Amazon is serious about its drone delivery service. It has released a new video that shows how Amazon Prime Air’s new delivery drone will work. These drones have a sense & avoid system to operate autonomously and safely. The electric drones can fly up to 15 miles and deliver packages under 5 pounds in less than 30 minutes.
Here is another humanoid robot capable of playing a musical instrument. University of Tokyo researchers have developed the Kojiro robot with a body that mimics the way human skeleton, muscles, and tendons work to generate motion. While Kojiro uses DC motors, it uses them to pull cables to simulate how muscles and tendons contract and relax.
In the future, you will be able to control robotic hands to manipulate objects while getting touch feedback. In fact, Shadow robot company and HaptX have already pulled it off. Their haptic robotic hand let you control a robotic hand to pick up and manipulate things while feeling everything it feels. This video from Alan Boyle shows what Jeff Bezos thought of it:
After trying out the haptic robotic hand at @HaptX @shadowrobot booth at #reMARS conference, @JeffBezos says the experience felt “weirdly natural.” 2/2 H/T @AmazonreMARS pic.twitter.com/HbsBf2Qb7P
— Alan Boyle (@b0yle) June 6, 2019
Looks pretty fun, don’t you think?
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Here is a 72 autonomous racing drone that uses efficient algorithms for onboard vision, state estimation and control in order to fly through a narrow racing track with a speed of 2 m/s. The drone relies on model predictions that are corrected with gate detection. Here is how the researchers explain this approach:
a strategy for autonomous drone racing which is computationally more efficient than navigation methods like visual inertial odometry and simultaneous localization and mapping. This fast light-weight vision-based navigation algorithm estimates the position of the drone by fusing race gate detections with model dynamics predictions.
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Security robots are nothing new. We have covered a bunch of them that can patrol commercial properties and alert people. The Cobalt robot is an intelligent security robot for indoors applications. It can roam workspaces along designated routes and detect anomalies in real-time.
Meet Flippy from Miso Robotics: a mobile kitchen assistant robot that learns from its surroundings and can work a fryer or grill burgers. It delivers consistent results every time and can collaborate with the kitchen staff. With its cloud based monitoring and learning, the robot keeps getting better.
The MISO AI can identify and locate food and tools and determine which tasks to perform to cook food as desired.
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Meet the SlothBot: a wire traversing robot that can be used to monitor the environment. It is a solar powered, slow-paced robot that can move on a mesh of wires by switching between branches. It is energy efficient and has a mechanical structure consisting of two bodies connected by an actuated hinge. Each body has a DC motor to drive its tire.
The SlothBot can switch between branching wires safely by having at least one of the bodies hung on the wires at all times. As the developers explain:
First, the top gears of the rightmost body open, allowing the first body to move onto the new branch. Once the first body is firmly attached to the new branch, the top gears of the second body open, letting the SlothBot complete the switching maneuver.
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Here is another combat robot that can help out soldiers on the battlefield. This BVLOS combat UGV by Milrem Robotics and ST Engineering serves as a force multiplier for dismounted troops. It can be used in urban and rural areas. This UGV has a tracked all-terrain system with ground clearance of up to 60cm. It can negotiate 60% slopes and pass 61cm deep water obstacles.
Drones are not cheap, so if you wouldn’t want to break yours by accident. The SafeAir Mavic Drone Parachute system can help protect your your investment. ParaZero’s SafeAir not only protects your payload but also bystanders. It identifies critical drone failures to cut power and deploy parachute.
