Unmanned Maritime Systems Archives - The Robot Report

NASA spinoff Seatrec offers a new power source for underwater robots

Brianna Wessling — Sat, 15 Jun 2024 12:35:24 +0000

Seatrec’s infiniTE float is a subsurface ocean profiling platform that uses new power-generation technology. | Source: Seatrec

Around 80% of the ocean floor remains uncharted today, and for good reason. The deep sea is an unforgiving environment. Between intense pressure, zero visibility, and extremely cold temperatures, individuals and organizations looking to shed some light on the area have massive challenges to overcome.

Robots will likely be a key driver of this exploration, but they have their own limitations. One of the most pressing among these is power. Batteries in subsurface sensors often rely on solar energy or any other kind of renewable energy. This means when the batteries die, they’re either left dead in the water or recharged by a ship that can cost up to $50,000 a day to operate.

Seatrec Inc. hopes to provide a new kind of power source using technology created at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California and licensed from the California Institute of Technology. The Vista, Calif.-based company said its technology can allow robots to work in the open ocean indefinitely and without any intervention.

Yi Chao, the company’s founder and CEO, spent 15 years at JPL studying the ocean from space after earning his doctorate in ocean sciences. At NASA, he could see firsthand how difficult it is to access many of the world’s open oceans.

“I really had an opportunity to know the challenges of underwater robotics, and especially energy, and settled on this particular bottleneck that I want to address,” Chao said.

NASA’s Aquarius instrument aboard the joint U.S. and Argentinian Satélite de Aplicaciones Científicas mapped the surface salinity of Earth’s oceans. To calibrate the instrument, a JPL team distributed robotic floats. The experience helped inspire Yi Chao’s invention of an inexhaustible power source. Credit: NASA

Robots to be powered by their environment

With the help of two JPL colleagues, funding from JPL, and then a JPL contract with the U.S. Navy, Chao set out to find a different kind of power source for subsea robots. The team is using phase-change material to generate power.

Phase-change materials are substances that can transition between phases, usually between solid and liquid, at certain desirable temperatures. Chao’s team is taking advantage of the volume change that comes with a change in state to generate power.

“We use the kinetic energy from that volume expansion to spin the motor and then turn the mechanical energy into electricity, and now you can recharge your battery,” said Chao.

This concept is similar to the way a steam engine works by using water’s expansion into steam to turn a motor. The solid-to-liquid transition, however, only creates about a 10% expansion. This means the team has to make the most of the small amount of energy the transition generates. This is why the method has been unused for so long.

When used in a robot, the material’s temperature changes when the robot rises and falls through the ocean, something it will typically do anyway. When exploring the deepest parts of the ocean, robots still need to occasionally surface to determine their position via GPS and transmit the data they’ve collected to satellites.

The team chose a common industry-grade, paraffin-family material with a melting point of around 50ºF, right between the typical ocean temperature of about 40ºF and the surface of around 70ºF. While this material is ideal for the average ocean temperatures, it can be swapped out to better fit different environments.

Chao and his colleagues tested a prototype float at JPL in 2011 and then tested an underwater glider that operated under the same principle but could also move horizontally. Later, Chao exclusively licensed the invention from the California Institute of Technology, which manages JPL. He founded Seatrec in 2016.

Seatrec sees a growing market for its technology

Seatrec is currently selling its first power module for diving floats to research labs, universities, government researchers, and the military. Chao said he expects a lot of growth in the market. Possible customers include:

Communications companies that are interested in laying transoceanic internet cables
Companies drilling for oil and gas, or building wind farms offshore
Environmental conservation groups that want to learn more about the locations of marine habitats
Companies managing offshore operations, including oil wells, wind turbines, and fish farms, that need underwater sensors to monitor conditions and equipment
Any company laying cables or mining for rare-earth elements on the seafloor. These companies need to asses the local environments and wildlife before these operations.

Moving forward, Seatrec plans to commercialize a system to power underwater gliders using its solid-to-liquid phase-change technology.

The company also plans to develop a power station that would cycle a liquid-to-gas phase-change material through ocean depths. This could create an order of magnitude more energy, allowing users to recharge more robots at sea, it said.

Seatrec has a grant from the Navy to develop a power station on the Arctic ice, where it can take advantage of the difference between water temperatures and the colder air above the ice.

The post NASA spinoff Seatrec offers a new power source for underwater robots appeared first on The Robot Report.

Elmo Motion Control to show innovations at 2024 Robotics Summit

The Robot Report Staff — Tue, 30 Apr 2024 12:00:06 +0000

Elmo demonstrates its technologies in a gantry robot. Source: Elmo Motion Control

From industrial automation and healthcare applications to increasingly diverse use cases, robots need precise and reliable motion control. Elmo Motion Control Ltd., a global technology leader, plans to display its latest innovations at events across the Americas including this week’s Robotics Summit & Expo in Boston.

The company, which supports industrial and collaborative robots, as well as automated guided vehicles (AGVs), smart warehouse systems, remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), and dispensing products, will also exhibit next week at the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston and Automate in Chicago.

“We eagerly anticipate exhibiting at these three industry events in three major U.S. cities in a whirlwind timeframe,” stated Elizabeth Victor, director of sales in the Americas at Elmo Motion Control. “We are thrilled to meet trade show visitors and showcase our comprehensive line of servo drives and our newest advanced innovations.”

“Our innovations boast outstanding capabilities, such as fully certified functional safety, and continue raising the industry’s technology bar,” she added. “We are particularly excited about showing a glimpse of the future with innovations significantly enhancing any machine’s performance.”

Platinum line includes Bassoon with functional safety

Platinum Bassoon Servo Drive. Source: Elmo Motion Control

Elmo Motion Control said its Platinum line of servo drives demonstrates its “commitment to innovation and excellence.” It includes the recently launched Platinum Bassoon, this line’s first AC drive, which includes the leading certified functional safety capabilities.

The Platinum Bassoon supports up to 10 amps at 230 volts and has up to 3.25 kW of continuous power. The drive is compatible with brushless, DC brush, linear motors, or voice coil, said the company.

At each show in May, Elmo is providing an opportunity to see its latest technologies. It will show its new multi-axis servo drives with full functional safety and the next-generation motion controller with artificial intelligence.

At Automate, visitors can see a collaborative robot with full functional safety and a life-sciences robot from Elmo customers Wyzo and Peak Robotics.

About Elmo and the Robotics Summit

Elmo Motion Control said it has been a motion-control technology leader for over 35 years, with millions of servo drives working 24/7 worldwide. The company‘s offerings range from design to delivery of servo drives, network-based multi-axis motion controllers, and integrated servo motors.

Elmo said all of its systems can be customized and configured using proprietary software tools for machines in any industry, such as semiconductors, lasers, robots, drones, industrial automation, extreme environments, and more. The company employs more than 350 people.

Its headquarters in Petah Tikva, Israel, and offices in the U.S., China, Germany, Italy, Korea, and Singapore, plus a manufacturing facility in Poland. Elmo has a worldwide distribution network. As of 2022, Elmo is a Bosch Rexroth company.

Elmo Motion Control will show its technologies at Booth 314 at the Robotics Summit & Expo on May 1 and 2. To schedule a one-on-one meeting, register here: https://www.elmomc.com/media/events/

The Robotics Summit & Expo, which will be in the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, will include keynotes and sessions with industry experts, more than 200 exhibitors, a MassRobotics Engineering Career Fair, and several networking opportunities. Registration is now open for the event.

The post Elmo Motion Control to show innovations at 2024 Robotics Summit appeared first on The Robot Report.

