ASAHIKAWA, Japan Removing the tiny eyes that pockmark potatoes is dull, repetitive and time-consuming work perfect, it would seem, for robots in a country where the population is declining and workers are increasingly in short supply.

But its not so simple.

When a food processing plant that makes potato salad and stews in Hokkaido, Japans northernmost island, tried out a robot prototype designed to remove the potatoes eyes, the machine was not up to the task.

The robots camera sensors were not sensitive enough to identify every eye. While human hands can roll a potato in every direction, the robot could rotate the vegetables on only one axis, and so failed to dig out many of the blemishes that are toxic to humans. Other perfectly good pieces were carved away.

Fundamentally, it could not do the work to the standard of humans, said Akihito Shibayama, a factory manager at Yamazaki Group, which operates the plant in Asahikawa, a midsize city in the middle of Hokkaido where 30 workers process about 15 tons of potatoes a day.

Japan, the worlds third largest economy, hopes that robots and other types of automation will help solve its demographic problems and impending labor shortage. That priority is reflected in a government blueprint, dubbed Society 5.0 and repeatedly emphasized by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

But businesses are struggling as some jobs that seem ripe for a robotic takeover prove remarkably difficult to outsource to a machine.

Robots can perform simple tasks but not tasks that require judgment or the ability to evaluate a change in a situation, said Toshiya Okuma, associate director of global strategy in the robot business division of Kawasaki Heavy Industries, a leading Japanese developer of robotics that has long helped automate car factory assembly lines.

Looking to robots allows Japan to avoid hard choices about immigration, a delicate topic in a country reluctant to let in many outsiders. But its also a good cultural fit.

Japan was an early adopter of robots, installing them in car factories starting in the 1970s. And some of the most beloved Japanese touchstones are robots.

Doraemon, a cuddly blue robot cat, stars in a comic book series and one of the countrys longest-running television shows. Astro Boy or Tetsuwan Atomu in Japan is a superhero in comics, television shows and movies, a kind of android equivalent of Pinocchio who fights for peace between robots and humans.

Still, however hospitable Japanese businesses have been to robots, they have learned that robots able to perform somewhat sophisticated tasks cost much more than human workers.

So at the factory in Asahikawa, where about 60 percent of the work is automated, many tasks still require the human touch. Workers peel pumpkins, for example, because some skin enhances the flavor of stew. A robot cant determine just how much skin to shuck off.

Other efforts to use robots or automation have hit snags, in programs ranging from self-driving buses to package-delivering drones or robots that comfort nursing home residents.

A hotel staffed by androids in southern Japan ended up laying off some of its robots after customers complained that they were not as good at hospitality as people.

During a trial of self-driving buses in Oita City, also in southern Japan, one bus crashed into a curb, and officials realized that autonomous vehicles were not quite ready to cope with situations like traffic jams, jaywalkers or cars running red lights.

For decades, Japan has been a leader in the use of robots. It is the worlds largest maker of industrial robots, and once led the globe in the number of robots per employee, said Gee Hee Hong, an economist specializing in Japan at the International Monetary Fund.

More recently, according to the International Federation of Robots, Singapore, South Korea and Germany have overtaken Japan in robots per worker.

Unlike in the West, where employees often view automation as an existential threat, robots in Japan are generally portrayed as friendly forces.

Real world robots are regarded for the most part as benevolent and as a kind of symbol of an advanced, technologically savvy society, said Jennifer Robertson, a professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan and author of Robo Sapiens Japanicus: Robots, Gender, Family and the Japanese Nation.

I think the Japanese have been more innovative in thinking about applications of robotics in everyday life, Ms. Robertson added. But the hype got in the way of reality.

Helping drive the interest in robots are concerns about the declining population in Japan, where births are at their lowest level since 1874. Already industries like manufacturing, caregiving, construction and agriculture are starting to run low of workers.

In Japan, instead of displacing workers, you are simply replacing workers, said Todd Schneider, deputy division chief for the Japan division of the International Monetary Fund.

In Hokkaido, for example, where there are 1.2 job openings for every working-age resident, recent tests of autonomous driving trucks have not been perceived as a way to get rid of workers since they are already in short supply, prefectural officials say.

Hokuren, a food company that processes beet sugar in northeastern Hokkaido, needs about 250 drivers during the peak fall season to transport 6,000 tons of beets a day from farms and storage facilities to its processing plant.

Because of intense labor shortages this year, Hokuren tested autonomous vehicles manufactured by UD Trucks, a Volvo subsidiary based in Japan. But Hokuren officials say more tests are needed to ensure that vehicles can handle impediments like snowy or icy roads or changes in traffic lights.

Genyou Imai, 48, the owner of a trucking company that regularly supplies drivers to Hokuren, acknowledged that he could not hire enough to meet his clients needs and that the autonomous vehicles might free his company up for other kinds of work.

Although Parliament passed a bill last year to grant new visas to foreign workers to help cope with shortages, the government has consistently emphasized robots as more likely saviors.

So where you would potentially have immigrants doing the jobs, you say, Go make robots, said Selma Sabanovic, a professor of cognitive science at Indiana University who was a visiting scholar at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Tsukuba, Japan.

Business leaders have expressed doubts that foreigners could quickly solve Japans need for workers, in part because of societal resistance.

Japan has kind of a very pure-blood race, said Noritsugu Uemura, an executive in charge of government and external relations for Mitsubishi Electric, a leading electronics manufacturer. I think not only could it take 20 or 30 years, but it will take more like 40 or 50 years to integrate immigrants into Japan.

We cant wait such a long time, he added.

Robots have helped the Kalm dairy outside Sapporo, Hokkaidos capital, trim from 15 workers to five. Now eight robots milk more than 400 cows three times a day as jazz piano music plays over loudspeakers in the barn.

Each cow wears a sensor on its collar to signal the robots when it is time for milking. Automated gates corral the animals into stalls where the robots attach suction cups to the cows teats. Computers track the volume of milk streaming into tanks.

Jin Kawaguchiya, chief executive of Kalm and a former banker who took over his wifes familys dairy business, said that to survive, it had to merge with several other local dairies that were also short of workers.

The best thing we could do, Mr. Kawaguchiya said, was make it into a humanless process.

Eimi Yamamitsu contributed reporting.

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Japan Loves Robots, but Getting Them to Do Human Work Isnt Easy - The New York Times

POWELL Students in the Robotics Club at Powell Middle School are blazing past the competition this year, and one team has been selected to represent the whole state in a global competition.

The middle school robotics team, Black and Orange Storm, took the Champions Award on Dec. 7, at the FIRST Lego League Wyoming State Championship in Casper. That drew an invite to represent Wyoming at the World Festival in April in Houston.

The team estimates the trip will cost about $10,000 for all nine members, so the team members are busy coming up with fundraising ideas including asking local businesses to sponsor their trip.

The stormers also took first place in the Robot Performance Award while Power House, another PMS team, took first place for the Innovation Solution Award.

The club is sponsored by Zac Opps, computer science instructor at PMS, and is comprised of a number of teams.

The Lego League has different themes every year, and this year the theme was City Shaper. The projects sought innovative and creative approaches to addressing various problems within a city, such as transportation, environment and accessibility.

The students were presented with the challenge of identifying a problem within their own communities, researching the problem and developing and refining a solution.

They also designed, built and programmed a robot to execute tasks on a board that simulated engineering challenges in an urban environment. The tasks involved picking up, transporting and delivering objects in various missions, with teams awarded points based on how well they carried out a mission. It was in this competition that Black and Orange Storm took the first place Robotics Performance Award.

For the innovation project, the stormers looked at ways to reuse the sand the city spreads on roadways when theres snow and ice.

It was raining and snowing at the time (they brainstormed ideas), so it was something we were thinking about, said Black and Orange Storm team member Kenan Lind.

What they discovered through their research is that cities often use salt and chemicals, which arent always great for the environment. After talking to Powell Streets Superintendent Gary Butts, however, they learned Powell crews use mostly sand, and it doesnt get reused. Instead, the city sweeps it up and uses it for landfill cover.

