In the past few years, we have covered plenty of fruit picking robots that help farmers save money and become more operationally efficient. This video shows a fruit-picking flying autonomous robot system, which came from a partnership betwen Tevel Aerobotics & HMC Farms. 2 flying autonomous robots are used to scan the area and locate the plums before picking.
Meet Stanford’s OceanOneK robot: an underwater humanoid robot that brings human touch, vision, and interactivity under water. It has a humanoid top half and slim back half with 8 multi-directional thrusters for maneuverability. It has a haptic or touch-based feedback system.
In the past few years, we have covered plenty of robotic platforms for manipulation tasks. They need to have a compact base to navigate through a cluttered space while having enough room to prevent tumbling or tipping over. This video from Robotic Systems Lab covers a reconfigurable robot that changes shape to navigate through light spaces and changes to a wide stance when handling heavy objects.
Meet the Ofuzzi Cyber Robot: a cordless robotic pool cleaner that captures pet hair, leaves, sand, and other debris in the water, so you don’t have to. It has an IPX8 waterproof design and lasts up to 120 minutes on battery. It can cover above/half-above ground pools up to 1076ft².
In the past few years, we have covered plenty of robotic chessboards here that use a robot arm to move the pieces. These can be dangerous if not programmed properly. One such robot has recently injured a player during a game. It caught a player’s finger accidentally and broke his finger.
All acquisition that advanced AI will destroy humanity is false. Not the powerful AI or breaching laws of robotics will destroy humanity, but engineers with both left hands :/
On video – a chess robot breaks a kid’s finger at Moscow Chess Open today. pic.twitter.com/bIGIbHztar
— Pavel Osadchuk 👨💻💤 (@xakpc) July 21, 2022
These robots can be made a whole lot safer with more safety protocols (like the ones used by top collaborative robots to detect and stop movement when human contact is detected). Thankfully, the injured player is doing fine.
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In the future, robots will do many things for us, including cooking our food, setting the table, and a whole lot more. This video from LIS Group shows what it takes to teach a robot to set a table. The researchers used a Task and Motion Planning (TAMP) framework, PDDLStream. It uses an orientation constraint to make sure the robot keeps a cereal bowl in upright orientation.
Here is another cute robot made to teach kids basic STEM concepts. The Dr. STEM Innobot can move forward, backward, and 360 degrees. It has gyroscope, dancing, and programming modes. Kids can program it manually or with a smartphone or tablet.
Meet the Shadow Glove: a smart glove that lets you control a Shadow Dexterous Hand easily. It comes with 6 sensors per glove to provide precise motion tracking. It has a latency of 4ms with streaming rate of 120Hz. It has an open frame design.
This smart glove comes with ROS integration. It is designed not to interfere with your hand movements. The above video shows what you can do with this glove.
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Here is another connected robotic mower that cuts your grass, so you don’t have to. The Ambrogio L60 Elite Mower can overcome slopes up to 26-degrees. It is designed to handle yards up to 2150ft. The L60 Elite robot has a 4-point star blade system. You can control this robot mower over Bluetooth.
Towing heavy loads with multiple robots can become a challenge as they can collide with each other or other objects. This video from Hybrid Robotics explores the idea of a robotic team traveling through narrow spaces while dragging a load with cables. The researchers created decentralized planners per robot to accomplish this. The below video sheds more light on this method:
