You've probably already read about Panasonic's EVOLTA robot climbing the Grand Canyon, but you can see a nice video on YouTube about the making of this cute little robot.
The text is in Japanese, but it shows how during an endurance test one of the parts failed and how robot creator Tomotaka Takahashi - maker of robots such as MANOI and neon - had to redesign it.
(Photo borrowed from the official EVOLTA site.)
I just finished writing about the Helper Robot Project but I found this cute video of one helping humanoid with a lawn mower through ROBOTS DREAMS. I love the ending!
The organization that holds the ever-popular robot competition ROBO-ONE has come up with a new contest - build a helper robot that will REALLY help humans in our everyday lives AND MOREOVER that will sell. The Helper Robot Project aims to entice hobbyists to compete in a series of contests that will test certain skills and if the winning robot's skill is good enough, the sponsoring firm(s) will try to commercialize it.
The first such competition will be around developing a teleoperated biped robot that can shop at a mall while you stay at home. Finals will occur on Sept. 6, 2008, and will require the robots to shop at 3 stores inside the Azalea shopping mall in Kawasaki City. (Azalea and the Kawasaki and Kanagawa Robot Business Conference are cooperating with ROBO-ONE for this event.) The robot will have to pick up a product, communicate with the clerk (bargaining will have a high score) and pay, etc. Unlike the battling ROBO-ONE competition, the teleoperator will not be able to directly see the robot in action and will have to use Wi-Fi. Also the robots will have to walk down a catwalk so that people can judge their strides and looks.
And to compete in the finals, you must first win the preliminary contest which will be held on Aug. 17. There are 3 events in the preliminary - 1. picking up hard boiled eggs and putting them in a container, 2. folding a child-size T shirt and 3. a 30 minute endurance race.
The types of products the robots must shop at the finals will not be announced till after the preliminaries and they may not have anything to do with eggs and T shirts, says Masahiro Sakigawara, General Manager of the Future Robotics Technology Center. GetRobo communicated by email with Sakigawara, who is one of the people leading this project, and he says that these objects were chosen because "we want to see more advancement in hand dexterity."
At least one robot seemed to already be making progress on building a robot that can fold T shirts (a task that at least one of my friends complains that her boyfriend can not accomplish). A robot made by the MARU Family that is very well-know in the ROBO-ONE world is photographed below. (Thank you for the photo, Sakigawara-san!)
The robot can be of any size but must weigh under 30kg. And it MUST be a biped humanoid. The reason for ROBO-ONE insisting on humanoid robots is because "we think that human-shaped robots are most compatible with our society and that they can most easily work in our everyday environment" says Sakigawara.
Unfortunately you will have to be residing in Japan to participate in this competition but you can read more about it on ROBOT WATCH (Japanese).
In summer of 2006, 7 major Japanese companies announced that they will be funding the Center of IRT (CIRT) at the University of Tokyo. IRT stands for the integration of Information Technology and Robot Technology. The goal of CIRT is for academia and industry to get together to come up with innovative technical solutions to support the aging Japanese society by blending IT and RT, which till recently were considered very different disciplines in Japan. IT was the place for computer scientists whereas RT was led by mechanical engineers.
So what are the 7 companies up to? Some insight was provided at a recent symposium at CIRT. You can read full coverage of this symposium in this article (in Japanese) on ROBOT WATCH, but here is a brief summary.
Panasonic is working with Prof. Tomomasa Sato in developing a logistical support system for the home using an "intelligent container" and a mobile robot that hangs from the ceiling which will bring you the container with the things you need in it. Panasonic is working on the cameras and RFID tags that will be necessary for this system.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries known for the wakamaru robot is working on how to make wakamaru recognize human motion and gestures.
Toyota and Fujitsu are working with Prof. Masayuki Inaba. Prof. Inaba's team is currently developing a robot that will be able to travel autonomously from Tokyo University to Akihabara. Another project is a robot for the kitchen, specifically one that can carry and put away the dishes after a human washes them. (Dish washers are not as common in Japan as in other parts of the world.)
Toyota is also working on a robotic service dog as well as a robotic device meant for rehab that can assist walking.
Fujitsu - which has a service robot produt called enon - is hoping to develop techniques for the robot to communicate more effectively with humans through eye contact and audio.
The giant printing company Toppan Printing is trying to figure out whether its display technology can be utilized to assist the lives of the elderly and Olympus would like to see its MEMS technology used to make sensors for all the five senses for robots.
Too bad I don't see anything about Sega (the 7th company participating in CIRT) in this article.
Universal Robot Inc., a startup in Tokyo, has developed a voice authentication system for robots. The robot photographed below will only take verbal orders from the owner - or whoever is authorized to be the operator. The system can only understand Japanese at this time, but GetRobo thinks this type of technology will become extremely important now that robots are mobile and are being remotely operated (some even with cell phones). You do not want someone controlling your household robot from a remote location to use it to damage your home. And what about airports and other public locations?
