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Announcing Kinema Systems

4/11/2016

I am proud to announce Kinema Systems, a startup in the Bay Area developing advanced robotic solutions for industry. Our first product – Kinema Pick – the world’s first self-training, self-calibrating software solution for robotic depalletizing. Kinema Pick enables fully automated depalletization of multi-SKU, single-SKU and random pallets of boxes. Kinema Pick is self-training, i.e. it requires no manual training for the type of boxes to be picked or the workcell that the robot is operating in.

Kinema Pick is the first in a series of solutions from Kinema Systems for the “holy grail” of industrial robotics – random picking. Kinema Pick addresses a critical need in the e-commerce, logistics and distribution industry for robotic picking solutions capable of dealing with unstructured random pallets of boxes.

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RoboBusiness 2015

9/19/2015

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Come meet us at RoboBusiness 2015 in San Jose. Sachin will be presenting on multiple panels:

Thursday, September 24, 2015: 10:15-11:00 AM: Transforming Logistics with Mobile Robots
- Sachin Chitta (Stealth Robotics Startup, Moderator)
- Melonee Wise (Fetch Robotics)
- Ryan Gariepy (ClearPath Robotics)
- Matthew Wicks (Intelligrated)
- Alfredo Valadez (Wynright)
Thursday, September 24, 2015: 4:45-5:30 PM: State of the Art Flexible Software Solutions.
- Sachin Chitta (Stealth Robotics Startup, Moderator)
- John Dulchinos (Jabil)
- Nate Koenig (OSRF)
- Mike Wynn (DroneDeploy)

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Report on the First MoveIt! Community Meeting

9/3/2015

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Thank you for coming to the MoveIt! Community Meeting and thanks to the presenters for making this a huge success. There were more than 240 people registered and more than 150 who attended from all over the world. I apologize to those running Ubuntu who had issues joining us (using Chrome was the suggested solution for the future).

MoveIt! now has a twitter account for updates: @moveitrobot

Meeting Video

The slides from the meeting are posted here in two parts.

Slides: PART 1

Slides: PART 2

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First MoveIt! Community Meeting: Sept. 3, 2015 at 8 AM PST (Online)

8/26/2015

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The first MoveIt! Community Meeting is happening online on Sept. 3 at 8 AM PST. Come see how the community is using MoveIt!.

When
Sept. 3, 2015 at 8 AM PST

Where
Online (Register here: http://www.anymeeting.com/PIID=EC50D886804E38)

Agenda

8:00-8:10 - The State of MoveIt! - Sachin Chitta (Stealth Startup)
8:10-8:20 - OMPL - Mark Moll, Lydia Kavraki (Rice University)
8:20-8:30 - ROS-Control - Adolfo Rodríguez Tsouroukdissian (PAL Robotics)
8:30-8:40 - Updates to STOMP - Jorge Nicho (SwRI)
8:40-8:50 - MoveIt! based implementation of an I-AUV - Dina Youakim (University of Girona)
8:50-9:00 - Team VIGIR at the DRC - Stefan Kohlbrecher (Technische Universität Darmstadt)
9:00-9:10 - ROS 2.0 and Manipulation - Jackie Kay (OSRF)
9:10-9:20 - Discussion

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Save the date for the first MoveIt! Community Meeting: Sept. 3, 2015 (Online)

8/4/2015

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Save the date for the first MoveIt! Community Meeting happening online on Sept. 3 at 8 AM PST. Confirmed speakers include:

* The State of MoveIt! - Sachin Chitta
* OMPL - Mark Moll, Lydia Kavraki (Rice University)
* ROS-Control - Adolfo Rodríguez Tsouroukdissian (PAL Robotics)
* ROS-Industrial - Shaun Edwards (SwRI)
* Team VIGIR at the DRC - Stefan Kohlbrecher (Technische Universität Darmstadt)
* MoveIt! based Implementation of an I-AUV - Dina Youakim, Pere Ridao, and Narcis Plaomeras (University of Girona)

If you have used MoveIt! on an exciting project or robot and would like to present your work to the community, please don't hesitate to email me at robot.moveit@gmail.com by August 11, 2015. A final agenda and details on how to take part in the meeting will be sent out next week.

