Battlefield Extraction and Retrieval Robot (BEAR)

Battlefield Extraction and Retrieval Robot (BEAR)


Country: USA
Manufacturer: Vecna
Year: 2006
Webpage Info



The BEAR robot is Vecna Robotics' flagship program. Designed to find, pick up and rescue people in harm's way, the humanoid BEAR robot can do what humans can't: Lift heavy loads and carry them long distances. Whether on a battlefield, in a nuclear reactor core, near a toxic chemical spill, or inside a structurally-compromised building after an earthquake, the BEAR can rescue those in need as well as or better than humans can, without risking additional human life.

The BEAR robot's patent-pending technology is a marriage of three elements: A powerful upper body controlled by hydraulics; an agile mobility platform that features two independent sets of tracked "legs"; and dynamic balancing behavior, or DBB. DBB is the capability of the robot to balance itself while on the balls of its "ankles", allowing it to stand upright while fully extended. In fact, the BEAR will be able to remain upright whether balancing on its ankles, its knees, or even its hips.

The BEAR is currently in proof-of-concept development stage. A prototype of the BEAR robot has been built and outfitted with a powerful torso and arms, together with a dynamic balancing system on two wheels. Together, the robot prototype has been able to demonstrate picking up a fully-weighted human dummy, and carrying the dummy around in its arms while dynamically balanced in an upright position for over 50 minutes without break. The tracked mobility system is currently in development.

2D Planar One-Leg Hopper

Country: USA
Manufacturer: MIT
Year: 1980
Webpage Info

The Planar One-Leg Hopper was MITs first Leg Lab robot. It was built to explore active balance and dynamic stability in legged locomotion. The machine has one leg that changes length and pivots with respect to the body. The body carries sensors, interface electronics, and the hip actuators. The machine was powered by pneumatics.

Experiments with the Planar One-Leg Hopper showed that balance could be achieved with a simple control system. The control system has three separate parts: one controlling forward running speed, one controlling body attitude, and one controlling hopping height. These controllers worked independently, treating any coupling as disturbances. The control system for the Planar One-Leg Hopper did not explicitly program a stepping motion, but allowed the stepping motion to emerge under the constraints of balance and controlled travel. The Planar One-Leg Hopper hopped in place, traveled at specified rates, and maintained balance when disturbed. The simple techniques used for planar one-leg hopper were later generalized for 3D one-leg hopping, bipedal running, and quadruped trotting, pacing, and bounding.

Top 10 Useful robots selected for Robot Award in 2006

GRAND PRIZE: Robotic building cleaning system (Fuji Heavy Industries and Sumitomo). The system received high marks for its efficiency and its ability to work both independently and alongside humans. The judges believe the robot has great potential to develop the market for robotic cleaning systems, as well as establish new business models in which robots and humans work side by side to provide inexpensive cleaning services.

SMALL-TO MEDIUM-SIZED VENTURE PRIZE: KHR-2HV (Kondo). The judges gave high marks to KHR-2HV for its relatively low price tag and its popularity with individual users both young and old. KHR-2HV was also recognized for fostering closer ties between humans and robots, as well as for its educational value.

HONORABLE MENTION: My Spoon (SECOM). The judges awarded their special prize to My Spoon for its contributions to society. The robot has received praise both in Japan and overseas for helping people enjoy the meals they want to eat and enabling them to eat with friends and family. The judges recognized the high quality of My Spoon resulting from SECOM's close cooperation with users and medical professionals in the development phase. They also like it because it is affordable.

Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) has announced its top ten list of finalists for the 2006 Robot Award. The ten robots selected from 152 applications fall into four categories — service robots, industrial robots, public sector robots, and small- to medium-sized venture robots.

METI established the annual Robot Award this year to recognize outstanding developments in the field of robotics, encourage further research and development, and stimulate demand. Winners of the grand prize and the special prize for small- to medium-sized ventures will be announced on December 21.

