RGo Robotics, a company developing artificial perception technology that enables mobile robots to understand complex surroundings and operate autonomously, announced significant strategic updates. The announcements include leadership appointments, new customers and an upcoming product release.

RGo develops AI-powered technology for autonomous mobile robots, allowing them to achieve 3D, human-level perception. Its Perception Engine gives mobile robots the ability to understand complex surroundings and operate autonomously. It integrates with mobile robots to deliver centimeter-scale position accuracy in any environment. In Q2 2023, RGo said it will release the next iteration of its software that will include:

• An indoor-outdoor mode: a breakthrough capability for mobile robot navigation allows them to operate in all environments – both indoors and outdoors.
• A high-precision mode that enables millimeter-scale precision for docking and similar use cases.
• Control Center 2.0: a redesigned configuration and admin interface. This new version supports global map alignment, advanced exploration capabilities and new map-sharing utilities.

RGo separately announced support for NVIDIA Jetson Orin System-on-Modules that enables visual perception for a variety of mobile robot applications.

RGo will exhibit its technology at LogiMAT 2023, Europe’s biggest annual intralogistics tradeshow, from April 25-27, in Stuttgart, Germany at Booth 6F59. The company will also sponsor and host a panel session “Unlocking New Applications for Mobile Robots” at the Robotics Summit and Expo in Boston from May 10-11.

Leadership announcements

RGO also announced four leadership appointments. This includes Yael Fainaro being named chief business officer and president; Mathieu Goy being named head of European sales; Yasuaki Mori being named executive consultant, APAC market development; and Amy Villeneuve as a member of the board of directors.

“It is exciting to have reached this important milestone. The new additions to our leadership team underpin our evolution from a technology innovator to a scaling commercial business model including new geographies,” said Amir Bousani, CEO and co-founder, RGo Robotics.

Goy, based in Paris, and Mori, based in Tokyo, join with extensive sales experience in the European and APAC markets. RGo is establishing an initial presence in Japan this year with growth in South Korea planned for late 2023.

“RGo has achieved impressive product maturity and growth since exiting stealth mode last year,” said Fainaro. “The company’s vision-based localization capabilities are industrial-grade, extremely precise and ready today for even the most challenging environments. This, together with higher levels of 3D perception, brings tremendous value to the rapidly growing mobile robotics market. I’m looking forward to working with Amir and the team to continue growing RGo in the year ahead.”

Villeneuve joins RGo’s board of directors with leadership experience in the robotics industry, including her time as the former COO and president of Amazon Robotics. “I am very excited to join the team,” said Villeneuve. “RGo’s technology creates disruptive change in the industry. It reduces cost and adds capabilities to mobile robots in logistics, and enables completely new applications in emerging markets including last-mile delivery and service robotics.”

Customer traction

After comprehensive field trials in challenging indoor and outdoor environments, RGo continued its commercial momentum with new customers. The design wins are with market-leading robot OEMs across multiple vertical markets ranging from logistics and industrial autonomous mobile robots, forklifts, outdoor machinery and service robots.

Capra Robotics, an award-winning mobile robot manufacturer based in Denmark, selected RGo’s Perception Engine for its new Hircus mobile robot platform.

“RGo continues to develop game-changing navigation technology,” said Niels Juls Jacobsen, CEO of Capra and founder of Mobile Industrial Robots. “Traditional localization sensors either work indoors or outdoors – but not both. Combining both capabilities into a low-cost, compact and robust system is a key aspect of our strategy to deliver mobile robotics solutions to the untapped ‘interlogistics’ market.”

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Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and UC Berkeley want to give quadrupeds more capabilities similar to their biological counterparts. Just like real dogs can use their front legs for things other than walking and running, like digging and other manipulation tasks, the researchers think quadrupeds could someday do the same.

Currently, we see quadrupeds use their legs as just legs to navigate their surroundings. Some of them, like Boston Dynamics’ Spot, get around these limitations by adding a robotic arm to the quadruped’s back. This arm allows Spot to manipulate things, like opening doors and pressing buttons, while maintaining the flexibility that four legs give locomotion.

However, the researchers at CMU and UC Berkeley taught a Unitree Go1 quadruped, equipped with an Intel RealSense camera for perception, how to use its front legs to climb walls, press buttons, kick a soccer ball and perform other object interactions in the real world, on top of teaching it how to walk.

The team started this challenging task by decoupling the skill learning into two broad categories: locomotion, which involves movements like walking or climbing a wall, and manipulation, which involves using one leg to interact with objects while balancing on three legs. Decoupling these tasks help the quadruped to simultaneously move to stay balanced and manipulate objects with one leg.

By training in simulation, the team taught the quadruped these skills and transferred them to the real world with their proposed sim2real variant. This variant builds upon recent locomotion success.

