Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We’ll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next two months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!): Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos. IROS is approaching fast. Here’s a taste of what’s to come: We’ll be there, of course. Well-known auto manufacturer NVIDIA is demoing the capabilities of its new deep neural network-powered self-driving car, which has a robot in Star Wars named after it: In contrast to the usual approach to operating self-driving cars, we did not program any explicit object detection, mapping, path planning or control components into this car. Instead, the car learns on its own to create all necessary internal representations necessary to steer, simply by observing human drivers. The car successfully navigates the construction site while freeing us from creating specialized detectors for cones or other objects present at the site.

Similarly, the car can drive on the road that is overgrown with grass and bushes without the need to create a vegetation detection system. All it takes is about twenty example runs driven by humans at different times of the day. Learning to drive in these complex environments demonstrates new capabilities of deep neural networks. The car also learns to generalize its driving behavior. This video includes a clip that shows a car that was trained only on California roads successfully driving itself in New Jersey. Is there such a thing as a robot hand that's too capable? Yes, if it's in one of those claw machines: The process by which RightHand Robotics designs and prototypes their hands is pretty cool, too: We'll be seeing plenty more of these hands, as RightHand is sponsoring this year's IROS Robotic Grasping and Manipulation Competition, which will take place at IROS in Korea in a few weeks. Unlike the arcade version of Space Invaders, this version has real consequences if the aliens reach the ground.

Namely, you're out a really expensive drone. This would be more fun with super high-powered battle lasers that could vaporize the drones, but still, not a bad start. [ For Real ] via [ DIY Drones ] I'm not looking at you. I'm not looking at you. I'm not looking at you. Watching a robot not get wrecked by a wrecking ball is more interesting than it sounds:aibotix aibot x6 uav drone price Do I want one of these? microdrone md4-1000 prixYes, I want one of these.parrot ar drone emergenza blocco And wow why don't I have a cookie warming lamp in my house? parrot ar drone solidworks

Can I just buy one of these to take me wherever I want, please? [ Nissan ] via [ Gizmodo ] While not strictly a robot, there's enough robotics history and application here that it's worth watching this video about using gecko-inspired adhesives to grip things in space: The Cybathlon competition is next week, and IHCM is ready to totally rock it with their exoskeleton:parrot ar drone chino This is a practice run of the full Cybathlon Powered Exoskeleton Course. ar drone 2 brugtIHMC will be competing in the Powered Exoskeleton Race on October 8, 2016 in Zurich, Switzerland. The race consists of 6 tasks with a 10-minute time limit. We are skipping one of the tasks, so this video shows only 5. Mark, our, pilot, who is paralyzed with a spinal cord injury, is fully controlling the exoskeleton. The tether is only for fall protection and to log controller data.

The total time to complete the 5 is 8:54. Looks like Valkyrie has been keeping busy over in Edinburgh: [ University of Edinburgh ] Drone-assisted water rescue requires specially developed equipment that can rise to the challenges often present in aquatic environments. The drone used in this rescue simulation was the microdrones md4-1000. This quadcopter is highly effective for water rescue because it has uniquely designed motors, rugged carbon fiber housing, highly efficient batteries, and an integrated GPS system. These features allow the UAV to fly and stay in position in strong winds over the water. In this work, we show a fully integrated system that is energy efficient and enables MAVs to pick up and deliver objects with partly ferrous surface of varying shapes and weights. This is achieved by using a combination of an electro-permanent magnetic gripper with a passively compliant structure and integration with detection, control and servo positioning algorithms.

The German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), with locations in Kaiserslautern, Saarbrücken, Bremen (with a branch office in Osnabrück) and a project office in Berlin, is the leading research center in Germany in the field of innovative commercial software technology using Artificial Intelligence. The DFKI research department Robotics Innovation Center (RIC), headed by Prof. Dr. Frank Kirchner, develops mobile robot systems that solve complex tasks under water, in space and in our everyday life. The goal is to design robots that operate autonomously and interact safely with humans, their environment and other systems. The RIC closely cooperates with the Robotics Group at the University of Bremen. Making autonomous robots is hard. Making autonomous robots that are waterproof is harder. Here's another amazing retro robot video courtesy of Georgia Tech: Meet Centipede, which was doing robot-y stuff 45 (!) years ago. The company MB Associates (San Ramon, CA) was a forerunner in the design of a number of different robot systems.

They designed a teleoperated arm that was the foundation for an arm used by NASA and they built a variety of robots for defense applications. The Centipede robot used a set of “standard” modules to build a high agile mobile platform that can be used for transportation and dismounted operation. The modular design and the integrated control from a simple joystick is interesting for a robot from ~1970. Fetch Robotics CTO Michael Ferguson tells you everything you ever wanted to know about running ROS-based robots in warehouses. This week's CMU RI Seminar for your hardcore roboticists out there: Ashish Kapoor, Microsoft Research: Safe and Optimal Path Planning in Uncertain Skies Achieving optimality while staying safe is one of the key problems that arise when planning under uncertainty. We specifically focus on path planning for aerial vehicles, where the uncertainties arise due to unobserved winds and other air traffic. A flight plan or a policy that doesn’t take into account such uncertainties can not only result in highly inefficient flight paths but can also jeopardize safety.