Hasta La Gadget!

Ahhh, Switzerland. Not only Europe’s centralized hub for chocolate, cheese, watches, banking, and international apolitical neutrality (so lucky), the nation also boasts two of the finest science and engineering schools on the planet. Naturally, that begets robots, and on Monday, the EPFL begat a cat: the Cheetah-Cub.

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So, the Swiss Have Awesome Robots?
Totally, but for most, when thinking about top robot labs & makers, the mind goes quickly toward DARPA-funded work, MIT, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Virginia Tech, Honda, Tokyo and/or Osaka Universities, KAIST, etc. So maybe the Swiss just aren’t awesome at marketing, because the country actually is the geographical locus of robotics development in Europe, and its two big tech schools conduct research in no fewer than 6 disciplines each – here, look:

“Yet Another Highly Advanced Robot from Switzerland”
Not an overly common news headline, but probably should be.

Cheetah-Cub from EPFL
The Cheetah-Cub comes from the Biorobotics Laboratory at the French speaking École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in southern Switzerland (that’s the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, for those unable or unwilling to do the linguistic math).

Cheetah-Cub walks with the elastic, hoppity, distinct gait of the common house cat – and it’s fast for a robot of its size. Based on meticulous observation and reverse engineering, it’s legs were designed with springs and actuators to mimic the biomechanics of feline legs (also at comparable size & weight).

It’s a durable, inexpensive, easy to produce research platform that the team hopes will lead to small machines more closely approximating the physical dexterity of meat-based cats. Eventually they might assist with rescue and exploration efforts.

Of course, the shot of the engineer “walking” Cheetah-Cub brings up the question, but so far there’s no word on plans for a pet version. Again, that marketing issue… maybe it just isn’t in the Swiss cultural toolhouse. They should get on that (hire France or Germany, perhaps?), because a project to develop a non-shedding, non meowing, non-excreting pet/toy cat with an off button could make a lot of people happy (and probably get funding).

Alright, that’s a wrap – and not one lame “always lands on its feet” jab in the whole piece. Success!

AIBO Addendum:
In this context, one would be remiss to not mention the super-advanced, inexcusably canceled AIBO. What could more appropriately give Cheetah-Cub a chase? It’s true, the Saddest Robots in Japan Live Among the Sins of Sony.

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Reno J. Tibke is the founder and operator of Anthrobotic.com and a contributor at the non-profit Robohub.org.

VIA: KurzweilAI, EPFL
Images: EPFL

The first signs of trouble at Fukushima were quickly followed by expectations of an action-ready ASIMO leaping to the rescue. Honda’s humanoid remains far from able, but their new High-Access Survey Robot is on the job, and of some consolation: it’s got ASIMO parts.

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After more than two years of research and development, in collaboration with Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) and with input and direction from the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), Honda has finally made good on its commitment to assist with recovery and repair at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

High-Access Survey Robot is as High-Access Survey Robot Does
“High-Access Survey” isn’t super creative in the naming department, but it really does nail what this technically two-piece robot is all about: 1. movement via tracked chassis with a variable-height platform allowing operators to peer into hard to see, difficult to access places up to 23ft/7m high (that’s AIST’s tech); 2. providing a comprehensive visual survey from the camera-equipped arm and automatic 3D mapping of the robot’s immediate location (thanks, ASIMO!); 3. a new control system that increases dexterity by allowing operators to manipulate several robotic joints at once (more ASIMO-tech); and 4. shock-resistant arms, e.g., within a reasonable range, the robot’s arms will remain steady and on-task even when other parts or the entire machine gets jostled around (that’s the big present from ASIMO, detailed below).

The robot’s advancements and benefits are pretty clear:
AIST’s sturdy, low center of gravity, tracked base keeps things moving over potentially rough terrain, and when the arm platform is fully extended it’s probably the tallest stand-alone robot out there (at least among robots that actually like, you know, do stuff).

The first two gifts from ASIMO are visually subtle, but operationally quite significant. Performing extremely important jobs through a single camera lens is the status quo drudgery for current recovery & repair robotics, so this system’s 3D view of the robot’s surroundings combined with increased dexterity are welcome enhancements (presumably, a number of different tools could make their way onto the business end of Honda’s arm). The last gift from ASIMO, the gift of stability, well there’s a bit of history to all that, and we’ll get to it below – first, here’s how the job will be done:

So there you go – it’s certainly an achievement, and along with several other machines already at work or heading to Fukushima (see: Japan’s Robot Renaissance: Fukushima’s Silver Lining), Honda’s new robot is a unique and valuable contribution to the recovery & repair effort. Okay – great, happy day!

