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July 16th, 2010

Robots: Nanosystems - mp3

In today’s episode we’ll be looking at nanorobotics from the hardware side to the control. In particular, we’ll be talking to one of the most renowned world leaders in the field, Ari Requicha from the University of Southern California. Our second guest, Grégory Mermoud, is a senior PhD student at the Distributed Intelligent Systems and Algorithms Lab at the EPFL, and a rising expert in the field of distributed nanosystems.

Ari Requicha

Ari Requicha is the founder of the Laboratory for Molecular Robotics (LMR) at the University of Southern California which is a an interdisciplinary center whose ultimate goal is to control the structure of matter at the molecular scale. For the past 20 years, his research has been aimed at pushing the limits of the infinitely small, by developing systems for manipulating and automatically assembling nanoscale objects using Atomic Force Microscopes (AFMs). The ultimate goal is to design components such as nanosensors and nanoactuators for the nanoscale robots of the future.

However, a single nanorobot won’t be nearly enough to achieve any real-world application, such as monitoring your body for harmful bacteria. Therefor, Requicha is investigating algorithms for programming self-assembling and self-repairing distributed systems composed of large numbers of nanorobots.

In this interview, he gives us an expert’s overview of the field, from his perspective as editor-in-chief of IEEE Transactions on Nanotechnology and tells us about the future of molecular manufacturing and nanorobots.

Grégory Mermoud

Grégory Mermoud is a PhD student at the Distributed Intelligent Systems and Algorithms Lab at the EPFL, Switzerland. Mermoud’s research focuses on developing efficient and original methodologies for modeling and engineering self-organization and self-assembly of a broad range of systems from distributed robotics, micro/nanosystems, chemical systems, to intelligent agents.

During his interview, Grégory Mermoud gives us his views on the remaining challenges in the domain. Based on his ongoing research experience, he talks about which specific problems have to be studied in more depth in order to lead to potential breakthrough applications for nanorobotics.

Links:

Latest News:
For more information on this the centipede microrobot and the autonomous helicopter navigation system, have a look at the Robots Podcast Forum!

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July 2nd, 2010

Robots: R&D at iRobot - mp3

In this episode we look at the Research and Development (R&D) done at iRobot in the government field with lead roboticist Brian Yamauchi.

Brian Yamauchi

Brian Yamauchi is Lead Roboticisist at iRobot in Bedford, MA where he leads many of the government projects aimed at helping soldiers and first-response teams do their work.

During this interview, Yamauchi covers some of the developments done over the past 10 years, most of which are based on the PackBot robot. In particular, he’ll be telling us how they make these robots more robust and what sensors they’re using to increase autonomy, and even map out the world. One of these sensors, the ultra-wideband radar, was presented at this year’s ICRA conference in Alaska (paper).

Beyond the single PackBot, Yamauchi is now looking at how to make robots collaborate with examples in terrestrial and aerial robot team and mobile wireless transmitters for the quick deployment of communication networks.

Moreover, because many of the government robots developed at iRobot are being used in Iraq or Afghanistan, he’ll be telling us about the research in making good soldier-robot interactions and the ethics of military robots.

Finally, we’ll be learning more on the business of iRobot and the futuristic projects they’re working on such as the chembot and jambot projects that involve making soft and deformable robots (see video below).

Before working at iRobot, Yamauchi completed a PhD in Computer Science from Case Western Reserve University and worked at the Naval Research Laboratory (Washington, DC).

Poll

In this week’s episode we’ll be asking you about your take on the cross-fertilization between the military and robotics. Make sure you take the poll and debate in the comments section below or on our forum.

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Latest News:
For videos of this week’s Robots news, including the autonomous robot lifeguard and the sand swimming salamander robot, have a look at the forum at the Robots Forum.

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June 18th, 2010

Robots: Modeling Biology - mp3

In today’s episode we speak about modeling biology using robots and how lessons learned through this process can feedback into robotics. Our first guest, Barbara Webb, is a world renowned expert in the field with several seminal papers on the subject such as “Using robots to understand animal behavior.” This interview follows up on her previous interview with Talking Robots. Our second guest, Steffen Wischmann, from the EPFL and University of Lausanne gives us his in-depth overview of the cross-fertilization between biology and robotics and tells us about his interest in artificial evolution.

Barbara Webb

Barbara Webb is director of the Insect Robotics Group at the Institute of Perception, Action and Behaviour at the University of Edinburgh.

Her group researches and models the sensorimotor capabilities of insects ranging from simple reflexive behaviours such as the phonotaxis of crickets, to more complex capabilities such as multimodal integration, navigation and learning.

