DIY Position Tracking Using HTC Vive's Lighthouse
From Alexander Shtuchkin:
Code & schematics for position tracking sensor using HTC Vive's Lighthouse system and a Teensy board.
General purpose indoor positioning sensor, good for robots, drones, etc.
3d position accuracy: currently ~10mm; less than 2mm possible with additional work.
Update frequency: 30 Hz
Output formats: Text; Mavlink ATT_POS_MOCAP via serial; Ublox GPS emulation (in works)
HTC Vive Station visibility requirements: full top hemisphere from sensor. Both stations need to be visible.
Positioning volume: same as HTC Vive, approx up to 4x4x3 meters.
Cost: ~$10 + Teensy 3.2 ($20) (+ Lighthouse stations (2x $135))
Skills to build: Low complexity soldering; Embedded C++ recommended for integration to your project.
(Github page)
A Robotics ETF Tries to Find its Way
Brenton Garen for ETF Trends: This year has seen another crowded field of new exchange traded funds come to market and within that group are plenty of niche funds, indicating that ETF issuers continue to slice and dice investment ideas into increasingly fine fund packages.
The Global X Robotics & Artificial Intelligence Thematic ETF (NasdaqGM: BOTZ) is one of those niche funds. BOTZ provides exposure to companies involved in the adoption and utilization of robotics and artificial intelligence (AI), including those involved with industrial manufacturing, medicine, autonomous vehicles, and other applications.
BOTZ follows the Indxx Global Robotics & Artificial Intelligence Thematic Index. The ETF, which debuted in September with the Global X FinTech Thematic ETF (NasdaqGM: FINX) and the Global X Internet of Things Thematic ETF (NasdaqGM: SNSR), holds 28 stocks with an average market cap of $8.8 billion, putting the ETF in mid-cap territory. Cont'd...
Was That an Insect or a Drone?
The insect drone takes on the functions of larger UAVs, but reduces the larger drones down into a miniature undetectable device.
Engineers Devise New Method to Heighten Senses of Soft Robot
Written by AZoRobotics: Most robots achieve grasping and tactile sensing through motorized means, which can be excessively bulky and rigid. A Cornell group has devised a way for a soft robot to feel its surroundings internally, in much the same way humans do.
A group led by Robert Shepherd, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and principal investigator of Organic Robotics Lab, has published a paper describing how stretchable optical waveguides act as curvature, elongation and force sensors in a soft robotic hand.
Doctoral student Huichan Zhao is lead author of “Optoelectronically Innervated Soft Prosthetic Hand via Stretchable Optical Waveguides,” which is featured in the debut edition of Science Robotics. The paper published Dec. 6; also contributing were doctoral students Kevin O’Brien and Shuo Li, both of Shepherd’s lab. Cont'd.. .
The IDC FutureScape Report: Worldwide Robotics 2017 Predictions
IDC predicts a compound annual growth rate of 17% to reach a global total market for robotics around $135 billion by 2019.
Autopilot vs. Autonomous
A fully autonomous automobile is able to decide whether it can safely enter an intersection. It is able to decide how to maneuver around other vehicles, people, and other moving objects.
MIT's Modular Robotic Chain Is Whatever You Want It to Be
Evan Ackerman for IEEE Spectrum: As sensors, computers, actuators, and batteries decrease in size and increase in efficiency, it becomes possible to make robots much smaller without sacrificing a whole lot of capability. There’s a lower limit on usefulness, however, if you’re making a robot that needs to interact with humans or human-scale objects. You can continue to leverage shrinking components if you make robots that are modular: in other words, big robots that are made up of lots of little robots.
In some ways, it’s more complicated to do this, because if one robot is complicated, robots tend to be complicated. If you can get all of the communication and coordination figured out, though, a modular system offers tons of advantages: robots that come in any size you want, any configuration you want, and that are exceptionally easy to repair and reconfigure on the fly.
MIT’s ChainFORM is an interesting take on this idea: it’s an evolution of last year’s LineFORM multifunctional snake robot that introduces modularity to the system, letting you tear of a strip of exactly how much robot you need, and then reconfigure it to do all kinds of things. Cont'd...
