Automaton

Spiegel Online reports on an EU DEXMART-funded research project at the University of Naples to design and build a robot that makes coffee and picks up clothes. The robot, named Justin [the Spiegel article incorrectly calls it "Justine"], is supposed to be one step in developing a multitasking household robot. From the article:

The â'¬6.3-million ($9.3 million) project aims to develop robots that can use two arms simultaneously and in harmony, as opposed to current robots, which only have the technological complexity to handle "one-armed" tasks.

This goal is interesting to compare with the predictions of iRobot cofounder Colin Angle, who predicts that we will instead see more specialized robots like the Roomba -- an armless, not at all humanoid robot. Will Justine control Roomba some day? Or is one more likely to take off as a new paradigm than the other?

Of course, we should really be focusing on the important question, which is: is this coffee-making robot programmed in Java?

Everyone lately is covering the thermally powered glider developed by Webb Research. Last week I attended the AUVSI/ONR Joint Review in Orlando, Florida, and I got to listen to someone from Webb talk a bit about their glider and how it works.

Gliders in general are a version of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), but with one important distinction: they are buoyancy-driven, rather than using a propeller to generate thrust underwater. Gliders maintain the torpedo-like shape of traditional AUVs but typically have wings that provide an extra control surface. They use a variable buoyancy system to change how much they weigh in the water, allowing them to ascend or descend, and also modify weight distribution inside their bodies to change their pitch angle in the water.

For example, the Spray Glider we build at Bluefin (developed at the SIO) has a constant-volume pressure vessel filled with mineral oil that can be pumped into or out of a bladder that sits in a flooded section of the vehicle. When oil is pumped in, the bladder expands, and displaces water in that flooded section, increasing the vehicle's volume in the water and allowing it to ascend. Similarly, when it pumps the oil out of the bladder and back into the constant volume vessel, it permits water to fill the flooded section again, decreasing the vehicle's volume and causing it to sink. Internal battery packs mounted on tracks can move side to side (controlling the vehicle's roll) and forward and backward (letting it dive or climb), so combining the angle control with the varied buoyancy allows the vehicle to dive and climb in a sawtooth pattern through the water. With this sort of system, a glider can stay out for durations on the order of six months.

This technology is ideal for long-term missions. Because so little power is used compared to a propeller that is always spinning, a glider can stay out for months at a time on one battery charge rather than the tens of hours that a propelled vehicle can achieve on a single charge. Webb, however, has made a few modifications to their buoyancy system that may allow their new gliders to stay out for years.

Rather than relying on a battery-powered hydraulic system to pump mineral oil in and out of the bladder, the oil is normally contained in a plastic tube surrounded by a kind of wax chosen for its phase change properties. The wax is sensitive to the ocean temperature: at cold temperatures it contracts, but at warmer ocean temperatures it expands. The expansion increases the volume of the wax and squeezes the tube, which in turn squeezes mineral oil out into the rest of the vehicle's variable buoyancy system. This causes the vehicle to sink. When it reaches depth (and therefore a low water temperature), the wax contracts, which allows the oil to flow back into the tube out of the buoyancy system and the vehicle ascends.

So what Webb has done is eliminate the need for batteries to drive a hydraulic pump system. However, they still need batteries to run the onboard computer, sensors, communication system, and roll/pitch control system, meaning that these gliders aren't totally "green" yet. But they're on their way, and other glider researchers are following suit. Webb's recent demonstration -- the activity that generated all the press -- shows that this technology is ready to be out of the lab and into the ocean, so we can probably expect this system to become widespread pretty quickly. It will be interesting to see what other ocean-powered systems can be applied to these gliders to make them truly "green'.

Thermal glider image from webbresearch.com

Sarah Adee's article on Dean Kamen's Luke Skywalker-like bionic arm created quite a buzz, but her video report is even better:

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/video?id=221

Ney Robinson Salvi dos Reis, a Brazilian roboticist who leads a group developing an environmental robot for the Amazon jungle, writes to report important developments.