Advanced Navigation’s Hydrus explores shipwrecks in the Indian Ocean

Brianna Wessling — Sun, 21 Apr 2024 12:30:31 +0000

Advanced Navigation’s Hydrus micro autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) deployed. | Source: Advanced Navigation

Advanced Navigation is bringing humans closer to the ocean with Hydrus, a relatively small underwater drone. The company recently sent Hydrus to the depths of the Rottnest ship graveyard, located in the Indian Ocean and just off the coast of Western Australia.

The Sydney, Australia-based developer of AI robotics and navigation technology said that upon seeing the gathered data, the team discovered a 210-ft. (64-m) shipwreck scattered across the sea floor. This means the wreck was more than twice the size of a blue whale.

“We’ve found through all of our testing that Hydrus is very reliable, and it will complete its mission and come to the surface or come to its designated return point,” Alec McGregor, Advanced Navigation’s photogrammetry specialist, told The Robot Report. “And then you can just scoop it up with a net from the side of the boat.”

Robot can brave the ocean’s unexplored depths

Humans have only explored and charted 24% of the ocean, according to Advanced Navigation. The unexplored parts are home to more than 3 million undiscovered shipwrecks, and 1,819 recorded wrecks are lying off Western Australia’s shore alone.

These shipwrecks can hold keys to our understanding of past culture, history, and science, said the company.

The Rottnest graveyard is a particularly dense area for these abandoned ships. Beginning in the 1900s, the area became a burial ground for ships, naval vessels, aircraft, and secretive submarines. A majority of these wrecks haven’t been discovered because the depth ranges from 164 to 656 ft. (50 to 200 m).

Traditionally, there are two ways of gathering information from the deep sea, explained McGregor. The first is divers, who have to be specially trained to reach the depths Advanced Navigation is interested in studying.

“Some of the wrecks that we’ve been looking at are in very deep water, so 60 m [196.8 ft.] for this particular wreck, which is outside of the recreational diving limit,” McGregor said. “So, you actually have to go into tech diving.”

“And when you go deeper with all of this extra equipment, it tends to just increase the risks associated with going to depth,” he said. “So, you need to have special training, you need to have support vessels, and you also have to be down in the water for a long period of time.”

The second option is to use remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) or autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). While this method doesn’t involve putting people at risk, it can still be expensive.

“Some of the drawbacks with using traditional methods include having to have big support vessels,” McGregor said. “And getting the actual ROVs in and out of the water sometimes requires a crane, whereas with the Hydrus, you can just chuck it off the side of the boat.”

“So, with Hydrus, you’re able to reduce the costs of operation,” he added. “You’re also able to get underwater data super easily and super quickly by just chucking a Hydrus off the boat. It can be operated with one person.”

Advanced Navigation uses ‘wet electronics’

One of the biggest challenges with underwater robotics, McGregor said, is keeping important electronics dry. Conventional ROVs do this with pressure chambers.

“Traditional ROVs have big chambers which basically keep all the electronics dry,” he noted. “But from a mechanical point of view, if you want to go deeper, you need to have thicker walls so that they can resist the pressure at depth.”

“If you need thicker walls, that increases the weight of the robot,” said McGregor. “And if you increase the weight, but you still want the robot to be buoyant, you have to increase the size. It’s just this kind of spiral of increasing the size to increase the buoyancy.”

“What we’ve managed to do with Hydrus is we have designed pressure-tolerant electronics, and we use a method of actually having what we call ‘wet electronics,'” McGregor said. “This involves basically potting the electronics in a plastic material. And we don’t use it to keep the structural integrity of the robot. So we don’t need a pressure vessel because we’ve managed to protect our electronics that way.”

Once it’s underwater, Hydrus operates fully autonomously. Unlike traditional ROVs, the system doesn’t require a tether to navigate underwater, and the Advanced Navigation team has limited real-time communication capabilities.

“We do have very limited communication with Hydrus through acoustic communications,” McGregor said. “The issue with acoustic communications is that there’s not a lot of data that can be transferred. We can get data such as the position of Hydrus, and we can also send simple commands such as ‘abort mission’ or ‘hold position’ or ‘pause mission,’ but we can’t physically control it.”

Hydrus provides high-resolution data

While Hydrus has impressive autonomous capabilities, it doesn’t find wrecks all on its own. In this case, McGregor said, Advanced Navigation worked closely with the Western Australian (WA) Museum to find the wreck.

The museum gave the company a rough idea of where a shipwreck could be. Then the team sent Hydrus on a reconnaissance mission to determine the wreck’s exact location.

“When we got Hydrus back on board, we were able to offload all the data and reconstruct the mission based on the images and from that, we were then able to see where the shipwreck was,” McGregor said. “One of the good things about Hydrus is that we can actually get geo-referenced data onto the water with auxiliary systems that we have on the boat.”

Hydrus gathered 4K geo-referenced imagery and video footage. Curtin University HIVE, which specializes in shipwreck photogrammetry, used this data to rebuild a high-resolution 3D digital twin of the wreck. Ross Anderson, a curator at the WA Museum, closely examined the digital twin.

Anderson found that the wreck was an over 100-year-old coal hulk from Fremantle Port’s bygone days. Historically, these old iron ships were used to service steamships in Western Australia.

In the future, the team is interested in exploring other shipwrecks, like the SS Koombana, an ultra-luxury passenger ship. The ship ferried more than 150 passengers before it vanished into a cyclone in 1912.

However, Advanced Navigation isn’t just interested in gaining information from shipwrecks.

“Another thing we’re doing with a lot of this data is actually coral reef monitoring. So we’re making 3D reconstructions of coral reefs, and we’re working with quite a few customers to do this,” McGregor said.

Hydrus reduced the surveying costs for this particular mission by up to 75%, according to the company. This enabled the team to conduct more frequent and extensive surveying of the wreck in a shorter period of time.

The post Advanced Navigation’s Hydrus explores shipwrecks in the Indian Ocean appeared first on The Robot Report.

CMU, NASA JPL collaborate to make EELS snake robot to explore distant oceans

Brianna Wessling — Sat, 13 Apr 2024 12:00:39 +0000

Version 1.0 of the EELS robot during field testing in Alberta, Canada, in September 2023. | Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech

In a collaboration that was 17 years in the making, Carnegie Mellon University, or CMU, researchers worked with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory to create an autonomous snake-like robot. The Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor, or EELS, is a self-propelled robot. NASA scientists said they hope to use EELS to search for signs of life in the ocean beneath the icy crust of Saturn’s Enceladus moon.

EELS was developed at NASA’s JPL with collaboration from Carnegie Mellon, Arizona State University, and the University of California, San Diego. Howie Choset, CMU’s Kavčić-Moura Professor of Computer Science in the School of Computer Science, Matt Travers, a senior systems scientist at the school’s Robotics Institute (RI), and Andrew Orekhov, a project scientist in the RI, contributed to the project.

The resulting robot can navigate extreme terrains, including ice, sand, rocks, cliff walls, deep craters, underground lava tubes, and glaciers. The CMU team developed the controllers for the robot. In addition, an early prototype used modules developed by HEBI Robotics, a university spinout that Choset founded in 2014.

“Enceladus is essentially covered with water,” Choset told The Robot Report. “But it’s underneath the rock that forms the moon. In the South Pole, the rock and ice are about 2 km [1.2 mi.] thick, and there are geysers that spit the water out from the underground ocean into space. So, there’s a belief that if you fly a spacecraft to Enceladus, land, and then get into the geysers, you may be able to swim in this extraterrestrial ocean.”