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Software and Robots having the Biggest Impact in Robotics Manipulation Research

7/29/2015

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The number of mentions for open-source software packages, frameworks and libraries at the 2015 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2015). This list is limited to software related to manipulation.

When I was at Willow Garage, we would often look to measure the impact that ROS and the PR2 were having. The primary target for ROS, at that point, was the robotics academic community. An obvious way to measure impact was to look at metrics like the number of packages released, the number of robots running ROS, etc. Another way to measure impact was to look at citations and mentions in robotics conferences. I ran some numbers using data from the recent IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Seattle to measure the impact, not only of ROS and the PR2 but also of other open-source software for Robotics and other manipulation robots.

In generating this data, I chose all the open-source frameworks, packages and libraries I know of. I left out proprietary software, like MATLAB (which gained 173 mentions). The names I searched for include those of component libraries, like FCL, simulation libraries (like Gazebo), several planning libraries (OMPL, SBPL, CHOMP, etc.) and complete open-source frameworks, like MoveIt!, OpenRAVE and ROS. The ROS-Industrial consortium is also included in the list. The list is, admittedly, biased towards the ROS ecosystem. The numbers were generated by searching for the number of papers where the names appear in the proceedings of the conference. I counted each paper where a name appears as a single mention even if the name was mentioned multiple times in the same paper. The search was performed using the search functionality in the proceedings so it is likely that some mentions may not be accurate.

The first graph shows the number of mentions for each software package. It is clear that ROS has had a huge impact, gaining mentions in 100 papers (of a total of about 930 accepted papers). Vision frameworks like OpenCV and PCL also garner a large number of mentions. Gazebo seems to be the most popular open-source simulation framework while the ROS-based planning frameworks and packages, like MoveIt!, OMPL, etc. also gain more than 10 mentions. Users seem to be about equally split between MoveIt! and OpenRAVE. Overall, it is clear that open-source software is having a big impact on robotics research in manipulation.

I also looked at which robots garnered the most mentions in manipulation research. In most cases, I looked for the names of the robots themselves, e.g. the PR2. In other cases, I chose to look for the names of vendors, e.g. KUKA. The list includes robot arms, hands, humanoids and mobile manipulation systems. Note that I am only counting the mention of a particular robot - this does not necessarily mean that the robot was used in the research.

The number of mentions for different manipulation robots at the 2015 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2015). This list includes robot arms, hands, humanoids and mobile manipulation systems. It is not exhaustive so feel free to email me robots you want to see included in this list at robot DOT moveit AT gmail DOT com

The PR2 finds 46 mentions at ICRA 2015. Five years after the platform was released, the PR2 is still a very popular manipulation research platform. Being the base platform on which ROS was first developed and deployed is most certainly a significant factor in its #1 ranking. KUKA robots come in a close second - possibly representing the popularity of the vendor in Europe. Shadow robot hands also find a lot of mentions, indicating the high degree of interest in multi-fingered manipulation.

Other industrial robot platforms, in general, do not rank high on this list. It is interesting to ask why. Is it safety and setup issues? The lack of a common, open API (an issue only now being addressed through the efforts of the open-source community)? The difficulty in having to integrate multiple components (grippers, sensors and more) vs. fully integrated systems like the PR2? Or is there a need for better collaboration between academia and industrial robotics? It is clear that we have reached a turning point in robotic manipulation, with the promise of new features, new capabilities and new robots. What seems to be missing is an overall software framework that brings all this together the right way - all the pieces of the puzzle are there, somebody just needs to put them together the right way.

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Amazon Picking Challenge at ICRA 2015 in Seattle

11/23/2014

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I am helping organize the Amazon Picking Challenge at ICRA 2015 in Seattle. The challenge pushes teams to design a complete system to pick objects from a Kiva "Pod". Multiple robot companies have offered to provide hardware to participating teams at the challenge. I had organized the ICRA 2012 Sushi Challenge with the PR2 - it was clear then that there were very few mobile robots around that could take part in a mobile manipulation challenge. With the Amazon challenge, fixed manipulators have a chance to demonstrate their capabilities in a really hard manipulation task. We expect to see lots of teams using MoveIt! and ROS in the challenge! Follow along at the Amazon Picking Challenge website.

