CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (NEWSPLEX) -- The Cavalier Robotics team is looking for new members.

They held an open house on Grounds on Sunday.

Team 619 is a high school robotics team in Central Virginia that celebrates science and technology by letting high school students get hands-on experience with robots.

There are about 20 members on the team now, and some say the hardest part is communicating as a team.

"Making sure all of the projects are done, we make the right decisions in the games so we perform the best on the field," said Micah Mutseheller, team member.

"A lot of school teams are a lot bigger than we are," said Seth Kilmer, team member. "If you have a huge team and not coordinated at all, you're not going to have a functioning robot at the end of six weeks."

The team recently won a district championship in robotics.

If you missed out on Sunday's recruitment, we have information on how you can sign up in the Related Links box.

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Cavalier Robotics recruiting new team members - The Charlottesville Newsplex

PEMBROKE, NC(WBTW) FIRST robotics hosted its Thundering Herd Of Robots competition atUNC Pembroke. This is the counties first-ever THOR event.

The event included 13 teams of high school students from around North Carolina who gathered during the off-season to compete Saturday. During the competition students competed by building robots they designed, build, programmed and tested in only six weeks.

They also qualify for scholarships at nearly 200 colleges or universities by participating in the FIRST robotics competitions.

Organizers told News13, the students not only get tolearn team building skills,but they alsogain the skills they need in future careers.

There is multiple sides to this, theres engineering and business, said Joshua Carlile, a competitor from Robeson Early College High School.You learn pretty much everything, electronics, programming quick thinking of course, and actually building added Carlile.

FIRST North Carolina is a nonprofit organization created to inspire youth to pursue careers in science and technology and to help them acquire the skills to compete in a technologically-driven economy.

FIRST robotics is always looking for mentors or sponsors for robotics teams, to learn more about first robotics click here.

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FIRST Robotics held areas first competition at UNC Pembroke - WBTW - Myrtle Beach and Florence SC

BEAVERCREEK

Seven High School students from Honduras participated in the FIRST Global Robotics Competition in Washington, D.C., with the help of Dayton-based nonprofit Shoulder to Shoulder.

RELATED: Marching band goes through intense camp

Shoulder to Shoulders 27-year mission has been to help bring sustainable health, nutrition and education services to the people of rural Honduras.

While in the U.S. the students also had the opportunity to spend time with students at Jacob Coy Middle School in Beavercreek as well as meet other local robotics teams.

The Honduran robotics team developed a connection with the Beavercreek students when Beavercreek middle school Spanish teacher Angel Allen had the opportunity to visit Honduras and tour the Good Shepherd Bilingual School as well as Santo Tomas Aquino High School, in Camasca, Honduras.

When Allen found out that the team would be in the U.S. for the competition she saw it as an opportunity for her own students.

These Honduran students changed my life. I was able to see how they are happy with so little. I want my Beavercreek students to find value out of the small things and recognize that you can create your own happiness, said Allen.

With the help of Shoulder to Shoulder, local fundraising and local families willing to host the students and their teachers the team was able to make the detour to Beavercreek.

Host mom Lynn Hay said that her daughter is part of Allens eighth-grade Spanish class and really wanted to participate as a host family.

My daughter got the opportunity to see life though their eyes. She got to know about them, their families, their culture and lifestyle. If you have kids, its definitely worth opening them up to experiences like this. They are so used their lifestyle, and all that matters is the next new phone. They dont know what its like to live when you are taking showers out of a bucket, said Hay.

Hay said she was so impressed with the Honduran students and all the barriers they had to overcome to get to the point that they were.

She said that they recounted a story about a representative from the robotics competition who traveled to Honduras for a week to give the team a bit of instruction on the competition kit.

He didnt speak Spanish so he had to communicate with them through an interpreter. He tried to explain how to use the controller by telling them it was just like using a PlayStation. The interpreter had to explain that these kids had never seen a PlayStation, said Hay.

The team traveled to Washington, D.C., on July 16-18 for the robotics competition. The Olympics-style robotics challenge invites one team from each country across the globe with the goal of inspiring a passion for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

Each group of students is given a kit and is asked to solve a set of challenges using only the tools and parts provided to them.

