A selection of items about robotics:
** The SpotMini looks to be Boston Dynamics‘s first major commercial robot. Here is a video released this week:
It only takes 10 Spotpower (SP) to haul a truck across the Boston Dynamics parking lot (~1 degree uphill, truck in neutral). These Spot robots are coming off the production line now and will be available for a range of applications soon.
** Boston Dynamics robots for warehouse work include Handle and Pick:
Handle is a mobile manipulation robot designed for logistics. Handle autonomously performs mixed SKU pallet building and depalletizing after initialization and localizing against the pallets. The on-board vision system on Handle tracks the marked pallets for navigation and finds individual boxes for grasping and placing. When Handle places a boxes onto a pallet, it uses force control to nestle each box up against its neighbors. The boxes used in the video weigh about 5 Kg (11 lbs), but the robot is designed to handle boxes up to (15 Kg) (33 lb). This version of Handle works with pallets that are 1.2 m deep and 1.7 m tall (48 inches deep and 68 inches tall).
Using a combination of vision sensors and deep learning software, Pick works with commercial robotic arms to palletize and depalletize boxes. Pick enables logistics, retail, and manufacturing companies to achieve high rates of box moving with minimal set up or training for both multi-SKU and single-SKU pallets.
** “Evolution of Boston Dynamics Robots“:
** Backflipping MIT Mini Cheetah – Mini cheetah is the first four-legged robot to do a backflip | MIT News
MIT’S new mini cheetah robot is the first four-legged robot to do a backflip. At only 20 pounds the limber quadruped can bend and swing its legs wide, enabling it to walk either right side up or upside down. The robot can also trot over uneven terrain about twice as fast as an average person’s walking speed.
** Cassie: Dynamic Planning on Stairs from Agility Robotics
This video shows the progression of increasingly complex gait strategies from ATRIAS through recent results with Cassie. Specifically, Cassie’s controller now includes planned footstep placements in addition to dynamic balancing, allowing access to substantially more complicated terrains.
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