Last week, I panicked about YouTube canceling RSS, but it turns out it was a false alarm; all is well now! I’m seeing a massive increase in robotics paper preprints, which means one thing: ICRA 2024 is near. Busy and exciting days are ahead! 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:
TartanDrive 2.0
It’s been ~1.5 years since we featured TartanDrive in this newsletter, and now TartanDrive 2.0 is out! It is (or will be when all the files are uploaded) a large-scale off-road driving dataset containing 7 hours of data gathered over 255 acres, information from various LiDAR sensors, cameras, GPS+IMU, and wheel encoders. The exciting feature of this work is a series of tools that can filter the dataset based on the metadata, allowing you to define bounding boxes for areas of interest, filtering by vehicle speed or time of day. If you’d like just a quick overview of this work, check out this video.
New Robots To Explore New Areas Of Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant
Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) demonstrated two new robots for inspection at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. I find it fascinating that the robots play such a big part in the inspection and cleaning efforts at that site.
beluga
Beluga is “a general implementation of Monte Carlo Localization (MCL) algorithms written in C++17, and a ROS package that can be used in ROS 1 and ROS 2”. The video included in the repo’s readme shows quite a nice performance with Ekumen’s Andino robot.
Zellij
Zellij can be an attractive terminal workspace alternative to tmux for those more software-oriented readers. The software supports panes and floating windows(!) inside your terminal sessions.
Explaining Kalman Filters with the Crazyflie
Kimberly McGuire created an excellent write-up about Kalman Filter that can be useful for beginners and experienced roboticists who could use a recap. What I appreciate about this blog post is that Kimberly links to Bitcraze firmware, where you can see the implementation of various filter steps.
aerugo
As per the project description, aerugo is a safety-critical real-time operating system written in Rust that targets an ARM Cortex-M7-based microcontroller. It’s nice to see Rust gaining traction for embedded applications.
Publication of the Week - BrainSLAM: SLAM on Neural Population Activity Data
I must say, we have already covered a lot of methods for SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping), and yet, a new and exotic one has emerged. This paper presents SLAM based on brain recordings from rodents. The approach presented in this paper builds on RatSLAM for ROS, which was developed based on how the hippocampus of a rat brain works. However, the author’s method takes it one step further by using deep learning to decode information from rats’ neural data while navigating in a 2D maze. This is the first of its kind to demonstrate a spatial map from brain recordings.
Business
Snap Recalls Lithium-Ion Battery Sold for Pixy Flying Cameras Due to Fire Hazard
“Consumers should immediately stop using the Pixy Flying Camera, remove the battery and stop charging it. […] Snap has received four reports of the battery overheating and bulging, resulting in one minor battery fire and one minor injury.”
Agtech startup Small Robot Company shutting down
“Small Robot Company (SRC) is shutting down as it failed to get the funding needed to reach its next phase. The company has entered liquidation after an extended battle for survival. Despite having a signed term sheet, the awaited investment failed to materialize before the company’s financial runway ran out”.
Events
- ROS Meetup Singapore 2024: Feb 07, 2024. Singapore, Singapore
- ROS Meetup Munich 2024: Feb 07, 2024. Munich, Germany
- HRI (Human robot interaction) 2024: Mar 11 - Mar 15, 2024. Boulder, Colorado, United states of America
- 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
- Robotics Summit & Expo: May 01 - May 02, 2024. Boston, United states of America
- Open Hardware Summit 2024: May 03 - May 04, 2024. Montreal, Canada
For more robotic events, check out our event page.