I came to the Silicon Valley region in 2010 because I knew it was the robotics center of the world, but it certainly doesn’t get anywhere near the media attention that some other robotics regions do. In California, robotics technology is a small fish in a much bigger technology pond, and that tends to conceal how important Californian companies are to the robotics revolution.

This conservative dataset from Pitchbook [Vertical: Robotics and Drones] provides data for 7166 robotics and drones companies, although a more customized search would provide closer to 10,000 robotics companies world wide. Regions ordered by size are:

• North America 2802
• Asia 2337
• Europe 2285
• Middle East 321
• Oceania 155
• South America 111
• Africa 63
• Central America 13

USA robotics companies by state

1. California = 843 (667) * no of companies followed by no of head quarters
2. Texas = 220 (159)
3. New York = 193 (121)
4. Massachusetts = 191 (135)
5. Florida = 136 (95)
6. Pennsylvania = 113 (89)
7. Washington = 85 (61)
8. Colorado = 83 (57)
9. Virginia = 81 (61)
10. Michigan = 70 (56)
11. Illinois = 66 (43)
12. Ohio = 65 (56)
13. Georgia = 64 (46)
14. New Jersey = 53 (36)
15. Delaware = 49 (18)
16. Maryland = 48 (34)
17. Arizona = 48 (37)
18. Nevada = 42 (29)
19. North Carolina = 39 (29)
20. Minnesota = 31 (25)
21. Utah = 30 (24)
22. Indiana = 29 (26)
23. Oregon = 29 (20)
24. Connecticut = 27 (22)
25. DC = 26 (12)
26. Alabama = 25 (21)
27. Tennessee = 20 (18)
28. Iowa = 17 (14)
29. New Mexico = 17 (15)
30. Missouri = 17 (16)
31. Wisconsin = 15 (12)
32. North Dakota = 14 (8)
33. South Carolina = 13 (11)
34. New Hampshire = 13 (12)
35. Nebraska = 13 (11)
36. Oklahoma = 10 (8)
37. Kentucky = 10 (7)
38. Kansas = 9 (9)
39. Louisiana = 9 (8)
40. Rhode Island = 8 (6)
41. Idaho = 8 (6)
42. Maine = 5 (5)
43. Montana = 5 (4)
44. Wyoming = 5 (3)
45. Mississippi = 3 (1)
46. Arkansas = 3 (2)
47. Alaska = 3 (3)
48. Hawaii = 2 (1)
49. West Virginia = 1 (1)
50. South Dakota = 1 (0)

Note – this number in brackets is for HQ locations, whereas the first number is for all company locations. The end results and rankings are practically the same.

ASIA robotics companies by country

1. China = 1350
2. Japan = 283
3. India = 261
4. South Korea = 246
5. Israel = 193
6. Hong Kong = 72
7. Russia = 69
8. United Arab Emirates = 50
9. Turkey = 48
10. Malaysia = 35
11. Taiwan = 21
12. Saudi Arabia = 19
13. Thailand = 13
14. Vietnam = 12
15. Indonesia = 10
16. Lebanon = 7
17. Kazakhstan = 3
18. Iran = 3
19. Kuwait = 3
20. Oman = 3
21. Qatar = 3
22. Pakistan = 3
23. Philippines = 2
24. Bahrain = 2
25. Georgia = 2
26. Sri Lanka = 2
27. Azerbaijan = 1
28. Nepal = 1
29. Armenia = 1
30. Burma/Myanmar = 1

Countries with no robotics; Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Jordan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Mongolia, Cambodia, Laos, North Korea, East Timor.

UK/EUROPE robotics companies by country

1. United Kingdom = 443
2. Germany = 331
3. France = 320
4. Spain = 159
5. Netherlands = 156
6. Switzerland = 140
7. Italy = 125
8. Denmark = 115
9. Sweden = 85
10. Norway = 80
11. Poland = 74
12. Belgium = 72
13. Russia = 69
14. Austria = 51
15. Turkey = 48
16. Finland = 45
17. Portugal = 36
18. Ireland = 28
19. Estonia = 24
20. Ukraine = 22
21. Czech Republic = 19
22. Romania = 19
23. Hungary = 18
24. Lithuania = 18
25. Latvia = 15
26. Greece = 15
27. Bulgaria = 11
28. Slovakia = 10
29. Croatia = 7
30. Slovenia = 6
31. Serbia = 6
32. Belarus = 4
33. Iceland = 3
34. Cyprus = 2
35. Bosnia & Herzegovina = 1

Countries with no robotics; Andorra, Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, Kosovo, Moldova, Malta, Vatican City.

CANADA robotics companies by region

1. Ontario = 144
2. British Colombia = 60
3. Quebec = 53
4. Alberta = 34
5. Manitoba = 7
6. Saskatchewan = 6
7. Newfoundland & Labrador = 2
8. Yukon = 1

Regions with no robotics; Nunavut, Northwest Territories.

The International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) showcases leading-edge research in robotics. IROS was held in Detroit MI Oct 1-5 and not only showcased research but the latest commercialization in robotics, particularly robotics providers selling into robotics for research or as part of the hardware/software stack. The conference focuses on future directions in robotics, and the latest approaches, designs, and outcomes. It also provides an opportunity to network with the world’s leading roboticists.

Highlights included seeing Silicon Valley Robotics members; Foxglove, Hello Robot, Anyware Robotics and Tangram Vision, also Open Robotics and Intrinsic talking up ROS 2 and the upcoming ROSCon 23. Intrinsic sponsored a ROS/IROS meetup and Clearpath Robotics sponsored the Diversity Cocktails event. OhmniLabs sponsored 3 telepresence robots which were in constant demand touring the expo, the competition floor and the poster sessions. I also met Sol Robotics from the Bay Area, which has quite a unique robot arm structure, that’s super stable with the ability to carry a lot of weight.

There were plenty of rolling and roaming robots, like this Diablo from Direct Drive Tech (world’s first Direct-Drive Self-Balancing Wheeled-Leg Robot), also from Deep Robotics, Unitree Robotics, Fourier Intelligence, Hebi and Westwood Robotics. Also the other legged one, and the rolling robots – Clearpath, Otto, Husarion, Hebi and more. Although they weren’t on the Expo Floor, the Disney keynote session was another highlight with a live robot demo on stage,

And Franka Emika fans will be pleased to hear that not only did they win a ‘best paper’ award, but that the eminent demise of the company is much overstated. It’s a German thing. There are many investors/purchasers lined up to keep the company going while they restructure. And watch out for Psyonics! Psyonics’ smart ability hands and arms, world’s first touch sensing bionic arms, are being used by Apptronik (humanoid for NASA) as well as for people with disabilities.

Full list of IROS Exhibitors is here.

In the last decade we have seen more robotics innovation becoming real products and companies than in the entire history of robotics.

Furthermore, the greater Silicon Valley and San Francisco Bay Area is at the center of this ‘Cambrian Explosion in Robotics’ as Dr Gill Pratt, Director of Robotics at Toyota Research Institute described it. In fact, two of the very first robots were developed right here.

In 1969 at Stanford, Vic Sheinman designed the first electric robot arm able to be computer controlled. After successful pilots and interest from General Motors, Unimation acquired the concept and released the PUMA or Programmable Universal Machine for Assembly. Unimation was eventually acquired by Staubli, and the PUMA became one of the most successful industrial robots of all time.

Shakey was the first mobile robot able to perceive and reason. Also called the world’s first electronic person by Time Magazine in 1972. Shakey was developed at SRI International from 1966 to 1972 and pioneered many advances in computer vision and path planning and control systems that are still in use today.

These companies have been at the heart of Silicon Valley Robotics, the regional robotics ecosystem/association, but we have also seen enormous growth in new robotics companies and startups in the last decade.

And all of them are hiring.

This volume serves as a guide to students who are interested in studying the field of robotics in any way. Robotics jobs range from service technician, electrical or mechanical engineer, control systems and computer science, to interaction or experience designer, human factors and industrial design.

All these skills are in great demand in robotics companies around the world, and people with experience in robotics are in great demand everywhere. Robotics is a complex multidisciplinary field, which provides opportunities for you to develop problem solving skills and a holistic approach.

The robotics industry also requires people with skill sets in growing businesses, not just robotics, but product and project management, human resources, sales, marketing, operations.

Get involved in robotics – the industry of the 21st century.

The guide

I have been studying the whole range of issues/opportunities in the commercial roll out of robotics for many years now, and I’ve spoken at a number of conferences about the best way for us to look at regulating robotics. In the process I’ve found that my guidelines most closely match the EPSRC Principles of Robotics, although I provide additional focus on potential solutions. And I’m calling it the 5 Laws of Robotics because it’s so hard to avoid Asimov’s Laws of Robotics in the public perception of what needs to be done.

The first most obvious point about these “5 Laws of Robotics” should be that I’m not suggesting actual laws, and neither actually was Asimov with his famous 3 Laws (technically 4 of them). Asimov proposed something that was hardwired or hardcoded into the existence of robots, and of course that didn’t work perfectly, which gave him the material for his books. Interestingly Asimov believed, as did many others at the time (symbolic AI anyone?) that it was going to be possible to define effective yet global behavioral rules for robots. Whereas, I don’t.

My 5 Laws of Robotics are:

1. Robots should not kill.
2. Robots should obey the law.
3. Robots should be good products.
4. Robots should be truthful.
5. Robots should be identifiable.

What exactly does those laws mean?

Firstly, people should not legally able to weaponize robots, although there may be lawful exclusions for use by defense forces or first responders. Some people are completely opposed to Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (LAWS) in any form, whereas others draw the line at robot weapons being ultimately under human command, with accountability to law. Currently in California there is a proposed legislation to introduce fines for individuals building or modifying weaponized robots, drones or autonomous systems, with the exception of ‘lawful’ use.

Secondly, robots should be built so that they comply with existing laws, including privacy laws. This implies some form of accountability for companies on compliance in various jurisdictions, and while that is technically very complex, successful companies will be proactive because companies otherwise there will be a lot of court cases and insurance claims keeping lawyers happy but badly impacting the reputation of all robotics companies.

Thirdly, although we are continually developing and adapting standards as our technologies evolve, the core principle is that robots are products, designed to do tasks for people. As such, robots should be safe, reliable and do what they claim to do, in the manner that they claim to operate. Misrepresentation of the capabilities of any product is universally frowned upon.

Fourthly, and this is a fairly unique capability of robots, robots should not lie. Robots have the illusion of emotions and agency, and humans are very susceptible to being ‘digitally nudged’ or manipulated by artificial agents. Examples include robots or avatars claiming to be your friend, but could be as subtle as robots using a human voice just as if there was a real person listening and speaking. Or not explaining that a conversation that you’re having with a robot might have many listeners at other times and locations. Robots are potentially amazingly effective advertizing vehicles, in ways we are not yet expecting.

Finally, and this extends the principles of accountability, transparency and truthfulness, it should be possible to know who is the owner and/or operator of any robot that we interact with, even if we’re just sharing a sidewalk with them. Almost every other vehicle has to comply with some registration law or process, allowing ownership to be identified.

What can we do to act on these laws?

1. Robot Registry (license plates, access to database of owners/operators)
2. Algorithmic Transparency (via Model Cards and Testing Benchmarks)
3. Independent Ethical Review Boards (as in biotech industry)
4. Robot Ombudspeople (to liaise between the public, policy makers and the robotics industry)
5. Rewarding Good Robots (design awards and case studies)

There are many organizations releasing guides, principles, and suggested laws. I’ve surveyed most of them and looked at the research. Most of them are just ethical hand wringing and accomplish nothing because they don’t factor in real world conditions around what the goals are, who would be responsible and how to make progress towards the goals. I wrote about this issue ahead of giving a talk at the ARM Developer Summit in 2020 (video included below).

Silicon Valley Robotics announced the first winners of our inaugural Robotics Industry Awards in 2020. The SVR Industry Awards consider the responsible design as well as technological innovation and commercial success. There are also some ethical checkmark or certification initiatives under preparation, but like the development of new standards, these can take a long time to do properly, whereas awards, endorsements and case studies can be available immediately to foster the discussion of what constitutes good robots, and, what are the social challenges that robotics needs to solve.

The Federal Trade Commission recently published “The Luring Test: AI and the engineering of consumer trust” describing the

For those not familiar with Isaac Asimov’s famous Three Laws of Robotics, they are:

First Law: A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

Second Law: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Asimov later added a Fourth (called the Zeroth Law, as in 0, 1, 2, 3)

Zeroth Law: A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm

Robin R. Murphy and David D. Woods have updated Asimov’s laws to be more similar to the laws I proposed above and provide a good analysis for what Asimov’s Laws meant and why they’ve changed them to deal with modern robotics. Beyond Asimov The Three Laws of Responsible Robotics (2009)

Some other selections from the hundreds of principles, guidelines and surveys of the ethical landscape that I recommend come from one of the original EPSRC authors, Joanna Bryson.

The Meaning of the EPSRC Principles of Robotics (2016)

And the 2016/2017 update from the original EPSRC team:

Margaret Boden, Joanna Bryson, Darwin Caldwell, Kerstin Dautenhahn, Lilian Edwards, Sarah Kember, Paul Newman, Vivienne Parry, Geoff Pegman, Tom Rodden, Tom Sorrell, Mick Wallis, Blay Whitby & Alan Winfield (2017) Principles of robotics: regulating robots in the real world, Connection Science, 29:2, 124-129, DOI: 10.1080/09540091.2016.1271400

Another survey worth reading is on the Stanford Plato site: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-ai/

Robots were on the main expo floor at CES this year, and these weren’t just cool robots for marketing purposes. I’ve been tracking robots at CES for more than 10 years, watching the transition from robot toys to real robots. Increasing prominence has been given to self-driving cars, LiDARs and eVTOL drones, but, in my mind it was really the inclusion of John Deere and agricultural robots last year that confirmed that CES was incorporating more industry, more real machines, not just gadgets.
In fact, according to the organizing association CTA or the Consumer Technology Association, these days CES no longer stands for the Consumer Electronics Show. CES now just stands for CES, one of the world’s largest technology expos.

Eve from Halodi Robotics shakes hands at CES 2023 with Karinne Ramirez-Amaro, associate professor at Chalmers University of Technology and head of IEEE Robotics and Automation Society’s Women in Engineering chapter. (Image source: Andra Keay)

The very first robot I saw was Eve from Halodi Robotics, exhibiting in the ADT Commercial booth. I am a big fan of this company. Not only do they have great robotics technology, which is very safe and collaborative, but I’ve watched them go from an angel funded startup to their first commercial deployments, providing 140 robots to ADT. One of their secrets has been spending the last year working closely with ADT to finetune the first production features of Eve, focusing on indoor security and working alongside people. In the future, Halodi has potential for many other applications including eldercare.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xv3U9FoBuRA

Another robot company (and robot) that I’m a big fan of is Labrador Robotics, and their mobile tray fetching robot for eldercare. Labrador exhibited their mobile robot in the AARP Innovation Lab pavilion, and are rolling out robots both in houses and in aged care facilities. There are two units pictured and the height of the platform can raise or lower depending on whether it needs to reach a countertop or fridge unit to retrieve items, like drinks and medications, or whether it needs to lower to become a bed or chair side table. These units can be commanded by voice, or tablet, or scheduled to travel around designated ‘bus stops’, using advanced localization and mapping. The team at Labrador have a wealth of experience at other consumer robotics companies.

Two Retrievers from Labrador Robotics in the AARP Innovation Lab Pavilion at CES 2023. (Image source: Andra Keay)

I first met Sampriti Battacharya, pictured below with her autonomous electric boat, when she was still doing her robotics PhD at MIT, dreaming about starting her own company. Five short years later, she’s now the proud founder of Navier with not one but two working prototypes of the ‘boat of the future’. The Navier 30 is a 30’ long electric intelligent hydrofoil with a range of 75 nautical miles and a top speed of 35 knots. Not only is the electric hydrofoil 90% more energy efficient than traditional boats but it eliminates sea sickness with a super smooth ride. Sampriti’s planning to revolutionize public transport for cities that span waterways, like San Francisco or Boston or New York.

Navier’s ‘boat of the future’ with founder Sampriti Battacharya, plus an extra stowaway quadruped robot from Unitree. Image source: Andra Keay

Another rapidly evolving robotics company is Yarbo. Starting out as a prototype snow blowing robot, after five years of solid R&D, Snowbot has evolved into the Yarbo modular family of smart yard tools. Imagine a smart docking mobile base which can be turned from a lawn mower to a snow blower or a leaf blower. It can navigate autonomously, and it’s electric of course.

And these robotics companies are making waves at CES. I met French startup Acwa Robotics earlier in 2022 and was so impressed that I nominated them as an IEEE Entrepreneurship Star. Water utilities around the world are faced with aging and damaged infrastructure, inaccessible underground pipes, responsible for huge amounts of water loss, road and building damage. Acwa’s intelligent robot travels inside the pipes without stopping water flow and provides rapid precisely localized inspection data that can pinpoint leaks, cracks and deterioration. Acwa was nominated for honors in the Smart Cities category and also won CES Best of Innovation Award.

Acwa Robotics and CES 2023 Best of Innovation Awards (Image Source: Acwa Robotics)

Some other robotics companies and startups worth looking at were Apex.ai, Caterpillar, Unitree, Bosch Rexroth, Waymo, Zoox, Whill, Meropy, Artemis Robotics, Fluent Pet and Orangewood. Let me know who I missed! According to the app, 278 companies tagged themselves as Robotics, 73 as Drones, 514 as Vehicle Tech, and 722 as Startups, although I’d say the overall number of exhibitors and attendees was down on previous years although there were definitely more robots.

On Tuesday, I also moderated the A3 Webinar “Robots and Beyond Roundtable: How Women in Robotics and Automation are Changing Manufacturing” with Joanne Moretti, CRO of Fictiv, Jackie Ram, VP of Operations, IAM Robotics, Jessica Moran, SVP and General Manager, Berkshire Grey, and Mikell Taylor, Principal Technical Program Manager, Amazon Robotics.

And on Thursday Sept. 15 I moderated a panel on “Reaching New Heights: Women in Tech Leadership” with Meaghan Ziemba, Owner, Z-Ink Solutions and Host, Mavens of Manufacturing Podcast, Nicole Wolter, President & CEO, HM Manufacturing, Laura Elan, Senior Director of Cybersecurity, MxD. We discussed so many great resources during our panel precall, that we really wanted to put together a list that could be shared more widely after the events were over.

Resources for Women in Tech Leadership:

Suggestions from Nicole Wolter;

• Sporting experience is a great pathway into leadership for women who often miss out on formal leadership training or experiences.
• Find mentors and champions (male or female) with an eye towards helping you develop your career pathway and deal with your next challenges.
• Build on your strengths, while we can always improve we should embrace your strength.
• The Goal is a great book about running a company. (now also available as a Business Graphic Novel)
• Crucial Conversations, Tools for Talking When Stakes are High by Joseph Grenny, Kerry Patterson and Ron McMillan

From Meaghan Ziemba;

• the Mavens of Manufacturing Podcast, celebrating women from the shop floor to the C-suite.
• Steel Toes and Stilettoes by Shannon Karels and Kathy Miller, a true story of women manufacturing leaders and lean transformation success
• Turn the Ship Around, a True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders, by L. David Marquet, and Stephen R. Covey
• Leaders Eat Last, Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t, by Simon Sinek
• Start with Why, How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action, by Simon Sinek
• Business Made Simple: 60 Days to Master Leadership, Sales, Marketing, Execution Management, Personal Productivity and More, by Donald Miller
• Twelve and a Half: Leveraging the Emotional ingredients Necessary for Business Success by Gary Vanyerchuk

From Laura Elan;

• Presence by Amy Cuddy, bringing your biggest boldest self
• Ted Talk:  Amy Cuddy, “Your body language may shape who you are”
• Leadership Development: Center for Creative Leadership
• Equality vs Equity image

From Andra Keay;

• From Battle of the Sexes to Balance of the Sexes, Hilary Wicht at TEDx Sonoma
• Hilary Wicht, Hollywood vocal coach on Voice, Power and Presence
• This Better Work, a female founders wild ride through the (hypermasculine) tech startup world, by Lynsie Campbell
• Data Shows Women Make Better Leaders, who cares? by Avivah Wittenberg-Cox
• Being Glue, by Tanya Reilly – don’t do glue work (or leadership/management) until it is on your performance metrics!
• Women in Robotics Org

• Xena Workwear for Women founded by Ana Kraft

Hardworking women deserve footwear that is both beautiful and strong. Xena Workwear’s women’s steel toe boots & safety shoes are handcrafted with high-quality materials, look stunning, and are not bulky or masculine. Each style is ASTM certified and handcrafted to help you feel safe and confident. (not just footwear!)

But wait, there’s more!

Additionally, you can find interviews with some of these kickass women in the IMTS+ coverage. 

Stop by the #IMTSCreatorsLounge at #IMTS2022, where mfg Influencers & content creators like Meaghan Ziemba, will come to connect & share their stories. FIND us in the South Building, Booth #338600 to get an inside look at industry influencers!#WeAreAllCreators #IMTSCreators pic.twitter.com/oEWaD88cxd

— IMTS (@IMTSchicago) August 24, 2022

IMTS+ In Conversation With Host, Tim Shinbara, Chief Technology Officer, AMT – The Association for Manufacturing Technology interviews Barbara Humpton,  President & CEO, Siemens Corporation. 

https://www.imts.com/watch/video-details/In-Conversation-With-Barbara-Humpton/199

Join IMTS+  Host, Marley Kayden for IMTS Unwind from Wednesday at the show. Featuring live interviews with: Nicole Wolter, President & CEO, HM Manufacturing; Aneesa Muthana, President, CEO, and Owner of Pioneer Service, Inc.; Yvonne Wiedemann, President & Owner of CAM Logic; Austin Schmidt, President of Additive Engineering Solutions; Max Egan, and Travis Egan, Chief Revenue Officer, AMT – The Association for Manufacturing Technology.

https://www.imts.com/watch/video-details/IMTS-Unwind-Wednesday-September-14-2022/198

Join IMTS+ Host, Marley Kayden for IMTS Today (Wednesday, September 14).  Featuring: Andra Keay, Vice President of Global Robotics; Robby Komljenovic, Chairman & CEO, Acieta; Richard Browning, Technologist and Founder of Gravity Industries; and Barbara Humpton, President & CEO of Siemens

https://www.imts.com/watch/video-details/IMTS-Today-Wednesday-September-14-2022/196

Join IMTS+ Host Marley Kayden for IMTS Today, Friday, September 16: Featuring: Dr. Jeffrey Ahrstrom, CEO, Ingersoll; Meaghan Ziemba, Owner, Z-Ink Solutions, Founder & Host, Mavens of Manufacturing; Mitch Free Founder & CEO, ZYCI and Trusted Source; and John Dyck, CEO, CESMII: The Smart Manufacturing Institute.

https://www.imts.com/watch/video-details/IMTS-Today-Friday-September-16-2022/204

Join IMTS+ Host, Marley Kayden for IMTS Unwind. Featuring live interviews with: Tim Shinbara, Chief Technology Officer, AMT – The Association for Manufacturing Technology; Jeremy Nyenhuis, Owner of J3 Machine & Engineering, LLC.; and Courtney Tate, Owner of Ontime Quality Machining. Additional live interviews with social media influencers James Soto, Founder & CEO, INDUSTRIAL and Partnership Advocate; and Charli K. Matthews, Founder & CEO, Empowering Pumps & Equipment, and Champion of Women.

https://www.imts.com/watch/video-details/IMTS-Unwind-Monday-September-12-2022/188

]]> https://robohub.org/seeing-the-robots-at-icra2022-through-the-eyes-of-a-robot/ Fri, 17 Jun 2022 11:55:06 +0000 https://svrobo.org/?p=22680 Accessbility@ICRA2022 and OhmniLabs provided three OhmniBots for the conference, allowing students, faculty and interested industry members to attend the expo and poster sessions. The deployment of telepresence robots was greatly appreciated by everyone, from people with medical conditions or visa issues preventing them from attending, to people who were able to sample a little bit of the conference as an introduction, including future conference organizers. 

There were more than 60 requests to “Tour ICRA 2022 via Telepresence Robots” from as far away as Africa, India, Asia Pacific, Australia and Europe, as well as across the USA. 24.6% of requests came from interested industry people, with an additional 1.8% from the investment community, 1.8% from the media and 5.3% was interest from the general public.

ICRA 2022 General Chair George Pappas commented that “​​The telepresence robots were a big hit! It added a very nice innovation and was discussed very positively on social media, particularly from registrants that could not make it.”

Thuc Vu, the CEO of OhmniLabs, the company that provided ICRA with telepresence robots, was delighted to see a conference that was taking a meaningful step for people with accessibility issues. OhmniLabs provide telepresence robots for hospitals and schools as well as for manufacturing or workplace settings and have seen first hand the difference that having a physical ‘body’ and the ability to move around makes in the experience, compared to a video call.

One ICRA researcher presented their poster session via robot, and several faculty who couldn’t attend in person were able to be there for their student’s poster sessions. 12.5% of the requests for telepresence robots came from people who had a paper or poster accepted at ICRA but couldn’t travel. PhD Student at The Sydney Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Systems (SIRIS) at Sydney University, Ahalya Ravendran said, 

“Did I tell y’all I bot-suit myself for my conference #ICRA2022 poster session? @RobotLaunch was kind enough to allocate a slot for me during my poster session and oh I had a lot of fun touring with the telepresence robot, via @OhmniLabs”

“Hi from Robotic Imaging Team ”

Sabine Hauert, Publicity Chair at ICRA, President of Robohub and Associate Professor of Swarm Engineering at Bristol University was unable to attend ICRA in person due to pregnancy, but she still visited her student’s poster sessions and explored the conference Expo, saying 

“That was fun! The height of the telepresence robot is even accurate Thanks @OhmniLabs, @RobotLaunch and @ieee_ras_icra for making it possible for this very pregnant lady to attend #ICRA2022 remotely. Congrats on the nice work @m_alhafnawi.”

