Video Friday is your weekly pick of the awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends on IEEE Spectrum robotics. We’ve also posted a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. please send us your events for inclusion.
Robotics Summit and Expo: 10–11 May 2023, BOSTON
ICRA 2023: 29 May–2 June 2023, LONDON
RoboCup 2023: 4–10 July 2023, BORDEAUX, FRANCE
RSS 2023: 10–14 July 2023, DAEGU, KOREA
IEEE RO-MAN 2023: 28–31 August 2023, BUSAN, KOREA
CLAWAR 2023: 2–4 October 2023, FLORIANOPOLIS, BRAZIL
Humanoids 2023: 12–14 December 2023, AUSTIN, TEXAS, USA
Enjoy today’s videos!
Because of the durability of bumblebees, MIT researchers have developed repair techniques that allow a bug-sized aerial robot to sustain severe damage to the actuators, or artificial muscles, that power the its wings—but still flew effectively.
[ MIT ]
This robot gripper is called the DragonClaw, and do you really need to know anything?
“Oh, DragonClaw wins again!”
[ AMTL ]
Here’s a good argument for having legs on a robot:
And here’s a less good argument for having legs on a robot, but still, awesome!
[ ANYbotics ]
It’s always fun to see drones doing real work! Also, when you offer your drone for powerline inspections and promise it won’t crash into anything, that’s confidence.
[ Skydio ]
Voxel robots have been widely simulated because they are easy to simulate, but not widely developed because they are difficult to build. But here are some that really work.
[ Paper ]
Thanks, Bram!
Reinforcement learning (RL) has been a promising approach in developing controllers for quadrupedal robots. We explore an alternative to the position-based RL paradigm, by introducing a torque-based RL framework, where an RL policy directly predicts joint torques at high frequencies, thus avoiding using a PD controller. The proposed learning torque control framework is validated through extensive experiments, where a quadruped is capable of traversing various terrains and resisting external disturbances while following user-defined commands.
[ Berkeley ]
In this work, we show how bio-inspired, 3D-printed snakeskins enhance the friction anisotropy and thus the slithering locomotion of a snake robot. Experiments were conducted using a soft pneumatic snake robot in various indoor and outdoor settings.
[ Paper ]
For bipedal humanoid robots to function successfully in the real world, they must be capable of simultaneously performing multiple movement tasks while responding to unexpected external disturbances in real-time. We propose Kinodynamic Fabrics as an approach for the specification, solution and simultaneous execution of multiple motion tasks in real-time while reactive to environmental dynamism.
The RPD 35 from Built Robotics is the world’s first autonomous piling system. It combines four steps—layout, pile distribution, pile driving, and as-built—into one package. With the RPD 35, a two-person crew can install the pile more productively than with traditional methods.
[ Built Robotics ]
This work contributes a novel and modularized learning-based method for aerial robots navigating cluttered environments containing hard-to-see, thin obstacles without assuming access to a map or the full estimate of the robot’s pose.
[ ARL ]
Thank you, Kostas!
The video shows a use case developed by FZI with the help of KIT: the multi-robot extraction of hazardous materials using two FZI robots as well as the KIT virtual reality environment.
[ FZI ]
Satisfying.
[ Soft Robtics ]
A year has passed since the launch of ESA’s Rosalind Franklin rover mission, but the work has not stopped for the ExoMars teams in Europe. In this program, the ESA Web TV crew returns to Turin, Italy to speak with the teams and watch as new tests are carried out with the rover’s Earth twin Amalia while the real rover remains carefully stored in a very clean room.
[ ESA ]
Camilo Buscaron, Chief Technologist, AWS Robotics sits down with Ramon Roche in this Behind the Tech episode to share his storied career in the robotics industry. Camilo explains how AWS provides many services for robotics developers from simulation and streaming to basic realtime cloud storage.
[ Behind the Tech ]