News
April 2008
A1 TEAM USA won its first race in the A1GP World Cup of Motorsport as Jonathan Summerton dominated the Feature race Sunday at Shanghai International Circuit.
"I'm really happy to win for A1 TEAM USA," Summerton said. "It's been a long time coming. We've steadily made the 'We the People' car more competitive this season and to finally stand on the top of the podium with our national anthem playing was the greatest feeling of my career."
Summerton lined up second for the standing start and accelerated past pole winner Neel Jani of Team Switzerland to take the lead into the first corner. The 19-year-old from Kissimmee, Fla., was never passed on the track, giving up the lead only during two pit stops in the 38-lap race on the 2.9-mile circuit. He finished 9.7 seconds in front of runner-up Filipe Albuquerque of Team Portugal.
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AutomationWorld
Vision-guided Robotics: In Search of the Holy Grail
By Wes Iversen
February 2006
While vision-guided robot "bin-picking" of randomly located parts has long proved an elusive goal, there are signs that the technology may now finally be set to emerge.
For more than two decades, machine vision practitioners have been predicting the commercial emergence of robotic random bin-picking-the ability of vision-guided robot arms to locate and pick individual parts from a jumble of parts piled haphazardly in a bin or container.
Highly flexible, random bin-picking systems would produce major savings for manufacturers, the early proponents declared. Human workers would no longer be required to unload incoming parts bins shipped by suppliers. And on machining and production lines, randomized parts piled in bins could replace expensive fixturing, tooling and component feeders used for part orientation.
Unfortunately, the widespread exuberance for the technology in the early 1980s gave way to hard reality later on. The "bin-picking problem" proved more difficult than anticipated. Bin-picking systems developed in the laboratories, it turned out, didn't translate well into real-world factory applications. "The industry found out that this wasn't so easy. You had things like partial occlusion with overlapping parts, and lighting variations that really stymied the progress of bin-picking," notes Adil Shafi, president of Shafi Inc., a Brighton, Mich.-based software solutions provider that specializes in vision-guided robotics. A further complication was that computers of the time tended to choke on the massive amounts of processing required to successfully recognize parts piled randomly in a bin, and to calculate their 3D position and orientation for picking.
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Microsoft's Internal Newsletter (distributed to 75,000 Microsoft developers daily).
Paving the Way for a Robot Invasion:
Microsoft Robotics Studio aims to transform robots from a novelty to a necessity, as ubiquitous as the PC is today.
By Fred Albert
February 15, 2008
CoroWare used MSRS in the CoroBot, a device that allows researchers to test out artificial intelligence and swarming applications.
When personal computers started appearing in people's homes in the late 1970s and early '80s, the common reaction was, "What are you going to do with that?" With few practical applications, the PC was perceived as a novelty more than anything else a diversion designed for fun rather than function.
Thanks, in large part, to the efforts of Microsoft, the PC now permeates many aspects of our daily lives. And the company is poised to do the same thing again, with robotics.
With the launch of the Microsoft Robotics Studio (MSRS) in December 2006, Microsoft was the first major company to produce an affordable robotics platform and tool kit that's suitable for any application. The technology promises to revolutionize the robotics world by fostering development at every level, elevating the robot from a novelty to a necessity. "Our goals are almost insanely ambitious," said Tandy Trower, general manager of Microsoft Robotics Studio. "We're trying to be a tool kit that can appeal to students, but one that is rich enough to provide a stable base for advanced research. Like Windows: one size that can fit all."
Robots are already a part of our lives in more ways than we may realize, controlling everything from surgical procedures to the braking and steering in our cars. But up until now, development was stymied by the lack of a uniform platform, forcing every researcher to reinvent the wheel. "Most applications are developed with tight coupling to the hardware, and there is neither a common programming model nor an environment between them, " said Joseph Fernando, a principal program manager with Robotics.
Tandy Trower, general manager of MS Robotics Studio, has seen 160,000 downloads of the MSRS platform and tool kit since its launch in Dec. 2006.
Industry representatives turned to Microsoft for help. "The early pioneers in the market were saying, 'Please, Microsoft, could you help accelerate the process by giving us a common ground that we can build on?' " recalled Trower.
It took Trower's team three years to develop MSRS. In the 15 months since its introduction, the product has been downloaded more than 160,000 times. Noncommercial users, such as academic institutions, constitute the bulk of those downloads, but the platform has also proven popular with commercial clients.
