Automaton

CANADIAN MUSCLE: The Space Shuttle Endeavour's robotic manipulator Canadarm 1 hands off a payload to the International Space Station (out of frame), which is also equipped with a mechanical arm, the Canadarm 2. A new ISS arm, Dextre, will become operational later this year. Photo: NASA (19 July 2009)

At a moment when the world is celebrating the historic lunar landing of Apollo 11, even the crew on the International Space Station found time to pay homage. But then, it’s back to work, as the astronauts continue with their busy schedule of construction and scientific work.

For the current mission, the astronauts count on a tireless partner: the robotic manipulator Canadarm 2. With space exploration at the center of earthlings’ attention, I thought it’d be great to learn more about this amazing space telemanipulator. And I couldn’t find a better person to talk to than Alexandre Grégoire-Rousseau, a mission planning engineer at the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).

The goal of the current mission is, among other things, to install two Japanese modules to the ISS. This process will take 16 days and involve three robots: the Canadarm 2 on the ISS, its older brother Canadarm 1 on the Space Shuttle, and an arm on Kibo, one of the Japanese modules. A true robotic ballet in outer space!

Those who have programmed robotic manipulators would have their brains tingling while hearing Grégoire-Rousseau describe how the arms work and all the challenges involved. Each mission requires that the planners prepare new control algorithms and trajectories for the different payloads.

“Every two-week mission takes two to three years to plan,” he says. “Fifty percent of our time is to define the actual mission scenario; the other 50 percent is to think about the what if’s.”

One interesting challenge is that, whereas industrial manipulators are bolted to factory floors that remain stationary, the Canadarm 2 is attached to the ISS, which floats in space. That means the dynamics of the arm is coupled with the ISS’s dynamics. Move the arm and conservation of momentum may cause the space station to move too. Grégoire-Rousseau says they haven’t had problems lately, because the ISS is getting heavier.

“Still,” he adds, “it is sometimes necessary to activate the gyros or in rarer cases the thrusters of the Station to maintain its attitude while the arm is moving around.”

The arm was originally designed for assembly tasks. But since it became operational, mission planners have come up other uses, such as positioning cameras for inspection or moving the astronauts around when they are out of the ISS. In fact, during the current mission, the Canadarm 2 will also be used to move an astronaut who has to replace electronic components on the ISS as part of an extra-vehicular walk.

Direct mechanical interactions between robots and humans is an area that receives a lot of attention from Grégoire-Rousseau’s team and other research labs on Earth. It’s a hot topic in robotics and presents many challenges related to control and safety. Just think that the ISS crew is maneuvering a 17.6 meter long manipulator … in free space. No need to say that a failure could have dramatic consequences up there.

To ensure flawlessness, astronauts plan a lot, train a lot, and operate very slowly to make sure that they have time to react. Many layers of safety wrap the operations. The arm can detect faults and stop its own operation, execute pre-planned parameterized trajectories, or follow joystick commands from the astronaut watching it on video displays from inside the ISS. Teams in Houston and at CSA’s headquarters near Montréal continuously monitor the telemetry information sent back to Earth.

But it seems that the best is still to come in terms of robotics and the ISS. Dextre, whose official name is the Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator, is a torso with two smaller arms that will be added at the end of the Canadarm 2. Dextre was assembled on site last spring, and it’s docked and tested, ready to come into action around October of this year. The main innovation in Dextre? It comes from the use of force-torque sensors, which will enable fine manipulation.

“Dextre could insert a DVD into a player”, Grégoire-Rousseau says. “Its capabilities will significantly reduce the number of necessary extra-vehicular astronaut walks.”

Samuel Bouchard is a co-founder of Robotiq in Quebec City.

Exactly 40 years ago, a human-made artifact touched down on the moon. Today, a space technology company unveiled the machine they hope will replicate the feat.

Or at least the machine's latest version. Astrobotic Technology, in Pittsburgh, is developing a lunar robot, which they hope to put on the moon sometime in 2011.

Spectrum wrote about Astrobotic's efforts, led by famed Carnegie Mellon roboticist William "Red" Whittaker, in our Mars special issue. The article described how Red and his team plan to win the US $20 million Google Lunar X Prize by being the first to land a robot on the moon and beam back photos and video.

Their robot is going through several design iterations, and the version revealed today addresses a hot topic, so to speak: the robot's ability to survive the scorching temperatures of the moon's equator -- over 130 degrees Celsius at local noon.

How will it do that? David Gump, the company's president, explains:

The robot beats the heat by keeping a cool side aimed away from the Sun to radiate heat off to the black sky. It travels toward or away from the sun (generally east or west) without turning its radiator into the light. Only the solar cells on the hot side ever face the sun. The robot can travel north and south by tacking like a sailboat.

[...]

The fundamental innovation developed at Carnegie Mellon is the rover’s asymmetrical shape. On the cold side, there’s a flat radiator angled up to the black lunar sky as well as a vertical panel for the logos of the corporations sponsoring the expedition. On the hot side, a half-cone of solar cells generates ample electrical power to power the wheels, run the computers and energize the transmitter beaming back stereo HD video to Earth.

