadmap initially involving the manufacturing automotive medical rehabilitation culture defense education
by expanding cooperation with telecommunication. The 1st Vice-minister Kim Jae-hong Ministry of Trade Industry and Energy said
#In order to take a leap forward in making our domestic robot industry a major industry it#s essential to expand robot demand based on the business service models of other industries with a secure core technology.
The government plans to support this process intensively.#(#(photo: Hyundai heavy industries v
#Governmental funding of strategic robotic projects Many governments have determined that robotics will play a significant role in contributing to their economy
and have set up projects to fund bottlenecks to speed up the process. Japan the EU France the UK and to a lesser extent the US are all doing this.
Sebastian Cagnon a French behavior architect at Aldebaran Robotics who blogs at About Robots recapped the following governmental programs.
These last few months have seen so many announcements from countries investing in robotics with head spinning numbers it gave
The wave started with the EU announcing a huge â#2. 8 billionâ investment program for the next 7 years.
the announcement of Pepper by Softbank and Aldebaran (although not really a governmental funding project)
Shinzo Abe Prime minister of Japan announced on June 19th funding to make a obot revolution. You can see Sebastian at work with Pepper in the article's news photo.
The fundingâ sets up a task force to further develop Japan robot manufacturers and help them increase their revenues to $24 billion by 2020.
In addition Abe calls for a Robotics Olympics to be held at the same time as the 2020 Olympics being held in Japan.
You canâ see hereâ that they went big with the numbers with $257m of investment planned for robotics!
When we are not in strike we make robots too! Our French Ministerâ Arnaud Montebourg announced the creation of a private fundâ with â#80m ($108m) to invest in companies.
Their new plan is to help existing robotics businesses increase their sales as well as investing in disaster recover
and search and rescue robots and eldercare robots. We are way past the MULTI-BILLION dollars in investments by now.
Thanks Sebastian. Â s
#Edison: A low cost robotics platform Edisonâ is a programmable and LEGO-compatible robot that is tackling the high cost of entry level robotics;
Using these sensors and outputs he can be programmed to: Programming Edison involves dragging and dropping icons to form a program.
The software Edware is open source and compatible with Windows Mac and Linux. Programs download into the robot via the supplied Edcomm cable that plugs into the headphone jack of your computer.
But programming isn#t necessary to start using Edison as the robot has the ability to read special barcodes that activate preprogrammed features such as line-following and obstacle avoidance.
The barcodes also allow Edison to learn commands from a standard TV and DVD remote control which can be used to drive the robot by remote control.
Two or more Edisons can communicate via infrared light so combined with the low cost creating your own robot swarm becomes feasible.
Edison robot is also LEGO-compatible allowing you to build on to the robot and create something new.
Already on the market are Lego Mindstorms (around $400) which has an impressive array of sensors and motors and the Thymio
which is priced slightly lower at around $200. While these robot products are very good their price can be a barrier to schools
and to individuals from pursuing an interest in robotics. Edison#s price capabilities and programmability make it outstanding value
and we are hoping that it will become the means through which many future robotics engineers first become interested in the field.
#Projector Drone: Could drones broadcast the news? As a Board member of the Professional society of Drone Journalists and part of the team at both I-Drone
and SWARM UAV I am lucky enough to work in the growing civilian UAV industry everyday.
The Projector Droneâ that we have built in Melbourne Australia is one of my favorite in-house projects.
It has provided a great opportunity to explore the role of drones beyond#eye-in the sky#applications.
In short our#Projector Drone#does not record the world around it. It broadcasts onto it. http://player. vimeo. com/video/98604521our proof of concept build uses a modified DJI F550 Flamewheel kit gets twelve minutes flight time and features its own
onboard data storage and a 500 lumens LED projector. We are already working on more sophisticated features including live streaming data gimbal integration ultrasonic sound capabilities and improved flight time.
 It is not hard to imagine a slightly sci-fi future where micro UAVS with similar broadcasting abilities are used to deliver breaking news disaster and traffic management emergency warnings and maybe an advertisement or two.
We are now looking for media commercial and educational partners to work with us on real world applications of this exciting new platform.
Any enquires hit me up at ryan @i-drone. com. auwritten by Ryan Hamlet for the Professional society of Drone Journalism n
#Global trends in robotics from patent analysis 120000 robotics patents have been published in the last 10 years tripling in rate from 2004 to 2013 according to the UK Intellectual Property Office Informatics Team.