Here's a rundown of the top robots in each category…

SERVICE ROBOTS:

- Paro — seal robot with therapeutic properties (Intelligent System/ AIST/ Microgenics)

Paro is a furry white robot modeled after a baby harp seal. Paro can serve as a pet alternative for general households, and research has shown that Paro has therapeutic effects on patients. Paro's entire body is covered in tactile sensors, and its actuators provide it with smooth movement. Lovingly crafted one by one, Paro is recognized for its safety, cleanliness, user-friendliness and durability. About 800 of the robotic seals have been adopted around Japan, and Paro's future plans include overseas travel. [ More]

- My Spoon — meal assistance robot (SECOM)

Designed to assist patients unable to use their hands, My Spoon enables users to enjoy ordinary meals by transporting food from a tray to the patient's mouth, one bite at a time. Users can select from three levels of contol — manual (joystick control), semi-automatic or fully automatic — to best suit their physical condition. My Spoon is available outside Japan, in the Netherlands and other locations in Europe. [ More]

- Robotic building cleaning system (Fuji Heavy Industries/ Sumitomo)

This autonomous robot roams the hallways of buildings, performing cleaning operations along the way. Capable of controlling elevators, the robot can move from floor to floor unsupervised, and it returns to its start location once it has finished cleaning. The robot is currently employed as a janitor at 10 high-rise buildings in Japan, including Harumi Triton Square and Roppongi Hills. [ More]

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTS:

- MOTOMAN-DIA10/ MOTOMAN-IA20 (Yaskawa Electric)

These industrial robot arms are capable of human-like movement, which is great news for factories worried about Japan's shrinking population (and human labor force). The DIA10 consists of two 7-axis arms mounted on a torso. According to this spec sheet (PDF), the robot has the "finesse of the human arm without the physical limitations." The same 7-axis design is incorporated into the IA20, a "snake" robot with great freedom of movement and the ability to operate in tight spaces.

- High-speed reliability verification robot (Denso Wave)

This robot relies on advanced machine vision technology to perform automated inspections on the go. Highly reliable inspections can be performed at each location without stopping the line, allowing for speedier and more cost-effective operations. [ More]

PUBLIC SECTOR ROBOTS:

- Tele-operated construction equipment (Fujita/ Technical Office of Kyushu, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (Kyugi))

These remote-control unmanned construction machines were originally developed for dangerous recovery operations following disasters such as avalanches and rockslides. Designed to prevent the occurrence of secondary disasters and greatly limit further damage and injury, these robots were deployed at the site of a disastrous mudslide that occurred in Okinawa in June 2006. [ More]

- Urashima — deep-sea autonomous underwater vehicle (Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology)

Urashima is a remotely operated vehicle for deep-sea exploration. The 10-meter long vessel relies on hydrogen-based fuel cell batteries that allow it to travel much greater distances than vessels powered by standard lithium-ion batteries. Urashima is expected to play an important role in pre-dive surveys for manned submarines and in the survey of areas considered dangerous for or inaccessible by manned research submarines. [ More]

SMALL-TO MEDIUM-SIZED VENTURE ROBOTS:

- URG Series scanning laser range finders (Hokuyo)

These lightweight, compact laser range finders feature low power consumption, making them ideal sensors for autonomous mobile robots. [ More]

-KHR-2HV (Kondo)

KHR-2HV is a high-performance build-it-yourself biped humanoid robot kit. The popular KHR-2HV is faster, lighter and more agile than its predecessor, KHR-1, and it is packed with more controls, gears, servos and software. Seventeen adjustable joints allow KHR-2HV to perform back flips, cartwheels and human-like moves, and USB connectivity means you can teach it lots of neat tricks. [ More]

- Squid-fishing machine (Towa Denki)

