RIC-Americas Meeting Recap (Part 1 - March 3)

Note: Part 2 of the RIC-Americas Recap will cover events that occurred on March 4.

The ROS-Industrial Consortium Americas annual meeting was held March 3-4 at SwRI's headquarters in San Antonio, TX. March 3 events included an introduction to SwRI, 16 lab demonstrations, a keynote presentation about the ways that ROS is adding intelligence to a five-story tall mobile robotic aircraft depainting system, and an introduction to the ROS-Industrial Consortium. More than 50 people attended representing a cross section of ROS-Industrial stakeholders including automation equipment OEMs, end users, researchers, and government. During the demonstrations, the noise of numerous discussions gave the event a palpable buzz. While still relatively young, we heard a number of attendees remark that ROS-Industrial has momentum. 

Special thanks to our demonstration teams and presenters:

ROS/ROS-I Demonstrations:

1. Autonomous Vehicle Test Rides. Chris Mentzer, Kris Kozak, Mark Alban, Ed Venator, SwRI.
2. Large-scale Mobile Robotic Laser Depainting. Clay Flannigan and Michael Rigney, SwRI.
3. Descartes Constrained Cartesian
   Motion Planner. Christina Gomez, SwRI.
4. Dual Arm Mobile Manipulation. Andrew
   Sharp, UT Austin NRG.
5. Euler Mobile Order Fulfillment. Jorge Nicho, SwRI.
6. FlexGUI. Trygve Thomessen, PPM AS.
7. Heavy Equipment Simulator (not ROS,
   but still cool). Susan Porter, SwRI.
8. Human-centered Teleoperation for
   High-precision Tasks aka “Thread the
   Needle”. Karl Kruusamäe, UT Austin
   NRG.
9. Intrinsic Calibration. Chris Lewis, SwRI.
10. Package Singulation. Shaun Edwards,
    SwRI.
11. Ragnar 2D Vision/Replication. Alex
    Goins, SwRI.
12. Ragnar Demonstration. Preben Hjornet,
    Blue WorkForce.
13. Robotic Blending. Jonathan Meyer,
    SwRI.
14. Scan-N-Plan for CAD-Free Painting.
    Michael Blanton, SwRI.
15. STOMP Free-space Motion Planner. Levi
    Armstrong, SwRI.
16. Thunder Motion Planner. Dave
    Coleman, CU Boulder.

Presentations:

• Introduction to SwRI. Paul Evans, SwRI.
• Space Science. Philip Valek, SwRI.
• Large Robots Need Smart Controls. Jeremy Zoss, SwRI.
• Introduction to the ROS-Industrial Consortium. Paul Hvass, SwRI.

Scan-N-Plan for On-The-Fly Robotic Blending Demonstration workcell.

Explaining the Robotic Blending Process.

Blue Workforce Ragnar pick and place demonstration.

Ragnar 2D vision/Replication Demonstration.

Dual arm Mobile Manipulation.

Package Singulation.

 Intrinsic calibration.

Thunder Motion Planner.

FlexGUI Demonstration.

FLEXGUI runs from any web Browser, even a smart phone!

Discussion about the STOMP Motion Planner.

Close up of the sTOMP Planner.

Human-Centered Teleoperation for High Precision Tasks: Note the voice and gesture interface.

Another view of the Teleoperation Demo.

Scan-N-Plan for CAD-Free Painting.

Euler Mobile manipulator Demonstration.

Participants took turns riding in SwRI's ROS-enabled autonomous vehicles.

One vehicle navigated a slalom course while the other drove over a mix of paved and off-road Terrain.