Sabine’s PhD student Merihan Alhafnawi was delighted,

“Such an amazing surprise having @sabinehauert visit my poster remotely at @ieee_ras_icra! I presented MOSAIX, a swarm of expressive robot Tiles that we designed & built. Work done with Sabine, @DrEdmundHunt, @skadge & Paul O’Dowd. Check out photos from both perspectives #ICRA2022”

Specially Appointed Assistant Professor at Tohoku University in Japan, Seyed Amir Tafrishi said, “I was lucky to join #icra2022 physically by my avatar robot, where two of our papers will be presented. Thanks to #Ohmnilabs for the fantastic experience with the telepresence robot! It was a great experience to talk with different experts. P.S. Person on the robot’s screen is me! :))”

Many people gave us additional information to help us understand why they wanted to access ICRA via telepresence robots, ranging from people stuck in war torn countries, to economic or visa difficulties traveling from some parts of the world. Corporate policy contributed to several people’s inability to attend in person, as sustainably minded companies seek to minimize their carbon impact. 

There was also interest from roboticists researching the telepresence experience as well as from future robotics conference organizers. And there were a wide range of medical reasons underpinning the requests for telepresence. Some medical issues are temporary conditions but some roboticists have permanent conditions requiring accessibility support. As telepresence robots become more of the norm, we will be helping to empower researchers who are otherwise isolated from the rest of the community. 

Kavita Krishnaswamy is a Google Lime Scholar and Microsoft Research Fellow, with a Ford Foundation Predoctoral and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at University of Maryland working with Dr. Tim Oates. Kavita was one of the researchers who was only able to attend ICRA through the use of a telepresence robot, due to her permanent medical conditions. 

As a professional researcher with a physical disability, Kavita is highly motivated to develop robotics systems to provide assistance and increase independence for people with disabilities. She is developing prototype robotics systems to support transferring, repositioning and personal care, with a focus on usable interfaces for people with severe disabilities. 

Kavita was interviewed by Robohub attending ICRA 2015 via telepresence robot and was excited to hear that IEEE RAS and OhmniLabs are working on making telepresence a permanent conference feature. 

https://robohub.org/robotic-assistive-devices-for-independent-living/

And of course, without dedicated volunteers managing the robots and helping visitors maneuver around the conference, we wouldn’t have been able to do anything. Many thanks to everyone who volunteered, the visitors who shared their experiences with us, and to the team at OhmniLabs for their generosity and support.

Interested in getting an Ohmni yourself? Reach out to Ohmni team at sales@ohmnilabs.com.

Links to original tweets or posts used in the report:

https://twitter.com/sabinehauert/status/1529809074338021377

https://twitter.com/m_alhafnawi/status/1529790038246141952

https://twitter.com/girlinrobotics/status/1529282946095804417

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6935214535754555392/

 

]]> https://robohub.org/unable-to-attend-icra2022-for-accessibility-issues-or-just-curious-to-see-robots/ Tue, 17 May 2022 06:36:53 +0000 https://svrobo.org/?p=22623

We can now offer you a telepresence robot tour of the ICRA 2022 expo hall, competitions and poster sessions, thanks to generous support from our friends at OhmniLabs. OhmniLabs build human-centric robots that elevate quality of life for billions of people worldwide, and they build all the robots right here in Silicon Valley using advanced additive manufacturing.

Join more than 5000 roboticists, researchers and industry from 89 different countries in Pennsylvania for a fascinating showcase of robotics thought leadership. There will be 12 keynote speakers, 6 industry and entrepreneurial forums, 10 competitions, almost 60 workshops and 1500 papers presented. And on top of that there are more than 80 robotics companies demoing their technologies, ranging from Agility Robotics to Zebra Technologies/Fetch Robotics. 

There are many things that can make it difficult to attend an in person conference in the United States and so the ICRA Organizing Committee, the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society and OhmniLabs would like to help you attend ICRA virtually. Priority of access will be for robotics researchers and students who are unable to travel, particularly if you are an author of a paper or poster, but we welcome applications from people who are simply curious about robots as well. 

Three OhmniBots will be in the main exhibition hall (with all the other robots) from opening to closing on Tuesday May 24th, Wednesday May 25th and Thursday May 26th, with time slots aligning with Poster Sessions, networking breaks and Expo Hall hours. The application form allows you to select several time slots, and we’ll give you feedback as soon as possible about your application, but we won’t be able to confirm your final booking time(s) until Monday May 23.

Telepresence Robot access is also available for media tours, ICRA sponsors, and members of Black in Robotics, Women in Robotics or Open Robotics who’d like to join the networking events. Generally, the robots are limited to the Expo Floor but we might be able to make special arrangements  

Contact one of the Accessibility Chairs: AndraKeay@ieee.org with subject [telepresence tour]

Or one of the Media Chairs: danicarzap@scientificagitation.com with subject [media]

Let us know why you need to tour ICRA by telepresence robot!

]]> https://robohub.org/seamless-transitions-between-autonomous-robot-capabilities-and-human-intervention-in-construction-robotics/ Tue, 15 Mar 2022 15:02:24 +0000 https://svrobo.org/?p=22249

Congratulations to the winners of the best paper award of the International Association for Automation and Robotics in Construction 2021. The team around Cynthia Brosque, Elena Galbally, Prof. Martin Fischer, and Prof. Oussama Khatib did excellent groundwork for construction robotics. With permission, Silicon Valley Robotics is reposting the first parts of the paper below. It is also available on the IAARC website.

GOLDBECK US Inc. helped define construction robotics use-cases that generate real-world value on their job sites. In the first phase of the project, they collected data to understand the tasks on site holistically. Subsequently, simulations on how robots perform the job were created. Using this information, the researchers of Stanford University | CIFE – Center for Integrated Facility Engineering then developed suitable robotic prototypes. GOLDBECK supplied physical building components to test the prototypes under realistic conditions.

GOLDBECK is now hunting for robotics companies to help us transition this research into a real-world robotic application!

Abstract

Due to their unstructured and dynamic nature, construction sites present many challenges for robotic automation of tasks. Integrating human-robot collaboration (HRC) is critical for task success and implementation feasibility. This is particularly important for contact-rich tasks and other complex scenarios which require a level of reasoning that cannot be accomplished by a fully autonomous robot. Currently, many solutions rely on precise teleoperation that requires one operator per robot. Alternatively, one operator may oversee several semi-autonomous robots. However, the operators do not have the sensory feedback needed to adequately leverage their expertise and craftsmanship. Haptic interfaces allow for intuitive human-robot collaboration by providing rich contact feedback. This paper presents two human-robot collaboration solutions for welding and joint sealing through the use of a haptic device. Our approach allows for seamless transitions between autonomous robot capabilities and human intervention with rich contact feedback. Additionally, this work opens the door to intuitive programming of new tasks through haptic human demonstration.

1 Introduction

In recent years, progress in mobility, manipulation skills, and AI reasoning have started to enable the use of robots in space, underwater, homes, agriculture, and construction [1]. A particularly important area of interest is the automation of dangerous, strenuous, and laborintensive tasks [2].

Construction sites are especially challenging environments for autonomous robots because of their highly unpredictable and unstructured nature [3, 4]. Hence, fully autonomous robots that replace human labor are not the most feasible or ideal solution. The majority of current approaches rely on a human operator that oversees a single task autonomous robot. The operator receives only visual feedback and is limited in the type of input and recovery from failure he can provide due to the lack of an intuitive interface to do so. [4] attributed this lack in technical flexibility of construction robots to the fact that early construction solutions imitated systems initially developed for industrial fabrication [5].

Some tasks are structured enough to be autonomously performed by a robot with little human input, but many require a more flexible approach that incorporates a higher degree of human reasoning and intuition [6]. Given this reality, a method to design construction robots should be flexible enough to allow varying levels of human-robot collaboration depending on the task.

Haptic devices (Fig.1) provide an effective interface for collaboration by allowing the human to (1) feel the contact forces between the robot’s end-effector and the environment [7], and (2) easily intervene and control the robot motion in scenarios that the autonomous behaviors are not able to handle successfully [8]. Additionally, data from these haptic interventions can be collected and used to learn new autonomous skills. Remote robot control using a haptic interface has been tested in fields such as surgery [9] and underwater exploration [1], but has not yet been widely implemented in construction.

In previous work, the authors explored human-robot collaboration solutions to five hazardous and repetitive construction tasks: installing drywall, painting, bolting, welding, and sealing precast concrete slab joints [10]. Our industry partner, Goldbeck, was interested in automating these assembly and finishing tasks that require on-site, repetitive manual effort, ergonomically challenging positions, and working from dangerous heights. [10] outlines a method for designing collaborative robotic solutions with haptic feedback and to assess their feasibility in simulation.

In this paper, we focus on two of the previously explored tasks (steel welding and sealing precast concrete joints) and apply the aforementioned method to design more flexible collaborative solutions. Different from [10], we propose relying primarily on the robot’s functional autonomy and using haptics as an effective and intuitive way to intervene in unexplored or failure scenarios. Force data from the recovery strategy employed by the operator can be recorded and used to learn from demonstration and augment the robot’s autonomy. Over time, the robot will require less human intervention. This higher degree of autonomy could allow a single operator to supervise many robots at once, overcoming the problems of teleoperation in which one operator per robot is needed.

2 Related Work

While factories have typically separated workers from robots due to safety concerns, human-robot collaboration cannot be overlooked in construction, as robots and humans share one workspace [2]. This requires devising solutions that allow us to effectively combine the workers’ expertise with the robots’ autonomous skills.

Construction literature has studied the use of teleoperation devices [11, 12, 7], particularly focusing on construction machinery, such as excavators. These solutions often involve cameras for visual feedback and GPS sensors for navigation, which can be sufficient to accomplish low dexterity tasks with increased operator safety. However, [7] states that complex tasks involving contact greatly benefit from additional sensory feedback such as tactile information. Furthermore, teleoperation solutions rely heavily on the operator’s guidance and do not fully exploit the autonomous capabilities of the robot.

A different set of collaborative solutions currently used onsite have semi-autonomous robots with a human supervisor that oversees the tasks such as drywall installation, concrete drilling, and layout [13]. The supervisor can provide simple inputs to the robot, such as when to start or stop the operation, while the robot handles the rest of the task. This approach makes better use of modern robotics capabilities and allows a single operator to manage several robots. However, the interfaces used to provide inputs to the robot are often too simplistic to allow recovery from failure.

In the event of a robot failure during task execution, joysticks and control pendants do not always provide enough feedback for the operator to intervene in an effective way that enables timely task completion. Additionally, there is currently no streamlined way to learn from the operator’s intervention and use this data to improve the robot’s autonomous capabilities.

By allowing the operator to feel the contact between the robot and its environment, haptic devices increase the range of scenarios in which the operator can aid in failure recovery [14]. Additionally, we can easily record both force and position data during the operator’s intervention. These human demonstrations of recovery strategies can allow the robot to learn new skills [15] and augment its functional autonomy.

Haptic devices have been used by the construction industry in combination with virtual reality for task training purposes [16]. The technology has allowed workers to train in a safe environment with realistic task conditions. However, haptics are still a novel technology in construction applications and field use has not been reported.

Current algorithms for haptic control of robots [17] can handle large communication delays, making them effective interfaces for remote intervention at long distances. In [1] an operator haptically controls an underwater ocean exploration robot from a distance of 100m.

Finally, [18] provides an example that integrates two modalities of robot control: autonomous robot behavior and expert human-guided motion interactions. In this study, a group of mobile robot arms successfully installed drywall boards in simulation with flexible human intervention.

This body of prior work illustrates how keeping the human in the loop with adequate feedback can facilitate successful task automation in complex, unstructured environments. Moreover, it highlights the value of haptics as a way to provide a flexible and effective interface for human-robot collaboration as well as teaching robots new autonomous skills.

Full Text of Paper

 

]]> https://robohub.org/automated-mining-inspection-against-the-odds/ Wed, 23 Feb 2022 08:07:59 +0000 https://svrobo.org/?p=22192

Image from Rajant.

Learn how Rajant Corporation, PBE Group, and Australian Droid + Robot – as part of a #MSHA (U.S. Department of Labor)-backed mine safety mission – achieved a historic unmanned underground mine inspection at one of the US’ largest underground room and pillar limestone operations in this comprehensive IM report.

Using ten ADR Explora XL unmanned robots, a Rajant wireless Kinetic Mesh below-ground communication network, and PBE hardware and technology, a horizontal mobile infrastructure distance of 1.7 km was achieved. This allowed the unmanned robots to record high-definition video and LiDAR to create a virtual 3D mine model to assess the condition of the mine, for the deepest remote underground mine inspection in history.

The inspection made it possible for MSHA to conclude within a very short time that it was safe to re-enter the operation and begin remediation efforts, which included allowing mine personnel back into the mine to re-establish power and communications, after which mining was able to recommence quickly at the site.

The project, in many ways, is the ultimate example of necessity breeding innovation. It also showcased the capability of Rajant wireless mesh networks underground to facilitate autonomous mining operations where underground Wi-Fi would not be up to the task.

It’s been a hard year for women all over the world, and I’d like to thank everyone who has contributed to Women in Robotics in 2021, whether you’ve simply shared information about yourself in our community #intros channel, or organized an online event, or made yourself available as an advisor in our pilot mentoring program. Perhaps you’ve been furthering our mission in an ‘unofficial’ way simply by supporting other women, and non-binary people, who are working in robotics, or who are interested in working in robotics. 

We recognize and appreciate the community building work that women do, which is so often out of the spotlight, and on top of everything else. Women’s work has rarely been given economic value as one of my heroes Marilyn Waring wrote in “Counting for Nothing”. She founded feminist economics, now called triple bottom line accounting, and changed the way that the World Bank and other global organizations evaluate economies. 

The pandemic has forced women out of the workforce at twice the rate of men, leaving women’s participation in the workforce lower than it’s been for 30 years. And the pressure shows no sign of stopping. However, I believe that whenever women are forced to step backwards, we move forward again with renewed determination and focus. And so my inspiration is renewed to further the mission of Women in Robotics, to support women and non-binary people who work in robotics, and those who would like to work in robotics. We may all find it hard to find time, but small actions in the right time and place can move mountains. 

In 2021, our annual showcase featured not 25 or 30 but ‘50 women in robotics you need to know about’ from 21 different countries, from industry, startups and academia, with particular mention of the women featured who have fought for the rights of refugees and persecuted women, especially the Afghanistan Women’s Robotics Team. For other women, this recognition has helped to raise their profile within universities or companies, leading to increased opportunities.

Our annual list also means that there’s no excuse for not including women in conferences, articles, policy making, job searches etc. In 2022, I’d love to see us create wikipedia pages for more women in robotics, and create a speaker database, and a citation list, similar to what Black in Robotics has done, and the work of 500 Women Scientists. 

The work of women in science is still less likely to be cited than that of men. Recent UNESCO research has found that citation bias is the start of career long lack of recognition for women, starting with women citing themselves less often than men do. In 2022, let’s focus on improving citation rates, increasing the number of women in panels, journals and conferences, or holding organizers accountable. We can target increasing the number of women cited in robotics curricula, reading lists and coursework. As an organization we can reach out to universities, labs, conferences and journals in a way that individual women can not.

Another grassroots campaign that we started was the Women in Robotics Photo Challenge, which has already resulted in some great new photos of women building robots joining the image search results. Since then we’ve realized that ordinary google or wikipedia search steer you to Sophia or sex robots, rather than referencing real women building robots. It’s also time to retire the word ‘unmanned’. Women in Robotics is planning to request that any university still referencing ‘Unmanned’ Vehicles should substitute with driverless, uncrewed or a better term.

The lack of in person conferences is severely impacting the benefits of in person networking at a senior level for women in robotics, and so we’d like to finally launch our Advisory Board through an online networking event(s) for senior women in robotics, both in academia and industry..

We piloted our first mentoring program over 12 weeks with 16 women and it was a very successful experience for almost every participant. We know that there is a lot of demand to run the program again but we’ll need more volunteers to help organize the events and match mentors/mentees. This is one area in which sponsorship for Women in Robotics could be useful, but sponsorship comes with a significant administrative cost, so we will only seek sustainable major sponsorships in 2022.

My gratitude goes to CITRIS & the Banatao Institute, through the People and Robots Lab, for providing me with some funding for the last two years that has allowed me to spend some of my time on Women in Robotics, Black in Robotics and the Society, Robots and Us Seminars. 

My call to action is for you to make your volunteer labor impactful by investing your time in a call to action with a big outcome. I hope it’s one of our Women in Robotics actions, but in everything you do you represent women in robotics and allies. Best wishes to you all for 2022. And thank you to the 2021 Women in Robotics Board of Directors! Our full Annual Report is here.

1. Counting for Nothing (originally If Women Counted) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_Women_Counted by Marilyn Waring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilyn_Waring
2. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/19/great-resignation-mothers-forced-to-leave-jobs
3. https://www.techrepublic.com/article/women-and-middle-managers-will-lead-the-great-resignation-into-2022/
4. https://en.unesco.org/news/unesco-research-shows-women-career-scientists-still-face-gender-bias

Reflections from the Women in Robotics Board of Directors:

We are very grateful for the work of our Board Members over the last year and we thank Kerri Fetzer-Borelli, Hallie Siegel and Ariel Anders for their vision and experience on the 2020 and 2021 Board. We are delighted to have them join our Advisory Board in 2022.

Allison Thackston:

Women in Robotics community and support in 2021 was different from previous years when we relied a lot on local chapters, meetups, and networking.  With many offices locked down and people more hesitant to do events in person, we’ve struggled a bit.  On the bright side, we’ve been bringing up our online presence, improving our website, and increasing our social media outreach.  In the year ahead, I hope we continue this growth.

Cynthia Yeung:

Launching the Project Advance mentorship program was a highlight of my service on the WiR board in 2021. We have received lots of great feedback from the inaugural cohort which we can use to improve the programming for the second cohort in 2022. One of the key success metrics was the percentage of returning mentors (demand is unlimited in two-sided marketplaces; supply is the constraint) and we are pleased to report that all mentors are interested in returning for the second cohort. It is personally gratifying to be in a position to implement the kind of program that I wanted to have access to earlier in my career. On a macro level, I believe that strong focus and measurable progress on a small number of initiatives will bode well for WiR’s impact roadmap.

Lisa Winter:

2021 was a year of self-reflection and a test of patience. I think 2022 will be the year when a lot of us take bigger risks as we try to figure out a better work/life balance. I would like to see more communication on the WiR Slack, specifically giving job advice and engineering advice. What I enjoy about other sites that I think we could incorporate is more sharing of personal projects; connecting over them and also learning.

Laura Stelzner:

WiR provides community and  support in a field where it can be lonely being one of the few women at your company/department.  As the field of robotics grows we would like to show women and non-binary people all the amazing career opportunities that exist, by providing them with mentorship,  networking, leadership and career advancement opportunities.

Laurie Linz:

2021 was a quiet year for Boulder/Denver, we didn’t hold any local (in person)  meetings. I do have good news and that is I am in process with setting up some in person events again. We’ll approach with caution given the covid situation, but happy to be starting again. 

WiR helps women level up or launch their career in robotics. We welcome those not ready to launch with networking and educational support. Learn, launch, level up.

Sue Keay:

One of the concerns that keeps me awake at night is wondering what important challenges we might have solved already and what technologies are missing because of the lack of diversity in robotics. That’s why Women in Robotics exists, to help to support the small number of women who are contributing to developing robotic technologies and to encourage more to join our ranks. The global list of women in robotics has been an important way to signal the important contributions that women are making in this space and to raise the profile of robotics as a valid career choice for women. Joining WiR is acknowledging that we can be doing better with diversity in robotics and may provide much needed support to a woman in robotics who may be questioning their reason for remaining in such a male-dominated field. My own experience has been that women have always been my greatest supporters and I feel less alone by being part of WiR.

Sue Keay (Robotics Australia) with Erin McColl (Toyota Research Institute) with a Ghost Robotics platform.

Casinos and robots? It must be CES time! A few years ago, the only robots at CES were toys. And as the robot toy makers at Ologic can attest, having your robot featured as the leading image for CES was still no guarantee that your robot would make it into production (AMP is pictured above). Luckily Ologic have transferred their consumer electronics experience into building robots of every other kind. And CES now showcases robots of every shape and size, from autonomous cars, trucks and construction robotics, to food production, health and rehabilitation robots. The 2022 CES Innovation Awards recognize a range of robotics technologies as Honorees, and feature three in the “Best of Innovation” category as well.

See & Spray

By John Deere

Best of Innovation

Robotics

Honoree

Vehicle Intelligence & Transportation

See & Spray is a technologically advanced, huge robot for the agriculture industry that leverages computer vision and machine learning to detect the difference between plants and weeds, and precisely spray herbicide only on the weeds. This groundbreaking plant-level management technology gives a machine the gift of vision and reduces the use of herbicide by up to 80 percent, benefiting the farmer, the surrounding community and the environment. This revolutionary approach of technology is unprecedented in both the technology and agriculture industries.

Leica BLK ARC

By Leica Geosystems, part of Hexagon

Best of Innovation

Robotics

The BLK ARC is an autonomous laser scanning module for robotics applications. It provides a safe and autonomous way to capture, in 3D, the images and data of areas that are difficult or dangerous for humans to reach. Professionals in architecture/engineering/construction (AEC), manufacturing, plant, public safety, and media and entertainment attach the BLK ARC to a robotic carrier to capture data that is used to build 3D models and recreate situations. For example, man-made or natural disasters, automotive plants, bridges, and movie location sets. The product’s speed, accuracy, flexibility, and modular design provides fully autonomous mobile LiDAR scanning and navigation.

WHILL Model F – Foldable Personal EV

By WHILL, Inc.

Best of Innovation

Accessibility

WHILL Model F is a foldable personal electric vehicle for everyone, including seniors and people who have difficulty walking. Unlike wheelchairs, which are typically built for patients in a medical environment, Model F is designed to fit an active lifestyle for everyday use. It is lightweight and foldable, which makes it easy to load in cars and convenient when traveling by air. The WHILL smartphone app allows you to drive and lock the Model F remotely, as well as check key device information such as total mileage and battery level.

DROWay – Intelligent UATM Ground Control Platform

By CLROBUR Co., Ltd. / HANSEO UNIVERSITY

Honoree

Drones & Unmanned Systems

DROWay is an integrated and expansional multi-mobile platform that goes beyond former mobility control services. (Part of DROW4D service) – Multi-heterogeneous mobility HW integrated control and real-time monitoring control system – Automatic multiple flight path generation and flight simulation in a 4D airspace(corridor) – Indoor/Outdoor Swarm flight & simulation (DROW World/DROW ART Manager) – AI based ground control data managing & analysis

DJ25 – Fuel cell powered VTOL (with JOUAV)

By Doosan Mobility Innovation

Honoree

Drones & Unmanned Systems

DJ25 is the world’s first hydrogen fuel cell VTOL(Vertical Take Off and Landing) commercial drone solution. Doosan and JOUAV successfully integrated its advanced PEMFC(Proton-Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell) technology to VTOL air frame, With this collaboration make the flight time achieve up to 5 and half hours. DJ25 can cover up to 500km in a single flight, and it is suitable for long distance inspections, large scale site surveying and mapping compared to the ordinary batter drone. and also hydrogen-powered version has low noise and no vibration during power generation. It is stable and efficient when loading various mission equipment.

Mini GUSS

By GUSS Automation

Honoree

Drones & Unmanned Systems

Mini GUSS is the world’s first and only autonomous vineyard, hops, berry, and high density orchard sprayer.

Drone Charging Station “ON STATION”

By ISON

Honoree

Drones & Unmanned Systems

High Mast Drone Charging Station consists of a pole, drone hangar, control box and other accessories if necessary by the users. The high mast pole can raise and lower automatically by the control box and the drone hangar can be stored up to 50 feet tall so drone hangar or other accessories such as anemometer, CCTV camera, rain sensor, solar panel module, LED lights or even the weapon (M60) can be added on the pole for the purpose of end user’ s circumstance.

Delivery AMR：Mighty-D3

By Piezo Sonic Corporation

Honoree

Drones & Unmanned Systems

The AMR for transportation: Mighty-D3 is designed based on the technology of Japanese lunar exploration robots, and uses Piezo Sonic Motor for the steering mechanism. It is designed based on Piezo Sonic’s 3C concept (Cool, Cute, Compact), so it has both design and functionality. Mighty-D3 is capable of climbing over bumps of up to 15cm, turning on the spot, and moving horizontally, allowing it to avoid obstacles and travel autonomously to its destination in both outdoor and indoor environments. Mighty-D3 can be used as a transportation support robot for urban areas, hospitals, commercial facilities, and big apartments.

WasteShark

By RanMarine Technology BV

Honoree

Drones & Unmanned Systems

To contribute to the huge challenge of cleaning and monitoring our world’s waters, RanMarine Technology developed the patented WasteShark. It is the world’s first autonomous aquadrone designed for clearing marine plastic waste. At a running cost of 20% of other marine waste removal solutions and with zero emission operation, the intelligent WasteShark is easy to operate and maintain. The WasteShark is our first model and our roadmap includes products based on the WasteShark such as the OilShark and MegaShark. It is accessible to public and private entities that aim to contribute to restoring the marine environment to its natural state.

SPIDER-GO ; Warehouse Inventory Automation System

By TACTRACER CO., LTD.

Honoree

Drones & Unmanned Systems

SPIDER-GO is an automated warehouse inventory system that periodically scans and updates the inventory status in real time. The key features include automated modelling of the warehouse layout, presenting the inventories on the 3D map, and inspecting the inventory status through remote control. It is also equipped with functions that allow monitoring by CCTV, detecting fire, and remote updating. Conventional warehouse management systems have had issues like frequent errors in loading and picking, discrepancies between the system and the actual inventories due to human input errors. SPIDER-GO can innovatively improve the visibility and efficiency for proper warehouse inventory management.

Whiz Gambit – 2-in-1 AI-powered cleaning & disinfection solution

By Avalon SteriTech Limited

Honoree

Robotics

Whiz Gambit, is a 2-in-1 AI-powered cleaning and disinfection robotic solution jointly developed by Avalon SteriTech and SoftBank Robotics Group. The robot is the first disinfection robot to achieve Performance Mark by SGS, the world’s leading verification and testing company, with proven efficacy to eliminate >99% microbial bioburden. Importantly, Whiz Gambit greatly minimizes potential health risks in communal areas with its effective, consistent cleaning and disinfection performance. It has been a trusted partner for hospitality groups, shopping malls, schools, and offices around the world.

The Essentials; The Ultimate Building Blocks for Mobile Robots

By Avular

Honoree

Robotics

Avular proudly presents the world’s first end-to-end solution for mobile robots. The Essentials are modular hardware and software building blocks, specifically designed to (1) rapidly build new mobile robot applications, (2) turn existing machines into autonomous ones, and (3) develop robust and scalable end-products. The Essentials cover all the core functionalities a mobile robot needs, allowing you to focus on your specific application. Our products already enable entrepreneurs and engineers to build robots that make the world a better place in the fields of food, safety, energy, and more.