EELS snake robot built for space applications

“So, we’ve been working on snake robots for a very long time,” Choset said. “And what’s nice about snake robots in general, is they can use their many joints and their slender physique to thread through tightly packed volumes and get to locations that people in machinery otherwise can’t access.”

This makes snake robots good for many applications, including search and rescue, he said. In this case, EELS will use these capabilities to wriggle into cracks in Enceladus’ layer of ice. EELS stands out from other snake robots because of its “wheels.” These wheels look more like corkscrews than traditional wheels, said Choset.

“When those corkscrews rotate, they kind of penetrate the ice a little bit, but also gives the mechanism the ability to roll forward,” he explained. “So the robot has the ability to propel itself, not only with the snake-like motion but also these corkscrew wheels that allow it to traverse icy surfaces really quickly.”

Choset said these wheels will help the robot to better move across ice until it can find a crack or geyser hole to crawl into.

“The autonomy that we developed is the robot’s ability to get into a tight space, and then use the constraints of that tight space to propel itself forward,” he said.

But that’s only half of the battle. Once the EELS robot has found its way into one of these holes, it has to be able to swim through Enceladus’ ocean to search for potential signs of life. Choset’s team already had experience building swimming snake robots.

“We built a variety of snake robots, but the one we most recently built was a swimming one called HUMRS, which stands for ‘Hardened Underwater Modular Robot Snake,'” Choset said. The CMU team was able to apply what it learned while developing HUMRS to this project with NASA JPL.

Connections bring the right people on board

Choset’s long-held connections within the industry brought him onto the EELS project, along with his expertise in designing snake-like robots.

“I went to Caltech as a graduate student, and JPL was part of Caltech,” he said. “So, whenever there’s an opportunity to work with JPL, the Jet Propulsion Lab, I jump on it, because it reminds me of my young graduate student days.”

It wasn’t just the chance to work with JPL that brought Choset on board, however. He was recruited by Rohan Thakkar, a researcher who worked in Choset’s group 17 years ago as a high school student.

“I think it’s important for people to realize that it’s not just a bunch of engineers getting together to build some mechanism as if they’re reading from a recipe or a cookbook,” Choset said. “Engineering is very important, but I want people to recognize the engineers behind the engineering.”

Choset said that personal connections, like the one between him and his CMU students, are what keeps the industry running.

Editor’s note: HEBI Robots will exhibit at Booth 448-12 at the Robotics Summit & Expo, which will be on May 1 and 2 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. Registration is now open.

The post CMU, NASA JPL collaborate to make EELS snake robot to explore distant oceans appeared first on The Robot Report.

Nauticus Robotics secures over $12M to propel Aquanaut’s autonomous exploration

The Robot Report Staff — Fri, 09 Feb 2024 19:03:25 +0000

Aquanaut is a subsea robot designed for inspection and maintenance of undersea platforms. | Credit: Nauticus

Nauticus Robotics Inc. this week announced that it has secured $12 million in a second tranche of investment that began in late 2023. The Webster, Texas-based company said it plans to use the funding to expedite commercialization of its flagship robot, the Aquanaut.

This month, Nauticus said it expects to begin the final certification of its remotely-operated vehicle (ROV) for commercial operations in depths ranging from 200 to 2,000 m (656 to 6,561 ft.). The company is preparing for Aquanaut‘s first job, inspecting a deep-water production facility of a major oil and gas company in the Gulf of Mexico.

Nauticus retools management on course to commercialization

Nauticus Robotics stated in a release the additional investment demonstrates ongoing support from its current stakeholders and is a part of strategic initiatives launched by its board of directors to enhance operations and financial sustainability. As part of this process, the company has assembled a new senior management team.

In January, Nauticus promoted John W. Gibson Jr. to the position of temporary CEO. He took over for departing co-founder Nicolaus Radford, who outlined his vision for the company and Aquanaut on The Robot Report Podcast Episode 100.

Gibson brings more than 35 years of experience in the energy and IT industries, including serving as president of Halliburton Energy Services. He was the president of Nauticus since last October and has been on its board since 2022.

Other recent executive appointments include Victoria Hay as interim chief financial officer and Nicholas Bigney as general counsel. Nauticus announced both in the fourth quarter of 2023. JD Yamokoski, the company’s longtime chief technology officer, has remained and rounds out its executive management team.

Aquanaut to take on new missions

Nauticus Robotics asserted that its new financial and business structure will help it provide proven and innovative systems for the “blue economy.” In the short term, this means working with oil and gas companies to improve inspections of underwater infrastructure.

In the long term, Nauticus said, the next generation of Aquanaut autonomous undersea robots will be used for maintenance and repair. Once offshore testing of the new new Aquanaut Mk2 vehicle is complete, the company plans to start working on a deepwater field.

“We currently have the intellectual property, prototypes, and the talent to deliver robust products and services,” said Gibson. “Team Nauticus is now laser-focused on converting our intellectual property, including both patents and trade secrets, into differentiated solutions that bring significant value to both commercial and government customers.”

“We are shifting from prototypes to creating reliable solutions for the blue economy,” he added. “We are pleased that our financing partners worked with us to address the ratchet provisions associated with earlier issued convertible securities, thereby enabling potential equity investment from others. We appreciate the engagement of the company’s board in addressing earlier challenges, and, as a result of our recent changes, are excited about the year ahead.”

Since becoming the president of Nauticus in October, Gibson said he has been assessing the company’s go-to-market strategy. Gibson acknowledged that finances and the ROV market required a realignment.

“The market sees our potential and supports our vision of delivering full autonomy to subsea operations,” he said. “However, the diffusion rate of our solutions requires a significant shift from the current paradigm of human operations to autonomous operations.”

“To eliminate the inertia to change, we recast our vision,” explained Gibson. “We realized the fastest path to full autonomy would be through the deployment of ‘tethered/augmented autonomy.’ This allows the customer and operators to retain the ability to intervene while simultaneously allowing Nauticus to gather the operational data needed to train our fully autonomous solutions for the future.”

Nauticus toolKITT works on other subsea systems

Nauticus Robotics noted that its software design doesn’t depend on a specific platform and that it can be used on any subsurface vehicle. The Nauticus toolKITT software has already been put to use on several competitor ROVs for military work.

The company claimed that this product strategy makes it a “multi-platform operating system for a vast array of vehicles already deployed.” By deploying “tethered autonomy” onto current platforms, Nauticus said it expects to improve the efficiency of these underwater vehicles by more than 20%, while also lowering emissions and making all underwater robots safer.

In addition, this approach should yield an additional revenue stream for already-developed intellectual property, said Nauticus. This also provides real application feedback, helping to prioritize the product development roadmap, it said.

The commercialization of this new subsea vehicle operating system will continue to fund the development of the fully autonomous and untethered future for the Aquanaut platform.

“What Nauticus has planned can truly revolutionize the entire industry – and I don’t use that term lightly,” said Sean Halpin, head of autonomous solutions at the company. “We can now normalize [the] performance of ROV operators because you will no longer have disparities between [the] skill levels of employees. This provides substantial safeguards to any company using this technology.”

Chuck Claunch, co-head of software solutions at Nauticus, added: “We are creating a win-win situation for ROV operators. We are not asking them to give up complete control. These robots are not replacing jobs, but instead are making them both easier and more reliable.”

ROV pilots are a highly skilled class of operators. As more subsea renewables, oil, and gas infrastructure is installed, there is a growing market for the maintenence and repair of these platforms. Automating many of the tasks for the inspection robots, keeps humans safely at the surface and enables more frequent inspections.