No, not a major advance in the robot's active suspension system. Not a breakthrough in its machine vision scheme either. The big news, Reis reports, is that the robot, called Hybrid Environmental Robot, was the inspiration for a vehicle used in this year's famed Rio de Janeiro carnival.

The vehicle was part of the presentation by the carnival group Grande Rio. The photo shows the vehicle parading through Sapucaí Avenue in Rio de Janeiro, and although you can't see them, Reis and his team of researchers were right there, dancing samba along with their "robot."

This lovely robot valentine, along with others, can be found at blissfullybitter.com.

My friend Chris Murphy is a graduate student in the MIT/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute joint program. Late last summer his group went on a research cruise to the Arctic Circle, so I asked him to tell me a little bit about the two underwater vehicles they used for their work. Read on for the interview and some of his pictures from the cruise!

Explain a little bit about your graduate program and how the MIT/WHOI relationship works.

I'm an Engineering student in the MIT/WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography, working towards a PhD. That means that I take classes and perform research at both MIT and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. At MIT, I'm in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL). At WHOI, where my advisor is located, I'm in the Deep Submergence Laboratory (DSL), studying underwater robotics. My research in particular is on the intersection of computer vision and acoustic communication strategies.

Can you tell us more about the DSL's research?

My advisor, Dr. Hanumant Singh, has focused on AUVs for imaging applications, such as generating 3D photo mosaics of the seafloor. Our group has three autonomous underwater vehicles, or AUVs, custom-built for that purpose: SeaBed, Puma, and Jaguar.

Tell us about the expedition's goals. What were you looking for?

This past summer we deployed and recovered AUV's from the middle of the Arctic ice pack. We deployed and recovered the vehicles several times, employing a variety of novel techniques for recovering the robots through the ice. We were trying to characterize the seafloor around hydrothermal vents in the Arctic -- both biologically and geologically. We were lucky to be on the Swedish icebreaker Oden, which had a fantastic crew, and really facilitated a lot of the work.

Why use robots to do what you needed to do?

As most of the area we worked in was covered with a few meters of ice, sending humans down in a manned submersible would be an extremely dangerous proposition, requiring perfect planning and execution. Even with the AUVs, the 'hole' in the ice that we were driving to was approximately 100m on a side, or about a shiplength. That's not much room for error. Using AUVs allowed us to run longer missions, and run missions in conditions that would have prevented diving with a manned submersible. Losing an AUV was a very real possibility, but one that is infinitely more acceptable than losing a manned submersible. AUVs are also capable of free-swimming; they could perform large-area or small-area missions as the scientists required, and weren't limited by places the ship could drive as a tethered vehicle might be.

What was the most challenging part of the AUV design?

The high pressures present at 6000m (the depth at which these AUVs were operating) dominate much of the design, which combined with the need for watertight enclosures makes for large metal enclosures around everything. It also takes a very long time to dive 4km, which means that it requires a lot of power, and therefore lots of batteries. That makes the vehicle even larger. Cold turns out not to a be a huge problem, as ocean temperatures at depth are already quite low regardless of location. Operationally, the cold and ice pose much larger challenges, ranging from difficulty working with connectors to the dangers of ice severing cables hanging from the ship.

What was new about Puma and Jaguar compared with similar vehicles?

The design for Puma and Jaguar is based off of the design of SeaBed, a robot designed over the last several years by the lab. Jaguar and Puma are rated to dive much deeper than SeaBed (6000m versus 2000m), and each has a different sensor payload. In addition, we made a variety of changes to our proprietary control software that made the vehicles more appropriate for Arctic operations. One such change was to the way that the AUVs handle abort conditions and return at the end of a mission. In traditional open-water operations, the AUVs can simply surface at the end of the mission, and the ship can be driven to their location. In Arctic operations, it is extremely likely that the AUVs would surface under the icepack, a situation we very much wanted to avoid. For Arctic operations, the AUVs each had a pre-programmed 'home' location about 100m deep that they would drive to at the end of the mission or if things went wrong. We could then guide the robots to open water using an acoustic communications link.

You had two robots -- why? What was different between them?