CygLiDAR_h3 (2D/3D Dual Solid State LiDAR)

By CYGBOT CO,. LTD.

Honoree

Robotics

It is a Solid State LiDAR product that does not operate mechanically, and it can measure 2D and 3D at the same time. Most robots use 2D LiDAR to identify their position and 3D Camera to determine obstacles while driving. CygLiDAR, you can get 2D and 3D data together with one product. CygLiDAR allows robots to reduce the number of sensors used and to produce robots that are competitive in design and cost.

Doosan NINA (New Inspiration New Angle)

By Doosan Robotics

Honoree

Robotics

As an achievement of Project NINA (New Inspiration. New Angle.), Doosan created an unprecedented camera robot system that empowers everyone to become professionals, opening next-level creativeness. To democratize filming robots, Doosan innovated software with intuitive UI that helps content creators to film effortlessly, including sharing presets of camera movement on Doosan’s platform. Another key part of the system is that the robot shoots 360-degrees and tracks shooting objects, simplifying complex camera moves to allow filming at any angle. It can be controlled by hand and/or joypad so that people with no experience with robot operations can handle it without difficulties.

DOTSTAND V1

By DOTHEAL Co.,Ltd.

Honoree

Computer Peripherals & Accessories, Fitness & Sports, Robotics

Using computers for an extended number of hours with poor posture results in forward head posture syndrome (FHP), a very common problem that causes neck pain and fatigue. Doctor visits and therapy are both time consuming and expensive. DOT STAND is a patent-pending, smart monitor stand that uses an AI sensor to analyze the user and automatically self-adjusts any monitor’s position to induce better posture – without the user even knowing it. DOT STAND relieves pain and improves concentration and work efficiency and improves average cervical curve ARA by up to 8%.

Hey-Bot(AI-based, Smart Disinfection&Guide Robot)

By Hills Engineering co.,ltd. / HANSEO UNIVERSITY

Honoree

Robotics

‘Hey-Bot’ is an AI-based self-driving disinfection and guide robot for convention centers, hospitals, negative pressure wards and other important but vulnerable places. The robot protects people from the coronavirus pandemic by minimizing chance of getting infection. It effectively kills the virus and limits unnecessary social contacts in guiding one’s way to his or her destination and sanitizing a given area based on its self-driving, guide and disinfection functions. ‘Hey-Bot’ is highly advanced intelligent Disinfection & Guide robot that can open safe and convenient “with coronavirus” era where people can be reassured for living and working.

RGB-D AI Robot

By Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI)

Honoree

Robotics

The RGB-D AI Robot is the world’s first collaborative robot that includes smart 3D vision as a built-in standard for high-precision object recognition. The integration of a 3D camera and MEMS laser scanning projector, along with the auto labeling technology, allows the robot to quickly learn through visually acquired data and perform hand-eye coordination skills. The miniature size of the optical sensor makes it easy to install in robotic arms and can lower installation costs. This innovation can be applied to human-robot collaboration in both manufacturing and service sectors.

Lumotive Meta-Lidar Platform

By Lumotive

Honoree

Robotics, Vehicle Intelligence & Transportation

The Lumotive Meta-Lidar Platform is the mobility industry’s smallest and most cost-effective 3D sensing solution comprising a Lumotive tiny lidar sensor with patented beam steering technology, real-time control software, and a reference system design. Unlike previous generation lidar systems that use mechanical spinning assemblies and are known for being big and expensive, Lumotive’s solution is tiny and scalable for a range of size, performance and power requirements.  The Meta-Lidar Platform removes barriers to greater proliferation of 3D sensing in automotive, industrial and consumer applications.

Monarch Tractor, MK-5

By Monarch Tractor

Honoree

Robotics

Monarch Tractor, the world’s first fully electric, driver optional, smart tractor, enhances farmer’s existing operations, alleviating labor shortages, and maximizing yields. The award-winning Monarch Tractor combines electrification, automation, machine learning, and data analysis to set a new standard in tractor technology and capabilities.

Ted

By Naio technologies

Honoree

Robotics

Ted offers a sustainable, serviceable and smart winegrowing solution combining high edge technology in robotics and AI. Ted is the first robot dedicated to vineyards, an alternative to the use of herbicides that respects your soils and improves your working conditions.

Autonomous Box Truck

By Gatik

Honoree

Vehicle Intelligence & Transportation

Gatik, the leader in autonomous Middle Mile logistics, delivers goods safely and efficiently using its fleet of light and medium duty trucks. The company focuses on short-haul, B2B logistics for Fortune 500 retailers such as Walmart and Loblaw. Gatik’s Class 3-6 autonomous box trucks are live for customers in multiple markets including Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana and Ontario. In April 2021, Gatik launched its strategic collaboration with Isuzu North America, marking the first time a global OEM is working in the medium duty category with a Middle Mile trucking company. Gatik’s autonomous driving.

XenoLidar-X

By XenomatiX – True-Solid-State-LiDAR

Honoree

Vehicle Intelligence & Transportation

XenoLidar-X is a true-solid-state LiDAR designed for high resolution and accurate analysis of the vehicle’s surroundings. It is a stand-alone, off-the-shelf solution with no moving parts, intended for autonomous and industrial applications. XenoLidar-X comes in two versions: Xact for mid-range, and Xpert for long-range measurements. Both versions include XenoWare, the 3D point cloud software enabling perception solutions in ADAS and up to fully autonomous driving.

4Sight M

By AEye, Inc.

Honoree

Vehicle Intelligence & Transportation

4Sight M is a high-performance, software-configurable adaptive LiDAR sensor designed to meet the diverse performance and functional requirements of autonomous and partially automated applications. Its solid-state reliability, combined with industry-leading LiDAR performance (extended range from 1cm to 1,000 meters), integrated intelligence, advanced vision capabilities (10-20x more accurate than camera-only systems), and unmatched reliability make it an ideal fit for mobility, trucking, transit, construction, rail, intelligent traffic systems, and aerospace and defense markets.

Eos Embedded Perception Software

By Algolux

Honoree

Vehicle Intelligence & Transportation

Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and Autonomous Vehicle (AV) systems today are not able to support many driving environments, weather conditions, and challenging scenarios. Driving in low light, snow, rain, and even tunnels are just some of the situations where perception systems often fail due to a lack of robustness. Eos is an award-winning embedded perception solution that delivers up to 3x improved accuracy across all conditions, especially in low light and harsh weather. Its efficient end-to-end deep learning architecture can be quickly personalized to any camera lens/sensor configuration or for multi-sensor fusion.

Nova Lidar

By Cepton Technologies

Honoree

Vehicle Intelligence & Transportation

Nova is a miniature, wide-angle, near-range lidar built for modern vehicles at a target volume price below $100, to help increase vehicle safety and enable autonomous driving capabilities. Powered by Cepton’s patented MMT®, Nova can be elegantly embedded all around a vehicle to provide a complete 360° view of its immediate surroundings without disrupting its design aesthetics. Nova is designed to help minimize perception blind spots and reduce accidents and vehicle damage. Nova is a transformational sensor that fundamentally changes the game for near-range sensing applications.

Automated Steering Actuator

By Nexteer Automotive

Honoree

Vehicle Intelligence & Transportation

Nexteer’s Automated Steering Actuator: High Availability, Output & Durability offers high safety coverage through a combination of software, electrical hardware, mechanical & sealing redundancies – plus increased durability & reliability performance required for higher loads due to increasing vehicle weights (battery mass) & more demanding use-cases of Shared Autonomous Vehicles without driver manual back-up. Our Automated Steering Actuator facilitates broader adoption of Shared Autonomous Vehicles (SAVs), like people movers, to be capable of higher loads and higher speeds, compared to current last-mile, geofenced and neighborhood vehicles on the market.

1-box Brake System for Highly Autonomous Driving

By Mando Corporation

Honoree

Vehicle Intelligence & Transportation

Mando’s Integrated Dynamic Brake is a 1-box electro-hydraulic brake system replacing and integrating multiple components of a traditional brake system into one unit. This promotes the reduction in vehicle mass and simplifying the assembly step by requiring less electrical and hydraulic components. ‘IDB for Highly Autonomous Driving’ is a world-first product that secures braking functional redundancy contained within the same 1-box system, eliminating the need for additional components. Moreover, in the unlikely event of failure, it provides fully redundant brake functionality and performance.

Hammerhead

By NODAR

Honoree

Vehicle Intelligence & Transportation

NODAR’s Hammerhead camera-based 3D vision software technology is a crucial component in the development of ADAS and autonomous vehicles bringing safety, advanced performance, and cost-effectiveness to the automotive market. NODAR’s 3D vision platform, Hammerhead, delivers reliable, ultra-precise, and real-time 3D sensing at long-range (up to 1000 meters), providing better than LiDAR-quality at the price point of camera technology. Between 2025 and 2030 a projected 250 million vehicles will require L2 and above autonomy to understand their environment and provide the high-level of safety required as autonomous systems control more of the driving function.

TriEye SEDAR

By TriEye

Honoree

Vehicle Intelligence & Transportation

TriEye’s SEDAR (Spectrum Enhanced Detection And Ranging) is the ultimate imaging and ranging solution for automated driving applications. SEDAR’s sensing modality, uniquely operating in the Short-Wave Infrared (SWIR) spectrum, enables imaging and 3D mapping of the road within all visibility conditions – in one sensory modality The SEDAR is based on two significant world’s first innovations: TriEye’s Raven (HD CMOS-based SWIR sensor) and TriEye’s UltraBlaze (Eye-safe SWIR pulsed laser illumination source). TriEye’s first-of-its-kind technology is suited for mass production, offering a 10X cost reduction compared to current LiDAR solutions on the market.

Phoenix Perception Radar

By Arbe

Honoree

Vehicle Intelligence & Transportation

Arbe’s Perception Radar, Phoenix, revolutionizes autonomous vehicle sensing, providing unmatched safety to the market. Ultra-high resolution transforms radar as a sensor to support advanced perception capabilities at mass market price, with top performance in all environments, weather, and lighting conditions. It is the first radar to detect stationary objects — a notorious stumbling block for autonomous radars — meeting NHTSA and NCAP requirements and resolving the factors behind ADAS and Autopilot related accidents. With an Advanced Free Space mapping and object tracking in all corner cases, Phoenix closes the sensor gap to achieve truly safe autonomous driving and Vision Zero.

‘Real-to-real’ – Unique ADAS Technology

By Cognata LTD – Ella Shlosberg

Honoree

Vehicle Intelligence & Transportation

Cognata is proud to launch its ‘real-to-real’ technology, which accelerates the global program for ADAS validation in order to meet worldwide regulatory requirements. The proprietary AI technology developed with Cognata transforms the super-high resolution data set to sensor inputs “as seen” by new sensors in new vehicle applications. Meaning, it is now possible to re-use previously collected video data to test a camera in a new position or with a new optical path and record multiscopic images and apply AI SLAM – based image transformation.

Robot Express for Smart Transportation and Logistics

By Mindtronic AI

Honoree

Smart Cities

The Robot Express is a smart logistic service that leverages the public transportation network for delivering goods. The advantage is that the sender and receiver can utilize the bus stop as express station. With the density and frequency of the shuttle bus, both service coverage and delivery time can be improved. Another advantage is energy saving because the shuttle not only transport the passengers but also the goods at the same time.

Maicat

By Macroact Inc.

Honoree

Smart Home

The social robot Maicat incorporates AI into Robotics, combining beneficial characteristics of a cute, engaging companion pet with the intelligence of AI, generating empathetic and personalized experiences for the user. Autonomous control and AI technology enable the robot to understand and adapt to its environment while its mobility, passive and active sensors support it to navigate and operate in the home, and allow an easy integration with other smart home technology via third-party Application, making it the center of the smart home. Being with Maicat adds another dimension to your life!

Mind-linked Bathbot

By Amorepacific

Honoree

Health & Wellness

Mind-linked Bathbot is the first beauty solution that produces bath bombs with customized fragrances and colors instantly, based on an individual’s electroencephalogram (EEG) data. The EEG signals are measured in real-time using a wearable headset and combined with a technology that has been developed to enable the quantitative evaluation of emotional indicators. These emotional indicators enable the identification of the fragrance and color that will provide a unique experience to the user. This user-optimized information is then transmitted to the Bathbot (bath bomb-making robot). This is the first technological invention to produce a customized bath bomb within a minute.

AVATAR 3D system (AVT-2020-700)

By AVATAR

Honoree

Health & Wellness

A next-generation system for quantification of animal behavior experiments that can replace the existing preclinical scoring that consists of human standards. As a fusion system of multi-vision hardware and AI software, all behaviors of mice, a representative animal of preclinical testing, can be quantified in real time with markerless and simulated in a 3D virtual space.

rebless

By H ROBOTICS INC.

Honoree

Health & Wellness

rebless is an FDA-registered robotic, exercise therapy device for both upper and lower limbs, providing motion to the elbow, wrist, ankle, and knee joints. With multiple operating modes, rebless allows for passive, active, active-assisted and active-resisted exercise and range of motion measurement, so therapy can be customized based on each individual patient’s condition and progress. Continuous Passive Motion (CPM) and Assist-as-Needed technology allow patients to change exercising modes depending on their rehabilitation abilities.

OMO Smart Trash Can

By GD International Inc.

Honoree

Home Appliances

The OmO Smart Can is a new and first of it’s kind self-sealing and touchless trash can.  A built-in motion sensor and compatible feature with voice assistants like Alexa and Google Assistant gives you a hand-free approach to tidying up.  When it’s time to take out the trash, an internal thermal sealing mechanism seals trash in and opens the inner bin for a ready to throw bag.  A replacement bag automatically deploys once the bin closes back up and is ready for the next dispense.

Narwal World First Self-Cleaning Robot Mop and Vacuum

By Narwal Robotics Corporation

Honoree

Home Appliances

Narwal J2 is a robotic cleaner with automatic mop-cleaning base station. Users can select between vacuum or mop modules to meet their cleaning needs. The spinning mop with 10N pressure applied against the floor, which greatly enhances the cleaning effect. It utilizes Lidar and SLAM technologies to intelligently navigate and map the environment. When the intelligent algorithm detects dirtiness of mopping pads, it automatically returns to base station to wash pads and resume work from where it stopped. Users do not need to deal with dirty mops at any time, saving hands from coming in contact with allergens or dirt.

Nailbot

By Preemadonna Inc.

Honoree

Home Appliances

Nailbot is a connected, at-home manicure device that instantly prints on nails any photo, emoji, image or any self-created design. Along with the product experience, comes a built-in community of Gen Z creators via a mobile app art marketplace. Preemadonna is the maker of Nailbot.

The full list of CES Innovation Award Honorees is here,

Here are some postcards from 2021 and wishing you all the best for 2022!

Founded and Funded in 2021

According to Crunchbase, 26 robotics startups were founded and funded in 2021. Many others were founded but not funded, or funded but not founded. :)

AION Prosthetics
Electronics, Manufacturing, Medical Device, Robotics
AION Prosthetics develops a prosthetic system designed to provide an adjustable, durable, and affordable future for amputees.
http://aionprosthetics.com/

Atorika
Augmented Reality, EdTech, Education, Edutainment, Leisure, Personal Development, Robotics, Subscription Service, Virtual Reality
Atorika offers edutainment that adapts to any child.
https://www.atorika.fr/

BOTINKIT
Big Data, Robotics
Robots

ContRoL
Autonomous Vehicles, Mechanical Engineering
ContRoL focuses on developing a range of vehicles for controlled release.
https://control-create.mcmaster.ca/

DIWÖ
Artificial Intelligence, Drones, Machine Learning, Robotics, Software
Diwö is accelerating the transition into safe AI using autonomous UAVs and Robotics
https://www.xn–diw-una.com/

Drone Express
Artificial Intelligence, Delivery Service, Drones
Drone Express is a full-service logistics company that uses airborne autonomous drones for local package delivery.
https://droneexpress.ai

Eco City
Artificial Intelligence, CleanTech, Machine Learning, Mobile Apps, Robotics, Service Industry, Smart Cities
Mobile App, Robotic, AI, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, E-service

Eight Knot
Artificial Intelligence, Navigation, Robotics
Eight Knot designs and develops autonomous navigation system for water mobility using robotics & AI.
https://8kt.jp/

Elexir
Automotive, Autonomous Vehicles, Cyber Security, Software
We redefine mobility with the truly digital car
https://www.elexir.eu/en/

General Systems
Construction, Industrial Automation, Robotics
Construction Tech, Robotics, B2B, Automated Building Masonry
https://www.generalsystems.tech

Helgen Technologies
Agriculture, Consulting, Farming, Mining, Oil and Gas, Robotics, Software, Software Engineering, Waste Management
Software and hardware services for industrial robotics
https://www.helgen.tech

Mach9 Robotics
Machine Learning, Robotics, Software
Mach9 Robotics builds integrated hardware and software to make utility infrastructure inspection more accurate at a lower cost.
https://www.mach9.io/

Meili Technologies
Automotive, Autonomous Vehicles, Software
Meili provides automatic, contactless, in-vehicle medical emergency detection and interface with EMS to protect riders and make roads safer.
https://www.meilitechnologies.com

Mowito
Artificial Intelligence, Industrial Automation, Intelligent Systems, Robotics, Software
Mowito provides software tools for mobile robots, to enable them to navigate intelligently in indoor facilities.
https://mowito.in/

Muncho
Food and Beverage, Food Delivery, Hardware, Robotics, Transportation
Pizza cooked en-route to your door & delivered in as little as 5 minutes. Currently piloting in Philadelphia.
https://www.muncho.com

Outlift AI
Artificial Intelligence, Health Care, Information Technology, Robotics
Outlift AI develops robotic process automation designed to assist and automate back-office healthcare work.
https://www.outliftai.com/

PhiGent Robotics
3D Technology, Artificial Intelligence, Autonomous Vehicles
PhiGent Robotics offers autonomous driving solutions.

Qiangua Technology
Automotive, Autonomous Vehicles
Qiangua Technology is a Chinese autonomous driving truck company.

Serve Robotics
Food Delivery, Logistics, Robotics
Serve Robotics connects people with what they need locally via robots that are designed to serve people.
http://www.serverobotics.com

Socian Technologies
Aerospace, Artificial Intelligence, Drones, Machine Learning, Software
We create safer societies using AI-enhanced UAV technologies.
https://socian.io/

Tergeo Technologies
Industrial Automation, Machinery Manufacturing, Robotics, Waste Management
Tergeo Technologies is a developer of robotic solutions to sanitation challenges.
https://www.tergeotech.com

Urban Machine
Building Material, Robotics
Salvaging the past to build the future- Stealth Startup
http://www.urbanmachine.build

Wiingy
E-Learning, Education, Robotics
Wiingy is a unique combination of multiple learning and skill development methods including 1:1 live classes, DIY robotics kits.
https://www.wiingy.com/

Xbotod Technologies Ltd
Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Computing, Electronics, Embedded Systems, Internet of Things, Robotics
Shaping the next generation of technology and cities with Artificial Intelligence & Internet of Things (AIoT)
http://www.xbotod.com

Zbeetle
Artificial Intelligence, Electronics, Robotics
Zbeetle is a robotics innovation company engaged in producing cleaning robots.
http://www.zbeetle.com

Ziknes
Machinery Manufacturing, Robotics
Ziknes develops printing technology on industrial manufacturing of metals.
https://www.ziknes.com/

News

Robot density nearly doubled globally

The use of industrial robots in factories around the world is accelerating at a high rate: 126 robots per 10,000 employees is the new average of global robot density in the manufacturing industries – nearly double the number five years ago (2015: 66 units). This is according to the 2021 World Robot Report. By regions, […] (Click here to read more)

2022 robotics predictions from industry experts

Leading robotics experts such as Juan Aparicio and Ken Goldberg, share what they’ll be keeping an eye on in 2022.

The post 2022 robotics predictions from industry experts appeared first on The Robot Report.

Investors warn Deep Tech founders about these 12 pitfalls

Firstly, what is Deep Tech as opposed to Tech or technology enabled? Sometimes Deep Tech is regarded as a science based startup, sometimes it is regarded as disruptive to the status quo, sometimes it is regarded just as slow and hard, capital intensive, with a long ROI horizon. Or as something that investors aren’t ready […] (Click here to read more)

Mind-controlled robots now one step closer

Researchers teamed up to develop a machine-learning program that can be connected to a human brain and used to command a robot. The program adjusts the robot’s movements based on electrical signals from the brain. The hope is that with this invention, tetraplegic patients will be able to carry out more day-to-day activities on their own. (Click here to read more)

Top 10 robotics stories of December

China’s new five-year plan for robotics and Toronto banning sidewalk robots topped our coverage in December 2021.

The post Top 10 robotics stories of December appeared first on The Robot Report.

Creating the human-robotic dream team

Using autonomous vehicle guidelines, a team has developed a system to improve interactions between people and robots. The way people interact safely with robots is at the forefront of today’s research related to automation and manufacturing, explains a researcher. She is one of several researchers who are working to develop systems that allow humans and robots to interact safely and efficiently. (Click here to read more)

How AI and robotics are reconstructing a 2,000-year-old fresco in Pompeii

Computer scientists and archeologists are working together to solve this ancient puzzle. (Click here to read more)

Bonus material!

Children as Social Robot Designers – IEEE Spectrum

What happens when you let kids design their own social robot from scratch. (Click here to read more)

Holiday robot videos 2021 (updated)

Happy holidays everyone! Here are some more robot videos to get you into the holiday spirit. Have a last minute holiday robot video of your own that you’d like to share? Send your submissions to daniel.carrillozapata@robohub.org […] (Click here to read more)

Firstly, what is Deep Tech as opposed to Tech or technology enabled? Sometimes Deep Tech is regarded as a science based startup, sometimes it is regarded as disruptive to the status quo, sometimes it is regarded just as slow and hard, capital intensive, with a long ROI horizon. Or as something that investors aren’t ready for yet. But the amount of money going into Deep Tech investing is increasing, and the pool of Deep Tech investors is increasing. One of the key points I made in a recent GIST Tech Connect Deep Tech panel is that most investors, including the most successful Tech investors are not able to invest seriously in Deep Tech startups because they lack the technical awareness and depth of commercialization experience specific to a Deep Tech startup. GIST or the Global Innovation in Science and Technology Network is the US State Department program to encourage and support global entrepreneurship.

In fact, if you do the research into the failure rates of some high profile Deep Tech startups, it seems that certain large funds have a much higher failure rate than others, so at best, their growth pathway is not compatible with Deep Tech startups. At worst, they are simply cherry picking some Deep Tech startups for their publicity value. Startups should always do their due diligence on investors and how they treat founders, particularly founders with similar startups.

Universities play a huge role in derisking, funding and commercializing Deep Tech startups but there is still a ‘Valley of Death’ in the transfer stages. And a Deep Tech startup can come out of any university but not all universities have real commercialization experience and a supportive startup ecosystem. Silicon Valley Robotics and Circuit Launch have provided a ‘halfway house’ for a lot of Deep Tech startups by providing affordable workspace with prototyping facilities and a startup ecosystem. But the first question I always ask entrepreneurs is if they have leveraged every advantage that their university connections can provide. Universities can provide greatly discounted lab space and testing facilities, also connections to scientific experts in most any field who can be leveraged as consultants and advisors.

The SBIR program, or the American Seed Fund, which is about a $4 billion non dilutive funding from the federal government in the form of R&D dollars, contracts and grants to small businesses and startups gives you the opportunity to derisk a lot of the technology very early on. You can really do a detailed scope and scan, and then couple that with the iCorps program and you get the opportunity to do deeper dives into customer discovery, to really understand if this is something that’s just a nice to have, or is it a real must have. Although the SBIR program is American based program, a lot of the countries around the world have been creating similar ones. A good example of that is EU Horizon 2020 grants.

Grants catalyze and do a certain amount to de-risk technology, extending the runway through non-dilutive funding and by creating a technology roadmap which validates the science as significant. Corporate venture funds or strategic investors also play an important role, alongside non-dilutive grant funding. Not only can they be a check, they can be a customer, they can be an advisor and a partner in the early prototype to manufacture stages. The best strategic investors play a huge role in helping Deep Tech startups succeed, because they need the technology you are creating.

Here’s a collection of tips for Deep Tech founders gathered from the GIST TechConnect Panel on Deep Tech with Nakia Melecio from Georgia Tech, Nhi Lê from WARF, Andra Keay from SVR and The Robotics Hub, G. Nagesh Rao from US Dept of State. Also tips from Six red flags that send investors running the other way by Sara Bloomberg, San Francisco Business Times. Quotes not attributed to other investors are my thoughts or recollections from the event.

Accelerator hopping

“When you start going from accelerator to accelerator looking for funding, then you’re doing it wrong. Accelerators only fund you to participate in their program. Their program and mentors are the real value.” Nhi Lê, WARF Accelerator

You also dilute your equity and become uninvestable.

Taking the first check, giving away too much equity in early rounds

Always negotiate terms. But don’t focus solely on the financials and at the risk of throwing away the less obvious value that a good investor can bring to you.

“Deep Tech startups may take longer to get to revenue than a traditional tech startup, so you need to think about grant funding as a source of revenue, and any contracts that help you develop part of your technology.” Nhi Lê, WARF Accelerator

Not budgeting for IP defense

“Companies often say that they’re investable because they have a patent, but they haven’t budgeted anything to defend it. Your IP is only as good as your ability to defend it. Universities play a great role in protecting and defending IP that they’ve licensed.” Nhi Lê, WARF Accelerator

Not having a plan for the whole journey

“When you go into your first funding meeting, you must be thinking about the long term journey, all the way to exit. It’s never going to be just one check, you’re growing a company.” G. Nagesh Rao, US Dept of Commerce

Not doing diligence on investors or accelerators

“Deep tech, especially at the leading edge, is usually expensive, so it’s critical to find the right path to commercialization at scale. Good investors speed up the process and lower your burn rate.” Michael Harries, The Robotics Hub

Have your potential investors brought similar startups to market? Having that experience can make the commercialization process much faster, and it’s critical to manage your resources effectively. Constant fundraising takes founders away from product development. Also, do your investors have patient capital? Or are they needing a rapid return on investment for their current fund? Don’t assume that a well known investor or accelerator guarantees you success, or even finding a good fit with their process.

Ignorance of basic financials

Overreaching on inventory, being unable to meet debts in a timely fashion, structuring the company poorly, all these things are cited by founders who’ve struggled.

