Global Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Robotics

MassRobotics announced the teams participating in its inaugural Form & Function Robotics Challenge . The finalists will be showcasing their robots on May 10-11 at the Robotics Summit & Expo in Boston. The winners will be announced on May 11 at 12:30 PM at the event. The challenge calls for teams to create a robotics or automation project that delivers a compelling form factor specific to its tasks while accomplishing a useful function. The following universities will be participating: Brown University Indiana University Bloomington Kwame Nkrumah Science and Technology MIT Northeastern University Seoul National University Stevens Institute of Technology Tufts University University of Bath University of Calgary University of Southern Denmark Worcester Polytechnic Institute “We received entries for the Form and Function Challenge from around the world,” said MassRobotics executive director Tom Ryden. “We are excited about the selected teams, their robot concepts ...

All of Tesla’s vehicles can be equipped with its $15,000 Full Self Driving software add-on. | Source: Tesla Earlier this month, Tesla issued a voluntary safety recall at the request of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) after the NHTSA determined that the company’s advanced driver assistance feature, Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) beta software, could create a “crash risk.”  The recall affects almost 363,000 Model S, Model 3, Model X and Model Y vehicles equipped with FSD. Users that already have FSD installed and activated can still use the software, but won’t see any new features until Tesla rolls out an over-the-air (OTA) software update to address the issues. Tesla hasn’t given any details on when it expects to make this update available, but the company did say that no immediate action needs to be taken by Tesla owners.  While users who already have FSD can continue to use it, Tesla is putting a hold on new installations of the software, ac...

Waymo announced today that its starting completely driverless testing in Los Angeles, making it the third city to see completely driverless Waymo vehicles.  Following a rigorous cycle of validation and safety readiness evaluation, @Waymo is starting fully-autonomous (no human driver) testing in LA. Thrilled by the data confirming, once again, how well our ML-based 5th-gen Driver generalizes across cities! pic.twitter.com/hd0XU5zecT — Dmitri Dolgov (@dmitri_dolgov) February 27, 2023 Waymo announced in October that LA would be its next ride-hailing city, after rolling out its services in San Francisco, Phoenix and the Phoenix suburbs.  “When we think about our next cities, Los Angeles jumps out,” Waymo’s co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said in October. “LA is a remarkable, vibrant place – and Waymo’s experience leaves us best positioned to tackle its driving complexity. We’re working closely with Angelenos to ensure we’re addressing the transportation needs and priorities of ...

Fulfil Solutions , a robotics company that offers an automated grocery fulfillment system, announced that it is emerging from stealth mode with $60 million in Series B financing.  Fulfil creates robots that can pick and pack grocery items across all product categories and temperature states. The company opened its first fully automated micro-fulfillment warehouse a few months ago in Mountain View, California in the San Francisco Bay area.  “To address the many challenges facing online grocery, retailers must adopt efficient automation that substantially reduces costs and provides the accuracy, quality and convenience customers expect,” Fulfil CEO and President Mir Aamir said. “That’s why our fully automated solution represents such a revolutionary step forward. Not only does it make online grocery retailing profitable while meeting customer expectations, but it also prioritizes social and environmental responsibility by cutting carbon emissions, eliminating food waste and e...

Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is shutting down its subsidiary Everyday Robots, according to reporting from Wired .  On January 20, 2023, Alphabet announced it would be laying off around 12,000 workers, 6% of its workforce, and Everyday Robots is one of the few projects disbanded as part of the budget cuts. Some of the technology and part of the Everyday Robots team will be consolidated into existing robotics projects within Google Research, Denise Gamboa, director of marketing and communications for Everyday Robots, told Wired .  The company graduated from Alphabet’s X moonshot lab just over a year ago. The company taught over a hundred wheeled, one-armed robots to clean cafeteria tables, separate trash from recycling and open doors.  Everyday Robots wanted to create flexible and adaptable robots that could be used outside of industrial environments. The company’s first prototype was unveiled in 2021, and in 2022, it was upgraded with Google’s AI language researc...

Luxonis offers high-resolution cameras with depth vision and on-chip machine learning. | Source: Luxonis L uxonis announced the release of its newest DepthAI ROS driver for its stereo depth OAK cameras. The driver aims to make the development of ROS-based software easier.  When using the DepthAI ROS driver, almost everything is parameterized with ROS2 parameters/dynamic reconfigure, which aims to provide more flexibility to help users customize OAK to their unique use cases.  The DepthAI ROS driver is being developed on ROS2 Humble and ROS1 Noetic. This allows users to take advantage of ROS Composition/Nodelet mechanisms. The driver supports both 2D and spatial detection and semantic segmentation networkers.  The driver offers several different modes that users can run their camera in depending on their use case. For example, users can use the camera to publish Spatial NN detections and publish RGBD pointcloud. Alternatively, with the DepthAI ROS driver users can s...

Motional announced that its autonomous ride-hailing service in Las Vegas is now available at night. The rides will be given in Motional’s IONIQ 5 robotaxi with a safety driver behind the wheel, for now, on certain routes along the Las Vegas Strip. Motional hopes to remove the human operators later this year.  Since Motional first rolled out its service in August 2022, over 90% of passengers have given the robotaxi rides a five-star rating, according to the company. The robotaxis have driven more than 2 million autonomous miles and conducted over 125,000 public rides without an at-fault accident.  When the company first started its service in Las Vegas, Motional gave robotaxi exclusively during the daytime so that the company could be sure its technology was safe enough to operate at night.  According to Jared Miles, a senior technical program manager at Motional, the company’s robotaxis use a sensor suite made up of more than 30 cameras, radars and lidars to navigate ...

