The 2013 IEEE International Conference of Robotics and Automation was held early in May. Here’s a video montage of several robots shown off at the event. Looks like it would have been a blast to attend, but at least you can draw some inspiration from such a wide range of examples.
We grabbed a half-dozen screenshots that caught our eye. Moving from the top left in clockwise fashion we have a segmented worm bot that uses rollers for locomotion. There’s an interesting game of catch going on in the lobby with this sphere-footed self balancer. Who would have thought about using wire beaters as wheels? Probably the team that developed the tripod in the upper right. Just below there’s one of the many flying entries, a robot with what looks like a pair of propellers at its center. The rover in the middle is showing off the 3D topography map it creates to find its way. And finally, someone set up a pool of water for this snake to swim around in.
[Thanks Michael]
The end is nigh.
My friends and I are watching Star Wars tomorrow and I’m definitely showing this in the intermission. Each of those bots has a cousin in a galaxy far far away.
Finally a proper post… was I the only one growing tired of this over-hyped and over-covered RedBull contest ?
+1
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+1.000.000!
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My friends and I are watching Star Wars tomorrow and I’m definitely playing this in the intermission. Each of these bots has a cousin in a galaxy far, far away.
Was Boston Dynamics there? I think their brick throwing Big Dog would’ve crushed them all.
I didn’t see any of boston robots in the video, but it’s nice to see more people are working on the quick/flexible quadruped approach in the form of the starlETH.
Dangit – I was there and I didn’t see half of this stuff! Stupid me spent too much time in the sessions and not enough time on the show floor.
What incredible demos. Robots are starting to replace humans in certain basic functions, such as lab automation. The future is definitely getting more unpredictable and exciting.
Sewer snakes, gathering personal info. Not unclogging drains. Great!
I don’t want to sound like a whiner but THIS IS NOT IMPRESSIVE. Not even one breakthrough shown, seen it all on the web in a similar version during last years. In fact if someone told me that this footage was taken in year 2000 then I wouldn’t be surprised (maybe except for the quadcopters). I’d say that ‘today we have much more advanced robotic achievements’ but it seems like we don’t because it’s from 2013. It all reminds me of this: http://www.techneology.org/2009/07/elektro-worlds-first-humanoid-robot.html . C’mon guys, where is the creativity? Can we do a bit better rather than just play with gyroscope for the millionth f#$%g time?
what an incredibly uninformed complaint.
Something to keep in mind is that as the progress gets past major mechanical advancements, improvements become harder to spot on a quick visual inspection. Sure, you’ve probably seen quadrupeds before, and ballancing bots. However, what you can’t necessarily tell from this quick video is that there might be some incredibly advanced, and yes, groundbreaking work going into dynamic gaits for optimal performance, or similar things.
When I watch such videos I assume that it’s the crème de la crème and by that i judge if I like it or not. Is there a progress? Can’t see it and seeing is believing.
Sure we can optimize things and polish corners, but sadly it seems like it’s still a bit too early for that. What possible problems do these clumsy and strangely rounded humanoids solve? If there are no problems solved, then what can we optimize?
Believe me – I’m not happy to write all this. Optimism just like criticism needs to be constructive or else we will end up in a dead end with a bunch of technical solutions having no purpose what so ever. It’s good that there are passionate people involved in robotics, but in 2013 this video looks more like a ‘How about robots?!’ clip for teenagers.
Just to put even more meat on what I just said: this is progress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_Hall_of_Fame