Video Friday: Origami Drone, Tesla Autopilot Fail, and Crowdsourced Robots

This week's best robot videos are here!

5 min read

Video Friday: Origami Drone, Tesla Autopilot Fail, and Crowdsourced Robots

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We’re also going to start posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months; here’s what we have so far (send us your events!):

International Conference on Social Robotics – October 26-30, 2015 – Paris, France
AUVSI Unmanned Systems Defense – October 27-29, 2015 – Washington, D.C.
Biorobots: Dissected – October 28, 2015 – San Francisco, Calif.
Humanoids 2015 – November 3-5, 2015 – Seoul, South Korea
2015 Robot Film Fest – November 7, 2015 – Pittsburgh, Pa.
Asian Robotics Week – November 12-13, 2015 – Singapore
AAAI Fall Symposia – November 12-14, 2015 – Arlington, Va.
SF Bay Area Robotics Group Meetup – November 18, 2015 – San Francisco, Calif.
Robotics Expo – November 20-22, 2015 – Moscow, Russia
World Robot Conference 2015 – November 23-25, 2015 – Beijing, China
Dronetech – November 26, 2015 – Bristol, U.K.

Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today’s videos.

Dyson’s 360 Eye robotic vacuum is now for sale in Japan. For about US $1200. If you live in Japan, buy one and send it to us, please. We will reward you with an autographed t-shirt.

[ Dyson ]

I never thought of paper cranes actually being capable of controlled flight.

Huh. Also, they’re selling something, but I don’t know what.

[ Lapis Semi ] via [ CNET ]

As much as I instinctively loathe the idea of in-app purchases, paying $20 to give your Parrot Bebop drone full autonomy sounds like it’s totally worth it:

And the drone itself is not that pricey, at $500.

[ Parrot ] via [ Gizmodo ]

Tesla drivers have been posting videos showing what happens when the new Autopilot feature supposedly fails. Except the problem in most cases is clearly not the car: it’s the wetware behind the wheel. Tesla’s Autopilot is really just supposed to be used on highways, folks.

[ Tesla Motors ]

“On Oct. 14, Lockheed Martin and KAMAN Corporations demonstrated for federal officials how the remotely piloted K-MAX helicopter can be used to perform wildland firefighting scenarios, including cargo drops, single target water drops, and progressive line building with a bucket. The demonstration provided officials from the U.S. Department of the Interior and U.S. Forest Service Fire and Aviation Management the opportunity to evaluate the capabilities of the unmanned helicopter.”

[ Lockheed Martin ]

It’s always fascinating to see how robots experience the world, especially when it’s in the form of point clouds:

Philipp Krüsi, Paul Furgale, Michael Bosse, and Roland Siegwart, “Driving on Point Clouds: Motion Planning, Trajectory Optimization, and Terrain Assessment in Generic Nonplanar Environments,” Journal of Field Robotics (submitted).

[ ETH Zurich ASL ]

The Martin Jetpack (really a ducted fanpack that you strap yourself to as opposed to wear) is basically a really big drone until it gets a passenger, and here’s the latest version flying all by itself:

These things are for sale, and they’ve just been approved for use by humans. New Zealand humans, at least.

[ Martin Jetpack ]

$1,150 is not nearly enough to pay for a robotic experience like this:

Thanks, Japan!

[ DMM ] via [ Engadget ]

“Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut, Kimiya Yui, is seen working with the SPHERES-VERTIGO investigation aboard the space station during Expedition 45. The volleyball-sized free-floating satellites were used for the SPHERES-VERTIGO investigation to demonstrate and test enhanced technologies and techniques related to visual inspection and navigation. This effort incorporates hardware and software that enables multiple SPHERES to construct three-dimensional models of a target object. The investigation also explores how well the SPHERES perform relative navigation solely by reference to these 3D models for possible use performing autonomous inspection and mapping of a tumbling and spinning object in orbit.”

[ NASA ]

This short film from 3D Robotics, the first in “an original sci-fi miniseries” called “Life After Gravity” is trying just a little bit too hard. Maybe a lot too hard. But it’s still pretty:

And behind the scenes, of course:

[ 3D Robotics ]

Pepper learns how to assist you with your alcoholism:

What the heck is in that fish tank?

[ YouTube ]

“Construction Robotics brick-laying robot working alongside masons to complete an 18-foot-high, 80-foot-wide brick wall in just 24 hours. The robot, SAM100 for Semi-Automated Mason, began laying bricks a little after 7 a.m. Tuesday on a wall for the new Potomac Valley Brick and Supply Co. warehouse in Frederick, Maryland. Three crews of masons from three different companies worked staggered shifts; SAM100 continued operating through the night, and installed 4,257 utility bricks in 22 hours and 48 minutes.”

“Sam is a robot, and robots are dumb.” That right there is a dude who knows pretty much all there is to know about robots.

[ Construction Robotics ]

Fight, robots, fight!

For more of ROBO-ONE Light, hit up the link below.

[ Biped Robot News ]

This video, from the euRathlon/SHERPA Summer School 2015 on Field Robotics in Finland, is worth watching for the epically orange robotic orcaboat that shows up in the middle:

[ euRathlon ]

What can TIAGo do for you? All of this, and more!

[ PAL Robotics ]

Thanks Judith!

Gimball: good for more than just nocturnal dancing!

[ Flyability ]

“The Jibo manufacturing process is well underway. Jibo’s manufacturing team recently got back from a trip to China, where they were working with Jibo’s contract manufacturer (CM) on the Jibo EVT (Engineering Validation Test). EVT denotes a stage of development in a manufactured product. In this video interview, Kyle Moise, shares how things are going at this stage of the process.”

[ Jibo ]

“Dr. Ron Diftler is an expert in robotic systems and helicopter dynamics, currently leading the team developing Robonaut, a human-scale space robotic system designed to assist astronauts undertaking space walks. Dr. Diftler has led this team through several highly successful collaborations with DARPA, the Institute for Human-Machine Cognition, and a number of top universities. He has 11 patents currently in process or awarded in the field of robotics, including several on robot hand technology, and has published more than 50 peer-reviewed technical papers. Dr. Diftler is a recipient of a 2012 Service to America Finalist Medal, a 2009 NASA Exceptional Engineering Achievement Award, and a 2005 IEEE Humanoids Conference Best Paper Award, among other awards. He holds a Ph.D. from Rice University.”

[ IBM ]

“Valery Komissarova, Business Development Director at Grishin Robotics, talking about working at an investment company focused on consumer robotics. In episode 4 of Robots in Depth, Valery describes why the timing for starting Grishin Robotics was just right and shares some of the initial feedback from different parts of the robotics community. She also talks about differences between the companies that get funded and the ones that don’t, what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur in robotics and the areas within consumer robotics where we are likely to see strong development in the next few years.”

[ Robots In Depth ]

And we’ll end with: “Crowds and Robots: Leveraging the Web to Advance Robot Autonomy,” a talk by Sonia Chernova from Georgia Institute of Technology.

The development of robots that work alongside human users and are adaptable to changing task and user needs is of critical importance for furthering industries as diverse as manufacturing, healthcare, defense, and consumer services. To operate effectively in these complex domains, robots must have the ability to adapt to user preferences and learn from user input. In this talk, I will discuss how my lab's research has leveraged innovations in cloud computing, crowdsourcing and remote access technologies to gain unprecedented access to data and users, fundamentally altering the way in which interactive robotic systems are developed and deployed. I will present applications of this research paradigm to robot learning from demonstration, object manipulation and semantic reasoning, as well as discuss exciting avenues for future research in this area.

[ CMU RI Seminar ]

The Conversation (0)