Team student representative Melissa Lemus said that Shoulder to Shoulder not only helped them financially but also with encouragement. She said they had never done anything with robotics before and didnt think that they could do this.

At the competition in Washington, D.C., Lemus said that she was surprised how differently each team approached the project even though they all had the same materials to work with.

All and all she said that the experience was very positive one and was amazed by the opportunities this country had to offer. This is an experience that will stay with me and have a positive impact on the rest of my life, Lemus said.

Contact this contributing writer at Erica.Harrah@woh.rr.com.

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'These Honduran students changed my life' - MyDaytonDailyNews

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Auris Surgical Robotics, a 10-year-old, San Carlos, Ca.-based surgical robotics company that was founded by serial entrepreneur Frederic Moll, has quietly raised $280 million in Series D funding led by Coatue Management.

The company had previously raised at least $184 million from investors, shows Crunchbase. Its other backers include Mithril Capital Management (cofounded by Peter Thiel and Ajay Royan), Lux Capital, NaviMed Capital, and Highland Capital Partners.

Auris is an interesting company, largely because of Moll, who previously founded three other companies, including 22-year-old, publicly traded Intuitive Surgical, which also makes robotic surgical systems and whose market cap is right now hovering around $35 billion, and Hansen Medical, a company that developed tools to manipulate catheters. Moll cofounded Hansen in 2002 and took it public in 2006. The company, which never gained the kind of traction that Intuitive has enjoyed, was acquired last summer by Auris in a deal valued at roughly $80 million.

Auris announced its newest round of funding in an easy-to-miss paragraph on its website, and its been similarly low key about its work to date, though it says that lung cancer is the first disease in its sights.

Its a huge opportunity (alas). Despite a wealth of information about the dangers of smoking, the World Health Organization estimates that one billion people in the world smoke currently, which leads to 6 million deaths per year.

As Auris notes, thats more victims than patients who die every year from prostate, breast, and colon cancer combined.

According to Auris, one reason lung cancer remains so dangerous is that both diagnosis often comes late, when the cancer has spread. Indeed, it says its technology will allow doctors to access early-stage lung cancer without incisions, allowing for more accurate diagnosis, as well as more targeted treatment.

Its making progress toward that end, seemingly. Last year, the FDA approveda medical robot that was identified in its application as theAuris Robotic Endoscopy System or ARES robot. Aclose readby the journal IEEE Spectrum of other patents Auris has filed suggest its working on flexible robots that can use the bodys natural openings, including the mouth, to address conditions of the throat, lungs and gastrointestinal system. (The company, which isnt talking to reporters currently, apparently confirmed toIEEE Spectrum last year that it had already carried out at least one successful human trial of such a robot, outside the United States.)

Such surgeries are called endolumenal surgeries, and reportedly, because they dont involve big incisions, they are especially attractive in cases that involve frail patients, for whom more invasive procedures can be life ending.

According to IEEE Spectrums thorough report which was published last year one of Auriss patent applications includes mentions of lasers, forceps, needles, graspers, and scalpels, which it said could potentially enable a surgeon to do everything from biopsies and gastric repairs to excising tumors.

Put another way, lung cancer is the first frontier, but its hardly the last.

Auriss competitors include Medtronic, MedRobotics, Verb Surgical (backed by Alphabet and Johnson & Johnson) and even Intuitive itself.

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Auris Surgical Robotics, founded by superstar Fred Moll, has quietly closed on a ton of money - TechCrunch

Snapchat owner Snap Inc is in talks to buy Chinese drone maker Zero Zero Robotics to boost its hardware push, according to media reports.

The deal, which was first reported by The Information, will be between $150 million to $200 million, TechCrunch reported citing a source.

Snap and Zero Zero Robotics have not responded to a request for comment.

Zero Zero Robotics makes a $500 foldable hovering drone that follows you and records video. If the acquisition goes through it would mark the latest move by Snap to double down on hardware after the launch of its video recording sunglasses called Spectacles.

The company, which went public in March to much excitement, has struggled to grow its user base amid stiff competition from Facebook's copycat product Instagram Stories. Shares of the company closed at $13.10 on Tuesday, below the company's $17 initial public offer price.

Originally posted here:

Snap reportedly close to acquiring Chinese drone maker Zero Zero Robotics - CNBC

GREAT FALLS -

The Rednek Robotics team from Sun River beat 128 teams to win the First Tech Competition World Championship back in April.

