Meet the IG-52 Center Pivot Robot: a clever machine with a chassis that allows it to move over objects and uneven terrain smoothly. It comes with a 1/8″ thick aluminum base with center pivot, 4 IG52 24VDC 136 RPM gear motors, a Sabertooth dual 25A motor driver, and 10-inch pneumatic wheels.
Here is a sorting robot that can automate the process between batch picking and final packaging. It can sort unorganized, random warehouse goods into groups of customer orders. XYZ Robotics’s Sorting Robot has a vision system that processes color and 3D sensor data to tell the robot how to best grasp the objects.
Plenty of researchers are working on building more advanced prosthetic devices. IBM have used AI to explore the idea of controlling prosthetic limbs through thought. The used the OpenBCI headset to read the intentions of the test subjects. As they explain:
Once intended activities were decoded, we translated them into instructions for a robotic arm capable of grasping and positioning objects in a real life environment. We linked the robotic arm to a camera and a custom developed deep learning framework, which we call GraspNet. GraspNet can determine the best positions for the robotic gripper to pick up objects of interest.
More information about this cool research is available here.
In the future, workers will wear smart robots and exoskeletons to help them move heavy items and get work done without putting unnecessary stress on their body. The RoboGlove is such a device. It uses sensors, actuators and tenders comparable to the nerves, muscles and tendons in a human hand. It improves efficiency while reducing fatigue in hand muscles.
Meet the Surveyor Rover MK1: a small robotic rover designed for those of you just getting started in robotics. It comes with a Linkia control board with a Carambola2 WiFi enabled processor, OpenWRT, 4-port USB hub, and everything you need for expansion and programming.
Researchers are always inspired by nature to build smarter products and robots. kodlab has shared a video that shows a 12DOF tailed bipedal robot that hops with 4 actuators. The robot can hop at an impressive speed while maintaining its balance. The below video shows it in action:
There is no better way to learn robotics and electronics than building and programming your own machines and robots. Electron Dust has shared a video that shows how you can use an Arduino Uno and Nano to build a ping pong ball bouncing machine that detects the location by using 4 microphones. As the developer explains:
The location is calculated from the time difference between mic pairs (one pair for each axis on the 2-dimensional plate). The noise from the ball hitting the plate is a very loud one. The Arduino checks the states as fast as possible, this allows for a reasonable accuracy. Another Arduino then uses this data to tilt the plate in such a way that the ball will not fall down.
You are going to need 4 stepping motors in addition to the above mentioned components to pull this off.
[HT]
Meet MANTIS: a multi-limbed walking robot with different gaits that can overcome obstacles and perform various manipulation tasks. The robot has rotational actuators in its arms, legs, and heads. It comes with laser rangefinder, stereo camera system, and temperature/current/tactical sensors.
Anybody who has flown a drone in the past has had to replace propellers and other parts after an accident. EPFL researchers have come up with a hybrid insect-inspired drone that deforms upon impact. It uses stiff and flexible structures to adapt to its environment. As EPFL explains:
The drone’s resilience comes from a unique combination of stiff and elastic layers. An elastomer membrane is stretched and then sandwiched between rigid plates. When the system is at rest, the plates hold together and give the structure its stiffness. But when enough force is applied, the plates draw apart and the structure can bend.
Such a structure builds up elastic potential energy when folded up, so it can unfold automatically when required. This technology can also be used to make better grippers.
[Source]
In the past few years, we have covered a bunch of interesting third arm projects that can assist workers on a daily basis. Christian I. Penaloza and Shuichi Nishio has published a paper that takes a look at using a noninvasive BMI to control a robotic third arm for multitasking.
