FIRST’s Post

If you're having rough days throughout the week, think about our beloved test dummy, Mr. Robot. 🤖 For Week 4’s assignment, the F7 cohort mastered #ragdoll physics in #unity trying different methods to initiate a ragdoll state, whether swapping the prefab or iterating through its rigid bodies 🦿 Curious how the students pulled it off? Some mines employ #colliders to detect nearby robots. When a robot approaches a #raycast, these mines activate, setting off an explosion💥 Robots can be exchanged for ragdoll #variants featuring non-kinematic rigid bodies, making them susceptible to forces like explosions, which dynamically affect the body parts. Thank you Mr. Robot, for demonstrating the art of ragdoll physics and the impact of simulated forces for the XR Bootcamp students. We students of the XR Bootcamp will never forget, that Mr Robot carved the way for a new generation of Spatial Computing XR developers. Accelerate!🚀

There is still time to register for the inaugural Space Robotics Workshop, part of the IEEE Space Computing + Space Mission Challenges for Information Technology, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA, on July 17-18. The field of space robotics is entering a transformative era, marked by ambitious science and exploration missions, the emergence of a new space economy, and rapid advancements in AI, sensors, and computation. We’re bringing together top experts from academia, industry, and government in robotics, AI, flight software, and mission operations to address the broad spectrum of opportunities and challenges presented by this new era. The SRW is organized around themed sessions: 1️⃣: Scaling up Robotics via Foundation Models: Exploring Opportunities and Challenges 2️⃣: Multi-Modal Robotic Cooperation for Next-Gen Space Missions 3️⃣: Space Use Cases for AI: Exploring Real Objectives and Challenges for Modern Robotics 4️⃣: Bots Before Boots: Venturing into New Worlds with Humanoid Robots as Modern Explorers We’ll also have a half-day tutorial session co-led with NVIDIA on Robotics Simulation with NVIDIA Isaac Sim and Omniverse. We look forward to seeing you there! Register at: https://lnkd.in/eUBAG3Gq Agenda: https://lnkd.in/gcRhuEpy Antoine Richard Meera Day Towler, P.E.

🌟 Search-and-Rescue Robot Dog: Autonomous Exploration and Visual SLAM with Unitree Go1 🌟 I'm thrilled to share a major development in my journey through the MS in Robotics program, here at Northwestern University. 🤖 🏆 Goal: As my personal Winter Project, over the past 10 weeks I developed #ros2 packages for a #UnitreeGo1 🐕🦺 to autonomously explore an outdoor environment, to search and locate a missing person ⛑ . 💪 Motivation: To allow robots to look for people missing in a natural environment, where gathering a search party ad-hoc is difficult. This leverages the unique advantages that legged robots 🦿 as well as visual SLAM 👁️ possess, in unmapped environments. 🛠 Setup: The dog (a Unitree Robotics Go1) is equipped with a Zed 2i camera by Stereolabs and uses its built-in Visual-Inertial Odometry (VIO) and mapping for SLAM 🗺️, object detection for detecting human beings🧍, a frontier exploration algorithm for searching and environment 🔍, and the Nav Stack by Open Navigation LLC for traveling to goal poses 🧭. Much of the work in this project has been about integrating different systems using ROS2 Humble on an NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano. 🌟 Final Product: At this stage, the frontier exploration algorithm is more explorative than exploitative and therefore only suitable for dense environments and not sparse outdoor environments. This video shows a teleoperated concept of the final prototype, and more information about this is given on: https://lnkd.in/g6bdH4_F 🤩 To see more cool projects like this, please check out my portfolio: https://lnkd.in/g9C5ux9c. I've documented 17 of my best projects here :) Stay tuned for more updates as I continue to delve into the fascinating world of robotics and automation! Open Robotics The Graduate School at Northwestern University McCormick School of Engineering #robotics #computervision #leggedrobots #slam #technology #researchanddevelopment #innovation #engineering

#BeyondMathTransformsEngineeringWithPhysicsAI BeyondMath has successfully raised $8 million in seed funding to revolutionize engineering design using AI trained on the vast knowledge of physics. By leveraging advanced AI models, BeyondMath aims to accelerate engineering simulations up to 1,000 times faster. The company’s platform enables rapid assessment of design concepts without the need for physical prototypes or expensive supercomputing simulations. This innovation holds promise for industries ranging from automotive to data centers. Notably, BeyondMath collaborated with a Formula One team to enhance race car aerodynamics, showcasing the platform's potential to replace costly supercomputers. #AIInnovation #BeyondMath #PhysicsAI #EngineeringRevolution #SaasVerse How do you foresee AI changing the landscape of engineering and design in the future?

