Image Credit: BladeBug
If you would like to take a break from world politics, this newsletter is just for you. This week’s issue has a contribution from Rodrigo Lopes Catto, who takes over the publication of the week section for at least the next two weeks! Enjoy! The most clicked link last week was AgRob_PP project with 12.9% opens.
First Robotic ‘Blade Walk’ on a Wind Turbine Opens Door to Significant Cost Cuts in Offshore Renewables
BladeBug took it’s first steps on a wind turbine recently. The robot is a hexapod with some serious suction cups. During the recent trials, the BladeBug walked 50 meters on a vertically positioned turbine blade.
Freeloader
The FreeLoader is a low cost, desktop size, open source, universal testing machine, designed for inexpensive high-throughput material testing. A freeLoader can apply tensile and compression loads of 5 kN with +/- 1.8 N accuracy, and at rates ranging from 2 mm/min to 30 mm/min. Each freeLoader can perform two simultaneous tests and costs under US$4,000.
Walmart Ends Five Year Inventory Robot Contract with Bossa Nova Robotics
Walmart has ended the contract with Bossa Nova, a company producing stock monitoring robots, citing alternative solutions that work just as well. Ending the contract led Bossa Nova to lay off 50% of its staff.
Rebuilding A Hero (the Robot, Not The Sandwich)
Scott Baker has been rebuilding a Hero Jr. robot toy, using Raspberry Pi and ATMega328 as the computing units. By the end of the video, Scott is able to control the robot using a remote.
Building Walks With Robot Legs
By attaching 198 legs to a building, Shanghai Evolution Shift made it possible to relocate 7600 ton building by 62 meters and rotate it 21 degrees. The move took 18 days. Could this count as the heaviest legged robot we have seen?
Look Inside iPad Pro 11’s LiDAR Scanner
If you are wondering how the depth-sensing in the current generation of iPads work then this article will probably answer some of the questions you might have.
Publication of the Week - RI Seminar: Jeff Schneider: Self Driving Cars and AI (2019)
This seminar presents an overview of how autonomous driving technologies have been integrated with Uber cars. Jeff Schneider, former Engineer Lead at Uber, shows live examples of numerous tricky situations that autonomous vehicles have to go through. He also tells about all the different architectures developed during his career ranging from classic motion planners to more recent neural network architectures using deep learning. This is a fun video to watch and get to know a bit more about the whole process of creating an autonomous car.
Sponsored
Huge thanks to all of the Weekly Robotics supporters helping this project through Patreon and the following business partners:
Announcements
Compete in the 5th AI Driving Olympics (AI-DO)
The 5th edition of the Artificial Intelligence Driving Olympics (AI-DO 5) has officially started! The AI-DO serves to benchmark the state of the art of artificial intelligence in autonomous driving by providing standardized simulation and hardware environments for tasks related to multi-sensory perception and embodied AI. The introductory webinars for taking part in the challenge start today.
ROS World 2020 Schedule
ROS World 2020 is taking place on 12th of November. From what I can see on the website you can still register to the event. See you there!