Monthly Archives: October 2019

Robotics, artificial intelligence, and augmented reality get a lot of press these days, some of it espousing the good while some of it decrying its inevitable toll on human jobs. Technology at its best doesn't replace people, though; it helps them perform better. That's on display every quarter when Intuitive Surgical (NASDAQ:ISRG) and its da Vinci robots report earnings.

The company shipped 275 new da Vinci systems during the third quarter of 2019, raising the total number in operation worldwide by 12% to 5,406. Robotic-assisted surgeries are still a small fraction of the total number of procedures, and as adoption continues to steadily rise, this robotics company's recurring-sales engine will continue to get even stronger.

Intuitive Surgical is soon to get some competition via the world's largest medical device maker, Medtronic (NYSE:MDT). Intuitive is also early on in promoting two new da Vinci systems: the da Vinci SP (single-port) designed for single incision deep-tissue access, and the da Vinci Ion for lung biopsies. Only four SP systems were placed in operation for a total installed base of 38, and the first three Ion systems were sold.

Competition and the slow rollout of new robots didn't phase results, though, with revenue growth accelerating to 23% year over year in the quarter, bringing year-to-date growth up to 19%.

Metric

Nine Months Ended Sept. 30, 2019

Nine Months Ended Sept. 30, 2018

Change

Revenue

$3.20 billion

$2.68 billion

19%

Adjusted operating income

$1.28 billion

$1.13 billion

13%

Adjusted earnings per share

$9.28

$8.03

16%

Data source: Intuitive Surgical.

The bulk of the 275 new system placements were still made up of the flagship X and Xi models for more-general procedures, and innovating new uses for those machines will continue to be the driving force for the company. Case in point: Total procedures performed in Q3 were up 20%, even though the total installed base grew by just 12%. Surgeons using da Vinci are finding new ways to put the system to work, and all of that is fueling the steady and predictable sales model at Intuitive.

Image source: Intuitive Surgical.

Purchasing a da Vinci robot can be a big commitment for hospitals. A new system runs as much as a couple of million dollars. To help encourage adoption, Intuitive has been offering lease options, with 33% of new system placements being made under such terms in Q3.

Getting as many da Vinci robots in operation as possible is a good strategy, because system sales don't make up the bulk of revenue. Most of that comes from instruments and accessories, as well as services.

Sales Segment

Revenue, Nine Months Ended Sept. 30, 2019

YOY Change

System sales

$930 million

18%

Instruments and accessories

$1.74 billion

22%

Services

$534 million

14%

YOY = year over year. Data source: Intuitive Surgical.

As for services, CEO Gary Guthart had this to say on the Q3 earnings call:

We're working on computing and real-time cloud technologies to allow for tests from telementoring to augmented reality. We now have over 20 active telementoring sites that together have supported hundreds of cloud-enabled, real-time surgery sessions as we progress in building real-time cloud capabilities. Feedback on the utility of these sites for case observations and mentoring has been supportive. In augmented reality, we're working through logistics and installation of our firstIRIS accounts [augmented reality that gives surgeons a 3D view of a patients anatomy] to gather customer and clinical feedback. We expect first clinical cases on the IRIS system in the next few months. Lastly, our surgical simulation products have become widely adopted in the installed base with more than 3,200 da Vinci simulators in the field.

And on the instruments and accessories side, Intuitive also got U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval to start selling a couple of new single-use staplers in Q3. The acquisition of endoscopeand camera maker Scholly Fiberoptic was also completed in the period for an undisclosed (and likely small) sum of money, further strengthening the company's portfolio of attachments available for use with its machines.

In short, the last quarter was a strong one, and the new systems rollout and a steadily climbing installed base mean Intuitive's real moneymaker, recurring instruments and accessory sales, will keep getting better. For investors looking for a consistent growth play, this medical robotics company is a must-have.

Originally posted here:

New Robots and Recurring Sales Push Intuitive Surgical Even Higher - Motley Fool

Pakistani six member team to participate in OIC Robotics Challenge

ISLAMABAD: Six-member Pakistani team has arrived in Tashkent, Uzbekistan for participating in the first `OIC Robotics Challenge (ORC) which is being held within the framework of INNOWEEK of the government of Uzbekistan from October 27 to 31.

From Pakistan, Ali Raza from National University of Science and Technology (NUST) and Usama Naseer from COMSATS University, Islamabad will participate in Robo Sumo competition while Muhammad Awais Khan, Muhammad Ahmad Ali, Abdul Waqas and Muhammad Ammar Hassan from Lahore Garrison University, Lahore will participate in the Robo Football competition.