Customer discovery never stops

“Focus on the customer and fall in love with the customer’s problem and you’ll never go wrong.” Nakia Melecio, Georgia Tech

Do it from the start, and never stop going to market. You can’t just outsource your business development to people with better sales skills, not until you know that pain points you’re solving for your customers and you can write the scripts for them.

Not doing the research, or using vanity metrics instead of strategy

“If a founder is estimating their market in the trillions of dollars they have either not done the research or they are just delusional.” Swati Chaturvedi, Co-Founder of PropelX

“Founders who are focused only on vanity metrics (growth rate and valuation) and not attuned to developing sound business models are a red flag.” Anurag Chandra, Fort Ross Ventures

Trying to skip steps

“Another red flag is trying to FOMO you into moving quickly. Not only is it bad for arriving at a sound investment decision, it’s an indication of how they do business with customers and partners (ie. not invested in building long term relationships). Anurag Chandra, Fort Ross Ventures

Misrepresentation or withholding data

“Investors can tell when you are avoiding details like actual product or customer development status and it may mean you are misrepresenting your business.” Caroline Winnett, Executive Director of Berkeley SkyDeck

Cofounder issues, not having a clear leader or not being open to feedback

“There needs to be agreement on who is acting as CEO, and everyone needs to be aligned on that. Another red flag is not being open to advice from experts.” Caroline Winnett, Executive Director of Berkeley SkyDeck

Being disorganized

“Founders should be responsive to requests for more information. It shows if they are organized and in the mindset to do a deal versus spin cycles.” Shruti Gandhi of Array Ventures

Much excellent work has been done, by many organizations, to develop ‘Roadmaps for Robotics’, in order to steer government policy, innovation investment, and the development of standards and commercialization. However, unless you took part in the roadmapping activity, it can be very hard to find these resources. Silicon Valley Robotics in partnership with the Industrial Activities Board of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, is compiling an up to date resource list of various robotics, AIS and AI roadmaps, national or otherwise. This initiative will allow us all to access the best robotics commercialization advice from around the world, to be able to compare and contrast various initiatives and their regional effectiveness, and to provide guidance for countries and companies without their own robotics roadmaps.

Another issue making it harder to find recent robotics roadmaps is the subsumption of robotics into the AI landscape, at least in some national directives. Or it may appear not as robotics but as ‘AIS’, standing for Autonomous Intelligent Systems, such as in the work of OCEANIS, the Open Community for Ethics in Autonomous aNd Intelligent Systems, which hosts a global standards repository. And finally there are subcategories of robotics, ie Autonomous Vehicles, or Self Driving Cars, or Drones, or Surgical Robotics, all of which may have their own roadmaps. This is not an exhaustive list, but with your help we can continue to evolve it.

• Global Roadmaps:

  • IEEE RAS 2050Robotics.org
  • IEEE Roadmaps
  • OCEANIS, Open Community for Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems
  • OCEANIS, Global Standards Repository
  • OECD.ai Policy Observatory
  • OECD.ai Stakeholder Initiatives
  • OECD.ai National AI Strategies
  • Mapping the Evolution of the Robotics Industry: A Cross-Country Comparison
  • BCG Robotics Outlook 2030
  • 2021 World Bank Review of National AI Strategies and Policies

• US Roadmaps

  • 2020 US National Robotics Roadmap
  • ASME: Robotics & Covid 19
  • ASME: Accelerating US Robotics for American Prosperity and Security
  • 2020 NASA Technology Taxonomy
  • 2017 Automated Vehicles 3.0: Preparing for the Future of Transportation
  • NITRD Supplement to the President’s FY2021 Budget
  • American AI Initiative

• Canada Roadmaps

  • Report from Canada’s Economic Strategy Tables: Advanced Manufacturing
  • Roadmap to 2030: A path towards doubling Canadian Manufacturing and Output
  • CIFAR: Building an AI World
  • Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy

• Latam Roadmaps

  • AI for Social Good in Latin America and the Caribbean
  • Mexico Agenda National for Artificial Intelligence
  • Brazil Industry 4.0
  • Brazil E-Digital
  • Colombia National Policy for Digital Transformation and Artificial Intelligence 
  • Chile National Artificial Intelligence Policy
  • Argentina Agenda Digital 2030
  • Uruguay Artificial Intelligence Strategy for the Public Administration

• UK & EU Roadmaps

  • AI in the UK: No Room for Complacency
  • UK’s Industrial Strategy
  • SPARC: Robotics 2020 Multi-Annual Roadmap for Robotics in Europe
  • SRIDA: AI, Data and Robotics Partnership
  • EC: Communication on Artificial Intelligence
  • Sweden National Approach for Artificial Intelligence
  • Spain RDI Strategy in Artificial Intelligence
  • Strategy for the Development of Artificial Intelligence in the Republic of Serbia for the period 2020-2025
  • AI Portugal 2030
  • Assumptions for the AI strategy in Poland
  • Norway National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence
  • The Declaration on AI in the Nordic-Baltic Region
  • Malta the Ultimate AI Launchpad: A Strategy and Vision for Artificial Intelligence in Malta 2030
  • Artificial Intelligence: a strategic vision for Luxembourg
  • Lithuanian Artificial Intelligence Strategy: A vision of the future
  • Italy National Strategy on Artificial Intelligence
  • Made in Germany: Artificial Intelligence Strategy
  • Meaningful Artificial Intelligence: Towards a French and European Strategy
  • Finland’s Age of Artificial Intelligence
  • Finland Leading the Way into the Age of Artificial Intelligence
  • Denmark National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence
  • Czech National Artificial Intelligence Strategy
  • Cyprus National Strategy AI
  • AI 4 Belgium
  • Austria AIM AT 2030

• Russia Roadmaps

  • National Strategy for the Development of Artificial Intelligence by 2030

• Africa & MENA Roadmaps

  • PIDA Closing the Infrastructure Gap Vital for Africa’s Transformation
  • Africa50
  • AIDA Accelerated Industrial Development for Africa
  • UAE Strategy for Artificial Intelligence
  • UAE Artificial Intelligence Strategy 2031
  • Saudi Arabia Vision 2030
  • National AI Strategy: Unlocking Tunisia’s capabilities potential

• Asia & SE Asia Roadmaps

  • 2017 A Robotics and Automation Roadmap for India
  • 2018 India National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence
  • AI Singapore
  • Korea AI Manufacturing 2030

• China Roadmaps

  • The 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) for National Economic and Social Development of the People’s Republic of China
  • Interpretation of “The “14th Five-Year” Robot Industry Development Plan”
    
  • 2017 A New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan

• Japan Roadmaps

  • 2021 Projects in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence
  • 2019 AI for Everyone: People, Industries, Regions and Governments
  • 2017 NEDO’s Activities in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence
  • 2015 METI Japan’s Robot Strategy

• Australia Roadmaps

  • A Robotics Roadmap for Australia
  • 2019 Artificial Intelligence Roadmap
  • Artificial Intelligence Standards Roadmap: Making Australia’s Voice Heard
  • 2017 The Automation Advantage

• New Zealand & Pacifica Roadmaps

  • New Zealand Robotics Automation and Sensing Roadmap
  • Towards our intelligent future: an AI roadmap for New Zealand

• Non Terrestrial Roadmaps

Do you know of robotics roadmaps not yet included? Please share them with us. 

What is the best simulation tool for robotics? This is a hard question to answer because many people (or their companies) specialize in one tool or another. Some simulators are better at one aspect of robotics than at others. When I’m asked to recommend the best simulation tool for robotics I have to find an expert and hope that they are current and across a wide range of simulation tools in order to give me the best advice, which was why I took particular note of the recent review paper from Australia’s CSIRO, “A Review of Physics Simulators for Robotics Applications” by Jack Collins, Shelvin Chand, Anthony Vanderkop, and David Howard, published in IEEE Access (Volume: 9).

“We have compiled a broad review of physics simulators for use within the major fields of robotics research. More specifically, we navigate through key sub-domains and discuss the features, benefits, applications and use-cases of the different simulators categorised by the respective research communities. Our review provides an extensive index of the leading physics simulators applicable to robotics researchers and aims to assist them in choosing the best simulator for their use case.”

Simulation underpins robotics because it’s cheaper, faster and more robust than real robots. While there are some guides that benchmark simulators against real world tasks there isn’t a comprehensive review. A more thorough review can address gaps and needs in research and research challenges for simulation. The authors focus on seven sub-domains: Mobile Ground Robotics; Manipulation; Medical Robotics; Marine Robotics; Aerial Robotics; Soft Robotics and Learning for Robotics.

I’m going to cut to the chase and provide a copy of the final comparison tables of each sub-domain but for anyone interested in utilizing these recommendations, then I recommend reading the rationale behind the rankings in the full review article. The authors also consider whether or not a simulator is actively supported. Handy to know! And the paper is also an excellent source of information about various historic and current robotics competitions.

Mobile Ground Robotics:

TABLE 1 Feature Comparison Between Popular Robotics Simulators

TABLE 2 Feature Comparison Between Popular Robotics Simulators Used for Mobile Ground Robotics

Manipulation:

TABLE 3 Feature Comparison for Popular Robotics Simulators Used for Manipulation

Medical Robotics:

TABLE 4 Feature Comparison of Popular Robotics Simulators Used for Medical Robotics

Marine Robotics:

TABLE 5 Feature Comparison of Popular Simulators Used for Marine Robotics

Aerial Robotics:

TABLE 6 Feature Comparison of Popular Simulators Used for Aerial Robotics

Soft Robotics:

TABLE 7 Feature Comparison of Popular Simulators Used for Soft Robotics

Learning for Robotics:

TABLE 8 Feature Comparison of Popular Simulators Used in Learning for Robotics

Conclusions:

As robotics makes more use of deep learning, simulators that can deal with data on the fly become necessary, and also a potential solution for simulation problems regarding points of contact or collisions. Rather than utilize multiple simulation methods to make a clearer abstraction of the real world in these boundary situations, the answer may be to insert neural networks trained to replicate the properties of difficult phenomena into the simulator. There is further discussion on differentiable simulation, levels of abstraction and the expansion of libraries, plug-ins, toolsets, benchmarking and algorithmic integration, all increasing both the utility and complexity of simulation for robotics.

As the field of simulation for robotics grows, so does the need for metrics that capture the accuracy of the real world representation.  “Finally, we predict that we will see further research into estimating and modeling uncertainty of simulators.”

This may have been the first review article on simulation for robotics but hopefully not the last. There’s a clear need to study and measure the field. I found the sections on soft robotics and learning for robotics particularly interesting, as the paper discussed the difficulties of simulation in these fields. And please attribute any errors in this summary to my mistakes. Read the full review here: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9386154

RightHand Robotics, Diligent Robotics and READY Robotics are young robotics startups that have all transitioned from the ICorps program and SBIR grant funding into becoming venture backed robotics startups. RightHand Robotics was founded in 2014 and is a Boston based company that specializes in robotics manipulation. It is spun out of work performed for the DARPA Autonomous Robotics Manipulation program and has since raised more than $34.3 million from investors that include Maniv Mobility, Playground and Menlo Ventures.

Diligent Robotics is based in Austin where they design and build robots like Moxi that assist clinical staff with routine activities so they can focus on caring for patients. Diligent Robotics is the youngest startup, founded in 2017 and having raised $15.8 million so far from investors that include True Ventures and Ubiquity Ventures. Andrea Thomaz maintains her position at UTexas Austin but has taken leave to focus on Diligent Robotics.

READY Robotics creates unique solutions that remove the barriers faced by small manufacturers when adopting robotic automation. Founded in 2016, and headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, the company has raised more than $41.8 million with investors that include Drive Capital and Canaan Capital. READY Robotics enables manufacturers to more easily deploy robots to the factory floor through a patented technology platform that combines a very easy to use programming interface and plug’n’play hardware. This enables small to medium sized manufacturers to be more competitive through the use of industrial robots.

To summarize the conversation into 8 key takeaways for startups.

1. Research is primarily involved in developing a prototype (works once), whereas commercialization requires a product (works every time). Robustness and reliability are essential features of whatever you build.
2. The customer development focus of the ICorps program speeds up the commercialization process, by forcing you into the field to talk face to face with potential customers and deeply explore their issues.
3. Don’t lead with the robot! Get comfortable talking to people and learn to speak the language your customers use. Your job is to solve their problem, not persuade them to use your technology.
4. The faster you can deeply embed yourself with your first customers, the faster you attain the critical knowledge that lets you define your product’s essential features, that the majority of your customers will need, from the merely ‘nice to have’ features or ‘one off’ ideas that can be misdirection.
5. Team building is your biggest challenge, as many roles you will need to hire for are outside of your own experience. Conduct preparatory interviews with experts in an area that you don’t know, so that you learn what real expertize looks like, what questions to ask and what skillsets to look for.
6. There is a lack of robotics skill sets in the marketplace so learn to look for transferable skills from other disciplines.
7. It is actually easy to get to ‘yes’, but the real trick is knowing when to say ‘no’. In other words, don’t create or agree to bad contracts or term sheets, just for the sake of getting an agreement, considering it a ‘loss leader’. Focus on the agreements that make repeatable business sense for your company.
8. Utilize the resources of your university, the accelerators, alumni funds, tech transfer departments, laboratories, experts and testing facilities.

And for robotics startups that don’t have immediate access to universities, then robotics clusters can provide similar assistance. From large clusters like RoboValley in Odense, MassRobotics in Boston and Silicon Valley Robotics which have startup programs, space and prototyping equipment, to smaller robotics clusters that can still provide a connection point to other resources.

Speakers in tonight’s Society, Robots and Us at 6pm PST Tuesday Feb 23 include Henry Evans, mute quadriplegic and founder of Robots4Humanity and Aaron Edsinger, founder of Hello Robot. We’ll also being talking about robots for people with disabilities with Disability Advocate Adriana Mallozi, founder of Puffin Innovations and Daniel Seita, who is a deaf roboticist. The event is free and open to the public.

As a result of a sudden stroke, Henry Evans turned from being a Silicon Valley tech builder into searching for technologies and robots that would improve his life, and the life of his family and caregivers, as the founder of Robots4Humanity. Since then Henry has shaved himself with the help of the PR2 robot, and spoken on the TED stage with Chad Jenkins in a Suitable Tech Beam. Now he’s working with Aaron Edsinger and the Stretch Robot which is a very affordable household robot and teleoperation platform.

We’ll also be hearing from Adriana Mallozi, Disability Advocate and founder of Puffin Innovations which is a woman-owned assistive technology startup with a diverse team focused on developing solutions for people with disabilities to lead more inclusive and independent lives. The team at Puffin Innovations is dedicated to leveling the playing field for people with disabilities using Smart Assistive Technology (SAT).  SAT incorporates internet of things connectivity, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to provide maximum access with the greatest of ease. By tailoring everything they do, from user interfaces to our portable, durable, and affordable products, Puffin Innovations will use its Smart Assistive Technology to provide much needed solutions the disabled community has been longing for.

This continues our monthly exploration of Inclusive Robotics from CITRIS People and Robots Lab at the Universities of California, in partnership with Silicon Valley Robotics. On January 19, we discussed diversity with guest speakers Dr Michelle Johnson from the GRASP Lab at UPenn, Dr Ariel Anders from Women in Robotics and first technical hire at Robust.ai, Alka Roy from The Responsible Innovation Project, and Kenechukwu C. Mbanesi and Kenya Andrews from Black in Robotics, with discussion moderated by Dr Ken Goldberg, artist, roboticist and Director of the CITRIS People and Robots Lab, and Andra Keay from Silicon Valley Robotics.

You can see the full playlist of all the Society, Robots and Us conversations on the Silicon Valley Robotics youtube channel.

TRANSCRIPT OF THE FIRST INCLUSIVE ROBOTICS DISCUSSION (from video directly above)

Andra Keay 0:05
So welcome, everybody. Welcome to our first society robots and us for 2021. And I’m looking forward to a discussion that is going to help us set the agenda for robotics in 2021 and beyond. And I think it’s very important that as our technology emerges, we address the issues around how it is affecting society, and how it can have an impact both positive and negative on society. And so we have wonderful conversations. And we started doing this event in the early days of the COVID era, and we were focusing on so what actually does it mean? How can robotics and roboticists help in this time of pandemics, and it was a fantastic conversation, and we decided that it was time to expand the topic, and to start to talk about things like racism in robotics, global challenges and how we address those. So it’s one of my favorite events. And I’m delighted to see so many people. Joining us now, my role is to warm up for the speakers and the rest of the discussion, I’ll just give everybody a little bit of housekeeping as to how this is going to roll. I will introduce each of the speakers, and they will each share their thoughts with us. We will move from speaker to Speaker if you have questions specifically for one of the speakers, put them into the chat, and I can forward the question on and then we’ll start the general discussion once every speaker has had their time to speak. And in the general discussion? Well, I’m looking forward to finding out what is inclusive robotics? Why do we need it? How do we go about getting it? And even beyond that? What is the robotics agenda? For 2021? And beyond? What are the questions that we haven’t thought to ask perhaps, and perhaps it’s time that we started those discussions. And in the spirit of that, I would like to acknowledge that I and many of us are here on the lands of the aloni people who are an unrecognized First Peoples tribe of California. And I’m very pleased to actually see more events starting to acknowledge the first peoples as part of how things happen. And so I’ve given us the introduction and the housekeeping. I’d like to say a little bit about our speakers. And we’ll kick off the rest of the discussion. And I see this all because pointed out an event that’s coming up in the chat, a spring founders circle for the responsible innovation labs. I would like to also say, Silicon Valley robotics, and women in robotics, have regular events. So in women in robotics, we have a weekly book club, for example. And we have a slack community where we can meet together online, as well as having local chapters. If you’re interested in joining that, and I’ll pop the link in the chat. Please go to women in robotics.org. And it’s not a ht, TP s site, it’s still an HTTP site. So if you can’t find it, that’s the reason. But if you’re interested in signing up, please go there. Silicon Valley robotics, which is the organization that I call my day job not, although it is also a passion project is able to assist you if you are a robotics company at any stage. And we have mentor networks, we have events that are topic related, or that are related to helping you with your startup. And I’m just wondering, Ken, would you just like to say a few words now about CITRIS, where Ken is the director of the people in robots lab, and as well as the research there. There’s also the CITRIS Foundry, I believe.

Ken Goldberg 4:37
Thank you under so I want to say we’re really lucky to be partnering with you on this and so it’s a pleasure to work with you and citrus is a University of California, actually state level organization that connects for the campuses. They are said, Davis, Santa Cruz and Berkeley and the mission of CITRIS stands for the center is a center for Information Technology Research in the interest of society. So the mission of this series that Andhra is organizing is very much consistent with the with the mission of the center. And my my initiative within it is the is people and robots. So these are really come together very strongly. And this idea of inclusive robotics is something that we’re very excited about developing and expanding in the in the in the year to come and the years to come. So I really appreciate the the discussion we’re going to have tonight, I’m really looking forward to hearing your perspectives.

Andra Keay 5:35
Thanks so much again. And you’ve probably seen that we have a fantastic lineup of speakers tonight, we have Dr. Michelle Johnson, who is at the grasp lab in new pen, and actually is the director of the rehabilitation robotics lab at the grasp lab, and the Associate Professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation. We have Dr. Ariel Anders, and she is the first technical hire at robust AI, and is also a board member for women in robotics. We have Alka Roy, who is the founder of the responsible innovation project, and is working on building delight, trust and inclusion into technology and AI. Looking forward to hearing more about that. Then we have getting my notes out of order here. Then we have Kenny Chiku Nova nisi from who is a roboticist. And my notes are totally out of order now. and is a member of blacking robotics, and he will be able to speak to us a little bit about, like in robotics, as well, Kenny Andrews, who’s a computer engineering master’s student at the University of Illinois, and on the undergraduate committee of black in robotics. And, of course, Ken Goldberg, who is the director of the people in robots lab at citrus, and the distinguished William S. Floyd Jr. Chair in engineering at UC Berkeley, and is not only a roboticist, but an artist and I love the cross disciplinary perspective that that brings to the discussion. And without more from me now I think we’ve given all of the strikers time to join the conversation, I would like to introduce Dr. Michelle Johnson.

Dr Michelle Johnson 7:46
Thank you Andra. Thank you, everyone for attending. I was really intrigued by the title inclusive robotics. What is it? Why do we want it? And what do we need to do to have it and as I was pondering, the title to clear thoughts came to mind first, I thought, inclusive robotics means designing robots that reflect the diversity of society in terms of culture and race, as the first thought. The second thought was that inclusive robotics means to me, designing robots that are usable in all types of settings in low resource in high resource settings, in high income countries and low low and middle income countries that benefit all types of people at different socio economic status. And not just in kind of in the, in the US, or the UK or in Europe, but all over and globally. So those are two, two thoughts that were kind of really present. With me, as I thought about this, I wanted to just expand on those two thoughts a little, and explain a bit about what I mean by that. So go back, going back to the first idea that we should be thinking about designing robots that reflect the diversity of society in terms of culture and race. I, you know, when I’m in the healthcare area, and my PhD is in me, and I’ve been thinking about designing robots for people with disabilities for a long time, and as we suggest that robots will be taking care of us and being seen as some type of assistance to our clinicians or to our elders, or to people in general. I think that this is where we really need to start thinking about how we design them, how do we train them using the AI and their functional goals? A couple of examples of why this is important. I was talking to a colleague recently about his face recognition software. And something he said to me struck me he said, Oh, yeah, You know, our face recognition software’s really have a hard time detecting people with darker skin? And I thought, Okay, so we’re we’re the AI is how are the AI is trained. So you know, this idea that as we train some of our systems, they’re, they’re, they’re being trained, maybe not enough on a diversity of people. But they are then not able to function well, when, when meeting the diversity of people that we encounter. So that’s an example of what I what I mean by kind of designing them to really think about the diverse diversity of society in terms of culture and race. Another thought is, recently in my lab, we’ve been talking about social robot design, and thinking about robots for children with disabilities and doing remote telehealth. And one of the discussions that we had was, how do we make sure that this robot, when someone looks at it can be they can see themselves partnering with it, and they don’t automatically assume that this robot is white, or this robot is any particular race or color, but that they can actually form a collaboration with the system. And so we talked about developing a robot that kind of can be seen as multicultural. And in fact, we did an exercise with my class that I taught this past fall about asking them to interact with the robot and asking them about issues of diversity and gender, and race, and that whether interacting the robot with the robot engendered any of those thoughts. So those are that’s kind of I think we need to do a better job of including cross section of people in our development process in our discussion about what is ideal. Just another quick anecdote. There’s a paper that came out that said, robots social robots should have eyes with a pupil. And when you looked at the message section, the majority of the people that they had surveyed were white, and they had blue eyes, or eyes that you saw distinct pupil. And and so I was like, Okay, well, of course, then that makes sense that now you’re gonna say that robot should have you know, pupil, because the variety of people that you’re serving, you know, that’s what they’re used to seeing, while if you serve dade, you know, people with darker eyes, or brown or but you’re not going to see a distinct pupil. So that’s not going to be a big deal with those. So that’s just another anecdote of, we need to be careful as scientists and as developers to really consider who we’re talking to, so that we’re not, and that was a kind of well bred paper. And I’m thinking, Oh, Why didn’t anyone ask that question? Maybe because, you know, I think the responsibility is on the designer, and the person developing it to make sure that their, their population that they’re querying reflects this cross culture and gender. And I think if if we do that, we’re going to see robots that are more inclusive, and we won’t have these. At least we’ll have less of these anecdotal stories that I’m pointing out. The second point about low robots should be usable by all just quickly is that came out of kind of some work that I I’m really passionate about affordable robots in global health. Because as I look back at robot assisted therapy, Sara therapy and the systems that we develop, I find that wholeheartedly. They’re they’re quite expensive, and they really haven’t penetrated low and middle income countries yet, in terms of stroke, 80% of the strokes and functional impairments that are resulting are outside of high income countries. So there’s this disparity in terms of here’s this technology that we’re proving to be able to possibly support in areas that have low resource, not enough clinicians where you might be able to leverage technology to support recovery after stroke or upper extremity impairment. But yet still, we have not been able to penetrate these areas, because the systems are way too expensive. So I mean, my lab has been passionate about how do we develop systems that are not only effective but affordable and able to be used in these low resource settings. So that’s kind of my two things. And I think more of us need to kind of be thinking about those things. And I see sometimes we are thinking about like better and better and better and cooler and cooler tech, but the translation of that tech into communities Globally, I think is missing. So that’s my second point about inclusion in robotics. I’ll stop there, Andra, I think I made my main points.

Andra Keay 15:12
No, that was that was excellent. And I think they were very clear points. I’ve been penciling down some questions myself. If anybody else has questions specific, specifically for Michelle, or questions about the subjects that she’s raised, you can table them in the chat, and we will definitely get to them. I’m looking forward to hearing what other angles on the discussion of what is inclusive robotics? And how do we get it that we’re going to uncover tonight. So without further ado, I would like to introduce Dr. Arielle Anders, who is the first technical hire at robust AI and on the board of women in robotics.

