Automaton

* Transformer Optimus Prime prevented a burglary in the U.K. This transformer is made of wood and stands 7 feet tall in the living room of one Michael Clarke, in Gravesend, Kent. The robot has motion sensors that activate a stereo, piercing purple eyes, and it matches the owner's couch.

* More robots from iRobot. The Roomba maker says it is mutating. The company wants to keep expanding its product line. Three years ago, it had only one domestic robot, the Roomba; by the end of this year it wants to have six domestic robots in the market. I wonder if Masseur Bot is on that list.

* Peter Crouch, the elongated (2 meters/6 feet 7 inches) British soccer player who celebrated some of his goals with an ridiculous robot dance, said the moves were because he's been "messing about" with robotics since he was a child. He also said no more robotic celebrations this season. That's a good thing.

The National Underwater Robotics Challenge [warning: frames, marquees, and other non-standard HTML abound], sponsored by Honeywell Hometown Solutions, is held yearly at Chandler High School in Arizona. Teams of students of almost any age can work together to build a remotely operated vehicle capable of performing some sort of underwater mission -- the 2008 competition (to be held next June) requires the ROVs to work around a crashed plane carrying vials of an important medicine and perform a number of tasks.

In addition to a neat "how-to" page full of cheap ways to design and build subsystems for the ROVs, the organization now sells a complete ROV kit of parts, complete with instruction manual, for $250. Even if you're not part of the competition, this would be a neat thing to explore a backyard swimming pool or lake!

Check out some of the videos of the missions to see what the students have done.

My company is pretty firmly entrenched in the defense industry. In fact, many robotics companies are -- defense contracting is a good way to pay the bills while growing other areas of research and development. But while robots are really amazing things to work on in and of themselves, the technology is slowly advancing toward greater capability and autonomy -- and for those of us working defense contracts, this has some uncomfortable implications.

Bluefin's AUVs aren't weapons (when people I ask, I remind them that there is already a word for an autonomous submarine that explodes -- "torpedo") and most other companies aren't actively weaponizing their robots. To date the bulk of military robotics has been oriented toward surveillance, security, and disposal of mines and IEDs -- situations where most everyone can agree that it's a good idea to keep a human out of the way.

But things are changing. Even if companies aren't putting on guns, they're at least putting on gun mounts. Early last month Wired reported on the newly weaponized ground robots. Other companies are building in weapons payload options: recently a Reaper aerial drone made history as the first Army unmanned military vehicle to kill (thank you for the correction, Kevin); its remote operators used it to locate two men suspected of placing an IED and dropped its "precision munitions" on the targets.

What do the users of these robots think? At the OceanTech Expo in early September, I attended an AUV panel; one of the panelists, Bill Schopfel, is the event manager at the Office of Naval Research. He spoke specifically to the role of robotic vehicles in underwater mine countermeasures -- he says for the forseeable future, the decision to engage and neutralize mines will not be autonomous; even if the vehicle is capable of performing neutralization measures, there will still be a person in the loop who is making the decision to engage. With respect to autonomous vehicles that operate without a human's control, a DoD proposal from last year discusses the idea that humans target humans and machines target machines -- though that proposal has not yet passed legal review.

The Army's Future Combat Systems initiative is becoming a reality, but it really demands thought and careful consideration of the ways we're deciding to employ technology -- though our military needs demand immediate technological solutions. How can we make sure ethics and technology develop at the same pace?

And speaking of robots on the battlefield, Wired's Danger Room points to a Defense News story about a U.S. Army $280 million contract to buy 3000 Negotiator robots from Robotic FX. The Negotiator tactical robot [photo above] is a "45-pound bomb detector with infrared cameras used by hundreds of state, local and federal law enforcement agencies around the U.S.," Defense News reports, adding that an "initial delivery order will be for 101 Robotic FX Negotiators, marking their first use with the U.S. military on the battlefield," where they will be used to clear caves and search for explosives.

MIT grad student Conor Walsh and the leg exoskeleton he and other researchers have developed. [Photo: Samuel Au / MIT News]

MIT researchers have created a wearable robotic exoskeleton to help soldiers carry heavier loads on their backpacks. Powered legs like those could one day help elderly and disabled people gain more mobility and carry things around more easily, but since this is DARPA funded work soldiers have priority. Sorry, grandma.

