Weekly Robotics #300

By Mat Sadowski
Issue 300

Wow! We’ve reached Issue 300 without missing a single week! We’ll take a short break during my upcoming WR Sabbatical in two weeks, but the fun will resume when I’m back. Until then, let’s dive into some exciting projects. As usual, the publication of the week section is manned by Rodrigo.

Flying planes with JavaScript

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This tutorial starts with the following note: “To allay any concerns: this is not about running JavaScript software to control an actual aircraft. That would kill people” and only gets better from there. The author will teach you how to connect to the Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 using websockets. Through this 6-part series, you will learn how to interface with the API, create custom web tools, and finally, create an autopilot to land the plane. I added this tutorial to a new ‘Tutorial’ section in the Awesome Weekly Robotics list.

How I Built the NEW World’s Fastest Drone

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Ten weeks ago, I featured this video from Luke Maximo Bell, showcasing a process of building and testing a really fast multirotor. Now, Luke and his father are back, and they managed to create an even faster design. On top of that, Luke’s dad has made this in-depth video on designing this airframe.

Video Friday: Robots With Knives

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Folks from IEEE Spectrum have put together this Video Friday edition that includes a selection of the most exciting videos from ICRA. I’m looking forward to all the event summaries that should start trickling in!

Embedded Open Source Summit 2024 Recap

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Since we are on event recaps, here is one by Thomas Sarlandie from Memfault. Many of the talks covered by the author are relevant to the robotics industry, so I recommend at least checking the titles of the talks featured in this article.

MUDLink: a Modular UART Duplex Link

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“MUDLink adds packet framing, delivery guarantees, and flow control to just about any UART Port. It also records stats on the link’s performance, to enable a little bit of feedback systems assembly”.

LocoMan: Advancing Versatile Quadrupedal Dexterity with Lightweight Loco-Manipulators

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I vote for all robotics research videos to follow this format starting from now!

Disney’s Robots Use Rockets to Stick the Landing

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Disney is being featured more and more in this newsletter. In this article, you will learn how some robots can stick a landing using ducted fans, pistons, and even a water rocket. I appreciate all the peeks behind the scenes in this write-up!

Publication of the Week - Filling Missing Values Matters for Range Image-Based Point Cloud Segmentation

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As cool as it sounds, point cloud segmentation (PCS) can be very sensitive to inconsistencies or missing values in the point clouds. This paper presents a new projection method called infolding++ that avoids considerable missing values, enhancing the PCS model. In the case of LiDAR, these missing values can derive from various reasons, such as a bean that went out of range or got absorbed by some material. Not only does the projection method reduce the missing values, but also the authors propose an interpolation method that boosts the segmentation performance.

Events

For more robotic events, check out our event page.