GetRobo Blog English

Archi/e Machina - A Robotic and Lifelike Structure

 Two researchers from Tokyo University have developed a robotic architectural structure that responds to surrounding sounds and movements. The Archi/e Machina is based on a tensegrity structure using 21 struts and 84 cables. Twelve of the cables are replaced with pneumatic artificial muscles.

 Below is a video of the lifelike structure developed by Ryuma Niiyama of the Intelligent Systems and Informatics Lab  and Yosuke Ushigome of the Hirose Tanikawa Lab. They exhibited the structure at Haneda Airport in Tokyo where people were able to interact with it.  

 It would be really cool to see a number of these structures interact with each other to create different shapes and perhaps in the future do something useful such as automatically provide shade for the public in the hottest times of the day or shelter when it starts to rain.  

 By the way, you may already be familiar with earlier works by Niiyama-san - who developed the artificial muscles for this project. His goal is to "develop robots that are dynamic and flexible like animals" and one such robot is Mowgli, the jumping robot. Just to refreshen your memory, here is a video of Mowgli.

Giant Rhinoceros Beetle Robot - KABUTOM RX-03

 Hitoshi Takahashi spent 11 years building this giant beetle robot just by himself as a hobby. Rhinoceros beetle in Japanese is "Kabutomushi" -thus the robot's name. It's 11 meters long and weighs 15 tons (estimate). It walks and can take up as many as 5 to 7 people. See photos of it being transported here.

 Appeared on TV below.

Stanford’s Robot Car to Drive from SF to LA Next Spring

Prof. Sebastian Thrun at Stanford University is world famous for leading a team of students and engineers to develop an autonomous car that won the DARPA Grand Challenge in 2005. The history making car “Stanley” now resides at the Smithsonian.

Since then, his next mission was set to develop a vehicle that can achieve urban driving. The team went on to develop “Junior” and during that process in 2007, won second place in the Urban Challenge. But the goal had always been grander – to create a car that can drive itself from downtown San Francisco to downtown Los Angeles without human intervention.

GetRobo got to chat with Prof. Thrun on the phone to get an update on this project and learned that he now plans to accomplish this goal by next spring. The following is an edited version of the interview. (Photograph from Oct. 2007)

 

Q. The last time we talked, you were working on developing a fully autonomous vehicle that can drive on its own from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Can you give us an update on this project?

 

A. The project is underway and we are making good progress. For example, we are now able to handle traffic lights and to localize reliably on highways, which is important for lane keeping. We can now speed up the vehicle in traffic. Also we are much better able to track the other cars around us and we can find and identify pedestrians.

 There are a few open problems that we haven’t solved including merging and lane changing that need some work. Then we have to start doing large-scale experiments on the road to see what other problems exist.

 

Q. Has your car already been driving autonomously on regular roads?

 

A. Yes, we have done many experiments on public roads. We always have a safety driver in the car who can take over just by grabbing the steering wheel. And he can disengage any point in time. And we have a safety computer engineer on board, who monitors the systems. There has never been a close call or anything like that. It is totally safe to do this.

 

Q. Has the car already attempted a trip from SF to LA?

 

A. No. We are gearing up for this. We are making good progress but we are not there yet. Certain behaviors on highways, such as mergers, lane shifts and exiting, entering ramps are still not ready. And I’m sure as we start tackling long distances, we will find more and more problems that we have to solve.

 

Q. If you were to measure your progress on a scale of one to ten, and your goal being ten, where are you at now? And when do you plan to do the full-blown experiment from SF to LA?

 

A. We are at seven. And we plan on doing it by spring of next year.

A New Way to Make Humanoids Walk - Work in Progress

 Tomomichi Sugihara  of Kyushu University is an expert on humanoid robots. His works include the H series  (H5, H6 and H7) and the UT-mu series. He provided the software for isamu, UT-theta and UT-gamma. He is one of the Superstars.

 

(Photo: Dr. Sugihara with one of his creations - a pale pink robot named "mighty")

 So it may come as a surprise for some people when he says that "humanoids of the future will NOT be based on current technology." During the history of humanoid research, he says, "we've accumulated lots of know-how on building the robots supported by advances in mechatronic technologies." "But there hasn't been much progress in the theoretics of how we control them and make them walk autonomously."

 But what about the ASIMO? 

 "ASIMO and most of the other humanoids are based on trajectory planning and when something goes wrong - such as an unexpected obstacle showing up - they have to correct their paths. The greatness of ASIMO is how well it can adjust. But there is always going to be limits when you have a preset trajectory. So we as roboticists have to gather up our courage to move back to square one and come up with a completely new method."

 Dr. Sugihara has ideas. He has named his new controlling method "Dynamics Morphing." Details will be described in his upcoming paper. 

 His goal?  "To develop a general-purpose humanoid tool. Versatile enough so that users can decide how to use them - just like the PC."

Robot House for Lease

 Anybody want to test their future home robot product inside a robot-ready house? Well, come to Fukuoka City in south of Japan and you can lease a model house - basically for free. The 1,700 square feet house and surrounding area is set up with cameras, LIDARS and thousands of RFID tags.

      

 Just contact Prof. Tsutomu Hasegawa of  Kyushu University, who is the leader of the project that led to the development of this house. "No matter how sophisticated the robots become, it is impossible for them to be of any use to us if the environment didn't support them," says Prof. Hasegawa. If you want the robots to be autonomous, they need to know where they stand and where the humans and other objects are so that they can perform whatever task they are supposed to do.  

 In the past 2 years, Prof. Hasegawa's team has demonstrated a robotic wheel chair that carries a person from the house to a nearby bus stop. Also, together with Yaskawa Electric they showed SmartPal and a smaller companion robot work together inside the house. 

 The core software that supports this environment is called "TMS" which stands for "Town Management System." TMS is open source and you can use it in your own environment with your own sensors, meaning you don't have to fly all the way to Fukuoka to do your experiments. The software will be downloadable soon. The site is not quite ready yet, but it will be similar to something like this.   

 If you do want to use the city-owned facility, researchers from overseas are welcome too, although I must warn you that there are no user manuals in languages other than Japanese. And you will have to pay your own electricity and phone bills. Prof. Hasegawa says that he and his team would be willing to offer technical support based upon a joint research agreement.

 What I thought was really cool when I visited Prof. Hasegawa in Feb. 2009 were the supporting team of robots that work in the background. Photographed below with Prof. Hasegawa are the 3 robots that move around the rooms and outdoors to develop a precise 3D map of the whole environment. Also there is a set of robots that go around the house and neighborhood periodically to check whether all the camera angles have remained where they are supposed to be. I feel symphathy for these hard-working robots that are essential but never seem to get any press because people just don't know they exist.

 

  Prof. Hasegawa's group is now working on applying TMS to a real world environment. One of the first places he would like TMS to be utilized is an elderly care facility. They will be looking into what the needs are and how robots would be able to help.