CoroWare, a Redmond-based systems and robotics integrator, uses MSRS for both professional services and products, such as CoroBot, a device used for testing artificial intelligence and swarming applications. "You can simulate anything with Microsoft Robotics Studio, that's actually the beauty of it," said Lloyd Spencer, CoroWare's president and CEO. "It's much easier to use than some of the other tools out there, like Player/Stage."
Babak Habibi, the chief technology officer for Braintech in Vancouver, British Columbia, used MSRS for a software development kit he markets called Volts-IQ. "Instead of us having to hand code a lot of these things underneath, we're able to leverage the power of the platform to take care of those things, which frees us up to focus on the tasks we want to focus on," Habibi said.
Joseph Fernando, a principal program manager with Robotics, says the lack of a universal robotics platform was hindering development.
Commercial clients pay just $399 for the right to use MSRS, but the vast majority of users, the noncommercial ones, pay nothing. So what's the value in developing something, then giving it away for free? "We believe that where the robotics marketplace is right now is primarily in the noncommercial space, where it badly needs a platform and tools to mature to a place where it can come to market," Trower said. "And we do believe that there's a marketplace coming. Every major world economy has indicated in their technological forecast that they see robotics becoming one of the principal industries."
Despite those predictions, the field isn't very crowded. "There really aren't any competitors," Trower said. Despite this, some assert that Microsoft is entering this category fairly late in the game. Trower doesn't deny the claim, but doesnÕt give it much credence, either. "That's like saying the PC market started in 1975, but you didn't get started until 1977," he said. "The market is still pretty young."
In a recent article in Scientific American, Bill Gates cited a prediction that the value of the personal robot industry will grow from about $5 billion a year today to more than $50 billion a year by 2025. Although Microsoft's involvement could prove extremely profitable in the long run, Trower says the company has a different ambition right now. "Our goal is not to dominate the market," he said. "Our goal is to enable the market."
Backgrounder
Published by The Heritage Foundation, December 19, 2007
The Pentagon's Robots: Arming the Future
by James Jay Carafano, Ph.D., and Andrew Gudgel
Robots have stepped out of the science fiction pages and onto the battlefield. Thousands are deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, supporting military operations on land, at sea, and in the air. Some robots cost as little as several thousand dollars each. Controlled remotely by soldiers, sailors, and airmen, they perform tasks such as disarming roadside bombs, scouting dangerous territory, and patrolling the sky.
As technology advances, robots will become increasingly autonomous of human supervision, providing new cutting-edge national security applications that could give the U.S. military significant competitive advantages. Robots on the battlefield will not bring an age of ÒbloodlessÓ push-button warfare nor provide ÒsilverbulletÓ solutions to every combat challenge, but they can offer U.S. forces tactical advantages for outfighting both conventional (regular armed forces) and unconventional (e.g., terrorists and insurgents) enemies.
The U.S. government should continue prudent investments in robotic technologies, particularly for autonomous operationsÑan area of research not adequately supported by commercial research and development. Congress can help by establishing a framework that will facilitate national security research and development programs and by addressing concerns about the risk to humans with legislative guidelines for liability and safety issues in research, development, and procurement.
CNNMoney.com
Braintech Releases Random Bin Picking™ Software.
New Technology is Integrated Into eVisionFactory™ Release 5.1
February 18, 2008
Braintech, Inc. (OTCBB: BRHI) has developed and integrated Random Bin Picking(TM) (RBP(TM)), the much sought after "Holy Grail" of Vision Guided Robotic technology (VGR), into its latest release of eVisionFactory (eVF(TM) version 5.1), a software platform and vision library for the development of VGR applications with greater efficiency and scalability than custom programming.
Braintech's Random Bin Picking uses the Company's unique VGR technology to locate and grasp randomly situated materials from generic bins, allowing them to be moved through assembly and manufacturing lines without high annual costs associated with manual labor, dedicated sorting machines, custom bins and trays. Braintech's technology solves the bin-picking problem in a highly unstructured environment where parts are completely jumbled within a bin and are under various degrees of occlusion.
"We believe this is a major advancement," Braintech Chief Executive Officer Rick Weidinger said. "Our team has made Random Bin Picking a priority in the last several months and they have done a tremendous job solving the problem of handling components which arrive at facilities in containers, including those jumbled together during shipping and throughout the entire material movement process. It streamlines the process along assembly lines by removing the need for purpose-built mechanisms, expensive custom crates and human interaction, which represents a significant return on investment for our customers.
"Our research indicates that there are approximately ten times as many random bin picking opportunities for any type of material movement application than current automation practices allow. We will target these opportunities."
Braintech is hard at work on more advancements in robotic technology.
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