iRobot has a new Roomba to clean your home. The Roomba Combo Essential Robot is a 2-in-1 robotic mop and vacuum, slim enough to grab dirt from hard to reach areas. It has 3 levels of suction power and 3 levels of water. This robot is app controlled but you can also control it with voice assistants such as Siri.
This is Toyota Research Institute’s Punyo: a soft robot for whole body manipulation. Its hands, arms, and chest are covered with compliant materials and tactile sensors, so it is capable of feeling contact. This robot can conform to the items it is manipulating. Its tactile sensors allow for safe interactions.
This robot has two hard robot arms, a rigid torso frame, and a waist actuator. Its arms are covered with air-filled bladders. The above video shows this robot in action.
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Robots are going to help astronauts on the moon and other planets in the future. Many companies are working on advanced robots and rovers for these types of missions. The Lunar Dawn LTV was recently awarded a NASA Lunar Terrain Vehicle contract. It comes with autonomous navigation and operation.
There are plenty of fancy robotic mowers on the market but most of them are not designed to take on steep slopes. The Mowrator S1 is a remote controlled slope mower with a 21-inch blade. It can take on large yards and steep slopes. It has an adjustable cutting height of 1.5 to 4.6 inches. It can also handle off-road conditions.
This is the myCobot Pro 630: an educational cobot with a harmonic drive robotic arm that can take on pick and place, sorting, and other tasks. It has a working radius of 630mm and 0.1mm repeatability. It also has max load capacity of 2kg. It has a controller equipped by Linux.
This is the XiaoR GEEK ROS2 Hunter: a Jetson Nano powered robot designed for more advanced students. It is available with 4 chassis options. This particular one has mecanum wheels for omnidirectional movement. This robot has a 2DOF 3D Depth camera and a foldable touchscreen display. It is capable of LiDAR and RTAB 3D mapping navigation. With Mediapipe, you get face, edge and color recognition.
Meet the AMBIDEX from NAVER LABS: a 7DOF 2-arm robot arm with a unique cable driven mechanism that can operate safely around humans. It has a lightweight design and can high-five a human at 5m/s without hurting them. This robot is controlled with a haptic device. It can be used to assemble things and perform a wide variety of other tasks. The below video shows it in action:
Robots can play all kinds of games. We have already covered a few of them that play chess, basketball, rock-paper,-scissors, and even badminton. Namiki’s Air-Hockey Robot is also worth a look. It is smart enough to change is strategy depending on your playing style. It uses a 4-axis robotic arms and two high speed cameras to pull it of.
AI is going to make robots a whole lot smarter. They will be able to take certain actions before we do. Take Emo for instance: it is a silicon robotic face that uses AI models to replicate a person’s smile before they even smile. It has 26 actuators.
Here is a robotic pool cleaner with an underwater vision system to get the job done more efficiently. The Valor P10 has 8000GPH suction power. It can detect fallen leaves, branches, and floor drain. It uses a camera, laser, sonar, geomagnet, and IMU to get the job done.