 Unsurprisingly there was a huge drop in robotics patent applications in 2009-2010 although not all industries were affected as by the global financial crisis as robotics was.
The preeminent country for robotics patents is Japan with 31%of patents published the majority from Toyota.
The US is in second place with 19%followed by Germany (17%)China (10%)Korea (9%)France (3)
and giving insight into innovation activity and direction for future funding. Â As well as robotics theâ UK Government has identified#eight great technologies#for future growth.
#the big data revolution and energy-efficient computing;##satellites and commercial applications of space;##robotics and autonomous systems;#
#life sciences genomics and synthetic biology;##regenerative medicine;##agri-science;##advanced materials and nanotechnology;##energy and its storage.
Robotics infographicthe IPO report also looks at the rate of robotics patents compared to other innovation patents on a country basis
and creates a relative specialization index. Some countries such as Japan China and Germany have proportionately greater robotics patents than general.
Whereas both the US and the UK are underspecialized in robotics technologies. Overall automotive patents make up around one third of the total not including other types of vehicles such as trucks buses agricultural machinery aircraft and aerospace/defence.
Google#s automotive patent portfolio is relatively small at 35 families. Most of Google#s patents were published very recently in 2013 with the earliest being only in 2010.
The rate of publishing for Google shows clear increase so further patents should be anticipated. Â The report also shows collaboration within industry groups.
For example Google and Honda are contained very self in contrast to other automotive companies. Most of the patents in the UK dataset are in the field of autonomous vehicles includingâ road vehicles unmanned aerial vehicles and unmanned underwater vehicles.
Roboticsâ companies in the UK dataset have very small portfolios with the largest being Notetry (5â families)
which is apparently a division of Dyson Ltd focussing on robotic vacuumâ cleaners. Other companies are Oliver Crispin Robotics Limited (industrial robotics) Â Absolute Robotics Limited (industrial robotics) Armstrong Healthcare Limited (robotics forâ surgeons
) Isis Innovation Limited Qinetiq Limited and Rolls-royce Plc. Finally the rate of change in robotics patent publishing in the last 10 years is very interesting with China showing significant growth from a China to become one of the strong sources of inventions e
#Exoskeleton with haptic sensors helps paralysed man to kick off World cup VIDEO UPDATE 06/13 It#s June 2014 and all eyes are on Brazil.
If you#re a football fan then June 12th is the day you#ve been waiting for
but eagle-eyed technophiles are likely to have noticed one very exciting addition to the opening ceremony.
The exoskeleton is controlled through an EEG (Electroencephalography) cap placed over the head#the sensors on the cap read brain activity from the scalp.
The cap then deciphers the intention of the user and transmits the instruction to the exoskeleton
While EEG is less sensitive than implanting sensors on the brain it has the advantage of being noninvasive meaning that the teenager was required not to undergo surgery for this one-off event.
Despite being made from alloys and polymers to make it as light and flexible as possible the exoskeleton weighs in at around 60kg.
For someone who is paraplegic a major issue when using an exoskeleton is that the person is not able to feel their legs
and therefore cannot know what position they are in. Think for a second how hard walking would be had
The exoskeleton user wears sleeves created by a team lead by Prof. Hannes Bleuler at LSRO EPFL and NCCR Roboticsâ and stemming from the ongoing Phd work of Simon Gallo.
The sleeves are embedded with vibrators that are spread over the forearm#these vibrators then give a haptic feedback to the wearer as they indicate not only
if the foot is on the floor (from sensors on the foot) but which part of the foot is on the floor giving a proprioceptive effect
and allowing the user to walk upright. Thus the wearer can sense what feels like an artificial footprint on their arm as the sensors roll from heel to toe.
It is for this part of the technology that the team have spent months training with volunteers trying out different arrangements of actuators on the arms trying epsilateral
and contralateral arrangements and using virtual reality and an avatar to allow the user to see real time limb positioning.
One of the major challenges of the project was the training process for the eight volunteers (males
and females) to enable them to master control of an exoskeleton directly with their brain in a stressful environment like a stadium.
The hopeful volunteers have trained in a realistic virtual environment mimicking the real stadium while receiving feedback from the tactile sleeves for the past 8 months with the final decision on who would take the kick made only last week.