The MIT exoskeleton consists of a pair of mechanical legs with a mounted backpack frame. The mechanical legs strap to the user's own legs and support much of the pack's weight by transferring it to the ground. The MIT researchers, led by Hugh Herr at Media Lab's Biomechatronics Group, report in the September issue of the International Journal of Humanoid Robotics that their prototype can take on 80 percent of an 36-kg load carried on a person's back.

And how does it work?

An article in today's WaPo discusses some odd dragonflies seen in New York City recently, which some of the witnesses say look "large for dragonflies" and suspiciously mechanical. Speculation is that they're robotic bugs spying for the US government -- of course, there's other speculation that they're just plain dragonflies, too. Don't be misled by the photo in the article (reproduced here); that's a picture from a lab at Harvard.

But after all the apparent warnings for the tinfoil hat brigade, the article does a nice of highlighting some of the ongoing research into robotic insects. Here's an interesting bit:

In one approach, researchers funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are inserting computer chips into moth pupae -- the intermediate stage between a caterpillar and a flying adult -- and hatching them into healthy "cyborg moths."

The Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems project aims to create literal shutterbugs -- camera-toting insects whose nerves have grown into their internal silicon chip so that wranglers can control their activities. DARPA researchers are also raising cyborg beetles with power for various instruments to be generated by their muscles.

"You might recall that Gandalf the friendly wizard in the recent classic 'Lord of the Rings' used a moth to call in air support," DARPA program manager Amit Lal said at a symposium in August. Today, he said, "this science fiction vision is within the realm of reality."

The previous DARPA Grand Challenge competition -- a trip through the Nevada desert taken by autonomous vehicles-- took two tries to get right; the first year, not a single vehicle made it across the finish line. The second year was a much better showing -- four vehicles finished -- and winner Stanford University took away the $2 million prize.

This year's DARPA Urban Challenge took the robots out of the desert and into a (simulated) city. Teams had to build vehicles capable of "executing simulated military supply missions while merging into moving traffic, navigating traffic circles, negotiating busy intersections, and avoiding obstacles." Since this was the first year of this style of competition, many people wondered if it would have the same problems as the first year in the desert -- lots of failures and no one completing the course.

We needn't have worried. Of the 11 vehicles that were allowed to enter the final round of the competition, six finished the course -- though only three teams, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, and Virginia Tech, finished under the 6 hour time limit.

The MIT vehicle waits at an intersection as a (human-driven) car makes a turn.
Photo Credit: JOHN VOELCKER

So what drives these vehicles (since it's not humans)? The short answer: lots of sensors and lots of computing power. Nearly all the vehicles had some sort of array of laser range scanners arranged on the front -- though while MIT used more than 10, the UPenn entry got away with just 2. A key player in that technology was Velodyne, developers of a high-def LIDAR unit based on their work in the first two DARPA Challenges -- they stayed out of this year's event in order to continue developing their LIDAR technology. Additionally, LIDAR units designed by IBEO and SICK (an old favorite of DARPA teams) were other popular additions to the sensor suite. Stereo vision complimented the laser sensors, and of course, differential GPS receivers and inertial measurement units (IMUs) were must-haves.

While hardware integration is no easy task, software was just as daunting. A layer of hardware interface ("What does the LIDAR say?") under a layer of navigation and control ("Where am I, where do I have to go, how far do I turn the steering wheel, and how fast do I have to go?) under a layer of behavior ("Hm, a stopped car. Wait behind it, or drive around it?") makes for some intense coding. Take the Carnegie Mellon vehicle, which required over 300,000 lines of code to run the 2007 vehicle. Some COTS tools made this easier for teams such as Virginia Tech, who used LabView to "provide the major functions of the vehicle including image acquisition and processing, systems communication, vehicle health monitoring, and vehicle control. A NI Compact RIO system [provided] steering, throttle, and braking control, as well as reading CAN-bus sensors," said NI representative Trisha McDonell.