All of these skills are combined into a robust long-term plan by teaching the quadruped a behavior tree that encodes a high-level task hierarchy from one clean expert demonstration. This allows the quadruped to move through the behavior tree and return to its last successful movement when it runs into problems with certain branches of the behavior tree.

For example, if a quadruped is tasked with pressing a button on a wall but fails to climb up the wall, it returns to the last task it did successfully, like approaching the wall, and starts there again.

The research team was made up of Xuxin Cheng, a Master’s student in robotics at CMU, Ashish Kumar, a graduate student at UC Berkeley, and Deepak Pathak, an assistant professor at CMU in Computer Science. You can read their technical paper “Legs as Manipulator: Pushing Quadrupedal Agility Beyond Locomotion” (PDF) to learn more. They said a limitation of their work is that they decoupled high-level decision making and low-level command tracking, but that a full end-to-end solution is “an exciting future direction.”

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What is the best architectural approach to use when developing medical robots? Is it ROS, ROS 2 or other open-source or commercial frameworks? The upcoming Robotics Summit & Expo (May 10-11 in Boston) will explore engineering questions concerning the level of concern, risk, design controls, and evidence on a couple of different applications of these frameworks.

In a session on May 10 from 2-2:45 PM, Tom Amlicke, Software Systems Engineer, MedAcuity will discuss the “Keys to Using ROS 2 and Other Frameworks for Medical Robots.” Amlicke will look at three hypothetical robotic systems and explore these approaches:

• 1. An application based on the da Vinci Research Kit through regulatory clearance
• 2. ROS as test tools to verify the software requirements for a visual guidance system
• 3. Commercial off-the-shelve robot arm used for a medical application

If you attend his session, you will also learn how to create trade-offs with these different architectural approaches and how to validate the intended uses of these architectural approaches to ensure a successful submission package for your FDA, EMA, or other regulatory approval.

Amlicke has 20-plus years of embedded and application-level development experience. He designs and deploys enterprise, embedded, and mobile solutions on Windows, Mac, iOS, and Linux/UNIX platforms using a variety of languages including C++. Amlicke takes a lead role on complex robotics projects, overseeing end-to-end development of ROS-based mobile robots and surgical robots.

You can find the full agenda for the Robotics Summit here. The Robotics Summit & Expo is the premier event for commercial robotics developers. There will be nearly 70 industry-leading speakers sharing their development expertise on stage during the conference, with 150-plus exhibitors on the showfloor showcasing their latest enabling technologies, products and services that help develop commercial robots. There also will be a career fair, networking opportunities and more. 

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All of the new tooling solutions are compatible with cobots that have an ISO 9409-1-50-4-M6 end-of-arm mounting pattern. Blank robots and tool plates are offered for those who wish to use their own mounting patterns.

Destaco highlighted its Microtool End Effectors, which it said enable cobots to perform palletizing functions. Users that know the length, width and weight of the packages to be lifted and transferred can select the palletizing kit type and pre-determined vacuum cup size necessary for the application, eliminating tool design work with off-the-shelf kits.

Destaco’s other cobot tooling solutions include:

CB-200 Quick-Move Base: Allows the cobot to be moved from one workstation to another without the need to reprogram the robot.

ARV-C Vacuum Gripper: Can pick up and move product via one airline with an auto-release vacuum generator; available in nine sizes and shapes.

MG Magnet Gripper: Allows the picking of ferrous material or components with one pneumatically actuated airline; available in two sizes.

MultiMount Tool Array: Mounts up to five different tools to the cobot wrist via various tool mounting plates and multiple extension lengths.

MultiMount Machine Tending: Can accommodate two grippers or two tools for use in work-piece exchange applications within CNC machining centers; features Blank, ISO-9409-50 and DirectConnect mounting plates.

MultiMount Tool Extension: Extends the reach of the cobot arm; a variety of tool plates and multiple extension lengths are available.

MicroTool Palletizing: Off-the-shelf kits to handle boxes from 160 to 750mm widths and 260 to 900mm lengths weighing less than 10 kg.

TC1 Manual Tool Changer: Allows the user to change cobot tools quickly and repeatedly and offers electric and air pass-through capabilities.

Tool Storage Tree: Securely stores and organizes up to six cobot tools safely and securely; fully adjustable with three different tree heights.

“Small payload robots are commonly found in larger industrial manufacturing facilities, but the low-cost entry into robotic automation has recently resulted in significant growth in their use across small, light industrial and commercial shops,” said Gary Labadie, global product director, Destaco. “Small payload robots are now a focus and a solution for both large and small facilities coping with the economic climate.”

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Clearpath Robotics, a manufacturer of mobile robotics platforms for research and development, announced Husky Observer, a fully integrated system designed to accelerate inspection solutions. This new configuration of the Husky aims to enable robotics developers and technology groups to build their inspection solutions and fast-track their system development.

