This is a sponsored article brought to you by Khalifa University of Science and Technology.

Abu Dhabi-based Khalifa University of Science and Technology in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will be hosting the 36th edition of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2024) to highlight the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region’s rapidly advancing capabilities in the robotics and intelligent transport systems.

aspect_ratio

Themed “Robotics for Sustainable Development,” the IROS 2024 will be held from 14-18 October 2024 at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Center (ADNEC) in the UAE’s capital city. It will offer a platform for universities and research institutions to display their research and innovation activities and initiatives in robotics, gathering researchers, academics, leading corporate majors, and industry professionals from around the globe.

A total of 13 forums, nine global-level competitions and challenges covering various aspects of robotics and AI, an IROS Expo, as well as an exclusive Career Fair will also be part of IROS 2024. The challenges and competitions will focus on physical or athletic intelligence of robots, remote robot navigation, robot manipulation, underwater robotics, as well as perception and sensing.

Delegates for the event will represent sectors including manufacturing, healthcare, logistics, agriculture, defense, security, and mining sectors with 60 percent of the talent pool having over six years of experience in robotics. A major component of the conference will be the poster sessions, keynotes, panel discussions by researchers and scientists, and networking events.

Khalifa University will be hosting IROS 2024 to highlight the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region’s rapidly advancing capabilities in the robotics and intelligent transport systems.Khalifa University

Abu Dhabi ranks first on the world’s safest cities list in 2024, according to online database Numbeo, out of 329 global cities in the 2024 standings, holding the title for eight consecutive years since 2017, reflecting the emirate’s ongoing efforts to ensure a good quality of life for citizens and residents.

With a multicultural community, Abu Dhabi is home to people from more than 200 nationalities and draws a large number of tourists to some of the top art galleries in the city such as Louvre Abu Dhabi and the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, as well as other destinations such as Ferrari World Abu Dhabi and Warner Bros. World Abu Dhabi.

The UAE and Abu Dhabi have increasingly become a center for creative skillsets, human capital and advanced technologies, attracting several international and regional events such as the global COP28 UAE climate summit, in which more than 160 countries participated.

Abu Dhabi city itself has hosted a number of association conventions such as the 34th International Nursing Research Congress and is set to host the UNCTAD World Investment Forum, the 13th World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference (MC13), the 12th World Environment Education Congress in 2024, and the IUCN World Conservation Congress in 2025.

Khalifa University’s Center for Robotics and Autonomous Systems (KU-CARS) includes a vibrant multidisciplinary environment for conducting robotics and autonomous vehicle-related research and innovation.Khalifa University

Dr. Jorge Dias, IROS 2024 General Chair, said: “Khalifa University is delighted to bring the Intelligent Robots and Systems 2024 to Abu Dhabi in the UAE and highlight the innovations in line with the theme Robotics for Sustainable Development. As the region’s rapidly advancing capabilities in robotics and intelligent transport systems gain momentum, this event serves as a platform to incubate ideas, exchange knowledge, foster collaboration, and showcase our research and innovation activities. By hosting IROS 2024, Khalifa University aims to reaffirm the UAE’s status as a global innovation hub and destination for all industry stakeholders to collaborate on cutting-edge research and explore opportunities for growth within the UAE’s innovation ecosystem.”

“This event serves as a platform to incubate ideas, exchange knowledge, foster collaboration, and showcase our research and innovation activities” —Dr. Jorge Dias, IROS 2024 General Chair

Dr. Dias added: “The organizing committee of IROS 2024 has received over 4000 submissions representing 60 countries, with China leading with 1,029 papers, followed by the U.S. (777), Germany (302), and Japan (253), as well as the U.K. and South Korea (173 each). The UAE with a total of 68 papers comes atop the Arab region.”

Driving innovation at Khalifa University is the Center for Robotics and Autonomous Systems (KU-CARS) with around 50 researchers and state-of-the-art laboratory facilities, including a vibrant multidisciplinary environment for conducting robotics and autonomous vehicle-related research and innovation.