Dr Ariel Anders 15:58
So that was a really great talk, I’m excited to try to follow up, I think I have some similar ideas. And I really appreciate Michelle’s comments on your how do we you know, we keep pushing the envelope of what robots can do, but they’re not necessarily going to everyone. And so to start, I just want to say thank you for inviting me to talk and share some of my ideas about inclusive robotics. If you’ve been able to see some of my recent presentations, I’ve been trying to get into the habit of introducing myself and providing a little bit of background and context. And I think that for this talk, the most important thing, the important thing here is that I am a human being. And I think that when we think about inclusive robotics, and the questions that ondra asked the speakers to share our thoughts on, it should come from this part of our humanity. And they’re the three questions, you know, what, what is inclusive robotics? Why do we need it? And what do we need to do to have it? I think that my answers today, you know, I’m kind of excited that we’re on zoom, and it looks like this is recorded, because I am curious to see, you know, what do I think in a decade or so on some of my thoughts here. And I think we’re going to continue growing and learning. And just reiterating on this process. And, you know, we’ve really should start having these discussions more and more, especially from people like myself, who really generally did not work so much in the idea of human robot interaction, a lot of my previous work was in programming robots to do new capabilities. So I’m really excited to share my ideas and what my kind of first impression thoughts are here. And to start off with, when I think about, you know, what is inclusive robotics? I think, what is what does it mean to be inclusive? And my definition of inclusive is belonging. So, going with that inclusive robotics is creating robots that belong in our world. I think that belonging that word to me has a lot of implications on what type of robots will have. Sorry, I think I think my dogs also very excited about that idea. Hopefully, you guys can still understand we’ll try to speak over her in terms of what does it mean for a robot to belong? It should be safe, it should be a robot that’s comfortable around us, you know, we should be comfortable to have it or around. We want to make sure the robots are, you know, they belong, they’re probably not hurting people because out exclude others. I think there’s a question about the appropriate use of robotics kind of going along what Michelle said, you know, it should not be something that alienates more people, it should be something that doesn’t exploit all our resources, it should be something that’s accessible. And to me, it should also be something that society wants. We want robots that are trustworthy, and they work and we want to have them around. And most importantly, in this very kind of circular definition. When I say people, I really do mean all human beings. And so when I think about this, you know, robots that are trustworthy and safe, and they work we want them around. To me. It makes sense that we would want robots like that. I think the question really is, why do we want this definition? To include everyone. And I honestly can’t answer that for you. But I can refer to an expert, Maya Angelou has a wonderful quote on diversity, and that it makes for a rich tapestry. And we must understand that all threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter what their color. I think that when we think about robotics, it is incredibly important to think about creating robots for marginalized groups. It’s not just for people who can pay for them. That being said, How do we get there, and I honestly don’t know how, but I think we should follow the principle of nothing about us without us. And that means we should try to make sure we have a diverse demographic creating robots, we need people from all backgrounds, otherwise, there’s no way we’re going to get there. So the other idea there is just to keep in mind as we continue going forward with our robotics development, is to remember that we are all humans. And I do want to share a little bit of a personal story here. Back when I was an undergrad, I had the opportunity to present my research at africamps. And our keynote speaker was Maya Angelou, which is incredible that I got to see her. And I can’t paraphrase I can’t even summarize exactly what she said. But she really solidified the point home that we are all human beings. And I think that’s that’s the message I want to share with you when we go to make our robotics more inclusive. That’s a kind of my short, short presentation on what I think inclusive robotics is.

Andra Keay 21:58
Thank you. All right, that was great and beautiful quotes from my Maya Angelou as well. And I’m getting such a lot of rich material from the discussion that’s going on in the chat about what is a multicultural robot that Michelle raised? And you know, you’re very clear points, nothing about us without us. And, you know, I’m thinking we have a lot of issues about where we cite the responsibility along the production of robots. And I think everybody kind of wishes, that it’s somebody else’s responsibility to do this. And quite often we’re reaching the production of robots with great big problems somewhere or other along this production process. There is nothing is working together collaboratively to develop appropriate robotics. So I’m starting to get some thoughts myself around this process. And you know, already, so thank you both for inspiring us there. What I should do is introduce our next speaker, Alka Roy is the founder of the responsible innovation project. And you’re currently a visiting faculty at Berkeley, I believe, as well. Okay.

Alka Roy 23:29
Yes, hi. I was just trying to figure out how to share my screen on my new computer. Sometimes, simpler is better. So I am, let me know if it works. No, it doesn’t work. So. All right. So I am. First of all, thank you for inviting me to this. I was actually more excited to hear what everyone was going to say then what I was going to say. I’m definitely not making robots, which I think I congratulate you for inviting an outsider to comment on this. But I do have a lot of opinions about it. Why not? And I think more and more people should have opinions about this. So I really am trying to see if I can still share my screen because I wanted to share a framework with you that I’m hoping we would think about my provocation tonight is very different. Because when I first got invited, and I heard inclusive robots, I said I don’t want to attend this event because or at least speak to it, because I’m not sure if robot to be inclusive and what does it really mean. And so I’ve been just thinking and thinking and thinking about it. And I because I actually believe that certain things should be excluded. And so let me let me let me explain what I mean by that. I am I’m working on or I have a responsible innovation framework. And that again, I says 1% of time, can I just share my screen or you should be able to do it on the green share screen at the bottom of your screen? Right. So my security settings are not allowing it. All right, so what I see. Give me one more second, if I can, I’ll just talk to it. Alright, so I will put my link in the website. And we’ll have another time to share this. But so I’m the founder of responsible innovation framework. And prior to that, I was at an innovation center in Palo Alto, where we were making a lot of the things that I’m going to talk about. And what happened for me was, I was the end of kind of 5g and AI and everything. So we were enabling anything that you know, mobility, can enable and immersive experiences, robotics. And in the middle of all of these discussions, I found a lot of voices missing, and which were community voices, or people or even when cities were involved, it was usually their CTO that was coming in, not people were thinking about the impact of society. And I kept raising the point, raising the point until I got so loud for myself, that I had to kind of feel like I had to take a break or two sides. And so I stepped out of that arena, and took a break. And this whole world happened with COVID, which has been a really interesting place for reflection for all of us. One of the things that I worked on last year is this responsible innovation framework, which is like a nested three by three by three, which is why I was hoping I could show you the visual, but just go with me. And and I will try to create it for you. So the first thing in there is the provocation for for wear robotics, which is really, I’m really excited to see what you’re going to think about it and how you’re going to disagree with me, and how are you going to tell me I’m wrong, is I think that we need to think about stakeholders differently. So we have people with everybody talked about and and really people, not customers, not clients, not you know, people, then we have the planet in the environment, physics, our laws, you know, all those things. The third stakeholder is technology, things. So I call it people planet things. And the reason I put that as a separate stakeholder is because I think, or my, my provocation is that the reason we design technology, so problematically including robots and chatbots. And digital twins, is because we don’t separate people and things. Because we try to build things in our own image, or the image of something living. So we’re taking an inanimate thing and creating it in that image, animation world is full of it. And that causes a lot of confusion for us. Because we transfer our feelings, we transfer our biases, we transfer our confusion to these inanimate objects. And now there’s so much research and where people are, you know, feeling things about the robot, which they’ve created a robot to sort of clear the minefield. But when they, they see this robot getting blown up, they stop and they’ve removed the robot because they’re feeling that this robot is doing more than it was designed to do. There’s a reason to create social and empathetic robots. I get it. But I think that in that process, we create teenage girls, we create women as our servers, and we just perpetuate the spice just sweep deep we can decouple. So my provocation is, why not design robots is things, useful things, but not in our image, not in our voice. And so that we don’t transfer, you know, just appears as a thing. And we treat it as a very useful thing that communicates and helps us and it’s technology. So those are, you know, that’s like basic provocation for me, the stakeholders. The other aspects of this responsible innovation framework includes the values of open and safe, which are conflicting values, but, but both needed, delightful and trustworthy, and inclusive and dependable. And their inclusion is about people and ideas and types of people. And the reason I say delightful and trustworthy is because whenever we talk about responsibility, you’re doing the right thing. We can vote like we get, we feel like we have to be very serious and boring. Whereas I think that’s the part of robotics design, which is very useful. lightful for us, and I love what Michelle said. And I think Ariel said about, we always looking ahead, and we feel like we have to be chasing the latest and the greatest. But there’s so much for us to learn from our weathering technology, the old stuff, and make things accessible, you know, around around the world. So I hopefully at some point, I’ll get to share this framework with you. But those are my provocations for this conversation. I’d love to hear what other folks have to say about that. So thank you.

Andra Keay 30:33
Thanks, Alka. And I could see some people are very positive about what you’re saying there. I have to agree that the good design framework is to not create something that is perpetuating stereotypes, because we do anthropomorphize and it triggers our unconscious biases and stereotypes, and I see some more conversations coming. But I think it’s time to introduce Kenechukwu Mbanesi from the Black In Robotics undergraduate committee. And you’re currently, he’s currently doing a PhD in robotics engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. And I’m looking forward to learning more about that over to you.

Kenechukwu C. Mbanesi 31:29
Alright, hello, sorry, I was just trying to get my sharing going on here. Just give me one second. Can you see my screen?

Andra Keay 31:47
Yes. Looks good.

Kenechukwu C. Mbanesi 31:49
Awesome. Yes, thank you so much for the privilege to be to be here to join this conversation today. I, I’ve benefited a lot just by listening to what the previous speakers have talked about. I want to take this discussion, somewhat piggybacking on what Ariel ended with, about how one way we can achieve inclusive robotics is by getting people from all backgrounds involved in robotics engineering. For a long time, I’ve been very passionate about the power that robotics and technology has to, to provide improved quality of life and socio economic benefits for people in underserved and underrepresented communities, especially on the African continent. And that’s really where my passion lies. And you see it, I see. I see exclusivity, which is the inverse of inclusivity is caused by two things. And it could be more but in my understanding is two things. One is discrimination. In other words, on equal opportunity. And second is limitation. More or less on equal access, right. And my passion really lies in addressing the Equal Access problem. And how I envision that is using education. Right? So how can we get more people who otherwise would not have a seat at the table of discussing and developing robotics technologies to be able to do that, by providing them the means through education. And I’ve been very privileged to be part of interesting projects with this goal in mind, and I’d like to share a few of that with you. The first project is math and science for Sub Saharan Africa. This project was supported by the World Bank, and our audacious goal was, was to run a continent wide train the trainer program to upskill stem teachers to teach math and science and robotics, and really to understand the interconnectedness. Right, so how does science and math inspire people to pursue engineering and robotics? So I think it was that if we could inspire and educate teachers, well, they would in turn, educate and inspire students. Right. And so we started this in 2016. And we’ve been able to partner with government education agencies on the continent, to run training programs in person and virtually in several African countries. And just to put a plug in here, one of the major challenges that we’re faced and this project is I know we really still do is accessing affordable, educational robotics kits at scale. We were very fortunate to get Vex robotics to donate a couple of kids. But beyond that, we still see that as a significant bottleneck to getting students and teachers access to kids that can really help them learn and participate. The second project is called bad for kids or co bad is stands for public collaborative robots. And this project was supported by the advanced robotics for manufacturing Institute here in the US. And the project was designed really to combat the current gaping shortfall of skilled manufacturing talent in the US. And particularly trying to address that in an inclusive way, right. So what we’re doing really was to swim upstream, to inspire and train middle and high school students, especially from underrepresented backgrounds, to be passionate about robotics and passionate about advanced manufacturing by taking them through several week after school program, so like after school program, where we teach them about how to program collaborative robots, reasonably UI robots, you can see on the screen, and to actually teach them how to manufacture items using CNC machines with machines and other things. And really, our vision was that this hands on experiential learning opportunity would inspire them to, to be passionate about this and to help with getting them into this programs, or in college, and to really retain it to increase retention so that they can actually go and pursue robotics in the future. And the last project is when I got involved in very recently, and is very dear to my heart, it’s the pan African robotics competition. It started in 2015, really small, but right now it’s grown to be probably the largest robotics competition on the continent. And really was designed with inspiration from from first robotics, if you’re familiar with that here in the US, really with a goal to inspire the next generation of roboticists on the continent. And we have seen very strong participation and significant impact on how students are motivated to not just be consumers of this technology, but to have the confidence that they can be part of the producers of the technology, right, they can be part of people who actually develop this technology. And that’s naturally where my passion lies. And so this competition is going on every year, and we get students from all the way down from middle school, all the way up to college level students, and, you know, to program robots to compete with each other, and to just really inspire them. So really, to summarize, I, I am a very relentless believer in the future of inclusion. And one, in one way I’m striving for that as, as this short presentation shows is by working to provide young people, particularly people from underrepresented communities, with access to education, that and skill development that allows them to not only be at the table where they can develop technology in a way that’s diverse, but also benefit from the dividends of, of the technology. Thank you.

Andra Keay 38:11
Thank you very much, Kenechukwu that’s, um, I’m looking forward to learning more about all of those initiatives. Particularly, I think Ari raised an interesting point, there can be a lot of education initiatives, how can we maximize the benefit, as well as the access rather than splintering or fragmenting success. And I know that open robotics is very keen to democratize access to robotics by putting forward access to simulations, to get around some of the costs of having access to physical robots. But of course, that requires access to internet. And we’re seeing even in the United States that there is there is a complete gap between those that have access to internet for education. And those students who for the last year have really struggled because of lack of lack of lack of access to the internet. And I don’t know what steps we need to take. I think we’ll discuss that a little bit more as the discussion moves on. But I would like to introduce our next speaker, Kenya Andrews, master’s student in Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois, and on the black and robotics undergraduate committee.

Kenya Andrews 39:41
Okay, thank you so much. Hello, everyone. I’m very excited to be here. And I didn’t bring slides so I’m just going to, you know, speak. So, first, I’m gonna first talk about a little bit about my background and Kind of where I fit in the space, and then I’m gonna go into the topic. So I’m a first year Masters student, and I live in this space where we make algorithms, right? And those are the things that that are the, the decision making properties of robots, right. So that’s, that’s the space that I’m in I do. I, my focus in my research is in machine learning fairness. And within that, my, my passion areas and that are algorithmic justice, algorithmic bias and decision making. Okay, so my current project is looking at fair distribution of COVID-19 vaccinations amongst vulnerable populations at the state of Ohio. And right now we’re looking at different measures, trying to build different models. So some of the some of the things that we’ve kind of tossed around are like, well, should should there be equal hospitalization rates between vulnerable and non vulnerable people? Would that make it fair? Or would it be more fair, if every every, like census tract or, you know, center would have the same amount of vaccines distributed to them? So, and we’ve been, you know, having to work around things like, like, distrust between historical you know, because of historical injustice and things like that, how that creates distrust and less vaccines and how that affects distribution. So hopefully, that gives you a little context for for where I’m coming from. Okay, so when I first saw inclusive robotics, I thought First, well, oh, that’s a, you know, loaded topic list. So let’s break down some definitions. So first, I wanted to look at what is the robot? And is the programmable machine that does the task, you know, with or without human assistance? And then I want it to look at, well, what is inclusion? That’s where I started having some some issues, because we, we don’t have a have a real agreeance, on what inclusivity looks like. And it’s not because, you know, it’s for different reasons, right? Like, maybe maybe it’s like, you don’t agree with someone’s lifestyle, so you don’t want to, to include them in things or, you know, I think I should have more because I do more, I work more, right. So it creates, you know, these biases around if people should be or should not be. So, I went to Oxford, and some of their definitions, were not excluding any of the parties or groups involved in something, and aiming to provide equal access to opportunities and resources for people who might otherwise be excluded. So putting those two things together, I thought about, well, we want to have robots that makes smart decisions to achieve, you know, different goals in this world, right? And it’s not like, it’s not just that we want them to do things, you want them to do them well, right. So unless they can do them, well, then maybe they shouldn’t do it at all right? That’s what that’s kind of what we were talking about a little bit earlier. So this analysis of if robots are doing something well, should encompass, you know, are they being just are they being fair in the decisions that they’re dishing out? And in order to look at that it kind of needs to start from the beginning, from the beginning of algorithm in that, you know, at the end, there are several stages of that people look at fairness, and one of them is at the end, they all the outcomes at the end come out good. What about when you were making the decision? So that’s another another scheme of fairness, like, Where were they in between stages, between the decisions good, where they fear that’s what I’m good. So I do want to hopefully you guys can hear me a little bit I want to talk about a few definitions of fairness. So hopefully, that can bring some context into where we are. So right. So some definitions of fairness are unawareness. So that that’s when we exclude different attributes of people. So that from data, even though it’s there, we know it’s there, we don’t look at it, we just ignore it. And that can be really dangerous. Because if you ignore those things, then you would be ignoring the historical injustice that comes with it. Right? So you’re if you ignore the fact that someone is a black or brown person, then you would be ignoring the injustice that they had to face to get where they are, and how that could have affected what we look at as their resume. Right. So maybe they don’t look qualified to you. But if we, if we, you know, considered the things that that affected their resume, then we can start to see, you know, actually, maybe they are qualified or maybe even more qualified than, than someone you know, who has a similar or equal resume. Another definition of fairness is demographic parity. And best when you look at if all the demographics and a data set, have the have equal outcomes, right, like, if white, black, Asian, Indian people are accepted at the same rate, or rejected at the same rate, and grouping demographics together, can completely cancel, completely cancel another group demographic that they could be a part of, right. So it’s not only race. What about you, though? Oh, they’re short, they’re tall. What about age, you know, things like that. So you could completely be ignoring someone else’s a part of their a part of their person, if you group them together like that, that’s the danger in that. And then there’s something called equal last odds. And that’s if you’re qualified, that you’re equally as likely to be accepted into something as someone else. And another one is equality of opportunity. So regardless of your demographic group, you’re equally as qualified to have something as someone else or reject it as someone else. And then there’s predictive parody. And that’s when the is very similar to demographic parody. And is when the positive rates are the same. Okay, lastly, I’ll go over firearm safety. And lastly, I’ll go over counterfactual fairness. And that’s if the outcome for you is the same. If you’re in this world, where you are, who you are, versus, you know, if you had a different set of demographics. So instead of being a short black woman, then I would be a Caucasian woman, and Mother, do I have the same outcome? Right? So those things are important, because when we look at robotics, and the decisions that they’re they’re pushing out, are, are you what measure of fairness? Are we going by, you know, and which one is most appropriate for our for our context, it changes, it changes all the time. So we have to be we have to be very careful. Um, when we’re designing robots and understanding what kind of space are they going to be in? And who are they going to be working with? Sorry, I’m reading my notes one second. Okay, yes, we want to make sure that we’re not promoting disparity but that we are minimizing your or mitigating it, right. So how can we do that some things that I really think we should do is just kind of take a step back and slow down, we need to look at where we are right now. And, and come to come to agreement on, on what inclusivity looks like. And once we all can sign off on that, we need to understand how we make decisions, because we don’t even have a great understanding of that. We need to know, you know, what is it that we’re that we’re saying is good or bad? And why are we saying that? If the things that reason are Why are bad and maybe that shouldn’t be in our design, right? Or the reasons that are good, you know, maybe we need to superimpose those and make them even larger, make them count more. And another way, after we after we have a good understanding of that and we’re developing good things. I think we have to start investing, right like you, you maybe you if you’re designing things for community or robots For a community that’s going to be specific to a community, maybe you should go to some of the community meetings and sit and understand their struggles, the things that are actually going on there, so that you have a real understanding. You need to support organizations like nesby, right? The National Society of Black Engineers or women in robotics, right? support them with your funds, support them with your knowledge, volunteer to speak. Even students tell students about robotics, and you know what it looks like. But while you’re telling them about robotics, take them to the African American museums, take them to the Holocaust museums, show them, you know, teach them moments in history, where we weren’t so fair, we weren’t so just we weren’t so inclusive, and how those things can can translate over into our lives, start a scholarship plays, you know, be a mentor. Yeah, those are, those are my thoughts on. So thank you so much. I appreciate you guys.

Andra Keay 51:09
Thank you so much, Kenya, you raised great points. And it was wonderful to have the definitions there. And what I like most is that you took it back to saying starting with the algorithm. And this is something that is both critically important and also crucially problematic at the moment. Because right now, robotics has become a subset of AI. And that means that federal policies on AI, are incorporating robotics, it means that the agenda is being driven around the discussion around AI and AI ethics. And it is often being done in complete ignorance with robotics. And some of the problems there is that if the discussion is only about robotics, then it may only be about safety, rather than algorithmic transparency. But at the same time, if the discussion is primarily about the algorithm, then it’s going to be excluding the impacts of physical robot. And they just have a completely different and expanded way of inter intersecting with us in society. So, you know, I love that you started with the AI in that discussion. And let me just see if Ken would like to speak now. And

Ken Goldberg 52:31
Thank you. Good, thank you. I appreciate that. I am really inspired by by a lot of this discussion. And I also want to take a moment to acknowledge that the event tonight is sandwiched between two major events, at least in the United States. One is Martin Luther King Day, which we celebrated yesterday, and tomorrow, which is the inauguration. And it will be approximately 15 hours or so we will have a new president of the United States new ministration. Which I don’t know how others feel about that. But I for one, I’m very, very, very happy about it. The I think that it’s important, because is going to we are at an opportunity, a new chapter in in American history, which I think will affect a lot of events globally. I think as as you know, one thing that that struck me is that the that is Kenya, I’ve just mentioned that the COVID vaccines process is going to be very interesting reexamination of our sense of inclusivity. Because we are going to have to think very carefully and deeply about how we prioritize the the vaccine. It’s been very interesting to me that the that seniors and, and healthcare workers, prisoners, incarcerated individuals have been prioritized with good reason. But it’s very interesting, because, you know, they’re not often they’re often not considered in, in our priorities. And so it’s been a forcing us to reconsider. And I think as the more vaccines become available, we’re gonna have to do some really careful thinking about how this is rolled out is going to cause a reexamination. And I want to note that this pandemic has, has, has, has woken us up in so many ways. It was 100 years ago that the 1918 pandemic occurred. And I was reflecting on the idea that the word robot was coined in 1920, right after the end of the pandemic, and I’m still trying to wrap my head around the idea that it was such an interesting context where they had just gone through World War and this horrendous threat to humanity. And that’s when the playwright Karl che back in Czechoslovakia basically comes up with a story about robots rebelling against against the the totalitarian regime that was basically forcing them to work. And that that’s the word that’s where the word robot originated. So 100 years later, We think that thinking about robots in this context of our political, economic, social environment is so important. And so I think that the the points that were raised here from the beginning from Michel characterizing, you know, what are we? What is our definition? Because I think that’s so hard to actually wrap our heads around. I mean, we can talk about, you know, seniors and children age as a sort of inclusivity. Right, that’s one very big factor, then there’s a one we didn’t talk about tonight, but gender, and LGBTQ T, right, there’s all the gender issues that have come to the fore, actually this year. And race issues, I mean, Black Lives Matter. I think that the bipoc, the whole idea of thinking about in new ways that has created a lot of shifting of attention and priorities in a really positive way, I can tell you that black and robotics, and black and AI have had a big influence this year on our admissions process at Berkeley, we’re right now reviewing applicants, and we are getting a lot of attention. We’ve got more applicants than ever before, more black applicants than ever before. And two of them are here, actually. And I want to say it’s wonderful, because they’re there. What’s really important is that we’re, we’re learning and educating the faculty that what’s important is not just looking at the scores, how many papers they’re reading, but what is their trajectory been? So if a student has come from a, from adversity in a small village, and in Africa, and now is an undergraduate at, you know, doing Greenham? Well, in classes, that’s a huge trajectory. I mean, that means they’re there, you know, imagine what they had to overcome to get there. So really think about that, in regard to how you’re evaluating that student. They may not have a published paper, but they’re on a trajectory to do, nothing’s gonna stop. Right. So I think this is really fascinating. And it’s a really powerful and important time, that I also think in terms of other you know, races, we talked about, you know, you open tonight ondra with a with a story about Native Americans and Aboriginal people, I think it’s really important. We also consider Hispanic, Indian, though the full spectrum of races that are out there. And languages, by the way, a big disparity that excludes many people is their language they speak. There’s a, you know, there’s an emphasis on English in a lot of the publications. But that is very difficult that it’s not your native language. So you have a barrier to overcome and the way you read and write that is, we need to think about how to overcome that even our conversation tonight is in English. And then the translation, nowadays, some of these tools and AI, again, comes into play, are going to open up these doors, and I hope they will increase in quality so that we can have simultaneous translation. And for example, for for people with hearing disabilities, having ability to have automated translation, Closed captioning is wonderful thing we’ve been using in our classes, I have a student who’s on hearing disabled, and we use this for all of our meetings. So it’s been it’s opened a huge amount of doors for all kinds of disabilities with regard to cognitive, neuro cognitive diversity, or neuro diversity. And people have learning disabilities, we find out today with COVID-19, that these kinds of learning disabilities are much greater than we thought before, students have all kinds of challenges. And that is also important to acknowledge the and also, as Michelle noted this socio economic variations, right, we are oftentimes targeting this kind of particular people who can afford these kind of robots and tools and even have who have Wi Fi in their homes. Right, but many people do not. So how do we think about that? And also, I also think that intellectually, we also tend to target, you know, in the inclusivity, in terms of the people developing are oftentimes, you know, nerds like me, engineers, right? We’re all people who feel pretty good about doing science or math stem, but many people don’t, they just don’t have that, that they’re uncomfortable there. And they, but they feel excluded. So how do we engage with people who are the artists and the humanists, and the writers, the journalists, you know, who are so engaged across the board. So all these things, and workers are oftentimes the affected by the robots that we’re, we’re developing, so we need to be engaging with with workers, and really thinking carefully about how it’s going to affect those workers, especially minimum wage, who are, you know, and most vulnerable to these technologies. So, um, there’s so many things that this is sort of, you know, engaging for me. And I also have to say, I’m Kenny, I have not met you before, but I’m so excited to follow up with you because we have a common background in Nigeria. I was born there. And in the in the 60s, and we would those programs you mentioned I’m not aware of. But it was fascinating because we had we started something called the African robotics network with a professor in Ghana. And it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s been a little bit in with the first objective of it. This was in 2012, was to build an ultra affordable robot for education to design an ultra affordable. And the challenge was to design something under $10. So we thought nobody could ever do that it’s programmable robot for under $10. Anyway, it turned out that someone did. And it was a it was a it was a hobbyist living in Thailand, basically came up with what he calls a lolly bot. And if you look it up on the internet, it’s l o, l, l, y BOT, a lolly bot, and it costs $8.64. So you can build it from an old Sony game controller. Anyway, what I want to say is, I love what you’re saying, because I completely agree with this, there is a big opportunity, I am very excited about Africa and its potential, I think that is a major continent, and that we are that there’s going to accelerate into the future. And one of the things that African students, I found a really incredible ability is to know how to think outside the box in a way that they think differently because of their experience. So they’re very, very attuned to how to make something affordable and sustainable, how to make something that works, even when the electricity goes out, which nobody in the West usually thinks about. But those kind of things are really important. And so and there is engaged and interested in robots as any kid anywhere. So that’s why I want to be able to bring them to robots and the programs that you’re talking about, like the pan African robotics competition, I absolutely love it. So I want to connect with you because I would really like to follow up. But that is one of the things I think we can do. As the group of us tonight, which is to break this we’re forming a community I mean, what I feel is that there’s a there’s a real sense of, of some ground ground grassroots thing happening here. And I’m so excited, I want to thank you Andra for putting that putting this group together. Because there’s a spark here that I want to support. And I mean, I really want to see that grow over the next few years. And I think we are at a moment in time historical moment when this is an opportunity for us to step forward and really take take this opportunity and do something with it carried forward in a really meaningful and sustainable way. Thank you.

