Bots & Brains

From 28 to 30 June, the thirteenth edition of the European Robotics Forum (ERF) will take place in Rotterdam. With about a thousand visitors, this will be the largest robotics event in Europe, where a diverse group of participants, from industry and science to government and end users, will exchange views on a wide range of topics.

Startup technology firm Pony.ai has issued a recall for some versions of its autonomous driving system software. The reason for this recall is an October crash in California, according to U.S. regulators.

NASA’s On-orbit Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing 1 (OSAM-1), the first to robotically refuel a satellite not designed to be serviced, and will also demonstrate assembly and manufacturing technologies and capabilities, has passed its mission critical design review (CDR). This is an important milestone that paves the way for the construction of the spacecraft, payloads, and ground system.

Mexico has officially started the COLMENA Project, the first Mexican lunar exploration mission. The mission, which will land on the moon in June, consists of five small robots that will be placed on the lunar surface. They are already on board the Peregrine Lander, made by the US Astrobotic company, and ready to travel the 384,400 kilometers that separate Earth from the moon.

Tobias Kopp, akademischer Mitarbeiter von Prof. Dr. Steffen Kinkel, Professor an der Fakultät für Informatik und Wirtschaftsinformatik der Hochschule Karlsruhe (Die HKA) und Leiter des Instituts für Lernen und Innovation in Netzwerken (ILIN), verteidigte erfolgreich seine Dissertation und durfte sich anschließend über die seltene Auszeichnung „summa cum laude“ für seine Promotion freuen.

Bosch has acquired Atlatec, provider of high-resolution digital maps for driver assistance and automated driving. The Karlsruhe-based company will become part of the Bosch Cross-Domain Computing Solutions division as an independently operated company. The company, which was spun off from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in 2014, employs around 25 people in Germany, Japan, and the United States.

Several researchers have recently published their findings in providing robots with sensitivity. A Korean research team has developed an electronic skin that can sense tactility just as humans do. And a team of scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS) has introduced a soft haptic sensor that uses computer vision and a deep neural network to accurately estimate where objects come into contact with the sensor and how large the applied forces are. They both work to the aim of robots being able to feel their environment as accurately as humans and animals.

VirtaMed, provider of medical simulation training, and Memic Innovative Surgery, provider of surgical robotic technology, announced a partnership to develop a new virtual reality simulator program to support surgeon skills training for the Hominis Surgical System.

The global market for AI in computer vision will reach $73.7 billion by 2027, is one of the conclusions of the  “AI in Computer Vision Market by Technology, Solutions, Use Cases, Deployment Model and Industry Verticals 2022 – 2027” report by ResearchAndMarkets.com

Researchers from the RIKEN Guardian Robot Project in Japan have made an android child named Nikola that successfully conveys six basic emotions. The new study, published in Frontiers in Psychology, tested how well people could identify six facial expressions—happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, and disgust—which were generated by moving “muscles” in Nikola’s face.