Weekly Robotics #291

By Mat Sadowski
Issue 291

Today, I’m slightly modifying the link format so the buggy online editors cannot break my links anymore, and I don’t have to send correction e-mails (once again, apologies to everyone affected!). This issue made me realize how nice it is to have complete control over all aspects of your work and own all your infrastructure (granted, this is no easy feat). Maybe one day! On a slightly different note, Roland, one of our WR Slack members, pointed this out, and I cannot unsee it: Embodied AI is what you call Robotics nowadays. It is like this time when people started calling simulation/visualization a digital twin. As usual, the publication of the week section is manned by Rodrigo.

Figure Status Update - OpenAI Speech-to-Speech Reasoning

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Have you seen the Figure + OpenAI demo yet? I have to say I’m impressed and the FOMO is getting real!

NVIDIA Announces Project GR00T Foundation Model for Humanoid Robots and Major Isaac Robotics Platform Update

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Since we are discussing humanoid robots, here is some fresh news from NVIDIA: “NVIDIA today announced Project GR00T, a general-purpose foundation model for humanoid robots, designed to further its work driving breakthroughs in robotics and embodied AI”.

Open Source Robotics Alliance

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The Open Source Robotics Alliance (OSRA) is a mixed membership and meritocratic initiative by the OSRF to enhance governance, funding, community involvement, and stability of its open-source projects, inspired by foundations like The Linux Foundation and the Eclipse Foundation. The organization’s primary focus will be ROS, Gazebo, open-RMF, and the infrastructure. You can learn more about the project in this ROS discourse post, or if you have any questions, there is a special thread for you.

The Mythical Non-Roboticist

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Benjie Holson is back at writing about robotics. He discusses the idea that allows non-robotics to make robots through a simple API and how this idea might be hard to pull off.

How Zipline Designed Its Droid Delivery System

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Here is a neat interview where you can learn more about how Zipline designed their droid—a rappelling device attached to a UAV that will safely land your groceries on the ground while the mothership hovers and waits for the delivery to be complete.

RTAB-Map as an Open-Source Lidar and Visual SLAM Library for Large-Scale and Long-Term Online Operation

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This paper, originally published in 2019, has had its pre-print made available. I have skimmed through it so far, but one thing I can say for certain is that I appreciate the various robot setups described within and how the localization using RTAB-Map is set up for them. It looks like I might be coming back to this publication.

The $16 PCB Robot

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This article and the featured video introduce StoRPer, an affordable Raspberry Pi Pico-based mobile robot. It might be a great project to get started with mobile robots!

Publication of the Week - PaperBot: Learning to Design Real-World Tools Using Paper

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Paper is a very versatile material that can be recycled in most cases. This paper presents PaperBot, a robot that uses paper to make tools and use them in the real world. One of the famous examples is a paper airplane that took 100 tries to fly better than the human-made using the same number of iterations. Another fantastic example is using paper to generate origami as grippers for strawberries. You can check the video and code on the paper’s website.

Business

LG Electronics invests $60M in service robot maker Bear Robotics

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“LG Electronics Inc. is strategically investing in development of service robots. Bear Robotics Inc. this week said that it has received $60 million in Series C funding led by LG. The company said this will add to LG’s portfolio for sustained growth, rather than focusing on immediate gains. After finalizing the stock purchase, LG will be the largest single shareholder of Bear Robotics”.

Announcements

The 2023 Year in Review — Dronecode Foundation

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Our friends at Dronecode Foundation released a 2023 review that I think many readers will find interesting. As for me, I’m really bullish about more ROS integrations, and the autonomy development kit from modal looks very tempting.

Events

For more robotic events, check out our event page.