Robotic Product Singulation Testbed

We are excited to post our 50th ROS-I video: Robotic Product Singulation Testbed. This project was demonstrated during the Annual Meeting and is a collaborative development between ABB and SwRI to create a commercial product for warehouse automation. It highlights that, with some optimization, ROS-I applications can exhibit fast cycle times, without sacrificing the intelligence afforded by ROS. A scale demonstration of this technology will be on display next week at MODEX 2016, booth MA 957 (Baldor/ABB).

Human-centered Teleoperation for High-precision Tasks

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.

ROS-Industrial Training April 6-8, 2016

Southwest Research Institute is hosting a ROS-Industrial Training Class April 6 – 8, 2016 in San Antonio Texas.

The classroom portion is similar to the training held last year with the same curriculum and lab option for Descartes; a more detailed agenda can be found at the ROS-I website. Please bring a laptop to the class with the ROS-I training Virtual Machine pre-installed . This class is geared toward individuals with a programming background who seek to learn to compose their own ROS nodes. Day 1 will focus on basic/introductory ROS concepts. Day 2 will examine motion planning using MoveIt! as well as the Descartes planner and Perception concepts. Day 3 offers a lab programming exercise (with a choice of):
• Simple Perception Lab
• Simple MoveIt! Application
• Simple Descartes Application.
• Pick and Place Application
Registration is now open: http://rosindustrial.org/training-registration
Book your hotel by March 22 to receive the discounted room rate! Details can be found at the event website.

Google Summer of Code 2016

This Summer, ROS-Industrial will be participating in the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) under the Open Source Robotics Foundation (OSRF) umbrella.

GSoC is a great way for students to participate in open source projects and get paid. It's also a great opportunity to get some work done on an open source project and grow our community. ROS-Industrial has had several successful GSoC projects in the past and many of the students continue on as members of our community.

If you are an interested student, or know of one, please check out our idea page: http://wiki.osrfoundation.org/gsoc16.

Students have until March 25, 2016, to submit proposals for these ideas to GSoC. More details on the timeline can be found here: https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/timeline .

I encourage students who wish to participate to reach out (swri-ros-pkg-dev@googlegroups.com) with any questions or ideas they might have about suggested projects. For GSoC rules, check out: https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/rules

Looking forward to being overloaded with proposals...

-Shaun Edwards