Weekly Robotics #235

My new realization is that if you are in what feels like a hobby project rut taking small steps helps. Taking apart my 3D printer yesterday for cleaning and lubrication is an excellent first step. Let’s see what comes next! As usual, the publication of the week section is manned by Rodrigo . Last week’s most clicked link was the 1st part of Benjie Holson’s series about working on robotics , with 15.4% opens. Last week Benjie released the part 4 of his series

Sponsored

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How to design a complex architecture on NVIDIA Isaac ROS

Technical talk at NVIDIA GTC

NVIDIA? Isaac ROS is a collection of hardware accelerated packages that make it easier for ROS 2 developers to build high-performance robotics solutions. In this GTC talk, we investigate how to design a robot using NVIDIA hardware, working with the latest Jetson Orin and designing in DevOps a continuous integration and delivery solution. We'll briefly explain how to implement your robot using Nanosaur.

--/Sponsored

Google Research, 2022 & beyond: Robotics

Google Research

Large Language Models (LLMs) are making a crazy amount of new stories lately (my favorite one from last week was the Bing assistant being convinced that it’s still 2022 ). If you are wondering how these new models could be utilized in our field, then you will find one answer in the first project presented in the article. The other examples will give you a good idea of what the Google AI team is working on regarding robotics.

Davide Faconti, Robotic Architect at PickNik Robotics | Behind the Tech Episode 11

YouTube (Px4)

In this episode of behind the Tech, Ramon Roche is interviewing Davide Faconti, a Robotic Architect at PickNik and the author of BehaviorTree.CPP and PlotJuggler . I highly recommend checking it out to learn about Davide’s views on being a robotics generalist, open-source robotics, and more!

NASA’s “evolved structures” radically reduce weight – and waiting

New Atlas

NASA is exploring generative design, where a simulation is run multiple times on a part, optimizing the structural elements for stress factors and weight. Does anyone know of anything similar for hobby projects?

Stanford’s robotics legacy

Stanford

I don’t remember how I came across this article from 2019, but it shows some of the robotics from Stanford, and I found the overview very interesting, with some robots going as far back as the 1960s. I was most mind blown about the autonomous robotics class using a Turtlebot3 Waffle with a proper Velodyne LiDAR on top .

Precision Fixed-Wing Flight Control

MIT

An MIT team is working on flight control of small tailsitter drones that work well in tracking an aerobatic trajectory. On the linked page, you will find three videos showing the results of this research. My favorite is the synchronized flight of three aircraft . I enjoy the swift switch from hover to forward flight, especially since it’s an indoor space.

Saving 10 Minutes on Documentation Wasted Hours of My Client’s Time

Embedded Artistry

I enjoyed this short and cautionary tale by Phillip Johnston, which shows how making too many assumptions and cutting a corner can cause frustration.

Publication of the Week - ANSEL Photobot: A Robot Event Photographer with Semantic Intelligence (2023)

arXiv

If you’ve ever been asked to be in charge of taking photos at an event, then you know the prey of not being able to make mistakes. This paper presents ANSELv (Appropriate sNap SELection) Photobot that uses a cellphone mounted on a robot arm to create a photo portfolio for an event. The method uses purpose language (LM) and vision-language (VLM) models to understand each scene and select the best frame candidates for the portfolio. The team created three simulated events: a birthday party, a wine-tasting event, and a painting class. For each event, 10 individuals evaluated the collage, and the ANSELv method outperformed 2 out of the 3 events compared to state-of-the-art methods.

Business

Vicarious Surgical cuts 14% of staff

The Robot Report

“Vicarious Surgical laid off 14% of its workforce to reduce cash burn and boost R&D spending at the surgical robotics company. CFO William Kelly told analysts yesterday evening the present economic environment has Vicarious Surgical focusing on getting a quality robotic surgery system “out the door fast””.

LiDAR makers Ouster, Velodyne complete merger

The Robot Report

Ouster and Velodyne, are merged now and shall be called Ouster moving on.