“It’s not dissimilar to when pilots first needed to adjust to automation in the airline industry — they didn’t lose their jobs; they gained more reliable support to enjoy them,” said Paul Dinh, co-head of software solutions at Nauticus.

The toolKITT software can be configured to control any undersea robot or ROV. | Credit: Nauticus

The post Nauticus Robotics secures over $12M to propel Aquanaut’s autonomous exploration appeared first on The Robot Report.

NVIDIA picks 6 noteworthy autonomous systems of 2023

Rick Merritt — Sat, 23 Dec 2023 14:00:45 +0000

Top row, from left to right: the Ella smart stroller, Soft Robotics’ food packer, and the TM25S. Bottom row: Salidrone, M4, and Zipline’s delivery drone. | Source: NVIDIA

Outside the glare of the klieg lights that ChatGPT commanded this past year, a troupe of autonomous machines nudged forward the frontiers of robotics, according to NVIDIA.

Here are six that showed promise, swimming, diving, gripping, seeing, strolling and flying through 2023.

Ella smart stroller makes a splash at CES

Ella — a smart stroller from Glüxkind Technologies, a startup in Vancouver, Canada — kicked off the year when it was named an honoree in the CES 2023 Innovation Awards.

The canny carriage uses computer vision running on the NVIDIA Jetson edge AI platform to follow parents. Its AI-powered abilities, like smart braking and a rock-my-baby mode, captured the attention of media outlets like Good Morning America and The Times of London as well as an NVIDIA AI Podcast interview with its husband-and-wife cofounders.

A member of NVIDIA Inception, a free program for cutting-edge startups, Glüxkind was one of seven companies with NVIDIA-powered products recognized at the Las Vegas event in January. They included:

John Deere for its fully autonomous tractor
AGRIST for its robot that automatically harvests bell peppers
Inception member Skydio for its drone that can fly at a set distance and height without manual intervention
Neubility, another Inception member, for its self-driving delivery robot
Seoul Robotics, a partner in the NVIDIA Metropolis vision AI software, for its Level 5 Control Tower that can turn standard vehicles into self-driving care
WHILL for its one-person vehicle that automatically guides a user inside places like airports or hospitals

mGripAI dexterously packs food

Bedford, Mass.-based Inception member Soft Robotics introduced its mGripAI system to an $8 trillion food industry hungry for automation. It combines 3D vision and AI to grasp delicate items such as chicken wings, attracting investors that include Tyson Foods and Johnsonville.

Soft Robotics uses the NVIDIA Omniverse platform and NVIDIA Isaac Sim robotics simulator to create 3D renderings of chicken parts on conveyor belts or in bins. With help from AI and the ray-tracing capabilities of NVIDIA RTX technology, the robot gripper can handle as many as 100 picks per minute, even under glare or changing light conditions.

“We’re all in on Omniverse and Isaac Sim, and that’s been working great for us,” David Weatherwax, senior director of software engineering at Soft Robotics, said in a January interview.

TM25S provides a keen eye in the factory

In a very different example of industrial digitalization, electronics manufacturer Quanta is inspecting the quality of its products using the TM25S, an AI-enabled robot from its subsidiary, Techman Robot.

Using Omniverse, Techman built a digital twin of the inspection robot — as well as the product to be inspected — in Isaac Sim. Programming the robot in simulation reduced time spent on the task by over 70%, compared with programming manually on the real robot.

Then, with optimization tools in Isaac Sim, Techman explored a massive number of program options in parallel on NVIDIA GPUs. The end result, shown in the video below, was an efficient solution that reduced the cycle time of each inspection by 20%.

Saildrone takes to the seas for data science

Saildrone, another Inception startup in Alameda, Calif., created uncrewed watercraft that can cost-effectively gather data for science, fisheries, weather forecasting and more.

NVIDIA Jetson modules process data streams from their sensors, some with help from NVIDIA Metropolis vision AI software such as NVIDIA DeepStream, a development kit for intelligent video analytics.

The video below shows how three of Saildrone’s smart sailboats are helping evaluate ocean health around the Hawaiian Islands.

Caltech M4 sets its sights on Mars

The next stop for one autonomous vehicle may be the red planet.

Caltech’s Multi-Modal Mobility Morphobot, or M4, can configure itself to walk, fly, or drive at speeds up to 40 mph (see video below). An M42 version is now in development at NASA as a Mars rover candidate and has attracted interest for other uses such as reconnaissance in fire zones.

Since releasing a paper on it in Nature Communications, the team has been inundated with proposals for the shape-shifting drone built on the NVIDIA Jetson platform.

Zipline delivery drones fly high

The year ended on a high note with Zipline announcing that its delivery drones flew more than 55 million miles and made more than 800,000 deliveries since the company’s start in 2011. The San Francisco-based company said it now completes one delivery every 70 seconds, globally.

That’s a major milestone for the Inception startup, the field it’s helping pioneer, and the customers who can receive everything from pizza to vitamins up to seven faster than by truck.

Zipline’s latest drone uses two Jetson Orin NX modules. It can carry 8 lb. of cargo for 10 miles at up to 70 mph to deliver packages in single-digit minutes while reducing carbon emissions 97% in comparison with gasoline-based delivery vehicles.

NVIDIA notes maker machines that inspire and amuse

Individual makers designed two autonomous vehicles this year worth special mentions.

Goran Vuksic with his AI-powered droid. | Source: NVIDIA

Kabilan KB, a robotics developer and student in Coimbatore, India, built an autonomous wheelchair using Jetson to run computer vision models that find and navigate a path to a user’s desired destination. The undergrad at the Karunya Institute of Technology and Sciences aspires to one day launch a robotics startup.

Finally, an engineering manager in Copenhagen who’s a self-described Star Wars fanatic designed an AI-powered droid based on an NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano Developer Kit. Goran Vuksic shared his step-by-step technical guide, so others can build their own sci-fi companions.

More than 6,500 companies and 1.2 million developers — as well as a community of makers and enthusiasts — use the NVIDIA Jetson and Isaac platforms for edge AI and robotics.

To get a look at where autonomous machines will go next, see what’s coming at CES in 2024.

Editor’s note: This blog reposted with permission from NVIDIA.

The post NVIDIA picks 6 noteworthy autonomous systems of 2023 appeared first on The Robot Report.

Stevens Institute for Artificial Intelligence looks at prospects for AI and robotics

Eugene Demaitre — Mon, 04 Dec 2023 22:06:23 +0000

Stevens Institute of Technology’s BlueROV uses perception and mapping capabilities to operate without GPS, lidar, or radar underwater. Source: American Society of Mechanical Engineers

While defense spending is the source of many innovations in robotics and artificial intelligence, government policy usually takes a while to catch up to technological developments. Given all the attention on generative AI this year, October’s executive order on AI safety and security was “encouraging,” observed Dr. Brendan Englot, director of the Stevens Institute for Artificial Intelligence.

“There’s really very little regulation at this point, so it’s important to set common-sense priorities,” he told The Robot Report. “It’s a measured approach between unrestrained innovation for profit versus some AI experts wanting to halt all development.”

AI order covers cybersecurity, privacy, and national security

The executive order sets standards for AI testing, corporate information sharing with the government, and privacy and cybersecurity safeguards. The White House also directed the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to set “rigorous standards for extensive red-team testing to ensure safety before public release.”

The Biden-Harris administration’s order stated the goals of preventing the use of AI to engineer dangerous biological materials, to commit fraud, and to violate civil rights. In addition to developing “principles and best practices to mitigate the harms and maximize the benefits of AI for workers,” the administration claimed that it will promote U.S. innovation, competitiveness, and responsible government.