IROS 2024 is sponsored by IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, Abu Dhabi Convention and Exhibition Bureau, the Robotics Society of Japan (RSJ), the Society of Instrument and Control Engineers (SICE), the New Technology Foundation, and the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society (IES).

More information at https://iros2024-abudhabi.org/

This is a sponsored article brought to you by Khalifa University of Science and Technology.

Abu Dhabi-based Khalifa University of Science and Technology in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will be hosting the 36th edition of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2024) to highlight the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region’s rapidly advancing capabilities in the robotics and intelligent transport systems.

aspect_ratio

Themed “Robotics for Sustainable Development,” the IROS 2024 will be held from 14-18 October 2024 at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Center (ADNEC) in the UAE’s capital city. It will offer a platform for universities and research institutions to display their research and innovation activities and initiatives in robotics, gathering researchers, academics, leading corporate majors, and industry professionals from around the globe.

A total of 13 forums, nine global-level competitions and challenges covering various aspects of robotics and AI, an IROS Expo, as well as an exclusive Career Fair will also be part of IROS 2024. The challenges and competitions will focus on physical or athletic intelligence of robots, remote robot navigation, robot manipulation, underwater robotics, as well as perception and sensing.

Delegates for the event will represent sectors including manufacturing, healthcare, logistics, agriculture, defense, security, and mining sectors with 60 percent of the talent pool having over six years of experience in robotics. A major component of the conference will be the poster sessions, keynotes, panel discussions by researchers and scientists, and networking events.

Khalifa University will be hosting IROS 2024 to highlight the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region’s rapidly advancing capabilities in the robotics and intelligent transport systems.Khalifa University

Abu Dhabi ranks first on the world’s safest cities list in 2024, according to online database Numbeo, out of 329 global cities in the 2024 standings, holding the title for eight consecutive years since 2017, reflecting the emirate’s ongoing efforts to ensure a good quality of life for citizens and residents.

With a multicultural community, Abu Dhabi is home to people from more than 200 nationalities and draws a large number of tourists to some of the top art galleries in the city such as Louvre Abu Dhabi and the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, as well as other destinations such as Ferrari World Abu Dhabi and Warner Bros. World Abu Dhabi.

The UAE and Abu Dhabi have increasingly become a center for creative skillsets, human capital and advanced technologies, attracting several international and regional events such as the global COP28 UAE climate summit, in which more than 160 countries participated.

Abu Dhabi city itself has hosted a number of association conventions such as the 34th International Nursing Research Congress and is set to host the UNCTAD World Investment Forum, the 13th World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference (MC13), the 12th World Environment Education Congress in 2024, and the IUCN World Conservation Congress in 2025.

Khalifa University’s Center for Robotics and Autonomous Systems (KU-CARS) includes a vibrant multidisciplinary environment for conducting robotics and autonomous vehicle-related research and innovation.Khalifa University

Dr. Jorge Dias, IROS 2024 General Chair, said: “Khalifa University is delighted to bring the Intelligent Robots and Systems 2024 to Abu Dhabi in the UAE and highlight the innovations in line with the theme Robotics for Sustainable Development. As the region’s rapidly advancing capabilities in robotics and intelligent transport systems gain momentum, this event serves as a platform to incubate ideas, exchange knowledge, foster collaboration, and showcase our research and innovation activities. By hosting IROS 2024, Khalifa University aims to reaffirm the UAE’s status as a global innovation hub and destination for all industry stakeholders to collaborate on cutting-edge research and explore opportunities for growth within the UAE’s innovation ecosystem.”

“This event serves as a platform to incubate ideas, exchange knowledge, foster collaboration, and showcase our research and innovation activities” —Dr. Jorge Dias, IROS 2024 General Chair

Dr. Dias added: “The organizing committee of IROS 2024 has received over 4000 submissions representing 60 countries, with China leading with 1,029 papers, followed by the U.S. (777), Germany (302), and Japan (253), as well as the U.K. and South Korea (173 each). The UAE with a total of 68 papers comes atop the Arab region.”

Driving innovation at Khalifa University is the Center for Robotics and Autonomous Systems (KU-CARS) with around 50 researchers and state-of-the-art laboratory facilities, including a vibrant multidisciplinary environment for conducting robotics and autonomous vehicle-related research and innovation.