It gets ground down and they cant use it again, said Luke Legler, who is also a stormer.

For their innovative solution, the kids are considering how the used sand can be filtered and applied for traction on hiking trails.

Power Houses innovation project, for which they won a first place award, addressed the problem of lead poisoning with a project called Put Lead to Bed, inspired by the problems Flint, Michigan, had in 2014 with the citys water system. Through their research the team discovered lead leaches through corrosive water pipes, and small towns cant raise the revenue to replace all their old lead pipes.

The students got in touch with Powells water superintendent, Ty McConnell, and after talking to him, they developed an idea for a sealant that could be sprayed inside the pipe with a robot. The non-toxic sealant will create a barrier between the corrosive water and the lead pipes.

Hopefully, science will soon catch up with the revolutionary idea and the Power House can find a new way to help small towns with the lethal lead pipes, said Power House team member Emma Johnson.

Last year, the stormers were called the Pink and Fluffy Unicorns. It was a name team member Salem Brown wanted to stick with this year. However, the other students wanted a name thats a bit more stormy, so the unicorns became the Black and Orange Storm.

The team did win the inspiration award last year, but that success pales in comparison to what they achieved this year.

We won a real award this time, said Brown, who did a lot of research into this years innovation project.

Brown didnt have a driving passion for robotics when she first got into the club several years ago, but her interest has held ever since.

I sat down at the table and they let me in, she said of how it all began.

Most of the members have been in the club and known each other for a long time.

The stormers didnt go to the Casper competition expecting to do so well; they were just having fun at the projects. When the announcement came that the Powell students had taken the Champions Award, they were floored.

I really wasnt expecting it. When they called us onto the stage, I was completely shocked, said stormer Alan Crawford.

There are other teams in the club, including the Rovengers and Chicken Nugget Tribe, and while they didnt win any awards at the competition in Casper, the students are still getting a lot out of their experience.

I chose to join the robots team because I did robotics in elementary school and I thought I could learn a lot from the experience, said Isabelle Lobingier, whos on the Rovenger team.

The seventh-grader said her continued participation has allowed her to improve her skills and make new friends.

For Johnson, an eighth-grader with the Power House team, the best part of the experience is the sense of accomplishment.

The thing that I like most about robotics is that seeing how far youve come, she said before they went to the state competition. The team itself has gone through so many changes and I really have enjoyed watching it develop.

Any individuals or businesses who would like to sponsor the Black and Orange Storms trip to Houston for the global robotics competition can contact Opps at PMS.

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Powell robotics team heading to national competition - Wyoming Tribune

Last year saw a number of significant changes take place in the edtech sector, and it looks like this innovation is going to continue into 2020 and beyond. For example, we have seen the rise of personalised learning a system which tests a students current level before using that information to guide them through the curriculum at an appropriate, personalised pace. Innovations in personalised learning mean that more and more students are able to enjoy and benefit from a learning experience that has been adapted to their ability.

In 2019, we have also seen a welcome discussion on the importance of bridging the gender gap in STEM subjects something I anticipate will continue to emerge as 2020 progresses. But what else can we expect 2020 to bring?

Edtech to support teacher wellbeing

In July 2019, Ofsted published a report which focused on teacher wellbeing and their research found that, despite most teachers enjoying teaching and maintaining good relationships with both colleagues and pupils, certain elements of the job led to poor occupational wellbeing for many teachers.

Although the reasons for this are complex, it is certain that technology will play a part in improving this wellbeing, especially as schools move to evidence how they are supporting teachers as part of the new Ofsted Inspection Framework. Whether this technology takes the shape of teacher-tailored wellbeing apps, or AI-software that allows for more streamlined administrative procedures, edtech will certainly be looking for ways to mitigate the undue stress on teachers and in doing so, will improve teachers wellbeing and cultivate better working environments.

Renewed emphasis on cross-curricular learning

One of the most important challenges when teaching is student engagement. Cross-curricular learning allows a child to be creative, think critically and approach a subject or discipline from a new perspective all of which help to boost engagement. But how can effective cross-curricular learning be facilitated?

Thanks to an increasingly digitised and automated workforce, the rise of robotics will continue in edtech. Robotics provides an umbrella offering of engineering, AI and technology as well as integrating subjects such as science and design into technology. Creating these cross-curricular learning opportunities through edtech will help schools and teachers streamline resource commitments but also deepen students knowledge through cross-curricular and practical applications. For example, with a little creativity, programming and coding resources can be used to measure soil pH and plant health an activity that has the power to connect the dots between coding, biology and chemistry.

Whats more, this active approach to learning reinforces the idea that science is not something that is isolated to textbooks and classrooms.

Bridging the gender gap in STEM subjects

Cross-curricular learning is about accessibility. However, the gender gap continues to be a problem in STEM subjects, with far too few girls pursuing STEM subjects as they progress through school.

Of course, a large part of the problem is rooted in societal expectations. One solution however, is to ensure that students irrespective of gender feel equipped and motivated to engage in the study of the STEM. I believe that technology has a huge role to play in this process and introducing engaging learning resources at an early age is vital in nurturing a life-long interest in these subjects.

If students are given the chance to enjoy a hands-on experience in STEM-related fields, then it is much more likely they will pursue these subjects later in their learning careers. Technology can help collapse gender expectations and ensure that all children receive a fun, inspiring and motivating introduction to the world of science, engineering and mechanics.

Coding for all

Coding has fast become an in-demand skill, particularly as we become ever more reliant on technology. Although it is clear that coding is taking centre-stage in education, few question the accessibility in this field.

To combat this, I anticipate a multi-disciplinary and creative approach that combines play principles with a personalised learning experience, building an engaging and motivating environment for students who want to involve themselves in this demanding field.

More holistic personalised learning

Personalised learning stood at the forefront of the edtech sector in 2019 and is showing very few signs of slowing down! As we enter 2020, I expect to see this trend continue but in a more holistic way. For example, I anticipate personalised learning to reach beyond meeting pupils individual needs and integrating personalised homework and revision, and assessment to ensure that pupils receive as close to a 1:1 learning experience as possible.

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Edtech 2020: personalised learning, robotics and teacher wellbeing - Education Technology

Robotic systems work on the chassis of a car during an automated stage of production at the Jaguar Land Rover factory (Leon Neal/Getty Images)

Automation is constantly being heralded as the reason for job losses in various industries but one expert believes there is a silver lining.

Rich Walker, the company director of robotics firm Shadow Robot Company, has gone on the record to say the introduction of artificial intelligence into the workplace will free up workers to take on more interesting jobs.

Speaking to Express.co.uk, Mr Walker explained that current working practices are not as efficient as they could be. In some areas specifically manufacturing adding in smart robots would allow humans to take on more complex tasks.

Most people in manufacturing industries spend most of their time picking things up and putting them down again, he told the site.

They do this over and over again all day every day. Even in an automated production line, there will be lots of people giving it parts.

This isnt a very efficient way for people to work, he said.

Most of the companies we talk to that do that say we have lots of people, all those people know how we work as an organisation and we have much better jobs for them to do.

But we cant get them to do those better jobs because we actually have to have people standing here all day picking things up and giving them to machines or picking them up and putting them down.

So if we can just make that next bit something that machines can do then that frees up people to do far more interesting jobs.

However, other thinkers dont necessarily share the same viewpoint.

A recent report from the Institute for Public Policy Research reckons that without policy intervention, automation is likely to exacerbate existing inequality rather than improve it.

And the GMB union said old jobs are being subsumed to automation faster than new jobs and are being created after reporting 600,000 job losses in manufacturing in the last decade.

But last year the World Economic Forum (WEF) seemed to agree with Walkers viewpoint.

Despite bringing widespread disruption, the advent of machine, robots and algorithm could actually have a positive impact on human employment, it stated.

However, if automation is going to free up workers from menial tasks then there will be a challenge for employers to reskill and redeploy their workers elsewhere.