Built on Top of the Versatile Husky Base Platform

Husky UGV is a tried and tested base platform that is trusted by hundreds of robotics researchers and engineers worldwide. With its simple and rugged design, Husky UGV is built to endure all real-world terrain making it ideal for observation missions. Fully supported in ROS, the robot can program complex autonomous systems.

As a result of past successful integration projects, the Husky Observer has been designed to showcase the flexibility of the Husky UGV. Pre-installed with Clearpath’s OutdoorNav Autonomy Software, the Husky Observer is built for all types of outdoor autonomous missions including but not limited to equipment monitoring, remote virtual inspection and detailed unmanned data collection.

“For more than a decade we have helped our customers succeed in their robotics projects. We’re excited to showcase the Husky’s versatility as well as bring our experience and capabilities to remote inspection where our products can accelerate the industry,” Bryan Webb, President of Clearpath Robotics, said.

Husky Observer: Inspection Ready

The Husky Observer comes with a variety of sensors, allowing users to program points of interest and capture data for offline review. Below are data capture stills from our Robotic Observation Systems:

Outdoor Thermal Sensor Data

Indoor LiDAR Data on RViz

Layered Thermal Sensor Data for Leak Detection

The Husky Observer is pre-installed with Clearpath’s OutdoorNav Autonomy Software enabling developers to plan and execute missions with an easy-to-use web interface for autonomous navigation in outdoor environments. The web-based user interface also supports teleoperation mode, allowing users to control their vehicle remotely. OutdoorNav supports several inspection actions out of the box, such as audio, image and video capture, and optional thermal capture. It provides an interface for users to integrate their own custom actions. The integrated system comes with a full-featured ROS Application Programming Interface (API) allowing advanced users to extend the capabilities of the system with their own add-ons. 

The Husky Observer is best deployed by tech-savvy personnel for:

• Remote virtual inspection, data sampling and image capture of infrastructure, high-value assets and safety critical equipment on oil & gas rigs, electrical substations, nuclear facilities, and solar and wind farms
• Unmanned data collection, scanning and quality inspection of job sites
• Remote construction site and progress monitoring
• Autonomous patrolling and monitoring of outdoor private and secured facilities
• Environment observation, real-time image transmission and data capture
• Remote crop and soil monitoring in orchards, vineyards, and other light agricultural environments.

With Husky Observer, robotics developers can get their applications up and running quickly, without needing to worry about the low-level intricacies of autonomous navigation and sensor integration. Clearpath Robotics’ services team can also add and integrate sensors based on customer requests. 

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MIT engineers developed a method to tailor any wireless network to handle a high load of time-sensitive data coming from multiple sources. | Credit: Christine Daniloff, MIT

How fresh are your data? For drones searching a disaster zone or robots inspecting a building, working with the freshest data is key to locating a survivor or reporting a potential hazard. But when multiple robots simultaneously relay time-sensitive information over a wireless network, a traffic jam of data can ensue. Any information that gets through is too stale to consider as a useful, real-time report.

Now, MIT engineers may have a solution. They’ve developed a method to tailor any wireless network to handle a high load of time-sensitive data coming from multiple sources. Their new approach, called WiSwarm, configures a wireless network to control the flow of information from multiple sources while ensuring the network is relaying the freshest data.

The team used their method to tweak a conventional Wi-Fi router, and showed that the tailored network could act like an efficient traffic cop, able to prioritize and relay the freshest data to keep multiple vehicle-tracking drones on task.

The team’s method, which they will present in May at IEEE’s International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM), offers a practical way for multiple robots to communicate over available Wi-Fi networks so they don’t have to carry bulky and expensive communications and processing hardware onboard.

Last in line

The team’s approach departs from the typical way in which robots are designed to communicate data.

“What happens in most standard networking protocols is an approach of first come, first served,” said MIT author Vishrant Tripathi. “A video frame comes in, you process it. Another comes in, you process it. But if your task is time-sensitive, such as trying to detect where a moving object is, then all the old video frames are useless. What you want is the newest video frame.”

In theory, an alternative approach of “last in, first out” could help keep data fresh. The concept is similar to a chef putting out entreés one by one as they are hot off the line. If you want the freshest plate, you’d want the last one that joined the queue. The same goes for data, if what you care about is the “age of information,” or the most up-to-date data.

“Age-of-information is a new metric for information freshness that considers latency from the perspective of the application,” said Eytan Modiano of the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS). “For example, the freshness of information is important for an autonomous vehicle that relies on various sensor inputs. A sensor that measures the proximity to obstacles in order to avoid collision requires fresher information than a sensor measuring fuel levels.”