RoboTire , a robotics company that automates tire changing, has installed another system with Discount Tire. This is the company’s second installation with Discount Tire, this time at a store in Arlington, Texas.  Tire changing can be a dull and strenuous job, with lots of repeated lifting of tires. RoboTire’s system can change four tires on passenger vehicles in 25 minutes using a set of four robotic arms. Two smaller arms work to remove and later screw back on the lug nuts of the tires, while two larger arms lift the tires off the cars and put new ones on.  “We’re thrilled to bring our innovative technology to a second Discount Tire location,” Victor Darolfi , CEO of RoboTire, said. “We’re committed to partnering with leading tire shops, improving the customer experience, and providing the best possible service.” Robotics Summit (May 10-11) returns to Boston Register Today RoboTire’s first installation with Discount Tire, announced in August 2022, was in Fountain ...

The 2023 World Ag Expo took place in early February in Tulare, CA, deep in the heart of the California central valley. The show kicked off with an introduction by US House of Representatives Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy.  US Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy addresses the crowd during the opening session of the World Ag Expo 2023. | Credit: The Robot Report Speaker McCarthy is a native of nearby Bakersfield and Tulare is in the district that he represents. The speaker along with several other senators and representatives from other ag-heavy states were present on day one of the show for an important “listening session” related to the upcoming farm bill which is up for renewal this spring in the US Congress. Tevel Aerobotics The new Tevel Alphabot is a partnership between Tevel Aerobotics and S&S Harvesting. | Credit: The Robot Report Tevel Aerobotics is the 2021 recipient of an RBR50 innovation award for fruit-collecting drones. Tevel’s major announcement ...

| Source: Cruise Cruise announced today that its fully driverless vehicles have traveled over one million miles just fifteen months after the company gave its first fully driverless ride. A majority of Cruise’s fully driverless miles were driven in San Francisco, where cruise first rolled out its robotaxis in November 2021.  Since its start in 2013, Cruise’s strategy has been to automate vehicles in the most difficult driving environments first so that its autonomous driving system could easily be rolled out to cities that are easier to drive in.  For Cruise, that meant starting in San Francisco, a notoriously difficult city to drive in. This means that for every driverless mile the company logs in San Francisco, [it’s] able to gain information about complex driving scenarios that help better its technology.  “The dense, often chaotic, streets of San Francisco have about 19,000 people per mile and give our fleet mountains of information-rich data to learn from,” Mo ...

Microsoft researchers controlled this robotic arm using ChatGPT. | Credit: Microsoft By now, you’ve likely heard of ChatGPT, OpenAI’s language model that can generate somewhat coherent responses to a variety of prompts and questions. It’s primarily being used to generate text, translate information, make calculations and explain topics you’re looking to learn about. Researchers at Microsoft , which has invested billions into OpenAI and recently integrated ChatGPT into its Bing search engine, extended the capabilities of ChatGPT to control a robotic arm and aerial drone. Earlier this week, Microsoft released a technical paper that describes a series of design principles that can be used to guide language models toward solving robotics tasks. “It turns out that ChatGPT can do a lot by itself, but it still needs some help,” Microsoft wrote about its ability to program robots. Prompting LLMs for robotics control poses several challenges, Microsoft said, such as providing a complete ...

A vehicle’s check engine light turning on is many car owners’ worst nightmare. Without specific knowledge about the inner workings of the vehicle, it’s unlikely you’d know what is actually wrong with it based solely on the check engine light. It could be a quick and easy fix, or a significant component failure that could end up costing thousands of dollars. But what if your car could tell you exactly what the issue is instead of relying on something so vague? Thankfully the internet of things has made this, among other exciting developments, a reality. Read on to learn how IoT-enabled “connected cars” are revolutionizing the automotive industry . The origin of connected cars While the term connected car is often used nowadays to describe vehicles utilizing IoT technology, that’s far from where the term first gained traction. In 1996, GM and Ford introduced their OnStar and RESCU services respectively. These services primarily served as an emergency response tool, putting customer...

In this episode of The Robot Report Podcast, Steve and Mike discuss the state of agriculture automation and review all of the new solutions on display at the recent 2023 World Ag Expo , in Tulare CA. The episode features short interviews for the show with representatives of the following agricultural robotics companies: 32:06 – Agtonomy CEO and cofounder Tim Bucher 44:16 – Farmwise VP of Sales Todd Rinkenberger 54:06 – Monarch Tractor Director of Product Danny Beck 1:04:11 – Carbon Robotics CEO Paul Mikesell Robotics Summit & Expo (May 10-11) returns to Boston Links from today’s show: Zoox gives first PUBLIC ROAD rides in purpose-built AVs A3: Robot sales reach a new high in 2022 Brightpick announces mobile picking robot Autopicker If you want to be a guest on an upcoming episode of the podcast, or if you have recommendations for future guests or segment ideas, contact Steve Crowe or Mike Oitzman . For sponsorship opportunities of The Robot Report Podca...