GetRobo Blog English

New Artificial Muscles to Generate Human Movements in Robots

  One of the reasons you realize that a robot like this is indeed artificial and not a human being is because it's movements are jumpy and jerky. So what exactly is the difference between a mechanical movement and a "natural" one?  And is it possible to make a robot move more "naturally?"

   Jun Ueda, Assistant Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology (photo), is set to find that out.
 
  In a human being, every time there is an electric signal from the brain - let's say - to wave an arm, different cells respond to that signal. The stochastic - or random - way the cells respond to a certain signal explains why every wave of the arm is slightly different from the last, which is something that doesn't occur with robots. A robot's wave will be exactly the same every time.
 
  So Prof. Ueda is developing a "stochastically-controlled, biologically-inspired actuator" to see if he can imitate the stochastic human process in robots. With current artificial muscles, if you send a signal at a regular interval, the movement will be jerky. Prof. Ueda thinks with his new cell-structured actuator combined with the right timing of electric pulses, he could generate a natural motion artificially.

(Photo: Actuator using 6 piezoelectric devices.) 
 
  The new actuator is made from an array of small piezoelectric devices (cells) that are linked together to build a muscle-like formation. Each device can only move a tiny bit depending on the electric voltage but linking many of them together and covering them with a mechanical frame enables it to make bigger strokes as a whole. The new actuator can respond more quickly than the existing artificial muscles which use air pumps or shape memory alloys. The cell structure is also useful in a way that you can change the length and size of the artificial muscle, as well as fix it more easily by replacing the tiny devices.

(Photo: Goal is to create a human muscle-like structure using a number of the small actuators, as seen in the model on the left. Sending electric signals to each actuator (cell) randomly may realize movements that are closer to humans.)
   
  Besides the intellectual merit of finding out the "missing link" that bridge the gap between biological movements and artificial ones, Prof. Ueda is eager to develop a robotic arm driven by a number of stochastic array actuators.

Interview with Adept CEO John Dulchinos - Quattro robot widens appeal

Adept Technology, the largest U.S.-based manufacturer of industrial robots, is on a quest to move its robots outside of the factory floors into packaging lines, food handling processes and beyond. The company’s key product, the Quattro robot, is currently the fastest packaging robot on the market and is being designed to fit into various applications around the world.

GetRobo sat down with Adept CEO John Dulchinos to learn about the newer and fascinating ways that his clients are utilizing Quattro. The following is an excerpt from the interview.

(This week is National Robotics Week and Adept is having an open house on April 16to celebrate. It will open up its laboratory and GetRobo highly recommends a visit to see the Quattro and other robots in action. You can even control a Quattro yourself with a Wii remote!=video after the break)

 

 

(Photo: Adept CEO John Dulchinos with a model of Quattro) 

Q. What is special about the Quattro?

A. Quattro is the only parallel robot in the world that features a unique four-arm rotational platform. All the parallel robots from other industrial robot companies have a three-arm design. The advantage of having four arms is that it offers faster cycles and can carry heavier payloads. Moreover, the four-arm design is mechanically more efficient so it uses 25% less energy than the three-arm design.

 Since we brought the Quattro to the market in 2007, we’ve targeted at applications that are very high speed and have a large work envelope. These applications include food handling, pharmaceuticals, consumer goods and even as far reaching as solar (cell manufacturing).

 And now, the Quattro has become one of the very few robots accepted by the USDA. As a matter of fact it’s the only high-speed parallel robot accepted by the USDA and it enables us to sell the robot to the meat and poultry market.

Q. How significant is it to be USDA accepted?

This market requires robots to be specially designed. The big difference is that in meat and poultry plants there is a high risk of bacteria growing. Every night, those plants have a wash-down process using chemicals and high-pressure hoses, so it is an impossible environment for a normal robot. The coating on the casting and the materials on the platform are different and they need ot be accepted by the USDA. The electronics have to be tightly sealed. These are tough requirements especially for a sophisticated piece of equipment like a robot. But Adept was able to meet that and we introduced the product last Oct. And we shipped our first set of robots this March quarter to customers in meat and poultry handling in the U.S. and France.

 It’s important to note that automating meat and poultry applications is very important because there is a lot of labor involved and the working conditions are not conducive to people. There are contamination risks when people are involved in packaging. So robots bring delicate product handling, the dexterity of touch labor with the efficiency and consistency of machines.

Q. How large is the market?

Interview with Max Safai, Neato Robotics CEO

 GetRobo had the chance to visit Neato Robotics in Mountain View, CA, and got a first-hand look at the new robotic vacuum cleaner Neato XV-11. I wanted to try out their "crown jewel" - as CEO Max Safai puts it - which is their original inexpensive laser rangefinder that costs only $30.

 First of all, I wanted to see how the XV-11 can detect and avoid obstacles on the fly. 

 Very clever!

  It's also neat that the robot can identify a door and will not go out of the room until it has finished cleaning. Once it's done, it will go out of the door and move on to the next room. You can check out the other videos on the YouTube GetRobo Channel.

  There were some questions that I wanted to ask the company. The main one being whether they are willing to sell the laser rangefinder component separately. 

 The following is an edited excerpt from an interview with Neato CEO, Mr. Safai. The original article appeared on GetRobo Japanese on Feb. 6. 

 

 Q. How do you feel about competing with iRobot?

Telepresent at iREX through the QB robot

 I didn't go to iREX this year, but I did get to see a bit of the action through Anybot's new telepresence robot QB.  

 QB is a simplified version of QA, costing one third of the price while maintaining the basic functions of the original robot. By making the design simpler, namely decreasing the number of motors from 6 to 2 and moving most of the electronics to the base, the price has now come down to 10,000 dollars. QB weighs 35 lb, 20 lb less than QA, and is height adjustable. All this makes QB easier to transport than QA. Anybots plans to commercialize QB by next spring.

    

   Anybots officially announced QB at iREX in Tokyo this week and I wanted to use the robot to interview people at the show. Trevor Blackwell, founder of Anybots, kindly agreed, and he came with his Mac so that I can operate QB from my home office. QB was being exhibited at the iREX booth by Innovation Matrix which will be the distributor in Japan. 

 And it was EXTREMELY FUN!!! I got to catch up with a couple of GetRobo readers that appeared at the booth and also chatted with vistors that were wandering around the exhibit floor. In general they were all pleased to be approached by QB and being asked questions from me in California (except for the 2 cases where I ran into them). They too had questions about the robot so I relayed them to Trevor and he was able to answer them real time. It worked out great! 

 So, although I don't see myself buying a 10,000 dollar robot anytime soon, I can imagine a future scenario where I would rent it by the hour so that I can visit places and do things that I would not normally be able to do. The feeling was a bit similar to doing interviews inside Second Life (which by the way I did do several years ago for a news article) but much more fun and of course real. In terms of approaching and interviewing complete strangers, I felt it was easier using a robot than doing it there myself. Even when I am rejected, I don't have to feel personal about it. :-)
  
 
 

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.