The team looked to prioritize age-of information, by incorporating a “last in, first out” protocol for multiple robots working together on time-sensitive tasks. They aimed to do so over conventional wireless networks, as Wi-Fi is pervasive and doesn’t require bulky onboard communication hardware to access.

However, wireless networks come with a big drawback: They are distributed in nature and do not prioritize receiving data from any one source. A wireless channel can then quickly clog up when multiple sources simultaneously send data. Even with a “last in, first out” protocol, data collisions would occur. In a time-sensitive exercise, the system would break down.

Data priority

As a solution, the team developed WiSwarm — a scheduling algorithm that can be run on a centralized computer and paired with any wireless network to manage multiple data streams and prioritize the freshest data.

Rather than attempting to take in every data packet from every source at every moment in time, the algorithm determines which source in a network should send data next. That source (a drone or robot) would then observe a “last in, first out” protocol to send their freshest piece of data through the wireless network to a central processor.

The algorithm determines which source should relay data next by assessing three parameters: a drone’s general weight, or priority (for instance, a drone that is tracking a fast vehicle might have to update more frequently, and therefore would have higher priority over a drone tracking a slower vehicle); a drone’s age of information, or how long it’s been since a drone has sent an update; and a drone’s channel reliability, or likelihood of successfully transmitting data.

By multiplying these three parameters for each drone at any given time, the algorithm can schedule drones to report updates through a wireless network one at a time, without clogging the system, and in a way that provides the freshest data for successfully carrying out a time-sensitive task.

The team tested out their algorithm with multiple mobility-tracking drones. They outfitted flying drones with a small camera and a basic Wi-Fi-enabled computer chip, which it used to continuously relay images to a central computer rather than using a bulky, onboard computing system. They programmed the drones to fly over and follow small vehicles moving randomly on the ground.

When the team paired the network with its algorithm, the computer was able to receive the freshest images from the most relevant drones, which it used to then send commands back to the drones to keep them on the vehicle’s track.

When the researchers ran experiments with two drones, the method was able to relay data that was two times fresher, which resulted in six times better tracking, compared to when the two drones carried out the same experiment with Wi-Fi alone. When they expanded the system to five drones and five ground vehicles, Wi-Fi alone could not accommodate the heavier data traffic, and the drones quickly lost track of the ground vehicles. With WiSwarm, the network was better equipped and enabled all drones to keep tracking their respective vehicles.

“Ours is the first work to show that age-of-information can work for real robotics applications,” said MIT author Ezra Tal.

In the near future, cheap and nimble drones could work together and communicate over wireless networks to accomplish tasks such as inspecting buildings, agricultural fields, and wind and solar farms. Farther in the future, he sees the approach being essential for managing data streaming throughout smart cities.

“Imagine self-driving cars come to an intersection that has a sensor that sees something around the corner,” said MIT’s Sertac Karaman. “Which car should get that data first? It’s a problem where timing and freshness of data matters.”

Editor’s Note: This article was republished from MIT News.

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The L linear actuator family is designed for high performances in compact dimensions, and supports large input speed or high output force. It’s well-suited for a wide range of applications like robotics, industrial machines and laboratory equipment. A large number of reduction ratios, uniformly distributed, are available to select the most appropriate configuration to fit various force or speed operating points as required by the application. This new family also features high flexibility offering different screw sizes and types. A large selection of options are available to match different ambient conditions and make mechanical integration inside applications faster and smoother through various flange and nut configurations.

The new FAULHABER L family can be combined with a wide range of FAULHABER dc motors, 4-pole and 2-pole brushless motors or stepper motors. As always, customer-specific modifications are also possible. Some of these meet particular requirements with special ambient conditions, while others ease the product integration into the application system or enhance particular performance parameters to fulfill specific needs, like accuracy.

Product options can refer to the coupler, to the screw or both, for example:

• screw type and length
• nut type and length
• ambient conditions like particular temperature range or special environmental conditions as vacuum
• different motor cable or terminals orientation when integrating the combination unit inside the application

Each of the available screw types has its own characteristics that should be taken into account to find the best match with specific needs. The basic difference between ball and lead screws is rolling movement of the ball screw nut, which eliminates the sliding friction typical of lead screws, resulting in high efficiency. The smaller FAULHABER L series 06L/08L/10L are equipped with lead screws in two load characteristics. The larger 22L and 32L series are available with lead screws and additionally as ball screw versions in two accuracy options.

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On the show today, Steve Crowe and Mike Oitzman discuss breaking news about the uncloaking of Figure.AI, a new humanoid robot company with a mission to create an affordable and ubiquitous humanoid robot.

They also discuss the features of the latest ChatGPT release, which delivers scalable infrastructure to support large enterprise interaction with ChatGPT via API. This formalizes the opportunity for roboticists to programmatically interact with ChatGPT for robotic applications. What will you do with it?