But wait…
So, Honda’s very highly accomplished robotics division (our coverage: Honda Robots for the Home • Honda Robots You Wear) has spent two years at this? Even casual tech observers know that we’ve had durable, effective crawler robots with cameras and nimble, powerful arms for well over a decade (see: iRobot), and those with a slightly higher level of robo-geekery know Honda’s been working on bipedal humanoid robots for almost 30 years.

Honda’s résumé reasonably amplifies everyone’s expectations; as such, both when things went bad at Fukushima, and even NOW, it’s not unreasonable to wonder why they’ve reinvented the tracked robot wheel, so to speak, and why there are still no practical, deployable results from all the time, money, and brains put into ASIMO. Can’t that robot at least do… something!?

Presents from ASIMO: the Humanoid has Indeed Contributed
ASIMO is often billed as the world’s most advanced humanoid robot (that’s recently become debatable), and it does have some autonomous capabilities, but what’s brought to the public eye is largely choreographed to a specific environment. The very robo-dorky among us knew it was entirely unreasonable to expect anything of ASIMO as a stand alone robot, but we did know that ASIMO is and has always been a research platform with wild potential. Honda, openly apologetic and conciliatory of its inability to immediately assist with Fukushima recovery & repair, got straight to work:

(see the derived-from-ASIMO self-steadying arm/leg tech in action, jump to 14:50 in this NHK documentary)

The self-steadying, self-balancing arm Honda engineers created, obviously, is the predecessor to the limb mounted on the new High-Access Survey Robot. So the work kinda paid off. The prototype provided design cues, inspiration, and data – and then was put away in Honda’s warehouse of lost robotic toys or whatever.

Or was it? Now, speculation is at best speculative, but what if maybe, maybe that arm isn’t on a shelf somewhere? What if, big if, but what if there’s also a body… and it’s not ASIMO?

Because Fool Honda Once, Shame on You…
Naively, but with hope inspired by Honda’s technological achievements, the world called for ASIMO to help at Fukushima, but Honda could do nothing. Now, pressure is building from the very exciting, fueled by international competition for prizes and prestige, Fukushima-inspired DARPA Robotics Challenge (our coverage). And, looming off in the future is the possibility that Japan’s best robots might once again get upstaged by something from the U.S., or Korea, Poland, Germany, etc. That’s a lot of pressure, but it’s also a ton of motivation.

Honda engineers extracted a polished, self-steadying/balancing arm from ASIMO’s leg in 8 months. In the 18 since, would they really have only managed to attach some eyes and bolt it to a crawler with a really long neck?

Akihabara News’ robotics coverage will keep you hip to developments – and you’ll wanna stay tuned in – because unless Honda’s hoping to get fooled again, it’s both safe to assume they’ve remained busy, and safe to assume that the image below is more than just a rendering; it might be something awesome.

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Reno J. Tibke is the founder and operator of Anthrobotic.com and a contributor at the non-profit Robohub.org.

VIA: IT Media (Japanese/日本語); Honda Robotics (Japanese/日本語)
Images: Honda Robotics; NHK

We’re a bit torn when we arrive at the Boulder Reservoir, past all the chain-linked signs warning of “potential danger ahead.” The organizers of the Autonomous Vehicle Competition are running two separate tracks — land and air — and frankly, we don’t have the resources to cover both. As the competitors scramble to complete last-minute repairs in the Team Pits area, we approach an employee in a red SparkFun T-shirt, to suss out the best plan of attack. “A lot of the aerial vehicles tend to fail in the first round,” she answers, without much deliberation, “so it’s probably best to start there.” The organizers would’ve been hard-pressed to have constructed a more beautiful Colorado spring day, as “Come Fly With Me” wafts over the PA while spectators settle into the bleachers and competitors find spots at the edge of the gravel pit.

Thirty teams will compete for the $1,000 aerial grand prize. The task: taking off autonomously, staying within the allowed fly zone, dropping a tennis ball onto a thin sliver of land inside the reservoir, ducking beneath a goalpost-like wicket and landing on the same surface from where it took off — and, as the name implies, all this must be done via a pre-programmed set of instructions without external control. The takeoff, it seems, is the hardest, as the first several competitors are knocked out of the contest, failing to launch in all sorts of spectacular fashions, including fixed-wing aircraft that just can’t seem find their way into the clear Colorado sky, sliding along the gravel or twitching mechanically atop the PVC launchpad. When a quadcopter finally manages to lift off successfully, there’s an audible sigh of relief amongst the crowd, followed by explosive applause. When it works, it’s magic.

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