Weekly Robotics #292
The amount of preprints I had to go through for this newsletter issue is stunning. Is a considerable conference coming up, or is it a new reality for robotics? I now have a backlog of over twenty papers I would like to start reading through, and it’s just from this month. I’ll never find time to go over them properly. Do you have any tips on automatically ranking them and finding the best ones? As usual, the publication of the week section is manned by Rodrigo.
Sponsored
Weekly Robotics is being developed thanks to the Patreon supporters and the following business sponsors:
ForzaETH/race_stack
ETH Researchers published an F1TENTH software stack for scaled autonomous cars. The solution is based on ROS 1 Noetic, and the repository has all the nodes, including dockerfile and devcontainers, so it should be pretty easy to hit the ground running with it. To learn more about this work, check out this paper. I highly recommend it, especially since it has lots of nice pictures. I added this project to the awesome-weekly-robotics list so that you can easily find it if you decide to build scale cars.
Vastly Improved Servo Control, Now Without Motor Surgery
Back in issue #189, we featured Adam Bäckström’s servo surgery, which showed how to improve the accuracy of DIY-grade servos. It turns out that Adam is still working on the project and has improved the process so that it does not require breaking apart a DC motor inside. Instead, the necessary sensing is done outside of the motor.
Rebuilding our BATTLEBOT
Hacksmith Industries continues their foray into building battle robots. Learning from their mistakes and rebuilding the team is getting ready to face new opponents. I enjoyed this build log and watching the testing videos.
Recommended by LinkedIn
Creating an autopilot in X-Plane using Python - part 1
This takes me back to my first job, where I spent thousands of hours developing hardware/software in the loop setup for an autopilot using this software. In the blog post, you will learn how to interface with NASA’s X-Plane Connect plugin and read/set some of the data. You can find other blog posts in this series under xplane category on Austin’s website.
Engineering household robots to have a little common sense
As per the article intro: “ With help from a large language model, MIT engineers enabled robots to self-correct after missteps and carry on with their chores”. Robotics + LLM hype continues!
MOOC: Hello (Real) World with ROS – Robot Operating System
The ROS course from the TU Delft team is back! It is hosted on edX, and you should be able to enroll for free without a certificate. According to the ROS discourse announcement, the team updated the course to target ROS 1 Noetic, and it will remain open until October 13th, 2024.
Publication of the Week - “It’s Not a Replacement:” Enabling Parent-Robot Collaboration to Support In-Home Learning Experiences of Young Children
The idea of using robots for health and education is gaining significant traction. This paper presents an experience using Misty II to understand how a robot can collaborate with young children’s apprenticeship. The authors highlight parents’ role in their children’s development and showcase the enhancement of those experiences when using a robot to give more detailed information and even provide prompts to add more to the learning activity. The paper uses many infographics, making the reading lighter and completely worth it.
Events
For more robotic events, check out our event page.