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Robotics expert says automation will provide 'more interesting' jobs - Metro.co.uk

Close to 60 years later a start-up operation called Construction Robotics, based near Rochester, New York, came up with a software-programmed device that could build an entire brick wall. CR branded their creation SAM (for semi-automated mason), and in SAM: One Robot, a Dozen Engineers, and the Race to Revolutionize the Way We Build, Waldman chronicles the long hours, endless frustrations and arduous struggles it took to come up with a version of SAM that was viable. That meant a machine that was easy for contractors to operate and could function effectively in an outdoor environment (construction sites were terrible places for robots).

As he tells the story of SAM, Waldman supplies brief histories of the construction industry and robotic arms. He also highlights the almost primal connection we have with brick that we dont quite have with steel and glass.

Clay resonates, Waldman says. Around the world, across religions, mythology has it that God fashioned mankind out of clay. Like us, bricks are of the earth; like us, bricks breathe; and like us, each brick is imperfect but also good enough. Even in the 21st century, he adds, [b]ricks strike a sociological nerve, presenting a familiar, comforting fabric in our lives. Bricks make schools feel school-like and churches church-like.

The economics of construction with brick, however, are under pressure. Starting in the 1890s, with the introduction of steel as a construction material, [m]asonry went from fundamental from essential to just a veneer, Waldman writes. One result was an 80-percent reduction in the use of brick in buildings. Another was that masonry became more of a specialized trade.

While masonry accounts for only four cents of every construction dollar, building in brick is still a big business. Ten billion dollars worth of bricks are installed annually in the United States, Waldman informs us. Of all the surface area on the exteriors of all the non-residential buildings in the country, a quarter is covered in brick.

Although bricklaying remains a significantly unionized industry with many masonry firms clinging to their traditional way of working and union-negotiated level of pay, some union leaders have pushed for technical innovation as a way to save costs and bring some relief to an aging work force (the average mason is 55 years old).

This was where Scott Peters, the head of Construction Robotics, sought his opportunity.

Scott wasnt trying to replace humans, Waldman writes. [H]is aim was to combine forces, and save men their jobs by marrying man and machine. By creating a bricklaying robot, he aimed to eliminate lifting and bending and repetitive-motion injuries in humans; to improve the quality of walls; to finish jobs faster and safer and cheaper. SAM, it should be said, still needed close human supervision even when working well. It also needed to be manually supplied with bricks and mortar.

Waldman immerses you eyeball-deep in the technological and logistical challenges Scott and his team faced, while also taking the marketing side of things into account. Peters initially embraced a corporate theory of minimal viable product, which meant he booked construction gigs before SAM was completely ready. The idea was that customer feedback would suggest improvements to SAM.

Scotts gamble, Waldman writes, was certainly bold. It was also somewhere between ridiculous and insane.

Waldman is clearly exhilarated by the story hes telling, and his zest comes through in the books best turns of phrase, whether hes critiquing the appearance of an early iteration of SAM (It looked, frankly, like a hot dog cart) or noting the way that in the choreography that is construction [o]ne changed note altered the whole tune.

That said, SAM poses some stumbling blocks for the lay reader. An index and glossary would have come in handy to help keep track of all the acronyms and specialized vocabulary Waldman uses. You can, perhaps, intuit the meaning of a sentence like Kerry turned an electric drill into a slump meter with a digital readout, and made a viscometer from a Sawzall and a spade bit. But to fully understand the books details requires constant Googling. Elsewhere, Waldmans word choice can seem off for instance, when he talks about an early version of SAM being disfigured and overhauled. Might he mean dismantled or disassembled?

The books incidental pleasures include Waldmans visit to the annual World of Concrete trade show where Construction Robotics introduced SAM. Details on the U.S. Brick Olympics and International Brick Collectors Association offer quirky surprises, too.

All in all, SAM reveals a world that surrounds us but mostly eludes our notice and thats quite a feat.

SAM: ONE ROBOT, A DOZEN ENGINEERS, AND THE RACE TO REVOLUTIONIZE THE WAY WE BUILD

By Jonathan Waldman

Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster, 267 pp., $28

Michael Upchurch is the former Seattle Times book critic.

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Jonathan Waldmans SAM documents the quest to invent a robotic bricklayer - The Boston Globe

aibos rival is here! chinese tech firm elephant robotics has launched the bionic marscat on kickstarter. the robotic cat autonomously moves using its 16 motorized joints and recognizes 20 keywords including come here.

images courtesy of elephant robotics

marscat is available in white, gray, ginger, and black, and is outfitted with six capacitive touch sensors. its other electronics include a depth-sensing laser, a microphone, a speaker and a raspberry pi microprocessor. a 5mp camera in the nose allows it to see and interact with the user and its surroundings.

the home bot can reportedly recognize objects such as three included toys, plus its able to avoid obstacles and respond to several voice. marscats personality is said to develop over time, with the ability to randomly perform activities such as playing, sleeping, and even burying imaginary waste in a litter box.

determining factors include the users tone of voice, and the number of times that they handle the marscat. the more often that the user talks to the robot, the more frequently it will meow at them.

the battery life last between two and three hours and up to five hours for low usage via USB charging. the marscat is currently the subject of a kickstarter campaign where a pledge of us$649 will get you one, when and if they reach production. the planned retail price is $1,299.

you will never know what marscat will do next because it is like a real cat, fully autonomous, the company explains. marscat acts independently without any instructions. marscat walks, runs, sleeps, sits, stretches, bites nails, kneads and even buries litter although she wont produce any waste. it may express different emotions by different meows or gestures. sometimes it may do some amazing things that surprise you and make your day!

project info

company: elephant roboticsproduct: marscattype: robotic catstatus: kickstarter

kieron marchese I designboom

jan 03, 2020

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the marscat home bot is the world's first bionic robotic cat - Designboom

STEM features - Robots are fun, but lets face it: A lot of the reasoning involved in splurging on a toy like this is for STEM learning. Different robots and robotics have varying levels of STEM; some have it as a primary focus, while for others its just a result of using the robot. If you specifically want your child to learn about coding or robotics, it may be better to pick a model that emphasizes these features.

Age level - The age of your child plays an important role in what kind of robot would best suit them. You may want to consider purchasing a robot that will grow with them if your child is young, offering basic features at the beginning with room to expand later. On the other hand, if your child is old enough to learn to code, a more advanced model might work better.

Personality - Its hard not to get attached to a robot, especially considering how cute some of them are. Some robots even have a personality that will develop based on interaction and use. If you think your child might enjoy having a robot companion to play with, choosing one with a personality might be a fun idea.

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The 8 Best Robotics for Kids in 2020

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Robotics is a domain in artificial intelligence that deals with the study of creating intelligent and efficient robots.

Robots are the artificial agents acting in real world environment.

Robots are aimed at manipulating the objects by perceiving, picking, moving, modifying the physical properties of object, destroying it, or to have an effect thereby freeing manpower from doing repetitive functions without getting bored, distracted, or exhausted.

Robotics is a branch of AI, which is composed of Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Computer Science for designing, construction, and application of robots.

The robots have mechanical construction, form, or shape designed to accomplish a particular task.

They have electrical components which power and control the machinery.

They contain some level of computer program that determines what, when and how a robot does something.

Here is the difference between the two

Locomotion is the mechanism that makes a robot capable of moving in its environment. There are various types of locomotions

This type of locomotion consumes more power while demonstrating walk, jump, trot, hop, climb up or down, etc.

It requires more number of motors to accomplish a movement. It is suited for rough as well as smooth terrain where irregular or too smooth surface makes it consume more power for a wheeled locomotion. It is little difficult to implement because of stability issues.

It comes with the variety of one, two, four, and six legs. If a robot has multiple legs then leg coordination is necessary for locomotion.

The total number of possible gaits (a periodic sequence of lift and release events for each of the total legs) a robot can travel depends upon the number of its legs.

If a robot has k legs, then the number of possible events N = (2k-1)!.

In case of a two-legged robot (k=2), the number of possible events is N = (2k-1)! = (2*2-1)! = 3! = 6.

Hence there are six possible different events

In case of k=6 legs, there are 39916800 possible events. Hence the complexity of robots is directly proportional to the number of legs.