While her group carries out behavioural experiments on insects, they principally work on computational models of the underlying neural mechanisms, which are often embedded on robot hardware. We’ll be talking to her about insect inspired robotics as a control system design approach.

Steffen Wischmann

Steffen Wischmann is a Postdoctoral researcher based at the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at the EPFL and at the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Lausanne. His current research investigates the evolution and the neural mechanisms of cooperation and communication in biological systems using robotic models. After years of reading about the close interaction between robotics and biology, he gives us his opinion on when robotic models are interesting for biology, to what depth the models should replicate biology and the use of artificial evolution.

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Latest News:
For more information and a video on the Ballbot as well as this year’s robot novelties at the Automatica trade fair, visit the Robots Forum!

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June 4th, 2010

Robots: Online Human-Robot Interactions - mp3

Today’s episode was recorded at the Personal Robots Group at the MIT Media Lab in the middle of some beautifully expressive robots such as the Huggable, Tofu and Leonardo. There, we had a chance to speak with Sonia Chernova about the Mars Escape online game that is being used to learn about how humans and robots can work in teams. We then speak with Kenton Williams about the technical aspects behind one of their most expressive robots, Nexi.

Sonia Chernova

Sonia Chernova received her PhD from CMU, where she worked with Manuela Veloso (see Robots interview).

She is now working as a post-doc at the Personal Robots Group at the MIT Media Lab , directed by Cynthia Breazeal (see Talking Robots interview). At MIT, she’s looking at how to create robots that are able to assist and work with humans in a natural, predictable and robust way by gathering data through a new online game dubbed Mars Escape in a world premiere at using the Internet to study human-robot interactions. Anyone can participate in this experiment by taking on the role of a robot or an astronaut in an attempt to escape from their oxygen-deprived Mars-base without leaving anything important behind. Give it a try!

Using the data from thousands of players, Chernova will look at how to use the dialogs and actions performed online to generate a computational behavior model for each player. This model will then be tested online and then implemented in the Nexi Robot in a physical replica of the Mars Escape game that will be set-up in the Boston Museum of Science.

Finally, Chernova will be joining Worcester Polytechnic Institute as an Assistant Professor of Robotics Engineering in the fall of 2010.

Kenton Williams

Kenton Williams is expert in the bolts and nuts of Nexi. As a Mechanical Engineer, he will be telling us about the technical aspects and challenges behind the robot and his thesis on making Nexi learn physics!

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Latest News:
For more information on this episode’s news, including videos of Anybots’ and Willow Garage’s telepresence robots and more information on Microsoft’s surprising move, visit the Robots Forum.

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May 21st, 2010

Robots: The Nao Humanoid - mp3

Today’s episode was recorded at ICRA in Anchorage Alaska, one of the major conferences in robotics with a 1575 head count and 857 papers. At the robot exhibit, we met with the Vice President in Engineering of French-based company Aldebaran, Luc Degaudenzi and with his colleague Cédric Vaudel who is the Sales Manager for North America. Aldebaran makes the Nao humanoid robot which has been seen at Robocup, showing off his soccer skills. We also talk with Nao in our first ever interview of a robot! Nao will be presenting himself and his version of Star Wars.

Nao

Listen in to our podcast where Nao will present himself and tell us a story in our first interview ever with a robot!

Nao has four microphones fitted into his head and a voice recognition and analysis system. He can also express himself by reading out any file stored locally in his storage space or captured from a web site of RSS flow. Nao sees by means of two CMOS 640 x 480 cameras, which can capture up to 30 images per second. He can react to touch by means of a capacitive sensor placed on the top of his head. Finally, Nao can communicate through infrared senders/receivers or also by logging on to your local network via Wi-Fi.

Luc Degaudenzi

Luc Degaudenzi is director of research and development at Aldebaran Robotics where he manages a crowd of around 40 people working on electronics, mechatronics and fun software for the Nao robot. Before working at Aldebaran, Degaudenzi worked in the mobile phone sector as technical and program director at Matra, Alcatel and Sony Ericsson. He’ll be telling us about the Nao platform, its possibilities and its first kicks at Robocup.

Cédric Vaudel

Cédric Vaudel is North America Sales Manager at Aldebaran Robotics.

After working for IBM for several years, he decided to take part in the robolution. Now, he coordinates business priorities and strategy deployment of Aldebaran Robotics in the whole region of America. He’ll be telling us about the origins of the name Nao and where he thinks the Humanoid market will be going in the future!

Links:

Latest News:

For more information on this episode’s news, including a video of ABB’s robot drummer as well as details on the promising echolocation device for robots and the 4 nanometer robot, visit the Robots Forum.

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