Robotics
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This post shows something really simple, but I decided to share it here as it took me some time to track down. On Saturday I received the 3D model of an ABB industrial robot – the IRB 6620 I mentioned last week – from Tom Eriksson. He's used a number of tools – including Fusion 360 – to create a gorgeous rendition of this particular robot in Unity. Tom very kindly agreed to share the model, and has spent quite a bit of time helping get it ready for HoloLens. The first version Tom sent unfortunately didn't work for my…
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Following up from last week's post, which included a brief video showing where we're headed with generative design, today's post highlights a speech by my colleague in Autodesk's Office of the CTO (OCTO), Maurice Conti. I've mentioned Maurice before: he has an Applied Research team working on Pier 9 that is currently hiring a Machine Learning + Robotics researcher. Maurice gave a speech at TEDx Portland entitled "The Future of Human Augmentation". It looks at how we're being augmented, not only by computational systems (helping us think) but by robotic systems (helping us make) and by a digital nervous system…
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It's a very welcome long weekend, here in Switzerland, and as the weather's a little brisk I decided to spend at least part of it building robots. Not the kind of robots you'd expect to see on Pier 9, but the kind of robots sold by our friends at LEGO: two different sets I've received as gifts in recent months. So here's a picture of the Mindstorms EV3RSTORM (Christmas) alongside WALL•E (birthday). Unfortunately I don't much rate WALL•E's chances of coming out unscathed from the above encounter: after all, who's ever heard of the plant being mightier that the twirling…
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Last Thursday I received possibly the most interesting job description I've ever seen. A colleague in the Office of the CTO, Maurice Conti, has a team of robotics researchers working in the Applied Research Lab on Pier 9 in San Francisco and is looking to bring Machine Learning expertise into the team. I've talked about the Lab before, and you may also have seen this Guardian coverage of my friend David Thomasson, who works there. I think this might actually be my dream job. There are a few reasons I won't be applying: there's a skills gap (I only have…
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After seeing how we can use Cylon.js to control Sphero's Ollie and BB-8 robots from a browser, and then using the same mechanism from inside a custom AutoCAD command, today we're going to drive these cute little bots based on AutoCAD geometry. The idea is that we'll decompose regular curves – whether lines, arcs, polylines or splines – and use the "segments" as movement instructions for our robots. The approach is simple enough: we'll iterate along the length of each selected curve and generate a set of instructions – really just a set of angles – for the associated bot.…
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After looking at how to control robots using Cylon.js in the last post, in this post we're going to get that working inside AutoCAD. For now with just a command that allows us to move the robots – in a future post we'll analyse geometry and use that to specify the movements. The "controller" code we saw in the last post needed a little updating for use in this way. I went ahead and stripped out the keyboard-related code – as we're using behind a web-service – and added the capability to control individual robots. We want to be able…
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Happy New Year! I hope that those of you who celebrate at this time of year, were able to take a nice, relaxing break. I certainly did. 🙂 Anyway, it's now time for me to ease back into work. But rather than it being an abrupt transition, I've decided to take a look at a pet project that I thought would be pretty fun: controlling robots from inside AutoCAD. The thinking is to outline some possibilities for moving virtual robots inside a floorplan drawing and having their real-world, physical counterparts move as instructed. Perhaps along a specific path, perhaps by…
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As mentioned in the last post, although I'd visited the Exhibit Hall at Autodesk University a couple of times during the prior days, it was really on Thursday that I spent the most time there. One of the highlights, for me, was in the hall leading to the Exhibition Hall itself: the AU Hive. This is the project I'd been introduced to when visiting the Applied Research Lab on Pier 9. It was an interesting experiment in how humans and robots – coordinated by a "controlling intelligence" – could achieve more together than they could separately: to build a structure…
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After getting home late on Friday from the Cloud Accelerator in Prague, on Saturday morning we celebrated my son's 9th birthday (how time flies) with a party for his classmates at Robosphere in La Chaux-de-Fonds, the heart of the Swiss watch-making industry. A fun fact: this town has also had a major impact on both architecture and the automotive industry, being the birthplace of Le Corbusier and Louis Chevrolet. Robosphere is a local organisation dedicated to increasing awareness of robotics and related fields. They have a couple of options for birthday parties: we opted for the "Primo" package – the…
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Back in September, Dyson announced their long-awaited entry into the robo-vacuum market with the Dyson 360 Eye. I was delighted to see an old friend of mine, Mike Aldred, in one of the launch videos: Mike and I were undergraduates at the University of Kent at Canterbury (UKC) together, back in the '90s. I was studying European Computer Science (which meant I was on a 4-year degree programme with the 3rd year spent studying Computer Science in Paris) while Mike was studying Computer Systems Engineering. I vaguely recall having common classes together with Mike, although as Mike started at UKC…