The same with the autonomous vehicles now being developed through initiatives such as the DARPA Grand/Urban Challenges. A voice recognition system could help to prevent the robotic vehicles from being stolen and causing havoc. Well from that perspective, it could help the current car owners too, I guess.
A big new robot exhibition is in the works according to freelance journalist Kazumichi Moriyama who covers the Japanese robotics scene extensively. According to a recent post on his blog, an event dubbed ROBO JAPAN is being scheduled in October of this year. ROBO JAPAN is positioned as the successor to ROBODEX which was held for 3 years before it's last trade show was organized in 2003.
Moriyama-san writes that the new exhibition was announced at the most recent humanoid battling ROBO-ONE competion. The next ROBO-ONE is planned to be held during and at ROBO JAPAN. He says that they weren't able to provide further information about the new exhibition at this time, and I couldn't find anything else about it on the web, but GetRobo will keep you posted.
Osaka Prefecture has been promoting itself as the place to be for robotics companies. The most recent issue of its PR magazine BRAND-NEW OSAKA (in English) features some of the companies and researches going on there.
Associate Professor Takafumi Matsumaru at the Bio-Robotics & Human-Mechatronics Lab at Shizuoka University has come up with a new way to control mobile robots. He is envisioning cases in which elderly people can use their walking sticks to guide their mobile companions or uses where manual input of commands are not possible. He calls it the "Step-On Interface (SOI)." A video is worth a thousand words.....
Dr. Matsumaru (shown left) spent 12 years at Toshiba developing robots before he joined the faculty at Shizuoka University.
A group of engineering companies including Chinougijutsu Co. (Chinougijutsu means "intelligence technology" in Japanese) have developed a toilet cleaning robot for public restrooms. It is shaped like a ladybug and is called the "LADY BIRD." This one robot will be used on trial this year before 2,000 more are placed in restrooms along the highways throughout Japan in 2009.
LADY BIRD will be one solution for the facilities maintenance company that is facing an increasing problem in Japan where finding people to clean the public restrooms is becoming harder and harder.
LADY BIRD has a bit of wit and is meant to communicate with the people she meets. When I said "Ohayo-gozaimasu (Good Morning)" to her at the exhibition floor, she responded by saying "You know, it's almost noon." Yes indeed, it was 11:50am when I looked at my watch!
Three more special prizes for the 2007 Robot of the Year. Best component was the ultra-small AC servo actuator RSF-3B made by Harmonic Drive Systems, Inc. Fit for robot hands as in the video below.
Japan's machinery association chose the Automatic Robotic Blood Sample Courier System made by Matsushita Electric Works, Ltd. to award its prize. Two key features of this system is that the robots can work in groups without predesignated tracks.
Last but not least, an MR Image-Guided Surgical Robotic System developed by a group of academia and companies and led by Prof. Makoto Hashizume of the Dept. of Advanced Medical Initiatives at Kyushu University, received the jury's special award. What is so cool about this surgical robot is that it is compact enough to fit inside an MRI scanner and that all the electronic/mechanic parts needed to manipulate the robot and that would normally interfere with the MRI are OUTSIDE of the scanner. Thus for the first time, the robot enables doctors to conduct surgery utilizing MR images at real time. Something the popular da Vinci surgical system is not capable of doing.
The Small- to Medium-sized Venture Award went to miuro - the robotic music player made by ZMP Inc. Here is miuro dancing to the music at the Robot of the Year 2007 event.
Three things to know about miuro in 2008.
1. ZMP is teaming with Sega Toys which will be coming out with ODO - a low-cost version of miuro - in July. Whereas miuro costs 108,800 yen (a little over $1,000), the ODO is planned to be priced at 15,540 yen (about $150).
2. ZMP is working on new human interfaces including one which you can operate miuro by touching it in certain ways and not just through the remote as with the current version.
3. ZMP is collaborating with researchers at Tokyo University to come up with a new music search engine for miuro that will recommend music according to the owner's tastes.
Japanese roboticist Ryosuke (Ron) Tajima used the Wii Remote to turn the Roomba into a regular - or as he puts it "dull" - vacuum cleaner. Check out the video below.
Tajima-san - who is clad in kimono in this video - is also the creator of the one-leg hopping robot. You can see a video of the robot at this site. Click the photo on the left to see it hop.
There is a beautiful article on Pink Tentacle about who won the 2007 Robot of the Year Award so I don't want to go into the details, but GetRobo was at the award exhibition and symposium where the people that developed the winnng robots talked about their experiences. (GetRobo was invited there to talk about the recent trends in robotics in the U.S.)