Pretty cool, uh?

Launch is scheduled for May 2011, and the robot is expected to explore the site of the Apollo 11 landing, which I'm sure will make for some exciting videos of flags, footsteps, and more. (By the way, if you're wondering, the Apollo 11 crew left before local noon, so Armstrong and Aldrin didn't have to worry about the extreme heat.)

Check out the photos above. Doesn't the side view look like a ... high-tech baby stoller?

Photos: Astrobotic Technology

We have previously established my disdain for hyped-up reporting of robotics that focus more on the apocalyptic implications of robots than on their actual applications. Imagine my excitement when I saw the headline "Upcoming Military Robot Could Feed On Dead Bodies" from Fox News last week, which quickly propagated throughout my email inbox and RSS feeds. (Fox News has since removed that article in favor of a revised one)

This stemmed from articles that covered two areas. One was the announcement by Robot Technology Inc and Cyclone Power Technologies of a military robot called EATR -- an admittedly ominous choice of acronym -- that is designed to be fueled by "biomass and other organic substances". The other was a quote from P.W. Singer in his recent book, Wired for War, that described organic fuel sources as "grass, broken wood, furniture, [and] dead bodies." When Popular Science combined these two pieces of information in one article, the organic matter hit the fan.

A drawing of EATR from its creator, Robot Technology Inc. Observe the large, gnashing jaws that will devour you without regard for your humanity. Personally, I'm terrified.

In response, Cyclone was forced to issue a second press release assuring people that the robot was only designed to consume plant matter, not dead bodies, to fuel itself.

Despite the far-reaching reports that this includes “human bodies,” the public can be assured that the engine Cyclone has developed to power the EATR runs on fuel no scarier than twigs, grass clippings and wood chips – small, plant-based items for which RTI’s robotic technology is designed to forage. ... “We completely understand the public’s concern about futuristic robots feeding on the human population, but that is not our mission,” stated Harry Schoell, Cyclone’s CEO.

There's a lot more to be said about Singer's book and the way the media has received it -- usually in tandem with alarmist headlines -- but I'll leave it at this. I think it's shameful any technology company has to make a press release establishing that their product does NOT eat humans.

Previously: 

The New "Terminator" And The Most Recent Fears of Robot Uprising

Last Februrary Helen Greiner, a co-founder of iRobot, launched a stealth startup company called The Droid Works. With only a skeleton website and very little information released, all she would say is that she planned to focus on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Speculation abounded. We here at Automaton guessed she'd be working on small or "micro" UAVs, given the dominance in the large UAV space by big defense companies who build things like the Predator and Reaper drones, as well as the prime opportunity to bring micro UAV research out of research labs. Turns out we were right!

Last week the National Science Foundation announced it had awarded a Small Business Innovation Research grant to the Droid Works to create technologies that will allow small UAVs to navigate inside buildings.

This technology, applied to emergency response situations, will save the lives of police officers, victims, and suspects. Emergency response teams have been slow to adopt unmanned systems to aid in hostage situations, search and rescue, fire fighting, and armed standoffs.

The full text of the award is here.

The SBIR is a great opportunity for Greiner's company; government research grants like this from organizations like the Office of Naval Research, DARPA, and the NSF have been the genesis of the majority of robotics companies on the East Coast and in Pittsburgh whether or not they're still in the military space now. The next generation of startups have begun to move away from the government SBIR model as venture funding availability has increased; look at recent non-military startups like Kiva Systems, Heartland Robotics, or Harvest Automation. However, the Droid Works is likely to stay in the military space, given Greiner's original involvement with the government and industrial side of iRobot, so this route makes a lot of sense for them.

But it is worth noting that some potential changes to the SBIR program being discussed this week in Congress may change the game for new companies. With changes in elgibility criteria, startups that might otherwise have relied on SBIRs to get going may find themselves having to seek other options.

Previously: Former iRobot Chair Launches Droid Works

Nearly two years ago I saw a little robot called Autom presented at a robotics panel I attended at the MIT Museum. Autom, developed at the MIT Media Lab by Dr. Cory Kidd, was designed to interact with people as they try to lose weight. While the idea seemed great, I couldn't help but notice that it looked a little ... well, creepy.

 

Autom, the original, and Autom, the recently designed. Note the change in footprint, increased screen size, and friendlier face.

After finishing his PhD, Kidd took the idea and turned it into a company called Intuitive Automata. They've spent the last two years working out of Hong Kong to redesign Autom and get her ready for mass production. The result is a sleek little robot with big blue eyes and a large LCD screen, meant to sit on your kitchen counter and interact with you each day. I have to say I find the new version much more personable looking.