It requires fewer number of motors to accomplish a movement. It is little easy to implement as there are less stability issues in case of more number of wheels. It is power efficient as compared to legged locomotion.

Standard wheel Rotates around the wheel axle and around the contact

Castor wheel Rotates around the wheel axle and the offset steering joint.

Swedish 45o and Swedish 90o wheels Omni-wheel, rotates around the contact point, around the wheel axle, and around the rollers.

Ball or spherical wheel Omnidirectional wheel, technically difficult to implement.

In this type, the vehicles use tracks as in a tank. The robot is steered by moving the tracks with different speeds in the same or opposite direction. It offers stability because of large contact area of track and ground.

Robots are constructed with the following

Power Supply The robots are powered by batteries, solar power, hydraulic, or pneumatic power sources.

Actuators They convert energy into movement.

Electric motors (AC/DC) They are required for rotational movement.

Pneumatic Air Muscles They contract almost 40% when air is sucked in them.

Muscle Wires They contract by 5% when electric current is passed through them.

Piezo Motors and Ultrasonic Motors Best for industrial robots.

Sensors They provide knowledge of real time information on the task environment. Robots are equipped with vision sensors to be to compute the depth in the environment. A tactile sensor imitates the mechanical properties of touch receptors of human fingertips.

This is a technology of AI with which the robots can see. The computer vision plays vital role in the domains of safety, security, health, access, and entertainment.

Computer vision automatically extracts, analyzes, and comprehends useful information from a single image or an array of images. This process involves development of algorithms to accomplish automatic visual comprehension.

This involves

OCR In the domain of computers, Optical Character Reader, a software to convert scanned documents into editable text, which accompanies a scanner.

Face Detection Many state-of-the-art cameras come with this feature, which enables to read the face and take the picture of that perfect expression. It is used to let a user access the software on correct match.

Object Recognition They are installed in supermarkets, cameras, high-end cars such as BMW, GM, and Volvo.

Estimating Position It is estimating position of an object with respect to camera as in position of tumor in humans body.

The robotics has been instrumental in the various domains such as

Industries Robots are used for handling material, cutting, welding, color coating, drilling, polishing, etc.

Military Autonomous robots can reach inaccessible and hazardous zones during war. A robot named Daksh, developed by Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO), is in function to destroy life-threatening objects safely.

Medicine The robots are capable of carrying out hundreds of clinical tests simultaneously, rehabilitating permanently disabled people, and performing complex surgeries such as brain tumors.

Exploration The robot rock climbers used for space exploration, underwater drones used for ocean exploration are to name a few.

Entertainment Disneys engineers have created hundreds of robots for movie making.

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Artificial Intelligence - Robotics - Tutorialspoint

Robotics brings together several very different engineering areas and skills. There is metalworking for the body. There is mechanics for mounting the wheels on the axles, connecting them to the motors and keeping the body in balance. You need electronics to power the motors and connect the sensors to the controllers. At last you need the software to understand the sensors and drive the robot around.

This book tries to cover all the key areas of robotics as a hobby. When possible examples from industrial robots will be addressed too.

You'll notice very few "exact" values in these texts. Instead, vague terms like "small", "heavy" and "light" will be used. This is because most of the time you'll have a lot of freedom in picking these values, and all robot projects are unique in available materials.

Note to potential contributors: this section could be used to discuss the basics of robot design/construction.

This section could be used to discuss various means through which robots are constructed.

This section could be used to discuss the control method and control algorithm introduces and analyzes the robot, including the position control, trajectory control, force control, torque control, compliance control, hybrid force / position control, decomposition motion control, variable structure control, adaptive control and hierarchical control, fuzzy control, learning control, neural control and evolutionary control, intelligent control.

This section could be used to discuss components used in robotics or the making of robots.

This section could be used to discuss the things involved with controlling robots via computers.

Sensors that a robot uses generally fall into three different categories:

Sensors aren't perfect. When you use a sensor on your robot there will be a lot of times where the sensors acts funny. It could miss an obstacle, or see one where none is. Key to successfully using sensors is knowing how they function and what they really measure.

This section could be used to cover "special" robots.

Continue reading here:

Robotics - Wikibooks, open books for an open world

You may have heard of Aibo, Sonys robot dog, but if a robot cat is what youve always wanted, youre now able to back one on Kickstarter. In fact, it actually looks kind of cute.

MarsCat, made by Elephant Robotics, looks a lot like a cat, but its not realistic enough that youll be fooled into thinking its a replacement for a furry feline that might already wander around your house. But it seems as if Elephant Robotics is trying to give MarsCat a lot of cat-like mannerisms, and it can apparently do things like bat at toys, stretch its front two feet out, and even accept chin rubs! Aw.

MarsCat comes in white, gray, ginger, and black, and its outfitted with six capacitive touch sensors, a 5MP camera in its nose to help it see, and is powered by a Raspberry Pi 3. Elephant Robotics tells The Verge that youll get between two to three hours of battery life with constant interactions and up to five hours for low usage, such as when MarsCat is lying down or sitting while still powered on.

Elephant Robotics says your interactions with MarsCat will shape its personality. For example, if you talk with MarsCat a lot, MarsCat will apparently meow at you more often in response. The company also says MarsCat can recognize 20 keywords, and CEO Joey Song tells The Verge that MarsCat will recognize specific commands different people might use, such as saying come instead of come here.

If you want to change the behaviors of MarsCat yourself, Elephant Robotics says youll be able to program actions for it using an open API and its Raspberry Pi. At the moment, there isnt a place where developers can upload and share their programmed actions, but Song tells The Verge that there should be a place on Elephant Robotics website for that by the time MarsCat starts shipping to backers.

If you want to back MarsCat, it will cost $649 for the first 100 backers, and that cost will go up in increasing amounts depending on how many people have already backed it. If youre one of those first 100 backers, Elephant Robotics estimates it will deliver MarsCat in March 2020, with later backers getting their MarsCats later in 2020.

When MarsCat officially goes on sale next year, Elephant Robotics says it will cost $1,299. That may seem expensive comparatively, Sonys Aibo robot dog costs $2,899.99 but robot pets just dont come cheap. At least not yet.

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Theres a robot cat you can back on Kickstarter - The Verge

Local FIRST Tech Challenge Robotics Team 8711 The Gas Attendants of the E3 Robotics Center in Elkhart won the West Virginia State Championship Dec 8. FIRST denotes For the Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.

E3 Robotics Center is a non-profit that focuses on robotics for students in kindergarten through 12th grade, along with partnering with area schools and other community youth organizations to create an impact using STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) programs and robotics.

The West Virginia State Championships hosted robotics teams from eight different states as they competed at Fairmont State University in this years FIRST Tech Challenge Game, according to officials with E3 Robotics Center. FIRST Tech Challenge is one of four programs providing robotics competitions for more than 80 countries worldwide. FIRST Tech Challenge is designed for students in seventh through 12th grades to compete head-to-head in a sports-like playing field.

This years game SKYSTONE had teams collecting stones, which look like large LEGO blocks, and stacking them on top of a movable foundation. Teams compete in a 2-on-2 match to try to outscore the other side with points.

In the morning of the event, The Gas Attendants placed sixth in Qualifying Rounds in which teams win matches to move up in rankings before the elimination brackets in the afternoon.

The Gas Attendants proceeded to make the elimination bracket as one of the Alliance Captains, which allowed them to pick the partner they would like to play with in eliminations. The team selected Team 8297 Geared UP!, a part of Ashburn Robotics in Virginia. The two teams started at the bottom of the elimination bracket and had to compete against all the teams ranked above them, a news release about the event states.

The Gas Attendants and Geared UP! ended going undefeated through all of the elimination brackets and winning the finals match by one point.

The Gas Attendants also won the 2nd place Rockwell Collins Innovate Award for their robot design and, because they were the Winning Alliance Captains, were also invited to the Maryland Tech Invitational to be held in June 2020, where the top teams from around the world will be invited to compete.

The Gas Attendants are going into their sixth year as a team, and are now on their second generation of students since original members have graduated and gone to college. The team consists of 10 students, almost all of them rookies to this years team, a few of them being younger siblings of the original members of the team.

