Taken at face value, it is a very cool project. With pneumatic muscles, the biggest challenge is actually not strength but control. Fine strength/distance control is difficult. Pneumatic muscles are more for bang-bang control (on/off). The company seems to address this issue by having many "myofibers" and recruiting the fibers one by one. However, in the video, the movement is still very jerky. My limbic robots were very jerky too.
Nevertheless, very cool. The claimed 500w pump, if really done, is quite a feat. Assuming 80% efficiency, 400w output for muscles would put the robot on par with a competitive cyclist activating quadriceps, the largest muscles in the body.
Indeed, the valve/line/pump mass will greatly dominate design cost.
The reason no one uses pneumatic actuators for repeatable positioning systems is gas is compressible, adiabatic thermal problems, and dangers when something fails.
Never saw automatons as particularly practical either, as the motion control planner balloons in complexity. Makes creepy looking sculptures though... =3
Typical in CNC, but is it really useful in closed-loop systems that use computer vision to adjust to an uncontrolled environment ? I've been wondering if I could reproduce something like mobile aloha but with sg90 servos instead of expansive dynamixel servos (in this case, I'm not looking at applications that require torque obviously).
In general, remote operated equipment still suffers latency, and thus visual servoing doesn't work well even in ideal controlled lighting conditions.
One of the lowest-cost commercial UR5 options with force-feedback is usually packaged with a traditional turtle-bot research platform. These are safer to use around people without a cage, as you can set impact safety thresholds:
It's between 20k and 30k dollars. Maybe your profession is suffering from "industrial bias": it focuses only on high-end robotics because it's the only thing that makes sense economically for now and anything super-cheap is seen as laughable ? Wasn't it the case for FDM 3D printer too before they went mainstream in the 2010s ?
I just want to build a toy and explore what's possible with this technology for non-serious applications. The servos may wear too quickly ? I'm fine with that. However I have trouble figuring out how cheap I can go. If I can carry out a task using the "control arm" and the "working arm" performs ok, does that mean Aloha will be able to learn it ? What are the limits then ? What if my arms are really flexible (as flexible as a 10 cm section of a PLA filament for instance), but I manage to carry out the task, can something based on policy diffusion learn to handle the task with "bones" that flex and oscillate ?
YMMV as I haven't tried it myself, it looks like a solid aluminum frame with geared-stepper drivers. This means many of the axis will have minimal backlash behavior from the gears, but if you keep the driver power minimal you are less likely to strip off teeth when (not if) you make a programming error.
I also like that it is open design, as making it do something useful gets easier. You might be able to get away with a fully 3D printed plastic arm if your use case is not demanding. However, when stating your project goal in one sentence you will have to decide if you are A. building robots or B. solving some lab task.
Best of luck, one may find academic sponsorship/funding is easier than trying to recreate the wheel. Best of luck =3
Your intuition is quite correct that closed-loop means open-loop repeatability is not critical, but controlability (non-stickness, smallest possible controlled movement) still matters. Motors are well behaved and continuous, so even with some backlashes, you will be fine. There are also ways to compensate for backlashes from software (e.g. same approach angle for end effector).
Aloha is a fascinating project and would love to hear more about what you are thinking. Dynamixel indeed is too expensive
Afterwards I'd like to tackle useful tasks related to gardening/botanical experiments: uprooting weeds, handling pests, harvesting small fruits. What's interesting is that you can develop new approaches to these problems. Uprooting stuff is difficult to do for a machine I guess. Maybe just cut the weeds with scissors every day, that'll teach them a lesson. Or remove aphids "by hand".
Another interesting thing is to do more scientific tasks such as handling a lot of tedious tasks on many, many plants. Example: creating polyploid plants is a lot of manual labor, what I'm talking about here is basically lab automation (doing flow cytometry on dozen or even hundred of samples).
Another aspect to explore in this space is continuous measurements (measuring photosynthesis efficiency for instance). I'm not a botanist but it seems that measuring devices either come in the form of a box you put the plant in, and you can get quasi-continuous measurements, or they are hand-held and you can only do punctual measurements (typical example: chlorophyll fluorometry). Also plants grow and change shape so putting a measuring device on a plant is in fact rather difficult. I think something like Aloha (even without the "Mobile" extension) could help tackle these situations.