The winningrobot is designed to pick up3 1/2inch wiffle balls and shoot them in a goal about 4 feet high.

The team wants to demonstrate their winning robot so everyone in the community can see it in person and learn more about the program that they are involved in.

Visitors will have the opportunity todrivethe robot and try to get the wiffle balls in the goal.

Ilaya Payne, a senior in high school that has been with the Robotics team for threeyears, said, "We want to interest students and younger kids to understand that this is available to them when they do get into high school and middle school."

The Robotics team will be at the fair Saturday, August 5th, from 1-6pm.

Sun River Rednek Robotics headed to Worlds Robotic Competition in Texas

Sun River Robotics achieves 1st Place at Worlds Robotics Championship

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Sun River Rednek Robotics team showcases creations at Montana State Fair - KXLH Helena News

Aviation International News

Former Drone Rivals DJI, 3D Robotics Link Product Offerings Aviation International News Two companies once poised as rivals in the early days of the small-drone industry have linked their product offerings aimed at architectural, engineering and construction (AEC) companies. In a blog post on August 1, 3D Robotics (3DR) of Berkeley ... and more »

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Former Drone Rivals DJI, 3D Robotics Link Product Offerings - Aviation International News

Photo Mourners carrying the coffins of victims of an attack on Tuesday on a mosque in Herat, Afghanistan, that killed 37. The Islamic State claimed responsibility. Credit Agence France-Presse Getty Images

KABUL, Afghanistan When the Afghan female robotics team, made up of teenage students from the western city of Herat, finally made it to a global competition in the United States, the cameras were focused on them. Here was a glimmer of hope from a place so often associated with bloodshed. The girls had made it against all odds, including being denied visas twice.

With a big smile, Fatemah Qaderyan, 14, the team captain, illustrated just how far girls, even from a challenging place like Afghanistan, could go if given the opportunity. Crucial to that, she repeated, was the support of her parents.

Tuesday night, Fatemahs father, Mohammed Asef Qaderyan, 54, was killed when suicide bombers targeted hundreds of worshipers at a mosque near their home in the city of Herat.

Roya Mahboob, an Afghan technology entrepreneur who helped arrange the teams trip to the United States, confirmed the news of the death. Jailani Farhad, a spokesman for the governor of Herat, also said that Mr. Qaderyan had been among those killed.

The assault, for which the Islamic State claimed responsibility, left 37 people dead and 66 others wounded. It was the fifth attack this year against Shiite places of worship, killing at least 44 civilians and wounding 88, according to the United Nations mission in Afghanistan. Four of those attacks took place in Herat Province, and one took place in Kabul. The regional branch of the Islamic State claimed responsibility for two of them.

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Father of Afghan Robotics Team Captain Is Killed in Suicide Bombing - New York Times

Photo: Anthony Weate/QUT Peter Corke, director of the Australian Centre for Robotic Vision at Queensland University of Technology, and other members of Team ACRV work on their robot, named Cartman, which won the 2017 Amazon Robotics Challenge in Japan.

Amazon has a problem, and that problem is humans. Amazon needs humans, lots of them. But humans, as we all know, are the most unreasonable part of any business, constantly demanding things like lights and air. So Amazon has turned to robots (over 100,000 of them) for doing tasks likemoving things around in a warehouse.But its proving to be much more difficult to get the robots to do some other tasks. One of the hardest ispicking objects from shelves and bins.

To solve this problem, Amazon is making it someone elses problem, by hosting a yearly robotics pickingchallenge. In the competition,teams have to developrobotics hardware and software that can recognize objects, grasp them, and move them from place to place. This is harder than it sounds, because were on year threeand Amazon is still running this thing, but some clever Australians are making substantial progress.

The 2017 incarnation of the Amazon Robotics Challenge was held at RoboCup in Nagoya last month, and sixteen teams from around the world made the trip to Japan. What Amazon was looking for was a robot that could identify items, remove target items from storage and place them into boxes (picking), take target items from totes and place them into storage (stowing), and then do both at once in a grand fantastic explosion all-or-nothing final competition.