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Top 5 in Robotics 2013

12/29/2013

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Its been a crazy year in Robotics. As the year draws to a close, here's my top 5 happenings in Robotics this year - including some understated success stories that may turn out to be more important over the long run than other more hyped stories.

Willow Garage - The most influential robotics company of this century ran its course this year. This was a personal story for me since I was one of the few people who had been there almost from the beginning (and the most senior technical person left standing at the end). Willow Garage, through the PR2, ROS, MoveIt!, PCL and more, changed the way Robotics is done forever and spawned an entire community of researchers, developers and companies in Robotics. It was like having a special Robot Santa Claus for 6 years since almost everything Willow did was given away to the world for free. Its going away has created a void that will be hard to fill.
Aethon's success story - Aethon has snuck up on us very quietly but its success is encouraging for the future of service robotics. The company has more than 300 robots deployed in the country which have driven over a million miles inside hospitals and other facilities. Its use of a "remote command center" to ensure performance for the client is probably the most important factor in its success - making sure that its robots always "just work". Aethon might well be the first trail-blazer in the coming wave of service robotics.
Anki launches its product - Only iRobot has been able to pass the million robot mark in sales. Anki's cool new product may well change the way we play games forever and break the consumer barrier for robots. Its great to see new robotics technology in entertainment. The consumer industry is fickle though, so Anki will have to work hard to keep up with new tastes.
Universal Robots - Its not sexy like some of the other stories but Universal Robots entering the US market may well be the most understated success story of the year. Their robots are designed for industrial uses but come with a teaching pad that lets users easily program new actions. The company also claims its robots are safe - they are designed with reactive behaviors to stop instantly on impact with unknown objects, allowing the robots and people to work together in factories and commercial applications. One thing they got right - solid quality of motion.
Google enters Robotics - Google threw its hat into the Robotics industry with a flash, buying up 8 companies - (with more to come?). With a large kitty in hand, Google has the resources to stay in the industry for a long time. This is certainly a big development in Robotics and we will be watching this with interest over the next few years.

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At the DRC Trials: A Detailed Look

12/25/2013

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I was at the DARPA Robot Challenge Trials this past Thursday through Saturday, watching 16 teams being put through their paces in a search and rescue competition. The trials were an attempt to find the state of the art before the finals next year. The competition aims to develop robots that can perform search and rescue in situations like the Fukushima disaster where it would be too dangerous to send humans in. Robots take part in 8 different tasks: (i) opening doors, (ii) removing debris, (iii) drilling holes, (iv) closing valves, (v) attaching a hose, (vi) climbing a ladder, (vii) walking on rough terrain and (viii) driving a car.

Thursday Practice: First Impressions
It all started with practice sessions on Thursday - which turned out to be a snoozer. It was clear that the teams were still getting used to the course and had very little practice. As we learned later on, there were also network issues that had not been fixed yet - this was a big issue for the teams since they were all using tele-operation to operate the robots. DARPA has specified that shaping the available bandwidth would be a part of the trials, presumably to encourage teams to build as much autonomy into their robots as possible. With the limited lead time for the contest though, all the teams were still operating using teleop and had to account for the changes in the network - the network switched between 100 Kb/s and 1 Mb/s every minute. A 1-second latency was also added in.

I also had my first look at ATLAS: the Boston Dynamics built robot that was provided to several teams for the contest. Clearly, the robot is a beast - its heavy, tall and noisy (it carries its own hydraulic equipment on its back). It has to be tethered for cooling water to flow into the robot. Boston Dynamics provides a black-box walking library with the robot which most teams were still using (except apparently a couple of notable exceptions: IHMC and WRECS). The robot also drips and loses hydraulic oil - one reason that the Miami speedway was a good choice of venue. Its arms are only 6-DOF with a limited workspace creating a lot of problems for teams when they need to do tasks like opening valves or climbing the ladder.

