All the highlights from IROS 2018

A record-breaking IROS 2018 just took place in Madrid! Over 4,000 attendees participated in the conference, explored the exhibition, enjoyed the social events, and challenged themselves during multiple competitions. As Platinum Sponsors, at PAL Robotics we travelled with 19 robots to take part in several activities, including a TIAGo flamenco dance during the Banquet! Did you miss IROS 2018? Here’s a summary of it! 

 

TIAGos all around, and torque-controlled TALOS balancing

At IROS 2018, organized by UC3M Professor Carlos Balaguer, we could discuss the present and the future of robotics with worldwide experts and stakeholders. Renowned guests, like Boston Dynamics’ founder Marc Raibert, Stanford Prof. Oussama Khatib, or even the Spanish King, visited PAL Robotics’ booth. TALOS, many TIAGos, REEM-C, TIAGo Base’s diverse configurations, and StockBot were all there:

  • Humanoids: An impressive torque controlled TALOS balancing using its whole body to keep the equilibrium was one of the demos that stood out at IROS 2018. REEM-C also caught the curious’ eyes with an appealing dance that the biped robot was continuously playing.
  • TIAGo: A handful of TIAGo demos showed how easily it can be customized to perfectly fit in endless contexts, like Assisted Living, Industry 4.0 or Artificial Intelligence. One TIAGo using Deep Learning with an integrated NVIDIA Jetson TX2; another one autonomously picking and placing objects; or a third TIAGo teleoperated by attendees through a haptic device are just a few examples. Find more at the competitions insights below!
  • Industry solutions: Diverse industrial solutions from PAL Robotics were also showcased, with TIAGo Delivery, a robot that automates transfers in indoor settings like hospitals or offices; TIAGo Base, for industrial facilities logistics; and StockBot, for 3-D stocktaking in retail stores.

ERL: Sponsorship renewed & SciRoc Call

A researcher working with the mobile manipulator robot TIAGo at IROS 2018 in MadridThe ERL Consumer League IROS 2018 Major Tournament was also getting attention at IROS. We could see many teams using TIAGo to assist an old person that was supposedly living in the home-like arena. Besides, during the Competitions Forum, we made an exciting announcement: PAL Robotics is renewing the ERL sponsorship and extend it to the SciRoc Smart Cities Challenge!

Speaking about ERL: the call for xxpressions of interest is now open for anyone interested in participating to the first SciRoc Challenge! PAL Robotics will open a call for loan for TIAGo robots, and put REEM-C platforms at teams’ disposal for the ERL Smart Cities (SciRoc) Challenge (Milton Keynes, Sept. 16th-22nd, 2019).

If interested, you can already apply without commitment; details will be announced soon.

 

Challenging TIAGo at the Mobile Manipulation Hackathon

The manipulator robot TIAGo pours water holding a water bottle

The Mobile Manipulation Hackathon was such an opportunity for the six selected teams to showcase their coding skills to program an app combining manipulation and navigation in record-time. Even if for some teams it was the first time programming a TIAGo robot, amazing demos were achieved, such as autonomous water pouring, person feeding, products re-stocking or cutlery storing.

Find all videos and details here!

 

IROS 2018 Workshops, Forums, and Sessions

We always love to exchange experiences, knowledge, and opinions on robotics and to learn from the best! That is why we enjoy taking part in debates, panel discussions and presentations about the multiple topics we are experts on, such as the workshops in which we took part, on Logistics and Warehousing Robots, Robots for Assisted Living, or also Human-Aiding Robots – in this last one, a TIAGo was used by a speaker to remotely be present at the workshop! Another example of this is the Industry Forum, co-organized by the UC3M and PAL Robotics, which provided a glimpse over the present and future trends in collaborative robotics.

 

Many thanks to the IROS organization in all areas! And a big thank you to everyone who came to visit us and made IROS 2018 extraordinary!

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