Teams brought their own robots with their own nutty gripper designs, and also their own item storage system designed to be able to handle all of the stuff and junk that crazy people like you buy on Amazon every day. Points were awarded for successful picks, successful stows, neat packing, and overall quickness, while points were deducted for (among other things) major damage to items, which is unfortunate, since a robot that could just flatten everything into a pancake would have a much easier time at this!

Heres an overview of how things went:

Team ACRV (from the Australian Centre for Robotic Vision at Queensland University of Technology in Australia), which didnt place in the top three on either the individual pick task or stow task, managed to knock it out of the park on the combined final task, taking first place and going home with US $80,000 (which is way more in Australia).

Third place went to Singapores Nanyang Technological University, whichmanaged a first in the picking task anda second in the stowing task. And second place went to NimbRo, which posted this video of their final run:

A few things to note from these videos: It looks like most teams used some flavor of hybrid gripper design, relying primarily on suction and using a physical gripping mechanism when necessary. There are also plenty of instances when the first grasping attempt fails, and the robot needs to be able to detect and adapt to that, just like a human does. Additionally, the robots sometimes grasped multiple things at once by accident, or had to deal with objects (like books) that can change their shape post-grasp as they were lifted. These sorts of things are why challenges like these are important: Given the number of objects that Amazon is foisting on us,its hard to predict how any system will perform without trying it out in real life, or as close to real life as challenges like these allow.

While QUTs press release suggests that the team has solved a key robotics problem for Amazon picking items and stowing them in boxes in an unstructured environment, that strikes us as awfully optimistic. Its certainly a key robotics problem, but solving it implies a reliable robotic solution that can compete (at least to some extent) with a human picker, and based on these videos, we seem kind of far from that. Also worth noting is that QUTs winning robot is a stationary gantry system, suggesting that Amazon could perhaps be open to a picking solution that doesnt move, rather than a mobile manipulator.

On the other hand, maybe we shouldnt draw too many conclusions from the specific designs, and just be happy that were seeing some tangible advancements in object recognition, grasp planning, and everything else under conditions that are somewhat close to real-world usefulness. And as soon as Amazon buys up all the winning teams of one of their challenges and then cancels the following year, we might be able to actually figure out what their robotics fulfillment plan is.

[ Amazon Robotics Challenge]

IEEE Spectrums award-winning robotics blog, featuring news, articles, and videos on robots, humanoids, drones, automation, artificial intelligence, and more. Contact us:e.guizzo@ieee.org

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Aussies Win Amazon Robotics Challenge - IEEE Spectrum

PEMBROKE Robots will invade the Jones Center on the campus of The University of North Carolina at Pembroke on Saturday.

The main gym will be the site of the countys first-ever Thundering Herds of Robots event. It is a robotics competition pitting high school students from across North Carolina against one another. A dozen teams are scheduled to compete, including Robeson Early College High Schools ROBCOBOT.

This is not just about robots, Keenan Locklear, the teams coach. They gain leadership skills and I have found since theyve been involved in these robotics competitions, they are doing better in school. Some have found something they didnt know they had an interest in, like software programming and mechanical engineering.

We are trying to get our students interested in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) and this is the first step.

The host of Saturdays competition will be FIRST North Carolina, a nonprofit created to inspire young people to pursue careers in science and technology and to help them acquire the skills to compete in a technologically-driven economy.

There are 21 members on the ROBCOBOT squad. They will be competing in a game called Steamworks, in which a three-team alliance will guide their robots in an attempt to score points by building steam pressure, gathering materials to ignite rotors, and boarding robots onto an airship.

THOR is the states first off-season robotics competition for FIRST Robotics Competition teams. The build season for FIRST begins in January. Teams are given six weeks to design, build, program, and test a robot that can perform the necessary tasks to succeed in each years game.

Students work closely with teachers, like Locklear at Robeson Community Colleges Early College, and volunteer mentors. Locklear said they are in need of mentors to assist during each phase.

The students come up with the design, he said. There are no instructions just a tub or parts. Thats why we need mentors from the community to assist with the engineering and testing.

The Early College team was formed in 2016. Locklear, a two-time UNCP graduate who teaches Chemistry and Physical Science at the Early College, learned about the FIRST organization while serving on the N.C. Board of Science, Technology and Innovation.

