Category Archives: Robotics

As of this writing, 37 people have been rescued from a Florida condo building that collapsed in the early morning of June 24. However, more than 140 others still remain unaccounted for and rescue robots have now been sent in to help find them.

The challenge: Search-and-rescue efforts are often a race against the clock in a situation like a collapsed building, the likelihood of finding survivors wanes with each passing hour.

However, a collapsed building is an incredibly dangerous place for first responders, too, so they must be very deliberate in navigating it one wrong move and the rubble might shift in a way that compromises their own safety or the people they're trying to rescue.

On the morning of July 1, another part of the building in Florida started showing signs that it might collapse, so first responders were pulled from the site for most of the day. When the search resumed, their access was limited.

Rescue robots: Robots can be a powerful tool in search-and-rescue operations, using cameras and other sensors to look for signs of survivors without putting human responders at risk.

Smaller rescue robots can also fit into tight spaces that humans can't or shouldn't navigate.

"In a collapse situation like this, the pile is structurally unsound and constantly vulnerable to shifting," Tom Frost, vice president of unmanned ground systems at robotics company Teledyne Flir, told the Washington Post. "It's much safer to have a robot crawl deeper into a void than to have a person crawling into that void."

Offer of help: Teledyne Flir has sent at least two of its rescue robots to the Miami-Dade Fire Department (MDFR) to help with the Florida disaster, according to the Post.

One is a seven-pound, tank-like robot called FirstLook. It's equipped with cameras and microphones and can survive drops of up to 16 feet onto concrete.

"You can take this robot and throw (it) through a window or throw it on a roof, and get to really hard to access places," Frost said.

The other is a suitcase-sized robot called PackBot. It assisted with rescue efforts following the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and is designed to move objects and carry loads of up to 40 pounds.

The next steps: It's not clear whether the MDFR has deployed either of the rescue robots yet or plans to in the future.

However, first responders have already used drones, sonar, and other technologies and with safety concerns limiting what human rescuers can do right now, ground robots might be a valuable addition to the rescue effort.

We'd love to hear from you! If you have a comment about this article or if you have a tip for a future Freethink story, please email us at [emailprotected].

Continued here:

Throwable Rescue Robots Sent To Help at Collapsed Building - Freethink

Tyson Foods joined ABB Technology Ventures, Tekfen Ventures and three other venture capital firms to invest a combined $10 million into Soft Robotics, to further the tech companys work in artificial intelligence applications used in meat processing.

Soft Robotics said the capital will fund the launch of SoftAI powered robotic solutions. The application layers 3D vision and artificial intelligence on top of Soft Robotics patented industrial robots to provide the hand-eye coordination of human beings. This will allow for the automation of bulk picking processes in the food supply chain.

Todays industrial robots are unable to deal with product variability or unstructured environments typically found across the labor-challenged food supply chain in areas such as agriculture, food processing, and logistics, said Mark Chiappetta, chief operating officer of Soft Robotics. With our revolutionary soft grasping, 3D perception, and AI technologies, Soft Robotics unlocks robotic automation by augmenting widely available industrial robots with true hand-eye coordination allowing them to perform tasks that traditionally could only be performed by human workers.

Companies like Tyson Foods and ABB which acquired Baldor Electric in Fort Smith and operates manufacturing plants there are betting on the adoption of robotic automation to help improve safety and increase production in their facilities to meet the demand for high quality, safe and nutritious protein products. Tyson Foods is a leading producer of chicken, beef, and pork, and has invested about $500 million in new technology and automation in the last three years. The company is an existing user of Soft Robotics.

At Tyson Ventures, we are continually exploring new areas in automation that can enhance safety and increase the productivity of our team members, said Rahul Ray, senior director of Tyson Ventures. Soft Robotics best-in-class robotic technology, computer vision and AI platform have the potential to transform the food industry and will play a key role in any companys automation journey.

With workforce challenges across the industry, Tyson said the company remains committed to applying technology and robotics where it can to help fill the gaps in high-turnover and hard-to-fill positions.

Jeff Beck, CEO of Soft Robotics, said the global pandemic turned up the pressure to automate to alleviate workforce challenges and increase operational and food safety practices.

The vulnerabilities of the food supply chain were illuminated by the pandemic making it clear that automation has graduated from a nice-to-have to a must-have across all large-scale food production operations, Beck said.

See the original post:

Tyson Ventures, ABB invest in Soft Robotics $10 million funding round - talkbusiness.net

NeuroArm | Open surgical maneuvers (scalable in amplitude and speed). Role: Telesurgery. Can execute microsurgical movements on behalf of the primary surgeon, potentially with fine motor augmentation (scalable movements, tremor filter). Prototype built and successfully used clinically, but not commercially available.

