ROS robotics news: January 2015 Archives

Software Engineer position at Cyberdyne Inc. (Japan)

By Ugo Cupcic on January 28, 2015 12:15 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

from Martin Peris Martorell via ros-users@

"Dreaming" or "Passion" is valuable, but a "Heart for Caring for Others" is much more important. If one has the heart to care for people and society, one cannot idly stand by, but will proactively think and take immediate actions for a brighter future. This is the heart of Cyberdyne and we are looking for a Software Engineer experienced in ROS to help shaping that future.

About the job

We require a software engineer with broad experience in ROS and its components: simulators, visualisation tools, navigation, sensors, actuators and others. You will have the chance to join a highly dynamic and creative group of engineers with different backgrounds and skills working on real-world robotic applications.

Your main responsibilities will be:
- Develop and maintain ROS software packages.
- Prototype robots in simulated environment.
- Implement and test algorithms in both simulated and real robots.

Requirements
- MSc in Computer Science or related field (preferable PhD)
- ROS proficiency
- Fluency in C/C++ (other languages are welcome)
- Software Development experience under Linux/OS X environment
- Hands-on experience with autonomous robots

Nice to have
- PLC experience
- Japanese language ability
- Currently residing in Japan (although we can sponsor a Visa)

If you feel you are the person we are looking for, let me know at martin_peris@cyberdyne.jp, send your cover letter (max 1 page) and your CV (max 2 pages) in PDF format. And to proof that you are human (or at least a robotic life form advanced enough to understand this e-mail and fulfil the requirements of the job position) state "Hasta la vista, baby" in the subject of your e-mail.

We are looking forward to hearing from you.

Best regards.

New modular Care-O-bot generation released: Care-O-bot 4

By Tully Foote on January 27, 2015 6:28 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

From Florian Weißhardt at Fraunhofer IPA via ros-users@

We've finished the new modular service robot generation of Care-O-bot - Care-O-bot 4.

In comparison to its predecessors, Care-O-bot 4 stands out in its modular design, extraordinary agility and multi-modal interactivity. The five independent modules - mobile base, torso, arms, sensor ring, head - are easily plugged through standard connectors. Care-O-bot can be thus be individually configured depending on the intended application: you can use the compact omnidirectional mobile base alone as a compact transportation device for payloads up to 150 kg. Equip the robot with one arm for simple manipulation tasks or with two arms for bimanual manipulation. If your application requires a large workspace of the arms, a spherical joint can be integrated that allows the torso to roll, pitch and yaw. This can be particularly helpful for picking objects from a shelf at different levels. A camera in the one fingered gripper enables object detection even in regions that are not covered by the cameras in the sensor ring or in the torso. Equip the Care-O-bot with a second spherical joint between torso and head if you need a large sensor coverage. Or if you want to move the touch screen integrated in the robot's head to a comfortable position for the individual user.

Discover all configuration options and all special features on the Care-O-bot website: www.care-o-bot.de.

Watch Care-O-bot 4 as a gentleman:

Like for Care-O-bot 3, open source ROS drivers and simulation models are provided for all modules (see http://wiki.ros.org/care-o-bot). We intend to make it available as research platform for service robotics soon. A the same time we envision to build a platform to create individual service robot solutions for commercial applications.

We are always looking for partners to advance the state-of-the art in service robotics and enlarge the ROS-based Care-O-bot community. Additionally to that we're searching for skilled ROS developers and have various open positions, see previous post at http://lists.ros.org/pipermail/ros-users/2014-October/069034.html.

Please let us know if you are interested to get more information on Care-O-bot 4. We are looking forward to any feedback!

New ROS robot development kit from Robotbase

By Tully Foote on January 22, 2015 4:40 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

From Duy Huynh of Robotbase via ros-users@

Hi everyone! A year ago, we began to play with Turtlebot 2 & ROS, and we love it! Over the last 12 months, we've added a lot of hardware and software components on top of it.

We would love to share what we've built with the ROS community. And if you're interested in getting the same unit for your own development or research, we're selling it on Kickstarter now.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/403524037/personal-robot

Pick the Research Edition ($1,495)

Here is a straightforward demo.

Hardware specs:

Kobuki Mobile Base
3D Depth Camera
Inforce 6410 Single-board Computer or better
9" Screen or Larger
Servos
Microphone
Speaker
Humidity Sensor, Temperature Sensor, CO2 Meter

If you're doing research in the Internet of Things & Connected Devices space, this Research Robot is perfect for you. It can interface with almost all the connected devices on the market already. We have built it as a Smart Home Automation System as well. It has:

Wireless Z-Wave Plus
Zigbee
BLE
Wi-Fi

We'll also release our AI SDK, including:

Facial Recognition
Object Recognition
Speech Recognition
Natural Language Processing
And more

As well as the remote control apps for the robot, so that you can control the robots from your phone locally or remotely.