The team only had funds to take four of the 10 members to compete at the West Virginia state championship; consequently as a team they decided who they would be able to send to represent the team. They hope to raise more funds to allow them to travel more to several of the other top tournaments and events they will be invited to this season, officials with the company stated.

Members include: Devyn Clements, Drew Clements, Ashlyn Harradon, Ian Hornblower, Avery Mantyla, Nick McClimon, Isaac McClimon, Zach Poplar, Killian Townsend and Breanna Wormuth.

The Gas Attendants will now start their local competitions in Indiana.

To learn more about The Gas Attendants or the E3 Robotics Program, follow them on social media or visit e3robotics.org for more information.

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Local robotics team gets victory in West Virginia championship - Goshen News

HINGHAM, Mass. and CAESAREA, Israel, Nov. 26, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- XACT Robotics Ltd. today announced it will debut its first-to-market hands-free robotic technology at the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) 2019 Annual Meeting in Chicago, IL on December 1 6, 2019. XACT Robotics will be exhibiting at booth #1650 located in the First-Time Exhibitor Pavilion where attendees will have access to:

Interactive demos of the XACT Robotics hands-free technologyFace time with Nahum Goldberg, MD, Ph.D. (Jerusalem, Israel) and Sebastian Flacke, MD, Ph.D. (Burlington, MA) sharing their early experiences with the XACT Robotic SystemIn addition, XACT was selected to present its robotic technology at the Innovation Theater, booth #4700, on Monday, December 3rd at 3 PM Central Standard Time (CST).

Ad StatisticsTimes Displayed: 8639Times Visited: 80

Founded by Harel Gadot, a renowned entrepreneur in the MedTech robotics space, XACT Robotics technology is based on research originally conducted at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology, by Prof. Moshe Shoham, founder of Mazor Robotics (acquired by Medtronic in 2018).

For the latest updates on XACT Robotics, follow the company on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

About XACT RoboticsFounded in 2013, XACT Robotics Ltd., is a privately held company with offices in Hingham, MA, and Caesarea, Israel. XACT Robotics is pioneering the first hands-free robotic system, combining image-based planning and navigation with instrument insertion and steering capabilities to democratize interventional medicine for multiple stakeholders including technologists, doctors, health system providers, payors and patients, delivering accurate, consistent and efficient results for percutaneous interventional radiology procedures.

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XACT Robotics debuts its robotic technology at RSNA - DOTmed HealthCare Business News

Amazon Inc, the worlds largest online retailer, is being known these days as more of a technology company, and rightly so.

Technology is at the core of whatever Amazon does from algorithms that forecast demand and place orders from brands, and robots that sort and pack items in warehouses to drones that will soon drop packages off at homes.

At its new Go Stores, for instance, advances in computer vision have made it possible to identify the people walking in and what products they pick up, helping add them to their online shopping carts.

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and the worlds richest man, is always pulling new rabbits out of his hat, like next-day or same-day shipping and cashier-less stores. Besides, there is Blue Origin, the aerospace company privately owned by Bezos, which is on a mission to make spaceflight possible for everyone.

Be that as it may, a lot more disruption aimed at reaching the common man is on the anvil.

The most far-reaching and impactful technologies being developed today are for Amazons own use, but some others have the potential to disrupt every sector.

The technology marvels that Amazon Web Services the largest profit driving unit in Bezos stable is working on could jolt several industries, including in India, in the same way that Amazon once disrupted retail. In retail, while things like the size of the catalogue, advertising and other stuff might play a role in success, at Amazon, I think success is largely technology driven, said Chief Technology Officer Werner Vogels.

The ecommerce giant is using advances in technology to disrupt several sectors outside of retail though medicine, banking, logistics, robotics, agriculture and much more. Interestingly, some of that work is happening in India.

Initially, the thinking was around allowing enterprises in these sectors to grow by using its cloud storage and computing capabilities.

Now, Amazons reach has become more nuanced and it has moved up the value chain. For example, no longer is Amazon offering banks a place to securely store information, it is going beyond by offering tools to detect fraud, making it unnecessary for the lenders to build expensive data science teams in-house.

It is a similar story in other industries, made possible due to the massive amounts of data that Amazon collects and processes.

We give people the software capability, so they no longer need to worry about that side of things. Most of our services are machine learning under the covers (and) thats possible mostly because theres so much data available for us to do that, Vogels said.

Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Amazon is moving up the value chain in offering services backed by Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to automate repetitive tasks done by human beings. Enterprise customers will simply be able to buy into these services with minimal customisation and without a large data science and artificial intelligence team. In December, AWS launched its Fraud Detector service that makes it easy to identify potentially fraudulent activity online, such as payment fraud and creation of fake accounts. Even large banks in India have struggled to put together teams to build machine learning models for fraud detection, but with such a service they can train their systems easily. Code Guru is another service that uses Machine Learning to do code reviews and spit out application performance recommendations, giving specific recommendations to fix code. Today, this is largely done manually, with several non-technology companies struggling to build great software for themselves due to bad code. Transcribe Medical is a service that uses Amazons voice technology to create accurate transcriptions from medical consultations between patients and physicians. Medical transcription as a service is a big industry in India, and Indias IT service giants hire thousands to review code. These services are expected to replace mundane manual tasks, freeing up resources for sophisticated tasks, and could lead to disruption in several sectors in the country.

Medicine Hospitals in the United States have to save imaging reports for years. Earlier these were stored on tapes, since doing so digitally cost millions of dollars. The advent of cheaper cloud storage meant new scans could be saved digitally, making them accessible to doctors on demand. Now, doctors could refer to a patients earlier CT scan and compare that with the new one to diagnose an ailment, said Shez Partovi, worldwide lead for healthcare, life sciences, genomics, medical devices and agri-tech at Amazon. The power of cloud and AWS own capabilities in medical technology have only expanded since. Healthcare and life sciences form rapidly scaling units of AWS, which is building a suite of tools that allow breakthroughs in medicine from hospitals using the tools to do process modelling or operational forecasting, refining the selection of candidate drugs for trial or delivering diagnoses through computer imaging. Developed markets will be the first to adopt such technologies, but AWS is seeing demand surge from the developing world, including India. Not everyone is within a mile of a radiologist or physician, so diagnostics through AI could solve for that. Further, theres a lack of highly trained people, but when all you have to do is take an image, it requires a lot less training, said Partovi.

Space Bezos, in his private capacity, is now looking to connect remote regions with high-speed broadband. He is building a network of over 3,000 satellites through Project Kuiper, which will compete with Elon Musks SpaceX and Airbusbacked OneWeb. The bigger bet is in outer space though. His rocket company Blue Origin has already done commercial payloads on New Shepard, the reusable rocket that competes with SpaceXs Falcon 9. The capsule atop the New Shepard can carry six passengers, which Bezos looks to capitalise on for space tourism, a commercial opportunity most private space agencies are looking at. It is also building a reusable rocket - Glenn, named after John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth which can carry payloads of as much as 45 tonnes in low earth orbit. Bezos aim, however, is to land on the Moon. His Blue Moon lander can deliver large infrastructure payloads with high accuracy to pre-position systems for future missions. The larger variant of Blue Moon has been designed to land a vehicle that will allow the United States to return to the Moon by 2024.

Robotics Amazons take on robotics is grounds-up. The company has been part of an opensource network that is developing ROS 2 or Robot Operating System 2, which will be commercial-grade, secure, hardened and peer reviewed in order to make it easier for developers to build robots. There is an incredible amount of promise and potential in robotics, but if you look at what a robot developer has to do to get things up and running, its an incredible amount of work, said Roger Barga, general manager, AWS Robotics and Autonomous Services, at Amazon Web Services. Apart from building the software that robots will run on, AWS is also making tools that will help developers simulate robots virtually before deploying them on the ground, gather data to run analytics on the cloud and even manage a fleet of robots. While AWS will largely build tools for developers, as capabilities such as autonomous navigation become commonplace, the company could look to build them in-house and offer them as a service to robot developers, Barga said. With the advent of 5G technology, more of the processing capabilities of robots will be offloaded to the cloud, making them smarter and giving them real-time analytics capabilities to do a better job. For India, robot builders will be able to get into the business far more easily, having all the tools on access, overcoming the barrier of a lack of fundamental research in robotics.

