In the past few years, we have covered a few robots that can help with maintenance of wind turbines. This video from Aerones shows a wind turbine edge repair robot in action. It can remove old 3M tape and prepare the eroded surface by sanding and cleaning. This robot can also apply the solution evenly on the prepared area of the eroded blade.
Robots are already capable of doing many things for us. The RoboTire Tire Changing System is designed to make it easier to replace car tires. It uses machine learning, AI, and high definition cameras to get the job done. It can replace 4 tires on a passenger vehicle in less than 25 minutes. This robotic system removes, lifts, and installs new tires and wheel assemblies.
Meet the Torobo Robot: a humanoid robot designed for research into industrial applications of full-body humanoid robots. It measures 1660mm tall with a reach of 680mm. Its arm has payload capacity of 8kg. This robot has torque sensors in all the joints of its arms and waist. It is ROS compatible.
Assembling a chair with a robot is more complex than it may look. It requires the robot putting each part in the right position and applying the right amount of force to tighten the pieces. With Haptic Device 2.0, a robot can be teleoperated to put a chair together with human-like movement.
The above video show it in action. You can also use this same approach to play ping pong and a whole lot more.
[Credit: Naver Labs]
Robots are going to do most of planetary exploration missions for us in the near future. Take the Sample Transfer Arm (STA) robot: it is designed to land on Mars to collect sample tubes. This robot can see and feel to take autonomous decisions.
In the past few years, we have covered plenty of experimental robots here. This 15 DOF robotic hand from Mech-Dickel Robotics is also worth a look. It uses 15 Lynxmotion Smart Servos (ST1) controlled by a DFRduino UNO. Each finger has 3 servos and multiple SES V2 brackets.
Here is a modular mobile base that can perform in confined spaces. With magnetic crawling, it can attach to bridges and move under them for inspection. With a robotic arm, these robots can manipulate objects. It has a computer with WiFi and hot swappable batteries.
Here is an autonomous robotic arm designed for commercial space stations. GITAI’s S10 has two grapple end effectors on both ends that mate with grapple fixtures to enable the robot to use multiple tools. It can also move around the space station. The below video shows this robotic arm in action:
We have already covered plenty of drones that can pick up and move objects around. Handling articulated objects is a more complex problem. A team of researchers have come up with a planning & control framework for aerial manipulation of articulated objects. This framework:
combines sampling-based predictive control to generate pose trajectories with an impedance controller for compliant behaviours, applied to a fully-actuated flying platform. The framework leverages a physics engine to simulate the dynamics of the platform and the environment in order to find optimal motions to execute manipulation tasks.
[researchers: M. Brunner, G. Rizzi, M. Studiger, R. Siegwart and M. Tognon – paper: IEEE]
