Monthly Archives: March 2017

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MOORE, Okla. -Our world is changing fast with advances in technology and robots are a big part of that change

From building the cars we drive to helping police, robots make our lives easier. But designing and making them requires a lot of brain power and hard work.

At Moore West Junior High the Tiger robotics club is busy working on creating their own robots.

Theyre learning problem solving, creative intuition, and theyre learning to project manage and get along with others. And develop those skills that they can actually use in a career today, said Donna Haworth, Robotics Coach.

The kids must design, program and then built a robot for competition.

They start in a start box and they have 60 seconds to move the hexballs that are on the board to scoring position, said Haworth.

As for the students, they love the work and find it anything but robotic.

We can express ourselves through robots. And build and learn about robots, and STEM projects, said Cheyanne Sutton, Moore West 7th grader.

But more than helping them develop those STEM skills, students are having their minds open to the possibilities of what robots can really do.

As my STEM project is, its cerebral palsy. With robots helping toddlers and babieshelp develop those muscle coordination skills, said Camden Miller, Moore west 7th grader.

Principal Jeni Dutton says The robotics program is a highlight of our school. These students are really truly the geniuses who walk these hallways and solve problems. Theyre resourceful and they know it.

McDonald's has partnered with KFOR for this spotlight series of 'What's Right With Our Schools' and presented a check of $600 to the school.

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Oklahoma students programming their future with robotics - kfor.com

A group of students worked late last week in Windsor to solve an odd problem: How to get through airport security with a robot and its jumble of wires, batteries and motors connected to a cellphone.

The students four in high school and one middle school together make up Windsor-based Black Diamonds Robotics. This past month, the team and its robot simply designated Black Diamond Robotics No. 9899 took first place at the state's FIRST Tech Challenge.

That means these kids built, programmed and piloted a robot against 59 other teams from across Colorado in a high-stakes arena challenge and came out on top.

The team's victory at the state competition earned them a chance to compete this weekend in the FTC West Super-Regional Championship in Tacoma, Wash. If they do well enough there, they'll advance to international-level competition.

Getting a robot through airport security is just one of the many challenges they've faced together as a team. The students essentially worked as engineers to design and create a robot to solve this year's challenge. Robots in this competition had to be capable of picking up plastic balls of the correct color, launching the balls into a goal a few feet off the ground and moving a yoga ball.

Building Colorado's top robot took hundreds of hours from each team member, said Joshua Rohrbaugh, a sophomore at Liberty Common High School in Fort Collins.

In competition, the robots compete head-to-head in teams of two. Each team can remotely pilot their machine for part of the challenge, but rules require the robot to compete on its own for a round, operating solely on the team's programming.

Just getting the robot to drive in a straight line can be challenging, said Joshua Rohrbaugh's brother, David Rohrbaugh, a senior at Liberty Common and the team's software specialist.

The 30-pound plastic and metal robot functions well without a remote control. Everyone on the team agrees No. 9899's autonomous operation is one of its strengths. However, there were a lot of bugs to find and fix in the programming code, David admitted.

His dad, John Rohrbaugh, helped.

John and his fellow coach, Tom Schmerge both engineers spend a lot of time with the team. They enjoy it. John gets to explore engineering and teach his trade to his sons. Schmerge's daughter, Aubrey, a junior at Windsor High School, is on the team, too. She's the robot's pilot, and does much of the team's fabrication work.

Brecken and Kayden Housden a freshman at Windsor High and seventh-grader at Windsor Middle School, respectively round out the team. They're the newest additions, so they do a little of everything to help and learn where they can.

Black Diamond Robotics isn't affiliated with a school. The team operates out of Schmerge's garage in south Windsor.

Tom and John have put in just as many hours as each of the kids at least 300, they estimate.

"I think that creates a wonderful parent-child connection," said John's wife, Janelle Rohrbaugh. "It's our family hobby."

After a bit more work and collaboration, the Black Diamond Robotics team sussed out another solution on the airport dilemma: a wooden, wheeled box to carry No. 9899 through the airport.

It took a bit of work, but the team managed to get airport security and the airline to let them gate-check the robot. That way, the students and their coaches could explain to airport security what their collection of wires, motors and metal is: a solution.

Read more here:

Windsor-based Black Diamond Robotics prepares for tech championship - Greeley Tribune

EWEN, Mich. (WLUC) - The robotics team of the Ewen-Trout Creek School District will be heading to Escanaba for their FIRST Robotics competition.

This is only the second year the Ontonagon County school team has participated. The competition combines sport with hands-on training in science and technology. Students at the school only had six weeks to put together their remote-controlled robot and learn how to pilot it.

