Redwood Robotics came out of its year-long stealth mode at today's Xconomy event in Menlo Park, California.  Redwood Robotics is a joint venture between three west-coast robotics powerhouses: Meka Robotics, Willow Garage, and SRI.  Aaron Edsinger, who is CEO of Meka Robotics and is expected to take a leadership / executive role at Redwood, made the announcement and explained the startup's goal: "To enable the personal and service robot markets through a new generation of robot arms that are simple to program, inexpensive, and safe to operate alongside people."  In other words, they're teaming up to create a proper competitor to Heartland Robotics in Boston.  Unfortunately, that's all the public details that they're sharing at this time.  They're being tight-lipped about business and technical details given the amount of secrecy in this market (eg. Heartland is notoriously tight-lipped).  We'll try to keep you updated as we learn more.  In the meantime, check out the brief spotlights of the three joint partners below.

It seems like robotics companies are being acquired left-and-right.  Just the other week we learned of two more: (1) My Robot Nation, which allows you to design and 3D print custom robot figurines, was acquired by 3D systems.  (2) Sensable Technologies, which is best-known in robotics circles for their "Phantom Omni" haptic interfaces (eg. for teleoperation), was just acquired by Geomagic.  While the acquisition prices were undisclosed, it's likely that they were smaller than the mega-acquisitions of Kiva Systems by Amazon for $775 Million and Aldebaran Robotics by Softbank for $100 Million.  Either way, these recent acquisitions seem to indicate a growing trend in the robotics industry -- that... or I'm just paying more active attention to the business-side of robotics.

As FutureBots Labs' solo roboticst, Dan Mathias has been toiling away for almost 10 years to develop humanoid robots (such as the ATOM-7XP humanoid) out of his lab.  Today Dan has a special announcement: FutureBot Labs has developed a new humanoid robot named KATE, the "Kids Avatar Teacher and Entertainer."  We're highlighting Dan's latest robot for three reasons:  First, FutureBots is trying to become a legit robotics business with real products for entertainment, education, research, and healthcare.  That's a tough nut to crack on a personal budget and as a solo engineer!  Hopefully a little exposure will help FutureBots find some much-needed assistance on a number of fronts.  Second, we are impressed with Dan's (solo!) engineering efforts over the years.  He's clearly a dedicated and capable roboticist.  Third, we've been unable to previously cover his robots' (seemingly-incremental) progress, so we're happy that KATE's unveiling gives us occasion to write about FutureBots Labs.  Be sure to check out the photos and videos of Dan's latest KATE robot, as well as the more mature ATOM robot.

Heartland Robotics, the stealthy robotics startup founded by iRobot co-founder and robotics legend Rod Brooks, was in the news again last week after closing a $20M financing round.  Little is known about the company beyond broad superlatives from executives about building robots to "increase productivity and revitalize manufacturing."  Now, successful fundraising by a robotics startup is great news, but alone it was insufficient to draw my laser-focus away from thesis work.  However, a Boston.com article this weekend provided a tantalizing new nugget of information that I absolutely must share -- Heartland is working on a new mobile manipulator with a $5,000 projected price point complete with one or two arms, grippers, sensor head, and a mobile base.  If coupled with a depth camera (eg. Kinect) and a decent computer, this could be a really compelling robot platform!  If this price point is real, perhaps those superlatives aren't so inflated after all...  

CNET's Road Trip 2010 series dropped by iRobot HQ, where "Cool Stuff" is aptly emblazoned on the doors. They snapped a number of interesting photos of lesser-known iRobot history / robots, including: underwater gliders, previously unseen chembot prototypes, and Landroids (mini-Packbots). But perhaps the most interesting nugget was the Roomba testing lab, where Roombas scuttle around for 1500-2000 hours of durability testing across various floor types with different levels of dirtiness -- check out the video below.  The multi-floor testing is uncannily similar to that which we performed on the Roomba Dustpan robot.

At Willow Garage's week-long PR2 training workshop, each of the eleven recipient institutions gave a 15-20 minute talk highlighting their planned research activities on the PR2.  On Monday, with a little help from yours truly, the first beta-site spotlight (of Georgia Tech) was posted on the WG blog -- complete with recorded video from the training workshop talk by Prof. Charlie Kemp (of Georgia Tech's Healthcare Robotics Lab).  Today, the spotlight for UC Berkeley (with video) followed.  These spotlights and recorded talks are a treasure trove of insights into work being performed at several top robotics research labs.  They are definitely worth reading / watching!  As as they come online, I'll embed the videos below and include links to Willow's thorough blog posts.  [Warning: many embedded videos below.]

The Boston Globe has unearthed another solid player in the remote presence (sometimes referred to as mobile telepresence or mobile videoconferencing) game. This time, it is the Vgo (pronounced Vee-Go) robot from Vgo Communications. Apparently Vgo Communications was founded in 2007 by Tim Root and has upwards of $8M in venture capital funding. The Vgo robot is pretty sleek with a nice cosmetic shell, though it seems a bit vertically challenged. Its target price-point is somewhere around $5000, with a required $1200 annual support contract. This comes just days after Anybots made their QB robot announcements ($15,000 ea.) and after some high-profile Willow Garage Texai events. A few other major players have been relatively quiet as of late, such as InTouch Health and Giraff Technologies (formerly HeadThere).