Dr. Shinsuke Sakakibara, a managing officer at Fanuc Ltd., talked about how from around year 2000 the advancement in vision sensors and force sensors enabled them to start making intelligent robots for industries that till then had not benefited from robots. The M-430iA - which won the Grand Prize - is one of them and handles food and pharmaceutical products.
The M-430iA in the video below is packing small pieces of Yokan - or soft bean cakes.
The next video I took at IREX is another Fanuc robot - the M-710iC. Due to its vision sensors, it can pick up odd-shaped parts that are randomly stacked up in a box and place them as necessary.
Dr. Sakakibara said that Fanuc currently has 2000 employees and 1200 robots working at its company. And the reliability of Fanuc's industrial robots is at the level where there is less than one failure in 100 months - that's more than 8 years!
Toyota announced on Dec. 6th two new robots as well as the grand scheme on where it's heading in the development of what it calls the "Partner Robots."
One is the Mobility Robot which is meant for moving people/things from one place to another. It can move at 6km/hour and continue going for about 20km after charging the battery for an hour. It can also climb a 10 degree slope and avoid obstacles.
The Mobility Robot is 1 meter high when boarding and 1.1 meter when moving. It weighs 150 kg.
The second is the Violin Robot which is 1.5 meter tall and weighs 56 kg. This robot can play the violin skillfully with its 17 joints on both arms and hands, according to Asahi. The goal is to make this robot capable enough to assist with household chores.
According to Nikkei, Toyota will embark on trials utilizing these robots at hospitals and recreational facilities that are operated by its group companies starting next year. Also Toyota is planning to double the number of researchers working on the Partner Robots to about 200 within 3 years. The company's robotics researchers are currently scattered in 3 locations but will be consolidated into a new R&D center in Toyoda City that will open by spring of 2009.
What is most interesting to me is the fact that Toyota seems to be very open about the kinds of robots it is working on and when it plans to deliver them. This is a very different philosophy compared to Honda which is super secretive about where it is heading with the ASIMO.
Hello from Tokyo! Tokyo is bustling with robot-related news this week due to the 2007 International Robot Exhibition which started today, and GetRobo is here to see all the action.
First of all, Waseda University announced a new humanoid robot called TWENDY-ONE. The new robot is the 21st century version of WENDY - thus the name. The Waseda team is led by Prof. Shigeki Sugano, shown below with TWENDY-ONE, and Associate Prof. Hiroyasu Iwata.
Prof. Sugano calls TWENDY-ONE a "human-symbiotic-robot" meaning that the robot is designed to live together with humans. For a robot to really become part of our daily lives, it has to meet all of the following 6 requirements - it must 1. be safe 2. create a sense of companionship 3. have means to communicate with humans 4. be skillful 5. be able to perform physical labor 6. have mobility
TWENDY-ONE is "the first robot in the world with all 6 features," says Prof. Sugano.
I will write more about TWENDY-ONE on a separate day but here are some videos from the press conference.
TWENDY-ONE helps grandma (played by one of the students) get out of bed and into her wheelchair.
TWENDY-ONE takes out the ketchup from the fridge while grandma prepares her breakfast.
TWENDY-ONE carries the breakfast tray to the table for grandma.
Honda exhibited a new type of walking support equipment that it has developed utilizing technologies on its ASIMO at the International Home Care and Rehabilitation Exhibition in Tokyo, according to ROBONABLE. I am borrowing the photo from this site.
According to this article, you strap the gadget on your hip and legs and the sensors will pick up how you walk so that the motors can aid you when walking. The equipment is a sample exhibit and there is no information about commercialization in this story.
Sega Toys announced a new robot toy called MIO. I would say that the concept is similar to the Tamagotchi but in a more idog form. The new MIO can show 17 different kinds of emotions by the shape of its pupil which can change into more than 100 variations. A bone-shaped pupil means that it is hungry and if you feed him the bone (which comes as an accessory) he will become happy or love you etc. You can pet it to make it happy and when happy it can start walking too.
MIO is specifically targeted toward "elementary school age girls." Price is 9,240 yen including tax - about $80 - and Sega Toys aims to sell 100,000 of these per year.
I found out through this article on ROBOT WATCH about a small company in Hiroshima Prefecture called Oisaka Development Ltd. The article is a report from the exhibition floor at the recently-held Robotics Society of Japan's annual conference, but this company has developed a high-precision electromyograph.
Scroll down the article and toward the end you'll find a video right next to this photo and click the blue letters that says [動画3]. You'll see a video of a humanoid that is being manipulated by a man. The man is wearing a high-precision EMG sensor and is sending motion commands wirelessly to the robot. It looks a bit like controlling the robot with telepathy, doesn't it?
I wonder if Oisaka's Personal-EMG system is being used in exoskeletons such as HAL.........
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