2023 was the very best 12 months ever for robotics. I say this each 12 months, however yearly it’s true, as a result of the robotics area appears to be all the time poised on the sting of adjusting completely all the things. Is 2024 going to be even higher? Will or not it’s the 12 months the place humanoids, or AI, or one thing else makes our lives superb? Possibly! Who is aware of! However both approach, it’ll be thrilling, and we’ll be right here because it occurs.
As we stay up for 2024, right here’s a glance again at a few of our hottest tales of 2023. I hope you loved studying them as a lot as I loved writing them!
Roombas on the Finish of the World
My favourite story to report and write in 2023 was this story of the weird existence of the Roombas that stay and work on the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station. A single image that I noticed whereas casually searching via the weblog of a South Pole infrastructure engineer took me down a loopy rabbit gap of Antarctic hijinks, the place a small variety of people relied on some robotic vacuums to assist hold themselves sane in probably the most remoted place on Earth.
This Robotic Might Be the Key to Empowering Folks With Disabilities
This story about Henry and Jane Evans, Willow Storage, and Hi there Robotic superbly tied collectively one thing like a decade and a half of my historical past as a robotics journalist. I acquired to know the parents at Willow early on in my profession, and noticed the PR2 performing some superb work, together with with Henry and Jane. However the PR2 was by no means going to be a sensible robotic for anybody, and it took the expertise and fervour of Hi there Robotic to design the {hardware} and software program to make PR2’s guarantees into one thing real-world helpful.
What Flight 50 Means for the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter
The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter is presently wanting ahead to its seventieth flight, which is astonishing for a expertise demo that was solely actually anticipated to fly 5 occasions. Arguably, this little helicopter is among the most excessive autonomous techniques that people have ever constructed. I’ve written a bunch about Ginny over the previous couple of years and talked to a number of totally different members of her staff. However Flight 50 was a particular milestone, and on this interview, Ingenuity staff lead Teddy Tzanetos talks about why.
It’s Completely Fantastic for Humanoid Robots to Fall Down
We’re going to be seeing much more robots strolling round over the following 12 months, and that additionally means we’re going to be seeing much more robots failing to stroll round in a technique or one other. Movies of robots falling are inclined to go loopy on social media, however the general public who see them gained’t have any thought concerning the underlying context. On this article, two of the businesses with probably the most expertise constructing humanoids (Boston Dynamics and Agility Robotics) clarify why robots falling down is definitely not a giant deal in any respect.
Watch This Large Chopstick Robotic Deal with Bins With Ease
It’s not typically {that a} robotic is ready to mix a really novel design with an instantly sensible industrial software, however Dextrous Robotics was in a position to do it with their big chopstick field manipulator, and our readers actually appreciated it. Bins are a compelling near-term software for robots, however the go-to manipulation method that we see again and again is suction. Dextrous’ method is completely distinctive, and it looks as if a gimmick—till you see it in motion.
Superhuman Pace: How Autonomous Drones Beat the Finest Human Racers
People can do some fairly unimaginable issues, and watching a human demonstrating some ability that they’re the precise greatest on this planet at is fascinating—particularly in the event that they’re liable to shedding that high spot to a robotic. This race between world champion drone racers and autonomous drones from ETH Zurich befell in 2022, however I needed to anticipate the underlying analysis to be revealed earlier than I used to be allowed to inform the entire story.
How Disney Packed Huge Emotion Right into a Little Robotic
It’s refreshing to put in writing about Disney’s robots, as a result of considerably uniquely, they’re designed for the first function of bringing people pleasure. Disney goes about this methodically, although, and we’re all the time excited to have the ability to share the analysis underlying all the things that they do. These are a few of my favourite tales to inform, the place there’s an excellent cool robotic that simply will get cooler when the individuals behind it clarify the way it does what it does.
Stowing Is a “Lovely Downside” That Amazon Is Fixing With Robots
Robotics is filled with issues which are arduous, and a type of issues is stowing—the method of packing objects into bins in a warehouse. Stowing is the other of choosing, which is one thing that warehouse robots are getting fairly good at, however stowing can also be rather more troublesome. “For me, it’s arduous, but it surely’s not too arduous,” Amazon senior supervisor of utilized sciences Aaron Parness advised us for this text. “It’s on the reducing fringe of what’s possible for robots, and it’s loopy enjoyable to work on.”
Your Robotic Avatar Is Nearly Prepared
As a lot as we love robots, people are nonetheless a lot, a lot better at quite a lot of stuff. One factor that people are notably unhealthy at, although, is being bodily current in far-off locations. The Avatar XPrize competitors mixed human brains with robotic embodiments, and the outcomes had been truthfully a lot better than anticipated. With the correct {hardware} and the correct interface, the competitors confirmed that people and robots could make a unbelievable staff.
The entire Humanoid Robots
And eventually, our high robotics protection space for 2023 was humanoid robots. Or, extra particularly, humanoid robots which are (supposedly) poised to enter the labor drive. The final time we had this a lot humanoid robotic protection was in all probability in 2015 surrounding the DARPA Robotics Problem Finals, and it’s not like there’s been a gradual improve or something—humanoids simply went completely bonkers in 2023, with one thing like a dozen firms creating human-scale bipedal robots with near-term industrial aspirations.