Fundamentally, Autom is not entirely different than a lot of the online calorie and exercise tracking websites. The key difference -- the focus of Kidd's research at MIT -- was the emotional interaction component. In a demo I saw, Autom's software first asks a question; for example, "Do you want to tell me what you had for lunch today?" You then have the option to replay with something like "Sure!" or "Okay" or "Not really", each of which has a different emotional connotation -- perhaps you're particularly proud of eating well one day, or feeling guilty about sneaking a candy bar. By recognizing what appears to be your current emotional state, Autom can tailor her interactions with you to be as effective as possible in tracking your information accurately and encouraging you to do better each day. The early tests of the product showed that "people who worked with Autom stayed with their diet for twice as long as using a computer or paper-based diet log." 

Since the version developed at MIT, Autom has gotten smaller, with better custom electronics and improved software based on lots of interaction studies. Intuitive Automata is ramping its way up to a larger scale trial, aiming to eventually be able to sell these to everyone to use at home, so that you, too, can guiltily admit to an adorable robot that you succumbed to a McDonald's McFlurry craving today.

 We previously discussed some of the research activities at the small, undergraduate-only Olin College near Boston, MA. They've just released a video montage of the different robots that have been worked on over the last few years, including some new additions -- robots that have been the product of senior projects. This year in particular had two really interesting new autonomous vehicles.

One is an unmanned surface vehicle (a USV) that was developed with funding from Aurora Flight Sciences. USVs are an up-and-coming ocean technology that serve a variety of purposes: ocean monitoring, surveillance and reconnaissance, and launch platforms for other unmanned vehicles. Some take the form of a standard jetski; others, like the Olin/Aurora USV, are based on a pontoon raft platform. The video shows clips of Olin's USV being tested on a navigation course at Lake Waban in Wellesley.

The other is the Ghost Swimmer. Inspired by the original RoboTuna developed at Draper Laboratory, the Olin students are working with the consulting firm Boston Engineering to develop a new generation of robotic fish, designed it to mimic as closely as possible the movement of its tail to direct itself through the water. Though it currently spends most of its time swimming in an indoor pool, Ghost Swimmer -- currently remote controlled -- is likely to join its USV cousin in Lake Waban and eventually open water in the near future.

Thanks, Dave!

Previously:

Robotics Research and Majors at Olin College of Engineering

It's time for ... Friday afternoon YouTube robot silliness Part 2.

No big story, just a short video for your entertainment. The little humanoid is called HINA. As a friend of mine put it: "The robot is great, the music is nice and the coffee looks good."

PS: See also our previous Friday afternoon silliness.

Thanks Julien!

The global personal robots market will grow from US $1.16 billion in 2009 to $5.26 billion in 2015, according to a new study by NextGen, an arm of ABI Research.

Growth is good, but then there's some bad news: sales of such robots should decline through 2010 because of the global economic downturn.

Moving on to less gloomy news, the study says that the next phase in the evolution of the personal robots market -- currently dominated by entertainment toy robots and robotics kits and single-task robots like vaccuming and floor-washing bots -- will involve robots partially controlled by users at remote locations.

Yes, that's telepresence robots, which I sort of put down in a previous post. Guess you shouldn't turn to me for forecasts!

From their release:

In the next phase of the market's evolution, robots will be partially controlled by a user at a remote location. Telepresence robots will allow people to interact with family members at another location or to check on pets or second homes. Health personnel will monitor the elderly or infirm remotely, making sure they take their medication on time or guiding them through blood pressure or blood sugar measurements.

On May 30th and 31st, the 2009 Bay Area Maker Faire brought together scientists, engineers, and hobbyists of every type to one of the biggest DIY events in the world. Robotics, of course, has become a popular hobby among the DIY crowd, with technologies like the Arduino board enabling anyone to build their own little automaton. To discuss the robotics industry on a larger scale, Dr. Rodney Brooks gave a half hour talk to the Makers about changing demographics, Moore's Law, and American manufacturing, and what they all might mean for us robot geeks over the next 50 years.

Brooks is, of course, not only a well-known roboticist from MIT, but also the co-founder of a number of companies, most recently iRobot and Heartland Robotics. Heartland, as we discussed when it was announced, is tackling the problem of manufacturing robots. Brooks's Maker Faire talk does a nice job of outlining the challenge Heartland and other similar companies are facing.

Previously:

Former CSAIL director and iRobot CTO launches new robotics startup

GPS revolutionized robotics on Earth, but it fails to work for robots deep in space. To solve this problem, two astronomers have published a paper to show how you can locate your position anywhere within the galaxy by using no less than 4 pulsars of known locations.

Fully relativistic coordinates have been proposed for (relativistically) running a "GPS" system. These coordinates are the arrival times of the light signals emitted by four "satellites" (clocks). Replacing the signals emitted by four controlled clocks by the signals emitted by four pulsars defines a coordinate system with lower accuracy, but valid across the whole Solar System. We here precisely define this new coordinate system, by choosing four particular pulsars and a particular event as the origin of the coordinates.

Similar to the idea for the Pioneer 10 and 11 plaques, these four pulsars would form a rough tetrahedron centered on the Solar System.

With the co-ordinate system established, any interplanetary spacecraft could then use the signals from these pulsars to determine its position in this co-ordinate system to within a few nanoseconds, which corresponds to about a metre.

Follow the link to learn more: http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/23576/