Andra Keay 1:02:03
Thank you so much, Ken, that was a very wonderful note to finish on. And sadly, for tonight, we are out of time. But the problem space is enormous. But it’s fitting to realize that the opportunity space is even larger. And I personally had thought a lot. What would a robot look like if it was designed by women for women, and I could imagine things being different. But imagine now what it would look like if your language models were for languages other than English. Or if you had to rise to the challenge of developing language models for multiple languages, as is the case in Africa. And I love the examples that can gave us there as well about really thinking outside of the box. If it’s been proven, fairly scientifically, that diversity drives innovation. And it might not be as comfortable. But it is certainly far more productive. If you’re looking to make change, as well as creating something that’s inclusive. So we shall have to continue this discussion and extend this discussion into our workplaces and to the rest of the people around us because we Yes, we need to get everybody in the room. And I’m looking forward to taking that journey with you all and thank you so much tonight. That’s wonderful speech. Okay, I’m going to stop the recording and say goodnight to everyone.

Dr Michelle Johnson 1:03:48
Thank you

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Eliza Kosoy is a Ph.D Student at UC Berkeley. She studied mathematics in college and then worked for Prof. Joshua Tenenbaum at MIT in his computational cognitive science lab. She then started on a Ph.D at UC Berkeley working with Professor Alison Gopnik in 2018. She is most proud of receiving funding and winning an innovation prize that catalyzed her business!  Her startup is called E-liza Dolls. They are 18’’ electronic “liza” dolls that introduce young girls to coding and hardware in a fun way!

She chose this topic because as a woman in STEM she couldn’t help but feel the gender and racial divide and discrepancies in the hard sciences. With her background in child development, it only made sense that it’s best to expose children to these concepts early on so they will be embedded into their hypothesis space as they develop. The hardest challenge for her is “Soldering Errors” and when tiny components fall off without notice.

E-liza Dolls Kickstarter will open very soon in March 2021… We’ll update this post the moment it goes live!

Roboticists in Residence is a Silicon Valley Robotics initiative that provides free studio space and support for creative artists and engineers making a difference, whether it’s modding a Tesla with all the conveniences of the Victorian era or adding to the ROS2 navigational stack. For more information and updates from our Roboticists in Residence

Image credit: wata1219 on flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

It has been almost half a year since the mass resignation of the editors and editorial board of the Journal of Field Robotics. In a new turn of events, Peter Corke has recently relaunched Field Robotics as an online open-access journal with the old editorial board. Field Robotics deals with the fundamentals of robotics in unstructured and dynamic environments. Papers are now being accepted at their website.

The story of the mass resignation was reported on Silicon Valley Robotics on 26 August, in their post Is it farewell to the Journal of Field Robotics?, which we will reproduce below.

Original post from Silicon Valley Robotics

2020 is proving to be a watershed year. First COVID-19 has forced the cancellation (eg. ROSCon 2020, Hannover Messe) or the complete redesign of almost every major robotics conference. Now it seems that the science publishing community is also undergoing a sea change, as yesterday’s mass resignation of the editors and editorial board of the Journal of Field Robotics suggests. Stay posted for updates about the future of a field robotics research journal.

August 25, 2020

Dear Colleagues,

We would like to inform you about an upcoming major transition for the Journal of Field Robotics.

After 15 years of service, John Wiley and Sons, the publisher has decided not to renew the contract of the Editor in Chief (Sanjiv Singh) and the Managing Editor (Sanae Minick) and hence our term will expire at the end of 2020.

This comes after two years of discussions between new Wiley representatives and the Editorial Board have failed to converge to a common set of principles and procedures by which the journal should operate. The Editorial Board has unanimously decided to resign.

We do want to assure the authors who have papers under review that we see it as our responsibility to bring these documents to resolution during our term. We will continue to process new submissions until the end of the year. More about the future at the end of this note.

While the issue at the heart of our disagreement with Wiley is about academic independence, it should be noted that there is a structural issue here. Scholarly publishing is broadly in flux at the moment in the search for a sustainable model. Currently, academics are not paid to create and review articles. In fact, they often have to pay fees to publish, and, readers have to pay to access the work through a pay per view system, or, through subscriptions.

Plan S, an international consortium makes the dilemma clear:

“Monetising the access to new and existing research results is profoundly at odds with the ethos of science (Merton, 1973 )… In the 21st century, science publishers should provide a service to help researchers disseminate their results. They may be paid fair value for the services they are providing, but no science should be locked behind paywalls!”

While this moment calls for creativity and collaboration with the scholarly community to find new models, Wiley is intent on making broad changes to the way that the Journal of Field Robotics is operated, guided mostly by an economic calculation to increase revenue and decrease costs. To do this, they have unilaterally decided to change the terms of the contract that has been constant since the JFR was started in 2005. Wiley has confronted a similar case (European Law Journal) with similar effect – the entire editorial board has resigned in January of 2020:

Wiley insists that the new contract is covered under a confidentiality agreement that not even the Editorial Board can examine. What we can say is that the net effect of Wiley’s demands would make the Editors contractors to the publisher rather than having them respond to the board. We see this as a breach of academic autonomy.

In resigning, the Editorial Board of the Journal of Field Robotics reaffirms its commitment to dissemination and discussion of research. In the near future we will announce a new forum for research in Field Robotics that will maintain the academic integrity of our editorial process while also ensuring open dissemination of your research.

The Editorial Board of the Journal of Field Robotics

• Simon Lacroix, LAAS
• David Wettergreen, CMU
• Cédric Pradalier, GeorgiaTech Lorraine
• Tim Barfoot, University of Toronto
• Roland Siegwart, ETH
• Giuseppe Loianno, NYU
• Henrik I Christensen, UC San Diego
• Marco Hutter, ETH
• Kazuya Yoshida, Tohoku University
• Aarne Halme, Aalto University
• Hanumant Singh, Northeastern University
• Matthew Berkemeier, Continental
• Anibal Ollero, University of Seville
• Jonathan Roberts, QUT
• Hajime Asama, University of Tokyo
• Satoshi Tadokoro, Tohoku University
• Raja Chatila, Sorbonne University
• Peter Corke, QUT
• Matt Spenko, Illinois Institute of Technology
• Larry Matthies, NASA JPL
• Salah Sukkarieh, University of Sydney
• Stefan Williams, University of Sydney
• Sanjiv Singh, CMU

Silicon Valley Robotics will be hosting E-Robot Prize information and connection events as part of our calendar of networking and Construction Robotics Network events. The first event will be on February 3rd at 7pm PST in our monthly robot ‘showntell’ event “Bots&Beer”, and you can register here. We’ll be announcing more Construction Robotics Network events very soon.

E-ROBOT stands for Envelope Retrofit Opportunities for Building Optimization Technologies. Phase One of the E-ROBOT Prize looks for solutions in sensing, inspection, mapping or retrofitting in building envelopes and the deadline is May 19 2021. Phase Two will focus on holistic, rather than individual solutions, i.e. bringing together the full stack of sensing, inspection, mapping and retrofitting.

The overarching goal of E-ROBOT is to catalyze the development of minimally invasive, low-cost, and holistic building envelope retrofit solutions that make retrofits easier, faster, safer, and more accessible for workers. Successful competitors will provide solutions that provide significant advancements in robot technologies that will advance the energy efficiency retrofit industry and develop building envelope retrofit technologies that meet the following criteria:

• Holistic: The solution must include mapping, retrofit, sensing, and inspection.
• Low cost: The solution should reduce costs significantly when compared to current state-of-the-art solutions. The target for reduction in costs should be based on a 50% reduction from the baseline costs of a fully implemented solution (not just hardware, software, or labor; the complete fully implemented solution must be considered). If costs are not at the 50% level, there should be a significant energy efficiency gain achieved.
• Minimally invasive: The solution must not require building occupants to vacate the premises or require envelope teardown or significant envelope damage.
• Utilizes long-lasting materials: Retrofit is done with safe, nonhazardous, and durable (30+ year lifespan) materials.
• Completes time-efficient, high-quality installations: The results of the retrofit must meet common industry quality standards and be completed in a reasonable timeframe.
• Provides opportunities to workers: The solution enables a net positive gain in terms of the workforce by bringing high tech jobs to the industry, improving worker safety, enabling workers to be more efficient with their time, improving envelope accessibility for workers, and/or opening up new business opportunities or markets.

The E-ROBOT Prize provides a total of \$5 million in funding, including \$4 million in cash prizes for competitors and an additional \$1 million in awards and support to network partners.

Through this prize, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) will stimulate technological innovation, create new opportunities for the buildings and construction workforce, reduce building retrofit costs, create a safer and faster retrofit process, ensure consistent, high-quality installations, enhance construction retrofit productivity, and improve overall energy savings of the built environment.

The E-ROBOT Prize is made up of two phases that will fast-track efforts to identify, develop, and validate disruptive solutions to meet building industry needs. Each phase will include a contest period when participants will work to rapidly advance their solutions. DOE invites anyone, individually or as a team, to compete to transform a conceptual solution into product reality.

Agility Robotics builds robots that go where people go, to do pragmatically useful work in human environments.  Digit, Agility Robotics’ humanoid robot with both mobility and manipulation capabilities, is commercially available and has been shipping to customers since July 2020. Digit builds on two decades of research and development from the team on human-like dynamic mobility and manipulation, and can handle unstructured indoor and outdoor terrain. Digit is versatile and can do  a range of different jobs that have been designed around a human form factor.

In October 2020, Agility Robotics closed a $20 million Series A round led by DCVC and Playground Global, bringing their total funds raised to $29 million. The investment enables the company to meet the demand from logistics providers, e-commerce retailers and others for robots that can work alongside humans to automate repetitive, physically demanding or dangerous work safely and scalably, even in the majority of spaces that are not purpose-built for automation.

Built Robotics transforms heavy equipment for the $1 trillion earthmoving industry into autonomous robots using its proprietary AI Guidance Systems. Built Robotics combines sensors such as GPS, cameras, and IMUs with advanced software, and the systems can be installed on standard equipment from any manufacturer. The technology allows equipment operators to oversee a fleet of vehicles working autonomously in parallel.

Built Robotics is backed by some of the top investors in Silicon Valley — including Founders Fund, NEA, and Next47 — and has raised over $48M to date. They have targeted markets in which they can have a big impact, such as earthmoving, clean energy, gas pipelines, trenching, and new housing developments. Built Robotics has partnered with one of the largest labor unions in North America, the IUOE, to help train and develop the next generation of equipment operator.

“At the end of the day, robots are just tools in the hands of skilled operators, and we believe that the best-trained workers equipped with our technology will fundamentally change the future of construction,” said Noah Ready-Campbell, CEO of Built Robotics. “Together we can build and maintain the critical infrastructure our country needs.”

Covariant is building the Covariant Brain, a universal AI to give robots the ability to see, reason and act on the world around them. Bringing practical AI Robotics into the physical world is hard. It involves giving robots a level of autonomy that requires breakthroughs in AI research. That’s why Covariant assembled a team that has published cutting-edge research papers at the top AI conferences and journals, with more than 50,000 collective citations. In addition to their research, they’ve also brought together a world-class engineering team to create new types of highly robust, reliable and performant cyber-physical systems.

Instead of learning to master specific tasks separately, Covariant robots learn general abilities such as robust 3D perception, physical affordances of objects, few-shot learning and real-time motion planning. This allows them to adapt to new tasks just like people do — by breaking down complex tasks into simple steps and applying general skills to complete them. In 2020, Covariant raised a $40 million Series B round from investors such as Index Ventures, Lux Capital and Baidu Ventures, bringing their total funding to $67 million. They’ve also developed partnerships with logistics and robotics companies such as Knapp Ag. and ABB, showcasing successful order pick rates at faster than human speeds.

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Self driving technology, the integration of robotics, AI and simulation, is the hardest engineering challenge of our generation. So it’s only fitting that Cruise autonomous vehicles are on the road in San Francisco navigating some of the most challenging and unpredictable driving environments, because the best way to bring self-driving technology to the world is to expose it to the same unique and complex traffic scenarios human drivers face every day.

Cruise became the industry’s first unicorn when GM acquired the company in 2016. Cruise is building the world’s most advanced all-electric, self-driving vehicles to safely connect people with the places, things, and experiences they care about. And in the first three months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Cruise delivered more than 125,000 contactless deliveries of groceries and meals to San Francisco’s most vulnerable underserved populations. And as of December 4, Cruise has started driverless testing in San Francisco. You can see the video here:

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Dishcraft’s mission is to create happy, productive, sustainable workplaces by making automation accessible to food service operations. Dishcraft Daily® delivers a full-service clean-dish ‘dishwashing as a service’ every day to dining operations in business, education, and healthcare, providing measurable environmental benefits compared to using disposable wares.

Dishcraft provides environmental and financial efficiencies for both dine-in and to-go businesses once you calculate the hidden costs of normal restaurant or food service operation. Dishcraft has raised over $25 million from investors including Baseline Ventures, First Round Capital, and Lemnos. The company’s dishwashing as a service is now being used by dozens of companies, including hospitals, around the Bay Area. Since the advent of COVID-19, there’s been an increased demand for food safe and sterile processes in the food service industry.

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Embark technology is already moving freight for five Fortune 500 companies in the southwest U.S. By moving real freight through our purpose-built transfer hubs, we are setting a new standard for how driverless trucks will move freight in the future. Embark has compiled many firsts for automated trucks, including driving across the country, operating in rain and fog, and navigating between transfer hubs. Embark is advancing the state of the art in automated trucks and bringing safe, efficient commercial transport closer every day.

Started as University of Waterloo startup, then at YCombinator, Embark has raised more than $117 million with top investors like DCVC and Sequoia Capital. Embark is assembling a world-class group of engineers from companies like Tesla, Google, Audi and NASA with a professional operations team that averages over a million miles per driver, with the goal of developing a system tailored to the demands of real world trucking.

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Autonomous robots are awesome, but if you want to run a business with them, you’ll need a robust operations platform that connects people, processes, sensors and robots, and provides fleet-wide management, control, and analytics at scale. That is where Formant comes in.

Formant bridges the gap between autonomous systems and the people running them. Our robot data and operations platform provides organizations with a command center that can be used to operate, observe, and analyze the performance of a growing fleet of heterogeneous robots. Empowering customers to deploy faster, scale while reducing overhead, and maximize the value of autonomous robots and the data they collect.

So far in 2020, Formant’s robot data and operations platform is supporting dozens of different customers with a multitude of robot types and is deployed on thousands of autonomous devices worldwide. Formant’s customers span robot manufacturers, robot-as-a-service providers, and enterprises with robotic installations and represent a variety of industries, from energy to agriculture to warehouse automation.

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Iron Ox is an operator of autonomous robotic greenhouses used to grow fresh and pesticide-free farm products that are accessible everywhere. It leverages plant science, machine learning, and robotics to increase the availability, quality, and flavor of leafy greens and culinary herbs that enable consumers to access naturally grown and chemical-free farm products.

Iron Ox is reimagining the modern farm, utilizing robotics and AI to grow fresh, consistent, and responsibly farmed produce for everyone. From the development of multiple robot platforms to their own custom hydroponic, seeding, and harvesting systems, Iron Ox is taking a system-level approach to creating the ideal farm. The company’s experienced team of growers, plant scientists, software engineers, and hardware engineers are passionate about bringing forward this new wave of technology to grow local, affordable fresh produce.

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Robust.AI is building the world’s first industrial grade cognitive engine, with a stellar team that’s attracted $22.5 million in seed and Series A funding from Jazz Ventures, Playground Global, Fontinalis, Liquid 2, Mark Leslie and Jaan Tallis. Robust’s stated mission is to overhaul the software stack that runs many of existing robots, in order to make them function better in complex environments and be safer for operation around humans.

The all-star team of founders are Gary Marcus and Rodney Brooks, both pioneers in AI and robotics, Mohamed Amer from SRI International, Anthony Jules from Formant and Redwood Robotics, and Henrik Christensen author of the US National Robotics Roadmaps.

“Finding market fit is as important in robots and AI systems as any other product,” Brooks said in a statement. “We are building something we believe most robotics companies will find irresistible, taking solutions from single-purpose tools that today function in defined environments, to highly useful systems that can work within our world and all its intricacies.”

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Zipline is a California-based automated logistics company that designs, manufactures, and operates drones to deliver vital medical products. Zipline’s mission is to provide every human on Earth with instant access to vital medical supplies. In 2014, Zipline started flying medical supplies in Africa, and has gone on to fly more than 39,000 deliveries worldwide and raise over $233 million in funding.

Zipline has built the world’s fastest and most reliable delivery drone, the world’s largest autonomous logistics network, and a truly amazing team. Zipline designs and tests its technology in Half Moon Bay, California. The company assembles the drones and the technology that powers its distribution centers in South San Francisco. Zipline performs extensive flight testing in Davis, California, and operates distribution centers around the planet with teams of local operators.

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Zoox is working on the full stack for Robo-taxis, providing mobility-as-a-service. Operating at the intersection of design, computer science, and electro-mechanical engineering, Zoox is a multidisciplinary team working to imagine and build an advanced mobility experience that will support the future needs of urban mobility for both people and the environment.

In December 2018, Zoox became the first company to gain approval for providing self-driving transport services to the public in California. In January 2019, Zoox appointed a new CEO, Aicha Evans, who was previously the Chief Strategy Officer at Intel and became the first African-American CEO of a $1B company. Zoox had raised a total of $1B in funding over 6 rounds and on June 26, 2020, Amazon and Zoox signed a “definitive merger agreement” under which Amazon will acquire Zoox for over $1.2 billion. Zoox’s ground-up technology, which includes developing zero-emission vehicles built specifically for autonomous use, could be used to augment Amazon’s logistics operations.

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You can see the full list of our Good Robot Awards in Innovation, Vision, Commercialization and our Community Champions here at https://svrobo.org/awards and we’ll be sharing articles about each category of award winners throughout the week.

Self-driving vehicles would not be possible without sensors and so it’s not surprising to see two small new sensors in the 2020 Silicon Valley Robotics ‘Good Robot’ Innovation Awards, the Velabit from Velodyne and the nanoScan3 from SICK. We showcase three other innovations in component technology, the FHA-C with Integrated Servo Drive from Harmonic Drive, the radically new Inception Drive from SRI International and Qualcomm’s RB5 Processor, all ideal for building robots.

Our other Innovation Awards go to companies with groundbreakingly new robots; from the tensegrity structure of Squishy Robotics, which will help in both space exploration and disaster response on earth, to the Dusty Robotics full scale FieldPrinter for the construction industry, and Titan from FarmWise for agriculture, which was also named one of Time’s Best Inventions for 2020. Finally, we’re delighted to see innovation in robotics that is affordable and collaborative enough for home robot applications, with Stretch from Hello Robot and Eve from Halodi Robotics.

The Velabit, a game-changing lidar sensor, leverages Velodyne’s innovative lidar technology and manufacturing partnerships for cost optimization and high-volume production, to make high-quality 3D lidar sensors readily accessible to everyone. The Velabit is smaller than a deck of playing cards, and it shatters the price barrier, costing $100.00 per sensor. The compact, mid-range Velabit is highly configurable for specialized use cases and can be embedded almost anywhere. Gatik and May Mobility are just two of pioneers in autonomous vehicle technology using Velodyne Lidar.

The nanoScan3 from SICK is the world’s smallest safety laser scanner and is based on their latest patented Time-Of-Flight technology. Not only does it provide the most robust protection for stationary and mobile robots, but being a LiDAR, it simultaneously supports navigation and other measurement-based applications.

Founded in 1946, SICK sensors help robots make more intelligent decisions and give them the ability to sense objects, the environment, or their own position. SICK, and their west coast distributor EandM, offer solutions for all challenges in the field of robotics: Robot Vision, Safe Robotics, End-of-Arm Tooling, and Position Feedback.

The FHA-C Mini Series from Harmonic Drive is a family of extremely compact actuators that deliver high torque with exceptional accuracy and repeatability. The revolutionary FHA-C with Integrated Servo Drive eliminates the need for an external drive and greatly improves wiring while retaining high-positional accuracy and torsional stiffness in a compact housing. This new mini actuator product is ideal for use in robotics.

The Qualcomm Robotics RB5 Platform supports the development of the next generation of high-compute, AI-enabled, low power robots and drones for the consumer, enterprise, defense, industrial and professional service sectors that can be connected by 5G. The QRB5165 processor, customized for robotics applications, offers a powerful heterogeneous computing architecture coupled with the leading 5th generation Qualcomm® Artificial Intelligence (AI) Engine delivering 15 Trillion Operations Per Second (TOPS) of AI performance. It’s designed to achieve peak performance while being able to also support small battery-operated robots with challenging power and thermal dissipation requirements. The platform offers support for Linux, Ubuntu and Robot Operating System (ROS) 2, as well as pre-integrated drivers for various cameras, sensors and connectivity.

The latest breakthrough from SRI Robotics is a novel ultra-compact, infinitely variable transmission that is an order of magnitude smaller and lighter than existing technologies. The Inception Drive is a new transmission that can reverse the direction of the output relative to input without clutches or extra stages, dramatically increasing total system efficiency in applications including robotics, transportation, and heavy industry.

Squishy Robotics’ rapidly deployable, air-droppable, mobile sensor robots provide lifesaving, cost-saving information in real time, enabling faster, better-informed data-driven decisions. The company’s robots provide first responders with location and chemical sensor data as well as the visual information needed to safely plan a mitigation response, all from a safe distance away from the “hot zones.” The scalable and reconfigurable robots can carry customized, third-party equipment (e.g., COTS sensors, emergency medical aid supplies, or specialized radio components) in a variety of deployment scenarios.

The company’s first target market is the HazMat and CBRNE (chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive) response market, enabling lifesaving maneuvers and securing the safety of first responders by providing situational awareness and sensor data in uncharted terrains. The robots can be quickly deployed by ground or be dropped from drones or other aerial vehicles and then be used in a variety of ways, including remote monitoring, disaster response, and rescue assistance. A spin-off of prior work with NASA on robots for space exploration, the company’s Stationary Robot has been successfully dropped from airplanes from heights of up to 1,000 ft; the company’s Mobile Robot can traverse rugged and uneven territory.

Dusty Robotics develops innovative robotics technology that power the creation of high-accuracy mobile printers for the construction industry. Dusty’s novel robotics algorithms enable the system to achieve 1-millimeter precision printing construction layout on concrete decks, which is a breakthrough in the industry.

Construction industry veterans who are normally skeptical about new innovations have all embraced Dusty’s FieldPrinter as the solution to critical problems in the industry. Layout today involves a number of manual steps, each of which has the potential to introduce errors into the process. Errors increase building cost and delay time to completion. Dusty’s robotic layout printer automates the BIM->field workflow and is poised to be the first widely adopted robotic technology in the field across the construction industry.

For vegetable growers who face increased growing costs and new environmental and regulatory pressures, the FarmWise suite of data-driven services harnesses plant-level data to drive precise field actions in order to streamline farm operations and increase food production efficiency.

Titan FT-35, the automated weeding robot from FarmWise Labs, has just been named one of Time Magazine’s ‘Best Inventions of 2020’. Titan consists of a driverless tractor and a smart implement that uses deep learning to detect crops from weeds and mechanically removes weeds from farmers’ fields. Thanks to the trust and collaborative effort of visionary growers, the FarmWise idea of a machine that could kill weeds without using chemicals went from a proof-of-concept to a commercialized product.

Hello Robot has reinvented the mobile manipulator. In July 2020 they launched Stretch, the first capable, portable, and affordable mobile manipulator designed specifically to assist people in the home and workplace. At a fraction the cost, size, and weight of previous capable mobile manipulators, Stretch’s novel design is a game changer.

Stretch has a low mass, contact-sensitive body with a compact footprint and slender telescopic manipulator, so that it weighs only 51lb. Stretch is ready for autonomous operation as well as teleoperation, with Python interfaces, ROS integration and open source code. In the future, mobile manipulators will enhance the lives of older adults, people with disabilities, and caregivers. Hello Robot is working to build a bridge to this future.

Halodi Robotics has developed the EVE humanoid robot platform using its patented REVO1 actuators to enable truly capable and safe humanoid robots. The robots have been commercialized, and the first commercial customer pilots are being planned for next year in security, health care and retail.

By developing a new actuator and differential rope based transmission systems, the company has overcome many of the obstacles preventing the development of capable and safe robots. Impact energies of less than a thousandth of comparable systems means that the system can be inherently safe around humans and in human environments.

Halodi Robotics is using the EVE platform to pilot humanoid robotics into new areas while their next generation robot Sarah is being developed for 2022 launch.

You can see the full list of our Good Robot Awards in Innovation, Vision, Commercialization and our Community Champions here at https://svrobo.org/awards and we’ll be sharing articles about each category of award winners throughout the week.

Three years ago I set out on a journey to build a future where one-day delivery is available anywhere in the world by commercializing high precision, low-cost automated airdrops. In the beginning, the vision seemed almost so grand and unachievable as to be silly. A year ago we began assembling a top-notch team full of engineers, aviators and business leaders to help solve this problem.  After a lot of blood sweat and tears, we arrive at present day with the announcement of our $8M seed round raise backed by some amazing capital partners and a growing coalition excited and engaged to accelerate DASH to the next chapter.  With this occasion, we have been reflecting a lot on the journey and the “why” that inspired this endeavor to start all those years ago.

Why Does This Problem Exist?

To those of us fortunate enough to live in large well-infrastructured metropolitan cities, deliveries and logistics isn’t an issue we often consider. We expect our Amazon Prime, UPS, and FedEx packages to arrive the next day or within the standard 3-5 business days.  If you live anywhere else these networks grind to a halt trying to deliver.  For all its scale, Amazon Prime services less than 60 percent of zipcodes in the US with free 2-day prime shipping. The rural access index shows that over 3 Billion people, live in rural settings and over 700 million people don’t live within easy access to all-weather roads at all. Ask manufacturers in need of critical spare parts in Montana, earthquake rescue personnel in Nepal, grocery store owners in mountainous Columbia, or anyone on the 20,000 inhabited islands of the Philippines if rapid logistics feels solved or affordable. The short answer – it’s not.

Before that package is delivered to your door it requires a middle mile solution to move from region to region. There is only one technology that can cross oceans, mountains, and continents in a single day, and that is air cargo.

Air cargo accounts for less than one  percent of all pounds delivered, but over 33 percent of all shipping revenue globally. We collectively believe in air cargo and rely on it to get our most critical and immediate deliveries, including a  growing share of e-commerce and just in time deliveries.  If you want something fast, it’s coming by airplane. There is no substitute. 

