Weekly Robotics #13 11 Nov 2018

1) ESIM - An Open Event Camera Simulator.

http://rpg.ifi.uzh.ch/esim.html

INFO: Compared to traditional cameras the event cameras measure the change in pixel intensity, in the form of asynchronous events. This 30s YouTube video is a good comparison between the event and traditional cameras. ESIM is an open source event camera simulator allowing simulation of arbitrary camera motion in 3D scenes. The data provided by the sim are: events, standard images, inertial measurements, ground truth information (pose, velocity, depth and optical flow maps).

2) OpenDog quadruped robot video series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BoPoWF_FwY&list=PLpwJoq86vov_PkA0bla0eiUTsCAPi_mZf

INFO: This playlist by James Bruton contains is a build log of his open source dog robot. It’s a great mixture of design, hardware and control systems work. Up to date there are 13 videos in the series.

3) European Robotics Week 2018.

https://www.eu-robotics.net/robotics_week/events/index.html

INFO: European Robotics Week 2018 will take place from 16 to 25th of November all around Europe. There are over 1000 events planned for those days in the page above you will find an interactive map together with a full list of events.

4) Inspexel - an open source library for Dynamixel motors.

https://github.com/gottliebtfreitag/inspexel/

INFO: The library support both V1 and V2 Dynamixel protocol, provides automatic motor discovery, supports all baud rates and according to the description in the repository it support all Dynamixel motors that are currently produced.

5) Understanding quaternions.

https://www.3dgep.com/understanding-quaternions/

INFO: Need a refresher on quaternions? Start here. Or if you’d like more visual explanation then you can find it in this youtube video.

6) Pointcloudprinter.

https://github.com/marian42/pointcloudprinter

INFO: If you are creatig point clouds from your UAV or other robotic system you might be interested in the above software that transforms point cloud data into solid meshes for 3D printing.

7) Publication of the week - SFV: Reinforcement Learning of Physical Skills from Videos (2018).

https://xbpeng.github.io/projects/SFV/index.html

INFO: The work contained in this publication (don’t forget to checkout the videos and a blog post) allows simulated characters to learn dynamic movements from videos (hence the name SFV - Skills From Videos). The presented framework takes a video as an input, performs pose estimation, motion reconstruction and finally performs motion imitation in the simulation.

Careers

0) Would you like to advertise an open position in a robotics related company?

https://weeklyrobotics.com/About

INFO: If you would like us to include your open position in the hiring section please feel free to send us an e-mail.

1) Voyage (Pao Alto, CA, US) - Various Positions.

https://voyage.auto/careers/

INFO: Voyage builds autonomous vehicles.

2) Boston Dynamics (Waltham, MA, US) - Various positions.

https://www.bostondynamics.com/jobs

INFO: Boston Dynamics is developping advanced dynamic robots, including Spot, Atlas, Handle, and others.

3) National Oceanography Centre (Southampton, UK) - Robotic Systems Electronics Engineer.

https://www.noc.ac.uk/jobs/robotic-systems-electronics-engineer

INFO: The National Oceanography Centre (NOC) is an UK national research organisation, delivering integrated marine science and technology from the coast to the deep ocean.

4) CVC (Barcelona, Spain) - Senior Software Engineer for CARLA.

http://www.cvc.uab.es/?p=4444

INFO: Computer Vision Center is looking for Senior Software Engineers to work on CARLA - an open source simulator for autonomous driving research (we featured CARLA in Weekly Robotics #8).

5) Maidbot (Austin, TX, US) - Various Positions.

http://maidbot.com/careers/

INFO: Maidbot serves the commercial cleaning industry by leaving dull, dirty, and dangerous tasks to autonomous solutions, allowing humans to focus on more meaningful and enjoyable work.