Robot show

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It was packed with unemployed, flat broke programmers.  As far as jobs, there was 1 engineering job at NASA which required many more years of college & had a line of guys wanting to get in.  There is far more talent than demand.  Stock & buyout prices don't reflect the real economy.

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Earthquake simulator using air bags from a car suspension.

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Pneumatic robot arms.

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There were lots of these things.

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The mighty Roomba add-on.

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Where the XV-11 lidar sensor comes from.  They were still using crusty NiMH batteries & relying more on brushing than sucking in their next revision.  It's a shame the robotics can't be combined with 1 of the many high end portable vacuum cleaners.

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Someone still trying to get that thing to work.

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Exosuits were the rage, years ago.  There's still someone working on them.  Still no demo of someone lifting something real heavy.

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If these startups merely used a beautiful woman in their demos, they would be bought by Google for $50 billion.

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Version 1 of the sixense position sensor abounded in virtual reality & remote manipulator applications.  Its range was only 3ft, beyond which it suddenly died.  In range, it very accurately sensed position, considering it only had a magnetic field, but it had a lot of lag.  There is great demand for position sensing.  Without it, these remote manipulator applications have to rely on keyboard input.

This particular application was a turd.  There was a real trick to calibrating it so the virtual arms appeared anywhere near your real arms.  The lag made it very hard to manipulate any virtual objects.  Got nauseous before succeeding.

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A piece of the mighty Davinci surgery robot was there, but no complete robot.

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The mechanisms were hanging out.

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All those wires & pieces operating on the ragged edge of failure make for some exciting surgery.

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There were some job openings, all for lawyers & accountants, but no engineers.

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A remote manipulator being operated by a sixense position sensor.  Very hard to use.

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A bench microscope using a DSLR.

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Bosch has an industrial robotics division, just like Denso.

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Occulus Riftbook wasn't there, but there were a few version 1 headsets with long lines of men waiting to try them on.  Found it as nauseating as every other POV game.  There was a lot of lag.

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A wall climbing robot that uses 5000V to generate static cling.

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 A form of locomotion based on the cytoskeleton.  It looked like a cheap way for hobbyists to get locomotion.

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 The actuators were either winches or

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Very expensive linear motors.

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 Despite 50 years of budget cuts, NASA still had 1 extremely over engineered piece of aluminum that put the after-tax hobbyist projects to shame.

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There was a picture of the robot used in Innerspace to handle the microchip. The guy who invented the Unimate was also there.  Didn't really believe it was the exact robot & the guy never heard of Innerspace, so didn't photograph everything.  A quick review of the DVD collection revealed

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it was indeed the same robot, if not the same model number from the movie.  It was the 1st robot arm which used direct drive stepper motors & it was patented.  1 of the students of the guy who invented it founded a startup that was sold to Google.


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Pressure sensor with position.

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Cheap 2 axis milling machine.

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Boring.

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Biomorphic walking robots made by folding paper & throwing in a bunch of servos.  They scurried pretty fast, on their paper legs.  That took a lot of mechanical engineering.  Only useful in Calif*, where it no longer rains.

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3 generations of FOG gyros, including a russian gyro.  The newest & smallest one is $1000.

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After seeing all those government & academic projects, the homebrew clubs were just plain sad.  With so many people now building robots at home & a firmly established level of sophistication that diy robots are now affiliated with, it was clear why building something at home doesn't get jobs anymore.

 

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There are a lot more people making robots at home than before. 

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There were definitely signs of very limited after-tax income, not having the means to use the ideal components, projects being started & stopped over many years, a major achievement in just getting something to move on its own.

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Pick n place machine from

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Telepresence robots abounded.

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Something to do with beards & hair.

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Automotive lidar.

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It could be an artform.  It updated at some 5Hz.

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It had to spin very fast to get 5Hz.

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Very simple $180 submarine robot.  No doubt, the waterproof motors are a big expense.   The guy couldn't get it balanced & the water wasn't deep enough, so it just floated on the surface.

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There was a 3D Robotics Iris, but no need to photograph it.

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Running back home.

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Comments

  • Thank You Jack,

    Love your perspective as always.

    We need to Kickstart the $300.00 3 axis FOG.

    Then we can sell it to Google for umpteen billion.

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