On Wednesday night, midway through a week-long PR2 training workshop, Willow Garage held a press conference and party celebrating the launch of the PR2 Beta Program, essentially signifying the completion of their Milestone 4.  The night featured speeches by Willow Garage founder (Scott Hassan), CEO (Steve Cousins), and Personal Robotics Program co-founders (Keenan Wyrobek and Eric Berger).  Eleven PR2 robots, destined for recipient robotics institutions around the world, made dramatic entrances before performing an impressive 11-robot coordinated dance (see video below).  I was privileged to attend the event as both a workshop participant and as a Hizook "press" representative, providing access to the press conference where I met other elite robotics bloggers, such as Norri Kageki (GetRobo), Evan Ackerman (BotJunkie), and Erico Guizzo (IEEE Spectrum Automation Blog).  The event was fun, and definitely strengthened my impression that the personal robotics revolution is near.  Updated June 2^nd 2010:  The official Willow Garage mashup from the "PR2 Graduation Party" has been posted (embedded below).

Last week Willow Garage kicked off its official PR2 Beta Robot Workshop, where approximately 50 robotics researchers from the 11 PR2 recipient institutions gathered to become familiar with ROS on the PR2, hack on the robot alongside Willow personnel, and have plenty of stimulating robotics discussions.    Attending as a grad student in Georgia Tech's Healthcare Robotics Lab, I had a front-row seat to this enjoyable but grueling event.  I'll give my high-level day-to-day overview of the week (below), which included the "PR2 Launch Party" on Thursday night that featured many prominent folks from Silicon Valley (more detailed coverage).  As an aside, I was proud to hear that so many robotics professionals at the event read and enjoy Hizook -- be sure to contribute your photos and impressions in the comments.

On Thursday, Meka Robotics uploaded a video showing off their latest "coming soon" product, the G1 robot gripper.  While the price and specs are still unknown, the patent-pending parallel-jaw design with independent finger actuation looks interesting -- a great addition to their product lineup.  Be sure to check out the video embedded below. 

At IROS 2009, IRobot demonstrated an interesting form of locomotion dubbed "particle jamming skin" (to create what became known as the "blob bot").  The robot was creepy, but the concept was interesting.  In a recently available TEDMED 2009 talk (embedded below), IRobot CEO Colin Angle describes a unique particle jamming end effector (robot hand) for manipulation.  By selectively inflating or deflating, the particle jamming end effector can change from a liquid-like state to ooze around a target object and then harden into a solid-like state to grasp or pickup the object.  Colin shows a video of a PackBot with particle jamming end effector picking up medication, keys, and a (dummy) patient's arm.  He also does a live demonstration using a hand-held particle jamming system.  Be sure to check out the video and stills below -- they will help you understand this bizarre (but compelling) robot hand.

Back in October 2009, Colin Angle spoke at TEDMED 2009.  It was a big announcement: IRobot was launching a new healthcare robotics business unit to be led by Tod Loofbourrow.  Their ambitious goal:  add 1 million years to users' lifetimes through robotic assistance.  Some good synopses of the talk were posted, but videos of the event were elusive... until now.  Below you can find the full video of Colin's talk and some points that I think are particularly poignant.

Today Willow Garage announced that eleven (rather than the original ten anticipated) PR2 Beta robots, with a total value of over $4.4M, will be loaned out to academic and research institutions worldwide to develop a slew of impressive capabilities over the next two years.  The recipients include 7 US-based institutions, 3 European, and 1 Asian.  The final list is a panoply of robotics specialists:  University of Freiburg (Germany), Bosch, Georgia Tech, KU Leuven (Belgium), MIT, Stanford, TU Munich (Germany), UC Berkeley, U Penn, USC, and University of Tokyo (Japan) -- full details can be found in the Willow Garage press release.  It is difficult to overstate the importance of this event in the grand history of robotics...  Let me try to explain.

Phillip Torrone (senior editor of Make Magazine) and Limor Fried (aka Lady Ada), both of AdaFruit Industries, gave a talk at O'Reilly's Foo Camp East 2010 that unveiled the financials of two robotics-related open hardware projects.  First, DIYDrones -- founded by Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson and makers of open hardware UAV components like autopilots and IMUs  -- is approaching $1M in revenue (est. 2010).  Second, MakerBot -- an open hardware 3D printer and purveyors of an online 3D design repository called Thingiverse -- has surpassed $1M in revenue.  Looks like open hardware is really starting to gain momentum.

Robotiq is a new Canadian startup spun-out of the Laval University Robotics Lab and founded by Samuel Bouchard, Vincent Duchaine and Jean-Philippe Jobin.  Their first product is a very cool looking three-fingered robot hand called the "Adaptive Gripper."  It is comprised of three under-actuated fingers, two of which can change their position and orientation to support a variety of grasp configurations -- very similar in principle to the Barrett Hand and Schunk SDH Hand.  The Adaptive Gripper's prominent finger linkages lead to a rather beautiful mechanical motion, as seen in the grasping videos (below).  I would imagine the mechanical linkages also offer additional robustness compared to under-actuated cable-driven competitors and cost advantages over fully-actuated competitors.  Unfortunately, its price is still an unknown -- perhaps someone attending ICRA 2010 in Alaska can stop by their booth and inquire...?