We present a general framework for accurate positioning of sensors and end effectors in farm settings using a camera mounted on a robotic manipulator. Our main contribution is a visual servoing approach based on a new and robust feature tracking algorithm. Results from field experiments performed at an apple orchard demonstrate that our approach converges to a given termination criterion even under environmental influences such as strong winds, varying illumination conditions and partial occlusion of the target object. Further, we show experimentally that the system converges to the desired view for a wide range of initial conditions. This approach opens possibilities for new applications such as automated fruit inspection, fruit picking or precise pesticide application.
"closed-loop means open-loop repeatability is not critical"
Hobby servos have limited repeatability especially as they wear, and when swinging an arm with shifting center of mass the errors will be quite obvious.
One may want to look at the UR5 platform design before wasting time and money. Best of luck =3
> Hobby servos have limited repeatability especially as they wear, and when swinging an arm with shifting center of mass the errors will be quite obvious.
Your statement is correct by itself, but it is not completely applicable to what the GP comment (not my comment) said. Aloha uses optical encoders (which themselves are far better than hobby-grade potentiometer servo encoders) and in fact also compensates for inaccuracies in the optical encoder.
I have no experience with UR5 but looks interesting. Any reason why you recommend this?
Pre-built 3D simulation models for easier software development, official ROS support from the company, and better physical safety with advanced force-sensing motion systems.
"optical encoders" have their own set of issues... usually require quadrature encoder tracking FPGA or dedicated ASIC features in the mcu. i.e. you now have 2 problems to solve, and higher costs.
It looks fun, but I'm still amazed by companies trying to create humanoid robots. I mean, any automation, factory improvement, transportation, etc. will be achieved with fewer issues and easier maintenance by purpose built robots. Alternatively by something simple but adaptable (like mounted or mobile arms with different attachments). Unless they're building a sexbot or art... who exactly is the target here?
(I get that there's a potential military use, but getting to that stage will likely take over a decade and you could build a thousand different things that can be sold/used today instead)
Why would you want to use human tools? Human tools exist because of how we work. If you're building a robot, it's extremely easier to give it a functionally equivalent attachment instead. (rather than a functionality equivalent arm with enough fine-grained pressure feedback to be able to reliably grab things)
Or phrased a different way, what environment are you thinking of where a fully generalised highly advanced humanoid robot and its maintenance is more cost effective than diying or airshipping a specialised handle?
Assuming the cost of the droid is low enough, I think the use-case is to have it do ad-hoc tasks using the tools you have at hand right now, without the need to invest in an expensive specialized tool which only the robot can use. The idea is not efficiency but versatility.
Just think for a moment on all the unique interfaces we humans encounter with our tools on a daily basis*. No interior in our cars look the same, coffee machines have varying functionalities, every vacuum has its buttons placed differently, all our digital interfaces (smartphones, smart home control panels, digital oscilloscopes, synthesizers etc.), even simple remote controls etc. Some of these interfaces are just some designers choice on top of an already standardized digital protocol (CAN bus, Bluetooth) - so this thing takes the hard way and needs to adapt to all those interfaces in order to be more useful than "can follow you around"?
Honestly, I think that would be quite an achievement and could be great for something like elderly care. Although this thing needs to be able to do useful tactile tasks first, like putting a thread through a pinhole, or cutting your vegetables in cubes of equal size. I'd look forward to seeing a demo!
*: How many things do you personally encounter with the exact same interface? iPhones yes-ish (apps can be renamed and shuffled around, the control center can be customized etc.), but not even QWERTY keyboards. I think we humans constantly strive for some form of individuality.
Yeah I think of it this way. I have an expensive vacuum and an expensive lawnmower. I paid a lot because they have a pretty dumb level of auto (eg roomba). If I could have bought a commodity push vac and push mower this humanoid could operate it. But they could also serve dozens of other valuable services with cheap existing tools for which no roomba equivalent even exists. At some point being surrounded by purpose built robots is not the best strategy even though when you are only focusing on a single purpose a specialized robot seems best.
Someone made a comment about energy efficiency and Bitcoin and AI should tell you everything about how much “we” actually care about energy efficiency, if this robot had infinite learning potential and the physical ability of a human it’s totally going to win out in the race to mechanize the world.
> If you want a robot to pour you coffee from a coffee maker humans also use, how do you imagine that working?
Two standardised grabbers for round and flat things. Simple three-finger device should cover almost all of the dishes. Same for water/beans refills. Zigbee/wifi/ir/whatever local comms to trigger the coffee machine.
Your house, your car, your dishwasher, you washing machine (and everything else in your kitchen and laundry), your medicine bottle/syringes/etc etc are all designed for humans.