My goal is to start up clubs at each of the middle schools in Robeson County, he said. I have seen my kids mature in the areas of public speaking. They come to high school thinking they want to be a doctor and thats all they think.

But once they get involved in robotics, they start thinking about designing prosthetics. This exposes them to other areas that they can succeed.

We have some smart students. They just need to be challenged. Robotics gives them the opportunity to rise to the challenge.

Mark Locklear is a Public Relations specialist at The University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

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Robotics competition at UNCP on Saturday - The Robesonian

While originally a coalition of robotics teams in Ashburn Virginia, Ashburn Robotics has grown into a non profit (501(c)(3)) organization dedicated to the promotion of STEM education throughout our community, both through STEM outreach and our support of local FLL and FTC teams. Each of our teams is formed and managed by the parents of the children on that team. While each of our teams have their own unique identities they all share a common belief that kids discover more when they explore the world around them through a hands on approach to science and technology.

Ashburn Robotics was established in 2006 with the simple goal of starting a FIRST Lego League (FLL) program in our neighborhood. Over the years the program has grown and now includes both FLL and FTC teams. Ashburn Robotics FLL and FTC teams are respected not only for the many local, state and international awards they have won, but more importantly, for their commitment to helping spread FIRSTs mission to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders, by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering and technology skills, that inspire innovation, and that foster well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication, and leadership. Our teams understand the value of gracious professionalism and giving back to our communities through volunteering as mentors, coaches and passionate advocates for science and technology. If you are interested in finding out more about FLL or FTC visit FIRSTinspires.org or us contact us.

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It is our belief and goal here at Fairfax OB/GYN Associates, P.C. to provide top quality health care using a minimally invasive technique while integrating an individualized approach. Fairfax OB/Gyn Associates, P.C. combines the latest in innovation and technology with personalized care to meet the needs of our patients. We have been performing Laparoscopic surgery for over 30 years and introduced Robotic surgery within the last4 years. Our staff of highly skilled surgeons has now completed over 350 Robotic cases with 98% of our patients going home the same day and resuming normal activities with 2 weeks. Our innovative services include complete obstetrical care with nurse-midwifery services, gynecologic care offering the latest in laparoscopic-assisted surgical techniques, robotics, infertility, pre-conception counseling, contraception, Nexplanon, Gardasil, Well Women and menopausal management. We offer in-house ultrasonography, Dexa Scans, Urodynamic Testing, NovaSure Endometrial Ablation procedure, Essure Sterilization procedure, and childbirth classes.

Our office is affiliated with the following hospital(s):

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OBGYN Fairfax, VA - Robotic GYN Surgeons of Nova

It looks like Snap is enlisting outside help to advance its expansion into new hardware projects. The U.S. company is in talks with China-based drone maker Zero Zero Robotics over an acquisition, according to a source with knowledge of discussions.

The deal, which was first reported by The Information, is in the range of $150 million-$200 million, the source told TechCrunch. That price would represent quite an outlay, but Snap previously paid upwards of $250 million for social map company Zenly which is its most expensive acquisition to date. (Although Snap hasnt confirmed its price for Zenly.)

Neither Snap norZero Zero Robotics had returned our requests for comment at the time of writing.

Zero Zero Robotics is best known for its Hover Camera drone, which is designed for taking aerial selfies and was on display at our TechCrunch China event in Shanghailast year. The device launched to the public in October, it is sold exclusively by Apple for $500 via both its online and physical retail stores.

When we first began to hear rumors that Zero Zero Robotics had been acquired by a major U.S. company earlier this summer, it was easy to assume that it had followed the fate of other drone companies in struggling to build a sustainable business and was seeking a soft landing. Most prominently, Lily, a Kickstarter success story, was forced to shutter earlier this year due to financial issues.

Snap does have a track record in shopping for bargains among defunct drone companies.The fact that Lily had held unsuccessful acquisition talks with Snap as an alternative to closing and that Snap reportedly did acquire drone firmCtrl Me Robotics, which was about to shutdown,played into that theory. While increased competition from drone pioneer DJI, which announced its own take on Hover Camera, the $499 Spark drone, may well have put some heat on the Hover Camera.

However, these negotiations are not driven by failure.Not only is Snap in talks to pay a lot more than the $25 million which Zero Zero Robotics has raised from investors to date, but, according to The Information, the Chinese company actually approached Snap over a potential investment and that turned to a prospective acquisition.