Our featured guest his week is Dejan Pangercic, co-founder and CTO of APEX.AI. Dejan talks about software development for autonomous vehicles and how APEX.AI built a hardened operating system for autonomous vehicles around ROS 2. We discuss uses for APEX.AI in both on-road vehicles and for agriculture.

Episode timeline:

06:37  ChatGPT for roboticists

11:24  Uncloaking of Figure.ai

32:20 Autonomous vehicle news: Waymo starts fully driverless testing in LA, Argo.AI relaunched as Latitude.AI. Tesla FDS recall.

40:02 Interview with Dejan Pangercic

Robotics Summit & Expo (May 10-11) returns to Boston

Links from the show today:

• Argo AI team joins Ford’s new self-driving startup Latitude AI
• OpenAI releases APIs for production use of ChatGPT
• Figure.ai website
• Figure Promises First General-Purpose Humanoid Robot (IEEE Spectrum)
• Today, Figure emerges from stealth. (LinkedIn)
• APEX.AI Grace
• APEX.AI IDA

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Luxonis offers high-resolution cameras with depth vision and on-chip machine learning. | Source: Luxonis

Luxonis announced the release of its newest DepthAI ROS driver for its stereo depth OAK cameras. The driver aims to make the development of ROS-based software easier. 

When using the DepthAI ROS driver, almost everything is parameterized with ROS2 parameters/dynamic reconfigure, which aims to provide more flexibility to help users customize OAK to their unique use cases. 

The DepthAI ROS driver is being developed on ROS2 Humble and ROS1 Noetic. This allows users to take advantage of ROS Composition/Nodelet mechanisms. The driver supports both 2D and spatial detection and semantic segmentation networkers. 

The driver offers several different modes that users can run their camera in depending on their use case. For example, users can use the camera to publish Spatial NN detections and publish RGBD pointcloud. Alternatively, with the DepthAI ROS driver users can stream data straight from sensors for host processing, calibration and modular camera setup. 

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With the driver, users can set parameters for things like exposure and focus for individual cameras at runtime and IR LED power for better depth accuracy and night vision. This allows users to experiment with onboard depth filter parameters. 

The driver enables encoding to get more bandwidth with compressed images and provides an easy way to integrate a multi-camera setup. It also provides docker support for easy integration, users can build one themselves or use one from Luxonis’ DockerHub repository.

Users can also reconfigure their cameras quickly and easily using ‘stop’ and ‘start’ services. The driver also allows users to use low-quality streams and switch to higher quality when they need or switch between different neural networks to get their robot the data it needs.

Earlier this month, Luxonis announced a partnership with ams OSRAM. As part of the partnership, Luxonis will use OSRAM’s Belago 1.1 Dot Projector in its 3D vision solutions for automatic guided vehicles (AGVs), robots, drones and more.

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CaPow, a perpetual power solution provider, announced it raised a $7.5 million Seed round to scale up the commercialization of its battery-free, wireless, energy delivery eco-system for autonomous robotics. This solution provides continuous power for automated robotic environments while eliminating robot downtime due to charging. The round was led by IL Ventures, a VC fund focused on disruptive technologies for legacy industries, with co-investment from Mobilion VC, Payton Planar Magnetics, Doral Energy-Tech Ventures, Mobilitech Capital, and Mr. Ray Nissan, a prominent angel investor.

Today, many automated solutions rely on batteries for power supply. This dependency leads to several inherent inefficiencies such as charging downtime and rampant costs due to the need for additional robots to replace the ones that are being charged. Moreover, traditional batteries have a negative environmental impact, as they create safety hazards and are an operational “headache” since they require a dedicated procurement strategy, special shipping, handling, storage and recycling.

CaPow addresses the primary bottleneck for automation: the challenge of providing reliable, cost-effective, and non-pollutive energy. By offering consistent power flow for mobile robots, CaPow’s energy delivery eco-system allows automated robotic solutions to continuously operate with no energy depletion downtime while ending the concept of reliance on legacy batteries. CaPow’s “battery-free”, paradigm-shifting solution is being well received along the logistics value chain, as it is validated to cut down the size of the required robot fleet, enhance throughput and improve the ROI of automation.

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CaPow’s proprietary solution facilitates optimal power transfer with wide and dynamic capabilities. It accommodates multiple users, as well as the presence of metal and debris in and around the energy transfer field. In addition, it supports large distances between the transmitting and receiving ends, as well as wide spatial coverage. This provides substantial power levels with optimal end-to-end efficiency. The value of CaPow’s technology further expands to the wider mobility market with a wide range of applications. 

Mr. Amir Fishelov joins CaPow’s Board of Directors as Chairman of the Board, leveraging his two decades of experience as Co-Founder of SolarEdge (Nasdaq: SEDG), a pioneer and global leader in smart energy technology. At SolarEdge, a $17B company, Mr. Fishelov served as Chief Architect as well as VP of Strategy and Corporate Development, leading large-scale and complex energy management projects.

