Observe The Banana

A few weeks ago I posted about some students at the Department of Technological Studies at Ohio Northern University who are working on making an industrial robot play air hockey. Now it looks like an engineering services company called Nuvation has a lead on them. They recently demonstrated a very successful version of an air hockey playing robot that is able to beat all comers (or at least wins 90% of games) at the Freescale Technology Forum 2008 Americas. Here is a nice video interview with the CEO of Nuvation explaining their system. One interesting point is that the robot vision system not only tracks the current position, speed and direction of the puck, but then makes intelligent guesses on its future position predicting up to three bounces. They are showcasing the power of the processing system which is using two different procesors working together, but I have been unable to dig up more technical details online.

The robot, by the way, does live up to its advance billing, according to Kanellos. In watching it for a half an hour at the Freescale Technology Forum, the bot never lost a goal and scored many. Granted, none of the players he witnessed were off-duty roofing contractors tanked up on a 12-pack of Keystone Lager, but some players were pretty good nonetheless. The most eerie moments come when the robot would block a shot without even moving. It mocks you with its stillness.

Crave via TechEBlog

Update:

I finally found a little more technical information on this robot here:
Robot Aims to Top Human at Air Hockey

They talk about how the “The robot is powered by a special pc-board that can instantly switch between Freescale Semiconductor’s 8-bit Flexis and its 32-bit ColdFire microcontrollers”. Apparently in 8-bit mode human players could beat the robot, but in 32-bit mode the robot would win most of the time.  Follow the link above to learn more.

This morning on the MPR morning show they played this fun song by Hypnotic Clambake called 500 Robots.

“I’ve got 500 robots in my house, they do the things that I can do without….”

It is a fun catchy tune that is stuck in my head and will my theme song for the day. It is from their Mayonnaise album.
I managed to find this live version on Internet Archive - Enjoy!

Hypnotic Clambake - 500 Robots Live MP3

Hypnotic Clambake Official Site

The students at the Department of Technological Studies at Ohio Northern University are using techniques similar to industrial automatic dynamic bin picking applications (grabbing parts from moving bins) to make a KUKA KR3 industrial robot play air hockey.

They have the arm mounted in an inverted position on a gantry over an air hockey table with a Point Grey Flea2 camera which snaps 30 images per second of the entire table. These images are transmitted to a computer where image distortions are removed and VisionPro machine vision software distinguishes the puck and transfers its x,y position to another algorithm on the computer. This program keeps track of current and previous positions and attempts to calculate the puck’s trajectory and determine where the arm should move to strike it.

Since the arm can only move at up two 2 meters per second, which is much slower than a human player, they have devised a “puck striker” which the robot holds. The striker is like a regular air hockey paddle split in to four quadrants which can rapidly expand outwards at 16 times per second to strike the puck more effectively than the arm alone could accomplish. They designed the striker in CATIA V5 and then printed it on a rapid prototype 3D printer.

They also found that the standard side walls of an air hockey table are constructed from MDF (medium density fiberboard) which has some flex and deforms slightly when hit by the puck. This causes the the puck to bounce off the walls at a different angle than they could accurately predict with a basic “angle of incidence equals angle of deflection” algorithm. To solve this problem they replaced the side rails of the table with aluminum which deflects the puck in a more predictable manner.

When the player scores, the puck is routed out the bottom of the robot’s goal onto a small conveyor belt which carries it under the table back to the human to put back into play. It looks like the robot currently plays mainly defense, but the students hope to continue developing the software with more AI to play more effectively. Then it should be ready to fill in and help satisfy your late night air hockey needs after your roommate passes out. After that, maybe their next project will be a robot that can play quarters.

Here is a short video of a student presentation of the project. Unfortunately it doesn’t show much actual hockey playing by the robot, which was still awaiting more advanced software at the time of the presentation.

[Link] to project home page with more technical details and images.

Update:

Apparently an engineering services company called Nuvation has made a very successful version of an air hockey playing robot that is able to beat all comers (or at least wins 90% of games). Here is a nice video interview with the CEO of Nuvation explaining their system. One interesting point is that the robot vision system not only tracks the current position, speed and direction of the puck, but then makes intelligent guesses on its future position predicting up to three bounces.

The robot, by the way, does live up to its advance billing, according to Kanellos. In watching it for a half an hour at the Freescale Technology Forum, the bot never lost a goal and scored many. Granted, none of the players he witnessed were off-duty roofing contractors tanked up on a 12-pack of Keystone Lager, but some players were pretty good nonetheless. The most eerie moments come when the robot would block a shot without even moving. It mocks you with its stillness.

Crave via TechEBlog

On May 24, Panasonic showed off the capacity of their Evolta AA batteries by using them to power a cute little mascot robot as he scaled a 530 meter cliff in the Grand Canyon. The grueling climb took the little (17 cm, 130g) robot 6 hours and 45 minutes and was recognized by the Guinness Book as the longest of its kind.  I, for one, would like to state that our robot overlords should not be made to scale tall cliffs to get out of canyons.