For Snap, the deal makes sense as it looks to push its hardware business on from its Spectacles product. While another, more advanced iteration of the wearable camera glasses that could include augmented reality technology is currently under development, as TechCrunch recently reported, Snap has shown a desire to get into drones as part of its broadening focus on being a camera company.

Snap once looked into developing its own dronesin house, according to a New York Times report, but in the end it looks to have opted to lean on specialists outside of the company.

Snap is under pressure from Wall Street to show growth, which could explain why it is prepared to pay a large sum to get a product that is already in the mark. Its stock just came out of the dreaded lock-up period, when insiders are able to sell their shares, relatively unscathed, but its current value of $13.10 is well down on the $17 that it priced its IPO at in March.

Read more here:

Snap is in talks to buy Chinese selfie drone maker Zero Zero Robotics for $150M-$200M - TechCrunch

As e-commerce giants like Amazon continue expanding their on-demand offerings, retailers are struggling to keep up. CommonSense Robotics wants to make near-instantaneous deliveries accessible to smaller businesses with micro-fulfillment centers that can be built inside existing retail spaces. The company announced today that it has raised $6 million in seed funding from Aleph VC and Innovation Endeavors.

CommonSense Robotics was founded by Eyal Goren, Ori Avraham, Shay Cohen and Elram Goren after they became curious about why more grocery stores dont offer online shipping and on-demand delivery. They discovered that its just not economically sustainable for most supermarkets (or even well-funded startups for that matter, as the recent flurry of consolidation in the food delivery space shows). The team decided to work on ways for retailers to be able to deliver orders within an hour and keep margins the same as it would be in their brick-and-mortar stores, but without having to charge fees or higher prices.

CommonSense Robotics is now getting ready to deploy its micro-fulfillment centers for the first time and is not giving away a lot of details until they start operating. Each one combines robotics and artificial intelligence to automate the preparation of orders, including receiving inventory, picking orders and packing them. Then deliveries are carried out by the retailers themselves or third-party services. Building micro-fulfillment centers into stores means retailers can save on overhead and sell more things to their existing customers.

Retailers that use our platform arent just catching up to leaders, they are positioning themselves to set new standards for the industry, says Goren.

The rest is here:

CommonSense Robotics raises $6M seed round to make on ... - TechCrunch

Students attending the camp at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock will learn hardware design, programming, teamwork, problem solving and leadership skills. (KATV Photo)

A new summer camp for elementary students interested in robotics began this week at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

Students attending the camp will learn hardware design, programming, teamwork, problem solving and leadership skills.

In addition to students, elementary teachers who are interested in starting robotics programs at their schools are encouraged to attend.

Sandra Lieterman, a math specialist at the university and robotics coach, says the camp is a great way to introduce robotics to students who may not have the opportunity at their schools.

"They can take that into the computer science courses that are required for middle school and high school right now and, hopefully, into a STEM field in college," Lieterman said. "They're learning life-long skills in here."

The camp runs through Friday, August 4.

Link:

Students get hands-on experience with robotics at summer camp - KATV

BBC News reported the winning entry to be Cartman a budget-priced robot from Australia.

The robot was designed by a team calling itself the Australian Centre for Robotic Vision (ACRV), which featured engineers from the Queensland University of Technology, the University of Adelaide and the Australian National University. Their cash prize was US$80,000 (60,980).

The bot was designed from scratch for the challenge and, unlike past winners that used a robotic arm, used a sliding mechanism to pick up products.

According to the BBC report, the winning team believes its Cartesian co-ordinate robot design was better suited to the task than the arm-like designs of others.

The robot uses a frame to move in straight lines across three axes at right-angles to one another. It supports a rotating gripper fitted with suction cups and a two-fingered claw to hold and manipulate the items.

The parts used to make it were cheap by the standards of typical industrial robots, according to professor Jonathan Roberts, robotics lab leader at Queensland University of Technology.

It could be built for under A$30,000 (18,245), he told the BBC. However, he noted the many thousands of hours of team effort that went into the design, testing and programming.

The online retailer sponsorsthe event to strengthen ties between the industrial and academic robotics communities and to promote shared and open solutions to the practical hurdles of running a global supplier.