BERNSTEIN: China's insane spending on robotics is fundamentally changing capitalism
Oscar Williams-Grut for Business Insider: Analysts at global investment manager Bernstein believe the "age of industrialization is coming to an end," with robots set to destroy manufacturing jobs globally.
That may not sound seismic. After all, the industrial revolution happened hundreds of years ago and manufacturing jobs have been the minority of all jobs in the West for decades. But Bernstein is arguing that the nature of capitalism is undergoing a fundamental change.
Analysts Michael W. Parker and Alberto Moel argue that Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, the foundational textbooks of economics, is becoming redundant because of two trends: the rise of robotics and China's modernising economy. Cont'd...
Carnegie Mellon Successfully Exploiting Manufacturing Robots
The team wanted to use the robot to transform complex 3D designs from concept to physical reality in machine foam and other soft materials.
Boeing buys Liquid Robotics to boost autonomous surveillance at sea
Alan Boyle for Geekwire: The Boeing Co. says it has agreed to acquire Liquid Robotics, its teammate in a years-long effort to create surfboard-sized robots that can use wave power to roam the seas.
The acquisition is expected to help Boeing create military communication networks that can transmit information autonomously from the sea to satellites via Sensor Hosting Autonomous Remote Craft, or SHARCs.
Liquid Robotics was founded in 2007 and currently has about 100 employees in California and Hawaii. Once the deal is completed, the company will become a subsidiary of Boeing. The arrangement is similar to the one that applies to Insitu, a Boeing subsidiary that is headquartered in Bingen, Wash., and manufactures ScanEagle military-grade drones. Cont'd...
Sensitive Environment Robots
Because of their enclosed structure with all the cables routed internally, the robots are ideally equipped to handle even the most extreme conditions.
Japan Robots Riding on the Concept of Entertainment, Ease of Life and Engaging
The worlds biggest robots ever made were unveiled by Japanese company On-Art Corp., wants to use them to build a tourist park called Dino -A-Live.
Robots won't kill the workforce. They'll save the global economy.
Ruchir Sharma for The Washington Post: The United Nations forecasts that the global population will rise from 7.3 billion to nearly 10 billion by 2050, a big number that often prompts warnings about overpopulation. Some have come from neo-Malthusians, who fear that population growth will outstrip the food supply, leaving a hungry planet. Others appear in the tirades of anti-immigrant populists, invoking the specter of a rising tide of humanity as cause to slam borders shut. Still others inspire a chorus of neo-Luddites, who fear that the “rise of the robots” is rapidly making human workers obsolete, a threat all the more alarming if the human population is exploding.
Before long, though, we’re more likely to treasure robots than to revile them. They may be the one thing that can protect the global economy from the dangers that lie ahead. Cont'd...
Quick Overview of 4D Graphics
The 4 in the 4D represents the additional level of visual process information available, "Making the invisible - visible." This means that on the screen the user receives 3D visualization of the robots movement.
Robotics startup Exotec raises $3.5 million to help warehouses pack and dispatch goods using mini robots
Paul Sawers for Venture Beat: A French robotics startup has raised €3.3 million ($3.5 million) to build and grow a fleet of mobile robots that help warehouses prepare orders for delivery.
The company was founded in 2015 by former GE Healthcare software architect Renaud Heitz and BA Systèmes technical director Romain Moulin, and Exotec Solutions (“Exotec”) robots have already been tested across a number of industries. With $3.5 million more in its coffers, the company expects to launch its first robot — called Exo — into the wild in early 2017. The most recent round was raised from 360 Capital Partners, Breega Capital, and a handful of its existing investors.
The miniature robots are being targeted at any logistics operator that relies on humans to traverse large warehouses picking items off shelves, and it promises to cut employees’ average daily distance covered from 15km to 4km per day and to “[double] the productivity” of each worker. The robots are controlled by what the company calls a “centralized intelligence system,” which liaises between the humans and the robots on the ground. Cont'd...
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