It also ordered the Department of Homeland Security to apply the standards to critical infrastructure sectors and to establish an AI Safety and Security Board. In addition, the executive order said the Department of Energy and the Department of Homeland Security must address AI systems’ threats to critical infrastructure and national security. It plans to develop a National Security Memorandum to direct further actions.

“It’s a common-sense set of measures to make AI more safe and trustworthy, and it captured a lot of different perspectives,” said Englot, an assistant professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J. “For example, it called the general principle of watermarking as important. This will help resolve legal disputes over audio, video, and text. It might slow things a little bit, but the general public stands to benefit.”

Stevens Institute research touches multiple domains

“When I started with AI research, we began with conventional algorithms for robot localization and situational awareness,” recalled Englot. “At the Stevens Institute for Artificial Intelligence [SIAI], we saw how AI and machine learning could help.”

“We incorporated AI in two areas. The first was to enhance perception from limited information coming from sensors,” he said. “For example, machine learning could help an underwater robot with grainy, low-resolution images by building more descriptive, predictive maps so it could navigate more safely.”

“The second was to begin using reinforcement learning for decision making, for planning under uncertainty,” Englot explained. “Mobile robots need to navigate and make good decisions in stochastic, disturbance-filled environments, or where it doesn’t know the environment.”

Since stepping into the director role at the institute, Englot said he has seen work to apply AI to healthcare, finance, and the arts.

“We’re taking on larger challenges with multidisciplinary research,” he said. “AI can be used to enhance human decision making.”

Drive to commercialization could limit development paths

Generative AI such as ChatGPT has dominated headlines all year. The recent controversy around Sam Altman’s ouster and subsequent restoration as CEO of OpenAI demonstrates that the path to commercialization isn’t as direct as some assume, said Englot.

“There’s never a ‘one-size-fits-all’ model to go with emerging technologies,” he asserted. “Robots have done well in nonprofit and government development, and some have transitioned to commercial applications.”

“Others, not so much. Automated driving, for instance, has been dominated by the commercial sector,” Englot said. “It has some achievements, but it hasn’t totally lived up to its promise yet. The pressures from the rush to commercialization are not always a good thing for making technology more capable.”

AI needs more training, says Englot

To compensate for AI “hallucinations” or false responses to user questions, Englot said AI will be paired with model-based planning, simulation, and optimization frameworks.

“We’ve found that the generalized foundation model for GPT-4 is not as useful for specialized domains where tolerance for error is very low, such as for medical diagnosis,” said the Stevens Institute professor. “The degree of hallucination that’s acceptable for a chatbot isn’t here, so you need specialized training curated by experts.”

“For highly mission-critical applications, such as driving a vehicle, we should realize that generative AI may solve a problem, but it doesn’t understand all the rules, since they’re not hard-coded and it’s inferring from contextual information,” said Englot.

He recommended pairing generative AI with finite element models, computational fluid dynamics, or a well-trained expert in an iterative conversation. “We’ll eventually arrive at a powerful capability for solving problems and making more accurate predictions,” Englot predicted.

Collaboration to yield advances in design

The combination of generative AI with simulation and domain experts could lead to faster, more innovative designs in the next five years, said Englot.

“We’re already seeing generative AI-enabled Copilot tools in GitHub for creating code; we could soon see it used for modeling parts to be 3D-printed,” he said.

However, using robots to serve as the physical embodiments of AI in human-machine interactions could take more time because of safety concerns, he noted.

“The potential for harm from generative AI right now is limited to specific outputs — images, text, and audio,” Englot said. “Bridging the gap between AI and systems that can walk around and have physical consequences will take some engineering.”

Stevens Institute AI director still bullish on robotics

Generative AI and robotics are “a wide-open area of research right now,” said Englot. “Everyone is trying to understand what’s possible, the extent to which we can generalize, and how to generate data for these foundational models.”

While there is an embarrassment of riches on the Web for text-based models, robotics AI developers must draw from benchmark data sets, simulation tools, and the occasional physical resource such as Google’s “arm farm.” There is also the question of how generalizable data is across tasks, since humanoid robots are very different from drones, Englot said.

Legged robots such as Disney’s demonstration at iROS, which was trained to walk “with personality” through reinforcement learning, show that progress is being made.

Boston Dynamics spent years on designing, prototyping, and testing actuators to get to more efficient all-electric models, he said.

“Now, the AI component has come in by virtue of other companies replicating [Boston Dynamics’] success,” said Englot. “As with Unitree, ANYbotics, and Ghost Robotics trying to optimize the technology, AI is taking us to new levels of robustness.”

“But it’s more than locomotion. We’re a long way to integrating state-of-the-art perception, navigation, and manipulation and to get costs down,” he added. “The DARPA Subterranean Challenge was a great example of solutions to such challenges of mobile robotics. The Stevens Institute is conducting research on reliable underwater mobile manipulation funded by the USDA for sustainable offshore energy infrastructure and aquaculture.”

The post Stevens Institute for Artificial Intelligence looks at prospects for AI and robotics appeared first on The Robot Report.

Underwater robot gives insight into ice shelf crevasses

Brianna Wessling — Mon, 30 Oct 2023 20:58:44 +0000

The Icefin underwater robot has sonar, chemical, and biological sensors that help researchers learn more about sub-ice environments. | Source: Cornell University

A research team led by Cornell University is using an underwater robot, called Icefin, to gain a better understanding of ice shelf crevasses.

Crevasses in ice play an important role in helping to circulate seawater beneath Antarctic ice shelves. This circulation can potentially influence the stability of the shelves, according to the research team. In particular, the team studied the Ross Ice Shelf, the largest ice shelf in Antarctica.

Icefin is a tube-shaped robot roughly 12 feet long and less than 10 inches around. It is equipped with thrusters, cameras, sonar, and sensors for measuring water temperature, pressure, and salinity. First deployed in 2019, the robot can climb up and down crevasses in the base of ice shelves.

The robot revealed a new circulation pattern, a jet funneling water sideways through the crevasse it was studying, in addition to rising and sinking currents, and diverse ice formations shaped by shifting flows and temperatures.

For its work in the Ross Ice Shelf, Icefin was deployed on a tether down a 1,900-foot borehole drilled with hot water, near where the ice shelf meets the Kamb Ice Stream. This was an ideal place for the team to study the long-term effects of underwater conditions, as the Ross Shelf is older than previously explored ice shelves, making it more representative of Antartcia’s other ice shelves, and the Kamb Ice Stream is stagnant.

This climb resulted in the first 3D measurements of ocean conditions near where it meets the coastline, an important juncture known as the grounding zone. These grounding zones are key to controlling the balance of ice sheets, and the places where changing ocean conditions have the most impact.

On the last of three dives, Matthew Meister, a senior research engineer, drove Icefin into one of five crevasses near the team’s borehole. The robot climbed almost 150 feet up one slope and descended the other.

With the robot, the team was able to detail changing ice patterns as the crevasse narrowed. They found that melting at the crevasse base and salt rejection from freezing near the top moved water up and down around the horizontal jet steam, driving uneven melting and freezing on the two sides, with more melting along the lower downstream wall.

“Each feature reveals a different type of circulation or relationship of the ocean temperature to freezing,” Peter Washam, a polar oceanographer and research scientist in the Department of Astronomy at Cornell and lead author on the paper, said. “Seeing so many different features within a crevasse, so many changes in the circulation, was surprising.”

The research team believes it’s likely that similar conditions exist in adjacent crevasses. The findings highlight crevasses’ potential to transport changing ocean conditions through an ice shelf’s most vulnerable region.

