Weekly Robotics #288
No intro today; let’s jump straight to business! As usual, the publication of the week section is manned by Rodrigo .
Sponsored
Weekly Robotics is being developed thanks to the Patreon supporters and the following business sponsors:
Stigmergy, robots, and automatic design
“Stigmergy is a form of indirect communication and coordination in which individuals influence their peers by modifying the environment in various ways, including rearranging objects in space and releasing chemicals.” Now, imagine this applied to robot swarms based on e-puck mobile robots, and the result is what you can find in this video. I’ve been writing this newsletter for nearly six years now, and it’s the first time I’ve seen robotics and pheromones in the same sentence. To learn more about this project, check out this paper . Big thanks to David for sharing this project!
The race to the first useful humanoid robot: 20 demos
James Darpinian had put together a list of humanoid robot demos. It looks like the bipeds are getting trendy!
Building an Internal Cycloidal Robotic Actuator
Aaed Musa made another interesting video, this time building his own actuator. I came to this video with the expectation that Aaed would take an existing motor, add some cycloidal reduction, and that would be it. Instead, you are in for a ride. The author is even wiring the motor by himself (the winding scheme calculator is a great find!) and doing a build from the ground up based on an existing motor. I loved the advice Aaed offers us at 4:31!
Marc Raibert: Boston Dynamics and the Future of Robotics | Lex Fridman Podcast #412 - YouTube
Recently, Marc Raibert was on Lex Fridman’s podcast. I only started listening to it, but I like the format and look forward to having time to review it.
OK-Robot
From the paper abstract: “By combining Vision-Language Models (VLMs) for object detection, navigation primitives for movement, and grasping primitives for object manipulation, OK-Robot offers a integrated solution for pick-and-drop operations without requiring any training. To evaluate its performance, we run OK-Robot in 10 real-world home environments. The results demonstrate that OK-Robot achieves a 58.5% success rate in open-ended pick-and-drop tasks, representing a new state-of-the-art in Open Vocabulary Mobile Manipulation (OVMM) with nearly 1.8x the performance of prior work”.
领英推荐
Introducing psdk_ros2: Bridging DJI’s PSDK libraries with ROS 2
If you like drones and ROS, you might want to check this announcement from Umanned Life folks about their wrapper for DJI products. It sounds like an exciting weekend project!
Publication of the Week - Autonomous Mapless Navigation on Uneven Terrains
Uneven terrains are part of the real-world challenges that robots must face. This paper presents a method for mapless navigation on those terrains. The mapless method takes into account LiDAR reading and uses less computational power. The method also considers limits for the robot’s roll and pitch angles. The repository still needs the code, but it’s nice to keep an eye out for it.
Business
Jeff Bezos and Nvidia join OpenAI and Microsoft in backing a humanoid robot unicorn valued at $2 billion, sources say
“The startup Figure AI Inc. — also backed by OpenAI and Microsoft Corp. — is raising about $675 million in a funding round that carries a pre-money valuation of roughly $2 billion, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the matter is private. Through his firm Explore Investments LLC, Bezos has committed $100 million. Microsoft is investing $95 million, while Nvidia and an Amazon.com Inc.-affiliated fund are each providing $50 million”.
MMI Raises $110 Million in Series C Financing
“MMI (Medical Microinstruments, Inc.), a robotics company dedicated to increasing treatment options and improving clinical outcomes for patients with complex conditions, today announced that it has raised $110 million in Series C financing”.
RobCo raises $42.5M for automation for small, midsize manufacturers - The Robot Report
“RobCo GmbH today said it has raised $42.5 million in Series B funding to support its development and growth trajectory”.
Events
For more robotic events, check out our event page .