However, the efficiency and applications for air cargo break down when the plane has to land.  While the 737 can fly over 600 mph and thousands of miles, it requires hundreds of millions in infrastructure, airports, and ground trucking to get cargo from the airport to your local warehouse making it very costly for commercial deliveries. The ground infrastructure has to exist on every island in the Philippines, every mountain town in Columbia and every town in Nepal. This infrastructure has to reach both sides of every mountain or island anywhere you want things fast.   Even when you can land at a modern airport take-off and fuel burn during climb can account for upwards of 30 percent of an entire flight’s fuel use and drives insurance and maintenance costs from landing and takeoff cycles. This problem is so intrinsic to air cargo and logistics it almost seems natural. Well of course flyover states and rural areas don’t get cheap, fast, and convenient deliveries. Are you going to land that 737 at 20 towns on the way from LA to New York City? We fly over potential customers on our way to big urban cities with modern infrastructure even though only a minority portion of the world’s population lives there. Something has to change.

Our solution

To solve this problem is simple in thought. Yet this has been  one of the most complex tasks I’ve had the honor of working on in my engineering career.  Land the package, not the plane.  By commercializing high-precision low-cost air drops you can decouple airplanes from landings, runways and trucks.  Suddenly a delivery to rural Kansas is just as fast and cost-effective as a major coastal city. Fuel, insurance, utilization rate, service improvements, coverage area, and-and-and, so many metrics improve overnight in significant ways if an existing aircraft can deliver directly to the last mile sorting facility and bypasses much of the complexity, cost and infrastructure needed for traditional hub and spoke networks.

DASH Systems performing air drop tests in Southern California (image from DASH Systems)

Perhaps one of the most common questions I received when I started DASH why hasn’t [insert your preferred enterprise organization here] done this before? Without taking a detour conversation on why large enterprises historically struggle with innovation, the simple answer is: Because now is the time.  Advancements in IoT, low size weight and power flight controllers coupled with a career implementing automation in safety-critical environments meant that the necessary ingredients were ready. Tremendous credit is due to some of the most brilliant engineers, scientists and developers I’ve had the pleasure of working with who took to task carving away raw ideas and rough prototypes into aerospace grade commercial products. All with the bravery to do so while working outside the confines of existing aerospace text books.

Beyond the intricacies of technology was a personal impetus to implement. My father’s family has origins in Barbados, during hurricane season we would make the call, when the phone lines were restored, to ask “is everything okay?” It often felt like a roll of the dice if they would be spared that year in a sick game of roulette that someone else would lose.  With islands by definition nearly all help and aid have to come from aboard, but how can supplies be distributed when ports are destroyed, runways damaged and roads washed out? To me, it is a moral imperative to help, but also to build self-sustaining commercial solutions that can scale to help more in the future.

This thought process was put to the test in 2017, just weeks after starting to seriously contemplate and study the ideas that became DASH. Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico. I awoke just as millions of others to witness one of the worst hurricanes to make landfall in 100 years. That day we started making calls, 10 days later we were flying inland in a rented Cessna 208 delivering thousands of pounds of humanitarian supplies via air drops to cut off communities.  The take away was that if this could be done safely and legally on an idle Fedex feeder aircraft, if those on the ground were willing and ready for rapid logistics at the same price they would have paid, why did it have wait until a natural disaster to strike?  DASH exists because there is no technology, process, or company that can honestly make the claim of delivery to anywhere or even most places in under 2 days. We in large cities have come to enjoy it and expect it, yet in the same breath, we cut the conversation short for those geographically situated elsewhere. Our solution exists and with the hard work of an amazingly talented team and excellent partners continue to scale and grow until that one day that claim can be made.

Our Future

The story of DASH is far from over, our vision is rapid logistics anywhere and there is a flight path ahead of us to get there. Today, DASH is advancing the state of the art of precision air drop technology, tomorrow we are looking to deliver into your community wherever it is and despite the circumstances.  The entire globe deserves the same level of service and convenience. The list is too long to thank everyone who has helped DASH get to where we are today, and growing longer every day. Instead I can offer up, look to the skies you may see your next delivery safely and precisely coming down to a location near you.

Joel Ifill is the founder and CEO of DASH Systems.  He can be found at www.dashshipping.com and reached at inquiries@dashshipping.com we are always on the hunt for talented roboticists engineers and developers who enjoy aviation, inquire at HR@DASHshipping.com

If robotics is the technology of the 21st century, rather than biotech, then we have some serious work to do. This week marks the ‘beginning of the end’ of the coronavirus pandemic as a vaccine is deployed in the US. The Wall St Journal recently profiled the incredible effort of Pfizer and BioNTech who pioneered a novel Messenger RNA (mRNA) approach, and got it in production in a tenth to a quarter of the normal vaccine development time. It undoubtedly takes a team, but the WSJ article “How Pfizer delivered a COVID vaccine in record time” highlights the efforts of two men, CEO Albert Bourla and manufacturing chief Mike McDermott, and one woman, head of Pfizer’s vaccine research Dr Kathrin Jansen, in this achievement. And the WSJ feature makes more fuss about CEO Albert Bourla’s Greek heritage than about Dr Kathrin Jansen’s femaleness. Now the WSJ isn’t exactly a leftwing propaganda machine, so this reflects the strides that the biological sciences have taken in diversity in the last fifty years. Given the growing shortage of professionals in computer science, robotics and AI occupations, including basic manufacturing, and given the basic human right of empowering everyone with access to equal opportunities, then it is clear that systemic inequity is still at work in some new technologies like robotics. Biotech shows that hardware and innovation is doable. Sadly, Silicon Valley shows that equity is harder than hardware.

Silicon Valley Robotics announces its inaugural ‘Good Robot’ Industry Awards this week, celebrating Innovation in products, Vision in action, and the Commercialization of new technologies that offer us the chance to address global challenges. The computer age did not usher in the increases in productivity that were anticipated. Unlike the advent of tractors or electricity, productivity due to technology has largely stagnated since shortly after the second world war. This is in spite of large amounts of public research and development funding in advanced computing technologies like robotics and AI. In the meantime, the negative impacts of many technology advances (like plastics) continue to wage war on the planet. But there is no point in promoting a Luddite view of a technology free era (of high infant mortality, short average lifespan and child labor), instead we can use technology wisely to address areas where the gain to society will be great.

We want to also recognize the work of robotics community champions who do all sorts of (often unsung) work that advances the science and technology of robotics, from research, to production and employment. These awardees serve as great examples of how providing support for robotics supports all of us.

Community Champion Award:

Companies:

NASA Intelligent Robotics Group
Open Robotics
PickNik Robotics
Robohub
SICK
Willow Garage (best to see the Red Hat series How to Start a Robot Revolution)

Individuals:

Alex Padilla
Ayanna Howard
Evan Ackerman
Frank Tobe
Henrik Christensen
Joy Buolamwini
Katherine Scott
Khari Johnson
Louise Poubel
Mark Martin
Rodney Brooks
Rumman Chowdhury
Timnit Gebru

Silicon Valley Robotics appreciates the contributions made by all of our inaugural Community Champions! And we look forward to next year, because there are many of you out there who are making not just good robots, but a better robotics industry. One of the things I love most about robotics is being around so many people who are are passionate about using technology to improve the world. It can be frustrating that the world is so resistant to change sometimes but in ten short years, the robotics industry has gone from insignificant (in Silicon Valley terms) to unicorns. We all have an opportunity to be part of changing the world for the better, like our Community Champions.

Make no mistake, this is not an issue for women or black & brown people to solve. Without an accurate reflection of the society in which our technologies will be used we will not produce the best technologies and we will not be attractive or competitive as an industry that is fighting for the best talent. Diversity and equity in robotics should be worrying everybody in robotics. We need robots to solve our greatest global challenges. And we need global talent to do this.

I dream of seeing a Silicon Valley Robotics industry cluster and robotics education program in every country, hand in hand with non-profit programs like Women in Robotics and Black in Robotics to support workers entering what is still not an equitable work environment.

*The Silicon Valley Robotics Board is incredibly supportive, however this commentary is all my own opinion piece and I  put my Ruth Bader Ginsburg socks on today. I highly recommend them.

About Silicon Valley Robotics

Silicon Valley Robotics (SVR) supports the innovation and commercialization of robotics technologies, as a non-profit industry association. Our first strategic plan focused on connecting startups with investment, and since our founding in 2010, our membership has grown tenfold, reflecting our success in increasing investment into robotics. We believe that with robotics, we can improve productivity, meet labor shortages, get rid of jobs that treat humans like robots and finally create precision, personalized food, mobility, housing and health technologies. For more information, please visit https://svrobo.org

SOURCE: Silicon Valley Robotics (SVR)

CONTACT: Andra Keay andra@svrobo.org

President: Sabine Haeurt          

Founded: 2012

HQ:  Switzerland

Robohub is an online platform and non-profit that brings together leading communicators in robotics research, start-ups, business, and education from around the world, focused on connecting the robotics community to the public. It can be difficult for the public to find free, high-quality information about robotics. At Robohub, we enable roboticists to share their stories in their own words by providing them with a social media platform and editorial guidance. This means that our readers get to learn about the latest research and business news, events and opinions, directly from the experts.

Since 2012, Robohub and its international community of volunteers have published over 300 Robohub Podcasts, 7000 blog posts, videos and more, reaching 1M pageviews every year, and more than 30k followers on social media. You can follow robohub on Twitter at @robohub.

The gendering of robots is something I’ve found fascinating since I first started building robots out of legos with my brother. We all ascribe character to robots, consciously or not, even when we understand exactly how robots work. Until recently we’ve been able to write this off as science fiction stuff, because real robots were boring industrial arms and anything else was fictional. However, since 2010, robots have been rolling out into the real world in a whole range of shapes, characters and notably, stereotypes. My original research on the naming of robots gave some indications as to just how insidious this human tendency to anthropomorphize and gender robots really is. Now we’re starting to face the consequences and it matters.

Firstly, let’s consider that many languages have gendered nouns, so there is a preliminary linguistic layer of labelling, ahead of the naming of robots, which if not defined, then tends to happen informally. The founders of two different robot companies have told me that they know when their robot has been accepted in a workplace by when it’s been named by teammates, and they deliberately leave the robot unnamed. Whereas some other companies focus on a more nuanced brand name such as Pepper or Relay, which can minimize gender stereotypes, but even then the effects persist.

Because with robots the physical appearance can’t be ignored and often aligns with ideas of gender. Next, there is the robot voice. Then, there are other layers of operation which can affect both a robot’s learning and its response. And finally, there is the robot’s task or occupation and its socio-cultural context.

Names are both informative and performative. We can usually ascribe a gender to a named object. Similarly, we can ascribe gender based on a robot’s appearance or voice, although it can differ in socio-cultural contexts.

Astro Boy original comic and Pepper from SoftBank Robotics

The robot Pepper was designed to be a childlike humanoid and according to SoftBank Robotics, Pepper is gender neutral. But in general, I’ve found that US people tend to see Pepper as female helper, while Asian people are more likely to see Pepper as a boy robot helper. This probably has something to do with the popularity of Astro Boy (Mighty Atom) from 1952 to 1968.

One of the significant issues with gendering robots is that once embodied, individuals are unlikely to have the power to change the robot that they interact with. Even if they rename it, recostume it and change the voice, the residual gender markers will be pervasive and ‘neutral’ will still elicit a gender response in everybody.

This will have an impact on how we treat and trust robots. This also has much deeper social implications for all of us, not just those who interact with robots, as robots are recreating all of our existing gender biases. And once the literal die is cast and robots are rolling out of a factory, it will be very hard to subsequently change the robot body.

Interestingly, I’m noticing a transition from a default male style of robot (think of all the small humanoid fighting, dancing and soccer playing robots) to a default female style of robot as the service robotics industry starts to grow. Even when the robot is simply a box shape on wheels, the use of voice can completely change our perception. One of the pioneering service robots from Savioke, Relay, deliberately preselected a neutral name for their robot and avoided using a human voice completely. Relay makes sounds but doesn’t use words. Just like R2D2, Relay expresses character through beeps and boops. This was a conscious, and significant, design choice for Savioke. Their preliminary experimentation on human-robot interaction showed that robots that spoke were expected to answer questions, and perform tasks at a higher level of competency than a robot that beeped.

Relay from Savioke delivering at Aloft Hotel

Not only did Savioke remove the cognitive dissonance of having a robot seem more human that it really is, but they removed some of the reiterative stereotyping that is starting to occur with less thoughtful robot deployments. The best practice for designing robots for real world interaction is to minimize human expressivity and remove any gender markers. (more about that next).

The concept of ‘marked’ and ‘unmarked’ arose in linguistics in the 1930s, but we’ve seen it play out in Natural Language Processing, search and deep learning repeatedly since then, perpetuating, reiterating and exaggerating the use of masculine terminology as the default, and feminine terminology used only in explicit (or marked) circumstances. Marked circumstances almost always relate to sexual characteristics or inferiority within power dynamics, rather than anything more interesting.

An example of unmarked or default terminology is the use of ‘man’ to describe people, but ‘woman’ to only describe a subset of ‘man’. This is also commonly seen in the use of a female specifier on a profession, ie. female police officer, female president, or female doctor. Otherwise, in spite of there being many female doctors, the search will return male examples, call female doctors he, or miscategorize them as nurse. We are all familiar with those mistakes in real life but had developed social policies to reduce the frequency of them. Now AI and robotics are bringing the stereotype back.

And so it happens that the ‘neutral’ physical appearance of robots is usually assumed to be male, rather than female, unless the robot has explicit female features. Sadly, female robots mean either a sexualized robot, or a robot performing a stereotypically female role. This is how people actually see and receive robots unless a company, like Savioke, consciously refrains from triggering our stereotypically gendered responses.

I can vouch for the fact that searching for images using the term “female roboticists”, for example, always presents me with lots of men building female robots instead. It will take a concerted effort to change things. Robot builders have the tendency to give our robots character. And unless you happen to be a very good (and rich) robotics company, there is also no financial incentive to degender robots. Quite the opposite. There is financial pressure to take advantage of our inherent anthropomorphism and gender stereotypes.

In The Media Equation in 1996, Clifford Reeves and Byron Nass demonstrated how we all attributed character, including gender, to our computing machines, and that this then affected our thoughts and actions, even though most people consciously deny conflating a computer with a personality. This unconscious anthropomorphizing can be used to make us respond differently, so of course robot builders will increasingly utilize the effect as more robots enter society and competition increases.

Can human beings relate to computer or television programs in the same way they relate to other human beings? Based on numerous psychological studies, this book concludes that people not only can but do treat computers, televisions, and new media as real people and places. Studies demonstrate that people are “polite” to computers; that they treat computers with female voices differently than “male” ones; that large faces on a screen can invade our personal space; and that on-screen and real-life motion can provoke the same physical responses.

The Media Equation

The history of voice assistants shows a sad trend. These days, they are all female, with the exception of IBM Watson, but then Watson occupies a different ecosystem niche. Watson is an expert. Watson is the doctor to the rest of our subservient, map reading, shopping list helpful nurses. By default, unless you’re in Arabia, your voice assistant device will have a female voice. You have to go through quite a few steps to consciously change it and there are very few options. In 2019, Q, a genderless voice assistant was introduced, however I can’t find it offered on any devices yet.

And while it may be possible to upload a different voice to a robot, there’s nothing we can do if the physical design of the robot evokes gender. Alan Winfield wrote a very good article “Should robots be gendered?” here on Robohub in 2016, in which he outlines three reasons that gendered robots are a bad idea, all stemming from the 4th of the EPSRC Principles of Robotics, that robots should be transparent in action, rather than capitalizing on the illusion of character, so as not to influence vulnerable people.

Robots are manufactured artefacts: the illusion of emotions and intent should not be used to exploit vulnerable users.

EPSRC Principles of Robotics

My biggest quibble with the EPSRC Principles is underestimating the size of the problem. By stating that vulnerable users are the young or the elderly, the principles imply that the rest of us are immune from emotional reaction to robots, whereas Reeves and Nass clearly show the opposite. We are all easily manipulated by our digital voice and robot assistants. And while Winfield recognizes that gender queues are powerful enough to elicit a response in everybody, he only sees the explicit gender markers rather than understanding that unmarked or neutral seeming robots also elicit a gendered response, as ‘not female’.

So Winfield’s first concern is emotional manipulation for vulnerable users (all of us!), his second concern is anthropomorphism inducing cognitive dissonance (over promising and under delivering), and his final concern is that the all the negative stereotypes contributing to sexism will be reproduced and reiterated as normal through the introduction of gendered robots in stereotyped roles (it’s happening!). These are all valid concerns, and yet while we’re just waking up to the problem, the service robot industry is growing by more than 30% per annum.

Where the growth of the industrial robotics segment is comparatively predictable, the world’s most trusted robotics statistics body, the International Federation of Robotics is consistently underestimating the growth of the service robotics industry. In 2016, the IFR predicted 10% growth for professional service robotics over the next few years from \$4.6 Billion, but by 2018 they were recording 61% growth to \$12.6B and by 2020 the IFR has recorded 85% overall growth expecting revenue from service robotics to hit \$37B by 2021.

It’s unlikely that we’ll recall robots, once designed, built and deployed, for anything other than a physical safety issue. And the gendering of robots isn’t something we can roll out a software update to fix. We need to start requesting companies to not deploy robots that reinforce gender stereotyping. They can still be cute and lovable, I’m not opposed to the R2D2 robot stereotype!

Consumers are starting to fight back against the gender stereotyping of toys, which really only started in the 20th century as a way to extract more money from parents, and some brands are realizing that there’s an opportunity for them in developing gender neutral toys. Recent research from the Pew Research Center found that overall 64% of US adults wanted boys to play with toys associated with girls, and 76% of US adults wanted girls to play with toys associated with boys. The difference between girls and boys can be explained because girls’ role playing (caring and nurturing) is still seen as more negative than boys’ roles (fighting and leadership). But the overall range that shows that society has developed a real desire to avoid gender stereotyping completely.

Sadly, it’s like knowing sugar is bad for us, while it still tastes sweet.

In 2016, I debated Ben Goertzel, maker of Sophia the Robot, on the main stage of the Web Summit on whether humanoid robots were good or bad. I believe I made the better case in terms of argument, but ultimately the crowd sided with Goertzel, and by default with Sophia. (there are a couple of descriptions of the debate referenced below).

Robots are still bright shiny new toys to us. When are we going to realize that we’ve already opened the box and played this game, and women, or any underrepresented group, or any stereotype role, is going to be the loser. No, we’re all going to lose! Because we don’t want these stereotypes any more and robots are just going to reinforce the stereotypes that we already know we don’t want.

And did I mention how white all the robots are? Yes, they are racially stereotyped too. (See Ayanna Howard’s new book “Sex, Race and Robots: How to be human in an age of AI”)

References:

• Should robots be gendered? – Robohub
• Machine Translation: Analyzing Gender – Gendered Innovations (Stanford University)
• The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television, and New Media Like Real People and Places – Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass
• Alexa, Siri, Cortana: The Problem With All-Female Digital Assistants – The Wall Street Journal
• I’d blush if I could: closing gender divides in digital skills through education – UNESCO
• Principles of robotics – EPSRC
• Web Summit: A Debate on Robots and People – IEEE Transmitter
• Should robots look and act like humans? – Keycass on Medium
• Web Summit Lisbon 2016 – Cristina Turbatu
• IFR’s two reports for 2015 show double-digit growth for remainder of decade – The Robot Report
• World Robotics Report: Global Sales of Robots Hit $16.5B in 2018 – Robotics Business Review
• What are Professional Service Robots? – Robotic Industries Association
• How toys became gendered – and why it’ll take more than a gender-neutral doll to change how boys perceive femininity – The Conversation
• Most Americans see value in steering children toward toys, activities associated with opposite gender – Pew Research Center
• Why Are So Many Robots White? Study Shows There’s a Racial Bias – Observer
• Should robots have a gender or ethnicity? One roboticist says no – Marketplace

The Five Laws of Robotics are drawn from the EPSRC Principles of Robotics, first developed in 2010 and a living document workshopped by experts across many relevant disciplines. These five principles are practical and concise, embracing the majority of principles expressed across a wide range of ethics documents. I will explain in more detail.

1. There should be no killer robots.
2. Robots should (be designed to) obey the law.
3. Robots should (be designed to) be good products.
4. Robots should be transparent in operation
5. Robots should be identifiable

EPSRC says that robots are multi-use tools. Robots should not be designed solely or primarily to kill or harm humans, except in the interests of national security. More information is at the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots.

Humans, not robots, are the responsible agents. Robots should be designed and operated as far as is practicable to comply with existing laws and fundamental rights and freedoms, including privacy.

Robots are products. They should be designed using processes which assure their safety and security. Quality guidelines, processes and standards already exist.

Robots are manufactured artefacts. They should not be designed in a deceptive way to exploit users, instead their machine nature should be made transparent.

It should be possible to find out who is responsible for any robot. My suggestion here is that robots in public spaces require a license plate; a clear identification of robot and the responsible organization.

As well as speaking about Five Laws of Robotics, I introduced five practical proposals to help us respond at a regional, national and global level.

1. Robot Registry (license plates, access to database of owners/operators)
2. Algorithmic Transparency (via Model Cards and Testing Benchmarks)
3. Independent Ethical Review Boards (as in biotech industry)
4. Robot Ombudspeople to liaise between public and policy makers
5. Rewarding Good Robots design awards and case studies

Silicon Valley Robotics is about to announce the first winners of our inaugural Robotics Industry Awards. The SVR Industry Awards consider the responsible design as well as technological innovation and commercial success. There are also some ethical checkmark or certification initiatives under preparation, but like the development of new standards, these can take a long time to do properly, whereas awards, endorsements and case studies can be available immediately to foster the discussion of what constitutes good robots and what are the social challenges that robotics needs to solve.

In fact, the robot registry suggestion was picked up recently by Stacey Higginbotham in the IEEE Spectrum. Silicon Valley Robotics is putting together these policy suggestions for the new White House administration.

The SubT Challenge allows teams to demonstrate new approaches for robotic systems to rapidly map, navigate, and search complex underground environments, including human-made tunnel systems, urban underground, and natural cave networks.

The SubT Challenge is organized into two Competitions (Systems and Virtual), each with two tracks (DARPA-funded and self-funded).

SYSTEMS COMPETITION RESULTS

Teams in the Systems Competition completed four total runs, two 60-minute runs on each of two courses, Experimental and Safety Research. The courses varied in difficulty and included 20 artifacts each. Teams earned points by correctly identifying artifacts within a five-meter accuracy. The final score was a total of each team’s best score from each of the courses. In instances of a points tie, team rank was determined by (1) earliest time the last artifact was successfully reported, averaged across the team’s best runs on each course; (2) earliest time the first artifact was successfully reported, averaged across the team’s best runs on each course; and (3) lowest average time across all valid artifact reports, averaged across the team’s best runs on each course.

The Tunnel Circuit final scores were as follows

The Urban Circuit final scores were as follows:

VIRTUAL COMPETITION RESULTS

The Virtual competitors developed advanced software for their respective teams of virtual aerial and wheeled robots to explore tunnel environments, with the goal of finding various artifacts hidden throughout the virtual environment and reporting their locations and types to within a five-meter radius during each 60-minute simulation run. A correct report is worth one point and competitors win by accruing the most points across multiple, diverse simulated environments.

The Tunnel Circuit final scores were as follows:

The Urban Circuit final scores were as follows:

2020 Cave Circuit and Finals

The Cave Circuit, the final of three Circuit events, is planned for later this year. Final Event, planned for summer of 2021, will put both Systems and Virtual teams to the test with courses that incorporate diverse elements from all three environments. Teams will compete for up to $2 million in the Systems Final Event and up to $1.5 million in the Virtual Final Event, with additional prizes.

Learn more about the opportunities to participate either virtual or systems Team: https://www.subtchallenge.com/

Dr. Timothy Chung joined DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office as a program manager in February 2016. He serves as the Program Manager for the OFFensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics Program and the DARPA Subterranean (SubT) Challenge.

Prior to joining DARPA, Dr. Chung served as an Assistant Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School and Director of the Advanced Robotic Systems Engineering Laboratory (ARSENL). His academic interests included modeling, analysis, and systems engineering of operational settings involving unmanned systems, combining collaborative autonomy development efforts with an extensive live-fly field experimentation program for swarm and counter-swarm unmanned system tactics and associated technologies.

Dr. Chung holds a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Cornell University. He also earned Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology.

Learn more about DARPA here: www.darpa.mil

RSS 2020 was held virtually this year, from the RSS Pioneers Workshop on July 11 to the Paper Awards and Farewell on July 16. Many talks are now available online, including 103 accepted papers, each presented as an online Spotlight Talk on the RSS Youtube channel, and of course the plenaries and much of the workshop content as well. We’ve tried to link here to all of the goodness from RSS 2020.

The RSS Keynote on July 15 was delivered by Josh Tenenbaum, Professor of Computational Cognitive Science at MIT in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, CSAIL. Titled “It’s all in your head: Intuitive physics, planning, and problem-solving in brains, minds and machines”.

Abstract: I will overview what we know about the human mind’s internal models of the physical world, including how these models arise over evolution and developmental learning, how they are implemented in neural circuitry, and how they are used to support planning and rapid trial-and-error problem-solving in tool use and other physical reasoning tasks. I will also discuss prospects for building more human-like physical common sense in robots and other AI systems.

RSS 2020 introduces the new RSS Test of Time Award given to highest impact papers published at RSS (and potentially journal versions thereof) from at least ten years ago. Impact may mean that it changed how we think about problems or about robotic design, that it brought fully new problems to the attention of the community, or that it pioneered new approach to robotic design or problem solving. With this award, RSS generally wants to foster the discussion of the long term development of our field. The award is an opportunity to reflect on and discuss the past, which is essential to make progress in the future. The awardee’s keynote is therefore complemented with a Test of Time Panel session devoted to this important discussion.

This year’s Test of Time Awards goes to the pair of papers for pioneering an information smoothing approach to the SLAM problem via square root factorization, its interpretation as a graphical model, and the widely-used GTSAM free software repository.

• Frank Dellaert: Square Root SAM. Proceedings of Robotics: Science and Systems I, 2005.
• Frank Dellaert and Michael Kaess: Square Root SAM: Simultaneous localization and mapping via square root information smoothing. International Journal of Robotics Research, 25, 1181-1203, 2006.