The event is being arranged by COMSTECH in partnership with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) General Secretariat, Ministry of Innovative Development of the Republic of Uzbekistan and the Islamic Development Bank (IDB).

The ORC takes place in the UZEXPOCENTRE exhibition center Tashkent and is restricted to participants from OIC Member States with ages between 17 and 23 years, an official of COMSTECH informed.

The teams, selected by OIC Jury, consisting of three members and each team can be accompanied by a senior person as Team Manager or Mentor who will need to support his own travel.

The participants would have the opportunity to have a guided tour of some of the exciting INNOWEEK activities being held concurrently, the official said.

The competition will be held in two different categories, and first three winning teams will be given the prize money in each category.

The total prize money for the competition is $21,000 which will be distributed among winners of the competition in two categories including Robo Sumo and Robo Football.

The first three winners of the Robo Sumo category will be given $ 5,000, $ 3,000 and $ 1,000 respectively while the first three winners of Robo Football category will be given $ 6,000, $ 4,000 and $ 2,000 respectively, the official added.

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Pakistani six member team to participate in OIC Robotics Challenge - The News International

Combining the skill of LEGO building with the knowledge of coding, teams throughout Delaware are preparing for the 2020 FIRST LEGO League.

One new entry will be the combined forces of Great Oaks Charter School and Kuumba Academy in Wilmington, as they held their first practice Thursday afternoon.

"I've always loved technology and coding, so I came here from a poster. It said LEGO League, and I thought 'oh, okay', and it has coding, so it's great," saidNasir Briscoe, an eighth grade student at Great Oaks.

LEGO League is split into four different age groups covering K-12, and challenges teams to build a robot, and then pre-program its motor to do various tasks, such as moving objects, or in one case, helping get a person unstuck so they can continue swinging.

Briscoe said he can still remember when he got his first set.

"I didn't really play with toys as a kid, I wasn't one of those kids. I played with technology, and when she gave me a LEGO set, I started building it, and I loved it."

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The Great Oaks/Kuumba team is getting a huge assist from Mount Pleasant junior Davis Miller, who is serving as the team's mentor, while also helping to get his school's team ready for the top division.

"What gets me into robotics is the fact probably half of it is team-building and the camaraderie of the students that you wouldn't get anywhere else, except maybe a sports team or a family. I think what it teaches kids about working together is invaluable."

Teams, including traditional schools along with various Boys & Girls Clubs in Delaware, are in the preliminary planning and building stages through the end of 2019. Statewide competition begins in January, and successful teams can move on to national, and perhaps even international, competition.

Read more:

LEGO-based robotics teams growing in Delaware | The Latest from WDEL News - WDEL 1150AM

MIT researchers have compiled a dataset that captures the detailed behavior of a robotic system physically pushing hundreds of different objects. Using the dataset the largest and most diverse of its kind researchers can train robots to learn pushing dynamics that are fundamental to many complex object-manipulation tasks, including reorienting and inspecting objects, and uncluttering scenes.

To capture the data, the researchers designed an automated system consisting of an industrial robotic arm with precise control, a 3D motion-tracking system, depth and traditional cameras, and software that stitches everything together. The arm pushes around modular objects that can be adjusted for weight, shape, and mass distribution. For each push, the system captures how those characteristics affect the robots push.

The dataset, called Omnipush, contains 250 different pushes of 250 objects, totaling roughly 62,500 unique pushes. Its already being used by researchers to, for instance, build models that help robots predict where objects will land when theyre pushed.

We need a lot of rich data to make sure our robots can learn, says Maria Bauza, a graduate student in the Department of Mechanical Engineering (MechE) and first author of a paper describing Omnipush thats being presented at the upcoming International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. Here, were collecting data from a real robotic system, [and] the objects are varied enough to capture the richness of the pushing phenomena. This is important to help robots understand how pushing works, and to translate that information to other similar objects in the real world.

Joining Bauza on the paper are: Ferran Alet and Yen-Chen Lin, graduate students in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS); Tomas Lozano-Perez, the School of Engineering Professor of Teaching Excellence; Leslie P. Kaelbling, the Panasonic Professor of Computer Science and Engineering; Phillip Isola, an assistant professor in EECS; and Alberto Rodriguez, an associate professor in MechE.

Diversifying data

Why focus on pushing behavior? Modeling pushing dynamics that involve friction between objects and surfaces, Rodriguez explains, is critical in higher-level robotic tasks. Consider the visually and technically impressive robot that can play Jenga, which Rodriguez recently co-designed. The robot is performing a complex task, but the core of the mechanics driving that task is still that of pushing an object affected by, for instance, the friction between blocks, Rodriguez says.