IROS 2024 is sponsored by IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, Abu Dhabi Convention and Exhibition Bureau, the Robotics Society of Japan (RSJ), the Society of Instrument and Control Engineers (SICE), the New Technology Foundation, and the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society (IES).

More information at https://iros2024-abudhabi.org/

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.

Enjoy today’s videos!

[ Nature ] via [ MPI ]

Thanks, Toshi!

[ ETH Zurich ]

How could you not be excited to see this happen for real?

[ arXiv paper ]

Can we all agree that sanding, grinding, deburring, and polishing tasks are really best done by robots, for the most part?

[ Cohesive Robotics ]

Thanks, David!

[ arXiv paper ]

Fall of 2025 is a long enough time from now that I’m not even going to speculate about it.

[ Weave Robotics ]

[ Science Robotics ] via [ Yale ]

[ NASA ]

I love this and want to burn it with fire.

[ Carpentopod ]

[ Pollen Robotics ]

[ ScalAR Lab ]

[ Astorino ]

I guess fish-fillet-shaping robots need to exist because otherwise customers will freak out if all their fish fillets are not identical, or something?

[ Flexiv ]

[ ESA ]

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.

Enjoy today’s videos!

[ Nature ] via [ MPI ]

Thanks, Toshi!

[ ETH Zurich ]

How could you not be excited to see this happen for real?

[ arXiv paper ]

Can we all agree that sanding, grinding, deburring, and polishing tasks are really best done by robots, for the most part?

[ Cohesive Robotics ]

Thanks, David!

[ arXiv paper ]

Fall of 2025 is a long enough time from now that I’m not even going to speculate about it.

[ Weave Robotics ]

[ Science Robotics ] via [ Yale ]

[ NASA ]

I love this and want to burn it with fire.

[ Carpentopod ]

[ Pollen Robotics ]

[ ScalAR Lab ]

[ Astorino ]

I guess fish-fillet-shaping robots need to exist because otherwise customers will freak out if all their fish fillets are not identical, or something?

[ Flexiv ]

[ ESA ]

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.

Enjoy today’s videos!

[ HAND ]

The Environmental Robotics Lab at ETH Zurich, in partnership with Wilderness International (and some help from DJI and Audi), is using drones to sample DNA from the tops of trees in the Peruvian rainforest. Somehow, the treetops are where 60 to 90 percent of biodiversity is found, and these drones can help researchers determine what the heck is going on up there.

[ ERL ]

Thanks, Steffen!

1X introduces NEO Beta, “the pre-production build of our home humanoid.”

[ 1X ]

We love MangDang’s fun and affordable approach to robotics with Mini Pupper. The next generation of the little legged robot has just launched on Kickstarter, featuring new and updated robots that make it easy to explore embodied AI.

The Kickstarter is already fully funded after just a day or two, but there are still plenty of robots up for grabs.

[ Kickstarter ]

Quadrupeds in space can use their legs to reorient themselves. Or, if you throw one off a roof, it can learn to land on its feet.

To be presented at CoRL 2024.

[ ARL ]

HEBI Robotics, which apparently was once headquartered inside a Pittsburgh public bus, has imbued a table with actuators and a mind of its own.

[ HEBI Robotics ]

Carcinization is a concept in evolutionary biology where a crustacean that isn’t a crab eventually becomes a crab. So why not do the same thing with robots? Crab robots solve all problems!

[ KAIST ]

Waymo is smart, but also humans are really, really dumb sometimes.

[ Waymo ]

[ Michigan Robotics ]

I appreciate that UBTECH’s humanoid is doing an actual job, but why would you use a humanoid for this?

[ UBTECH ]

I’m sure most actuators go through some form of lifecycle testing. But if you really want to test an electric motor, put it into a BattleBot and see what happens.

[ Hardcore Robotics ]

Yes, but have you tried fighting a BattleBot?

[ AgileX ]

[ Hybrid Robotics ]

I had not realized that the floretizing of broccoli was so violent.

[ Oxipital ]

[ B-Human ]

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.