Android
iOS

Of course, we'll pre-install ROS and Ubuntu on the robot.

Any question / comment / advice / feedback is much appreciated.

My email is duy@robotbase.com.

Thanks!

Duy

Notes from the first Korean ROS Users Meetup

By Tully Foote on January 20, 2015 10:43 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Hi Everyone,

We held the first time ROS Korea users seminar & meetup in Seoul,
Korea on 21-22 of December 2014, hosted by OROCA (www.oroca.org), one
of the largest korean robotics community.

The seminar covered overview for introduction, navigation, moveit,
UAV, and community briefly by speakers from various groups in Korea.

We also prepared and shared a book "ROSBook_KR" for this meetup event.
It is now available for download from Github (free PDF version, total
261 page).
http://wiki.ros.org/Books/ROSBook_KR
https://github.com/robotpilot/rosbook_kr/blob/master/pdf/ROS_Book_KR.pdf

See the links below for the presentation slides of this meetup.

Pictures

[presentation slides and example code]
http://www.slideshare.net/yoonseokpyo/2-8-43019073
http://www.slideshare.net/secret/yy1sE2ksrfUTJP
http://www.slideshare.net/yoonseokpyo/2-10-43019133
http://www.slideshare.net/secret/lPy1NHaXd2JdQV
https://github.com/byeongkyu/safe_arm
https://github.com/oroca/oroca-ros-pkg

free pdf book

We'd like to give special thanks to ROS development team, many ROS
users and our sponsor Yujin Robot Inc.

We <3 ROS!

Cheers,
Yoonseok Pyo

Shadow Robot - looking for a new Software Engineer

By Ugo Cupcic on January 20, 2015 1:29 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

from Ugo Cupcic

Job description
The role of software engineers at the Shadow Robot Company is to advance robotic systems, by implementing new solutions and algorithms, in order to realize complex tasks with complex robots. Think about all the knowledge and skills a human requires to lift a simple glass of water, and try to imagine how you'd implement that with a highly sophisticated robotic system.

Should you join our team your job would center on solving real world problems using robotics. We work on highly challenging and simulating problems to deliver new solutions using advanced robotic systems. The job is quite versatile, ranging from driver development, to more high level cognition. Being part of a team of highly skilled individuals, we always strive to make you work on what you're best at.

Overall your goal will be making our robotic systems more reliable and easier to use for our customers.

Company
We're a small central London based company formed in 1987 with a well established reputation for developing top end robotic systems. Our core product is our robotic Hand, but we're also involved in a list of Robotics based projects for research, agriculture, space, medical, consumer, and other applications.

We're a close knit team, all passionate about robotics and will be happy to share our knowledge in different domains, ranging from electronics to manufacturing.

Shadow's mission is to use robotics technology to solve real-world problems.

Skills:
Must have:
- highly proficient in C++ or python
- good knowledge of programming under Linux
Nice to have:
- previous experience or keen interest in robotics
- previous experience using ROS (www.ros.org)
- good knowledge of DVCS
- experience programming in Qt

Experience:
- 2 to 4 years programming experience.

Contact:

ugo@shadowrobot.com

www.shadowrobot.com

rosjava Video Tutorial

By Tully Foote on January 14, 2015 12:39 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

From Anis Koubaa via ros-users@

I started a video tutorial series for rosjava.

I just put the first video on creating rosjava workspace and is added to the Wiki

http://wiki.ros.org/rosjava_build_tools/Tutorials/hydro/Creating%20Rosjava%20Packages

I will add more videos soon on rosjava tutorials including explanation of Talker Listener and making more advanced applications with rosjava.

This is the link of the YouTube playlist for future rosjava tutorials

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSzYQGCXRW1GNAGxX70iaLN9hzy5tihNh

Hope this will be helpful.

If you have comments, on the video, let me know

Yaskawa Motoman Offers Robots to Amazon Picking Challenge Teams

By Ugo Cupcic on January 14, 2015 7:58 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Yaskawa Motoman Robotics is pleased to announce sponsorship of the Amazon Picking Challenge to be held in conjunction with ICRA 2015. This open competition will further the development of robot skills required for e-commerce and other material handling. Yaskawa Motoman is offering consignment robots to select teams entering the challenge. Selected teams will receive their choice of robot model in January, 2015 and may keep them through June, subject to model availability. To apply for a Motoman consignment robot, please submit the following items via this form by midnight PST ~~December 17, 2014~~ January 16, 2015 (extended deadline).