Omnipush builds on a similar dataset built in the Manipulation and Mechanisms Laboratory (MCube) by Rodriguez, Bauza, and other researchers that captured pushing data on only 10 objects. After making the dataset public in 2016, they gathered feedback from researchers. One complaint was lack of object diversity: Robots trained on the dataset struggled to generalize information to new objects. There was also no video, which is important for computer vision, video prediction, and other tasks.

For their new dataset, the researchers leverage an industrial robotic arm with precision control of the velocity and position of a pusher, basically a vertical steel rod. As the arm pushes the objects, a Viconmotion-tracking system which has been used in films, virtual reality, and for research follows the objects. Theres also an RGB-D camera, which adds depth information to captured video.

The key was building modular objects. The uniform central pieces, made from aluminum, look like four-pointed stars and weigh about 100 grams. Each central piece contains markers on its center and points, so the Vicon system can detect its pose within a millimeter.

Smaller pieces in four shapes concave, triangular, rectangular, and circular can be magnetically attached to any side of the central piece. Each piece weighs between 31 to 94 grams, but extra weights, ranging from 60 to 150 grams, can be dropped into little holes in the pieces. All pieces of the puzzle-like objects align both horizontally and vertically, which helps emulate the friction a single object with the same shape and mass distribution would have. All combinations of different sides, weights, and mass distributions added up to 250 unique objects.

For each push, the arm automatically moves to a random position several centimeters from the object. Then, it selects a random direction and pushes the object for one second. Starting from where it stopped, it then chooses another random direction and repeats the process 250 times. Each push records the pose of the object and RGB-D video, which can be used for various video-prediction purposes. Collecting the data took 12 hours a day, for two weeks, totaling more than 150 hours. Humans intervention was only needed when manually reconfiguring the objects.

The objects dont specifically mimic any real-life items. Instead, theyre designed to capture the diversity of kinematics and mass asymetries expected of real-world objects, which model the physics of the motion of real-world objects. Robots can then extrapolate, say, the physics model of an Omnipush object with uneven mass distribution to any real-world object with similar uneven weight distributions.

Imagine pushing a table with four legs, where most weight is over one of the legs. When you push the table, you see that it rotates on the heavy leg and have to readjust. Understanding that mass distribution, and its effect on the outcome of a push, is something robots can learn with this set of objects, Rodriguez says.

Powering new research

In one experiment, the researchers used Omnipush to train a model to predict the final pose of pushed objects, given only the initial pose and description of the push. They trained the model on 150 Omnipush objects, and tested it on a held-out portion of objects. Results showed that the Omnipush-trained model was twice as accurate as models trained on a few similar datasets. In their paper, the researchers also recorded benchmarks in accuracy that other researchers can use for comparison.

Because Omnipush captures video of the pushes, one potential application is video prediction. A collaborator, for instance, is now using the dataset to train a robot to essentially imagine pushing objects between two points. After training on Omnipush, the robot is given as input two video frames, showing an object in its starting position and ending position. Using the starting position, the robot predicts all future video frames that ensure the object reaches its ending position. Then, it pushes the object in a way that matches each predicted video frame, until it gets to the frame with the ending position.

The robot is asking, If I do this action, where will the object be in this frame? Then, it selects the action that maximizes the likelihood of getting the object in the position it wants, Bauza says. It decides how to move objects by first imagining how the pixels in the image will change after a push.

Omnipush includes precise measurements of object motion, as well as visual data, for an important class of interactions between robot and objects in the world, says Matthew T. Mason, a professor of computer science and robotics at Carnegie Melon University. Robotics researchers can use this data to develop and test new robot learning approaches that will fuel continuing advances in robotic manipulation.

More:

Pushy robots learn the fundamentals of object manipulation - MIT News

Will you be willing to give your face to be put on thousands of robots worldwide for Rs 91,02,179 (100,000 pounds)? No, we are not just making this up. A start-up tech company is actually looking for a 'kind and friendly' face to put on their robots.

The unnamed firm is looking for human faces for the robots, which will be used as virtual friends for elderly people, and for the same, they have lodged a request with the company Geomiq.com.

Geomiq wrote that they were approached by a robotics company to help with the finishing touches to a 'state-of-art humanoid robot.' They did not give out a lot of details about the company due to a non-disclosure agreement that they have signed.

The company knows that it is an unusual request and that it is a big deal, which is why they are ready to pay so much money. The robots are set to go into production next year.

