Drake: Robotics Planning, Control And Analysis Toolbox
From MIT:
Drake ("dragon" in Middle English) is a toolbox maintained by the Robot Locomotion Group at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL). It is a collection of tools for analyzing the dynamics of our robots and building control systems for them in MATLAB and C++, with a heavy emphasis on optimization-based design/analysis. Here is a quick summary of capabilities:
Simulation
Rigid-body dynamics including contact/collisions (hybrid+LCP) and kinematic loops
Basic aerodynamics/fluid dynamics
Sensor models (lidar, depth camera, imu, contact force/torque; cameras coming soon)
Hand-derived models for many canonical control dynamical systems
Easily add your own models/components
Some support for stochastic models
For all of the above we aim to expose sparsity and provide analytical gradients / symbolic analysis
Primary limitations: code is optimized for analysis / planning / control design (as opposed to speed, generality)...
... Most of these models/tools are described in the companion textbook from an MIT course/MOOC . We've also recently started populating the Drake Gallery (contributions welcome!)... ( git repo )
Simbe Robotics launches new retail robot
By Silicon Valley Robotics via Robohub: The area of service robotics is getting active, with a new retail robot startup launching today. Tally is one of several robotics startups launching today at Haxlr8r’s 7th Demo Day. Tally is an inventory tracking robot platform fromSimbe Robotics and the “world’s first robotic autonomous shelf auditing and analytics solution” according to the press release.
Tally is in trials with several North American retailers and will traverse aisles scanning and auditing merchandise to help stores maintain ideal product placement, fill inventory gaps, and find misplaced or mispriced items. Tally is also capable of autonomously returning to base to charge.
“When it comes to the retail industry, shopper experience is everything. If a product is unavailable at the time the shopper wants to buy it, the retailer has missed an opportunity and disappointed their customer,” according to Brad Bogolea, CEO and Co-founder of Simbe Robotics. “Tally helps retailers address these challenges by providing more precise and timely analysis of the state of in-store merchandise and freeing up staff to focus on customer service.” Cont'd...
Toyota Invests $1 Billion in AI and Robots, Will Open R&D Lab in Silicon Valley
By Erico Guizzo and Evan Ackerman for IEEE Spectrum: Today in Tokyo, Toyota announced that it is investing US $1 billion over the next five years to establish a new R&D arm headquartered in Silicon Valley and focused on artificial intelligence and robotics. The Toyota Research Institute (TRI) plans to hire hundreds of engineers to staff a main facility in Palo Alto, Calif., near Stanford University, and a second facility located near MIT in Cambridge, Mass.
Former DARPA program manager Dr. Gill Pratt, an executive technical advisor at Toyota, was named CEO of TRI, which will begin operations in January. Toyota president Akio Toyoda said in a press conference that the company pursues innovation and new technologies “to make life better for our customers and society as a whole,” adding that he wanted to “work with Gill not just because he’s an amazing researcher and engineer, but because I believe his goals and motivations are the same as ours.” Cont'd...
Random Bin Picking And Part Loading System
Our customer was faced with manually moving heavy parts from multiple bins and placing them onto a conveyor to begin a heat-treating operation.
FABTECH 2015 - Interview with Chahe Bakmazjian, Business Team Leader for Robotmaster
We have a new suite of specialized tools for cutting and welding which we will be demoing at Fabtech.
RoboticsTomorrow discusses FABTECH 2015 with Jan Abel of Stäubli
FABTECH gives Stäubli an opportunity to illustrate solutions that improve productivity while increasing profits.
Robot Can Pick and Sort Fruit
A robotics breakthrough by product design and development firm Cambridge Consultants is set to boost productivity across the food chain – from the field to the warehouse. It paves the way for robots to take on complex picking and sorting tasks involving irregular organic items – sorting fruit and vegetables, for example, or locating and removing specific weeds among crops in a field.
“Traditional robots struggle when it comes to adapting to deal with uncertainty,” said Chris Roberts, head of industrial robotics at Cambridge Consultants. “Our innovative blend of existing technologies and novel signal processing techniques has resulted in a radical new system design that is poised to disrupt the industry.”
Special Tradeshow Coverage for FABTECH 2015
FABTECH 2015 will be held from November 9th - 12th in Chicago, Illinois. This RoboticsTomorrow.com Special Tradeshow report aims to bring you news, articles and products from this years event.
FABTECH 2015 - Interview with Kristen Fairbrother, Marketing Communications Leader for DE-STA-CO
Many of our product demonstrations will be in full motion, and some will be interactive, so visitors can get a good understanding of how our products can provide solutions for their applications.
Interactive Video Annotation Tool for Computer Vision Research
From University of California, Irvine:
VATIC is a free, online, interactive video annotation tool for computer vision research that crowdsources work to Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Our tool makes it easy to build massive, affordable video data sets and can be deployed on a cloud. After three years of research, vatic is now used by labs around the world to annotate the next generation of data sets.
Features
Crowdsource video annotation to Mechanical Turk
Automatic quality assurance for good annotations
Complex payment schedules and bonuses
One-click worker compensation
Optimized interface for video annotation
Offline mode for expert annotator use (no MTurk)
( site ) ( github )
Vision-Enabled Robot Replaces Four Conventional Flame Treating Robots
Using vision instead of proximity sensors makes it possible for each fixture to handle a wider range of parts.
Where are the Top Robotics Employers?
The below table shows the location, the number jobs & the key employers. We only searched for jobs that had "Robotics" in the job title.
Development of Battery-Free Multi-Rotation Absolute Encoder
In recent years, there have been many demands for equipment with high productivity to have a system that retains positioning information, even after the main power supply is turned off.
Special Tradeshow Report for PACK EXPO Las Vegas 2015
PACK EXPO 2015 will be held from September 28th - 30th in Las Vegas, Nevada. This RoboticsTomorrow.com Special Tradeshow report aims to bring you news, articles and products from this years event.
Robotic Vision Inspection System
Although the system was developed primarily for the inspection of orthopedic parts it can equally be used for the automated inspection of any critical parts, for example aeronautical.
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Automation & IIoT - Featured Product
PI USA - High Precision R-Theta Stages for Semicon, Laser Processing Apps
2-axis R-Theta motion systems are better suited to spiral motion than Cartesian XY stages. R-Theta systems often find applications in precision laser / semiconductor applications due to higher throughput, precision, and smaller size. See examples and options.