“With the backing of our investors and strategic partners, CaPow is challenging robot manufacturers, automation solution providers, and facility operators to change their definition of operational efficiency”, says Prof. Mor Peretz, Co-Founder & CEO at CaPow. “We look forward to accelerating our product development to meet strong market demand for our innovative and proven technology. The company will use the proceeds from the investment round to expedite business growth in markets around the world.”

“At IL Ventures, we align closely with CaPow’s mission of creating a sustainable, battery-free power supply for the industry,” says Yoni Heilbronn, Managing Partner at IL Ventures. “We are excited to invest in an exceptional and proven technology, which is a game changer for the entire robotic power landscape.”

“I am very proud BGN Technologies took part in bringing CaPow’s revolutionary technology to the market,” says Zafrir Levi, VP Exact Sciences at BGN, the commercialization arm of the Ben-Gurion University. “We wholeheartedly believe in CaPow’s Perpetual Power solution, and this investment is proof of the company’s superior technology and for the massive potential for disrupting the industry in which it operates”.

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A Universal Robots collaborative robot arm with a Robotiq gripper. | Source: Robotiq

ASTM International announced that its robotics, automation and autonomous systems committee is developing a standard, WK83863, based on the grasp strength of robot end-effectors. 

The proposed standard is for a test method that evaluates an end-effector’s grasp strength to better determine its capabilities like limits of payload size and resistance to pull and push forces during operation. 

The standard outlines two major types of grasps: pinch and wrap. With a pinch grasp, the standard will measure how well the end-effector performs precision grasping. An end effector’s performance with power grasping is measured with a wrap grasp. 

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“These grasp-type end-effector performance standards will be useful to producers of these technologies as methods to characterize their performance, ultimately helping both end-users and integrators to match capabilities to application needs,” Joe Falco, ASTM International member, said. “Additionally, researchers and developers will benefit from a common set of benchmarks for improving end-effector designs.”

This standard will help to outline better the capabilities of different kinds of end-effectors with diverse designs. By outlining a unified framework for these robotic grippers and performance metrics, end-users and developers can have a better understanding of the raw traits of the technology they’re working with.

You will learn more about ASTM’s standards work at the Robotics Summit & Expo (May 10-11 in Boston), the world’s leading event focused on commercial robotics development. The event is produced by The Robot Report. Adam Norton, chairman of ASTM International’s Committee F45 on Robotics, Automation, and Autonomous Systems, will present an overview of the committee’s recent and upcoming activities. Norton will also hold an interactive discussion during the session to gather industry feedback on recommendations for future standards developments to ensure alignment with the community’s needs, both from a developer and user perspective.

Aaron Prather, director of ASTM’s robotics & autonomous systems programs, was recently a guest on The Robot Report Podcast. He discussed the current state of robotic standards at ASTM, specifically with Committee F45, and talked about some of the pitfalls that young robotics companies can trip over when attempting to sell their solutions to a large fortune 500 company like FedEx, for which he served as senior technical advisor for many years. You can listen to that podcast episode below. The interview with Prather starts at the 19:20 mark.

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Canonical announced the general availability of real-time Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. Real-time Ubuntu provides a deterministic response to an external event, aiming to minimize the response time guarantee within a specified deadline. The new real-time kernel is ideal for stringent low-latency requirements. Enterprises in industrial, telecommunications, automotive, aerospace and defense, as well as public sector and retail, can now run their most demanding workloads and develop a wide range of time-sensitive applications on the open-source operating system (OS).

“The real-time Ubuntu kernel delivers industrial-grade performance and resilience for software-defined manufacturing, monitoring and operational tech”, said Mark Shuttleworth, CEO at Canonical. “Ubuntu is now the world’s best silicon-optimized AIOT platform on NVIDIA, Intel, MediaTek, and AMD-Xilinx silicon”.

Optimal compute and deterministic performance for time-sensitive applications

Based on the 5.15 version of the Linux kernel, Ubuntu 22.04 LTS integrates the out-of-tree PREEMPT_RT patches for x86 and Arm architectures. The PREEMPT_RT patchset reduces the kernel latencies as required by the most exacting workloads, helping to ensure time-predictable task execution. Meeting stringent determinism requirements and upper-bounding execution time, Ubuntu with PREEMPT_RT makes the kernel more preemptive than mainline Linux.

“The commercial availability of real-time Ubuntu on Arm demonstrates the power of open source collaboration and benefits the entire Arm ecosystem across the computing spectrum, from cloud to edge”, said Mark Hambleton, vice president of open source software, Arm. “From software-defined vehicles and smart Industrial 4.0 factories to 5G vRAN functionality and energy-efficient Arm-based hyperscale data centers, Canonical is enabling the future of computing on Arm”.

