Editors’ Picks




Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 32.85
…or M4, which now could be part of future NASA Mars Rover missions. The M4 Morphobot is powered by the NVIDIA Jetson platform for artificial intelligence at the edge and robotics. The institute called the robot the M4 because it can fly, drive, walk, and do eight permutations of motion through a combination of its skills. “It grew in the number of functions that we wanted to do,” said Gharib, a professor of aeronautics and bioinspired engineering at Caltech, in a blog post. “When we proposed it to our design team, at first, they all said, ‘No.’” NASA JPL continues…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 10.43
…research with 10 previous “general-purpose” robots, including work on NASA Valkyrie. “Since the early days of Apptronik, we've been looking for performance,” recalled Cardenas. “We wanted electric actuators to do what hydraulics could do, and we wanted robustness and low cost.” Cardenas said his team learned about safety from its development of exoskeletons, about improving payload while maintaining affordability from work on robot arms, dynamic walking from bipedal models, and fine manipulation from upper-body systems. As a result, Apollo has a modular design, allowing users to decide whether it is best suited for a particular application as a full humanoid,…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 10.83
…robot to perform many different tasks. Leading organizations including NASA, Ford, Honda, and Johns Hopkins University use the company's products. ATI F/T Sensors enable precise tasks ATI Industrial Automation said the integration of its Multi-Axis Force/Torque Sensors with FANUC's hardware and software will enable users to achieve greater levels of accuracy, flexibility, and responsiveness. Integrators and manufacturers will be able to take advantage of the enhanced sensing capabilities, it said. ATI and FANUC have integrated F/T sensors and robot arms. Source: ATI Industrial Automation ATI said its F/T Sensors can “provide accurate measurements of forces and torques in multiple axes,…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 12.87
…billion in 2021 dollars. However, if we look at NASA's Perseverance Rover, which took flight in July 2020, it had a total expenditure of around $2.5 billion to $2.7 billion. What we should also notice here is that the Apollo program was to explore the moon. Hence, the distance in case of the Apollo mission was 384,400 km (238,800 mi.), while in case of the Perseverance rover, Mars is a minimum of 54.6 million km (33.9 million miles) away. If we compare the given metrics, the cost per kilometer for Apollo was close to $400,000, while for the Perseverance rover,…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 13.69
…companies address the technical, cost, and time challenges associated with the development of advanced robotic applications. Many organizations, including NASA, Google, Amazon, and Samsung, have partnered with PickNik, said the company. Boulder, Colo.-based PickNik also supports and collaborates with the worldwide open-source robotics movement and is the lead developer of MoveIt and MoveIt Studio.
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 10.79
…Sanctuary AI unveiled its Phoenix “sixth-generation, general purpose robot.” NASA and Woodside Energy this month said they are testing a Valkyrie robot for remote operations at the Australian energy company's facilities. More sensationally, a United Nations event featured nine humanoid robots in “the first human-robot press conference,” with much of the questions and coverage focusing on perceived threats (see video below). Shanghai-based Fourier Intelligence last week announced its Fourier GR-1, which it claimed will be the first mass-produced humanoid designed to help aging populations in China. Intel Capital joins leading investors Intel Capital joined existing investors in Figure including Parkway…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 6.66
…industry naysayers. “I brought this to some folks at NASA, and everyone was saying, 'It’s not going to work,'” he recalled. “And then when you look at what’s behind the propeller design and the motor design, you realize that we cannot be living on an edge. We designed propellers for a very specific condition, which is air.” However, the innovator challenged the status quo of the aerospace community by asking, “'Can you design propellers and motors for water?' And it turns out that you can.” Diez deconstructed his lab’s research: “So if you look at the curve for air, and…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 23.10
…Mission Grant by the Australian Space Agency to support NASA’s endeavor to explore the Moon and beyond to Mars. The grant will accelerate the development and production of the company’s light detection, altimetry and velocimetry (LiDAV) technology, the Sydney, Australia-based Advanced Navigation said. Supported by this award, Advanced Navigation said it will deliver a space-qualified LiDAV sensor called LUNA (Laser measurement Unit for Navigational Aid) to US-based space systems company, Intuitive Machines, as part of NASA’s ongoing Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. Project LUNA will ultimately be demonstrated on board Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lander during the final descent en…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 27.44
…robot arms. SBIR to enable PickNik fault detection, reporting NASA said it increasingly needs highly autonomous robots to maintain critical spaceflight hardware, and its first SBIR award to PickNik Robotics is for a project titled “A Framework for Failure Management and Recovery for Remote Autonomous Task Planning and Execution.” PickNik is developing a novel fault-detection and reporting system. The system is intended to empower remote operators to diagnose and resolve failures in real time so they can adjust task specifications and guide the robot to recover and complete the objective on site, according to the contract. PickNik said it will…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 11.01
…American Society of Colon and Rectal Surgeons (ASCRS) Annual Scientific Meeting in Seattle. Virtual Incision is also working with NASA, and one of its MIRA systems will be tested aboard the International Space Station in 2024 as part of a technology demonstration mission. With MIRA, Virtual Incision aims to make every operating room robot-ready, Murphy said. The robotic-assisted surgery device, in most cases, can be set up in an operating room in under 30 minutes, he said. The company has raised $116 million in funding, according to Crunchbase.
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 11.26
…the requirements for precision are stringent, such as in NASA's Mars rovers, surgical power tools, humanoid robots, and industrial automation applications. To maintain its more than 60 years of leadership, maxon said it invests a “considerable” share of its annual revenue in research and development. The company has more than 3,500 employees at nine production sites and is represented by sales companies in more than 30 countries. maxon in Massachusetts With full engineering design services, technology development, and drive system manufacturing capabilities in Massachusetts, maxon said it helps design engineers reduce their time to market. The company said it will…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 24.61
…Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase 3 funding from NASA to develop advanced motion-planning capabilities for robots in microgravity environments. It has also a commercial-off-the-shelf product for supervised autonomy for space missions called MoveIt Space. In addition, the company has worked with NASA and various commercial space companies to lead the development of Space ROS, a flight-certified version of the Robot Operating System (ROS). Motiv develops robotic arms for use in space Founded in 2014, Motiv Space Systems has designed and manufactured space systems for commercial and scientific applications, including Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars, and beyond. Among its contracts…