Berkeley News April 24, 2019 A team of researchers in the US (UC Berkeley, industry, NASA) started designing these “tensegrity” robots — which combine the forces of tension and compression to create stable structures in hopes of creating a robot that could safely fall from space to explore Saturn’s moon, Titan. The new soccer-ball-shaped robots, created by engineers at UC Berkeley and Squishy Robotics, have the remarkable ability to fall from a height of more than 600 feet and be no worse for wear. Built of a network of rods linked by contracting cables, they can also shapeshift in order […]
Tag Archives: Autonomous systems and robotics
The military wants to build barracks autonomously
Fedscoop April 26, 2019 The Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) is looking for companies to help build the barracks of the future. They want tech that works with minimal operator input, can be deployed in about an hour and is able to operate in a range of different conditions. Beyond these few directives, the solicitation doesn’t offer much specification on what it is looking for. Interested companies have until May 7 to respond to the Commercial Solutions Opening (CSO)…read more.
Robots to autocomplete Soldier tasks
Science Daily April 4, 2019 The Army envisions a future battlefield wrought with teams of Soldiers and autonomous systems. As part of this future vision, the Army is looking to create technologies that can predict states and behaviors of the individual to create a more optimized team. A team of researchers in the US (ARL, Columbia University, SUNY Buffalo, University of Pennsylvania, Carnegie Mellon University, UC Santa Barbara) is looking at ways the dynamics and architecture of the human brain may be coordinated to predict such behaviors and consequently optimize team performance. While this research focuses on a single person, […]
Fleets of autonomous satellites to coordinate tasks among themselves
Phys.org March 27, 2019 Working under the CORDIS project NetSat researchers in Germany aim to launch four small satellites, at the end of this year, to orbit the Earth and test formations with varying degrees of autonomy, with light-touch supervision from ground control. Each satellite weighs 3 kilogram and they will be placed in low Earth orbit. The satellites will be able to coordinate with each other over distances from about 100 kilometres down to 10 metres, as well as change their formation depending on the tasks they need to perform. AI can make a satellite aware of its surroundings and […]
The first walking robot that moves without GPS
Science Daily February 13, 2019 To navigate safely in hostile environment, desert ants assess their direction from the polarized pattern of skylight and judge the distance traveled based on both a stride-counting method and the optic flow. Using this concept a team of researchers in France has designed AntBot equipped with an optical compass used to determine its direction by means of polarized light, and by an optical movement sensor directed to the sun to measure the distance covered. Armed with this information, AntBot was able to explore its environment and to return on its own to its base, with […]
Autonomous drones that can ‘see’ and fly intelligently
Phys.org February 6, 2019 Researchers in Australia used an Xbox Kinect sensor as an input camera to help drones ‘see’ their environment. They developed algorithms to process the video footage image by image, to help the drones know their own speed, motion, and to detect obstacles so they can reach their target position. The algorithm uses the images the drone ‘sees’ and compares the same pixel to detect the differences in 2-D images and calculates the speed and location of drones in 3-D space. As the RGB-D cameras are still in their infancy, they suffer from performance drawbacks such as […]
New Foldable Drone Flies Through Narrow Holes in Rescue Missions
Science Daily December 12, 2018 Researchers in Switzerland propose a novel, simpler, yet effective morphing design for quadrotors consisting of a frame with four independently rotating arms that fold around the main frame. To guarantee stable flight at all times, they exploit an optimal control strategy that adapts on the fly to the drone morphology. Using a fully autonomous quadrotor relying solely on onboard visual-inertial sensors and compute, they demonstrated the versatility of the proposed adaptive morphology in different tasks, such as negotiation of narrow gaps, close inspection of vertical surfaces, and object grasping and transportation…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
DARPA Seeks Proposals for Third OFFSET Swarm Sprint, Awards Contracts for Second
DARPA News October 12, 2018 DARPA’s OFFensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics (OFFSET) envisions swarms of 250 collaborative autonomous systems providing critical insights to small ground military units in urban areas with limited sight lines constrain communications and mobility. Swarm sprints allow for incorporation of emerging technology and new performers throughout the life of the program. Each of five core sprints focuses on one or more of the key OFFSET thrust – or topic – areas: swarm tactics, swarm autonomy, human-swarm teaming, virtual environment, and physical testbed. Each topic emphasizes slightly different perspectives, but ultimately aims to enable breakthroughs in swarm capabilities…read more. Solicitation
Robots learn by checking in on team members
Phys.org June 13, 2018 Researchers in Saudi Arabia have developed the software and hardware needed to coordinate a team of UAVs that can communicate and work toward a common goal. They custom-built UAVs and incorporated a lightweight, low-power computing and wi-fi module on each one so that they could talk to each other during flight. Each drone makes its own plan based on a forecast of optimistic views of their teammates’ actions and pessimistic views of the opponent’s actions. They used Capture the Flag game scenario to test the drones. Their algorithm worked well in both indoor and outdoor arenas […]
Russian scientists created ‘flying’ gas chromatograph
Eurekalert June 18, 2018 The portable gas microchromatograph developed by researchers in Russia weighs a little more than a kilogram and it completely replaces bulky laboratory devices. It can provide accurate data on the composition of the atmosphere, qualitative and quantitative composition of oil and gas, as well as analyse biomarkers in exhaled human air within a few minutes. It can perform an operational analysis of the state of the atmosphere at altitudes of up to 1000 meters and within a radius of 2 km from the source, record and track the level of concentration of substances in the air […]