Towa Denki has made a number of improvements to its automated squid-fishing machines since the company began manufacturing them in the 1970s. Relying on functions such as high-tech load detectors, squid finders and water depth detectors, the machines can perform automated operations that boost squid-fishing productivity. [ More]

from here

Top ten most famous robots

by John Pickrell

1. Qrio – the all-dancing bipedal robot

2. Roomba and Scooba – domestic robots

3. The self-replicating robot

4. The spherical security guard

5. Aibo – the robotic pet

6. Stanley – the autonomous car

7. Asimo – the first walking humanoid robot

8. NASA's Mars rovers – labs on wheels

9. The tiniest remote-controlled robot

10. The fly-eating robot

 

1. Qrio – the all-dancing bipedal robot

Qrio – short for quest for curiosity – is Sony's 58-centimetre-tall, all-dancing, bipedal humanoid robot. Qrio is famous for such feats as conducting the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra in a unique rendition of Beethoven's 5th symphony, navigating an assault course, and even roller-skating.

See footage of four QRIOs performing a complicated dance routine, (Windows Media Player required) recorded in December 2003.

2. Roomba and Scooba – domestic robots

Starting in 2002, MIT spin-off iRobot, of Massachusetts, US, finally brought domestic robots to the masses, with their small and affordable Roomba and Scooba vacuuming and mopping robots – retailing at less than $200. Sales of all household robots have boomed, and in 2005 more than a million were thought to be in operation worldwide.

See videos of the Roomba Vacuuming Robot at work on the IRobot Corporation's web site (Macromedia Flash Player required).

3. The self-replicating robot

In 2005 Cornell University researchers, in Ithaca, New York, built the first robot able to create exact copies of itself. The device is built of small mechanical building blocks that can swivel, and also attach themselves to one another using electromagnets. Three or four blocks piled on top of each other to form a tower can create an identical tower by swivelling round like a crane to pick up other nearby blocks and pile them on top of each other.

See footage of the self-replication process (courtesy of Hod Lipson at Cornell University - Windows Media Player required).

4. The spherical security guard

This spherical roving robot designed to detect and report intruders was created in Sweden. It is based on a robot probe originally designed to explore other planets. The automated security guard is propelled by a pendulum suspended from an axis inside the casing, controlled by a motor. Moving the pendulum forwards causes the robot roll along, but the pendulum can also swing from side to side, giving the robot the ability to steer left and right.

See an animation and images of the robot on the Rotundus AB web site (Quicktime required).

5. Aibo – the robotic pet

Aibo – Japanese for companion – is Sony's robotic pooch. It can walk, sit, sleep, beg, yap and perform lots of other convincingly dog-like actions. When Aibo was first released in 1999 it sold out in 20 minutes in Japan - by 2002, 100,000 people owned them.

Brand-new Aibos all behave alike. But over time they develop their own personality as they interact with people. Just how they develop depends on the interaction between their environment and their innate abilities. Aibo owners can also use software to reprogram their pets and add new behaviours.

A short video, available from Sony's research and development lab in Paris, France (Windows Media Player required), shows an Aibo pup that has learnt to play with its toys and bark at another robot nearby.

6. Stanley – the autonomous car

Stanley, an autonomous racing car, has been developed at Stanford University in Palo Alto California. It bagged a $2 million prize in October 2005 for winning the DARPA Grand Challenge, a tough desert race for driverless vehicles.

Stanley has the body of a converted Volkswagen Touareg SUV, and navigates using seven onboard Pentium M computers and an array of devices that includes GPS, four laser range-finders, three cameras, a radar and inertial sensors.

See a video of Stanley at work here on the Stanford University web site (available in several formats).

7. Asimo – the first walking humanoid robot

Asimo, who stands at 130 centimetres tall and weighs 54 kilograms, was the world's first walking humanoid robot. The latest model can run at 6 kilometres an hour, jog in circles and zig-zag. A prototype unveiled in Tokyo, in December 2005, was capable of guiding guests to a meeting room, serving coffee on a tray and pushing a cart with a load of up to 10 kilograms.

See videos of Asimo running and delivering a tray of coffee on the Honda web site (Macromedia Flash Player required).