Read [Via Pink Tentacle] [Via Engadget]

Earlier today I ran across a fun little video about a new animatronic WALL E robot that will soon be roaming Disney Parks. I kind of like WALL E, although those big round eyes are a bit too Disney cute. Since I have not seen the movie yet, only some fun trailers, I don’t know if he will earn a place in my heart, but he got me thinking about some of the other robots, both real and imagined, that seem to have touched me on an emotional level. So, even though there are already so many robot lists on the net, after the jump is my own Top 5 Favorite Robots

(click for more…)

Looks like those clever engineers over at Toyota took the next logical step and put together a talented quartet of their musician robots. The robots are Harry on trumpet, Dave on trumpet, Chuck on tuba , and Ritchie on drums. (Sadly it looks like one of the trumpet players is still in a wheel chair from that unfortunate accident after their last gig. Had a little too much to drink and tried jump a speeding Prius). Songs played include: “The Theme of Lupin III”, “Moonlight Serenade”, “Stompin ‘at the Savoy”, and “A train to go”.

I would like to find more technical details on how these guys work, like what kind of “lips” do they have, and are they listening to each other play to synchronize? I could definitely see this kind of thing catching on for entertainment on cruise ships or in theme parks. No more trouble with the band eating all the food or getting carried away at the open bar. Of course, then I wonder how long until the musicians unions start complaining?

TechEBlog » Feature: Toyota’s Robot Quartet Perform in Concert

I like sailboats, I like robots, so naturally I was pleased to find this story about sailing robots. The Times of London reports that seven robotic sailing craft will race across the Atlantic Ocean in October 2008. One of them, ‘Pinta the robot sailing boat,’ has been designed at Aberystwyth University, Wales, UK. Pinta is expected to sail for three months at a maximum speed of four knots (about 4.6 mph or 7.4 kilometers per hour). Its designers hope the Pinta will become the first robot to cross an ocean using only wind power. Here is a quote from Mark Neal, Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at Aberystwyth University.

“This is the first time anybody has attempted to sail across any ocean with an automated boat. The big issue in robotics at the moment is longevity and flexibility in a complicated environment. Something that can survive for two to three months completely unassisted while doing something interesting is a major challenge. If it does get there I will be seriously cheerful. It will open up all the oceans to environmental monitoring by robots.”

This is a cool thing. Giving it some thought, it seems like it could be really tricky managing conventional fabric sails automatically, so many ways to lines to tangle or get caught in unpredictable ways. I guess it is not surprising then to see the robot boat in this picture appears to be using a vertical wing type of sail. The real question is, will they program them to talk like pirates? “Avast ye scurvey dogs, that does not compute!” or maybe “Arrrr mateys, me hard drive be full!”

Over at Roland Piquepaille’s Technology Trends he has more details and lots of good links.

Roland Piquepaille’s Technology Trends via Slashdot

Once they get that robot orchestra made, it looks like they will have someone to conduct. Asimo, that cute little guy from Honda, will be guest conducting the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in a performance of “Impossible Dream.” Along with renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma, Asimo will open a special concert performance for young people in Detroit on May 13.

From DeviceGuru

May 14 Update

Apparantly the performance went well. Here is a video




TechE Blog has a nice feature on robots what can skillfully play a musical instrument. I like the way the trumpet player and violin player move and sway to the music they are playing in a very life-like way. The percussion player is very cool in the way it improvises along with a human drummer. I am also impressed with the quality of music they produce as playing a musical instrument requires some subtle control. I wonder how the trumpet player changes its “mouth” to produce different notes from one valve position. I imagine iit won’t be long before we see a entire band or even orchestra made up entirely of robots.

TechEBlog » Feature: Robots That Can Skillfully Play a Musical Instrument

I love this little drumming robot called “Yellow Drum Machine”. I like reading about little “carpet rover” robots, and have done some experimenting with Lego Mindstorms in navigation and obstacle avoidance, but once you have created a little bot that can wander around and avoid things the next obvious question is “now what?” This creative individual answered that by making his bot not just avoid obstacles, but instead drum on them. It finds a suitable surface and plays a little riff with its two front drum sticks while recording what it hears. It then it plays back the riff in a loop and drums along adding in a little floor stick in the rear. Very creative idea. I can imagine a group of these communicating with some swarm behavior programming to find drummable surfaces and make music together. Watch the video and tap along….

Why? Well.. I was sitting thinking what I should do for my next robot, what it should do.. Listening to music.. making a rythm with some robot-parts.. Thought; “Hey, I will make a robot that drives around and plays on stuff”

Get more video and some good technical details at:
Yellow Drum Machine

These wall climbing robots look really cool. I could see how they could be really useful for building inspection or surveillance, although the suction fan seems quite loud in the videos so I don’t know how sneaky you could be with one. They have underwater versions too that I guess could be good at inspecting ship hulls.

See videos and read more [via Engadget]

I for one welcome our new wall climbing overlords

This steam powered R2-D2 by I-Wei (CrabFu) is too cool.

Link

The Robotic Giraffe - Popular Science
The Robotic Giraffe

It walks, it blinks, it seats six, and it blasts Kraftwerk: Meet one man’s 17-foot-tall pet project

It started with a seven-inch walking toy giraffe and a desire to see Burning Man from a higher vantage point. A year later, Lindsay Lawlor rode into the desert art festival atop Rave Raffe, a 1,700-pound robotic giraffe sporting 40 strobes, 400 LEDs and bone-shaking speakers.
LINK