MIT ATLAS Robot demo shows advanced moves - Video

The bipedal robot ATLAS from MIT is moving on. Reacting to the recent video of "MIT Atlas truckin' with a truss," TechCrunch said, "We've seen the cute little guy walk, toddle, and climb over obstacles but now he can reach down, grab a heavy metal girder, and drag it around like a beast. Our little robo-monster is growing up!"

The Gizmodo header was the most fitting: "The ATLAS humanoid robot has advanced to the level of a lazy teenager."

Watching the video showing the robot in action from the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) team at MIT, one can appreciate the resonance of asking a teenager to take out the trash or get ready for school; ATLAS moves slowly as it drags a big object around a spacious area. Nonetheless, the significance is clear.

As John Biggs wrote in TechCrunch: "This means the robot could carry differently weighted objects in each arm (a gun and a battle-ax or a baby and an adult) and can also assist in warehouses and deep inside an underground lair. It is, in short, now a humanoid robot that can do useful work."

The project is part of MIT's DARPA Robotics Challenge work and the team effort includes Scott Kuindersma, Frank Permenter, and Russ Tedrake.

The formal description of the video demo is "A simple demonstration of ATLAS walking using an implementation of and carrying an (unmodeled) aluminum truss."

In a paper submitted to the arXiv server earlier this year, the three authored "An Efficiently Solvable Quadratic Program for Stabilizing Dynamic Locomotion."

They wrote, "We describe a whole-body dynamic walking controller implemented as a convex quadratic program. The controller solves an optimal control problem using an approximate value function derived from a simple walking model while respecting the dynamic, input, and contact constraints of the full robot dynamics."

"By exploiting sparsity and temporal structure in the optimization with a custom active-set algorithm, we surpass the performance of the best available off-the-shelf solvers and achieve 1kHz control rates for a 34-DOF humanoid. We describe applications to balancing and walking tasks using the simulated Atlas robot in the DARPA Virtual Robotics Challenge."

The MIT DRC team home page describes ATLAS, saying that "Articulated, sensate hands will enable Atlas to use tools designed for human use.

ATLAS includes 28 hydraulically-actuated degrees of freedom, two hands, arms, legs, feet and a torso.

An articulated sensor head includes stereo cameras and a laser range finder. ATLAS is powered from an off-board, electric power supply via a flexible tether."

The DRC team also noted on their home page that in competition with 18 other academic and industry teams, they must enable the humanoid robot to walk over uneven terrain, climb stairs and ladders, enter and drive a small utility vehicle, handle debris and other objects, and use tools.

The DRC is a competition of robot systems and software teams that are working on robots capable of assisting humans in responding to natural and man-made disasters.

It was designed to be extremely difficult. The DRC finals at the end of 2014 will require robots to attempt a circuit of consecutive physical tasks, with degraded communications between robots and their operators; the winning team will receive a $2 million prize.

More information: arxiv.org/abs/1311.1839

Jetpack Flies at Smithsonian Futuristic Conference - Video

The jetpack was demonstrated at the Smithsonian Magazine hosted event on Saturday May 17th, 2014 in Washington D.C.

Those of you pondering the future and wondering where your jetpack is, take heart: A human pilot flew a real jetpack for 20 seconds in front of a packed crowd here Saturday (May 17) at the "Future is Here 2014" festival, hosted by Smithsonian Magazine.

The pilot flew around inside the cavernous atrium of the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center.

The jetpack can fly for a maximum of 26 seconds before it runs out of juice, according to Jet PI, which built the futuristic flying device.

The demonstration was the jetpack's first indoor flight in the United States, apart from the company's warehouse.

The jetpack is fueled by hydrogen peroxide and nitrogen gas, which react in the presence of a silver catalyst to produce jets of compressed steam that provide the necessary thrust, company officials said.

The pilot uses a handle on one hand to control the pack’s flight dynamics, including roll, pitch and yaw, and uses the other handle to control the power.

The contraption itself costs between $100,000 to $150,000, but you can’t buy one of these bad boys in stores yet (at the moment, you can only buy the parts and assemble them).

The past, present and future of jetpacks will be featured in an upcoming Smithsonian channel documentary.

The "Future is Here 2014" festival is a two-day event celebrating outer space, science fiction and the technologies of tomorrow. The conference features talks on everything from robots to human evolution to life beyond Earth.

Honda: New Unicycle Personal Transport Demo

Honda President Takanobu Ito displays the prototype model of a personal mobility device called the U3-X at the company's headquarters in Tokyo.

This is great! Now all we need is for it to incorporated into a suitcase and suddenly travelling is not such a hassle! Over to you Honda!

Picture: AFP/GETTY

NASA: New Robotic Lunar lander Test Bed on Demo

Marshall Space Flight Center is testing a new robotic lunar lander test bed that will aid in the development of a new generation of multi-use landers for robotic space exploration.

The test article is equipped with thrusters that guide the lander, one set of which controls the vehicle's attitude that directs the altitude and landing.

On the test lander, an additional thruster offsets the effect of Earth’s gravity so that the other thrusters can operate as they would in a lunar environment. MSFC is partnered with John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and the Von Braun Center for Science and Innovation for this project.

Image Credit: NASA