8. NASA's Mars rovers – labs on wheels

NASA's quad-bike-sized laboratories-on-wheels were built to last just 90 days on Mars and cover no more than 600 metres. But the roving robots have now logged more than an entire Martian year on the surface and collectively covered 12 kilometres of terrain.

See a NASA animation showing how the rovers work (Quicktime required).

9. The tiniest remote-controlled robot

In September 2005, researchers at the University of California in Berkeley created the tiniest mobile robot ever – narrower than a human hair. It is simply a sliver of silicon one hundredth of a millimetre thick. This can be precisely steered - like a remote controlled car - to move in any direction across the surface of a special plate. Powered by a grid of electrodes underneath a surface layer, the bot crawls around at a speed of about 200 micrometers per second and can push specks of dust, or other “dead” robots.

See videos of the tiny bot here here (courtesy of Dartmouth College, available in several formats).

10. The fly-eating robot

Last, but not least, is the unlikely-sounding, fly-eating robot. EcoBot II, designed at the University of West England in Bristol, is part of a drive to make "release and forget" robots that can be sent into dangerous or inhospitable areas to carry out remote industrial or military monitoring.

To survive without human help, a robot needs to be able to generate its own energy. EcoBot ii can do just that, by catching flies and digesting them in a special reactor cell that generates electricity. The downside is that the robot will has to attract the hapless flies using a stinking lure concocted from human excrement.

See videos of the fly-eating robot here on the researchers' web site (available in several formats).

 

from here

The Uniroo robot is kinematically similar to a real kangaroo

Uniroo (1991-1993)

 

The Uniroo robot is kinematically similar to a real kangaroo of mass 6.6 kg. The Uniroo consists of a body, a three-joint (hip, knee, ankle) articulated leg, and a single degree-of-freedom tail. The body is a bolted framework of aluminum struts, and the leg is composed of welded aluminum tubes. Hydraulic actuators control each joint. A steel coil spring at the ankle stores elastic energy during stance.

 

The Uniroo differ from the previous robots in four important respects. The Uniroo is not symmetric, the leg is articulated instead of telescoping, the hip is offset from the center of mass, and the leg is relatively heavy (one-third the mass of the body). Because of the asymmetry, the ground forces during stance affects the body pitch. A massive leg also affects the body pitch as the leg is swept forward during flight. Finally, the kinematic redundancy of the leg must be addressed.

 

Work with the Uniroo showed that it is possible to control the balance of legged robots that have a non-symmetrical mechanical structure. Regulation of angular momentum allowed the Uniroo robot to hop in a range of forward velocities from 0 to 1.8m/s for at least a minute. Although nothing proves that a steadily null angular momentum is part of an optimal hopping strategy, we observed that a small angular momentum is a characteristic of ``smooth'' hopping and underlies a very natural motion.

 

robot home page

The Quadruped - four legs robot

Quadruped (1984-1987)

The Quadruped was used to explore running on four legs. We programmed it to trot, pace, bound, and do several transitions between gaits. We found that principles for one-legged hopping generalized to four-legged running, with the addition of a low-level leg coordination mechanism.

 

We considered only those quadruped gaits that use the legs in pairs: trotting (diagonal legs as pairs), pacing (lateral pairs), and bounding (front pair and rear pair). By restricting consideration to the pair gaits, the control of the Quadruped was reduced to the control of an equivalent virtual biped. We found that each of the gaits that use the legs in pairs can be transformed into a common underlying gait, a virtual biped gait.

 

robot page

HRP-2 (Humanoid Robotics Projects 2)

Country: Japan

Manufacturer: AIST

Year: 2003

Height: 5ft (154cm)

Weight: 127lbs (58kg)

Degrees of Freedom: 30

HRP-2 Webpage Info

The HRP was initially developed as part of a five-year program launched by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) in 1998, under the project leader, Mr. Hirochika Inoue, Professor of Tokyo University. The project goal was a first-generation robot that could work in human environments and use human tools. At least three different prototype HRP's were created before the project was completed in 2003: the HRP-1S, HRP-2P, and the HRP-2. General Robotix picked up where METI left off and has commercialized the HRP series with the further developed HRP-3 model expected to go on sale in 2006.