Neuromate | Floor-mounted robotic arm to align and maintain linear trajectory. Role: Frameless stereotaxis with semiautomated targeting. For endoscopy, can function as a surgical assistant (retraction, lighting, correlation of location with navigation). Commercially available (Renishaw).

ROSA | Floor-mounted robotic arm to align and maintain linear trajectory. Role: Frameless stereotaxis with semiautomated targeting. For endoscopy, can function as a surgical assistant (retraction, lighting, correlation of location with navigation). Commercially available (Zimmer Biomet).

Stealth Autoguide | Mayfield clamp-mounted robotic arm to align and maintain linear trajectory. Role: Frameless stereotaxis with semiautomated targeting. Commercially available (Medtronic).

SurgiScope | Ceiling-mounted surgical microscope capable of frameless robotic stereotaxis. Role: Can be used for frameless stereotaxis with semiautomated targeting. Commercially available (ISIS Robotics).

See more here:

10 robots for cranial neurosurgery on the market or in the works - AI in Healthcare

MARLBOROUGH, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--American Robotics, a leading commercial developer of fully-automated drone systems, today announced it will join the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Beyond-Visual-Line-of-Sight (BVLOS) Aviation Rulemaking Committee (ARC) to advance BVLOS drone operations at the request of the FAA. As the first company to be authorized by the FAA for highly automated operations with no humans on-site, American Robotics holds a unique view on how to further advance and develop drone regulations to best support the $100 billion commercial drone industry. American Robotics will provide recommendations to normalize safe, viable and scalable BVLOS flights.

American Robotics is excited to participate in pushing forward BVLOS regulations alongside the FAA to develop safe integration of UAS into our National Airspace System, said Reese Mozer, co-founder and CEO of American Robotics. Our groundbreaking FAA approval in January 2021 was an important and significant step forward for the commercial drone community as a whole. We look forward to sharing our insights with the broader commercial drone community, and the FAA, and providing commercial users better access to the data and insights that are only accessible through an automated drone solution.

The commercial drone industry is growing quickly and providing significant benefits to the American public, but enabling expanded BVLOS operations is critical for the industry to truly take off. Automated BVLOS operations are particularly important to bringing the commercial sectors into the drone economy, including the oil and gas, renewable energy, infrastructure, and agriculture verticals. Key to these operations is the use, and FAA acceptance, of new and innovative safety technologies, such as long-range detect and avoid (DAA) sensors and software-enabled automation. The ARC will be a key step towards the future of the commercial drone industry.

To learn more about American Robotics and its Scout System drone, click here. For media assets, click here.

About American Robotics, Inc.

American Robotics (AR) is a privately-owned company focused on designing, developing, and marketing industrial drone solutions for rugged, real-world environments. ARs Scout System is a fully-automated, AI-powered drone system capable of continuous, unattended operation and is marketed as a drone-in-a-box turnkey data solution service under a Robot-as-a-Service (RAAS) business model. The Scout System is the first drone system approved by the FAA for automated operation beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) with no humans on-site. AR was founded by leading roboticists from Carnegie Mellon and Stanford with a shared vision for bringing robotic technology out of the lab and into the real-world to solve global challenges. American Robotics growth is also bolstered by the companys recent decision to enter into an acquisition by Ondas Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: ONDS), a developer of proprietary, software-based wireless broadband technology. Ondas and American Robotics recently completed a $51.5 million equity raise that was heavily oversubscribed.

More here:

American Robotics Selected to Participate on the FAA's New Rulemaking Committee to Advance Beyond-Visual-Line-of-Sight (BVLOS) Drone Operations -...

If you're one of the millions of people who suffer from knee pain, you know it can severely affect your daily life. The Ascend is a smart knee orthosis that can help people with osteoarthritis or knee injuries move with less pain. Designed by San Francisco-based Roam Robotics, it uses air compression to support the knee and take the strain out of the quadriceps muscle.

There's a huge potential market for wearable devices to help improve mobility. The American Association of Orthopedic Surgeons estimates that more than 750,000 knee replacements were performed in 2017 in the US alone. Exoskeletons designed to help augment human strength or reduce injury aren't new. But the Ascend is an orthosis specifically designed for people who have exhausted the pain management options of physical therapy and traditional braces. It's also made of plastic and fabric rather than metal, so it's lightweight at 2.5 pounds. Roam Robotics says the Ascend can help delay or even avoid surgery altogether.

I got to try a prototype Ascend and strapped on the smart knee to try a few everyday activities, like walking up and down steps or moving from a sit to a stand position. Getting used to the Ascend takes a few minutes, but after I stopped thinking about the robotic orthosis on my body, I hardly noticed it at all.

Wearing the Ascend to ascend some steps.