The second worry for the project was that electromagnetic fields from cell phones carried by people in the stadium would block electronic signals in the exoskeleton
#however testing in a comparable stadium showed that this would not be a problem. The researchers hope that by using such a high profile event as the World cup the general public will gain a greater understanding and a greater tolerance of
along with giving those with disabilities a hope for the future. To keep up to date with NCCR Robotics please sign up to ourâ monthly infoletter
Covering manufacturing agriculture health transport civil security and households the initiative#calledâ SPARCÂ#is the EU#s industrial policy effort to strengthen Europe#s position in the global
But the potential of robotics goes far beyond the factory: from helping nurses in hospitals to inspecting dangerous power plants and tedious farm work.
Autonomous cars and drones are other examples of robots. The project is launched at theâ AUTOMATICA 2014â conference in Munich.
SPARC is open to all European companies and research institutions. The partnership launched today is based on a contract signed with eurobotics aisbl on 17 december 2013 (press release.
The next funding call will be published in October 2014 with an April 2015 deadline. Stay tuned viaâ@Roboticseuâ#find out more aboutâ EU support to roboticsâ andâ examples of funded projects.
and has the hardware capabilities to organize into complex shapes with its neighbors due to accurate range and bearing.
but works poorly when the robots are too close together. For this reason most range and bearing systems (such as that of the Khepera III or e-Puck) have a certain minimum range.
This requires dedicated electronics that give access to the raw signal and demodulation. We solve this problem on the Droplets by using two receivers:
one that has a built-in 38khz demodulation circuit (as used in TV remote controls) and another that provides us with the raw amplitude.
In order to overcome the limitations of a point source approximation we measure the incoming infrared from another robot#s emitter using all six receivers (as opposed to just one;
we do this for all six emitters leading to a 6×6 matrix of measurements. Using a two-step approximation1â we showâ how this data can be combined with accurate sensor
and receiver characteristics to calculate not only the bearing to the other robots but also its heading and eventually the range.
The advantage of this method is that an emitting robot can provide range bearing and heading information to as many robots as can simultaneously hear it making this approach much more scalable than other techniques that must exchange mutual bearings to calculate heading.
however and omnidirectional motion using three motors has been thought to be only possible by carefully synchronizing all motors phases#something close to impossible with cheap hardware.
Supercaps allow the Droplets to remain powered also during#airtime #or when navigating the small gaps between each stripe.
We are currently working on using this feature for data transmission enabling programming an entire swarm not only via infrared but directly via the floor.
and low cost (the powered floor is a simple 2-layer printed circuit board) could make the Droplets an ideal educational platform enabling instructors to tangibly teach subjects such as organic chemistry (with each Droplet being a wiggling atom
) geometry (with Droplets measuring angles and distances between them) or the spread of infectious diseases. Using the robots together with an overhead projector allows projecting an RGB coordinate system
Google new purpose-built self driving car Google completed a major step in its long and extensive self-driving cars project by presenting its first purpose-built autonomous car
and is modified not a conventional Toyota. The as yet unnamed car is very small (looks smaller than a Smart)
and can accommodate two people and some luggage. It probably electric and its maximum speed is limited to 25mph (40km/h). Its most striking characteristic is that it doesn have any controls#no steering wheel accelerator
or brake pedals#and you can ride it strictly as a passenger which is probably a strange feeling but according to Google video not entirely unpleasant.
This is a purely experimental project in every aspect. Google will make about a hundred prototypes and it looks like it a very serious effort.
It is equipped with multiple sensors (a big LIDAR on its roof is probably doing most of the work)
but there are also sensors in the front in the back and where the side view mirrors would have been in a regular car.
Thanks to Google previous experience with self-driving cars one can expect very good performance in real environments;
other Google self-driving cars have completed hundreds of thousands miles with no major incidents. The car itself may look like a toy
but it is cleverly and purposefully designed to be as cute as possible in order to inspire trust
and reduce fear of its autonomous status. Â Small cars in general may be more vulnerable in a crash with a heavier vehicle
but it already proven that with clever engineering you can have almost no compromises in their passive safety
and most small cars from established manufacturers achieve very high scores in a crash test. The main chassis is made from robust box sections of (probably) aluminum tubing and there also a tubular roll cage above.
Even the suspension wishbones look highly over-engineered for a 25mph city car. A substantial crash box is placed in the front
and above it the whole front panel is made of foam so the car is not only safe for its passengers but for pedestrians as well.