Abstract: Many estimation, planning and optimal control problems in robotics have an optimization problem at their core. In most of these optimization problems, the objective function is composed of many different factors or terms that are local in nature, i.e., they only depend on a small subset of the variables. 10 years ago the Square Root SAM papers identified factor graphs as a particularly insightful way of modeling this locality structure. Since then we have realized that factor graphs can represent a wide variety of problems across robotics, expose opportunities to improve computational performance, and are beneficial in designing and thinking about how to model a problem, even aside from performance considerations. Many of these principles have been embodied in our evolving open source package GTSAM, which puts factor graphs front and central, and which has been used with great success in a number of state of the art robotics applications. We will also discuss where factor graphs, in our opinion, can break in

The RSS 2020 Plenary Sessions highlighted Early Career Awards for researchers, Byron Boots, Luca Carlone and Jeanette Bohg. Byron Boots is an Associate Professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. Luca Carlone is the Charles Stark Draper Assistant Professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Principal Investigator in the Laboratory for Information & Decision Systems (LIDS). Jeannette Bohg is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University.

Title: Perspectives on Machine Learning for Robotics

Abstract: Recent advances in machine learning are leading to new tools for designing intelligent robots: functions relied on to govern a robot’s behavior can be learned from a robot’s interaction with its environment rather than hand-designed by an engineer. Many machine learning methods assume little prior knowledge and are extremely flexible, they can model almost anything! But, this flexibility comes at a cost. The same algorithms are often notoriously data hungry and computationally expensive, two problems that can be debilitating for robotics. In this talk I’ll discuss how machine learning can be combined with prior knowledge to build effective solutions to robotics problems. I’ll start by introducing an online learning perspective on robot adaptation that unifies well-known algorithms and suggests new approaches. Along the way, I’ll focus on the use of simulation and expert advice to augment learning. I’ll discuss how imperfect models can be leveraged to rapidly update simple control policies and imitation can accelerate reinforcement learning. I will also show how we have applied some of these ideas to an autonomous off-road racing task that requires impressive sensing, speed, and agility to complete.

Title: The Future of Robot Perception: Certifiable Algorithms and Real-time High-level Understanding

Abstract: Robot perception has witnessed an unprecedented progress in the last decade. Robots are now able to detect objects and create large-scale maps of an unknown environment, which are crucial capabilities for navigation, manipulation, and human-robot interaction. Despite these advances, both researchers and practitioners are well aware of the brittleness of current perception systems, and a large gap still separates robot and human perception.

This talk discusses two efforts targeted at bridging this gap. The first focuses on robustness. I present recent advances in the design of certifiable perception algorithms that are robust to extreme amounts of noise and outliers and afford performance guarantees. I present fast certifiable algorithms for object pose estimation: our algorithms are “hard to break” (e.g., are robust to 99% outliers) and succeed in localizing objects where an average human would fail. Moreover, they come with a “contract” that guarantees their input-output performance. I discuss the foundations of certifiable perception and motivate how these foundations can lead to safer systems.

The second effort targets high-level understanding. While humans are able to quickly grasp both geometric, semantic, and physical aspects of a scene, high-level scene understanding remains a challenge for robotics. I present our work on real-time metric-semantic understanding and 3D Dynamic Scene Graphs. I introduce the first generation of Spatial Perception Engines, that extend the traditional notions of mapping and SLAM, and allow a robot to build a “mental model” of the environment, including spatial concepts (e.g., humans, objects, rooms, buildings) and their relations at multiple levels of abstraction.
Certifiable algorithms and real-time high-level understanding are key enablers for the next generation of autonomous systems, that are trustworthy, understand and execute high-level human instructions, and operate in large dynamic environments and over and extended period of time

Title: A Tale of Success and Failure in Robotics Grasping and Manipulation

Abstract: In 2007, I was a naïve grad student and started to work on vision-based robotic grasping. I had no prior background in manipulation, kinematics, dynamics or control. Yet, I dove into the field by re-implementing and improving a learning-based method. While making some contributions, the proposed method also had many limitations partly due to the way the problem was framed. Looking back at the entire journey until today, I find that I have learned the most about robotic grasping and manipulation from observing failures and limitations of existing approaches – including my own. In this talk, I want to highlight how these failures and limitations have shaped my view on what may be some of the underlying principles of autonomous robotic manipulation. I will emphasise three points. First, perception and prediction will always be noisy, partial and sometimes just plain wrong. Therefore, one focus of my research is on methods that support decision-making under uncertainty due to noisy sensing, inaccurate models and hard-to-predict dynamics. To this end, I will present a robotic system that demonstrates the importance of continuous, real-time perception and its tight integration with reactive motion generation methods. I will also talk about work that funnels uncertainty by enabling robots to exploit contact constraints during manipulation.

Second, a robot has many more sensors than just cameras and they all provide complementary information. Therefore, one focus of my research is on methods that can exploit multimodal information such as vision and touch for contact-rich manipulation. It is non-trivial to manually design a manipulation controller that combines modalities with very different characteristics. I will present work that uses self-supervision to learn a compact and multimodal representation of visual and haptic sensory inputs, which can then be used to improve the sample efficiency of policy learning. And third, choosing the right robot action representation has a large influence on the success of a manipulation policy, controller or planner. While believing many years that inferring contact points for robotic grasping is futile, I will present work that convinced me otherwise. Specifically, this work uses contact points as an abstraction that can be re-used by a diverse set of robot hands.

Inclusion@RSS is excited to host a panel “On the Future of Robotics” to discuss how we can have an inclusive robotics community and its impact on the future of the field. Moderator: Matt Johnson-Roberson (University of Michigan) with Panelists: Tom Williams (Colorado School of Mines), Eduard Fosch-Villaronga (Leiden University), Lydia Tapia (University of New Mexico), Chris Macnab (University of Calgary), Adam Poulsen (Charles Sturt University), Chad Jenkins (University of Michigan), Kendall Queen (University of Pennsylvania), Naveen Kuppuswamy (Toyota Research Institute).

The RSS community is committed to increasing the participation of groups traditionally underrepresented in robotics (including but not limited to: women, LGBTQ+, underrepresented minorities, and people with disabilities), especially people early in their studies and career. Such efforts are crucial for increasing research capacity, creativity, and broadening the impact of robotics research.

The RSS Pioneers Workshop for senior Ph.D. students and postdocs, was modelled on the highly successful HRI Pioneers Workshop and took place on Saturday July 11. The goal of RSS Pioneers is to bring together a cohort of the world’s top early career researchers to foster creativity and collaborations surrounding challenges in all areas of robotics, as well as to help young researchers navigate their next career stages. The workshop included a mix of research and career talks from senior scholars in the field from both academia and industry, research presentations from attendees and networking activities, with a poster session where Pioneers will get a chance to externally showcase their research.

Content from the various workshops on July 12 and 13 may be available through the various workshop websites.

RSS 2020 Accepted Workshops

Monday, July 13

RSS 2020 Accepted Papers

The RSS Foundation is the governing body behind the Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) conference. The foundation was started and is run by volunteers from the robotics community who believe that an open, high-quality, single-track conference is an important component of an active and growing scientific discipline.

“Robotics is the latest advent in the multi-century trend toward the automation of production. The number of industrial robots, a key component of Industry 4.0, is accelerating. These machines are built by major multinationals and, increasingly, venture-backed startups.

As the segment continues to mature, data are coming in that allow founders, investors and policymakers to establish a framework for thinking about these companies. In this special sector report, we take a data-driven approach to emerging topics in the industry, including business models, performance metrics and capitalization trends.

Finally, we zoom out and consider how automation affects the labor market. In our view, the social implications of this industry will be massive and will require continuous examination by those driving this technology forward.”

Austin Badger, Director of Frontier Tech Practice at Silicon Valley Bank

Beyond the startup funding information though is valuable assessment of the economics of automation, from the shift from CapEx to OpEx and ARR, to the shift from automation to productivity to wealth creation. While it’s clear that automation increases wealth and productivity, there are still justifiable fears that automation will reduce labor opportunities. At the same time, it’s going to be primarily an issue for the developing countries that are currently serving as cheap labor for the world’s on-the-move manufacturing facilities.

Silicon Valley Robotics works closely with Silicon Valley Bank to help startups grow. SVB participates in our In-Depth Networks and Forums. You can download the SVB report “The Future of Robotics” here: https://www.svb.com/trends-insights/reports/the-future-of-robotics

Live Plenary Panel – COVID-19 : How Roboticist Can Help ?

Our first Plenary is a hot topic panel on COVID-19 Pandemic & Robotics, moderated by Ken Goldberg and chaired by Wolfram Burgard. Catch it on Big Screen or on IEEE.TV.

Proudly featuring:

Join us for the virtual conference taking place May 31 to August 31 with sessions available both live and on demand. Plenaries and keynotes will be featured every afternoon (Central European Time) from June 1 to June 15, with live interactive Q&A sessions with the speaker. Our goal is bringing cutting-edge ICRA sessions to our community around the globe and provide opportunities to network with like-minded professionals from around the world. We hope that this offering reaches new members of our community and creates engaging discussions within the virtual conference platform.

Schedule

Special RAS Events

There are also several virtual gatherings for IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) society members and Students. Scroll below for more information.

• Meet the Leaders
• Student Video Challenge
• SAC Logo Design Contest
• SAC Robot Trivia
• Young Professionals Networking Event
• Women in Engineering –  Summer Mentoring Event
• RAS Town Hall

RAS Meet the Leaders (formally Lunch with Leaders)

RAS Meet the Leaders is the virtual equivalent of the popular RAS Lunch with Leaders event traditionally held at IEEE RAS’s flagship conferences: ICRA, CASE, and IROS.

Meet the Leaders is planned for multiple dates and time zones to accommodate the international robotics community. Each Leader will begin with an informal 5-minute presentation about their career, followed by a question and answer session.

Participants (students and young professionals) may sign up for ONE session to participate in a relaxed chat with academic and industry leaders from around the world.

The following Leaders are confirmed for the dates and times listed below (check back often for additional sessions):

• Tuesday, June 2nd @ 12:00 PDT / 19:00 GMT
  Aleksandra Faust, 2020 RAS Early Industry Career Award in Robotics and Automation
• Wednesday, June 3rd @ 10:00 am AEST / 00:00 GMT
  Peter Corke, 2020 RAS George Saridis Leadership Award, (and colleagues)
• Thursday, June 4th @ 8:00 pm JST / 11:00 GMT
  Toshio Fukuda, IEEE President
• Thursday, June 4th @ 13:00 EDT / 17:00 GMT
  Jaydev Desai, RAS AdCom Class of 2022
• Monday, June 8th @ 12:30 JST / 03:30 GMT
  Zhidong Wang, RAS VP Electronic Products and Services Board, Yasushi Nakauchi RAS VP Financial Activities Board, Yasuhisa Hirata, RAS AdCom Class of 2022
• Tuesday, June 9th @ 1:00 am KST / 16:00:00 GMT (Monday, June 8)
  Frank Park, RAS President Elect
• Tuesday, June 9th @ 12:00 CDT / 17:00 GMT
  Lydia Kavraki, 2020 RAS Pioneer Award Winner
• Thursday, June 11th @ 10:00 am PDT / 17:00:00 GMT
  Allison Okamura, Editor-in-Chief of RA-L and Marcia O’Malley, IROS 2020 Program Chair
• Thursday, June 11th @ 12:00 pm PDT / 19:00:00 GMT
  Dieter Fox, 2020 RAS Pioneer Award WinnerFriday,
• June 12th @ 3:00 pm CEST / 13:00 GMT
  Torsten Kroeger, RAS Vice President of Conference Activities
• Registration Form (Required): https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/3834d7362695475f915f52b1653439c9

In this Research Article, the Retail Analytics Council at NWU presents information on the benefits associated with deploying robots in stores. Estimates of the size of the global retail robot market are advanced. The impact on demand for robots in the grocery industry, in light of the Coronavirus outbreak, is discussed as well. This is followed by a review of U.S. retail robot deployments and the advancing of some emerging applications.

In summary, we find that the trend toward deploying robots in retail environments is accelerating. The reasons for this include their functional utility, advances in AI, and the ability to address both labor challenges and customer and employee safety concerns. The introduction of new uses of real-time, in-store generated data is another advantage. Further, the movement toward multimodal robots that are efficient at performing various functions adds to the value equation. We also find that changing consumer behavior to increase online purchases, especially in grocery, is a major impetus fueling this movement. Finally, establishing industry standards, which is ongoing, will fuel adoption.

Previous impediments to adoption, which are not detailed here, are also at play. These, for the most part, include issues of cost and training. The costs of robots will decrease, and the ROI will greatly increase, as complex computing moves off the payload via 5G and sensor costs continue to decrease. Increased vendor competition will also be a factor. The cost and complexity associated with environmental training are also being addressed via the introduction of synthetic data.

As the industry is still in its infancy, there are minimal reliable studies regarding market size. Estimates range from $4.8 billion to $19 billion in the 2015 to 2018 time frame, to as much as $52 billion by 2025. In April 2018, Bekryl Market Analysts published its Global Retail Robots Market Size Analysis, 2018-2028. Bekryl estimates the global retail robot market at $19 billion in 2018. They further estimate that the market will grow at a CAGR of 12.7 percent over the next ten years.

Now consider a different perspective. Verified Market Research valued the global retail robotics market at $4.78 billion in 2018, but expects a much more rapid rate of growth of 31.89 percent from 2019- 2026, reaching $41.67 billion by 2026.12 In 2016, yet another point of view was advanced by consulting firm Roland Berger, which stated “[t]he segment of robots designed for retail stores is emerging in a global robotics market that is already significant ($19 billion in 2015) and growing steadily ($52 billion in 2025).”

As the current Coronavirus pandemic constrains consumers’ ability to shop in stores, there is ample evidence that a shift to online purchasing is occurring in select categories, particularly grocery. To realize operating efficiencies while meeting this increased demand, grocery retailers, which represent the largest segment currently invested in robotics technology, are expected to accelerate their rate of investment.

The pressing question is whether this current movement to online grocery purchases during the pandemic represents a more permanent shift in consumer behavior. Consumers seem to think so. For example, in an April 2020 survey, 43 percent of adults said they were somewhat or very likely to
continue ordering groceries online once the pandemic ends (see Chart 11). McKinsey & Company’s COVID-19 U.S. Digital Sentiment Survey found that fully “75 percent of people using digital channels for the first time indicate that they will continue to use them when things return to normal.”

In conclusion, we see the pace of retail robot adoption accelerating, especially in the grocery segment. Technology advancements surrounding deployments in stores, backroom/warehouses, and delivery applications will continue to improve. Deployment costs will fall, as will the time to deploy, which will increase ROI, as will multi-functional payloads that perform a variety of tasks. Emerging innovations will add interesting new use cases. Increasing uses of real-time data generated, and the application/integration thereof, will also create additional value. Finally, ongoing efforts to establish industry standards will aid in industry adoption.

Silicon Valley Robotics is on the Robotics and AI Advisory Board of the Retail Analytics Council at NWU, where you can download the full report “Emerging Trends in Retail Robotics”.

The COVID-19 pandemic is increasing global demand for robots that can 
assist in surgery and healthcare. This symposium focuses on recent 
advances and open problems in robot-assisted tele-surgery and 
tele-medicine and needs for new research and development. The online 
format will encourage active dialogue among faculty, students, 
professionals, and entrepreneurs.

Featuring:
Gary Guthart, CEO, Intuitive Surgical
Robin Murphy, Texas A&M
Pablo Garcia Kilroy, VP Research, Verb Surgical
Allison Okamura, Professor Stanford
David Noonan, Director of Research, Auris Surgical
Jaydev Desai, Director, Georgia Tech Center for Medical Robotics
Nicole Kernbaum, Principal Engineer, Seismic Powered Clothin
Monroe Kennedy III, Professor, Stanford

Presented by the University of California Center for Information 
Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) and the Banatao 
Institute “People and Robots” Initiative, SRI International, and 
Silicon Valley Robotics.

Schedule:

   *  09:30-10:00: Conversation with Robin Murphy, Texas A&M and Director of 
Robotics for Infectious Diseases, and Andra Keay, Director of Silicon 
Valley Robotics
   *  10:00-10:30: Conversation with Gary Guthart, CEO Intuitive Surgical 
and Ken Goldberg, Director of CITRIS People and Robots Initiative
   *  10:30-11:00: Conversation with Pablo Garcia Kilroy, VP Research 
Verb Surgical and Tom Low, Director of Robotics at SRI International
   *  11:00-11:15: Coffee Break
   *  11:15-11:45: Conversation with David Noonan, Director of Research, 
Auris Surgical and Nicole Kernbaum
   *  11:45-12:45: Keynote by Jaydev Desai, Director, Georgia Tech Center 
for Medical Robotics
   *  12:45-01:15: Conversation with Allison Okamura, Stanford and Monroe 
Kennedy III, Stanford

 Andrew Davison (Imperial College London)

Abstract: To enable the next generation of smart robots and devices which can truly interact with their environments, Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping (SLAM) will progressively develop into a general real-time geometric and semantic `Spatial AI’ perception capability. I will give many examples from our work on gradually increasing visual SLAM capability over the years. However, much research must still be done to achieve true Spatial AI performance. A key issue is how estimation and machine learning components can be used and trained together as we continue to search for the best long-term scene representations to enable intelligent interaction. Further, to enable the performance and efficiency required by real products, computer vision algorithms must be developed together with the sensors and processors which form full systems, and I will cover research on vision algorithms for non-standard visual sensors and graph-based computing architectures.

Biography: Andrew Davison is Professor of Robot Vision and Director of the Dyson Robotics Laboratory at Imperial College London. His long-term research focus is on SLAM (Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping) and its evolution towards general `Spatial AI’: computer vision algorithms which enable robots and other artificial devices to map, localise within and ultimately understand and interact with the 3D spaces around them. With his research group and collaborators he has consistently developed and demonstrated breakthrough systems, including MonoSLAM, KinectFusion, SLAM++ and CodeSLAM, and recent prizes include Best Paper at ECCV 2016 and Best Paper Honourable Mention at CVPR 2018. He has also had strong involvement in taking this technology into real applications, in particular through his work with Dyson on the design of the visual mapping system inside the Dyson 360 Eye robot vacuum cleaner and as co-founder of applied SLAM start-up SLAMcore. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2017.

Robotics Today Seminars

“Robotics Today – A series of technical talks” is a virtual robotics seminar series. The goal of the series is to bring the robotics community together during these challenging times. The seminars are scheduled on Fridays at 1PM EDT (10AM PDT) and are open to the public. The format of the seminar consists of a technical talk live captioned and streamed via Web and Twitter (@RoboticsSeminar), followed by an interactive discussion between the speaker and a panel of faculty, postdocs, and students that will moderate audience questions.

Stay up to date with upcoming seminars with the Robotics Today Google Calendar (or download the .ics file) and view past seminars on the Robotics Today Youtube Channel. And follow us on Twitter!

Upcoming Seminars

Seminars will be broadcast at 1PM EST (10AM PST) here.

22 May 2020: Leslie Kaelbling (MIT)

29 May 2020: Allison Okamura (Stanford)

12 June 2020: Anca Dragan (UC Berkeley)

Past Seminars

We’ll post links to the recorded seminars soon!

Organizers

Contact

1. Demonstration of A Social Robot for Control of Remote Autonomous Systems José Lopes, David A. Robb, Xingkun Liu, Helen Hastie

Abstract: There are many challenges when it comes to deploying robots remotely including lack of situation awareness for the operator, which can lead to decreased trust and lack of adoption. For this demonstration, delegates interact with a social robot who acts as a facilitator and mediator between them and the remote robots running a mission in a realistic simulator. We will demonstrate how such a robot can use spoken interaction and social cues to facilitate teaming between itself, the operator and the remote robots.

2. Demonstrating MoveAE: Modifying Affective Robot Movements Using Classifying Variational Autoencoders Michael Suguitan, Randy Gomez, Guy Hoffman

Abstract: We developed a method for modifying emotive robot movements with a reduced dependency on domain knowledge by using neural networks. We use hand-crafted movements for a Blossom robot and a classifying variational autoencoder to adjust affective movement features by using simple arithmetic in the network’s learned latent embedding space. We will demonstrate the workflow of using a graphical interface to modify the valence and arousal of movements. Participants will be able to use the interface themselves and watch Blossom perform the modified movements in real time.

3. An Application of Low-Cost Digital Manufacturing to HRI Lavindra de Silva, Gregory Hawkridge, German Terrazas, Marco Perez Hernandez, Alan Thorne, Duncan McFarlane, Yedige Tlegenov

Abstract: Digital Manufacturing (DM) broadly refers to applying digital information to enhance manufacturing processes, supply chains, products and services. In past work we proposed a low-cost DM architecture, supporting flexible integration of legacy robots. Here we discuss a demo of our architecture using an HRI scenario.

4. Comedy by Jon the Robot John Vilk, Naomi T. Fitter

Abstract: Social robots might be more effective if they could adapt in playful, comedy-inspired ways based on heard social cues from users. Jon the Robot, a robotic stand-up comedian from the Oregon State University CoRIS Institute, showcases how this type of ability can lead to more enjoyable interactions with robots. We believe conference attendees will be both entertained and informed by this novel demonstration of social robotics.

5. CardBot: Towards an affordable humanoid robot platform for Wizard of Oz Studies in HRI Sooraj Krishna, Catherine Pelachaud

Abstract: CardBot is a cardboard based programmable humanoid robot platform designed for inexpensive and rapid prototyping of Wizard of Oz interactions in HRI incorporating technologies such as Arduino, Android and Unity3d. The table demonstration showcases the design of the CardBot and its wizard controls such as animating the movements, coordinating speech and gaze etc for orchestrating an interaction.

6. Towards Shoestring Solutions for UK Manufacturing SMEs Gregory Hawkridge, Benjamin Schönfuß, Duncan McFarlane, Lavindra de Silva, German Terrazas, Liz Salter, Alan Thorne

Abstract: In the Digital Manufacturing on a Shoestring project we focus on low-cost digital solution requirements for UK manufacturing SMEs. This paper shows that many of these fall in the HRI domain while presenting the use of low-cost and off-the-shelf technologies in two demonstrators based on voice assisted production.

7. PlantBot: A social robot prototype to help with behavioral activation in young people with minor depression Max Jan Meijer, Maaike Dokter, Christiaan Boersma, Ashwin Sadananda Bhat, Ernst Bohlmeijer, Jamy Li

Abstract: The PlantBot is a home device that shows iconographic or simple lights to depict actions that it requests a young person (its user) to do as part of Behavioral Activation therapy. In this initial prototype, a separate conversational speech agent (i.e., Amazon Alexa) is wizarded to act as a second system the user can interact with.

8. TapeBot: The Modular Robotic Kit for Creating the Environments Sonya S. Kwak, Dahyun Kang, Hanbyeol Lee, JongSuk Choi

Abstract: Various types of modular robotic kits such as the Lego Mindstorm [1], edutainment robot kit by ROBOTIS [2], and the interactive face components, FacePartBot [3] have been developed and suggested to increase children’s creativity and to learn robotic technologies. By adopting a modular design scheme, these robotic kits enable children to design various robotic characters with plenty of flexibility and creativity, such as humanoids, robotic animals, and robotic faces. However, because a robot is an artifact that perceives an environment and responds to it accordingly, it can also be characterized by the environment it encounters. Thus, in this study, we propose a modular robotic kit that is aimed at creating an interactive environment for which a robot produces various responses.

We chose intelligent tapes to build the environment for the following reasons: First, we presume that decreasing the expectations of consumers toward the functionalities of robotic products may increase their acceptance of the products, because this hinders the mismatch between the expected functions based on their appearances, and the actual functions of the products [4]. We believe that the tape, which is found in everyday life, is a perfect material to lower the consumers’ expectation toward the product and will be helpful for the consumer’s acceptance of it. Second, the tape is a familiar and enjoyable material for children, and it can be used as a flexible module, which users can cut into whatever size they want and can be attached and detached with ease.

In this study, we developed a modular robotic kit for creating an interactive environment, called the TapeBot. The TapeBot is composed of the main character robot and the modular environments, which are the intelligent tapes. Although previous robotic kits focused on building a robot, the TapeBot allows its users to focus on the environment that the robot encounters. By reversing the frame of thinking, we expect that the TapeBot will promote children’s imagination and creativity by letting them develop creative environments to design the interactions of the main character robot.

9. A Gesture Control System for Drones used with Special Operations Forces Marius Montebaur, Mathias Wilhelm, Axel Hessler, Sahin Albayrak

Abstract: Special Operations Forces (SOF) are facing extreme risks when prosecuting crimes in uncharted environments like buildings. Autonomous drones could potentially save officers’ lives by assisting in those exploration tasks, but an intuitive and reliable way of communicating with autonomous systems is yet to be established. This paper proposes a set of gestures that are designed to be used by SOF during operation for interaction with autonomous systems.

10. CoWriting Kazakh: Learning a New Script with a Robot – Demonstration Bolat Tleubayev, Zhanel Zhexenova, Thibault Asselborn, Wafa Johal, Pierre Dillenbourg, Anara Sandygulova

Abstract: This interdisciplinary project aims to assess and manage the risks relating to the transition of Kazakh language from Cyrillic to Latin in Kazakhstan in order to address challenges of a) teaching and motivating children to learn a new script and its associated handwriting, and b) training and providing support for all demographic groups, in particular senior generation. We present the system demonstration that proposes to assist and motivate children to learn a new script with the help of a humanoid robot and a tablet with stylus.

11. Voice Puppetry: Towards Conversational HRI WoZ Experiments with Synthesised Voices Matthew P. Aylett, Yolanda Vazquez-Alvarez

Abstract: In order to research conversational factors in robot design the use of Wizard of Oz (WoZ) experiments, where an experimenter plays the part of the robot, are common. However, for conversational systems using a synthetic voice, it is extremely difficult for the experimenter to choose open domain content and enter it quickly enough to retain conversational flow. In this demonstration we show how voice puppetry can be used to control a neural TTS system in almost real time. The demo hopes to explore the limitations and possibilities of such a system for controlling a robot’s synthetic voice in conversational interaction.

de1045vf.mp4

12. Teleport – Variable Autonomy across Platforms Daniel Camilleri, Michael Szollosy, Tony Prescott

Abstract: Robotics is a very diverse field with robots of different sizes and sensory configurations created with the purpose of carrying out different tasks. Different robots and platforms each require their own software ecosystem and are coded with specific algorithms which are difficult to translate to other robots.

VOTING CLOSED ON THURSDAY MAY 14 AT 11:59 PM BST [British Standard Time]

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