The other day, I started two charity auctions for WOŚP, a Polish non-profit organization that is purchasing equipment for hospitals. In the auction, you can buy an advertisement in this very newsletter or a one hour robotic consultation with me (did I ever mention I do this for the living?). The auctions are structured so that the proceeds go straight to charity. As usual, the publication of the week section is manned by Rodrigo.
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NASA regains contact with mini-helicopter on Mars
NASA has lost contact with Ingenuity during its 72nd flight. Given that the communication was disrupted during the landing, I’ve assumed the worst, but fortunately, the little guy seems to be online! The team must assess what happened and determine whether the helicopter can fly again.
The results of the Moon Landing by the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM)
Since we are on the topic of landing, JAXA made a successful one on the Moon with their Smart Lander for Investigating Moon. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the solar cells were not generating power, likely leading to the mission finishing earlier than hoped.
IMU Preintegration Basics
Tangram Vision has released the final version of their IMU in-depth series of blog posts. As always, the team created some very informative content, and I highly recommend checking it out if you want to learn something today. You will find all the links to the previous posts at the beginning of the write-up.
Boiler log feeder robot. Part 12. (Project complete)
Here is the best kind of DIY robot project: a robot that actually improves your life. This gantry robot can pick up wooden logs from a shelf and deliver them to a furnace to keep the central heating going in Anders’ place. This video discusses some very interesting considerations about robots’ non-rigidness that can be eye-opening for some projects.
Kitepower’s Wind Energy System Fits in a Shipping Container
Kitepower aims to replace windmills with a portable winch system to generate energy. The entire system fits in a standard shipping container. If you like learning about this kind of system, I can’t recommend the documentary on Makani enough. If you like following engineering journeys, you will love this one.
Disney Imagineer Makes History
I loved this video from Disney Parks showcasing some of Lanny Smoot’s work. Some of his inventions are very cool animatronics, but the omnidirectional floor shown at the end could be a game changer for some industries, such as robot teleoperation and VR. Big thanks to Rodrigo for sharing this in our WR Slack!
DTC: Deep Tracking Control
Learning from 23 years of trajectory learning and optimization, the researchers at the Robotic Systems Lab at ETH Zurich have arrived at a very capable locomotion system for quadrupeds that can deal with tricky terrain and terrain with sparse contact locations. Cool stuff!
Publication of the Week - Enhancing Lidar-based Object Detection in Adverse Weather using Offset Sequences in Time
When it comes to autonomous vehicles, safety is always a humongous concern, mainly when it comes to adverse weather conditions. This paper presents an enhanced Lidar-based object detection leveraging offset sequences in time. Situations with rain and fog can be challenging for Lidar sensors and require some filtering or pre-processing. Instead, the authors developed a different approach using random temporal offset between sequences, making the models more robust against noisy data as tested in many datasets and also cranked up the detection performance time.
Business
farm-ng raises Series A funding to scale Amiga robot and AI for small to midsize farms
“farm-ng said it has completed its Series A funding round, raising more than $10 million to further develop the Amiga robot for agriculture”.
iRobot shares tank 30% on report EU plans to block Amazon acquisition
iRobot’s shares plunged over 30% following reports that the European Union plans to block Amazon’s $1.7 billion acquisition of the robot vacuum maker. The European Commission, serving as the EU’s competition watchdog, initiated an in-depth investigation into the acquisition, focusing on concerns that Amazon might stifle competition by manipulating its online marketplace. A final decision is expected by February 14.
Events
- ROS Meetup Karlsruhe 2024: Jan 23, 2024. Karlsruhe, Germany
- ROS Meetup Eindhoven 2024: Jan 25, 2024. Eindhoven, Netherlands
- ROS Meetup Lagos 2024: Feb 03, 2024. Lagos, Nigeria
- FOSdem 2024: Feb 03 - Feb 04, 2024. Brussels, Belgium
- ROS Meetup Munich 2024: Feb 07, 2024. Munich, Germany
- ICARA 2024: Feb 22 - Feb 24, 2024. Athens, Greece
- European Robotics Forum 2024: Mar 13 - Mar 15, 2024. Remini, Italy
- R-24 Robots, Automation and Drones 2024: Mar 13 - Mar 15, 2024. Odense, Denmark
- RoboSoft 2024: Apr 14 - Apr 17, 2024. San Diego, United States of America
- Xponential: Apr 22 - Apr 25, 2024. San Diego, United States of America
For more robotic events, check out our event page.