Weekly Robotics #85 06 Apr 2020

There is a high chance you are in isolation/lockdown right now. If you feel talking about robotics can help lift your spirits then feel free to send me a message. The most clicked link last week was the Open Source Turtle Robot instuctable with 16.5% opens.

1) Robots Learning to Move Like Animals.

BAIR

INFO: Researchers at Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Researcher (BAIR) and Google Research had developed a framework that enables legged robots to learn agile skills by imitating animals.

2) Building My Own 50Ah LiFePO4 Lithium Battery Pack.

The Life of Kenneth

INFO: A very nicely written blog article on how to build a battery pack out of 4 LiFePo4 cells and putting them together with a charger in an ammo box.

3) Results 2020 User Survey.

ROS Discourse

INFO: Katherine from Open Source Robotics Foundation shared the results of ROS 2020 user survey. Since I’m actively working on ROS and writing tutorials from time to time I found lots of insightful data in the survey. Hope you will too!

4) Augean Robotics: Mechanizing Food Production From Farm To Table.

Robot Rabbi

INFO: “What on earth is a tractor doing at CES?” - this post by Oliver Mitchell gives a neat overview on robotics in agriculture in the US.

5) I Am Mesmerized By Our New Robotic Vacuum.

dev.to

INFO: A very enjoyable read on a software developer being fascinated by his new low cost robotic vacuum cleaner.

6) Ford Autonomous Vehicle Dataset.

Ford

INFO: Ford has published an autonomous vehicle dataset (for non-commercial use only). If you like laser scanners then you will like this one - each vehicle was equipped with 4 HDL-32E LiDARs. On top of that the dataset contains information IMU, GPS and 7 cameras. The data is provided as ROS bags.

7) Design and Optimal Control of a Tiltrotor Micro Aerial Vehicle for Efficient Omnidirectional Flight.

YouTube (aslteam)

INFO: Normally this video together with this publication would make the “publication of the week”, however because I’m very short on time I didn’t have enough time to fully cover it. From the video and the paper you will learn about the omnidirectional multirotor designed by Researchers at Autonomous System Lab at ETH Zurich.

1) ArduSimple RTK - ROS Integration.

msadowski.github.io

INFO: I got around to testing my u-blox F9P based ArduSimple RTK modules with ROS. In the above blog post I show a minimal integration with ROS that allows to visualize the data without any other hardware then the RTK units.

Job Seekers

In the issue #83 I’ve started this section to try to help out those looking for work in the times of pandemic. If you are currently looking for work then feel free to send me your details in the same format as you can see in the entries below. Please note that I will be able to list up to 5 profiles a week here.

Name: Sagar Eligar

Location: Boulder, CO, USA. Willing to relocate

Skills: Python, Linux, MATLAB, C, ROS, GIT, Coppleia Robotics, Control Systems, and Embedded systems

Profile: I’m a Robotics graduate student working on Mobile Robots, self-balancing robots, and control of robots. Previously I worked on an underwater vehicle AUV

Social Profiles: LinkedIn

Email: sagar.eligar@colorado.edu

