I just received word from Berthold Bäuml, a lead scientist in realtime dynamic motion planning at DLR, that they've developed a new humanoid robot named "Agile Justin."  Agile Justin is very similar to Rollin' Justin (the ball-catching, Pulp Fiction-dancing robot), except that it has improved dynamic performance.   To test the new hardware, DLR researchers have programmed Agile Justin to throw a baseball.  Naturally, since Rollin' Justin is able to catch a baseball (see the DLR project page), researchers set up an impromptu game of "catch" between the two robots -- shown in a sneak peek video below.   It sounds like this new system is just ramping up and will be used to push the envelope in terms of full-body control: real-time coordination of hands, arms, torso, and mobile base for dynamic tasks.  I'm told that technical details should be forthcoming in academic publications later this year along with demonstrations at Automatica 2012.

News just broke on XinHuaNet (via Slashdot) that Foxconn, a Taiwanese company with more than 1M Chinese laborers on the mainland,  plans to deploy one million robots(!) over the next three years -- a 100-fold increase over current numbers.  This should serve as a wake-up call for the United States.  China already dominates in manufacturing; if they can capture the "new" flexible, light manufacturing space too, then the United States will be in dire straits (National Robotics Initiative or not).  One commentor on HackerNews suggests that the robots will be ABB's Frida. Of course this needs more substantiation, but ABB isn't exactly a newcomer to industrial robotics; the Swiss company has been around for ages.  Still, it would be mildly surprising if ABB wins out over all the competition (eg. Heartland Robotics) that are specifically trying to establish themselves as pioneers in "flexible, light manufacturing."  The future of robotics certainly looks interesting!

ICRA 2011 kicks off in less than two weeks in Shanghai, China.  Unfortunately, I won't be attending -- I'll have to wait to see y'all at IROS 2011 in San Francisco come September.  However, I was browsing through the program and it looks like there are going to be a lot of great talks! A few that caught my eye: Morgan Quigley's low-cost 7 degree-of-freedom (7-DoF) series elastic actuator (SEA) arm for sub-$5k, Aaron Dollar's helicopter-mounted shape deposition manufacturing (SDM) hand,  and Rollin' Justin's fast reflexes to catch flying (tossed) balls... and these are just the talks that have videos posted online already (embedded below).  Eventually I'll get around to writing about all this cool research (after finishing my dissertation in a few months!) -- but for the time being, here's a quick scatter-shot overview.

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...  

A few weeks ago, my labmates from Georgia Tech's Healthcare Robotics Lab presented a paper at IROS 2010 entitled, "Towards an Assistive Robot that Autonomously Performs Bed Baths for Patient Hygiene."  Their work used Cody, a robot with compliant arms, and a specialized "bath mitt" end effector to perform wiping motions that could clean selected areas of an actual person's body, including the upper arm, forearm, thigh, and leg.  In this robotic cleaning task, the robot initiated and actively made contact with a human.  The psychological impact of such robot-initiated contact is an interesting question -- one I believe will be important for future healthcare and human-robot interaction (HRI) tasks.  Read on for a video and discussion by the authors.

Dejan Pangercic of the Intelligent Autonomous Systems Group at TUM (Technische Universität München) wrote in to show us a cool dual-robot demonstration where a PR2 robot (TUM's James) and TUM-Rosie combine their efforts to prepare and deliver pancakes -- Yum!  The demonstration system is quite impressive, featuring: door and drawer opening, object recognition, grasping and manipulation, navigation, multi-robot cooperation, etc.  The demo seems to use a fair bit of stock ROS functionality, as well as some new functionality and CRAM integration (Cognitive Robot Abstract Machine, a reasoning framework from TUM).  I'm anxious to learn more about the system: assumptions, limitations, and methods.  Hopefully more advanced details are forthcoming.  Check out the video below.

By now, you're probably familiar with the Nao humanoid robot from Aldebaran Robotics -- the robot that supplanted the Sony Aibo as the robot du jour for Robocup's Standard Platform League (international robot soccer competition) back in 2007 and retains that prestigious title yet.  Recently, Aldebaran announced a new Educational Partnership Program that aims to expose students of higher education to the joys of programming advanced robots.  Contemporaneously, Aldebaran announced a set of four product derivatives to match varied academic budgets, ranging from full humanoids, to upper-body manipulation rigs, and 2-DoF robot heads for audio-visual experimentation (see details below).  Crucially, this new initiative provides a stable hardware platform with a comprehensive software suite (alternatively, extensive open-source ROS drivers) to match your educational, research, or just whimsical robot needs.

