Meet the Robolink Zumi: a self-driving robot car with AI for kids and adults. It has a 720p camera for object tracking and facial recognition. It can be programmed with Blockly and Python. Zumi comes with 60-minutes battery life. It comes with 2 DC motors, Raspberry Pi Zero, and everything you need to get started.
Meet the ARMstrong robot: a nuclear & radiation response robot that can protect human lives. It has a speed of 6km/h and towing capacity of 200+ kg. It also has 2 arms with 100kg capacity. As the below video shows, this robot is capable of lifting heavy blocks, moving items around, and manipulate objects.
Plenty of businesses are taking measures to get back to work safely during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yaskawa Motoman is now using a HC10DT collaborative robot to take individual employee temperatures. Named Covie, the robot records the temperature using a webcam with infrared depth-sensing and facial recognition software.
In the future, robots are going to do even more things for us in space. Take GITAI’s G1 Robot for instance: it is a space robot designed to automate tasks on space stations. It has dual arms to manipulate all kinds of objects. It also has cameras for streaming high resolution and wide FOV video.
Meet the Cray X Power Suit: a carbon fiber exoskeleton that assists workers with lifting heavy loads to reduce stress on their back. It has an ultra-light construction and can help with lifting up to 28kg by amplifying their movements and protecting their lower back. It is cloud integrated to work seamlessly in a smart factory.
Boston Dynamics’ Spot is quite special. We have seen plenty of videos of it in action. Businesses can now order their own for under $75000. It comes ready to operate out of the box and has a flexible API and payload system to adapt to a wide variety of tasks. Spot can be used to carry payloads on unknown terrain and inspect dangerous environments.
Here is another micro:bit robot kit that serves as a good starting point in robotics. The Kitronik :MOVE Mini MK2 Buggy Kit is a 2-wheel robot with autonomous operation. It can be controlled using a second microbit or via a Bluetooth application. The Kitronik :MOVE mini is powered by two continuous rotation servo motors. It has 5 x RGB addressable LEDs.
Meet AVO by ecoRobotix: a solar powered autonomous weeding robot with app control that can save farmers time and money. It has a max speed of up to 0.4m/s and comes with a GPS RTK positioning system, compass, and other small sensors.
We have seen plenty of amazing bio-inspired robots in the past few years. ETH Zurich’s engineers have come up with a magnetically controllable cilia carpet that can move like a millipede. As they explain,
“by stretching and folding onto curved templates, programmable magnetization patterns can be encoded into artificial cilia carpets.”
The robot has legs that move like waves. Such an approach can also be used to transport liquids and particles.
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Here is another micro:bit based robot platform designed to introduce kids to visual programming. The Wonder Rugged Kit for Micro:bit can move in all directions with its mecanum wheels. It is ready for JavaScript, MicroPython, and MakeCode programming.