“If the water heats up or cools off, it can move around in the back of the ice shelf quite vigorously, and crevasses are one of the means by which that happens,” Washam said. “When it comes to projecting sea-level rise, that’s important to have in the models.”

These new discoveries will help to improve the modeling of ice shelf melting and freezing rates at grounding zones and of their potential contribution to global sea-level rise.

The Icefin team was led by Britney Schmidt, an associate professor of astronomy and earth and atmospheric sciences and Cornell Engineering, and the director of the Planetary Habitability and Technology Lab. The research also included members of a New Zealand-based research team led by Christina Hulbe, a professor at the University of Otago.

This research was funded by Project RISE UP (Ross Ice Shelf and Europa Underwater Probe), part of NASA’s Planetary Science and Technology from Analog Research program, with logistical support provided by the National Science Foundation through the U.S. Antarctic Program.

The post Underwater robot gives insight into ice shelf crevasses appeared first on The Robot Report.

Nauticus Robotics picks up $2.7M in expanded Leidos contract

The Robot Report Staff — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 22:01:14 +0000

Nauticus Robotics’ Aquanaut, an autonomous subsea robot. | Source: Nauticus Robotics

Nauticus Robotics, Inc., a developer of autonomous robots using artificial intelligence for data collection and intervention service for the ocean economies, announced it has been awarded an additional $2.7 million under its current contract with Leidos Holdings, Inc., a FORTUNE 500 science and technology leader. The funded extension allows continued development of an Aquanaut-derivative in preparation for customer adoption decisions and government opportunities expected later this year.

The state-of-the-art subsea platform, an unmanned underwater vehicle (“UUV”) with advanced artificial intelligence, sensing capabilities, and more can perform a growing number of jobs without hazarding human divers. This program has received $14.5 million in funding from Leidos since 2022, and the technology developed is expected to underpin major future government opportunities.

Like Nauticus‘ commercial UUV platform, Aquanaut, this derivative robot features technology to support security activities and is advancing to complete longer and more challenging missions. In addition, this award allows further autonomous behavior and operational capability enhancements to toolKITT, Nauticus’ proprietary software package developed to enable an ecosystem of autonomous actions for subsea vehicles and serves as the foundation for this work.

“I am very proud of our team’s performance resulting in this follow-on award, further cementing our partnership with Leidos,” said Nicolaus Radford, founder and CEO of Nauticus. “This very important work combines great attributes from each company to deploy a truly novel subsea capability.”

Nauticus Robotics is a developer of autonomous robots using artificial intelligence for data collection and intervention services for the ocean industries. Nauticus’ robotic systems and services are delivered to commercial and government-facing customers through a Robotics-as-a-Service (RaaS) business model and direct product sales for both hardware platforms and software licenses.

The post Nauticus Robotics picks up $2.7M in expanded Leidos contract appeared first on The Robot Report.

Nauticus Robotics brings in $1.1M, spends $8M in Q2 2023

Brianna Wessling — Tue, 15 Aug 2023 21:48:00 +0000

Nauticus Robotics, a developer of autonomous underwater robots that use AI for data collection and intervention services, has brought in $1.1 million in revenue in Q2 of 2023, which ended on June 30, 2023.

The company saw a drop in revenue from Q2 of last year when it brought in $2.8 million. According to Nauticus, this is because of delays in contract authorization with government entities. Its operating expenses during Q2 totaled $8.0 million, which is a $2.5 million increase from the same quarter of last year. This increase in expenses was caused by non-cash stock compensation expenses.

Q2 was an exciting three months for Nauticus. During that time it signed a contract with Shell plc for an initial project in the Gulf of Mexico Princess Field. If this contract is successful, it could bring in multi-millions of dollars of additional contracts for Nauticus over the next few years.

Nauticus also signed a contract with Petrobas in Q2 that leads to a potential market opportunity of more than $100 million per year. Under the contract, Nauticus will deploy Aquanaut, its autonomous subsea robot, to support Petrobras’ offshore activities. Specifically, Aquanaut will be used in Petrobras’ Deepwater Production Field using supervised autonomy for infield inspection services. The contract consists of approximately two months’ worth of subsea inspection time.

The company also continued commissioning exercises for the first of three second-generation commercial Aquanauts. Nauticus has logged over 100 hours of offshore testing to date, and it expects the new Aquanaut will qualify in September for commercial service with Shell.

Additionally, Nauticus advanced both of its programs with the US Defense Innovation Unit (DIU). With the DIU, the company has completed contract phases that further develop specialized autonomous platforms for amphibious and mine-counter measure capabilities for the US Navy and US Marine Corps.

In September 2022, the company completed its business combination with CleanTech Acquisition Corp, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) formed in June 2020. Nauticus also made its debut on the NASDAQ under ticker symbols “KITT” for its common stock and “KITTW” for its public warrants.

Nauticus’ entire product line includes its flagship Aquanaut robot, the Hydronaut, an autonomous or remotely controlled small vessel, and the Olympic Arm, a robotic arm subsea tool. The company also offers ToolKITT, its robotics control software.

The post Nauticus Robotics brings in $1.1M, spends $8M in Q2 2023 appeared first on The Robot Report.

Nauticus earns Petrobras contract worth $100M

Brianna Wessling — Mon, 26 Jun 2023 19:17:59 +0000

Nauticus Robotics, a developer of autonomous underwater robots that use AI for data collection and intervention services for the ocean industries, has been awarded a contract with Petrobras to develop and test its autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) Aquanaut in Brazil. The contract leads to a potential market worth over $100 million annually and will expand Nauticus’ international presence to South America.

Under the contract, Nauticus will deploy Aquanaut, its autonomous subsea robot, to support Petrobras’ offshore activities. Specifically, Aquanaut will be used in Petrobras’ Deepwater Production Field using supervised autonomy for infield inspection services. The contract consists of approximately two months’ worth of subsea inspection time.

Aquanaut is a fully electric AUV that carries an array of multi-spectral perception sensors that allow the robot to detect, classify, inspect, and act upon subsea infrastructure using its pair of manipulators without direct operator control. The Aquanaut can provide significant reductions in cost and greenhouse gas emissions over conventional methods.

“A contract with another worldwide leading operator for Nauticus speaks to the state-of-the-art technologies of our autonomous robots as we further penetrate the global markets,” Nicolaus Radford, CEO of Nauticus, said. “The market opportunity for Nauticus in offshore Brazil is significant, as it is one of the world’s most active offshore energy basins; we are pleased to enter this market through a world-class operator. We competed through a rigorous tender process with many well-respected industry competitors to earn this business with Petrobras and eagerly await the deployment of our assets to validate our capabilities. We continue to build our robust pipeline of opportunities, giving us the confidence to execute our mission and deliver long-term value to shareholders.”

Petrobras is one of the world’s largest offshore operators. It manages 57 platforms, and ten thousand miles of oil and gas pipelines, and produces 2.6 million barrels of oil equivalent per day.

The post Nauticus earns Petrobras contract worth $100M appeared first on The Robot Report.

Sarcos, VideoRay partner to offer underwater robotic systems

Brianna Wessling — Tue, 02 May 2023 23:03:30 +0000

Sarcos Technology and Robotics Corporation and VideoRay have announced they signed an agreement to offer integrated underwater robotic systems. These systems will combine VideoRay’s remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) with the Sarcos Guardian Sea Class robotic system, including its power-efficient dexterous arm.

Under the terms of the agreement, Sarcos and VideoRay will be able to sell an integrated robotic system, sell their respective individual products and provide replacement parts and repair services and support.