Of course at this stage there are no independent crash tests to verify its performance. As mentioned above the most striking aspect of the car is its lack of any kind of manual control.
This is a very clever move from Google that aspires to overcome the legal and ethical problems of who should be able to drive
or control a self-driving car. If you completely eliminate any kind of input from the occupants (apart from the destination selection) then anyone on board is defined strictly as a passenger
Google will launch a small pilot program in California in the next couple of years. The prototypes released on public roads will have manual controls for obvious legal reasons
Read the full post in Google official blog here. It worth mentioning that similar concepts
It was also a two-seater (loosely based on a Fiat 500) but its main feature was the interior where similarly to Google car no manual controls were present
#Transforming robots to transform your room The word#robot#conjures up many different things to many people
but how many of them immediately think of furniture? It sounds futuristic but the Biorobotics laboratory at EPFL sponsored by NCCR Robotics is working on exactly that#robotic furniture or Roombots.
Roombots are a modular self-reconfiguring robotic system and are a direct response to the pressure on space that is so common within large cities today.
and contains three motors (for rotational movements) onboard computation and a battery that allows for at least one hour of operating time.
Modules also contain a latch-based connection mechanism that allows them to connect to each other or to connector ports in the environment.
 The rotational movements and the dynamic connectors allow the modules to form any shape that may be desired#this means that you could have breakfast on a table
Using connector ports embedded in the floor walls and ceiling Roombots can crawl and climb on any surface meaning that furniture does need not to be connected only to the floor
or stick to the wall. Â As it may not always be embed possible to ports everywhere in the room the Roombots have also been designed to be able to#walk#using an oscillating motion controlled by a network of coupled oscillators in the modules to allow them to travel across a room.
The team behind the Roombots have had to overcome a series of research challenges in terms of hardware and control.
and technical challenges such as compensating unwanted bending in the mechanical structure (related to building larger complex 3d structures) developing the best-suited algorithms for reconfiguration
which uses a combination of wearable devices sensors throughout the home and a mobile robot to assist older people in their homes
and to connect them to family friends and healthcare professionals who need to keep an eye on the person health and activities.
and often writes about r Robinon her blog (in Italian). In our ageing society many elderly people are in the same situation
and robotics can offer a safe and affordable solution. 3 million of EU funding was invested in Giraffplus to test how robots
and other devices could help older people live safer more independent lives. The sensors are designed to detect activities like cooking sleeping
or watching television and monitor health blood pressure or sugar levels for example. They also allow the persons caregivers to monitor their wellbeing remotely and to check for falls.
A robot moves around the home and allows family friends and carers to virtually visit the person.
Silver generation and economyvice-President of the European commission@Neeliekroeseu responsible for the Digital Agenda says: one of us is getting any younger.
But we all want to know that we will not lose our dignity respect and independence as we age.
and much of this will be ploughed back into the caring economy. According to Stephen Von Rump CEO of Giraff Technologies AB the EU market for robots and other devices assisting our elderly will reach 13 billion by 2016. iraffplus will be in 15 homes by the end
of 2014says Amy Loutfi the project coordinator based at Arebro University Sweden. o far we have had six homes in Europe two homes each in Spain Sweden
but we see that various aspects of the system are appreciated differently by the different users.
and technology should be both adaptable and tailored to user needscurrent plans are to put the system into commercial production next year based on an upfront fee
The Active Assisted living Joint Programme(@AAL JP) is driven an initiative by the EU member states for applied research on ICT products
and services for ageing Well over a hundred projects have been funded since 2008 and it should be continued under H2020:
25 million of EU funding is foreseen in 2014 and the same amount again in 2015.
The European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy ageing(@EIP AHA) is a multi-stakeholder partnership to implement innovative ICT-driven technologies for active
and healthy ageing at European scale and to remove barriers that prevent their deployment. One of its six Action Groups focuses on independent living while others deal with related topics like the prevention and early detection of falls and age-friendly communities and environments.
Read more about Standards for caring robots and The ethics of robotics. Funding available under Horizon 2020through Horizon 2020#H2020 many more projects on independent living including robotics will be funded.
One of the focus areas of Societal Challenge 1 Health demographic change and wellbeing is ersonalising health and care (PHC.
It notably supports citizen empowerment through self management of health and disease health promotion and disease prevention.
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