People are a little concerned about this demand and are asking why can't the company just make a new face exactly like Sophia, the social humanoid robot developed by Hong Kong based company Hanson Robotics.

Technology reporter Rowland Manthorpe took to his Twitter account to call it a bad sci-fi plot. He wrote, "Bad sci-fi plot alert. This unnamed company is looking for someone to be the face of its robot, which will be used as a 'virtual friend' for elderly people. It's offering 100,000 for the rights to your face in perpetuity."

Another Twitter user wrote, "Even I wouldn't have my face "in perpetuity" to which a person responded saying, "Who would?! I grew a beard to hide mine."

Would you be willing to give your face?

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A company will pay you Rs 91 lakh to put your face on its robots. Internet is aghast - India Today

In a "Bad-sci-fi plot", a tech company is looking for a 'kind and friendly' face to be put on thousands of robots worldwide.

The unnamed tech company has even offered to pay around rupees 91 lakhs (100,000 pounds) to anyone, who agrees to have his face masked on these robots, which are being designed to act as "virtual friends" to elderly people.

The "unusual request" was forwarded to Genuique.com, a mechanical/industrial manufacturing firm, by the privately-funded robotics company as they are looking for the 'finishing touch' to the "state-of-art humanoid robot".

Genuique.com stated, "This is not our usual remit of request, which is why were making this public appeal to try and find the right person. The designer knows that this is a big deal, and has agreed a fee of 100,000 to license the rights to the right face."

The details of the company were not put out due to a non-disclosure agreement. However, the anonymity is also preserved due to the secretive nature of the project.

In a post shared on Twitter, Rowland Manthrope, a technology correspondent said that it's a bad-sci-fi plot".

Signing up to have your face put on robots around households is indeed an "extremely big decision" and this didn't go down well with Twitterati.

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Company Offers Nearly 90 Lakh Rupees If You Sign Up to Have Your Face on Robots - News18

PEKAN: IN a move to spur creative and innovative thinking among their pupils, teachers at SK Seri Terentang here decided to spend their own money to buy robotics kit sets early last year.

The school then made their debut at the International Robotics Competition in Putrajaya in February last year and unexpectedly bagged the runners-up prize.

On Oct 20, it made the country proud after winning a gold medal at the The Maker Robot Festival, a robotics competition which attracted participants from around the world in Ulsan, South Korea.

SK Seri Terentang Robotics Club adviser Mazlan Muhamad Yusof said the experience was an amazing journey, especially as the school exposed the pupils to robotics and programming only last year.

When we first started, we collected money from the teachers to buy robotics kit sets. We never expected the school team to make it this far.

Due to this, he said, the school now had its own Robotics Club where its members assembled up to six sets of robots and conducted programming activities every week.

We hope the achievements will encourage more Year One and Year Two pupils to join the club.

We have a limited number of robotics kit sets as they are costly. This is compounded by the fact that there is no special fund for the club.

However, club members are eager to learn and they spend long hours working on the robots, he said, adding that the pupils parents had financially contributed to their childrens South Korea trip.

Mazlan, who led the team of five pupils, along with two other teachers Roslaini Abdullah and Roszita Ajmain, said the decision to travel to South Korea was to give the participants exposure on robotics and Korean culture.

A Malaysian teacher who is in South Korea for a teacher exchange programme had told us about the festival. We decided to travel there hoping that the pupils could gain knowledge on robotics and learn a new culture.

Surprisingly, we emerged tops and won gold in the sumo-bot category, which is where two robots attempt to push each other out of a circle, he said.

The five pupils who travelled to the festival were Muhammad Imran Mazlan, 10, Muhammad Baqir Borhan, 12, Muhammad Danish Fawwaz Mohamad, 11, Nurul Iman Mazlan, 11, and Nur Ishamina Amni Mohd Imeran, 10.

On their next competition, Mazlan said the team would travel to Guangzhou, China, next month to compete in the 2019 MakeX Starter City Guardian competition. He said the schools team was picked to represent Malaysia after winning gold at the MakeX Malaysia Robotics Competition, which was held in Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia in Bangi on Oct 12 and 13.

The participants have started their training and are making preparations for the competition. Training sessions include modifying robots and programming them to carry out instructions according to the requirements of the competition, he said, adding that some 60 countries would compete in the competition from Nov 28 to Dec 1.

SK Seri Terentang along with SK Putrajaya Presint 11(3) in Putrajaya recently won five medals including a gold medal in the South Korean robot festival.

Excerpt from:

Pekan school robotics team beats odds to win gold - New Straits Times