“As a global leader in AI we are focused on delivering accelerated hardware and software that power the intelligent edge”, said Justin Boitano, VP of Enterprise and Edge AI at NVIDIA. “From vision AI and 5G to robotics and autonomous vehicles, many of the solutions we develop rely on a real-time OS for ultra-low latency with end-to-end security. We are excited to see Real-time Ubuntu, an enterprise-grade, Linux operating system that will accelerate these markets”.

Ideal for telco, Industry 4.0 and automotive use cases

Real-time Ubuntu is designed to deliver performance, ultra-low latency and security for critical telco infrastructure. As workloads requiring quality of service and low latency steadily migrate to Ubuntu, Canonical designed the real-time kernel to meet telco network transformation needs for 5G.

“Canonical’s industry-leading Ubuntu Pro with a real-time kernel, provides significant value to our Service Provider and Enterprise customers across multiple industries”, said Arno Van Huyssteen, Telco Field CTO at Canonical. “We understand the importance of providing secure and reliable solutions, which is why we offer telco SLA-backed support for the real-time kernel enabled within Ubuntu Pro LTS. In-house provision of fixes, security patches, kernel module integration, and operating system platform testing can be cost-prohibitive for organizations, so leveraging Canonical’s expertise and support, ensures customers can achieve their business objectives while realizing economic benefits and investment returns from an open-source adoption strategy, without compromises”.

With support for real-time compute, Canonical is pushing the envelope of digital infrastructure and bringing the future of robotics automation forward. From industrial PCs to Human-Machine Interfaces (HMIs), a wide variety of Industry 4.0’s use cases require support for real-time Linux. As determinism is critical, industrial innovators often deploy workloads requiring a real-time OS running on their edge servers or have real-time control loops with stringent response times.

With real-time Ubuntu generally available, Canonical continues paving the way for software-defined vehicles as well, allowing for speed of development and deployment. Relying on Canonical’s state-of-the-art OTA updates and long-term security maintenance for real-time Ubuntu, OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers can shape their software-defined vehicle strategies around safe and secure open-source solutions. 

“Accessing an industry-leading Linux OS on AWS, with the power of AWS Graviton processors, will help further hardware parity in automotive development”, said Stefano Marzani, Worldwide Technical Lead, Software-Defined Vehicles at AWS. “By working with Canonical, and providing access to real-time Ubuntu in the cloud, AWS is helping to empower developers to start implementing systems requiring deterministic behavior- like automotive and industrial workloads – ahead of hardware availability and in parallel with hardware provisioning”.

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Ouster and Velodyne have completed their merger. The combined company will operate under the name Ouster and will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker “OUST.” 

Velodyne ceased trading on the NASDAQ after markets closed on the day the merger was completed. Each Velodyne share was exchanged for .8204 shares of Ouster common stock. 

The combined company has over 850 customers spanning the automotive, industrial, robotics and smart infrastructure industries. Ouster expects to retain about 350 employees and will be headquartered in San Francisco, with other key offices in the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific. 

“We’re thrilled to have completed the merger with Velodyne so quickly, further boosting our financial position and our ability to accelerate LiDAR adoption,” Angus Pacala, CEO of Ouster, said. “Together, we have an even stronger team backed by a healthy balance sheet, new channel partners, and a wide selection of positive-margin products to serve a diverse set of customers and win more deals than ever before. We expect our innovative digital LiDAR roadmap, amplified by exciting new software solutions, to further expand our serviceable market and catalyze growth across the business.”

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Ouster now has an intellectual property portfolio with 173 granted and 504 pending patents. The combined company has a cash balance of over $315 million as of December 31, 2022. Ouster is on track to exceed its estimation that the combined company will save at least $75 million in operating costs within the first 9 months of the transaction’s close.

“The combined Ouster is stronger than ever, led by an esteemed executive leadership team and Board with deep company, industry, and financial expertise,” Dr. Ted Tewksbury, executive chair of Ouster’s Board of Directors, said. “Ouster is well positioned as a global leader in LiDAR backed by the talent, products, and technology roadmap to make performant and affordable LiDAR solutions pervasive while accelerating time to profitability and enhancing value for stockholders.”