Factories are not the target market, in-home use is. Imagine if you could buy a robot that was a chef a cleaner a gardener a butler a security guards and a carer for the price of a family car. It would sell like crazy. Every household would want one.
Ignoring the weirdness-factor it would be an amazing quality of life improvement if you had a tireless robot that could basically do all your day to day chores for you.
It looks like it's supposed to be a general purpose robot servant, although "Follows you around" from the list of skills on the pre-order page is hilariously disturbing. There would be a market for people willing to pay for a very humanlike robot, for the novelty if nothing else.
Plus if you want to make a robot which can do everything a human can do, without exception, you'll start running into weird edge cases if you make it with a fixed wheeled base. Like suppose you want it to climb a ladder or turn sideways to slip into a narrow space and retrieve something. Or maybe you want it to be able to climb in and out of vehicles designed for human occupants. Would you want to have to buy a special vehicle to bring your robot somewhere with you?
And judging by the name of the company and that they likely aspire towards more than what they've made so far, I'd guess that a long-term goal could be to also make something for people who realize the weakness of their flesh and crave the strength and certainty of steel.
If the goal is to commoditize, does it not make sense to have a humanoid that you can sell to individual households? Not everyone would want to have a purpose-built robot arm in their kitchen. But this may be an easier sell if it works well.
What's the point of a humanoid in that case? Light frame on rollers would be much safer. There are rolling designs that can deal with stairs too. Humanoids waste lots of energy just balancing themselves and use precise adjustments (toes do quite a bit of work here). And if they fail at balancing, you've got tens to hundreds kilograms of equipment falling through a wall / on your possessions / on somebody. Equipment that may decide to start getting up in that situation and cause more issues...
I think the point is your humanoid is effectively as capable as you. If that was the only job worth solving, purpose built makes sense, but a general human form can (in theory) serve any purpose which is kind of the holy grail.
I don’t need to buy a roomba or the lawnmower version or hire a pool service or cleaning service, etc. if this one device can do it all. That makes this problem space extremely valuable. And the human form is a known form that can do all these things.
Even the things like food delivery robots, and food delivery fees of all types, grocery store pickers, some gig workers, etc. they kind of go away if I can tell this humanoid to run to McDonald’s and get me a #2
The world is a human interface. Instead of building robots for every specific task out there, this approach mimics the interface so that robots can replicate what humans are expected to do.
They're claiming some revolutionary "synthetic muscle," but is there video of one of these things walking? If it's just pneumatics then this is a repeat of the early androids out of Japan, which looked cool but never got up and moved - they were basically just impressive animatronic dolls. My guess is that this ends up being something similar.
Check the arm/hand videos; it shows what they are testing ; unless they completely changed everything since that video, it's just a bucketload of rubber (pneumatic) tubes.
I also thought it was an art project, but they've previously put out footage of a torso with a mostly empty abdomen which looked about as real. That is, it might of course be CG but if so they're making it look less good over time, which seems unlikely. (They put footage on X periodically but it all looks janky).
I've been interested in artificial muscles for a long time and thought it was a more feasible path to go down than the 'industrial/mechanical' style, so this project looks quite interesting. But of course there's no way to tell if it's any way functional or just animatronics.
If it even has a battery, it will be horrendous. The most expensive purpose built robots with large battery cases have horrible battery life; this has far less space, so it will be measured in minutes. Battery life is why we won't have nice robots any time remotely soon unless there is an actual (not the yearly bla is coming and then it isn't) revolutionary step in battery tech. And there is just no sign of that.
Got me actin sus, a thicc robot finally the time has come
This is so random too 279? What why
So easy to making a landing page and some graphics nowadays
There's a funny little startup thing guy sticks a glowing tab thing on his temple and it appears like it's mind control or something but it's just a mic/cam data remote processor like Humane
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7dhwFcuUn0
Taken at face value, it is a very cool project. With pneumatic muscles, the biggest challenge is actually not strength but control. Fine strength/distance control is difficult. Pneumatic muscles are more for bang-bang control (on/off). The company seems to address this issue by having many "myofibers" and recruiting the fibers one by one. However, in the video, the movement is still very jerky. My limbic robots were very jerky too.
Nevertheless, very cool. The claimed 500w pump, if really done, is quite a feat. Assuming 80% efficiency, 400w output for muscles would put the robot on par with a competitive cyclist activating quadriceps, the largest muscles in the body.