I would like to introduce you to iRobot's latest prototype: a new telepresence robot named AVA that was unveiled this week at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2011) -- see the video below.  Through AVA, iRobot intends to explicitly leverage the proliferation of tablets / smart phones and their associated app stores.  They intend to furnish actuation (mobile base, pan-tilt unit, telescoping linear actuator spine, etc.), a sensor suite (including sonar, laser, and a depth camera like Microsoft's Kinect), and basic robot software (eg. obstacle avoidance, mapping, and direct physical interfaces).  Meanwhile, you provide the brains in the form of a tablet (eg. iPad or Android).  In theory, this should open up mobile robot application development to a much broader audience, creating the oft-discussed robot app store.  When combined with the recent announcement of the Scooba 230 floor cleaning robot (which I will certainly purchase), I would say iRobot is still innovating!

KUKA has developed an impressive array of omnidirectional robot platforms: OmniMove, OmniRob, and youBot. A new video on the youBot Store shows how an OmniMove holonomic base (containing eight mecanum wheels) can be transformed into a seriously heavy-lifting mobile manipulator through the addition of a huge Titan robot arm, which has been called the "world's strongest robot arm" and is capable of lifting 1000 kg.  The video (embedded below) shows this latest platform towering over the smaller youBot platform. I wonder if this new platform would qualify for BattleBots...?  It would make for a fun exposition match!

I recently learned that the holonomic mobile base developed at the University of Bonn's Autonomous Intelligent Systems Lab (NimbRo@Home) for the Dynamaid robot has become commercially available.  It is officially called the VolksBot Omni and is being sold in Fraunhofer's VolksBot line for 9000 EUR (~$11,700 USD).  Fundamentally, the VolksBot Omni is a powered-caster omnidirectional robot base (similar to the PR2 or Justin robots), except that its actuators are exclusively Robotis Dynamixel servos -- four modules, each with two EX-106 servos for drive torque and one RX-64 for module steering. The base is fairly light weight (around 5kg), but sports a 40x60cm chassis that supports a 20kg payload.  It has a top speed of 50 cm/sec, is controlled via USB, and has ROS / Player drivers.

Back in 2006-2007, a dynamically-stable robot named TBot was developed at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) by a team of professional roboticists.  Financed by a now-defunct DARPA program, the goal was to create a a robot capable of fast transportation in open areas  and precision operation in tight urban combat scenarios.  Using two "arms" capped with an extra set of wheels and a linear "waist" actuator, TBot can transform from various four-wheel statically-stable (large footprint) configurations to a two-wheel dynamically-stable (small footprint) configuration, and vice-versa.  I'm still a bit skeptical about dynamic stability -- often, it seems to add many challenges for very few added benefits.  Perhaps the transformer approach, like the TBot and the iBot personal wheelchair, is a healthy compromise for those who insist on (occasional) dynamic stability?

This week KUKA Robotics is demonstrating their latest product offering at the Automatica conference in Munich: the youBot robot.  YouBot is a mobile manipulating robot with a 5DOF arm coupled to a mecanum omnidirectional base -- essentially the same product that Hizook predicted when the individual components were being demonstrated at IROS 2008.  KUKA will start delivery in November for Germany (March for the US), and the robot will cost approx $24,000 USD (less with educational discounts), and components will be available separately.  The youBot looks to be a solid robot platform and is not encumbered by the large control boxes characteristic of some larger KUKA arms -- a few photos and videos are embedded below.

The curious robotic creation pictured below is called the Roomba QuadDrive, and hails from the University of Bonn's Autonomous Intelligent Systems Lab (NimbRo@Home).   The Roomba QuadDrive is an omnidirectional mobile robot base of the powered caster variety with one obvious (whimsical) characteristic:  it uses four IRobot Roomba 530s as the drive motors, each paired with a Robotis Dynamixel RX-64 servo for steering!  Another of the lab's robots, named Robotinho, surfed atop the QuadDrive base when competing in the 2009 RoboCup@Home competition and when it gave tours of the Deutsches Museum in Bonn -- a short clip of which is embedded below.

This new humanoid robot named "Cody" comes from Georgia Tech's Healthcare Robotics Lab (to which I belong).  Cody is composed of a Segway RMP 50 Omni mobile base, 1-DoF vertical linear actuator, and a pair of 7-DoF Meka Arms with series elastic actuators (the same as Simon).  This mobile manipulator has shown some pretty impressive capabilities.  It can open doors, drawers, and cabinets using equilibrium point controllers developed by Advait Jain and Prof. Charlie Kemp.  It also has a nice direct physical interface (touching interface) to reposition the robot that was developed by Tiffany Chen and Prof. Charlie Kemp. Much of the code controlling this robot is open-source and has ROS (Robot Operating System) interfaces.  Be sure to check out the videos and photos below.

