Control Engineering

Paul Grayson

iRobot - RoboBusiness 2008 demonstrations

RoboBusiness 2008
Since iRobot was founded, in1990 by roboticists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, iRobot has sold more than 2.5 million Home Robots and over 1,200 PackBot® Tactical Mobile Robots. The tactical robots have been deployed worldwide, mostly in Iraq or Afghanistan and have performed tens of thousands of missions. The robots have saved scores of soldiers’ lives and iRobot has won numerous awards. "From cleaning floors to disarming explosives, we constantly strive to find better ways to tackle dull, dirty, and dangerous missions—with better results.” -- iRobot literature. Their designs are behavior-based, artificially intelligent robots, powered by proprietary AWARETM Robot Intelligence System, designed to navigate through complex and dynamic real-world situations ranging from maneuvering around furniture to searching abandoned buildings. While highly sophisticated, the robots are practical and new controllers make them easier to use.   As robots log longer and longer hours searching for people or objects of interest, operators of these robots are asking that these robots have more autonomy built into them to lighten the operators workload. 


Jerry Hirshberg - Author

NEW ADDITION TO THE AIM TECHNICAL LIBRARY
The Creative Priority: Driving Innovative Business In The Real World, by Jerry Hirshberg, c1998, Harper Business is a book I picked up at Goodwill this weekend. Jerry is the founder and former president of Nissan Design International. The dust jacket and flyleaf of the book say that the book explains how he created an environment and procedures that allow creative people to flourish while solving design problems for Nissan car company. For those of you who would be interested in getting a copy of your own, while I paid $2 for my copy at Goodwill, I just saw it available from online booksellers for $0.01 plus shipping and handling. Not a bad price for what amounts to about 8 hours of advice from an expert in their field. I have found the books that I buy from the online used book sellers are a great education in technical subjects (the basics don't change) and the technical journals that I subscribe to, like Control Engineering Magazine, bring me up to date on what the latest in the field is. Children's books on technical subjects often times have better pictures in them than books meant for adults, so you will find children’s books scattered throughout the collection.

2007 DARPA Urban Challenge

Photo by AIM Team members Linda & Tom Graham

ANTICIPATION
This photo, taken by AIM Team members Linda & Tom Graham while the jumbotrons were warming up, shows that DARPA Urban Challenge officials were prepared for the large crowd that showed up later to attend the race. Cameras spread around course allowed people in this area to follow the action through the 55 miles of the rally style race.  Will the new president in 2009 and her/his appointed head of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency want to continue the DARPA race series as a way to stimulate robot development?

GO ROBOTS !

 

Paul F. Grayson - Chief Engineer
AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL MAGIC, LLC
Racing to build technology that saves soldier's lives.
390 4-Mile Rd. S.
Traverse City, MI 49686-8411
(231) 946-0187, (231) 883-4463 Cell
pgrayson@aimagic.org
AIM: http://aimagic.org
Robot Club: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/robotcluboftraversecitymi/
CE Magazine: http://www.controleng.com/blog/1180000318.html

Industries: Machine Control