Even though I don't experience knee pain, I still felt the substantial support from the orthosis when I walked up and down steps. A sitting mode can help you with movements like lowering down or getting up from a seated or squatted position. The user can also choose the level of support and change between different modes on a remote. "Ultimately the goal of a robot like this is you don't want to feel like you're being driven by a machine, you want to feel like you're the one in control," Roam Robotics CEO Tim Swift tells me.

The Ascend is powered by a smart pack that weighs around 10 pounds. Worn like a backpack, it has processors that recognize the movements you're making and then lets the orthosis provide the correct support for the muscle group. The smart pack also contains the battery and an air compressor. Depending on the activity level, you should be able to get around two hours of runtime from a single charge. An accompanying app can also score how your mobility is changing over time.

Watch the video on this page for more details on how the Ascend works and the experience of CNET senior producer Mitchell Chang (who does suffer from knee pain) when he tried it on.

If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, Roam Robotics will let you take the Ascend for a test run. The version available to customers is completely custom fabricated and made to your exact limb measurements. It's also registered by the Food and Drug Administration as a Class I device, which means it may be partially or fully covered by your private health insurance or Medicare, but the outright cost is around $7,000.

From the lab to your inbox. Get the latest science stories from CNET every week.

Read more:

This wearable robotic knee brace may put an end to your knee pain - CNET

High-tech systems and tools allow our society to do all sorts of incredible things. And the people that design and produce advanced forms of technology are just as valuable to our society as the technology itself. High-tech systems and hardware are, by their very nature, complicated. Learning the inner workings of circuit boards and apps can take years and often cost thousands of dollars. Thankfully, there are alternatives when learning the basics of modern technologies.

The 2021 Raspberry Pi and Arduino Bootcamp Bundle offers students the opportunity to broaden their horizons and satisfy their desire to learn more about programming circuit boards and robotics. Best of all, this course bundle is currently available for only $20. The combined value of all these courses is $995 (that's a savings of 97%).

The course bundle consists of five separate courses totaling 434 lessons across more than 40 hours of instruction. Users of this course bundle will learn the fundamentals ROS2, Raspberry Pi, and Arduino.

The courses are taught by Edouard Renard, whose classes have average ratings of 4.2 - 4.7/5 stars. Renard is a software engineer and entrepreneur who not only has a passion for electronics, but also for the challenge and reward of breaking down complicated topics and teaching them to people who want to broaden their horizons.

Learn more about the complicated technological processes that drive the world around you. Pick up an incredibly fun new hobby of automating robotics to the tasks you decide, and begin to understand the fundamentals of what could possibly become a rewarding career in technology. The 2021 Raspberry Pi & Arduino Bootcamp Bundle is now available for just $20, a major drop from its total value of $995.

Price subject to change.

This content is from our partner StackCommerce. GameSpot may get a share of the revenue if you buy anything featured on our site.

See the original post here:

Become A Robotics Guru With This Raspberry Pi And Arduino Training - GameSpot

Every time we come across an unknown concept or an image or a word, we quickly search for it on google and instantly get loads of answers on that matter. If robots could do the same, things will be so much easier. For conventional robots, every task like moving a foot, grasping an object, recognizing a face, requires a significant amount of processing and preprogrammed information. So, installing any new programming in them, for new knowledge takes a lot of time and effort. This is why several research groups are exploring the idea of robots that rely on cloud-computing infrastructure to access vast amounts of processing power and data. This approach, which some are calling cloud robotics, would allow robots to offload compute-intensive tasks like image processing and voice recognition and even download new skills instantly.

The idea of cloud robotics is to attach the robot to an external cloud. So, if the robot sees an unknown object, it can instantly send the image to the cloud and receive information and instructions in no time. The term cloud robotics is coined by James Juddher, a professor at Carnegie Mellon currently working at Google. He described the possibilities of cloud robotics at the IEEE International Conference on Humanoid Robots, in Nashville, Tenn., this past December. According to him, embracing the cloud could make robots lighter, cheaper, and smarter, He is confident that cloud robotics could offload CPU-heavy tasks to remote servers, relying on smaller and less power-hungry onboard computers. Even more promising, the robots could turn to cloud-based services to expand their capabilities.

The idea of connecting a robot to an external computer is not new. Back in the 1990s, Masayuki Inaba at the University of Tokyo explored the concept of a remote brain, as he called it, physically separating sensors and motors from high-level reasoning software.

Now cloud robotics seeks to push that idea to the next level, exploiting the cheap computing power and ubiquitous Net connectivity available today. Kuffner, who currently works on Googles self-driving car project, realized that running computing tasks on the cloud is often much more effective than trying to do it locally.

Kuffner explained the Google service known as Google Goggles. If someone snaps a picture of a painting at a museum or a public landmark and Google sends the information about it. Similarly, it can be used in robotics too. A robot would send images of what it is seeing to the cloud, receiving in return detailed information about the environment and objects in it. Using the cloud, the robot could also improve capabilities such as speech recognition, language translation, path planning, and 3D mapping.