“This collaboration is significant for the industry as it will enable Sarcos and VideoRay customers to easily purchase a pre-integrated system combining VideoRay’s best-in-class remotely operated vehicles with our advanced one- or two-armed Sea Class system,” said Kiva Allgood, president and CEO, Sarcos. “Through this relationship, we aim to make it easy for customers to acquire and deploy complete underwater systems and we look forward to continuing working closely with VideoRay moving forward.”

Sarcos’ Guardian Sea Class robotic system has a modular design, making it easy to integrate with VideoRay’s lineup of one-person portable ROVs. VideoRay’s systems deliver enough power and maneuverability to enable operation in currents up to four knots.

The Guardian Sea Class system can be operated with one, two, or six-degree of freedom arms and can perform in depths of up to one kilometer for up to two hours. RE2, which was acquired by Sarcos in March 2022 for $100 million, and VideoRay collaborated last year to hit the underwater depth milestone of one kilometer.

The companies achieved the milestone using the Maritime Mine Neutralization System (M2NS), which was able to dive more than a kilometer deep during an open-water demonstration for the US Navy’s Office of Naval Research (ONR).

M2NS’ base is VideoRay’s inspection-class Defender remotely operated vehicle (ROV). Mounted onto the ROV the RE2 Sapien Sea Class, an older version of the Guardian Sea Class robotic system. M2NS also used RE2 Detect and RE2 Intellect to see the world around it and act autonomously.

Sarcos’ Guardian Sea Class system can be teleoperated via supervised autonomy and is electronically driven. This means that the Guardian Sea Class eliminates the need for the added weight, size, and expense that comes with hydraulic power unit systems.

“VideoRay has designed our remotely operated vehicles to perform critical jobs in the harshest environments,” Chris Gibson, CEO of VideoRay, said. “Our ROVs are a natural fit with the Guardian Sea Class system and, when combined, we believe that the packaged solution offers the most advanced underwater inspection capability on the market today.”

The post Sarcos, VideoRay partner to offer underwater robotic systems appeared first on The Robot Report.

Nauticus begins commissioning of Mark 2 Aquanaut

Mike Oitzman — Fri, 21 Apr 2023 20:53:50 +0000

The Nauticus Aquanaut Mark 2 is the latest generation of autonomous underwater rover. | Credit: Nauticus

Nauticus Robotics, Inc. a developer of autonomous robots using artificial intelligence for data collection and intervention services for the ocean industries, announced the commencement of commissioning exercises of the first of three second-generation Aquanauts, dubbed the ‘Mark 2’ (MK2). Following commissioning, Nauticus expects to send the initial Aquanaut MK2 units to the North Sea and the Gulf of Mexico in the coming months to support customer initiatives in those regions.

The Aquanaut MK2 is a fully electric, untethered and autonomous subsea robot that is controlled through acoustic communication networking and underpinned by Nauticus’ proprietary software suite, toolKITT. The artificial intelligence-based software suite allows for robotic controls, user interfaces, sensor integration, simulation, data analysis, and communication frameworks purpose-built to enable subsea work.

Aquanaut MK2’s defining capability is operating in two separate modes, actively transforming itself between the excursion and intervention configurations. Excursion mode involves the usage of data collection and perception sensors, while intervention mode utilizes two of Nauticus’ Olympic Arms – electric work-class manipulators – to perform precise yet powerful interactions with subsea infrastructure and objects to complete complex, underwater tasks.

“The delivery of our initial second-generation Aquanauts is a significant milestone that accelerates our mission to disrupt the offshore ocean services industry while setting a benchmark for next-generation subsea technology that will fundamentally revolutionize how the industry operates,” said Nicolaus Radford, founder and CEO of Nauticus. “Our autonomous ocean robots and proprietary AI software provide a compelling solution to the marine industry, validated on a recurring basis with the continued interest and robust growth of our commercial pipeline. This splashdown allows us to remain on track to deliver two additional Aquanauts by mid-year, which are already committed to fulfill customer demands, as we continue to execute on our commercial pipeline and expand the breadth of our world-class portfolio.”

Nauticus’ comprehensive service solution, leveraging artificial intelligence to perform a wide variety of autonomous underwater tasks, is sought by companies that desire to inspect and interact with the subsea environment at lower cost and increased safety while minimizing environmental impact. This AI-powered technology coupled with the company’s next generation subsea robots substantially improve the efficiency and safety, while reducing the carbon footprint, of offshore operations at significantly reduced costs over legacy methods.

Nauticus Robotics co-founder Nicolaus Radford will present a keynote presentation on Developing Robots for Final Frontiers.

Space is commonly referred to as the “final frontier.” But Nicolaus Radford and the team at Nauticus Robotics believe the world’s oceans are of the utmost near-term priority (and largely unexplored) final frontier. Founded by former NASA engineers, Nauticus is leading the way by developing novel ocean robotic platforms for unprecedented ways of working in and exploring the aquatic domain, while challenging the less-than-desirable and archaic paradigm of the legacy industry. The company’s vision is to become the most impactful ocean robotics company and to disrupt the current ocean services paradigm through the integration of autonomous robotic technologies. The deep sea is vast, full of potential, and yet remains largely as uncharted as space itself – and Nauticus is at the forefront of unlocking its possibilities.

This keynote will chart Radford’s journey from developing humanoid robotics for space and leveraging that experience to form Nauticus and its revolutionary ocean robotics portfolio. His work at NASA heavily influenced the advancements at Nauticus as the company develops robots capable of aiding in national security, repairing oil pipelines, and inspecting windfarms — all while significantly reducing emissions and hazards to human counterparts. During his keynote, Radford will provide insights about both environments, discuss the business and technology of Nauticus’ current work and explain his vision for the future of ocean technology and robotics.

Registration is now open for the summit.

The post Nauticus begins commissioning of Mark 2 Aquanaut appeared first on The Robot Report.

How fish sensory organs could improve underwater robots’ navigation skills

Brianna Wessling — Tue, 31 Jan 2023 22:23:18 +0000

Two yellow blaze African cichlid fish, the ones at the center of the University of Bristol team’s research for underwater robots. | Source: University of Bristol

A research team led by the University of Bristol is studying fish sensory organs to better understand the cues they give to determine collective behavior. These researchers think these same cues could be used in swarms of underwater robots.

The team’s research is focused on the lateral line sensing organ found in African cichlid fish, but it can also be found in most fish species. This lateral line-sensing organ helps the fish sense and interpret water pressures around them. These organs are sensitive enough to detect external influences, like neighboring fish, changes in water flow, nearby predators and obstacles.

On fish, the lateral line system is distributed across the head, trunk and tail of the fish. It is made up of mechanoreceptors, or lateral line sensory units called neuromasts that are either within channels under the skin or on the surface of the skin.

“We were attempting to find out if the different areas of the lateral line – the lateral line on the head versus the lateral line on the body, or the different types of lateral line sensory units such as those on the skin, versus those under it, play different roles in how the fish is able to sense its environment through environmental pressure readings,” Elliott Scott, lead author on the paper and a member of the University of Bristol’s Department of Engineering Mathematics, said in a release. “We did this in a novel way, by using hybrid fish, that allowed for the natural generation of variation.”

The researchers found that the lateral line system around a fish’s head has the most influence on how well fish are able to swim in a group or a shoal. Additionally, when many neuromasts are found under the skin, fish tend to swim closer together. Many neuromasts found on the skin mean the fish will likely swim further apart.

