Category Archives: Robotics

Rise of the Machines

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I gave this talk at Quanda Convergence on Mar 4th. I was pleasantly surprised with the response the talk received. It was a very good gauge to ascertain if people in general were ready for having more robots in their everyday lives and the answer is an overwhelming YES!

The talk focused on my work in robotics and the kind of questions people asked me when I told that I build robots. While most of them were paranoid as to when we should welcome our robot overlords, others were skeptical if robotics was there yet. We’re somewhere in between today and this talk examined the topic in a lighthearted manner. It touched the various movies that had robots as a centerstage and linked them to real robots or intelligent systems that we have today.

So, when will the robots rise?

Rise of the Machines 

 


DAvinCi’s Revival

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I came across this article on IEEE Spectrum today and I was pleasantly surprised to see DAvinCi mentioned in Prof.Kuffner’s presentation (slide 17).

Cloud Computing and Robotics

Prof.Kuffner’s Presentation -
Cloud Enabled Robots

DAvinCi started with the grand vision of providing intelligence cheaply to a horde of heterogeneous service robots and we made good progress in identifying the underlying technologies and in deploying a SLAM demonstration on a single node Hadoop cluster. We were the only group that existed publicly at that point and I believe we were one of the first to publish the concept of using Cloud-computing for Service Robots. My interest in DAvinCi has been resparked and I’m glad that players like Google have finally taken notice. I look forward to more efficient use of computing ahead.

LEO10 in the news

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A hearty congratulations to my students for making the media with their recent accomplishment at the Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition held in Michigan in June 2010. They placed 8th out of 48 teams in the design challenge during their debut.Their robot is featured in the front, while my robot Rio is in the background. You can also see our humanoid, HOAP-3 in the edge of the picture. The team members are Dev Chandan (team lead, mechanical), Hitesh Dhiman (software, ROS expert) and Ankit Sachdev (electronics, embedded systems). The picture was taken in my lab.

This is impressive on two counts -

1. The LEO10 team consisted of just 3 rookie members. Most teams have an average of 8 to 20 members.

2. This is the team’s first robot. Most teams have existed for atleast half a decade.

Given this precedence, I’m excited about the upcoming year’s design and I wish the team the very best.

To read the full article, click on – NUS team’s Robotic Turtle is no slouch

Alternative link

Rio 2 – The Holonomic Telepresence Robot

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Rio has been constantly evolving in its application and is currently been outfitted as a Telepresence robot for remote surveillance, patient care, elderly and child monitoring applications. While the fundamental technology behind Telepresence robots are equivalent to web-conferencing, the real challenge lies in delivering enterprise level QoS. We are now evaluating methods for data compression on the fly to minimize latency, increase video resolution and to improve the controller frequency.

A robot’s birthday

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Quite possibly my fastest fabrication to implementation for a full fledged autonomous robot. Rio, our holonomic robot, works; flawlessly too.

It was fabricated (mechanical and PCBs), wired, tested and ready to go in less than 12 days, quite a miracle given the failure rate in robotics, the lead time for procuring parts in Singapore and the paperwork involved.

Here’s Rio all wired up and good to go.

Don’t stare at the wheels too long, they make your head spin. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Upio7feAY6w)

Rio, DAvinCi @Robocup 2010

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We’ve been working hard to complete the beta version of Rio just in time for Robocup 2010, which is being held in Singapore from June 19 to June 25.

Just the holonomic version of Rio will be on display – it’ll demonstrate its resourcefulness in guiding “visitors” in a demo environment. Do drop by the A*STAR Booth for quick chat.

The Evolution of Rio

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I never imagined that I would be going through so many iterations of Rio. And these are just from the Alpha prototype to the Beta. Also, I could not accommodate the countless other versions that superseded the Alpha. I need to employ Agile methods in my design planning and fix elements of the design in short iterations.

Video: Living with Robots

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Honda released this awesome short film titled ‘Living with Robots’  at the Sundance Festival. It does justice to explaining the motivation for robotics and also the reason for people’s general fear towards robots.

We fear robots because we think they will replace us. So, we fear robots just like we fear immigrants/aliens?

Willow Garage’s PR2 Beta Program

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Willow Garage, my favorite robotics company, has just announced its PR2 Beta Program. PR2 is a highly compliant, personal robot with the best compliant arm in the industry. It is the flagship robot for the Robotics Operating System (ROS) and has demonstrated complex tasks such as the opening of doors, plugging itself into a wall power supply and intricate manipulation tasks.

PR2 Robot (source: Willow Garage)

And the best parts is that the PR2 is going for free!

For more information on the call for proposals, look here.