With the impressive success of the vehicles on Saturday, is my human-driven car suddenly old fashioned? Not so, say the experts. Forbes had a nice article on the competition, and specifically quoted Stanford team leader Sebastian Thrun:

In the eyes of Stanford's team leader, Sebastian Thrun ... the world is still years away from driverless autos. "I'm positively enthused that this race has a winner," he said. "But we’re witnessing the painful birth of a new technology, and this is the first of many hours of labor."

Fair enough, Dr. Thrun. I'll settle for a car that can park itself for the time being.

Special thanks to John Voelcker for insight and photos from the field

Raytheon is a large, well-known defense contractor with divisions all over the world. Sarcos Robotics is a small company in Utah that makes, among other things, animatronic and robotic characters for movies and amusement parks. And now Raytheon has bought Sarcos.

This article in Mass High Tech describes how Sarcos will be folded into the Integrated Defense Systems division in Massachusetts. In addition to its business of animatronics, Sarcos works on some medical devices and MEMS. Undoubtedly the MEMS technology will come in handy as part of Raytheon's defense systems, but perhaps there is another reason: Sarcos makes a robotic butterfly (link goes to Quicktime video). Perhaps Americans should be suspicious of military butterfly spies?

At any rate, take a look at Sarcos's website (especially their mildly intimidating jobs page). They do an excellent job of posting videos of their animals, humanoids, and other products. I like the juggling robot, below. I can't even do that.

In response to yesterday's article about Raytheon's acquisition of Sarcos, a friend sent me this video:

That, my friends, is pretty crazy.

Spectrum ran a feature on exoskeletons two years ago with some interesting details on the Sarcos system's force sensors, power unit, and hydraulic actuators, below:

For its part, the Salt Lake City–based Sarcos team, led by roboticist and inventor Stephen C. Jacobsen, has been working on what may be one of the strongest exoskeletons ever built. Earlier this year, at the demonstration the group did in Fort Belvoir, an engineer wearing the Sarcos robotic system was able to carry 84 kg [185 lb]—about the weight of an average size washing machine—without feeling the payload at all. Jacobsen, Sarcos's CEO and a mechanical engineering professor at the University of Utah, says that the new exoskeleton supports the payload's entire weight even if the wearer stands on one leg.

Like Bleex 2 [the UC Berkeley exo], the latest Sarcos system is a second-generation model that improves substantially over its predecessor. Jacobsen says that while wearing the exoskeleton, you can walk and run, and if you stumble, the system is fast enough to readjust its powered limbs to keep the payload's weight off your body.

The exoskeleton relies on a network of force sensors that are in touch with the wearer's body at certain points, such as underneath the feet. These special sensors, developed by Sarcos, feed data to a control computer that in turn commands the robotic limbs to move in harmony with the wearer's arms and legs without ever obstructing them. Jacobsen calls this method "get out of the way" control, and he says using the robotic suit requires no training. "You can step into the exoskeleton, and you can immediately run it," he says.

According to Jacobsen, what makes an exoskeleton an extremely hard problem is that conventional, off-the-shelf components won't work. Sarcos had to design and fabricate each piece and, in parallel, integrate all of them into its system. The exoskeleton's power unit was one of these many pieces the company had to engineer painstakingly. It's a special internal-combustion engine that can use a variety of fuels and deliver enough hydraulic power to the actuators to meet the great strength and speed the robotic limbs require.

But even more challenging, Jacobsen says, was developing yet another component: the servo valves that control the flow of the hydraulic fluid into the actuators. The valves had to be small, extremely reliable, resistant to high pressures, and highly efficient to preserve precious power, not to mention that some of their parts had to be machined to micrometer tolerances. To make things even harder, so many complex physical processes occur in the valves, Jacobsen insists that simulation software couldn't help in the design. His group, therefore, had to go through several iterations of prototypes to get the valve it needed.

Sarcos is now preparing for demonstrations scheduled over the next few months. Team members are especially busy with the exoskeleton's upper-extremity system, which will add strength to the wearer's arms. A person wearing the full-body system will be able not only to carry a payload on a backpack but also lift heavy items, a capability that is particularly useful for logistics operations such as loading and unloading cargo vehicles and moving things in a warehouse.

