Autonomously seeking out power for battery recharging is a pretty crucial capability for advanced mobile robots.  While Roomba-like docking stations are a quick fix, "plugging in" to existing infrastructures is preferable.  Not long ago, the robotics world was abuzz with the Willow Garage Milestone 2, where (among other things) a PR-2 robot plugged itself into 9 different wall outlets.  My curiosity on this subject was further piqued when I saw Intel's Marvin robot use electric fields emanating from an outlet's internal wiring to finely localize an outlet/plug and adeptly plug itself in, all sans camera.  I'd like to share some photos and videos of recent efforts (by both the Willow and Intel folks), as well as examine the history of robots plugging themselves into wall outlets.

Building capable robot end effectors, particularly high-complexity hands, can be a daunting challenge.  In this article, we will examine the fabrication of a robot hand with compliant, under-actuated fingers that is rugged enough to bounce back from twisting, end-on and side impacts, falls, collisions, and even severe back-bending.  The specific fabrication process explored is akin to shape deposition manufacturing using materials such as resins (epoxy / Delrin) and urethanes (a "rubbery" substance) of various durometer (hardness).  This particular technique was used to build early hand prototypes for MIT's Nexi (or MDS) robot from the Personal Robotics Group, and further refinements resulted in the Meka Robotics H2 Compliant Hands, as seen on the Simon robot.    Read on for details and pictures -- this should be of interest to robotics hobbyists and professionals alike.

Meka Robotics is a San Francisco robotics startup founded by MIT roboticists Aaron Edsinger and Jeff Weber, of Domo fame.  They have produced some pretty amazing products in the last few years, including the humanoid robot Simon that was recently featured on Hizook.  As I'm somewhat familiar with these arms and hands, I'd like to share some more detailed information, including new videos of the torso and a more detailed look at the anthropomorphic hands.  In particular, it is worth noting that all motors on the 7-DOF arms and 4-DOF hands employ series-elastic actuators (SEAs), a technology that offers natural compliance and provides torque measurements at each joint -- two very useful qualities for robots interacting directly with people.  Be sure to read on for videos and many pictures.   Updated Oct. 19th 2009:  exclusive photos, product data sheets, and new videos added.

Dr. Andrea Thomaz of Georgia Tech's Socially Intelligent Machines Lab was recently awarded the prestigious "MIT Tech Review 2009 Young Innovators Under 35", an honor shared with last year's robotics recipient, Andrew Ng.  Simultaneous to this fantastic news, Andrea's lab unveiled an amazing new robot named Simon (see photos and videos below).  Simon features an articulated torso, dual 7-DOF arms, and anthropomorphic hands from Meka Robotics along with an expressive head designed at Georgia Tech.  Simon is designed to study human-robot interaction from a social learning vantage, such as learning by demonstration and human-robot collaboration.  I'm very enthralled for Andrea, and I'm proud to have taken her graduate research course on human-robot interaction while at Georgia Tech. 

A few blogs are passing around videos of the Ishikawa Komuro Lab's high-speed robot hand performing impressive acts of dexterity and skillful manipulation.  However, the video being passed around is slight on details.  Meanwhile, their video presentation at ICRA 2009 (which took place in May in Kobe, Japan) has an informative narration and demonstrates additional capabilities.  I have included this video below, which shows the manipulator dribbling a ping-pong ball, spinning a pen, throwing a ball, tying knots, grasping a grain of rice with tweezers, and tossing / re-grasping a cellphone!

While most (semi)autonomous mobile manipulators employ expensive articulated arms with grippers (6 or more DOF), the Healthcare Robotics Lab at Georgia Tech, the same folks who made EL-E, are also examining low-complexity end effectors modelled off of dustpans and kitchen turners for non-prehensile grasping of isolated objects from the floor.  When mounted on an iRobot Create (Roomba), the system's performance was impressive; it successfully grasped ~95% of the 34 test objects across numerous orientations / configurations and four different surfaces -- an impressive feat of robustness given that the end effector is a single under-actuated "sweeper" (1 DOF) working in tandem with a planar wedge, the whole system operates via open loop control, and the objects were quite varied (from small individual pills to large containers, and from deformable textiles to rigid bottles).  This system is slated to appear at ICRA 2009 in Kobe, Japan in the next few days and is documented in a paper entitled "1000 Trials: An Empirically Validated End Effector that Robustly Grasps Objects from the Floor" (of which I am a coauthor).  Read further for videos and additional discussion.

Back in November of 2007, I saw a presentation by Professor Siciliano from University of Naples where he briefly mentioned (and had a video) of a very cool humanoid robot named Justin.  I've seen a lot more of DLR-III lightweight arms now that DLR and Kuka are working together to push them out into industry; though I must admit that I like Justin's blue arms compared to the characteristic Kuka-orange.  Perhaps the most impressive aspect of these arms is that each has a power-to-weight ratio greater than unity.  This, combined with some very capable DLR-II Hands make Justin an impressive bi-manual research platform.