Enjoy today’s videos!

[ HAND ]

The Environmental Robotics Lab at ETH Zurich, in partnership with Wilderness International (and some help from DJI and Audi), is using drones to sample DNA from the tops of trees in the Peruvian rainforest. Somehow, the treetops are where 60 to 90 percent of biodiversity is found, and these drones can help researchers determine what the heck is going on up there.

[ ERL ]

Thanks, Steffen!

1X introduces NEO Beta, “the pre-production build of our home humanoid.”

[ 1X ]

We love MangDang’s fun and affordable approach to robotics with Mini Pupper. The next generation of the little legged robot has just launched on Kickstarter, featuring new and updated robots that make it easy to explore embodied AI.

The Kickstarter is already fully funded after just a day or two, but there are still plenty of robots up for grabs.

[ Kickstarter ]

Quadrupeds in space can use their legs to reorient themselves. Or, if you throw one off a roof, it can learn to land on its feet.

To be presented at CoRL 2024.

[ ARL ]

HEBI Robotics, which apparently was once headquartered inside a Pittsburgh public bus, has imbued a table with actuators and a mind of its own.

[ HEBI Robotics ]

Carcinization is a concept in evolutionary biology where a crustacean that isn’t a crab eventually becomes a crab. So why not do the same thing with robots? Crab robots solve all problems!

[ KAIST ]

Waymo is smart, but also humans are really, really dumb sometimes.

[ Waymo ]

[ Michigan Robotics ]

I appreciate that UBTECH’s humanoid is doing an actual job, but why would you use a humanoid for this?

[ UBTECH ]

I’m sure most actuators go through some form of lifecycle testing. But if you really want to test an electric motor, put it into a BattleBot and see what happens.

[ Hardcore Robotics ]

Yes, but have you tried fighting a BattleBot?

[ AgileX ]

[ Hybrid Robotics ]

I had not realized that the floretizing of broccoli was so violent.

[ Oxipital ]

[ B-Human ]

At ICRA 2024, Spectrum editor Evan Ackerman sat down with Unitree founder and CEO Xingxing Wang and Tony Yang, VP of Business Development, to talk about the company’s newest humanoid, the G1 model.

Smaller, more flexible, and elegant, the G1 robot is designed for general use in service and industry, and is one of the cheapest—if not the cheapest—humanoid around.

At ICRA 2024, Spectrum editor Evan Ackerman sat down with Unitree founder and CEO Xingxing Wang and Tony Yang, VP of Business Development, to talk about the company’s newest humanoid, the G1 model.

Smaller, more flexible, and elegant, the G1 robot is designed for general use in service and industry, and is one of the cheapest—if not the cheapest—humanoid around.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.

Enjoy today’s videos!

Imbuing robots with “human-level performance” in anything is an enormous challenge, but it’s worth it when you see a robot with the skill to interact with a human on a (nearly) human level. Google DeepMind has managed to achieve amateur human-level competence at table tennis, which is much harder than it looks, even for humans. Pannag Sanketi, a tech-lead manager in the robotics team at DeepMind, shared some interesting insights about performing the research. But first, video!

Some behind the scenes detail from Pannag:

• The robot had not seen any participants before. So we knew we had a cool agent, but we had no idea how it was going to fare in a full match with real humans. To witness it outmaneuver even some of the most advanced players was such a delightful moment for team!
• All the participants had a lot of fun playing against the robot, irrespective of who won the match. And all of them wanted to play more. Some of them said it will be great to have the robot as a playing partner. From the videos, you can even see how much fun the user study hosts sitting there (who are not authors on the paper) are having watching the games!
• Barney, who is a professional coach, was an advisor on the project, and our chief evaluator of robot’s skills the way he evaluates his students. He also got surprised by how the robot is always able to learn from the last few weeks’ sessions.
• We invested a lot in remote and automated 24x7 operations. So not the setup in this video, but there are other cells that we can run 24x7 with a ball thrower.
• We even tried robot-vs-robot, i.e. 2 robots playing against each other! :) The line between collaboration and competition becomes very interesting when they try to learn by playing with each other.