Enterprise Technology AWS might be a behemoth in the cloud computing space, but cloud still makes up just 3% of all IT in the world. The rest remains on-premise. While a lot will migrate to the cloud, some will not. In order to get into the action in the on-premise market, Amazon has innovated on services that run on a customers data centre, offering capabilities as if the data is stored on the cloud.

With Outposts, which was announced last month, AWS infrastructure, AWS services, APIs, and tools will be able to run on a customers data centre. Essentially, this will allow enterprises to run services on data housed within their own data centres, just like how they would if it had been stored on AWS. The other big problem that AWS is looking to solve is not having its own data centres close enough to customers who require extremely low-latency computing. For this, the company has introduced a new service called Local Zones, where it deploys own hardware closer to a large population, industry, and IT centre where no AWS Region exists today. Both these new services from AWS could be valuable in India given the lower reach of cloud computing among enterprises as well as stricter data localisation requirements.

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From retail to robotics, Jeff Bezos is betting big on technology - Economic Times

Rampaging killer tyrant robots. In the movies, they keep subjecting humans to their own systems of oppression. My favorite is when they mechanize all human operations and sequester them in Matrix-like pods.

Cinematic simulations aside, these types of fears are held by eminent minds. In his final book, Brief Answers to the Big Questions, Stephen Hawking describes a futuristic scene where crookedly programmed robots hack into vital facilities and take over the world. Neil deGrasse Tyson and Elon Musk also share the apocalyptic fear, while Jeff Bezos expresses it with less intimidation. Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku thinks the threat of AI will materialize not for us, but for our grandkids. Once robots gain self-awareness, he says, realizing theyre indeed robots, they could pose some kind of intended threat against humanity. Fueling the dystopian vision is Kakus idea that humans will be genetically and cybernetically fused with robots at that point, a cinematically seductive Franken-entanglement sure to bewitch another generation of sci-fi addicts.

Whether the fears are just products of busy imaginations and automation or are apocalyptically accurate depends on various factors and, I think, whether AI and robots are automated with high emotional quotients (EQs). Emotively programming robots makes perfect ethical and fiscal sense. Robots are designed to do human work. They usually cobot alongside humans, and as Facebooks Chief AI Scientist, Yann LeCun, has pointed out, were not going to have a ton of intelligence without emotions anyway. Its even comforting to think that consumers are paying to control the programming direction of AI with their needs and wants and businesses should heed that call. Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and other major tech companies have already begun, and McKinsey reports that the number of jobs related to developing and deploying new technologies, including AI- and automation-related jobs, will grow to 20 to 50 million globally by 2030.

Have no fear. By tooling AI with high EQ under the same rules that have been prescribed in ethics and wartime, AI and robotics products will sell better, because they will coalesce with human wants and needs. Its an approach that my business associates and I take and I think all business leaders should adopt as well.

Asimov And Aristotle

Coupling Isaac Asimovs Laws of Robotics with Aristotles virtue ethics builds a rational foundation for AI and robotic behavior. Asimovs three laws state that robots must not injure but aid humans, must obey human directives that don't conflict with the first law and must protect themselves, except when doing so conflicts with the first two laws. Virtue ethics is Aristotles ethical system of emphasizing and exercising the classic virtues. Its the first normative system of ethics established and exercised continuously in the West and is still taught in university courses today.

Whether AI is programmed to mine data for commerce or robots are developed for military use, if the products arent solely manufactured to aid, I believe they should expressly be forbidden.

The 2012 Directive

Like Hawking, deGrasse Tyson, Musk and Bezos, ex-Google engineer Laura Nolan also fears killer robots, and, like them, not without reason. Despite the Department of Defenses 2012 3000.09 Directive that established ethical navigation rules for autonomous and semi-autonomous systems, martial technology, in awful times, has destroyed lives. The directive states that vehicles shall be designed to allow commanders and operators to exercise appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force. Additionally, these cobotic vehicles can be used to select and crush targets with the exception of selecting humans as targets. Even though this is the mandate, we have seen mistakes, and the challenge of keeping the tech safe from cyberattacks will always be paramount.

Nolan says, There could be large-scale accidents because these things will start to behave in unexpected ways, perhaps stoking the same robot self-awareness projection as Kaku. Nolan should place the directive at the heart of the campaign to block killer robots, and businesses can and should, together with Asimovs laws and Aristotles virtue ethics, use it as a foundation for programming. Doing so will help aid some of the practical and emotional needs the consumer nation is experiencing today.

The Robot Story

Understanding the robot story could help facilitate more confidence. Way before Norbert Wiener published his seminal book on cybernetics in 1948, the ancient imagination was already familiar with robots. In the 10th century B.C.E., artificer Yen Shih purportedly presented King Mu with an automaton, and Homer populated his tales with mythic automata servants that appeased the gods while cybernetic statues teased Athenians on their way to the agora. History reveals that robots are created with the singular purpose to assist humans, not replace or trounce them like they do in Blade Runner. If we keep one lens on history, we see that the reasons to furnish AI with EQ tech are organic.

AI platforms will keep entering the market, and all of them will seek to aid humanity, especially in areas with close robot-human contact. Nova reports American seniors will need 3.5 million additional healthcare workers by 2030. Given that one-on-one support is often unaffordable, robots may become suitable human replacements. Ironically, the demographic that is criticized the most for not embracing change will likely be the front-line adopters of robotic technology. Thus, the time to program AI applications with high EQs is now.

Prometheus created man. Victor Frankenstein created monster. The next fear is what the monster will create. At the shaky heart lies a phobia of change, but I believe automation unease will be eclipsed by the assets of AI and robotics. Value is the marauder of unctuous fears. DXC Technology reports, Using robotics enables us to spend more time on value-adding activity for our clients, rather than data entry and manipulation. Robotics saves. If AI and robotics applications mirror human needs and are built with EQ steeped in ethics, these inevitable machines could scale faster and maybe even help save the world rather than destroy it.

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Can High-EQ Robots Save The World? - Forbes

NAGOYA More and more unmanned cleaning robots are being used in Japan, mainly at public transportation facilities, amid severe labor shortages.

Faced with difficulties securing enough workers, Central Japan Railway Co. started using four robots this year to clean Nagoya Station and other locations, hoping that using the robots expected to cover most of the necessary cleaning work will help save on labor costs.

In the wee hours, automated robots scrub the floors at Nagoya Station with water. In February, two robots joined 50 human staff to perform cleaning work.

We can reduce the cost of hiring and training, a JR Central official said.

JR Central has also introduced cleaning robots at offices and commercial facilities.

In the half year from May, SoftBank Robotics Corp. put on the market over 1,000 units of a new type of carpet cleaning robot, reflecting rising demand for such robots for use at offices and hotels.

If the robot is guided once by hand along a cleaning route, it will memorize that route and clean the area automatically.

At Narita International Airport near Tokyo, over 10 cleaning robots have been introduced since November.

Ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Games, well make robots do work that cleaning staff do now so the staff can focus on work requiring more skills, an official at Narita International Airport Corp. said.

East Japan Railway Co., or JR East, has been using cleaning robots at major stations since 2016.

It looks difficult to switch fully to robots for cleaning work because cleaning some places, such as wall corners and braille blocks, still needs to be done by humans, said an official from JR East Environment Access Co., a cleaning unit of JR East. But the official was hopeful that future technological innovations would enable robots to do that work, too.

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Robots cleaning up at stations and airports in labor-hungry Japan - The Japan Times

The South Florida Science Center & Aquarium was recently awarded a $100,000 grant through the Stiles-Nicholson Foundation to help increase STEM education for Palm Beach County students, galvanizing the community around a common goal to expand local FIRST robotics programs.

