Apparently novel robot end-effectors are popular this week (see the particle jamming robot grippers), as we’ve spotted another: a previously-unseen robot gripper from SRI International that uses an electrically controlled reversible adhesion called electroadhesion.  We’ve looked at SRI’s electroadhesive wall-climbing robots before, where electrostatic forces are able to support extreme loads with relatively little power consumption. Several friends and I ruminated about the possibility of embedding the electrodes in a robot’s gripper to ease manipulation, but it seems SRI beat us to the punch.  It also looks like they’re developing general-purpose, highly-compliant electroadhesive
pads for a variety of applications; according to the specifications, I
should be able to walk up a wood wall using a pad of less than 16×16
inches² while consuming less than 18 milli-Watts — cool stuff!  Few details are currently available, so I will post updates in the comments as we learn more.  In the meantime… pictures! 

Remember that compliant "jamming" end effector unveiled by Colin Angle (iRobot CEO) at TEDMED 2009?  Even then, it was demonstrated picking up medication bottles, keys, and water bottles (a hand-held version was also demonstrated).  Well, it just got a whole-lot more official with the publication of "Universal robotic gripper based on the jamming of granular material" in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).  The cool thing about this method of grasping is its relative simplicity: a rubber sack (balloon) filled with coffee grounds is pressed onto an object, it conforms to the object’s natural contours, and the air is pumped out (a volume change less than 0.5%) to form a stable grasp– no complex grasp planning required.  Be sure to check out the new video and photos!

Dejan Pangercic of the Intelligent Autonomous Systems Group at TUM (Technische Universität München) wrote in to show us a cool dual-robot demonstration where a PR2 robot (TUM’s James) and TUM-Rosie combine their efforts to prepare and deliver pancakes — Yum!  The demonstration system is quite impressive, featuring: door and drawer opening, object recognition, grasping and manipulation, navigation, multi-robot cooperation, etc.  The demo seems to use a fair bit of stock ROS functionality, as well as some new functionality and CRAM integration (Cognitive Robot Abstract Machine, a reasoning framework from TUM).  I’m anxious to learn more about the system: assumptions, limitations, and methods.  Hopefully more advanced details are forthcoming.  Check out the video below.

Yesterday Georgia Tech’s PR2 robot made a LIVE appearance on CNN.  The event was accompanied by interviews of Dr. Charlie Kemp (director of Georgia Tech’s Healthcare Robotics Lab and my advisor) and Keenan Wyrobek (Willow Garage figurehead).  Yours truly was also present and responsible for the robot demonstration.  While some of the PR2′s movements (some driving, waving to the audience, etc) were scripted or teleoperated via joystick, the actual medication delivery demonstration was fully autonomous and used UHF RFID sensing (a major component of my PhD research), the base laser rangefinder, and a slightly-modified TrajectoryPlannerROS.  The demo went off without a hitch, and as Keenan mentioned on the PR2-Users mailing list, "Their demo is a milestone (albeit a gutsy one) for PR2.  The first nationally televised, LIVE, sensor-based demo with a PR2."  Check out the video (embedded below), as well as some behind-the-scenes pictures of the PR2 inside CNN’s studio.