The two robots, Puma and Jaguar, are similar in design but feature different science sensor payloads. Puma's name comes from the phrase "PlUme MApper", which describe's its purpose pretty well. Hydrothermal vents typically have a sort of 'mushroom-cloud' shaped plume of chemical-rich water eminating from them which reaches to several hundred meters above the seafloor. To locate a vent, Puma first attempt to locate the main 'cloud' using a variety of chemical sensors, and then works to localize the stem of the cloud. This gives a basic idea of the vent's location. Jaguar is then deployed to capture photographic and microbathymetric sonar maps of the seafloor and get a 'close-up' view.

Any favorite stories from the trip?

Seeing polar bears was a pretty amazing experience, but one particularly amusing moment occurred after a dive when we were using a helicopter to survey in the AUV's location. We were coming to the end of our survey, and believed we had tracked down the position of the AUV under the ice. As we were flying back to the ship to find out where the survey placed the vehicle, we flew directly over the vehicle! It was sitting on the surface in an area of open water.

What have you been doing with Puma and Jaguar since this cruise?

I just returned from another trip with Puma and Jaguar, where we tested new navigation techniques for the robots. We hope these techniques will eventually allow us to do cooperative missions with both AUVs in the water at the same time, and without deploying navigation beacons beforehand, which could open up a variety of new types of missions.

Many thanks to Chris for taking the time to answer my questions! There are lots more pictures from the cruise on WHOI's website -- check them out and take a look at some of the scientific briefs available that talk more about the project's goals.

All photos for this post copyright 2007 -- Chris Murphy

We've all had those days when we suddenly say to ourselves, "Gosh, I wish I had my very own Predator drone. The things I could keep under surveillance! The neighbors I could buzz! Yes, my life is empty without it." Fortunately, for people like us, there is DIY Drones, a site dedicated to telling you how to build your own unmanned aerial vehicle for under $1000 using things like LEGO Mindstorms kits or BASIC Stamp kits to add navigation and other behaviors to RC airplanes.

Via MeFi. Photo from diydrones.com

From Spectrum's February issue:

The small motorboat meanders through the Amazonian swamp. The water is a turbid brown, the jungle a thicket of twisted trees. A cricrió bird chirps from the treetops. The Brazilian researchers stop the boat to have a look around. Suddenly a noise breaks the calm. Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Within seconds, an angry swarm of cabas, Amazon wasps with a powerful sting, envelops the boat and its unlucky occupants. To hear Ney Robinson Salvi dos Reis tell the story, you almost feel you're right there in the rain forest with him, fighting off the bellicose bugs.

â''Jumping into the water is not a good idea,â'' Reis says. â''There are crocodiles, snakes, piranhas, and a bloodsucking little fish called candiru that can enter your body orifices. So I covered my head and told the mateiroâ''â''the Amazon native piloting the boatâ''â''to get us out of there fast!â''

For Reis, a robotics engineer at Petrobras, Brazil's state-controlled oil company, fleeing from wild wasps through treacherous waterways in excruciating heat and humidity is just part of the fun. He heads the robotics laboratory at Petrobras's underwater technology division in Rio de Janeiro. The company's main oil fields reside in deep waters off the Brazilian coast, so Reis's lab specializes in developing all sorts of Jules Vernian contraptionsâ''a caterpillar-like robot to unclog underwater pipelines, a supersized hydraulic wrench that can work down to 2000 meters.

Petrobras also operates some oil fields inland, including Urucu, tucked deep within the Amazon rain forest. Sometime this year the company plans to complete a 670-kilometer-long pipeline to transport natural gas to Manaus, the region's largest city. The company will need to routinely inspect the line for leaks. That's where Reis comes in.

â''You can't just hop in your 4x4 and go see if the pipes are okay,â'' he says. â''You need to cross rivers, igarapés [seasonal tributaries], flooded forests, and a floating cushion of aquatic vegetation that forms near the riverbanks.â''

So Reis's team is building a pipeline-monitoring robot that can navigate just about any kind of terrain. Shaped like a dune buggy, it has four spherical wheels the size of overinflated beach balls, which let the robot float. The outer sides of the wheels have paddles, and powered suspensions can tilt the paddled sides into the water. The machine is called Chico.

