Go to Top
FourByThree

Blog Full Width

Reaching and pointing gestures calculated by a generic gesture system for social robots

September 27, 2016

Complete article Highlights: The proposed method can be used to generate gestures for an arbitrary social robot. This paper focuses on how reaching and pointing gestures are calculated. DH-parameters, orientation of the base frames and joint limits are used as input. Joint angles are calculated using IK with a cost-function for natural postures. The method was validated on several robots, including NAO, Justin and ASIMO. Abstract: Since the implementation of …Read More

Co-bots bring Industry 4.0 to Ford’s German plant

August 26, 2016

Source: The Machinist Are first being used to help workers fit shock absorbers to Fiesta cars. More than 100 years after the first cars rolled off Henry Ford’s pioneering assembly line, Ford Motor Company is breaking new ground in the way workers and robots are collaborating to manufacture vehicles. New collaborative robots, also known as co-bots, are first being used to help workers fit shock absorbers to Fiesta cars, a …Read More

The Business of Automation, Betting on Robots

August 16, 2016

Source: Robotic Industries Association (RIA) Once again, the robotics industry broke its own record. In 2015, worldwide industrial robot sales rose by 8 percent, surpassing for the first time 240,000 units globally, according to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR). For the third year in a row, robots sales are at an all-time high. By 2018, the IFR estimates that 2.3 million industrial robots will be in operation across the …Read More

Food industry palletizing cobot with vision system works in tight quarters

August 9, 2016

Source: Universal Robots Watch video Norwegian meat producer Nortura needed to optimize palletizing, but with limited floor space and a tight budget. A UR10 robot with a ceiling-mounted vision system provided a cost-effective and high-performance palletizing system in one-fifth of the space typically required. If no pallet is present, the floor space is available for other processes. Challenge Typical palletizing robots require a large fixed cell with safety caging that …Read More

This Cloud-Enabled Robot Could Be Your Next Coworker

August 2, 2016

Source: PSFK The further experts hypothesize about the future of our workforce, the more we find ourselves talking about robots and automation. Whilst the prospect of technical unemployment remains a very dire reality for some occupations, there is one startup that is looking to give the future of robotics and animation a collaborative boost. Tend.ai is a cloud-based solution aimed to assist with machine tending processes. The idea behind Tend.ai is …Read More

Cooperation project between DFKI RIC and Volkswagen AG

July 29, 2016

Source: DFKI This initial cooperation project between DFKI RIC and Volkswagen AG (Smart Production Lab) aims at creating the hardware and software basis for future work on the area of human-robot collaboration. The final robot demonstrator of this pilot project possesses multiple sensor modalities for the environment monitoring and is equipped with the ability for online collision-free dual-arm manipulation in a common human-robot workspace. Moreover, the robot can be controlled …Read More

What Makes Collaborative Robots Ergonomic?

July 26, 2016

Source: Robotiq We talk about collaborative robots being “ergonomic” but what do we really mean? In this post we introduce the basics of ergonomics and find out how ergonomic principles are applied to the design of collaborative robots. We also find out that there’s more to cobot ergonomics than first meets the eye. Look at most of the popular collaborative robots and you will notice some similarities: smooth links, rounded corners, …Read More

Manipulation Tasks Using Shared Autonomy: Optimus Robot (MIT)

July 25, 2016

Source: CPDArobotics This video demonstrates the Optimus Robot performing manipulation tasks using shared autonomy. A human operator performs the task planning with assisted perception and assisted motion planning. The robot has no previous knowledge about the tasks and objects have no fiducials. Only on-board sensing is used (no sensors external to the robot). Robot motion is shown 1X and no robot motion has been edited. Planning actions are shown on …Read More

Update on the Mid Project Review Meeting

July 22, 2016

Yesterday, July 21 2016, FourByThree’s Mid Project Review Meeting was celebrated at IK4-TEKNIKER’s headquarters in Eibar, Basque Country, Spain. Instead of presenting each of the workpackages separatedly, the agenda was scheduled around the main areas of the project: modular design, actuators, programming framework, safety aspects, interaction, control and non-technical issues like the status of the four pilot scenarios, dissemination, exploitation and administration. Current status and foreseen activities were discussed for …Read More