As robots’ skills are amazingly rocketing at the technical level, our imagination flies envisioning their vast potential to assist us in our everyday life. But technical breakthroughs cannot walk alone. A favourable ecosystem is essential to foster robotics, and this means that legislation, ethics, businesses and end-users have to be ready to embrace them. With the [...]
When we shake hands with someone or help them moving furniture, our body is calculating much more than we know, even though we are not consciously aware. The direction in which our hand is moving, how much force is needed, how we keep the balance meanwhile… These are automatic decisions that are daily taken by [...]
Back in May, we announced our intention to lend TIAGo Steel robots to teams who wanted to enter the European Robotics League - Service Robots competition (ERL). We had a fantastic number of participants, and are thrilled to see so many researchers, students and companies excited to test their software applications on our robot. Drum roll, [...]
If you saw the modified TIAGo that competed at Robocup 2017 in Japan, you probably noticed that the robot looked a little different. That’s because it was modified by the Technical University of Munich, specifically for the Robocup@Home Open Platform League, and aptly renamed TIAGo@Home. Keep reading to find out how the Alle@Home team hacked [...]
This week, we interview Head of the Department of Automatics, Biocybernetics and Robotics at the Jozef Stefan Institute in Slovenia, Ales Ude. As founder of the department’s Humanoid and Cognitive Research Lab, he has a particular interest in imitation learning - the way robots interact with and learn from humans. In Ales’ words, “Imitation learning [...]
In the face of growing competition from e-commerce, brick-and-mortar stores are having to innovate. With lower costs, speed and ease-of-use on their side, online retailers are in prime position to take the lead in the retail world. So, what are stores doing about it? Early adopters of automation and AI (think computerized check-outs and online [...]
SLAM - simultaneous localisation and mapping - is a technique robots use to build a map of their environment, ascertain where they are within the map and assess whether they’ve been to a particular location before. It’s an incredibly important technique within navigation research, so important in fact that we currently have a team focusing [...]
This May, for a period of three weeks, we’ve had the pleasure of hosting two fellow roboticists, Guido van der Hart and Nicky Mol, from one of our partner companies based in the Netherlands: Heemskerk Innovative Technology (HIT). Helping maintain independence Over at HIT, Guido and Nicky keep themselves busy by trying to anticipate some [...]
We’re incredibly excited to announce the call for loan of three TIAGo Steel robots to teams who want to enter the ERL Service Robots 2017 tournament. We will also give one additional robot for free to the team we believe shows exceptional quality of expertise and degree of innovation in their application paper and simulation [...]
