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Submission + - US navy is planning to launch a squadron of underwater drones by 2020 (robohub.org)

Submitted by Hallie Siegel
Hallie Siegel writes: According to the non-profit Autonomous Undersea Vehicle Applications Center, there are over 250 different configurations of unmanned undersea vehicles (UUVs) in service today. That number is likely to grow in the coming years as the technology improves — note that the US Navy has made UUVs a priority and is planning to launch a whole squadron of them by 2020. Dan Gettinger from the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College gives us an overview of this technology.

Submission + - Robot chefs: shaking up the food industry anytime soon? (robohub.org)

Submitted by pRobotika
pRobotika writes: When Moley announced its robotic kitchen back in April, the media jumped on the story as a promising glimpse into the future. But how realistic are robot chefs? Robotics’ professionals are understandably skeptical but, if Moley manages to overcome one major issue, their approach could have real potential. Why? Because their kitchen is basically a flexible robotic workcell, and in manufacturing that’s nothing new.

Submission + - What effect will VW's scandal have on robocars? (robohub.org)

Submitted by pRobotika
pRobotika writes: It’s looking bad for Volkswagen, German car manufacturers and possibly even car manufacturers as a whole. But the revelations that VW put software in their cars to deliberately cheat on emissions tests could have even greater repercussions. Robocars’ Brad Templeton looks at the knock-on effect for manufacturers of autonomous vehicles.

Submission + - Morphological computation: The hidden superpower of soft-bodied robots (robohub.org)

Submitted by Hallie Siegel
Hallie Siegel writes: Ever wonder why most robots are built with hard bodies? It's because they are easier to control that way. But now researchers are embracing the complexities of soft bodies, by using their complex dynamics as an asset for solving some of the control computation, instead of using digital computation to solve it. Not surprisingly, many soft robots are inspired by nature. Researcher Helmut Hauser talks about his research in 'morphological computation', including OCTOPUS, a bio-inspired robotic silicon arm.

Submission + - Clinical trials begin for Russia's first medical exoskeleton (robohub.org)

Submitted by pRobotika
pRobotika writes: Seven hundred people volunteered to try out the ExoAtlet when the Russian startup advertised its imminent clinical trials. Only a handful of these could be accommodated when testing of Russia’s first medical exoskeleton began recently in a Moscow hospital. It’s the latest step in the Skolkovo-backed innovation’s battle to reach the market, and progress is looking phenomenal. The video features the coolest looking exoskeleton testers we’ve seen in a long time.

Submission + - Buzz: a novel programming language for heterogeneous robot swarms (robohub.org)

Submitted by pRobotika
pRobotika writes: Designing the behavior of robot swarms is difficult; the larger the group, the more tricky it is to predict its dynamics and the causes of errors. Buzz is a new open-source programming language specifically for robot swarms. It’s designed for ease of use and is inspired by well-known programming languages such as JavaScript, Python and Lua.

Submission + - Beyond safety: Is robotic surgery sustainable? (robohub.org)

Submitted by Hallie Siegel
Hallie Siegel writes: The release last week of the study on adverse events in robotic surgery led to much discussion on the safety and effectiveness of robotic surgical procedures. MIT Sloane's Matt Beane argues that while the hope is that this dialogue will mean safer and more effective robotic procedures in the future, the intense focus on safety and effectiveness has compromised training opportunities for new robotic surgeons, who require many hours of “live” surgical practice time to develop their skills. Beane says that robotic surgery will likely continue to expand in proportion to other methods, given that it allows fewer surgeons to perform surgery with less trauma to the patient, but no matter how safe we make robotic surgical procedures, they will become a luxury available to a very few if we fail to address the sustainability of the practice.

Submission + - When do robocars become cheaper than standard cars? (robohub.org)

Submitted by Hallie Siegel
Hallie Siegel writes: With all the extra sensors and technology that have to go into autonomous cars, you'd expect them to cost more. Afterall, autonomous features like park assist and auto lane changing are charged as added-value components that you pay extra for. But autonomous car expert Brad Templeton thinks it could be that the overall cost of autonomous vehicles per mile driven will lower than traditional cars. Not only because features of traditional cars, like dashboards and steering columns, will not be necessary in robocars, but also because autonomous cars are more likely to be shared and constantly in use, rather than sitting in your driveway 90% of the time. Some insightful ideas presented here.

Submission + - Robots appear to raise productivity without causing total work hours to decline (robohub.org)

Submitted by Hallie Siegel
Hallie Siegel writes: We often read about the economic impact of robots on employment, usually accompanied with the assertion that "robots steal jobs". But to date there has precious little economic analysis of the actual effects that robots are already having on employment and productivity. Georg Graetz (Professor of Economics at Uppsala University) and Guy Michaels (Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics) undertook a study of how robots impacted productivity and employment between 1993 and 2007, and found that "industrial robots increase labour productivity, total factor productivity and wages." And while there is some evidence that they reduced the employment of low skilled workers, and, to a lesser extent, middle skilled workers, industrial robots had no significant effect on total hours worked.