The researchers then took to simulation to demonstrate how the mechanisms behind the work the later line does are applicable both in smaller cases, like for groups of fish, and at larger scales. These mechanisms could be mimicked using a type of easily-manufactured pressure sensor for underwater robots. The sensor would help these robots navigate dark or murky environments that traditional sensing systems struggle with.

“These findings provide a better understanding of how the lateral line informs shoaling behavior in fish, while also contributing a novel design of inexpensive pressure sensor that could be useful on underwater robots that have to navigate in dark or murky environments,” Elliott said.

The University of Bristol team plans to further develop this sensor and eventually integrate it into a robotic platform to demonstrate its effectiveness.

The research was funded by the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC), Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP).

The post How fish sensory organs could improve underwater robots’ navigation skills appeared first on The Robot Report.

Remembering robotics companies we lost in 2022

Steve Crowe — Tue, 27 Dec 2022 20:21:46 +0000

There are many reasons robotics companies fail. From an ill-conceived idea to poor execution or the inability to raise funding, building and running a sustainable robotics company is challenging.

This is never a fun recap to write. We don’t want to see startups fail, but inevitably many do. The last couple of years have been especially difficult thanks to a global pandemic, economic uncertainties and ongoing supply chain issues. But perhaps some lessons can be learned from those that couldn’t survive a global pandemic or supply chain issues.

Here are some of the robotics companies we’ll, unfortunately, remember losing in 2022.

Argo AI (2016-2022)

Argo AI, the self-driving company previously backed by Ford and Volkswagen, abruptly closed its doors in October. For most, this will be the most surprising shutdown on the list. When news broke about the shutdown, Ford said its plan was to shift its focus away from funding Argo AI’s development of Level 4 autonomous driving technology and towards creating its own Level 2 and Level 3 driving systems.

“We still believe in Level 4 autonomy that it will have a big impact on our business of moving people,” Ford’s CEO and President Jim Farley said at the time. “We’ve learned though, in our partnership with Argo and after our own internal investments, that we will have a very long road. It’s estimated that more than $100 billion has been invested in the promise of Level 4 autonomy. And yet no one has defined a profitable business model at scale.”

Farley continued, “Deploying L4 broadly, perhaps the toughest technical problem of our time, will require significant breakthroughs going forward in many areas: reliable and low-cost sensing, it’s not the case today; algorithms that can operate on limited compute resources without constraining the operating time and domain of an electric vehicle; breakthroughs in neural networks that can learn to operate a car more safely than a human, even in very complex urban environments.”

“We’re optimistic about a future for L4 ADAS, but profitable, fully autonomous vehicles at scale are a long way off and we won’t necessarily have to create that technology ourselves.”

Argo AI spun out of Carnegie Mellon in 2016 and came out of stealth in 2017 with a $1 billion investment from Ford. Since then, it raised another $2.6 billion, primarily from Ford and VW, and secured partnerships with Walmart and Lyft.

Kitty Hawk (2010-2022)

After more than a decade of trying to make autonomous flying cars, Kitty Hawk closed its doors in September. The company was founded in 2010 by Sebastian Thrun, who previously founded and led Google’s self-driving car project, which we now know as Waymo.

Kitty Hawk built a number of different aircraft, and in 2021 demonstrated a beyond-visual-line-of-sight flight in Ohio. In June 2021, Kitty Hawk acquired 3D Robotics, a drone company that was once a competitor to DJI. As part of the acquisition, 3D Robotics co-founder Chris Anderson became Kitty Hawk’s chief operating officer. Kitty Hawk said at the time its new focus was on developing a remote-piloted electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft.

After the company shut down, Thrun said that “no matter how hard we looked, we could not find a path to a viable business.”

Local Motors (2007-2022)

Local Motors, which was building Olli the autonomous shuttle, shut down in early January. Local Motors was founded in 2007, but didn’t start dipping its toes into the world of autonomous vehicles until 2016 when it launched Olli. The company closed due to a lack of funding.

Olli 1.0 was a low-speed pod that could drive for 60 miles on a single charge. The shuttle was designed for environments like hospitals, military bases and universities. In 2019, Local Motors upgraded to Olli 2.0 with a top speed of 25 miles per hour and the ability to run for 100 miles on a single charge.

In October 2020, the company announced it would be testing Olli on the streets of Toronto. Olli hit the streets in 2021, but would only carry out tests until December, when an Olli 1.0 shuttle collided with a tree, resulting in the attendant being critically injured. After the collision, the City of Toronto stopped its trials of the self-driving shuttles. An investigation by the Durham Regional Police Service found that the shuttle was being operated manually during the accident.

The company raised a total of $15.3M in funding over 6 rounds. (Crunchbase)

Perceptive Automata (2015-2022)

Perceptive Automata was a Boston-based developer of human behavior understanding AI for autonomous vehicles and robots. According to co-founder and CTO Sam Anthony, Perceptive Automata went “kablooey” after it failed to close Series B funding.

Anthony said that the shutdown snuck up on him and the staff. “The part that was lousy was how it went down for the staff. There was a sense that we were blindsided by it falling apart,” he said. “That said, I’m not sure we should’ve been blindsided by it. Part of being a VC-funded company is that you have fairly specific marks you have to hit. If you don’t hit them, the path is cloudy at best. Combined with other factors outside of our control, we were in a tough spot.”

Perceptive Automata raised $20 million since it was founded in 2015.

Skyward (2013-2022)

Skyward built a software platform that helped customers manage drone workflows, including training crews, planning missions, accessing controlled airspace and more. It was acquired by Verizon in 2017 before being shut down in May. At the time of the acquisition, Verizon said it planned to use the company’s technology to streamline drone operation management through one platform.

Skyward sent its customers an email to announce the closure, which came as a surprise to many. Verizon said the decision to shutter Skyward “was about market agility and ensuring that Verizon continues to focus on areas that provide both near and mid-term growth opportunities.”

The company raised a total of $8.2M in funding over 4 rounds. (Crunchbase)

Chowbotics (2014-2022)

DoorDash shut down its subsidiary Chowbotics less than 1.5 years after acquiring the business. Chowbotics built Sally, a vending machine-like robot that made salads and other fresh meals. It should be noted many folks in the industry have questioned whether Sally is a robot, but nevertheless.

“At DoorDash, we create an environment to build new products and set high standards to determine when to scale, continue, or cut back investments,” a DoorDash spokesperson said. “We’re always looking for new ways to serve our merchants, exceed consumers’ increasingly higher expectations, and complement our logistics infrastructure.”

Chowbotics was founded in 2014 and acquired by DoorDash in February 2021 for an undisclosed amount. At the time of the acquisition, DoorDash wanted to explore how to deploy Chowbotics’ technology across restaurants. It hoped Sally could help restaurants expand their menu or allow salad bars to pop up in more locations without needing more manpower.

Fifth Season (2016-2022)

Fifth Season was a Pittsburgh-based company that used robotics to grow and harvest various leafy vegetables that were then packaged and sold as salads, mixed greens or in variety packs. It shut down in October. A Carnegie Mellon University spinout founded in 2016 and raised more than $75 million in investment.

Fifth Season had about 100 employees, including about 20 or so that worked shifts at a 60,000-square-foot indoor farming facility in Braddock, Pa.

Rovenso (2016-2022)

Rovenso was a Switzerland-based company developing autonomous robots for security and safety monitoring of industrial sites. The company was founded in 2016 and raised $2.8 million in funding, according to Crunchbase.

Thomas Estier, co-founder and CEO of Rovenso, posted about the shutdown on LinkedIn, saying he and the team didn’t understand the impact of COVID on business development and components sourcing.

The post Remembering robotics companies we lost in 2022 appeared first on The Robot Report.