Video Friday: DARPA ANCILLARY

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.

CLAWAR 2022: 12–14 September 2022, AZORES, PORTUGAL

IROS 2022: 23–27 October 2022, KYOTO, JAPAN

ANA Avatar XPrize Finals: 4–5 November 2022, LOS ANGELES

CoRL 2022: 14–18 December 2022, AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND

Enjoy today’s videos!

DARPA’s AdvaNced airCraft Infrastructure-Less Launch And RecoverY X-Plane program, nicknamed ANCILLARY, aims to develop and flight demonstrate critical technologies required for a leap ahead in vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL), low-weight, high-payload, and long-endurance capabilities.

[ DARPA ]

Behold the tastiest robot ever, thanks to the 40 kilograms of dark chocolate that it’s made of.

[ Amaury Guichon ]

When a video features a robot operating outdoors while being pursued by a human with a laptop on a cart, you know it’s going to be some cutting-edge stuff. In this case, it’s the University of Michigan’s Cassie autonomously navigating based on directions from a hand-drawn map.

First, we show Cassie a map with a hand-drawn path, which she needs to follow. Second, she localizes herself into the OpenStreetMap, used as a topological global map. Third, she then converts the drawn path to her own understanding in the OpenStreetMap. Fourth, she determines terrain types such as sidewalks, roads, and grass. Fifth, she decides what categories she should walk on at the moment. Sixth, a multi-layered map is built. Seventh, a reactive CLF planning algorithm is guiding Cassie to walk safely without hitting obstacles. Finally, the planning signal is sent to Cassie’s 20 degree-of-freedom motion controller.

[ University of Michigan ]

Thanks, Bruce!

Apparently Indonesia drone laws are very permissive? Or they are for DJI, anyway.

[ DJI Avata ]

Waymo Co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov recently took another rider-only trip around San Francisco. Watch as the Waymo Driver reacts dynamically to other human drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians during the nearly hour-long ride.

[ Waymo ]

This capacitive sensing skin will keep you from getting whacked by a robot arm.

[ Paper ]

Dexterous Teleoperation combining shadow hand with real-time volumetric telepresence rendering in VR.

[ Extend Robotics ]

Breathtaking landscape aerial cinematography is made easy when using Skydio drone technology! Enjoy some of our favorite scenic landscape moments from the Skydio community.

[ Skydio ]

Most people think of intelligence as existing in the computer or our brain. Artificial intelligence recognizes faces, understands speech, picks movies, and corrects typos. These tasks are well-suited for computers. But when it comes to roboticists, they are all about physical tasks in the real world. And intelligence is no longer confined to the realm of the bits; the intelligent agent is a robot. Professor Matei Ciocarlie’s Robotic Manipulation and Mobility lab is embodying intelligence in robot hands to solve the problem of physical interaction in our complicated world.

[ ROAM Lab ]

In this episode of our Robot Spotlight series, we showcase a Polaris GEM electric vehicle that has been outfitted with our OutdoorNav autonomy software. Watch the video to learn how it all came together and to find out if the team was able to use the autonomy software to navigate the vehicle through a local shopping plaza and through a Starbucks drive thru.

[ Clearpath ]

Two research talks from UPenn’s GRASP lab: Nadia Figueroa on Collaborative Human-Aware Robotics, and M. Ani Hsieh on Robots for Climate, Energy, and Stability.

[ GRASP Lab ]