This year, the robots had to be designed relying on steam power, and the team is pretty confident in what they have been able to construct.

It does exactly what we want, perfectly, FIRST Robotics, Team 5989 member Gentry Brand said. I honestly do not think we'd change anything."

We took two of the three main tasks you can do and got them down to where we could do it, I would say, 99 percent of the time, FIRST Robotics, Team 5989 member Lucas Burrows said.

The Ewen-Trout Creek team, along with several other teams from across the state will take part in the competition March 16th. For more information on the competition, visit this website.

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Robotics teams set to compete next week - UpperMichigansSource.com

The middle school team from Leominster that qualified for the VAX Robotics World Championship: From left, Sam Bartow, Maggie Cunningham (kneeling), Charlotte Weldon, Josh Iacoboni, Lucas Rabello and Andrew Fielo. SUBMITTED PHOTO Sam Bartow and Andrew Fielo drive, while Charlotte Weldon is in the coachs position and has just loaded the orange cube onto their robot during a qualifying match. SUBMITTED PHOTO The high school team that advanced to regionals last weekend: Caleb Weldon, Lucas Lanzdorf and Sam DeCarolis. SUBMITTED PHOTO

The Leominster Youth Robotics middle school team, officially known as Vex Team 549C Robo Mayhem, has qualified for the second straight year for the VEX Robotics World Championship, to be held in April.

The team made it to the semifinals in the regional championship, held Saturday, Feb. 25 in Framingham, and won the skills competition.

In its 10th year, the VEX Robotics World Championship will include about 1,400 student-led robotics teams from Asia, North America and Europe. It will be held April 19-25 in Louisville, Kentucky.

Robo Mayhem is raising money so team members Charlotte Weldon, Maggie Cunningham, Josh Iacoboni, Lucas Rabello, Sam Bartow and Andrew Fielo can travel to Kentucky. Donations may be made online at https://www.gofundme.com/RoboMayhem549c, or by mail to Leominster Youth Robotics, c/o Jim Cunningham, 24 Church St., Leominster, MA 01453. Checks should be made out to Leominster Youth Robotics.

In addition, one of the Leominster Youth Robotics high school teams, Vex Team 549K Kinetic Karbonites, advanced to the high school division regional tournament, held the weekend of March 4-5.

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Leominster Youth Robotics team again qualifies for worlds - Leominster Champion

About 10 years ago, computer scientist Matanya Horowitz became intrigued at how far robotics had come within some industries and he started thinking about its potential in recycling, particularly for recognizing and sorting materials. Horowitz postulated that intelligent systems could have a huge impact if they could be designed to identify any material in a waste stream and pull it out.

But there were unique challenges to address within the recycling niche, and Horowitz went to work to troubleshoot them. After years of tweaking, the proprietary technology he created under the Denver-based company, AMP Robotics, is running in several material recovery facilities (MRFs). The robotic system, called the AMP Cortex Robotic Sorter, has the attention of several stakeholders, including the Closed Loop Foundation and a federal government agency.

Horowitz says the automated system cuts sorting costs by 50 percent. But the smart technologys main sell is that not only does it recognize any material coming into a MRF today, it shows potential to be able to identify virtually any item it has yet to encounter.

Early on, a main problem in developing automated sorting was that there was no vision system that could look into the waste stream and identify multiple, specific materials or their location on a conveyor belt.

To this day, with optical sorters materials must be physically separated before they are scanned. And optical sorters require their own special belts.

AMPs robot can detect unseparated materials and it can be installed on existing conveyor belts while.

And while most individual optical sorters can identify one material, one of AMPs robot can pick multiple materials. In essence, the system detects a materials location on the conveyor belt; the robot moves to intercept it, its then picked using grippers.

AMPs robotic sorter leverages a concept from the field of robotics called deep learning, which relies on algorithms to automatically perform various tasks, such as identifying examples of various materials.

We have applied this deep learning concept to recycling. You show the system individual examples, and it has the ability to learn what is unique about them, Horowitz says. For instance, PET is shiny, and we can program the system to look for shininess. It can learn to pick up on labels or cap colors. And it can figure out different combinations of featuresfor instance shapes and the specific shininess of aluminum.

The AMP team started its lab-based research early in 2015 with a National Science Foundation grant. The company has since completed projects in several recycling facilities under confidential agreements.

The Closed Loop Foundation has gotten behind AMPs efforts to lead innovation in the recycling space. It has awarded the company a grant and also invested in the technology through its venture fund.