The robot's main job will be to run up and down the pipeline using gas-sniffing sensors to find leaks. The current prototype is remotely operated, but Reis's group is designing a manned version for more complex inspection and repair missions. He says the robot will also help scientists gain unprecedented access to the Amazon, letting them film animals, record bird sounds, and collect plants and water samples. â''We're doing these engineering projects,â'' he says, â''to give people the ability to see, smell, hear the jungleâ''and protect it.â''

Reis's inspiration to become an engineer came from his grandmother Irene, an elementary school teacher. Growing up in Rio, the young boy would marvel at the objects she built for her classes, from a simple tin-can phone to a dollhouse with numbered windows and doors to teach arithmetic.

In 1972, Reis earned a degree in mechanical engineering from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and began working on the construction of nuclear reactors, iron-mining plants, and oil refineries. He took scuba-diving courses and worked on the construction of Brazil's first offshore platforms. â''It was a beautiful adventure,â'' he recalls. â''I finally understood the meaning of navy blue.â''

In 1987, he joined Petrobras. At the time, the company was beginning to explore deeper and deeper waters and couldn't rely on divers anymore. It needed robots. Reis cofounded the robotics lab and helped the company reach some of the world's deepest oil reservoirs.

These days, when Reis is not out in the Campos Basin off Rio's coast or the Amazon jungle testing a new system, he's in the lab, making wooden models with his longtime assistant, José â''Geppettoâ'' Almir Sena, or brainstorming with the graduate students he helps advise.

On a muggy spring afternoon, Reis heads out to the lab's pool to put the robot through a round of tests. Tall and tan, with green-gray eyes and a mane of brown and silver hair, he strolls gracefully, greeting everyone he sees. â''Opa, tá bom, menino?â'' he calls out to one acquaintance. â''Hey, you good, boy?â''

In his cramped office, Reis keeps a binder labeled â''On the Anvil,â'' full of half-baked ideas he has scribbled on scraps of paper or napkins. â''You're at home, in the shower, the toilet, or whatever, and then, boom!â''you're taken by the most wonderful of ideas,â'' he says. Many of those ideas become topics for his students' doctoral dissertations.

Reis enjoys giving talks at schools and universities about his projects and the importance of science and engineering. He's found it a useful technique for recruiting new members to his lab, which now includes, in addition to his full-time staff of four, about half a dozen master's and Ph.D. students and high school interns. â''Ney encourages the group to be creative, improvise, and above all, have fun,â'' says Gustavo Medeiros Freitas, a master's student. â''He wants to look into your eyes and see that you love what you're doing.â''

Late last year, Reis and his team were preparing for another trip to the Amazon (he's been there more than 30 times in the past five years). He says the project is not just about going there, testing the robot, and leaving. He and his crew seek to involve local communities and hope the locals will eventually assist in operating and maintaining the robot. And what do the Amazon natives think of their futuristic wheeled visitor?

â''The kids love it; they're totally unafraid,â'' Reis says. â''Once we were operating the robot, and this little boy ran toward it. I shouted, â''Be careful!' Then we stopped the robot. I took the boy in my arms and sat him on a wheel. He had the biggest smile on his face.â''

Wired has a neat gallery that looks into the robotics labs at SPAWAR in San Diego. There's a wide array of ground-based humanoids, vehicles, and other machines, which all appear to be armed. On one of the bots:

This prototype robotic weapon platform is designed to be buried underground for camouflaged deployment. When called to action, the robotic gun pops up and starts shooting. If you're the unlucky soul on the business end of this gun, it's likely curtains for you -- this robot is an extremely accurate shooter. A high-tech night-vision scope (bottom right) permits dead-on targeting even during moonless nights.

Via BoingBoing

Robotics Trends, a web portal of many things robotic, has just re-launched its site. The new site does a really nice job of putting together a ton of information about industry, academia, conferences, jobs, and other resources and presenting it in an easy to read way. Check it out!

Robotics Trends also runs the RoboBusiness conference, this year 8-10 April in Pittsburgh, and registration is going on as we speak.