This award is an addition to a recent $50,000 STEM Equity Community Innovation Grant received by the Palm Beach County School District from FIRST, the worlds leading youth-serving nonprofit advancing STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education.

Working collaboratively, the Palm Beach County School District, the South Florida Science Center & Aquarium and Green Mouse Academy have already begun to implement an innovative FIRST Lego League program expansion for students from pre-K through grade four, which will provide robotics equipment labs, curriculum, certified training and ongoing job-embedded coaching for teachers and afterschool programs at multiple local elementary schools, allowing 750 more students and 12 elementary schools to discover hands-on, STEM robotics through project-based learning as they research and explore a real-world challenge.

This years FIRST global robotics theme challenges students to imagine and create a building that solves a problem and makes life easier, happier or more connected, and then use Lego robotics to design and program their Boomtown Build.

At the Science Center, we want to open every mind to science, and we are grateful to our partner organizations for making this happen, and we are proud to be a host for this incredible program, said Kate Arrizza, CEO of the Science Center.

FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) continues to grow in Palm Beach County, engaging more than 3,000 students annually through age-appropriate afterschool learning opportunities and local competition teams. Leadership and support from the local community is a key reason that Palm Beach County was selected to receive this highly competitive grant, joining eight other winning communities from more than 270 applicants nationwide.

With the generous local funding received from the Stiles-Nicholson Foundation and the leadership support of the South Florida Science Center and of the school districts Department of Teaching & Learning K-12 STEM Team, we expect to see a significant impact on the local community, and we hope to see this project serve as a model emulated throughout the country, said Shane Vander Kooi, president of Green Mouse Academy.

The project seeks to test several innovations designed to engage more students, teachers and schools. It also seeks to bridge applied learning experiences that occur informally at community locations, like the South Florida Science Center, with formal classroom instruction provided during the school day.

According to the latest 2018 PISA report on international student assessment, the United States ranked 18th out of 77 nations in science literacy and China ranked #1. We can do better, said David Nicholson, founder of the Stiles-Nicholson Foundation. We need to encourage more students to pursue STEM careers. FIRST Robotics is fun, project-based learning, which motivates youngsters to learn more about science and consider it as a career. The FIRST Lego League program stimulates excitement, engagement and team-building while teaching students the needed skill sets of tomorrow.

A key aim of this grant is to support communities with underserved and underrepresented students and help them develop new, innovative approaches to tackle the education gap. Over the long-term, this will not only address the STEM education needs of students but develop a local pipeline of talent and help position the future community workforce for success.

We need kids of all backgrounds, capabilities and social circumstances to contribute to innovation and participate in addressing the worlds toughest challenges, said Donald E. Bossi, president of FIRST. We hope that these resources enable underserved and underrepresented students to realize their full potential and have the self-confidence to do anything they set their mind to.

The mission of the South Florida Science Center & Aquarium is to open every mind to science and in addition to its fresh and saltwater aquarium and new Fisher Family Science Trail, the indoor/outdoor venue features more than 100 hands-on educational exhibits, a digital planetarium, conservation research station, Florida exhibit hall, the pre-K focused Discovery Center, an interactive Everglades exhibit and the 18-hole Conservation Course an outdoor putting course with science-focused education stations. The newest addition includes a $2.5 million permanent exhibit, Journey Through the Human Brain and features the most advanced neuroscience research and technology in the world.

The South Florida Science Center and Aquarium is located at 4801 Dreher Trail North in West Palm Beach. For more information, call (561) 832-1988 or visit http://www.sfsciencecenter.org.

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Science Center Grant Will Expand FIRST Robotics Program - Town-Crier

The development of robotic technology and artificial intelligence (AI) is increasing at a rapid pace. Where once, robots were experimental lab-based creations that were a little shaky on their feet. They are now ready to come into our home to help us with our lives.

Dont think that you will never need a robot in your home or life? Think back to a time (not that long ago) when you used a camera to take photos, a personal CD player for music and wrote to or rang people to stay in touch. Do you still carry all three devices, or are you one the estimated 5 billion smartphone users worldwide? The point is that technology is already very much part of our daily lives so the leap to robots becoming indispensable family members is not so huge a leap.

Robots In The Home

Lets start with robots in the home. You might already have a handy robot hoover to help you keep the house free from dust and debris but there are even more helpful robots that can do so much more.

These range from information giving kitchen robots like Mykie to the super impressive robotic limbs known as Moley. Mykie is the smaller of the two, an information giver which can look up recipes and project videos to assist you in the kitchen. Moley goes not just one step but a few steps further. Moley is a robotic kitchen that will cook you a delicious meal and then - and this may be the best bit - Moley will clean up after itself.

Ever felt like you could do with an extra pair of hands? You may have your wish come true sooner than you expect. Robots are now able to help you with mundane chores like folding clothes, cleaning windows, mopping and fetching items from around the home. There are even personal assistant robots or Smart assistants that may just become the side-kick you have always dreamed of explains John Alvarez, a blogger at Britstudent and 1day2write.

Health Robots

Perhaps one of the biggest impacts that robots will have on our lives is our health. There are already a number of health service robots on the market. These include humanoids, robots that have physical human features, like Romeo. Romeo could revolutionize the lives of our elderly family members. Designed to assist those who have lost their autonomy, Romeo helps in a way that restores independence to a degree. Romeo is practical and will help to open doors, remind you to take your medications and write grocery lists. Romeo can also make conversation and suggest games that you can play together. Could Romeo be the missing link in our aging societies where loneliness has become an epidemic?

A smaller, but also impressive, option for health is Pillo the pint-sized healthcare assistant. A brilliant addition to a healthy lifestyle, Pillo not only monitors but also dispenses medication. Pillo can also help you keep track of your food intake, making healthy eating that bit easier in a busy life.

Encouraging more movement for improved health whilst also being incredibly useful are Pepper and Gita Bot. The latter looks like a large plastic drum with a tyre on either side. Look closer and you will see that Gita can, in fact, open up to carry 40lbs of shopping or schoolbooks or luggage for example. What is special about Gita is that the robot is designed to follow you as you walk. Making it easier to build a little exercise into your day without the strain of carrying heavy loads yourself.

Pepper is a little more sophisticated. Ever been to the gym and not really known what to do or decided to slack off earlier and hit the jacuzzi? Pepper is the personal trainer robot of your dreams. Pepper has been proven to improve the results of people taking the Couch to 5km challenge. By monitoring your heart rate and offering words of support and encouragement, Pepper will get you up and running - literally!

Delivery Robots

Outside of the home, robots are being tested in more areas of busy towns and cities. Amazon has been open for a while about plans to use drones as part of its delivery service. Look up in certain areas of the UK and US and you might just spot them testing delivery drones near you says Martha Cross, a tech writer at Writemyx and Nextcousework.

Closer to the ground, on sidewalks in Berkley, California, you might spot small four-wheeled delivery bots called Kiwibots zipping around the town delivering piping hot burritos to hungry students. These arent the only robots on campus either. In August 2019, Starship Technologies deployed thousands of their four-wheeled delivery robots to campuses around the US.

With services robots already offering convenient solutions for busy lives, it is easy to see how they will become common staples of our homes and lives in the very near future.

______________________________________________________________________________

Michael Dehoyos is a marketing guru who regularly contributes to Phd Kingdom and Academic britsamong others. Michaels strategic marketing approach is much sought after by companies looking to break through the noise and get their brands known. He also writes for Origin Writings service blog.

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Service Robots Are Coming To Your Door - Robotics Tomorrow

HILLSBOROUGH, NJ A first year rookie robotics team of sixth graders from Hillsborough won first place in the North NJ Regional Championship for First Lego League Robotics for their research project called Griggstown Causeway Traffic Management.

Team RoboWarriors is made up of students from Auten Rd Intermediate School including: Ahaan Chhabria, Aneesh Natu, Ashay Hajarnis, Khoi Hoang, Rohaan Shah and Shane Khurana. They are coached by first time rookie coaches.

FIRST Lego League (FLL) is a Robotics Program for kids 9 to 14 years where teams across the globe complete in four areas including: robot design, robot mission/game; core values of the league like teamwork, innovation, and discovery; and research project where the topic varies every year.

