GetRobo Blog English

[FIRST 2010] Silicon Valley Regional, March 18-20

 The 2010 FIRST Robotics Competition, Silicon Valley Regional  was held last weekend.

(Photo 1: The field) 

 First and foremost, I would like to thank Team 114 for letting me follow the team this season and to experience with them firsthand what this competition is all about. I would not have had a clue about what was going on at the event, had I not watched you build the robot over a matter of weeks and if you had not so kindly answered all my questions during that process and also on the day of the game. (I mean, seriously, the rules are not easy for a first-timer as myself.)

(Photo 2: Team 114) 

 And Team 114 did great! They got into the final tournament and competed in the quarter finals. 

 Their robot even seemed to know what makes a good story!  The team's seeding score was 9th (out of 50 teams) after the qualifications, which couldn't have been better for my article because it allows me to explain to my Japanese readers how the alliances are formed for the final tournament. (The top 8 teams become team captains for the elimination matches, they each choose 2 other teams to form an alliance, but the 1st team chose the 2nd, so team 114 moved up to become an alliance captain, and so on......  see, it's complicated.) 

 Moreover, the robot was the only machine that made a major runaway during autonomous mode and hit an opponent. This did end in a penalty, but again, these are the things that make an intriguing story.

(Photo 3: Robot makes runaway)

(Photo 4: Team 114 communicating with the MC)

(Photo 5: Team 114 was really good at scoring)

(Photo 6: The quarter finals) 
 

(Photo 7: Fixing the robot in the pit)

 

   

(Photo 8: 50 teams competed in the Silicon Valley Regional)

(Photos 1,2,4 Courtesy of Mr. Budd)

 For the time being, the season ends for Team 114 but GetRobo will be covering the  Championship to be held in Atlanta in April.  
 

Journalist Robot - Friend or Foe?

 There's been so much bad news lately for journalists like myself with all those publications shrinking and disappearing, when I read about this robot, the first thing that came into my mind was "great, more competition." Am I eventually going to be competing with a robot to get news? 

 According to this article on Internet Watch (via Moriyama-san' Diary) a "Journalist Robot" was demonstrated in Tokyo at the Information Processing Society of Japan 50th Anniversary Event.

(Photo of Journalist Robot borrowed from Internet Watch )

 The robot is being developed at the ISI Lab at Tokyo University. (It's the same lab that did the Mowgli  and the humanoid that can get up on its own.)

 The Journalist Robot can detect what is new in the environment by comparing what it sees with data previously stored, move up to what it has detected and take photographs. Then it can search for people in that area and ask questions. The robot would have to know from previous input what exactly it has detected (examples of wine bottles and posters are given in the article), and then it will insert that word into question templates. ("Do you know who put up those wine bottles there?" -- I don't know, I'm just imaging here.) 

 And then if the robot thinks that the event is newsworthy, it will actually write up a piece.

 So there's not much detail and I really have to see this thing in person to know it's capabilities, but it looks like I don't have to worry about my job being taken over by it anytime soon. Yeah, it may be able to spell better than me with the on-board spell checker (or Kanji checker in Japanese), but it probably can't do --- well, let's see, what would I be able to do better than the robot........ Oh, I'd know which professor likes to drink more....... but isn't that just about how much knowledge you put into the robot?  OK, then I could ask more sophisticated questions in a nicer way........... but is that really necessary? Hmmmmm, this is difficult.

 What I'm sure is that I would have loved to have a future version of this robot 20 years ago as a cub reporter. There were evenings when I would have to wait in front of an executive's house for hours for him to come home so I can ask him about the pending merger or the upcoming bill. It was tough especially during the winter. If I had one of these waiting instead of me, it would have been a great help.  

 You can find the academic paper regarding the Journalist Robot here. The following pictures were borrowed from the Tokyo University joint research website.

     

[News] New baby robot M3-neony, cuter than older brother

 Remember baby robot CB2? Well, he has a new sibling. Meet M3-neony. Nothing on YouTube as of now, but you can see a video here.

 (Photo Top: M3-neony, Bottom: M3-synchy)

 The new baby robot was announced on March 3 in Japan by the ERATO project led by Prof. Minoru Asada at Osaka University.

 It is 50cm tall and weighs 3.5kg, just like a real baby, which is amazing considering how much tech it holds. It has 22 motors, 2 CMOS cameras, 90 tactile sensors and the computer that controls everything. It is autonomous and it can crawl, pull itself up holding a table, practice walking etc.

 The robot is designed so that even non-robotics researchers can use it as a platform for various research in human babies' cognitive development and motor learning.   

 The name is a little provocative. The M3 stands for "Man Made Man." Neony is for neonate.

 The M3-synchy is a platform for studying the communication between humans and multiple robots.

 Both platforms are meant to be widely available for the research community worldwide.

  

Asbestos removal robot does job that humans avoid

　New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO)  announced that it's asbestos removal robot (photo) being developed with Taisei Corp. is well on its way to unmanned operations. The robot is designed to move up and down inside elevator shafts to conduct asbestos removal at designated sites.

 

  The robot is designed to remove asbestos, a material harmful to human body, in elevator shafts of buildings to be demolished. After the elevators are removed, the robot placed on a gondola moves up and down the elevator shafts to conduct asbestos removal operations.

 

  The robot uses as its body a six-axis articulated robot developed by Fanuc Ltd. A metal brush attached to the end of its arm brushes the wall surface to remove asbestos.  A human operator will control the up and down maneuvering of the robot, but the actual removal of the harmful material is done by the robot by pre-designating work areas.

 

 A mock asbestos removal experiment was scheduled on Feb. 25 in an actual elevator  shaft set up at the machinery center at Seiwa Renewal Works headquarters in Saitama Prefecture, Japan.

 Asbestos removal operation is extremely dangerous and complicated, particularly when operating inside an enclosure such as an elevator shaft. This has caused the operations to be extremely time-consuming when done by human hands. The new robot is expected to achieve both safety and efficiency in asbestos removal operations.

 

 The robot was developed as part of the 2007-2009 "Project for Urgent Development of Basic Technologies to Reduce the Use of Asbestos and Decompose Materials Containing Asbestos" with a budget of 100 million yen. 

 

 (Via Robonable. Press release here.)