More interesting things in robotics this week!
null
Ispace Technologies - Series C - $46m
Based in Japan, Ispace Technologies is a space resource exploration company that locates, extracts, and delivers lunar ice to customers in cis-lunar space.
Third Wave Automation - Series B - $40m
Based in Union City CA, Third Wave Automation provides cloud robotics and machine learning technology to material handling automation.
Elroy Air - Series A - $40m
Based in San Francisco, Elroy Air is a logistics company that specializes in the fields of logistics, robotics, and air transportation.
null
Daegu Global Robotics Expo is looking for a robotics keynote speaker ideally from a big name famous company ie. Google, Apple, etc (just quoting!) honorarium upto $5k negotiable also flight and accommodation for in person but online ok too.
Title : 2021 Daegu Global Robot Expo
Date : 11/16/2021 (Tues), 13:00 ~ 18:00 KST (talk time is negotiable)
Site : Hotel Inter-Burgo Exco, Grand ballroom, Daegu
Scale : 1000+ participants (On/Offline Hybrid operation)
null
The post Mars Ingenuity helicopter successfully completes 11th flight appeared first on The Robot Report.
The post John Deere acquiring Bear Flag Robotics for $250M appeared first on The Robot Report.
The post Sarcos Robotics, T-Mobile partnership enables real-time control over 5G appeared first on The Robot Report.
The post Watch GE’s risk-aware autonomous robot navigate through woods appeared first on The Robot Report.
The post Rani prices $73M IPO for robotic drug-delivery pill appeared first on The Robot Report.
Inceptio has previously said it expects to begin production of autonomous trucks by the end of 2021.
The post Inceptio Technology raises $270M for autonomous trucking tech appeared first on The Robot Report.
null
Do robots need clothes? Yes, for form and function
By Adam Conner-Simons | July 29, 2021
There’s no shortage of people who dress up their babies, bunnies or puppies. But what about robots?
Besides a stray feline Roomba, very few people are investing energy into putting clothes on robots. Cornell and New York University researchers say that now’s the time to think more actively about when, how and why we would dress them, now that robots are likely to be popping up more regularly in our factories, stores, offices and homes.
The team just published a paper that outlines some of the considerations for dressing robots in a way that helps them serve their function.
“Rather than being merely for decoration, clothing can serve a practical purpose and be closely tied to what robots actually need,” says Cornell Tech Ph.D. student Natalie Friedman, co-lead author along with NYU lecturer Kari Love. They presented their work at the virtual Designing Interactive Systems conference in July.
Garments on robots could also serve as a way of providing information about the wearer’s role — for instance, a robot waiter might wear a white shirt with a black bowtie.
“Adding easy-to-read physical elements,” Friedman said, “can make the function of a system clearer and more intuitive for people to interact with.”
Friedman, Love and Wendy Ju, associate professor at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech, co-wrote the paper with Guy Hoffman, associate professor at the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and Jenny Sabin, the Arthur L. and Isabel B. Wiesenberger Professor in Architecture in the College of Architecture, Art and Planning.
While human clothing is largely marketed for its aesthetics, it obviously serves a range of more practical functions – including protection. Jackets protect us from rain and snow; boots, from mud and rocks; stain-resistant jeans, from unfortunate wine spills. Clothing could serve a similar purpose for robots in certain lines of work – say, a firefighting robot that may need a fireproof vest for one scenario and a waterproof vest for another.
Some garments also serve as a way of providing information about the wearer’s role. A robot waiter handing out hors d’oeuvres at a wedding might wear a white shirt with a black bowtie. Clothes also can be designed to highlight a robot’s potential actions, like vertical stripes on a shirt that make it easier to see when a robot is rotating. More complicated outfits might have color-coded buttons and buttonholes, to help people understand how to correctly put them on a robot.
Indeed, Friedman points out that it’s not as simple as just slapping some human clothes onto a robot. Robots are diverse and versatile, and some of their core attributes and advantages need to be considered and leveraged. (They don’t sweat, for example, so that may mean using certain fabrics that we’d never put on people.)
“I think this work is important to helping engineers and technologists understand the functional importance of aesthetics and signaling in design,” Ju said. “It’s not ‘just fashion’ – what the robot wears helps people understand how to interact with it in ways that are critical to safety and task execution.”
As a next step, Friedman said she’ll curate a fashion show of robots wearing clothes, while continuing to develop her framework about potential functions of clothes for robots.
Also contributing was City University of Hong Kong professor Ray LC.
The project was supported in part by Backslash Art, a Cornell Tech-based project that supports technological interventions into artistic practice.
Adam Conner-Simons is director of communications at Cornell Tech.