This week is National Robotics Week and all across the US, there are a ton of events being
held to promote robotics.
Here in the valley, Silicon Valley Robotics, which is a non-profit consortium of various
robotics companies, is hosting the Robotics Block Party.
The event is being hosted by the lead consortium member, Jabil Manufacturing, in their Blue
Sky Center labs down here in San Jose.
It is an industry event so there is a whole agenda of keynotes, panels, VC hours for start-ups
who are looking to connect with investors and there's even a start-up pitch competition.
For the general public, there is a "trade show floor" where you can wander around
and see exhibitors that are showing off the latest in robotics technology.
The new big industry trend here in the valley is robotics and artificial intelligence (or
AI).
It's actually being used in a ton of applications from consumer electronics, to toys, to business
automation, and even to software intelligence.
It's been estimated that funding for AI [start-ups] here in the valley was $1.2 billion
just last year.
And you can definitely see the craze being reflected in the pick up of robotics for after
school activities and how competitive it is to get into those types of programs.
My last stint was with a robotics start-up in the whole IoT space so I have a personal
interest in robotics and that's why I'm here.
It's kind of fascinating to see all of the new innovations happening in this space and
I can't wait to see what's in store for this next upcoming year!
One of the big trends on the floor is robotics in toys & education with a focus on teaching
kids on STEM topics.
Vex IQ Challenge is a competition where the kids build a robot and they have to score
the most points with an alliance partner after picking up balls off the mount or off the
ground and then getting it into the goals.
The goals up high is five points, bottom three points, those in the field is one point.
And then they can also score fifteen points if both robots got on the bridge and twenty
five points if they balance on the bridge.
And why do you think robotics is kind of important to promote right now?
Robotics is really interesting because, well in, you can create so much, you know, it's
um, there's that thing about do you want to be a consumer of technology or a creator
of technology, and this allows kids to actually create technology, to make things out of the box.
Like this whole idea of the pink bunny folding up, I never would have thought that, but when
the girls went to competition a NASA engineer was there and he said that that is actually
a very important part in building technology for space, being able to fold up compactly
and then expand once in outer space.
So yeah the kids have, you know, uninhibited creativity and that's where you need to
let it unleash so they can build things.
Another big trend on the floor is robotics for elderly care.
With many seniors wanting to preserve their independent lifestyles, this is a great way
to ensure that they have the needed in-home support and care.
A few exhibitors in this space were sharing their latest tech.
Catalia Health has an interactive robot that helps with medication management and health.
The stationary robot converses with the user and talks them through a variety of health
and medical needs.
Toyota's concept robot is a functional companion helping limited mobility seniors with various
functional tasks.
Using a tablet, users can send the robot to fetch and perform basic physical tasks that
they themselves cannot.
Hi, my name is Samir, I'm a co-founder of Chime.
This is our product, it's a chai maker.
Basically chai is a very cumbersome process to make, it takes ten to twelve minutes and
leaves a lot of mess.
We have made a machine that celebrates the process of making chai but makes it fun and
easy and free? to make it.
Everybody has their own taste of making chai right?
So we have given all these options where you can sort of configure your strength of chai,
you can configure how much milk do you want in your chai, you can froth it or not froth
it, you know you also have two options in the chai, and all you got to do is put the
milk in there and if you need milk in there, and press a button to go.
And what does the smart feature of this kinda offer?
A connected app.
Um, basically what you do is, you connect it to the machine and you have all sorts of
recipes.
It also reminds you that you're running out of chai if you're running out of chai.
You can order chai from here, as well.
You can go to your, if this is in a workplace you can actually connect that machine with
the recipe and get your own chai.
So the idea is that we can functionalize a cup of chai and you can carry it with you
anywhere and wherever there's a Chime you can connect and make a cup of chai.
The future of delivery robots is here!
Starship Technologies is also on hand to demo their new latest parcel bot which is currently
undergoing pilot trials with partners in Europe and
Parcelmates and Door Dash here in the US.
The bots are meant to solve short-distance, last-mile parcel delivery.
At some point the bots will be autonomous but right now trials are focused on mapping
sidewalks since that data doesn't really currently exist!
Here's Toyota's entry into the self-driving cars.
These are cameras for navigating and that's the LIDAR up there.
And this is actually a pretty similar set-up to what you see on the Google car,
self driving car.
There's more cameras on this front side of the car.
Fellow visitor: They do not have an even baseline.
[Zeene laughs].
And moving around to the side, some more cameras.
So look who I ran into.
It's my friend Camp from work, that we used to work together.
And actually, Camp is here representing the…
Camp: HomeBrew Robotics Club Zeene: Awesome!
Camp: HomeBrew Robotics club is an offshoot of the original HomeBrew Computer Club of
Apple fame.
In 1984 when they disbanded because you no longer had to build your own computer, there
was a group, a special interest group interested in robotics and they declared themselves a
full-fledged club at that point and this is the same club thirty odd years later. So…
Zeene: And you guys do some fascinating things with robotics.
Camp: Thank you.
Zeene: Yeah.
Camp: So, Loco Mo the smart table, it's a table that can get from one place to another
and back again in an unstructured environment.
So I've got a computer velcroed to the Neato Botvac down there and it's using ROS, Robot
Operating System from Open Source Robotics Foundation, and through the USB it tells the
robot what to do, it reads the LIDAR scans and drives the wheels and so forth and then
creates this map, and as I was saying, now I can just click on the goal, for example,
back there and the robot will autonomously navigate to that place.
[Chuckles] You can see the people walking past here.
Zeene: Yeah.
So that's the LIDAR at work…
Camp: True.
Zeene: …scanning and seeing all the obstacles that are in the way.
Camp: Yeah.
So here he goes to the goal that I've set.
Zeene: I can see it tracking there on your screen.
Camp: Yeah, so this has a computer velcroed to it but now…there you go…you see he's
getting to the goal there.
Now you can do the same kind of thing with Raspberry Pi in the dirt bin.
So this Raspberry Pi is a 900MHz quad-core gigabyte RAM for $35.
It displaces what would have been a $1000 laptop a few years ago.
Of course it doesn't have a screen but it doesn't need a screen.
Same thing it's telling the Neato Botvac what to do, it's reading the LIDAR scans,
it's driving the wheels, same thing it can create the map and then navigate within the
map and it's really a great way to learn ROS, Robot Operating System.
The Mot Bot by Chris Myers.
This is the HomeBrew Robotics Club OK, so home brewed robots here…there you can see
a Neato LIDAR.
[Chuckles] This is actually a commercial product but it was developed by a friend named Nick
Donaldson who spent like ten years developing this and this sold a couple hundred thousand
units.
Some more home brewed robots here.
So that was a quick tour around.
My favorites definitely had to be more on the geeky side.
I really enjoyed seeing all the advancements being made in LIDAR and in chip design.
The kids, there were lots of them there, really enjoyed all the robots.
There were a ton of toy applications, as well as, household applications that they loved.
And of course, there were a lot of industry people there doing their networking.
One of the great things about living in the Silicon Valley is being able to have public
access to events like this.
And for those that live here and are interested, I'm going to start maintaining a calendar
of events on my blog from now on, and if you're interested in finding out more about the Robot
Block Party for next year, I'll post the information about this year's event in my
description box below.
Til next time, peace out Geeksters.
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