Back in 2007 and 2008, funding agencies had a pretty hefty interest in robots with amoeba-like locomotion, also known as whole-skin locomotion (WSL), blob 'bots, or Chembots.  NSF awarded $400k to Dr. Dennis Hong of Virginia Tech's RoMeLa Lab and DARPA awarded $3.3M to iRobot to develop such robots.  Now, most people are familiar with iRobot's jamming skin robot announced at IROS 2009 (photos / videos below).  However, I would like to share with you the equally-clever and interesting work of Dr. Hong, including a new whole-skin locomotion robot called ChIMERA: "Chemically Induced Motion Everting Robotic Amoeba" that was unveiled at a recent TEDxNASA event.  Dr. Hong's robots resemble those slippery water-snake toys that are incredibly difficult to grasp, with silicone skin (flexible but rugged exterior) and water or gel inside (soft interior).  Read on to learn more!

While perusing through Kuka's 2008 Annual Report, it became evident that the robotics giant is making a serious foray into mobile manipulation with its OmniRob concept robot (photos and videos below).  This new robot sports a omnidirectional mobile platform based on mecanum wheels, a Kuka lightweight arm, and what appear to be dual SICK LMS100 laser range finders to provide 360° lidar coverage.  Between Kuka's "toy" educational platform (covered by Hizook in October) and this more advanced offering, it is clear that Kuka is highly invested / interested in the future of mobile manipulation.  With Kuka's classic expertise in robot arms, combined with competence in omnidirectional systems via their OmniMove industrial application line, Kuka will surely be a significant force in the exciting field of mobile manipulation.

As of January 2009, the iBOT powered-wheelchair will be discontinued.  This is unfortunate for the disabled community -- Dean Kamen and the others at DEKA (the same people responsible for the Segway and Luke Arm) developed an amazing robotic wheelchair that was (somewhat) unique it its ability to transition from a statically-stable, 4-wheel configuration to a dynamically-stable, 2-wheel configuration to give occupants added height.   Further, by pivoting pairs of wheels, the wheelchair and occupant were able to dynamically balance while traversing stairs, not to mention the wheelchair's basic ability to traverse (relatively) poor terrain, such as sand and gravel!  All of this was possible due to careful controllers and internal gyros (not entirely dissimilar to a Segway).   Read further for discussion -- specifically about why this loss for the disabled community could be an opportunity in disguise for the robotics community and a big win for Kamen and company.

You may recall Justin, the humanoid robot sporting two DLR-III lightweight arms and two DLR-II hands.  Well, Justin has recently acquired a 4-wheel mobile base dubbed "Rollin' Justin".  The base utilizes a "powered-caster" design similar to the Willow Garage PR2, except that the torso-caster linkage contains a spring-loaded lift mechanism that gives the base a variable footprint.  I'm sure this will prove useful when trying to squeeze through doors, adapting to uneven terrain, or providing a larger support polygon.  While we currently do not have any video of the system in action, there are a number of great pictures and design documents below.

Back on October 10th, John Leonard gave a Georgia Tech Robotics Institute talk about MIT's DARPA Urban Grand Challenge experience.  The MIT entry, a Land Rover LR3 named Talos, came in fourth place overall (out of 6 finishers and 11 qualifiers).  I thought the most interesting aspect of the design was that it was originally intended to be a "low cost" solution (meaning many $6k SICK lidars, low-cost cameras, and radars), but that ultimately the success of the design hinged on the use of the $75k Velodyne lidar and an equally (or more) expensive Applanix GPS plus Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) combo.  Regardless, it was an impressive piece of engineering, and they have released much of their code and driving datasets to the public.  Be sure to check out the rest of the post below to see some cool point-cloud visualizations made possible by those phenomenal Velodyne lidars!

One of the newest offerings from Segway is the RMP 50 Omni, a trimmed down version of the RMP 400 Omni. This platform has mecanum wheels which give the base the ability to drive forward, backward, right, left, and turn independently. It is a capable mobile base in a sleek and low profile package, but this product doesn't come with all the features one would expect from a $21,000 platform.

During the Spring 2007 semester, several friends (and labmates) took a course at Georgia Tech on mobile manipulation. This was no ordinary class... the final exam's assignment was to use a Segway base with KUKA arm to fetch a cup of coffee!  There are a ton of reasons that this is interesting, from mobility, navigation, perception, manipulation, etc. However, the most impressive thing is that each group used different software to complete the task. One team used MS Robotics Studio, another used Player/Stage on Linux, and another used a functional language called OCaml on Mac.