2023 was the perfect 12 months ever for robotics. I say this each 12 months, however yearly it’s true, as a result of the robotics discipline appears to be at all times poised on the sting of adjusting completely all the pieces. Is 2024 going to be even higher? Will or not it’s the 12 months the place humanoids, or AI, or one thing else makes our lives superb? Possibly! Who is aware of! However both means, it’ll be thrilling, and we’ll be right here because it occurs.
As we sit up for 2024, right here’s a glance again at a few of our hottest tales of 2023. I hope you loved studying them as a lot as I loved writing them!
Roombas on the Finish of the World
My favourite story to report and write in 2023 was this story of the weird existence of the Roombas that dwell and work on the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station. A single image that I noticed whereas casually searching by the weblog of a South Pole infrastructure engineer took me down a loopy rabbit gap of Antarctic hijinks, the place a small variety of people relied on some robotic vacuums to assist preserve themselves sane in probably the most remoted place on Earth.
This Robotic May Be the Key to Empowering Folks With Disabilities
This story about Henry and Jane Evans, Willow Storage, and Whats up Robotic fantastically tied collectively one thing like a decade and a half of my historical past as a robotics journalist. I acquired to know the oldsters at Willow early on in my profession, and noticed the PR2 doing a little superb work, together with with Henry and Jane. However the PR2 was by no means going to be a sensible robotic for anybody, and it took the expertise and fervour of Whats up Robotic to design the {hardware} and software program to make PR2’s guarantees into one thing real-world helpful.
What Flight 50 Means for the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter
The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter is at the moment trying ahead to its seventieth flight, which is astonishing for a expertise demo that was solely actually anticipated to fly 5 instances. Arguably, this little helicopter is without doubt one of the most excessive autonomous techniques that people have ever constructed. I’ve written a bunch about Ginny over the previous few years and talked to a number of totally different members of her crew. However Flight 50 was a particular milestone, and on this interview, Ingenuity crew lead Teddy Tzanetos talks about why.
It’s Completely Effective for Humanoid Robots to Fall Down
We’re going to be seeing much more robots strolling round over the subsequent 12 months, and that additionally means we’re going to be seeing much more robots failing to stroll round in a technique or one other. Movies of robots falling are likely to go loopy on social media, however most people who see them gained’t have any thought in regards to the underlying context. On this article, two of the businesses with probably the most expertise constructing humanoids (Boston Dynamics and Agility Robotics) clarify why robots falling down is definitely not an enormous deal in any respect.
Watch This Large Chopstick Robotic Deal with Bins With Ease
It’s not typically {that a} robotic is ready to mix a very novel design with an instantly sensible industrial software, however Dextrous Robotics was capable of do it with their big chopstick field manipulator, and our readers definitely appreciated it. Bins are a compelling near-term software for robots, however the go-to manipulation approach that we see again and again is suction. Dextrous’ strategy is completely distinctive, and it looks like a gimmick—till you see it in motion.
Superhuman Pace: How Autonomous Drones Beat the Greatest Human Racers
People can do some fairly unbelievable issues, and watching a human demonstrating some ability that they’re the precise finest on the earth at is fascinating—particularly in the event that they’re liable to shedding that high spot to a robotic. This race between world champion drone racers and autonomous drones from ETH Zurich passed off in 2022, however I needed to watch for the underlying analysis to be printed earlier than I used to be allowed to inform the entire story.
How Disney Packed Large Emotion Right into a Little Robotic
It’s refreshing to put in writing about Disney’s robots, as a result of considerably uniquely, they’re designed for the first function of bringing people pleasure. Disney goes about this methodically, although, and we’re at all times excited to have the ability to share the analysis underlying all the pieces that they do. These are a few of my favourite tales to inform, the place there’s an excellent cool robotic that simply will get cooler when the individuals behind it clarify the way it does what it does.
Stowing Is a “Stunning Drawback” That Amazon Is Fixing With Robots
Robotics is filled with issues which might be laborious, and a kind of issues is stowing—the method of packing objects into bins in a warehouse. Stowing is the alternative of choosing, which is one thing that warehouse robots are getting fairly good at, however stowing can also be way more tough. “For me, it’s laborious, but it surely’s not too laborious,” Amazon senior supervisor of utilized sciences Aaron Parness informed us for this text. “It’s on the reducing fringe of what’s possible for robots, and it’s loopy enjoyable to work on.”
Your Robotic Avatar Is Virtually Prepared
As a lot as we love robots, people are nonetheless a lot, significantly better at numerous stuff. One factor that people are notably unhealthy at, although, is being bodily current in distant locations. The Avatar XPrize competitors mixed human brains with robotic embodiments, and the outcomes have been actually significantly better than anticipated. With the proper {hardware} and the proper interface, the competitors confirmed that people and robots could make a unbelievable crew.
The entire Humanoid Robots
And at last, our high robotics protection space for 2023 was humanoid robots. Or, extra particularly, humanoid robots which might be (supposedly) poised to enter the labor pressure. The final time we had this a lot humanoid robotic protection was most likely in 2015 surrounding the DARPA Robotics Problem Finals, and it’s not like there’s been a gradual enhance or something—humanoids simply went completely bonkers in 2023, with one thing like a dozen corporations growing human-scale bipedal robots with near-term industrial aspirations.