This year the topic for the competition was to identify a problem in your community, research it, find a solution and share it.

Their research research project "Griggstown Causeway Traffic Management" identified the one lane bridge traffic issue as a major problem faced by Hillsborough Township and neighboring communities.

The team did a survey of the community to identify pain points, they developed a traffic management solution using traffic lights, sensors, automation and cameras. They shared this solution and received feedback from professionals in the field.

Qualifying completions were held across the state in November in different cities. RoboWarriors competed in the BoroBlast qualifier that Hillsborough High School hosts every year.

Twenty-four teams competed at the qualifier event where Team RoboWarriors won first place for their research project. They were one of the five teams and the only one from Hillsborough to qualify for the North NJ Regional Championship held Dec. 14 and 15 at Mt Olive High School.

This is where RoboWarriors won the first place award for the research project among 80 teams at this championship.

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Hillsborough Robotics Team Wins 1st Place In Championship - Hillsborough, NJ Patch

While Starsky Robotics says it remains committed to developing Level 4 autonomous vehicle technology, the companys over-the-road trucking fleet is not faring as well. Starsky recently decided to downsize the OTR fleet.

The 3-year-old startup is best known for its fully unmanned truck trip on a 9.4-mile stretch of public highway on the Florida Turnpike earlier this year. Less is known about Starskys small trucking fleet, founded in 2017 to generate revenue to fund its self-driving efforts.

In an email to drivers dated Dec. 4, Starsky stated that a significant downturn in rates the past few months caused the trucking company to operate at a loss.

The company also blamed increasing insurance premiums, equipment repairs and lease expenses as contributing to fourth-quarter losses in 2019.

These depressed market conditions and financial pressures have forced us to re-evaluate the size of our over-the-road trucking operations to remain viable, according to the email sent to truck drivers from Starskys operations team.

Starsky, headquartered in San Francisco, had 20 drivers and 33 power units, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration SAFER website.

Starsky co-founder Stefan Seltz-Axmacher declined to comment about how many trucks, if any, were hauling freight as of press time on Dec. 23.

Seltz-Axmacher also failed to address rumors about the financial health of the other side of Starskys operations and its recent plans to ramp up to 25 driverless trucks by 2020.

Since 2017, Starsky has raised more than $20 million in equity from investors like Trucks VC and Shasta Ventures.

Starsky has won plaudits for its commitment to innovation. It recently was named No. 12 on the FreightTech 25 list. It faces stiff competition from other self-driving startups like TuSimple, which has raised around $298 million in the last six rounds of funding. United Parcel Service (NYSE: UPS) has a minority stake in TuSimples autonomous trucking operation.

Plus.ai has raised around $200 million in its last three rounds of funding, according to Crunchbase, and Ike has raised $52 million in Series A funding.

Just days before Thanksgiving, Stacey Sprowl, a former truck driver for Starsky Robotics, said she was at home in Oklahoma waiting to hear from her dispatcher about her next load when she received instructions to drive her tractor-trailer nearly 200 miles to Dallas and turn in her leased equipment.

After cleaning out her truck, she drove it to Dallas, and Starsky paid for her rental car to drive back home.

I was told we were going with new leasing companies for our equipment and I would be assigned a new truck and trailer on Dec. 2, Sprowl told FreightWaves. The following Monday and Tuesday came and went with no word about my new truck assignment, then on Wednesday I found out the company was downsizing and my services were no longer needed.

I was really upset it was the best place I had worked and they paid me 50 cents per mile if I hit a certain number of miles each month, which I always did, Sprowl said.

One vendor, who is owed more than $7,000 from Starsky, said the company always paid its invoices on time until just prior to its downsizing announcement regarding its trucking fleet.

I never had any problems before, but then just like that, they stopped communicating with me about my outstanding invoices, the vendor, who did not want to be named, told FreightWaves. The company relied on brokerage freight and leased all of its equipment, so I can see why they werent able to make a profit.

The company stressed that it isnt ceasing operations at this time and if freight conditions improve in early 2020, Starsky may reach out to drivers to determine their availability to return to work.

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Starsky Robotics downsizes over-the-road trucking fleet - FreightWaves

The robot uprising forged in the Terminator movies is one step closer to reality.

On Thursday, Toyota debuted its new, upgraded humanoid robot, the T-HR3, which is controlled remotely by someone wearing a headset and wiring on their arms. Toyota claims that in the future, this machine, which is smoother, lighter and easier to use than past models, could be used to perform surgery in a distant place where a doctor cannot travel. It also might allow people to feel like theyre participating in events they cant actually attend, according to the Associated Press.

That same day, it was announced that Swiss researchers developed a light, quick robotic bug called the DEAnsect, which can withstand several whacks from a flyswatter and can survive being stepped on by a shoe. The miniature robot was designed with dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs), artificial muscles, a microcontroller for a brain and photodiodes as eyes. The bug, which weighs less than a gram, can carry five times its weight, recognize black-and-white patterns and follow lines drawn on the ground.

This technique opens up new possibilities for the broad use of DEAs in robotics, for swarms of intelligent robotic insects, for inspection or remote repairs, or even for gaining a deeper understanding of insect colonies by sending a robot to live amongst them, Herbert Shea, a member of the research team with cole Polytechnique Fdrale de Lausanne, told SiliconRepublic.

As if swarms of robotic bugs werent scary enough Shea said eventually they will be able to talk to themselves. Were currently working on an untethered and entirely soft version with Stanford University. In the longer term, we plan to fit new sensors and emitters to the insects so they can communicate directly with one another.

These are just two of the latest creations from mad scientists. Here are more bots some with eerily prescient automated intelligence that is being created behind closed doors.

The Bot Dog that can open doors

This four-legged creature which looks as unsettling as the killer robot dogs from Black Mirror, was developed by the secretive company Boston Dynamics a private firm that was bought by Google parent company Alphabet but sold to WeWork parent SoftBank Group in 2017. While Spot was initially used for research, Boston Dynamics announced in September that it will start selling the dog which can run, unlock and open doors, pick itself up, operate in a variety of weather and challenging terrain and even dance to select early customers. Fun times.

Atlas: The parkour robot

This humanoid robot is also brought to us by the kind folks at Boston Dynamics. Atlas can run, jump, do backflips and actually perform parkour stunts. As the companys YouTube account notes, the control software uses the whole body including legs, arms and torso, to marshal the energy and strength for jumping over the log and leaping up the steps without breaking its pace. Some claim Atlas could be useful in wars, and it is reminiscent of the early bots featured in The Terminator.

RiSE: The Climbing Robot.

Boston Dynamics, Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon University, UC Berkeley and Lewis & Clark University all collaborated to build this bioinspired climbing robot that looks like a clunky scorpion and has no problem crawling up trees, poles, stucco and brick.

The WildCat

This Boston Dynamics robot, roughly the size of a miniature horse, is a four-legged robot being developed to run fast on all types of terrain, according to the companys YouTube page. The WildCat, so far, has run at about 19 mph on flat terrain using bounding and galloping gaits, according to the company. An earlier, smaller version, called The Cheetah, has achieved speeds of almost 30 mph.

GhostSwimmer drone

Jaws has nothing on this guy as robots are also invading the seas. Brought to us by the U.S. Navy and Boston Engineering, this underwater drone is the size of an albacore tuna but looks just like a shark. According to Wired, it can operate in water as shallow as 10 inches or dive down to 300 feet. It can be controlled remotely via a 500-foot tether, or swim independently.

Sophia the robot lady

And of course, theres Sophia. Developed by Hanson Robotics, this humanoid personifies our dreams for the future of AI. Sophia is simultaneously a human-crafted science fiction character depicting the future of AI and robotics, and a platform for advanced robotics and AI research, the company said. Sophia, who has been interviewed on The Tonight Show, Today and CNBC, is the worlds first robot citizen and the first robot Innovation Ambassador for the United Nations Development Programme. Sophia and her robot boyfriend, Han, like to debate the future of humanity.

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Meet the creepy robots poised to take over the world - New York Post