Video of a simulated robot executing a picking task

Link to your team/organization website

Completed application describing your Motoman hardware utilization plan

Yaskawa Motoman will provide robots, software (including our MotoROS driver), and onsite technical support both at the team's location and the event.

To support your development efforts, the ROS-Industrial Consortium will be updating its pick and place tutorial to include the Motoman MH5 II model. The tutorial will also be updated to ROS Indigo.

Additional resource links:

DUO3D ROS node release

By Tully Foote on January 12, 2015 12:26 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

From Krystian Gebis via ros-users@

Hello all,

Recently, I have been working on creating a ROS driver for the DUO3D camera. After working with the DUO team, I have managed to wrap ROS around the DUO API functions, and have the camera images be published as ROS messages' of type sensor_msgs::Image. For those of you who do not know about DUO3D, it is a new, relatively inexpensive, stereoscopic camera which allows for many different custom solutions such as better lens, wider baseline, etc. More information about DUO3D can be viewed here: https://duo3d.com/ .

For those of you who are interested, here is a link to the github repository where I have developed the duo3d_camera node: https://github.com/l0g1x/DUO-Camera-ROS

As for now, I am still in the process of talking with DUO on how to package their shared libraries into a Debian package, so once I get that figured out with them, I will try to release the first version to the ROS repo.

I welcome everyone to give me feedback, as this is my first contribution back to the ROS community.

Erle-brain and Erle-copter

By Tully Foote on January 7, 2015 4:55 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

From Victor Mayoral via ros-users@

Hi everyone,

I'd like to introduce our new releases: Erle-brain and Erle-copter.

Erle-brain is a Linux based autopilot for creating drones based on the BeagleBone Black that uses the APM autopilot software and has ROS (Hydromedusa) pre-installed. It makes use of the mavros package to communicate with the software autopilot and supports for now three kind of vehicles (each one allowing different configurations): copters, planes and rovers.

Erle-copter is a Linux-based drone powered by Erle-brain that has been designed for educational and research purposes. It can carry up to 2 Kg of payload and it has cheap part that allow easy replacement.

Both products are available for pre-order and will start shipping shortly.

ROS + Gumstix + Create 2 Tutorials

By Tully Foote on January 6, 2015 11:27 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

From Uthra Krishnan

The iRobot Create 2 is a great resource for students and developers alike. With many programming methods, anyone from beginning programmers to advanced roboticists can utilize the Create 2 platform to grasp the fundamentals of robotics and build their own advanced solutions with sensors, video feeds, and other peripherals.

The Gumstix iRobot Create 2 tutorials focus on basic ROS to control and steer a Create 2 while streaming video wirelessly from building the package to installation and deployment. The video shows the final results of the project. Follow the iRobot Create 2 Gumstix tutorial series here: https://goo.gl/nZWtWW

Video Demo:

Xaxxon Introduces Oculus Prime

By Tully Foote on January 5, 2015 1:58 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

From Colin Adamson of Xaxxon Technologies

Oculus Prime is a new mobile robot from Xaxxon Technologies, available as a build-it-yourself kit, or fully assembled and calibrated. The aim of the project is to be both a low cost platform for getting going with ROS, and a capable internet controlled vehicle for remote monitoring.

It features an auto-docking charging station, four wheel gear-motors including rotational encoder, a 3-axis gyro, a large capacity LiPO battery, mini-ITX desktop PC internals, WiFi and bluetooth connectivity, tilting camera and lights, 2-way audio, mounting for an Xtion depth sensor, and always-on reliability.

It currently supports the ROS Indigo navigation stack running on Xubuntu 14.04. Near-future software enhancement plans include serving up the map via HTTP to internet connected clients, so initial pose and waypoints can be set within our standard web browser tele-op interface.

Software is fully open source of course, and the motors/gyro controller PCB is open hardware. The tough ABS frame is easy to assemble (and disassemble) with snap-together connections. We plan on offering interchangeable frame parts for swapping the Xtion with other sensors, depending on demand, as well as generic upper mounting plates.

For more information:
Product page: www.xaxxon.com/oculusprime
ROS wiki portal page: wiki.ros.org/Robots/Oculus_Prime
Get in touch for more info: www.xaxxon.com/contact

January 2015 Archives