Justin R. robot graceful elephant and ICRA 2014 (video)

We are back from the 2014 International Conference on Robotics and Automation IEEE (ICRA) in Hong Kong, and as always, there was a tremendous amount of research that is incredibly presented within three days of the conference and two days of workshops. I've posted a bunch of cool stuff, and we have more in the works, but for the time being, here's a pile of videos impressive research to have a look.

This video Agile Justin DLR won the award for best video ICRA. But it shows some of the equipment and capabilities that is without a doubt one of the most, if not more, and humanoid robots capable of dual-borne weapons in existence.

This video presents recent improvements in mobile robot Agile Justin DLR, bringing it closer to the ideal platform to discuss the independent manipulation. Made significant improvements in the areas of mechatronics, sensors 3D, tactile skin, huge GPGPU computing power-based, and part of the communications software. In addition, the first two algorithms are presented and experimental scenarios that take advantage of these new features.

"Agile Justin: DLR improved family lightweight and torque controlled by Android," b. Bauml, T. Hammer, R. Wagner, O. Birbach, T. Gumpert, F. Qi, U. Hillenbrand, S. Beer, George Friedel, J. Butterfass, DLR Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics in Germany, which were presented in 2014 in Hong Kong ICRA.

Coca award went robots paper to serve a document describing a robot - the two armed force able to deploy a variety of clothing. As we have seen, this is not folding clothes that is the challenge, and this is the first unfolding confused pile out of the dryer. Android is based on the severity of the vision, and the minimum number of prisoners to recognize and unfold long sleeve shirts and short-sleeved shirts, pants and shorts. Work is the product of cooperation between the Institute of Information Technology (IIT) in Greece and Imperial College London.

"Self-recognition and Active Proceedings of clothing using random forests of decision and probabilistic planning," according to Andreas Andreas Doumanoglou Kargakos, Tae Kyun Kim, and Sotiris Malassiotis IIT and Imperial College London, presented in 2014 in Hong Kong ICRA.

Turboquad is a robot that can give you the wheels when you want, or legs (sort) when the wheels do not do. It is the evolution of the robot Quattroped we covered a few years ago:

"TurboQuad: A leg-wheel robot manufacturing by controlling bio-inspired", and provided by Wei Hsieh Chen Hong Sheng Lin, Chun Lin Lobby, National Taiwan University in ICRA in 2014 in Hong Kong.

Find another follow-up that we have covered in the past is the inspiration wheeled robot cheetah, which are used to operate the tail enable it to make sharp turns at very high speed. CIFAR researchers gave the tail maneuver used to help control the rapid acceleration and braking:

Notes stimulated Panthers acceleration, and offers a new tail control system for the rapid acceleration and braking. To understand the behavior goal to make the leopard maneuver longitudinal energy and the effects of the tail has been the development of a simple mathematical model. After that, the design of controllers reactions on the basis of our hypothesis. Finally, the system has been tested experimentally control the robot model in order to reduce greatly increasing maneuverability.

"Acceleration and sudden braking: inspiration from the cheetah's tail" Prince Patel and Mr. Braae University of Cape Town, South Africa, presented at ICRA 2014 in Hong Kong.

Robots are complex things with engines and machinery and stuff everywhere. This makes them less sensitive to excessive water, dust, and the amount of sludge. One way to overcome this problem is to build a robot that is completely closed and tell us completely closed: Android, called a torus, the skin is covered with a transparent lead inside to move. Stick around at the end of the video to see if the wire free driving.

"Torres Group unilateral mechanism driving the output curve belts track" by Kenjiro Tadakuma, Hirohiko Ogata, Riichiro Tadakuma and Jose Berengueres of Osaka University, and presented at the ICRA 2014 in Hong Kong.

Legged robots can adapt to different terrain or travel at different speeds by choosing to use different gaits. Can also enjoy administered look different, if you give them enough of the members of the degrees of freedom. This is Glide Walker:

, Presented by Hirotaka Komura, Satoshi Kitano, Hiroya Yamada, General Endo and Tokyo Institute of Technology: "the development of an underwater robot multifunctional slip Walker, sliding, swimming and walking" ICRA in 2014 in Hong Kong.

When we (humans) pick up something we can not always get the proper range in our first attempt. Or, you may need to change the scope of our work for any reason, if we were to use a tool, for example. Is a skill that robots will have to master if they are working in human environments, and therefore, they can develop the skills necessary to become better human beings. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University, and ABB explore the concept of so-called "external constitution", using positive and negative things to restore techniques:

Constitution does not belong to the robot hand, but that the entire system. This video shows us that skillful manipulation is possible with much simpler than the typical hands of skilled labor. The key is to use the arm movements, inertia and faces, gravity, and external connections: external dexterity.

The video shows evidence regrasps developed for one section (MLab hand) and has one of the sequences regrasps to explore the ability to deal with the border that connects regrasps different.

"Re-entering objects skill aid external," by Nikhil Chavan Dafle, Alberto Rodriguez, Robert Paolini, BOWEI Tang, Siddhartha S. Srinivasa, Michael Erdmann, Matthew T. Mason, Ivan Lundberg, Harald Staab and Thomas Fuhlbrigge Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has provided Carnegie Mellon, ABB and ICRA in 2014 in Hong Kong.

This video shows us quadruped robot developed in recent times. It is named "Baby Elephant" because of the heavy load and elephant-like appearance. Leg mechanism is a series-parallel hybrid novelty of our robot. The maximum speed is 1.8 km / h. The experiment was carried out to walk with the same static load as well, suggesting that the baby elephant can walk on different types of terrain. Maximum load of up to 100 kg.

"Quadruped robot with legs parallel mechanism," by Feng Gao, Qi Qiao Chenkun Xianbao Chen Tian Sun and Shanghai Jiao Tong University Xinghua, presented at ICRA 2014 in Hong Kong.