The HRP-2 has a new 3D vision system, named "VVV" for Versatile Volumetric Vision, which replaced the more common single head mounted camera with four high precision color cameras. Not only does this improve the robots vision, it enables it see with greater accuracy and an expanded field of view.

Along with the VVV system enhancements, laser based distance measuring equipment was built into the robot's head. This allows it to build a 2 dimensional map of its environment for comparison with the VVV system's visual input, so it can easily avoid obstacles – even when they have been moved.

The narrow design of the legs allows one leg to be put in front of the other - in theory; the HRP could walk on a narrow plank or through very narrow spaces. It uses two 1GHz onboard computers for control, and has three visual sensors.

The world’s first advanced humanoid robot Asimo

Asimo
Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility

Country: Japan
Manufacturer: Honda
Year: 2000
Height: 4ft (120cm)
Weight: 119lbs (54kg)
Degrees of Freedom: 26
Asimo Webpage Info

ASIMO was the world’s first advanced humanoid robot and in many respects the beginning of what we here at Communist Robot fondly refer to as “The Future.”


2005 ASIMO – Working class

Older models of ASIMO exist as technical showcases for Honda’s impressive robotic advances over the last decade but serve no function greater than their presentation for amusement. The new 2005 ASIMO breaks away from existence as a novelty and moves into professional application with the functional capacity of an office lackey or well-trained monkey. ASIMO is now capable of delivering coffee, relaying messages, pushing carts, navigating stairs, getting up on its own, and running at about 4 miles per hour (6kph). Honda will begin employing ASIMO units as receptionists at their main offices in the spring of 2006 and shortly thereafter begin renting ASIMO’s out for 20 million yen ($166,000) per year.


To help ASIMO function in office environments, Honda has developed a telecommunication card. The card stores and wirelessly communicates personal information so ASIMO can uniquely identify its coworkers. ASIMO also uses a mix of voice and face recognition to confirm identity.

The new ASIMO can also detect forces in its arms. This allows it to apply pressure to push carts while balancing, as well as detect when a human has grabbed an object it is holding so it knows when to let go. It also allows ASIMO to hold hands and let a human guide its motion.

ASIMO is not a toy; it’s designed to serve as a human helper - to work around the house, help the elderly, or aid someone confined to a wheelchair. ASIMO’s 4ft height (120cm) is just right for looking eye to eye with someone seated in a chair. This allows ASIMO to do its job without being too big and menacing.


2004 ASIMO – Running Model

In December of 2004 Honda introduced an updated version of ASIMO that along with an improved body design and a longer lasting battery (1 hour), it was capable of running at nearly 2 miles an hour (3kpm). It accomplished this by means of a new hip joint, which allowed it to rock its torso while moving. In addition, the 2004 ASIMO had individually opposable thumbs allowing it to grasp objects and sense force when a human held its hand. This coupled with ASIMO’s ability to navigate its environment without having to repeatedly reconstruct an internal map, distinguish people from obstacles, and its ability to recognize voices, faces, and hand gestures brought ASIMO one step closer to commercial viability.


2002 ASIMO X2 – Advanced face recognition

The ASIMO X2 shows advanced face recognition, coupled with voice and hand gestures. This is most likely the result of collaborative research with scientists at CMU’s Robotics Institute.


2000 ASIMO

ASIMO, the worlds most advances humanoid robot makes its debut in the year 2000. The name ASIMO stands for Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility, and is pronounced “ashimo“ in Japanese, meaning “legs also” (from Japanese "足も"). This little robot is the result of 14 years of dedicated scientific research done by Honda into the mechanics of bipedal locomotion. About 40 of the old 2000 model ASIMO’s are currently touring the world in promotional capacity.