Share This ArticleDo the sharing thingy

Go here to read the rest:

Cloud Robotics: The Way to Lighter, Cheaper and Smarter Robots - Analytics Insight

By Jessica Mathews / news@whmi.com

A Howell robotics team has been named a finalist in a robotics challenge.

Team KRASH, one of Howell's four FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) teams, has advanced from the semi-finals to the finals of the FIRST Robotics Innovation Challenge. Team KRASH is one of only 20 teams worldwide to advance to this stage of the competition. In the Innovation Challenge, teams identify a real-world problem, design a solution, create a business model, and pitch their idea to other FTC teams for judged awards.

Team KRASH's project involved developing the KRASH Engineered Boxing Bag (KEBB) to help regress the symptoms of Parkinson's disease. The team has worked with Ohana Karate's Rock Steady Boxing program to develop the KEBB prototype. In addition to being a finalist, Team KRASH is in the running for the Community Choice Award, which is voted on by the public. The community can vote for Team KRASH through the provided web link.

As a finalist, Team KRASH will make several presentations to various FIRST Robotics judges, including a business pitch. As a finalist, the team will also receive expert pitch advice from real-world entrepreneurs before their final judging and a 1:1 coaching session with staff from one of the top social impact business incubators.

The winners will be announced on June 30th.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all FIRST Robotics events are being held virtually this year. Officials say Howell's teams are following the district's health and safety protocols while preparing for the events and virtual competitions.

Go here to read the rest:

Howell Team Finalist In FIRST Robotics Innovation Challenge - WHMI

According to the EPA, the U.S. alone produces 292.4 million tons of municipal solid waste a year. That figure works out to around 4.9 pounds per person, per day. To say the world and the United States in particular has a waste problem is putting it mildly. No one solution is going to address this growing issue but thankfully, weve seen a number of innovations surface in recent years.

This year, were playing host to the Extreme Tech Challenge Global Finals on July 22. The pitch-off competition will feature some of the most innovative forward-looking startups across a range of categories, including many dealing with sustainability. The day will also feature panels, including a number hosted by TechCrunch editors.

One highlight worth tuning in for is Waste Matters. The conversation will include a trio of folks from companies taking unique approaches to managing the waste stream.

Leon Farrant is the co-founder and CEO of, Green Li-Ion, a company dedicated to dramatically accelerating the process of recycling lithium-ion batteries. Its a key issue as a wide range of different consumer electronics grow more ubiquitous around the world.

Matanya Horowitz is the founder and CEO of AMP Robotics. The Denver-based company uses AI and robotics better sort a wide range of recyclables from waste. Material Evolution co-founder and CEO Elizabeth Gilligan will also join us to discuss her companys novel and sustainable approach to creating concrete.

Join us on July 22 to find out how the most innovative startups are working to solve some of the worlds biggest problems. And best of all, tickets are free book yours today!

Link:

Hear CEOs from Green Li-Ion, AMP Robotics and Material Evolution discuss high-tech solutions to waste management - TechCrunch

AutoStore is weighing an initial public offering that could value the Norwegian warehouse robotics company at more than $10 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.

The company is working with advisers on the planned listing, which could come as soon as this year, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing confidential information. While the venue for the IPO hasnt been confirmed, AutoStore is leaning toward listing on a European exchange, the people said.

Deliberations are ongoing and no final decisions on the timing and size of an IPO have been made, according to the people.

Founded in 1996, Nedre Vats-based AutoStore provides robots used in the storing and retrieval of goods in warehouses. It specializes in so-called cube storage automation and its technology is deployed at more than 600 sites in 35 countries.

Private equity firm Thomas H. Lee Partners acquired the company in 2019. In April, it sold a 40% stake in AutoStore to SoftBank Group Corp. in a deal that valued the company at $7.7 billion including debt.

Thomas H. Lee will continue to be AutoStores largest shareholder after an IPO, the people said.

A representative for AutoStore didnt immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for Thomas H. Lee declined to comment. SoftBank couldnt be immediately reached for comment.

E-commerce and related companies have seen a flurry of successful listings in the U.S. this year. Another SoftBank-backed firm, South Koreas Coupang Inc., rose 41% in its trading debut in March. The shares have since given up some of their gains but are still trading about 8% above the offer price.

Companies have raised an all-time high of almost $350 billion via IPOs this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, exceeding a previous peak of $282 billion from the second half of 2020.

With assistance by Michael Hytha

Before it's here, it's on the Bloomberg Terminal.

Go here to read the rest:

Robotics Firm AutoStore Is Said to Plan IPO at $10 Billion Value - Bloomberg