[ DeepMind ]

Thanks, Heni!

Yoink.

[ MIT ]

Considering how their stability and recovery is often tested, teaching robot dogs to be shy of humans is an excellent idea.

[ Deep Robotics ]

Yes, quadruped robots need tow truck hooks.

[ Paper ]

Earthworm-inspired robots require novel actuators, and Ayato Kanada at Kyushu University has come up with a neat one.

[ Paper ]

Thanks, Ayato!

[ MIT ]

Kengoro has a new forearm that mimics the human radioulnar joint giving it an even more natural badminton swing.

[ JSK Lab ]

Thanks, Kento!

[ Wallace and Gromit ]

[ Kawasaki ]

[ IceNode ]

[ LANL ]

Looks like Fourier has been working on something new, although this is still at the point of “looks like” rather than something real.

[ Fourier ]

[ Altus Dexterity ]

[ AgileX ]

[ Zoox ]

Traditionally, blind juggling robots use plates that are slightly concave to help them with ball control, but it’s also possible to make a blind juggler the hard way. Which, honestly, is much more impressive.

[ Jugglebot ]

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.

Enjoy today’s videos!

Imbuing robots with “human-level performance” in anything is an enormous challenge, but it’s worth it when you see a robot with the skill to interact with a human on a (nearly) human level. Google DeepMind has managed to achieve amateur human-level competence at table tennis, which is much harder than it looks, even for humans. Pannag Sanketi, a tech-lead manager in the robotics team at DeepMind, shared some interesting insights about performing the research. But first, video!

Some behind the scenes detail from Pannag:

• The robot had not seen any participants before. So we knew we had a cool agent, but we had no idea how it was going to fare in a full match with real humans. To witness it outmaneuver even some of the most advanced players was such a delightful moment for team!
• All the participants had a lot of fun playing against the robot, irrespective of who won the match. And all of them wanted to play more. Some of them said it will be great to have the robot as a playing partner. From the videos, you can even see how much fun the user study hosts sitting there (who are not authors on the paper) are having watching the games!
• Barney, who is a professional coach, was an advisor on the project, and our chief evaluator of robot’s skills the way he evaluates his students. He also got surprised by how the robot is always able to learn from the last few weeks’ sessions.
• We invested a lot in remote and automated 24x7 operations. So not the setup in this video, but there are other cells that we can run 24x7 with a ball thrower.
• We even tried robot-vs-robot, i.e. 2 robots playing against each other! :) The line between collaboration and competition becomes very interesting when they try to learn by playing with each other.

[ DeepMind ]

Thanks, Heni!

Yoink.

[ MIT ]

Considering how their stability and recovery is often tested, teaching robot dogs to be shy of humans is an excellent idea.

[ Deep Robotics ]

Yes, quadruped robots need tow truck hooks.

[ Paper ]

Earthworm-inspired robots require novel actuators, and Ayato Kanada at Kyushu University has come up with a neat one.

[ Paper ]

Thanks, Ayato!

[ MIT ]

Kengoro has a new forearm that mimics the human radioulnar joint giving it an even more natural badminton swing.

[ JSK Lab ]

Thanks, Kento!

[ Wallace and Gromit ]

[ Kawasaki ]

[ IceNode ]

[ LANL ]

Looks like Fourier has been working on something new, although this is still at the point of “looks like” rather than something real.

[ Fourier ]

[ Altus Dexterity ]

[ AgileX ]

[ Zoox ]

Traditionally, blind juggling robots use plates that are slightly concave to help them with ball control, but it’s also possible to make a blind juggler the hard way. Which, honestly, is much more impressive.

[ Jugglebot ]

In the 1960s and 1970s, NASA spent a lot of time thinking about whether toroidal (donut-shaped) fuel tanks were the way to go with its spacecraft. Toroidal tanks have a bunch of potential advantages over conventional spherical fuel tanks. For example, you can fit nearly 40% more volume within a toroidal tank than if you were using multiple spherical tanks within the same space. And perhaps most interestingly, you can shove stuff (like the back of an engine) through the middle of a toroidal tank, which could lead to some substantial efficiency gains if the tanks could also handle structural loads.

