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.

I think it is great that the Rotundus GroundBot (a spherical robot) made the Popular Science "Best of What's New in 2008"; however, I'm a bit perplexed... New Scientist featured the spherical robot all the way back in early 2005; how is it "new" now in 2008?  Either way, this serves as a convenient time to re-examine this novel robot -- one that brings back memories of the old solar-powered, spherical BEAM robots from Solarbotics (I believe it was called the "Solarball", but it appears they are no longer available).  Read on for some compelling images and pictures of the Rotundus GroundBot, the spherical robot.

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.

Kuka unveiled two prototype products at IROS 2008 in September, both ultimately targeting educational use.  The first product was very sleek holonomic (omnidirectional) base employing mecanum wheels.  The second product was a cute little 5 DOF (plus 1 DOF gripper) arm.  While the Kuka representatives mentioned possible price-points of $3,500 for the base and $4,000 for the arm, there was no mention of a timetable.  See below for additional discussion and videos!