The robot is equipped with a couple of options for hands but, surprisingly, several teams opted to put hooks on the robot - these were especially useful for tasks like opening doors and climbing a ladder. The rules of the competition required that the teams had to carry any tools and alternate hands or grippers they would use throughout the competition in all the rounds - e.g. if they wanted to use a hook for one task and then a gripper for another task, they would have to carry both on the robot at all times. A popular gripper on the robots seemed to be the Robotiq gripper - a heavy-duty versatile gripper developed for research and industrial uses.

The day clearly belonged to Team SCHAFT though. A Japanese company originally out of the JSK lab in the University of Tokyo (the same lab that was also a part of the PR2 Beta Program) build the robot based on the design of the HRP-2 robot. SCHAFT is a beautiful robot, clearly the result of the years of experience that lab has had in building humanoid robots. I saw it walking over the rough terrain, planning and taking two steps at a time. I have seen several robots walking but clearly this robot was in a league of its own - it was the smoothest walking robot I had ever seen. The arms are also mounted in what, at first sight, seems like a very weird configuration. However, as I learned, the design of the kinematics for the arms was refined using a workspace analysis. This meant that the robot is able to reach and operate with its arms within a very big workspace in front of the body. Clearly, Team SCHAFT has given much more thought to this design issue than Boston Dynamics.

There were a variety of teams, a variety of robots and a variety of tasks for the robots to solve. There was one thing in common with a lot of the teams though - most of them were using ROS. A look at the introductory videos for most teams had screenshots from Rviz (the ROS visualizer) - making it a proud moment indeed for Dave Hershberger (ex-Willow and now at SRI with me) who wrote the latest version of Rviz.

Friday Competition: Off to the Races!!
Thursday may have been a snoozer but come Friday, the robots were off to a strong start. It was clear that the network issues that may have existed the day before were now gone. Teams were opening doors, walking over terrain and working at all the tasks much more confidently than the day before. Team SCHAFT was clearly the pick of the lot though, bursting out of the gates and staying ahead throughout. However, the going overall was slow. It took close to half an hour for each team to get through individual tasks. My lasting impression of this day was of watching one robot take one step, walking over to another task to see a different robot move a little and then coming back to see the first robot take another step.

The teams had opted for a conservative approach to the contest. The robot operators were taking their time examining the terrains - mainly in 3D using scanning laser sensors. The cognitive decisions were all being made by the humans - they decided where the robot would put its feet and where they would move their arms. For me, this was slightly disappointing - having worked with the PR2 on autonomy for so long, I was hoping to see more autonomy in the task. Given what was at stake though, (only the top 8 teams would qualify for continued funding), it was understandable.

As the competition progressed, it was also clear that DARPA had made some of the tasks just that much easier. The wood in the debris competition seemed to always be arranged a certain way. The robots were no longer expected to get in and out of the car. The valves were apparently easier to turn. Some tasks got harder though - the wind at the venue kept closing the doors on the robots.

Saturday: We have a winner!!
Saturday saw some of the best walking on display as team SCHAFT tackled the terrain and the ladder. It was clear that Team SCHAFT was way ahead of the other teams. They had the railings removed from the ladder and then proceeded to climb to the top without needing a handhold. The ATLAS robots did not fare as well on the ladder although Team WRECS managed to climb up a long way, using the hands to hold on to the steps as they walked up.

SCHAFT ran away with the competition, scoring 27 out of a total of 32 points. The next best team, IHMC, got to 20 points total. Three teams placed in the top eight using non-ATLAS robots: SCHAFT, Tartan Rescue and RoboSimian. Tartan Rescue had an interesting robot - using a combination of tracks and limbs to create a hybrid robot that aimed to combine the best of both. RoboSimian also used a combination of wheels and limbs and a statically stable walking gait. The ATLAS robots placed 5 teams in the top eight: IHMC, MIT, TracLabs, WRECS, Trooper.