Because of their relatively complex shape, toroidal tanks are much more difficult to make than spherical tanks. Even though these tanks can perform better, NASA simply doesn’t have the expertise to manufacture them anymore, since each one has to be hand-built by highly skilled humans. But a company called Machina Labs thinks that they can do this with robots instead. And their vision is to completely change how we make things out of metal.

The fundamental problem that Machina Labs is trying to solve is that if you want to build parts out of metal efficiently at scale, it’s a slow process. Large metal parts need their own custom dies, which are very expensive one-offs that are about as inflexible as it’s possible to get, and then entire factories are built around these parts. It’s a huge investment, which means that it doesn’t matter if you find some new geometry or technique or material or market, because you have to justify that enormous up-front cost by making as much of the original thing as you possibly can, stifling the potential for rapid and flexible innovation.

On the other end of the spectrum you have the also very slow and expensive process of making metal parts one at a time by hand. A few hundred years ago, this was the only way of making metal parts: skilled metalworkers using hand tools for months to make things like armor and weapons. The nice thing about an expert metalworker is that they can use their skills and experience to make anything at all, which is where Machina Labs’ vision comes from, explains CEO Edward Mehr who co-founded Machina Labs after spending time at SpaceX followed by leading the 3D printing team at Relativity Space.

“Craftsmen can pick up different tools and apply them creatively to metal to do all kinds of different things. One day they can pick up a hammer and form a shield out of a sheet of metal,” says Mehr. “Next, they pick up the same hammer, and create a sword out of a metal rod. They’re very flexible.”

The technique that a human metalworker uses to shape metal is called forging, which preserves the grain flow of the metal as it’s worked. Casting, stamping, or milling metal (which are all ways of automating metal part production) are simply not as strong or as durable as parts that are forged, which can be an important differentiator for (say) things that have to go into space. But more on that in a bit.

The problem with human metalworkers is that the throughput is bad—humans are slow, and highly skilled humans in particular don’t scale well. For Mehr and Machina Labs, this is where the robots come in.

“We want to automate and scale using a platform called the ‘robotic craftsman.’ Our core enablers are robots that give us the kinematics of a human craftsman, and artificial intelligence that gives us control over the process,” Mehr says. “The concept is that we can do any process that a human craftsman can do, and actually some that humans can’t do because we can apply more force with better accuracy.”

This flexibility that robot metalworkers offer also enables the crafting of bespoke parts that would be impractical to make in any other way. These include toroidal (donut-shaped) fuel tanks that NASA has had its eye on for the last half century or so.

Machina Labs’ CEO Edward Mehr (on right) stands behind a 15 foot toroidal fuel tank.Machina Labs

“The main challenge of these tanks is that the geometry is complex,” Mehr says. “Sixty years ago, NASA was bump-forming them with very skilled craftspeople, but a lot of them aren’t around anymore.” Mehr explains that the only other way to get that geometry is with dies, but for NASA, getting a die made for a fuel tank that’s necessarily been customized for one single spacecraft would be pretty much impossible to justify. “So one of the main reasons we’re not using toroidal tanks is because it’s just hard to make them.”

Machina Labs is now making toroidal tanks for NASA. For the moment, the robots are just doing the shaping, which is the tough part. Humans then weld the pieces together. But there’s no reason why the robots couldn’t do the entire process end-to-end and even more efficiently. Currently, they’re doing it the “human” way based on existing plans from NASA. “In the future,” Mehr tells us, “we can actually form these tanks in one or two pieces. That’s the next area that we’re exploring with NASA—how can we do things differently now that we don’t need to design around human ergonomics?”

Machina Labs’ ‘robotic craftsmen’ work in pairs to shape sheet metal, with one robot on each side of the sheet. The robots align their tools slightly offset from each other with the metal between them such that as the robots move across the sheet, it bends between the tools. Machina Labs

The video above shows Machina’s robots working on a tank that’s 4.572 m (15 feet) in diameter, likely destined for the Moon. “The main application is for lunar landers,” says Mehr. “The toroidal tanks bring the center of gravity of the vehicle lower than what you would have with spherical or pill-shaped tanks.”