The combined company’s executive leadership team is made up of:

• Angus Pacala, chief executive officer
• Mark Frichtl, chief technology officer
• Mark Weinswig, chief financial officer
• Darien Spencer, chief operations officer
• Nate Dickerman, president of field operations
• Megan Chung, general counsel

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The number of users in the ROS community, for all versions, has shown a steady increase since 2008. | Credit: ros.org

The ROS team recently published statistics from 2022, and there were a few notable trends:

• ROS is gaining in popularity as an operating system for robotics. Both the number of commercial solutions using ROS and new projects based on ROS increased in 2022. There are currently more than 740 commercial companies using ROS. The actual number of robots that use ROS is hard to determine, but there ROS.org maintains a page that lists ROS-based solutions.
• ROS 2 officially launched in 2022, and the statistics on the various ROS sites show a growing migration from ROS 1 to ROS 2. The total number of ROS packages downloaded increased by 7.45%. ROS 2 accounted for 39.82% of all ROS downloads in 2022. ROS 2 had a 54.46% increase in package downloads YoY.
• There were 501,333,806 total deb downloads in 2022.
• An incredible 173.35 terabytes of ROS packages were served from OSUOSL.

ROS support channels are changing

ROS has a number of resources available for community support and documentation. The solution is open source and it’s the ROS community that helps to support new users and tackle difficult application questions.

ROS started with a Wiki, but in 2022, the Wiki lost users and traffic while the ROS docs site gained more than 56k new users. Overall, total users were up 33% year-over-year.

It has to be noted that the ROS Wiki only includes ROS 1 documentation while the newer ROS docs site includes the documentation for the most recent versions of both ROS 1 and ROS 2. This helps to explain the change in documentation usage patterns.

For community support, more users seem to be moving to the ROS Discourse resource as Discourse users are up +9.8% since 2021, while ROS Answers users are down -11.19%.

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A short list of ROS resources

Start here: ROS index: https://index.ros.org/ 

ROS Wiki page: https://wiki.ros.org/ 

ROS doc site: http://docs.ros.org/ 

ROS Discourse server: https://discourse.ros.org/ 

ROS answers: https://answers.ros.org/questions/ 

ROS packages download: http://packages.ros.org/

For complete details about the data cited in this article, be sure to check out the 2022 ROS metrics report.

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Rapid Robotics now offers Yaskawa Motoman’s line of industrial robots. | Source: Rapid Robotics

Rapid Robotics announced a brand-new integration with Yaskawa America, Inc., Motoman Robotics Div. (Yaskawa Motoman) that will bring industrial capabilities to Rapid Robotics’ Rapid Machine Operator (RMO).

The company is now integrated with the entire Yaskawa robotics portfolio, and can deliver more speed, higher payload and increased performance to a greater number of North American manufacturers with a more diverse range of needs.

“Since our founding in 2019, Rapid Robotics has been committed to providing manufacturers with a holistic workforce solution in the form of accessible, low-risk automation,” Jordan Kretchmer, CEO and Co-Founder of Rapid Robotics, said. “Today, we’re able to deliver on that commitment better than ever through our partnership with Yaskawa Motoman and their legacy of industrial expertise.”

By combining advanced computer vision, artificial intelligence and instinctive learning with as-a-service characteristics including cloud connectivity, monthly leasing and 24/7 support, Rapid Robotics has aimed to democratize automation in the face of an intense workforce shortage.

Now, with the Yaskawa portfolio as an integrated part of the company’s suite of solutions, manufacturers needing an industrial-size solution that previously could not automate due to traditional barriers like cost, inflexibility or lengthy deployments, could have the opportunity to automate.

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“A trusted name in industrial automation for over a hundred years, Yaskawa is an established leader in the robotics market. A partnership with Rapid Robotics opens the door to automation for a large number of enterprises that have previously found it difficult or intimidating to deploy robotic solutions,” Chris Caldwell, Product Manager of Yaskawa Motoman, said. “Yaskawa is excited for the opportunity to offer truly industrial solutions, expanding Rapid Robotics’ capabilities while providing improved cycle-times and return-on-investment for end users. By combining strengths, Rapid Robotics’ advanced vision systems and state-of-the-art AI allow Yaskawa’s full line of robotic manipulators to shift repetitive or dangerous tasks away from your human workforce, freeing them to perform more fulfilling work.”

A trademark of Rapid Robotics’ solutions is a high speed of deployment. This holds true for the new industrial RMO due to the company’s modular approach to work cell design. Streamlined industrial Yaskawa robots with robust capabilities take full advantage of that approach, avoiding interference with peripheral devices, and keeping the installation space of an industrial RMO work cell minimal.

A key feature of this re-imagined work cell is an innovative mobile robot pedestal with modular fixturing. The mobile pedestal gives this light industrial arm the same flexibility as Rapid Robotics’ collaborative robot (cobot) solution as the pedestal can be easily moved or reconfigured and then re-locked into place by a single person.

Historically, industrial robotic arms can be more challenging and time-consuming to deploy than their cobot counterparts, especially outside of mass production environments, due to their complexity and the extensive safety measures required. Rapid Robotics’ industrial RMO offers all the flexibility of a cobot solution while meeting all mandatory safety measures with the added payload, speed and reach of a traditional industrial arm.

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