InfoQ Homepage Robotics Content on InfoQ
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Robot Learns to Cook the Perfect Omelette Using Batch Bayesian Optimization
Researchers from the university of Cambridge trained a robot to prepare an omelette and optimized the recipe to produce well-tasting dishes. To find the most objectively best recipe, the researchers turned towards Bayesian optimization techniques. They investigated two methods: sequential Bayesian optimization and batch Bayesian optimization.
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ROS 2 Foxy Fitzroy Release Improves Security and Tooling
Open Robotics has released ROS 2 Foxy Fitzroy, the latest version of the robot operating system. The release contains several new features, including security enhancements and improved tooling, with contributions from many industry players including the Eclipse foundation and Amazon Web Services.
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Data Science at the Intersection of Emerging Technologies
Kirk Borne, principal data scientist at Booz Allen Hamilton, gave a keynote presentation at this year’s Oracle Code One Conference on how the connection between emerging technologies, data, and machine learning are transforming data into value. Emerging technological innovations like AI, robotics, computer vision and more, are enabled by data and create value from data.
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Alternatives to RViz for Visualising Robotics Data Presented: Summary from ROSCon 2019
During ROSCon 2019 two interesting tools for visualising and interacting with ROS were demonstrated. The first tool which was demonstrated is Webviz, an online web-based replacement for RViz. Another interesting option which gives you more options for interaction is using Jupyter notebooks to visualise and interact with your robot.
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iRobot’s Experience in Running ROS2 on Linux-Based Embedded Platforms
During ROSCon 2019, Alberto Soragna, Juan Oxoby, and Dhiraj Goel from iRobot presented their experience in using ROS 2 on a low-cost embedded platform. By experimenting with different Data Distribution Service (DDS) implementations they reduced the CPU and memory usage of their application, which improved performance.
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Migrating Two Large Robotics ROS1 Codebases to ROS2
In 2018, the Robot Operating System 2 (ROS2) was launched as a successor to ROS1. At ROSCon 2019, several speakers shared their experience in moving from ROS1 to ROS2. Lessons were shared in two separate talks: the Autoware project, and the demo porting by Rover Robotics.
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The Robot Operating System (ROS) Can Make Hospitals Smarter
The ROSCon 2019 conference kicked off with a keynote from Selina Seah from Changi General Hospital and Morgan Quigley from Open Robotics. In their talk, they outlined the need for robotics and automation in hospitals. To support robotics, the Open Robotics foundation works actively to create tools to support multiple robotics platforms, fleets working together, and tools for QA and simulation.
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Robot Social Engineering: Brittany Postnikoff at QCon New York
At QCon New York, Brittany Postnikoff presented “Robot Social Engineering: Social Engineering Using Physical Robots”. Quoting findings from academic research literature, she demonstrated that humans can often be manipulated via robots. A core message of the talk was the need for security and privacy to be part of any robot's fundamental design.
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Moving Embodied AI forward, Facebook Open-Sources AI Habitat
In a recent blog post, Facebook has announced they have open-sourced AI Habitat, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) simulation platform that is designed to train embodied agents, such as virtual robots. Using this technology, robots can learn how to grab an object from an adjacent room or assist a visually-impaired person in navigating an unfamiliar transit system.
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Facebook PyRobot Aims to Make Robot Programming Easier
According to Facebook, PyRobot will allow developers to get up and running with a robot quickly thanks to it providing a higher-level abstraction on top of the robot operating system (ROS).
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Making Robots More Intelligent, Microsoft Releases Autonomous Systems Platform
At the recent Build conference in Seattle, Microsoft announced, in limited preview, an end-to-end toolchain to help developers and organizations build autonomous systems for their industries. The platform includes machine teaching tools and simulation technologies that enable intelligent robotic systems to complete tasks like running autonomous forklifts and robotic inspection platforms.
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Amazon Introduces AWS RoboMaker for Building Intelligent Robotic Applications
At the recent AWS re:Invent 2018 conference, Amazon introduced AWS RoboMaker, a service that simplifies the development, testing and deployment of intelligent robotic applications at scale. RoboMaker includes extensions for the Robot Operating System (ROS) that enable cloud connectivity to AWS to take advantage of machine learning, cognitive, monitoring and analytics services.
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Robot Operating System Comes to Windows
Robot Operating System (ROS), a meta-operating system for robot development, is now available on Windows 10. Microsoft’s initial, experimental build, dubbed ROS1, is integrated within Visual Studio and includes a full port of ROS Core and several modules. According to Microsoft, ROS on Windows will evolve to include full integration with GPU-based machine learning and Azure IoT Hub.
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Intelligent Automation on Pace for Explosive Growth, But Organizational Challenges Prevalent
In a recent KPMG study, the professional services organization published a report on the growth of Intelligent Automation. The report suggests that overall spend will reach $232 billion by 2025, compared to $12.4 billion which is spent today. But, this expected growth comes with many challenges, including tool maturity, skilled labor and organizational change management.
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Neural Networks Trained on Images for Autonomous Vehicles Allow Drones to Navigate through Streets
A research team at the University of Zurich published a paper detailing how they got drones to fly on street-level in a safe manner. To predict the steering angles and possible collisions the researchers created a deep neural network. It produces a steering angle to navigate the drone itself, and a collision probability so the drone can recognize dangerous situations and react to them.