Innovation is the watchword of mechatronics. The pressure for solutions in alternative energy continue to push the boundaries of design in electromechanical systems. In the wind energy arena the biggest change has been the shift to direct drive permanent magnet generators. By eliminating the gear “increaser” to convert the low RPM of the propeller system […]
Lively international innovation summit about robotics
In Lyon, France, 14th to 16th March, 2012. Save the date! By Frank Tobe, Editor/Publisher, The Robot Report (www.TheRobotReport.com)and Catherine Simon, General Secretary, French Federation of Robotics Today’s devices are becoming smarter and connected. They sense their environment, process the data collected and act upon their decisions autonomously or semi-autonomously. The transformation is beyond productivity and enters…
Two newsworthy examples of healthcare robots
Children’s Hospital Boston sends Vgo telepresence robots home with post-op patients in a pilot program that includes the robots into its regular post-op care program. Doctors and nurses now have a direct line of communication and observation between themselves, the patients and their family as they recover at home. Vgo telepresence visits take 10-15 minutes…
Google’s Response to Apple’s Siri: Buy Cleversense
Cleversense, a learning AI with a natural language processing front-end – and the developer of the popular Alfred personal assistant app – has been sold to Google for an undisclosed amount. Fear that Apple’s Siri “could provide a new paradigm for searching the Web that circumvents Google’s search engine and ads” may be the reason.…
Friction Part 2
An interesting aspect of actuator design popped up in a couple of recent applications. The efficiency value of the actuator isn’t often the top parameter on the list of things to check when making a selection. But it should be. Efficiencies vary wildly, even from the same vendor, and will have signficant impact on the […]
Robots in the Kitchen: Sooner Than You Think
“James (a PR2 robot from Willow Garage) and Rosie (a custom lightweight two-armed robot from Kuka and DLR) aren’t specifically programmed with a “left, right, break egg, stir” type command set. They’re taught the ingredients for the dishes, and the order that things work in, and whether they need heating and so on. The robots…
Google Gets Patent for Driverless Car
Google was granted a US Patent “for transitioning a mixed-mode autonomous vehicle from a human driven mode to an autonomously driven mode.” Now comes the endless red tape over safety, negotiations with vehicle manufacturers, etc., that will tie things up for years. Patent experts say that Google’s patent will not prevent others developing rival self-drive…
Iranians Hacked US Drone And Instructed It To Land In Iran
In an exclusive to The Christian Science Monitor, an Iranian engineer describes how they hacked a U.S. military drone – a Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel – into landing at an Iranian airbase. First they cut off communications links and then reconfigured the drone’s GPS coordinates to make it land at what the drone thought was…
Friction, Friend or Foe?
Friction is rarely talked about in motion control circles (pun intended for those paying attention). It is the “waste” energy in mechanical systems. We spend a lot of time and sometimes cost, trying to eliminate it. Many times we just ignore it. This was the case when a friend of mine was designing a material […]
Robotics is a Highly Fragmented Industry With Few Common Standards or Platforms
by Frank Tobe, Publisher, The Robot Report with Manoj Sahi, roboticist and educator, India Imagine being present at the birth of a new industry. It is an industry based on groundbreaking new technologies, wherein a handful of well-established corporations sell highly specialized devices for business use, and a fast-growing number of start-up companies produce innovative…
Will there be a universal robotic control system?
From a highly fragmented industry with few common standards or platforms, there will soon be a universal interface so that 3rd parties can add platforms and modules to robotic systems. There won’t be a commercial version of Willow Garage’s ROS nor any other universal robotic operating system, but within academia and the emerging service robotics…
Programming Software and Control
Writing software for control applications isn’t the easiest thing. It’s probably been 15 years since I had to write any actual code for a control application. I have scripted and taught training classes in PLC programming and am very familiar with ladder logic programming and Boolean instructions, although I am less familiar with the latest […]
2011 Robot Gift Suggestions
Gift and book suggestions for almost every family member. Product descriptions, photos, prices, and where to buy.