AMP Robotics has developed a catalytic technology that we expect will drastically reduce contamination and increase yields at MRFs, thereby improving MRF profitability, says Ron Gonen, managing partner of Closed Loop Partners.

Once the product moved from the lab and was put to the test in MRFs there were hurdles to overcome. A big one was improving the ability to grip a wide variety of materials, which is still being fine-tuned. So far the system can handle multiple items in municipal solid waste streams, as well as e-waste and construction and demolition waste.

We have seen the technology work in the real-world conditions of a recycling facility, says Horowitz.

AMPs robotic system has been designed to recognize multiple materials and their features and to continually learn, which opens up potential opportunity to receive a whole spectrum of end of life products and materials, says Horowitz.

So, for instance, if a new piece of packaging comes down, our system may not recognize it at first, but once we learn what it does not recognize, we add that material or the materials feature to the learning algorithms, he says. Whats as exciting is that what will work at one facility can be applied to other facilities.

AMP Robotics is in active negotiations with a few MRFs interested in the technology, and hopes to roll its innovation to market in 2017.

The firmis not the only robotics solution on the market.

Finland-based ZenRobotics was founded in 2007. Its systems incorporate robotic sorters with sensors and arms for specific applications, such as construction and demoliton waste.

The ZenRobotics Recycler reclaims aw materials from waste with the help of advanced machine learning technology, sorting metal, wood and stone fractions. ZenRobotics Recycler uses multiple sensors (visible spectrum cameras, NIR, 3D laser scanners, haptic sensors, etc). to create a real-time analysis of the waste stream being currently processed. Based on the analysis, the system makes autonomous decisions on what objects to pick and how.

The ZenRobotics Recycler can separate large and heavy objects of up to 45 pounds. The robots gripper opens from to 20. Each robot arm has a 6.5-ft. by 6.5-ft. working area and can throw sorted objects into several waste chutes.

In 2016, ZenRobotics and ML Environmental LLC partnered to bring the ZenRobotics Recycler to the U.S. The technology was then introduced at WasteExpo in June.

In November, Recon Services Inc./973 Materials, announced it would be the first facility in the U.S. to install a ZenRobotics sorting line. It would be put in place at a C&D recycling facility.

Then there are tasks beyond sorting, such as disassembling iPhones, that are under exploration.

Meanwhile, Volvo Group is testing a Robot-based Autonomous Refuse handling (ROAR) system that would deploy robots as part of collections efforts. Instead of a team of human workers, Volvos robots will receive instructions from operating systems to do the heavy lifting and dumping. Drivers stay put, overseeing the controls.

See more here:

Are Robotics a Key to the Next Phase of Recycling? - waste360

Cassie Mitch Bernards / Agility Robotics

Agility Robotics took another approach

"The outdoors is complicated, and you're always going to slip and fall and tumble," Shelton says. "You wouldn't think of designing a car to be wrecked 20 times a day, whereas that is a specific design goal for Cassie." It can also stand in place, crouch, and keep its balance on a gently rocking dock; in the future, Shelton says, Cassie will also sport little arms.

Agility Robotics is planning to use future generations of Cassie for tasks like telepresence, inspecting industrial sites, and curb-to-doorstep package delivery. Cassie wouldn't replace people, Shelton says, but work alongside them to take over tedious tasks like hoisting packages.

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"A big portion of their jobis scheduling pickups, dealing with customer service issues, and that's not something that's quite as easy to automate," Shelton says.

Cassie comes from a line of robots inspired by flightless birds, but its ostrich-like appearnce was a bit of a coincidence. "In the case of Cassie you start with a biological system, do some math and turn it back into a design, and get something back that looks physically what you started with," Shelton says.

Nature doesn't always provide the ideal blueprint for machines. Airplanes were inspired by birds, but don't flap their wings to fly. "If you want to build a better horse you do a bunch of math...and you turn it into an internal combustion engine powered car," Shelton says. "We're not all riding around in things that look horses."

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But sometimes, robots that share an unsettling resemblance with living creatures are the best tools to get the job done. These agile, legged robots will prove their mettle on mundane stairs and driveways and in dangerous sites inaccessible to wheeled or tracked robots.

"There's so many areas where we still have to send humans to do the work where we really don't want to have humans," Hutter says.

One day, we may be able to remove workers from harm's way, and instead send legged robots galloping into burning buildings, over rubble, and into sewers or sites steeped in nuclear waste. These robots are still learning to walk, but wherever people go, they will follow.

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These New Robots Look Freaky But Can Do Amazing Things - NBCNews.com