This is important because it seems to contradict many of the pessimistic assertions that are presently being made about the impact of robots on jobs.

What I am especially curious about is post 2007 data, however, because it's just in the past few years that we have seen a major shift in industrial robotics to incorporate collaborative robots, or co-robots. ie. Robots specifically designed to work alongside humans, as tools for augmenting human performance. One might reasonably suspect that some of the negative impact of industrial robotics on low and middle skilled workers pre 2007 could be offset by the more recent and increasing use of co-bots, which are not designed to replace humans, but instead to make them more efficient.

I sincerely hope that Graetz and Michaels continue in their line of research to look at the more recent phenomenon of collaborative robotics. The field is moving so quickly now, and technologically speaking, eight years is a long time. Yet with so much speculation out there about the impact of robots on employment, it's critical that we acquire more empirical data so that correct taxation, education and social policies can be developed.

Submission + - Solar powered autonomous flight completes full day/night cycle; 28 hrs w/o fuel! (robohub.org)

Submitted by Hallie Siegel
Hallie Siegel writes: Researchers have long worked on building a solar powered aircraft capable of continuous flight. The general idea seems achievable enough: during the day, with the help of the solar cells that cover its wings, the aircraft collects energy from the sun in order to power the propulsion and control systems while any surplus power charges the battery. During the night, the batteries take over powering the propulsion and control systems, slowly discharging until the next morning when a new cycle begins.

To actually pull it off has required a fair bit of innovation in flexible solar cells, high energy density batteries, miniaturized MEMS and CMOS sensors, and powerful processors ... but researchers at ETH Zurich have just recently managed to keep their unmanned UAV aloft for 28 hours without any fuel, building on their previous record by over an hour. Having more than 24 hours of endurance is important because overcast skies can inhibit recharging and poor weather or high winds can effect power consumption.

Really nice accomplishment from the folks at the AtlantikSolar project — we're looking forward to their next goal, which is to achieve 80 hours of endurance flight. Now that would be something.

Submission + - The making of sci-fi Robot Overlords - nice robot VFX (robohub.org)

Submitted by Hallie Siegel
Hallie Siegel writes: Ever wonder how they make robots look so awesomely real in movies? Visual effects expert Graham Edwards goes behind the scenes with the makers of Robot Overlords to take you through the development of the robots in this movie, from script development and sketches, to filming and post FX. Really cool to see how these robots come to life.

Submission + - Robot swarm behaviour suggests forgetting may be important to cultural evolution (robohub.org)

Submitted by Hallie Siegel
Hallie Siegel writes: Do robots have culture? Can we learn about human cultural evolution by studying how group behaviour in robots evolves? Researchers in the Artificial Culture Project are trying to do just that. Prof. Alan Winfield from the Bristol Robotics Lab discusses his latest research on modelling the process by which cultural memes develop in robots when they pass learned behaviours to other robots in their group. Some interesting findings that suggest imitation noise (ie. when the behaviour isn't learned perfectly) and forgetfulness (i.e. when the robot has only limited memory of the behaviours it is trying to imitate) lead to stronger cultural memes in the robot behaviour.

Submission + - More warehouse robots coming to market as Softbank invests $20M in Fetch (robohub.org)

Submitted by Hallie Siegel
Hallie Siegel writes: Japanese Softbank just injected $20M in funding to Fetch Robotics, a Silicon Valley company that is developing robotic solutions for warehouse and logistics. This is one of the first warehouse systems that is coming to market since Kiva (Kiva Systems was bought by Amazon in 2012 for $775USD million). (Softbank is also invested in Aldebaran Robotics, producing the Pepper robot — a social humanoid robot that is scheduled to make its debut in Nestle stores later this year as a sales and marketing assistant.) The warehouse and logistics market is a nice fit for robotics — you can also read about some of the other competing systems that are being developed here: http://robohub.org/competing-r...

Submission + - Do robots need passports? International trade considerations (robohub.org) 1

Submitted by Hallie Siegel
Hallie Siegel writes: With countries evolving different regulations over robotic devices, law prof. Anupam Chander looks into whether robots crossing borders will need passports, and what the role of international trade law should be in regulating the flow of these devices. Fascinating discussion on what happens when technology like robots crosses over international borders, as part of this year's We Robot conference in Seattle.

Submission + - Robotic assistive devices for independent living (robohub.org)

Submitted by Hallie Siegel
Hallie Siegel writes: Kavita Krishnaswamy has extreme physical disabilities that severely limit her mobility. She also has drive and a keen mind. I met her last month at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), where she attended via BEAM. In this article, Kavita shares her Phd research to develop robotic assistive devices that give independence to people with severe disabilities. Interesting work on the need for "multi-modal" interfaces — ie. interfaces that allow the users to interact with the assistive device in different ways, including speech recognition and brain-computer interface.

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