Excited to share our latest project! 🤖♟️ Over the past months, my colleagues Rayen Belfayez, Mehdi Nouni, and I have been working on a chess-playing robotic arm as part of our studies at the INSAT - Institut National des Sciences Appliquées et de Technologie. This project allowed us to delve deep into robotics, kinematics, and artificial intelligence. Using Arduino for the microcontroller, ROS with RViz for simulation, and Stockfish as the chess engine, we successfully developed a system capable of playing a full game of chess autonomously. We’ve documented every step of our journey in a comprehensive report, which I’m happy to share here. If you're interested in robotics, AI, or chess, feel free to check it out! #Robotics #AI #Chess #Engineering #Arduino #ROS #Stockfish

Join us tomorrow morning LIVE on YouTube for our LAST miniSERIES with MathWorks and a SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT you don't want to miss!! 🤖 📝 💻 Presented by @mathworks Session Three: Interfacing with VRX Environment Learn how you can interface with the VRX simulator and use the tools learned in the previous sessions to accomplish a task! *Our MathWorks miniSERIES is for all humans interested in revolutionizing robotics, cybersecurity, networks, sensors, and big data. Whether you're a student, advisor, judge, alumni member, sponsor, or robotics enthusiast, you're welcome to join us for our tech talks. #RoboNation #MathWorks #TechTalk #STEM #Autonomy #Math #Engineering #Simulink #Gazebo #Jetson #Nano #ComputerEngineering #VRX

We’re proud to share that our team secured 3rd position in the AMD AI Developer Contest in the Robotics AI category! 🚀🤖 We used Luxonis OAK-D Lite camera, OpenCV, and the AMD Kria KR260 platform to build our solution. Although we were invited for a sponsored trip to the #AdvancingAIevent, we were unfortunately unable to attend due to some challenges. However, the experience and knowledge we gained during this competition were invaluable! A huge thank you to AMD for sponsoring the contest and providing such a great platform to showcase innovation in AI and robotics. Looking forward to even more advancements and future opportunities! 🙌 #AI #Robotics #OpenCV #OAKDLite #AMDKriaKR260 #Innovation #Competition #Tech #MachineLearning #AdvancingAI

Strong developments in simulation generation - what use cases do you see? Getting better at generating simulations will help us solve problems across various domains such as entertainment, robotics and design. This paper, authored by Researchers with University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and Cornell University, marks an exciting contribution to this field. It aligns with other impressive advancements in the field, signaling a strong move towards more dynamic and accessible simulation technologies. “Creating high-quality and interactive virtual environments, such as games and simulators, often involves complex and costly manual modeling processes. In this paper, we present Video2Game, a novel approach that automatically converts videos of real-world scenes into realistic and interactive game environments.” https://lnkd.in/d4pusiRj #SimulationTechnology #VirtualReality #GameDevelopment #Innovation #Robotics #TechTrends #ArtificialIntelligence

Summary series of Robotics/AI development over several years Episode 13 Building on the hardware setup introduced in the previous episode, an efficient way to collect data and train models is by utilizing simulators such as the Nvidia Isaac simulator or OpenAI Gym. In this case, we used the Nvidia Isaac simulator as an example. We trained the policy using a state-of-the-art reinforcement learning algorithm, Soft Actor-Critic (SAC). To accelerate training, we ran the policy in parallel across 100 or more independent scenarios, enabling the robotic arm to successfully stack a red block on top of a green one. Enjoy the video.

The subtle gamification in Slooh sure motivates students to stay engaged! I've got just one item left to capture in the Slooh 100 myself... the Bow-Tie Nebula (NGC 40)... but only 243 of the Slooh 1000. There's a lot to discover in the night sky! #astroedu #astronomy #astronomyeducation #astrophotography #careerreadiness #careertechnicaleducation #cte #edtech #ngss #overvieweffect #scienceeducation #spaceeconomy #spaceeducation #spaceexploration #spacephilosophy #spacescience #spaceworkforce2030 #STEMeducation #STEAMeducation #workforcedevelopment