Apparently my hunch about the recent humanoid being the standard platform for the DARPA Autonomous Robot Manipulation Software (ARM-S) program was spot-on!  A new blog post on ROS.org confirms that this is the DARPA "ARM Robot" and that there is a public contest to name the robot.  The blog post gives a few hardware details: "The 'ARM Robot' has two Barrett WAM arms, BarrettHands, 6-axis force torque sensors at the wrist, and pan-tilt head. For sensors, it has a color camera, SwissRanger depth camera, stereo camera, and microphone."  The program winners are also enumerated: Carnegie Mellon University, HRL Laboratories, iRobot, NASA-Jet Propulsion Laboratory, SRI International and University of Southern California.  Be sure to check out the video of the (now confirmed) unnamed DARPA ARM-S robot platform embedded below. Updated Sept. 1st, 2010: This robot was integrated / developed by RE², a Carnegie Mellon spin-off located in Pittsburgh, PA that specializes in agile defense robotics with an emphasis on intelligent mobile manipulation platforms.

Dr. Motilal Agrawal from the Artificial Intelligence Center at SRI International just sent an email to the robotics worldwide mailing list seeking qualified PhD or Masters job candidates (or interns) with experience in ROS, C++ / Python, and grasping / manipulation.   In the email, Dr. Agrawal points to a movie that shows off a new humanoid robot  being used at SRI that sports dual Barrett WAM arms, each with a Barrett three-fingered hand -- see the movie embedded below.  I can't wait to see what SRI plans to do with its new robot; they always seem to do such thorough work.  You'll notice that this design is becoming increasingly common, from Intel / CMU's HERB robot to Alexander Stoytchev's robot at Iowa State.  Updated Aug. 31st, 2010:  My hunch was correct; we just received confirmation that this robot is indeed the "standard" hardware platform for the DARPA ARM-S program and was developed / integrated by RE².

FastCompany spotted a new version of HERB (Home Exploring Robot Butler) at the CMU Quality of Life Technology Center.  HERB is a joint effort between Intel Research's Personal Robotics Program and Carnegie Mellon University.  The new version sports two Barrett WAM arms on a Segway RMP mobile base and has a very distinctive rotating (instead of tilting) planar laser rangefinder.  The new HERB certainly has a unique design -- be sure to check out the photos and video below where HERB grasps objects from a table.

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.

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.

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.

At ICRA 2009, the Rollin' Justin humanoid robot (the lovable robot that "Danced Like in Pulp Fiction") demonstrated some impressive teleoperation capabilities.  The man-machine interface (MMI) consists of two components.  The first component comprises two DLR-III lightweight arms, the same type employed by the robot, terminated with force-torque sensing load cells to command the omnidirectional base or the arms / hands.  Meanwhile, the second component, a fully-immersive heads-up display with vicon (optical) head tracking, constantly streams robot-mounted camera images to the heads-up display while simultaneously panning and tilting the robot's head in concert with the user's head movements.  All-in-all, this is a very impressively engineered system.  Be sure to check out the pictures and video below.

I came upon this new commercial (video below) entitled "The Runner -- Exploit Yourself" created by Big Lazy Robot (a design / visual effects studio) for Nike.  The humanoid robot performs impressive feats of urban acrobatics, strongly resembling a more agile version of the movie-star robot, Hinokio.  It is always interesting to compare robot fact with fiction.  Hopefully the future lives up to (nay, exceeds) our expectations.

While Hizook covered the Rollin' Justin robot over three months ago, the rest of the world (including Engadget) had to wait until CeBIT, where Rollin' Justin "debuted" today.  Lots of great pictures and videos were taken, including a video where Rollin' Justin is led around by the hand (I assume using the force/torque sensing capabilities of the DLR-III lightweight arm or the DLR-II hand).  However, the "serious" coverage at CeBIT left out one of Justin's most hilarious commands:  "dance like in pulp fiction."  We show this video (to be shown at the upcoming ICRA 2009 conference) below.

This is great!  Honda is celebrating its 50th year in the US by creating a 49-foot tall Asimo float that will lead off the Rose Parade on January 1st, 2009.  To quote the Honda press release: "Honda's Rose Parade float, a 49-foot replica of Honda's ASIMO humanoid robot, and the parade's first-ever hydrogen-powered fuel cell pace car, the Honda FCX Clarity, will lead the 120th Rose Parade as well as kick off Honda's 50th anniversary of U.S. operations."  I'm always a fan of robots being displayed (and appreciated) by the general public; thanks to DVICE for pointing this out.

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 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.