New video: How to program a robot over the Internet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FO2nCd9ZpFQ Also here are some comparisons with other robots. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-1-9E7XooM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7ICjHKHKzk

A picture of David Sands painted by an ST robot arm using AI software developed by Pindar van Arman

R12 is now 10 years old! 10 years ago an enthusiast designed a cardboard cutout of the R12. It really is superb and great for young (or old) to try. You can get the designs from our downloads page - look for 2 files starting "cardboard..."

Sneak peak: automatic position learning using vision

Normally with RoboForth positions are programmed using a teach pad. In JOG mode the user moves the robot in increments over and then down onto the object to be picked up, maybe making small adjustments in X,Y,Z and gripper angle then clicks the learn button on screen.

ST Robotics have been working on using a camera to locate an object and send coordinates to the robot controller. This includes the correct angle for the gripper. The software then learns the position as a PLACE name. The actual coordinates of the object are not of interest. The system can return to the learned position under program control.
If the position changes it may be quickly re-learned using the same vision system.

The process of learning the position involves moving the robot with camera over the object until it is in the viewport of the vision system. Rather than use the teach pad a joystick is employed which allows for continuous motion in straight lines in X,Y and Z directions.

The picture above shows the development setup. Please see the video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxcdBjwoNvQ

Ultimately it will be possible to learn many different positions and have different objects.

Talk to your robot!

Control of an ST robot is a man-machine conversation so why not use speech?

In reality you really need text to program anything complex but once programmed you could easily have a few voice commands. The speech engine we use is like the macro buttons on RobWin. You can say a single word but have the system send a whole string to the robot. Do see it in action:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTh_0ZR7-aE&t=1s

We have created an art form out of an R12 robot. It has no works inside but red and blue LEDs. Then we put it in a glass cabinet in the reception in Orwell House (Cambridge).

We now have JERK in the software. Jerk is basically the rate of increase of acceleration (like acceleration is the rate of increase of speed). To better understand it imagine you are in a car which suddenly accelerates. At the start you will push back in the seat so your personal acceleration will be delayed. In a robot this is when all the elasticity in the drive is taken out before actual acceleration can begin. Its worst manifestation is when the robot stops e.g. to grip something. Deceleration stops but the robot moves on before bouncing back. So with JERK this deceleration tapers off resulting in a smooth stop. The other new feature is you can program a special deceleration for emergency stop. We are not interested in precision in this case, we just want to stop as soon as possible. All this is now version 17 of RoboForth. I have developed the finest robot software on the planet and that's it. No more.

Our two students, Kazuo and Aaryaman this year did an amazing job creating a robotic dog. They both achieved Nuffield Research Placements scheme and the British Science Association Gold CREST awards.

A robot dog may sound simple but it was a major engineering exercise requiring CAD mechanical design, electronics and software including some quite difficult problems for example, synchronism of leg motors. What was especially satisfying was seeing them collaborate often disagreeing yet always talking through problems and agreeing a solution. When they encountered a problem I would do no more than suggest a solution or a particular component or give them the tools they needed (e.g. digital oscilloscope). They would then dive in and leave me behind with their thinking. They were creative and true problem solving engineers. They will go far.

Oh and guess what they named it: K9 !

wow, really old video of Joseph Engelberger and one of the first industrial robots on the Johnny Carson show. https://web.archive.org/web/20120113174852/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKo6KMkuVAk

15th June 2016:

Another successful day at Duxford showing the students how to build and program robots
Our people left to right: Kyle, 'DJ', Kutlo.

27 Steps

Interesting approach by Nish Kothari & Anesta Iwan in San Francisco:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/zoe-me-robotic-relationship-nish-kothari?trk=hp-feed-article-title-like

They operated our robot remotely over Webcam and Telnet and had a unique experience. They named the robot Zoe and we are adopting that name too!

strange videos on Vimeo

I had a visitor last week for a quick demonstration and they filmed the demo. For some reason they posted the videos on Vimeo

It's now on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P41FQnX6Mxw

Successful completion of Nuffield and Crest Award projects by two students

STEM Team East arrange summer placements for students across the whole of Anglia region. ST Robotics facilitated a summer research project for Frances Conboy from Hills Road College, Cambridge and Xiaoding (Tom) Lu from the Perse School, Cambridge.

The project they chose was a simplified Cubli device and was probably too ambitious but they did a great job.

Left to right: the students Francis and Tom discussing the engineering principles with ST Robotics' intern, Kutlo Kebaikanye from Cambridge University.

The students then had to display posters on their projects at the Nuffield ceremony held at Anglia Ruskin University campus. Frances was awarded her Nuffield certificate and Tom gained his Crest Award.

This is Frances explaining the project to visitors.

Tom explaining the project to visitors

STEM event at Duxford 2015

Once again ST had tables at the STEM Fair 1st July 2015 – Secondary Day for Years 7-13 at the Imperial War Museum, Duxford near Cambridge. Two sets of students built robots using our GoForth kits. We had quite a team present, all helping kids see what robotics is all about.This year, as you can see, we all had ST Robotics T-shirts!

Students with Kyle

Kutlo answering student's questions

Cheryl helping a student

David Sands explaining the bench top robot and RoboForth

Kyle figuring out a problem with a microcontroller

STEM event at Duxford

ST had tables at the STEM Fair 12th June 2014 – Secondary Day for Years 7-13 at the Imperial War Museum, Duxford near Cambridge. Two sets of students build robots using our GoForth kits. Cheryl started them off with the mechanics (Meccano) with Geena showing the students how to program motion on what they built.

Second group of students building robots. Cheryl is far left and Geena is on right.

Robotic dancers

Set up to do a panoramic video of the group at this table. The camera is on the robotc axis. The computer screen shows the software in front window over the CAD system in the back window.

ST Robotics participated at ACT, a charity to raise money for Addenbrookes Hospital. This event was to raise money for a Da Vinci surgery robot and ST Robotics were invited as the only robotics company they could find in Cambridge. It was held at Cambridge Cine World at the launch of Iron Man 3.

ST Robotics participated at the Cambridge (UK) Science Fair Saturday 16 March 2013, "Living with Robots". Unfortunately the lady who took the pictures moved them to her Apple Macbook which has since died. It will not switch on.

Nuffield Award Ceremony

We were pleased to yet again have helped a young person on the road to an engineering career. Using our GoForth robotics kit Felix Barker constructed a robotic paper folder. Although not visually a robot it nevertheless used the robotics principles of design, mechanics, electronics and software.

The award ceremony was on 8th November at the Mary Allen building, University of Cambridge. Pictures is Geena Chacko, ST Robotics applications engineer and STEM ambassador with Felix Barker.

We won Stemnet award

Thanks to our efforts with our GoForth schools project we were nominated for the Stemnet award and we won!
http://www.stemnet.org.uk/news/view/1232347

Thanks to Geena for all her hard work. She now gets to visit CERN!
The schools project is here:
http://forth-robotics.org/

2012 Mercer Science and Engineering Fair

Mathew Monforte, VP ST Robotics, Princeton, was pleased to be invited to judge entries at the annual Mercer county Science and Engineering fair. There was a considerable number of mini-booths created by the students. See http://mercersec.org/
Picture on right shows Mathew judging one of the entries.