Where do we go from here?
The trials exceeded expectations. 4 teams scored more than half the total number of points possible. The teams clearly did well at the tasks in the trials themselves, establishing a benchmark for the state of the art. The improvements in walking were incredible to see. The new hardware solutions coming out from the trials are revolutionary, ranging from the large powerful robots like SCHAFT and ATLAS to the smaller systems like THOR. The software and systems on display were also very impressive.

It is less clear how the skills on display would translate to an actual search and rescue scenario. The tasks were very structured and some of the teams clearly programmed to the tasks. More randomization would help in making the tasks more pertinent. Its also clear that more autonomy will become essential when the robots are required to venture into more unstructured scenarios, situations where software frameworks like MoveIt! will become more useful.

Walking robots may not be the most practical solution in the future- most current rescue robots are tracked. Search and rescue also often involves moving into cramped spaces - something that the giant robots like ATLAS and SCHAFT will not be capable of doing. The robots will have to carry their own power source into such scenarios as well - it is rumored that DARPA may require ATLAS to carry its own cooling. I am hoping to see more of the electric robots coming to the fore as the contest progresses - although the hydraulically powered ATLAS is very capable, a giant leap on the electric side would help in driving robots in other domains. The best looking robot in the trials - NASA Johnson's Valkyrie - did not do very well since the team was so focused on building hardware that they did not get the time to test out their robot. It would be great to see this robot do well in the next year. THOR just missed out on the top eight - their robot is smaller and leaner than the others and I hope they come back with more practice the next year.

The venue for next year's competition has not been finalized. The Miami Speedway seemed like a good venue although the heat and humidity may have affected several robots - especially since a lot of the robots are black in color. The Speedway does have garages (where the teams were staged) and is used to having a lot of dripping oil around. The constant thunder from fighter jets flying overhead only added to the overall atmosphere of the trials. Last week's event was a first step in the road to robots helping in search and rescue. It will be a very long road - but its definitely one worth pursuing to the end.

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Robots, people and the world: The Smithsonian

12/14/2013

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The Smithsonian Museums are a real treat to visit in Washington D.C. The Natural History Museum has an interesting exhibit on what it means to be human. Walking upright is considered one of the things that sets humans apart from other animals. As the interest in humanoid robotics grows, the question of whether the human form is also the right form for a robot will continue to be explored. Most robots doing real work, e.g. industrial robots or consumer robots like the Roomba, are not humanoid at all. Yet, there is something about the human form, molded by thousands of years of evolution that still fascinates roboticists.

The American Museum of History has a couple of interesting exhibits that seem almost prescient in examining issues that will be central as more robots make their way into the world. The first one I saw examines the 1971 strike by longshoremen on the West Coast. The longshoremen were worried about containerization - the mechanization of the shipping industry and loss of jobs it was going to bring. The exhibit is fascinating, examining the social issues that come with modernization in an industry that was heavily dependent on labor. Robots were at the center of the debate - a cartoon created by the union depicted robots working a ship while two workers looked on puzzled.

The second exhibit examines the role of immigrant workers in the agricultural industry - starting with Chinese immigrant workers in the strawberry farms of Watsonville, California. As the exhibit shows, successive generations of immigrant workers have carried out these jobs. Mechanization has played a big role in the agricultural industry but some tasks are still done by hand by seasonal workers, like the picking of fragile fruit when they ripen. This work is back-breaking and fewer people from the younger generation want to keep doing it. It will be interesting to see how the agriculture industry keeps evolving over the next few years.

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<<Previous

Announcing Kinema Systems

RoboBusiness 2015

Report on the First MoveIt! Community Meeting

First MoveIt! Community Meeting: Sept. 3, 2015 at 8 AM PST (Online)

Save the date for the first MoveIt! Community Meeting: Sept. 3, 2015 (Online)

Software and Robots having the Biggest Impact in Robotics Manipulation Research

Amazon Picking Challenge at ICRA 2015 in Seattle

Top 5 in Robotics 2013

At the DRC Trials: A Detailed Look

Robots, people and the world: The Smithsonian

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