The competitions tasks tested the robots ability to identify products, pick them up from a mixed batch of goods of differing shapes, sizes and weights, and place them in appropriate boxes for shipping to a customer.

Amazon is one of the biggest public companies in the world. Its logistics and warehousing operations serve a business with a global reach, so in a search for technical solutions to automated product picking it set up competitions to encourage the design of warehouse robots in 2015 and 2016.

This year it combined those competitions into the Amazon Robotics Challenge. This was a seven-day event held at Nagoya, Japan in July. Sixteen teams from universities and research institutes around the world brought robots they had designed, and assembled them to attempt a series of tasks to identify the winners.

Images: Amazon

Originally posted here:

Australian team wins Amazon Robotics Challenge - Electronics Weekly (blog)

TABOR If you travel about three miles northeast of Tabor, there is a hillside that is home to the Pechous Dairy. It might not look different from the average dairy operation on the outside, but inside its a different story.

Housed inside the walls of the Pechous Dairys newly built free-stall barn is a high-tech system of four robots working 24/7 to milk 230 cows an average of 2.8 times per day. The new barn and advanced machinery are investments in the familys legacy as dairy farmers for future generations. Tabor is in Bon Homme County, northwest of Yankton.

Having grown up and lived on dairy farms only two miles apart, Bob and Nancy Pechous took over Bobs parents operation in 1980 before getting married in 1981. The couple started with 30 cows in a stanchion barn and had to physically haul their own buckets of milk to the cooler. In 1986, the couple expanded their operation and built a 12-station milking parlor with a pipeline for hauling milk. The upgrade allowed them to gradually begin increasing their herd size to around 125 cows.

The addition of the milking parlor was great because everything became centralized, Nancy Pechous told the Yankton Daily Press & Dakotan. We could have six cows on each side. Once we finished milking on one side, we could switch to the other side and rotate in six new cows.

The Pechous Dairy operated out of its 12-station milking parlor for the next 30 years with help from two hired hands and family support before changing to their current operation.

Out of their three children, only the Pechous youngest son, Kyle, decided to join the dairy as a partner. Their oldest son, Justin, operates Pechous Repair in Tabor and their daughter, Jennifer, teaches in Brandon.

Kyle was adjoined at the hip with Bob since he could walk, Nancy said. We knew he was going to be our farmer. He was always helping out at the dairy as soon as he was old enough.

Kyle obtained a degree in diesel mechanics from Northeast Community College before returning home as a full-time partner in 2005. It was his idea to upgrade to the new robotic milking system in 2016.

We got to the point where the old barn was falling apart, Nancy said. We either needed to repair it or start new. Bob and I were actually thinking about getting out of the dairy business at the time, but Kyle came up with the idea to implement the new robotic system. We decided that we were all in this together and went full speed ahead.

Construction on the new barn and the installation of the robotic milking system began in January 2016 and finished late last September.

We are now nine months into the new system, Nancy said. For the first three months, we practically lived up in the barn after it was built. Thats how long it took before the cows adjusted to the new system.

Built with the potential for expansion in mind, the new barn is divided into two main sections capable of housing 120 cows on each side. Both sections are outfitted with access to a feeding trough, back scratchers and bedded stalls. The barn is also outfitted with fans that create a constant five-mile-per-hour breeze that keeps the cows comfortable and the bugs out. Adding to the overall automation of the Pechous Dairy, manure is also automatically scrapped from the floors by a robotic system and pressed into dry bedding to be put on top of the rubber mats that cover the stall floors.

We built this for future generations, Bob Pechous said. We want to keep this dairy going and pass it down to our grandchildren.

Installed in each section are two fully-automatic milking machines, each with the capability of milking 60 cows. All the cows at the dairy have been trained to come to one of the four milking machines through the use of special protein pellets that are delivered by the robots. When a cow walks into the stall next to a machine, it reads the chip inside of a collar placed around the cows neck. The cow is then weighed and fed according to how much milk it produces.

While the cow is feeding, the machine washes each teat and hooks up to them automatically, guided by lasers. The system records how much time each cow has been attached to the machine; it even measures down to the exact time that each teat is attached and how much milk each one produced. All the milk is then automatically transported from the machine to the cooler where it waits to be hauled out by truck every other day.

