VI Shots

Boston Engineering has created FlexStack.

The FlexStack product is a 2.5 inch, rugged platform that takes advantage of the flexibility of LabVIEW Embedded with the power of the Analog Devices Blackfin Processor.

Additional Resources:

• Boston Engineering Website
• FlexStack Information
• LabVIEW Microprocessor SDK
• Download Video

Anybots just released a new video of the next version of Dexter. Dexter is a biped teleoperated robot created by the Mountain View, CA based company.

Dexter’s walking is performed autonomously and is a demonstration of the type of hybrid robot that Anybots is working on. It will mainly be teleoperated but certain tasks will be automated such as walking.

Here’s a VI Shots video of the Anybots team during last years Robodevelopment conference:

Addition resources:

• Anybots
• Dexter’s first steps
• Download Video
• Trevor Blackwell
• Paul Graham writes about Dexter

VI Shots talked with Maria Bualat from the NASA Ames Research Intelligent Robotics Group. Gigapan.org is a website where people can upload super high resolution panoramic photos. These photos were taken by a prototype motorized automated pan and tilt camera mount that figures out the exact positions of all the multiple snapshots required to make an awesome high resolution panorama. Gigapan (gigapixel panorama) was developed by Carnegie Mellon University in collaboration with NASA Ames Intelligent Robotics Group, with support from Google. The price for this technology seems within reach of the consumer market at $279.

At the end of the video, Maria talks a little about here background and the K10 robotics platform which NASA used in the Canadian Arctic recently. The robots, K10 Black and K10 Red, carried 3-D laser scanners and ground-penetrating radar. The two NASA robots surveyed a rocky, isolated polar desert within a crater in the Arctic Circle. The study helped scientists learn how robots could evaluate potential outposts on the moon or Mars.

Resources mentioned in video:

• Intelligent Robotics group
• NASA Robots Practice Moon Survey in the Arctic Circle (Haughton Crater Site Survey Field Test)
• Gigapan Website
• Gigapan Hardware
• Download Video

Additional Video:

In this VI Shots video taken at Robodevelopment 2007, we talk with Paul Roberts, a developer with Microsoft Robotics Studio. Yes, it’s similar to LabVIEW and it can be used as a general purpose language.

Resources mentioned:

• Download Video
• Microsoft Robotics Studio
• Robodevelopment 2007

Download VideoBraintech demonstrates Volts-IQ to VI Shots.

Braintech’s VOLTS-IQ Visual Intelligence Software Suite provides feature recognition, object localization and robot guidance in the form of Microsoft Robotics Studio (MSRS) services.

VOLTS-IQ uniquely combines Braintech’s proven robot vision expertise with Microsoft’s powerful MSRS service-based architecture. Using VOLTS-IQ, researchers, commercial product developers and hobbyists can “vision-enable” their robotic projects and products with unprecedented ease and speed, leap frogging the traditional barriers involved with vision development and bringing their ideas to life faster than ever.

Resources mentioned in this video:

• Volts-IQ
• Microsoft Robotics Studio
• Braintech
• Mindstorms NXT

National Instruments continuously works closely with Lego to expand virtual instrumentation into the classroom by developing LabVIEW integration with their Mindstorms NXT platform. In this latest VI Shots video we see a demo of an NI product acquired from Hyperception, the Speedy-33. We see how the Speedy-33 combined with a HiTechnic interface can integrate LabVIEW signal processing algorithms to move an NXT based on audio frequencies.

Resources mentioned in Video:

• Infinity Project
• NI Speedy-33
• HiTechnic
• LabVIEW
• Lego

Download Video
In building the uBot-5, the team decided to go with Microsoft Robotics Studio.
Additional Resources:
Laboratory for Perceptual Robotics

In this video from RoboDevelopment 2007, we see the CoroBot in action.

CoroBot was created to minimize the complexity of robot development. By combining a powerful PC-class platform with a robust, object-oriented software development system, the CoroBot empowers you to rapidly deploy and develop robotics solutions. The CoroBot also assists the hardware developer with additional physical mounting space, ports, sensors and communication devices.