PS: When my colleague Harry Goldstein and I spoke with Sarcos for that article, the company had just began developing their exoskeleton's upper-extremity part. Now, as the video shows, it seems they've made significant progress. One thing, however, hasn't changed. Note in the video: the exo has a tether attached to it, probably feeding power or control signals to the suit. Sure, it's a prototype. It will be interesting to see how exoskeleton researchers will cut the umbilical cords of their creations.

As I've mentioned before, I work for a company called Bluefin Robotics located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I haven't really talked about our technology, but we just recently got a contract for the next generation of one of our coolest vehicles, and I really like talking about this one, so on to... the HAUV!

The Hovering Autonomous Underwater Vehicle started out as a joint project between Bluefin and MIT. It's a significant departure from our other vehicles, which are torpedo-shaped with propellers on the back. HAUV is more or less a box, not needing to be quite as hydrodynamic as its siblings, and as such has occasionally earned nicknames such as "Spongebob" in the Bluefin lab.

The HAUV is run by a main electronics housing (the brains) and a 1.5 kWh subsea battery that we make. It moves thanks to eight fancy hubless thrusters arranged to allow a full six degrees of freedom: X, Y, Z, roll, pitch, and yaw. To navigate it uses a Doppler Velocity Log (DVL), which provides the computer with velocity along the hull; an inertial measurement unit to measure orientation in space (or water!); a compass; and a GPS antenna to achieve a position lock when it's on the surface. Its payload is a Dual-frequency Identification Sonar (DIDSON), located on the front of the vehicle next to the DVL, which provides imagery of the ship hull that looks a lot like a blue ultrasound. The Soundmetrics website (linked above) shows what some of that imagery can look like.

HAUV communicates with an operator via a fiberoptic cable that runs between the vehicle and the ship, but the cable is there for transmission of sonar data, not for active control from the operator (though the operator can upload new sortie commands via the link). This is different from our other vehicles, which are not tethered in any way and instead communicate via acoustic link underwater or via Iridium satellite or an RF link on the surface (depending on distance from the ship).

So what is this all for? Hull inspection, basically. Plop this little guy in the water next to a ship and it can go to town taking images of the hull. If it sees something suspicious, the Navy or Coast Guard can send down a diver to check it out and dispose of it as appropriate. Port security is a big deal these days, so there could be a lot of work for the HAUV.

In this month's issue of Spectrum magazine, Erico covered the dispute between iRobot and Robotic FX bidding on the US Army xBot contract. Though the lawsuit is still in court, the Army has already moved: iRobot issued a press release this morning announcing that they had been awarded the contract. While iRobot's press release doesn't mention Robotic FX, they do acknowledge that they weren't just the lowest bidder:

"iRobot was selected to fulfill the contract as the lowest priced, technically qualified bidder deemed able to deliver as a responsible contractor."

This is a huge contract for iRobot. To date they've delivered about 1200 PackBots, and this contract could mean an order of up to 3000 over the next few years.

The United States Department of Defense has released its roadmap through 2032 (link to actual report at the bottom of the page; large PDF warning) for unmanned systems in the military. For this first time, this report includes not only unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) but also unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned underwater and surface vehicles (UUVs and USVs); previous reports had focused primarily on UGVs.

This is a very long but pretty fascinating read, particularly the president's budget through 2013 for funding in the three areas (section 2.4). It's really interesting to see that the UGVs like PackBots and Talons seem to be way ahead of other unmanned systems, with the R&D budget drastically decreasing over the next several years as the procurement budget skyrockets. The UAVs and UUVs, on the other hand, will still have a lot of R&D money pumped into them over the next several years. UAVs seem to be most popular with the highest overall procurement budget.

The report also goes into a nice explanation of the Dull/Dirty/Dangerous mantra that is so popular with American robotics development:

• For the dull, allows the ability to give operators normal mission cycles and crew rest.
• For the dirty, increases the probability of a successful mission and minimizes human exposure.
• For the dangerous, lowers the political and human cost if the mission is lost.

Lower downside risk and higher confidence in mission success are two strong motivators for continued expansion of unmanned systems across a broad spectrum of warfighting and peacetime missions.

There's also some good stuff on standardization and interoperability within the industries, including things like message format and processor speed. This will be good reading for the CTOs and budding entrepreneurs out there.