If something were to go wrong with the machine, like a computer glitch or a milking cup getting knocked out of position, the system automatically calls for assistance until someone responds. As an added safety net in case of power outages, the whole dairy is also backed up by a diesel generator to ensure that the system never goes offline and the cows are always milked.

The automated system also offers total monitoring of the herd from an office computer. It notifies the dairy of which cows are in need of artificial insemination and which cows need to be dried up. It also records the weight and body temperature of each animal, as well as notifies the dairy of abnormal milk, mastitis and other potential illnesses.

The new system allows us to get to the cows before they get sick, Nancy said. It helps us to head off a lot of things before they become a real problem.

Under the new milking robotic milking system, the Pechous Dairy has seen an increase of approximately 10 pounds of milk per cow. The daily average at the dairy is currently about 80 pounds of milk per cow. Overall, the dairy produces approximately 20,000 pounds of milk per day.

My goal per cow was 86 pounds per day, Bob said. We are not far from that right now. We actually have 33 cows producing over 100 pounds of milk per day, and our top producer is at about 145 pounds per day.

Currently, two-thirds of the Pechous Dairys herd is first-time heifers who dont produce as much milk until their second lactation.

Next lactation, we are going to probably get another 10 pounds of milk per cow from the majority of our herd, Nancy said. After our first-time heifers have their second calf, they will produce more milk.

Already the largest of three dairies in Yankton County, the Pechous family said it wants to continue to lead local dairy production well into the future with the technological investments they have made at their facility.

We want to help educate people on where their dairy products come from, Bob said. A lot of people might not know what goes into the process of getting their milk from the cow to the table.

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SD dairy looks to future with robotics - The Capital Journal

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Novi High students prep a robot for competition on July 21 on the final day of the Girls' Robotics Workshop. Staffed by volunteers from the school's Frog Force robotics team, the weeklong camp was designed to introduce middle school girls to the engineering and math required for robotics competition. From left are: Shana Gubbi, and siblings Anne and Leah George, right.(Photo: JOHN HEIDER | hometownlife.com)

Girls from Frog Force 503, the Novi High School robotics team, spent some time paying it forward this summer.

Fresh off a strong competition season in FIRST Robotics, the students planned, organized and taught a five-day robotics workshop in July for rising seventh- and eighth-grade girls, some of whom will likely join Frog Force themselves once in high school.

The idea was to inspire the younger girls to explore robotics and the FIRST program as well as to help them build confidence in STEM subjects (science, mathematics, engineering and technology), in which girls are underrepresented.

Community involvement has long been a part of Novi High's FIRST program. But this was the first all-girls workshop at the middle school level in Novi, said Janelle Moore, the Frog Force outreach mentor.

"Part of our mission is to let the community know about the FIRST program for younger ages, to mentor those teams, to help parents start those teams," Moore said. "Our high school girls wanted to start with the middle school because they felt that was the age to reach the girls."

The workshop was July 17-21, for 3hours a day, at the high school.

"They learned about electricity and circuits. They learned about gearing. They did a whole section on game strategy and analysis. ... Then they applied those things to their (robot) build," Moore said.

They also scrimmaged their robots in a game, STEM Gems, invented by the high schoolers. It was played on a 12- by 12-foot field, the standard size in FIRST Tech Challenge, the FIRST middle school program.

"You could really see those girls open up and blossom over the week," Moore said.

Robotic competition gets underway in the late morning at Novi High during the last day of the school's summer Girls' STEM Workshop. Teams were trying to place plastic boxes in the squares in a robot-version of tic-tac-toe.(Photo: JOHN HEIDER | hometownlife.com)

On the workshop's last day, parents got to stop in and see their daughters' projects.

At the middle school level, Novi has more than a dozen robotics teams, including an all-girls team that qualified for state competition in the spring.

"We'dlike to continue that and form another (girls) team," Moore said.

At Novi High, girls make up about 30 percent of Frog Force 503, which has about 115 members, she said.

"We're trying to reach 50 percent, which is a FIRST Robotics goal and a Frog Force goal," Moore said.

FIRST, or For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, is a not-for-profit that encourages the study of STEM subjects.

Anne George works on a robot.(Photo: JOHN HEIDER | hometownlife.com)

mjachman@hometownlife.com

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