Training these robots to work metal like this is done primarily through physics-based simulations that Machina developed in house (existing software being too slow), followed by human-guided iterations based on the resulting real-world data. The way that metal moves under pressure can be simulated pretty well, and although there’s certainly still a sim-to-real gap (simulating how the robot’s tool adheres to the surface of the material is particularly tricky), the robots are collecting so much empirical data that Machina is making substantial progress towards full autonomy, and even finding ways to improve the process.

An example of the kind of complex metal parts that Machina’s robots are able to make.Machina Labs

Ultimately, Machina wants to use robots to produce all kinds of metal parts. On the commercial side, they’re exploring things like car body panels, offering the option to change how your car looks in geometry rather than just color. The requirement for a couple of beefy robots to make this work means that roboforming is unlikely to become as pervasive as 3D printing, but the broader concept is the same: making physical objects a software problem rather than a hardware problem to enable customization at scale.

In the 1960s and 1970s, NASA spent a lot of time thinking about whether toroidal (donut-shaped) fuel tanks were the way to go with its spacecraft. Toroidal tanks have a bunch of potential advantages over conventional spherical fuel tanks. For example, you can fit nearly 40% more volume within a toroidal tank than if you were using multiple spherical tanks within the same space. And perhaps most interestingly, you can shove stuff (like the back of an engine) through the middle of a toroidal tank, which could lead to some substantial efficiency gains if the tanks could also handle structural loads.

Because of their relatively complex shape, toroidal tanks are much more difficult to make than spherical tanks. Even though these tanks can perform better, NASA simply doesn’t have the expertise to manufacture them anymore, since each one has to be hand-built by highly skilled humans. But a company called Machina Labs thinks that they can do this with robots instead. And their vision is to completely change how we make things out of metal.

The fundamental problem that Machina Labs is trying to solve is that if you want to build parts out of metal efficiently at scale, it’s a slow process. Large metal parts need their own custom dies, which are very expensive one-offs that are about as inflexible as it’s possible to get, and then entire factories are built around these parts. It’s a huge investment, which means that it doesn’t matter if you find some new geometry or technique or material or market, because you have to justify that enormous up-front cost by making as much of the original thing as you possibly can, stifling the potential for rapid and flexible innovation.

On the other end of the spectrum you have the also very slow and expensive process of making metal parts one at a time by hand. A few hundred years ago, this was the only way of making metal parts: skilled metalworkers using hand tools for months to make things like armor and weapons. The nice thing about an expert metalworker is that they can use their skills and experience to make anything at all, which is where Machina Labs’ vision comes from, explains CEO Edward Mehr who co-founded Machina Labs after spending time at SpaceX followed by leading the 3D printing team at Relativity Space.

“Craftsmen can pick up different tools and apply them creatively to metal to do all kinds of different things. One day they can pick up a hammer and form a shield out of a sheet of metal,” says Mehr. “Next, they pick up the same hammer, and create a sword out of a metal rod. They’re very flexible.”

The technique that a human metalworker uses to shape metal is called forging, which preserves the grain flow of the metal as it’s worked. Casting, stamping, or milling metal (which are all ways of automating metal part production) are simply not as strong or as durable as parts that are forged, which can be an important differentiator for (say) things that have to go into space. But more on that in a bit.

The problem with human metalworkers is that the throughput is bad—humans are slow, and highly skilled humans in particular don’t scale well. For Mehr and Machina Labs, this is where the robots come in.

“We want to automate and scale using a platform called the ‘robotic craftsman.’ Our core enablers are robots that give us the kinematics of a human craftsman, and artificial intelligence that gives us control over the process,” Mehr says. “The concept is that we can do any process that a human craftsman can do, and actually some that humans can’t do because we can apply more force with better accuracy.”

This flexibility that robot metalworkers offer also enables the crafting of bespoke parts that would be impractical to make in any other way. These include toroidal (donut-shaped) fuel tanks that NASA has had its eye on for the last half century or so.

Machina Labs’ CEO Edward Mehr (on right) stands behind a 15 foot toroidal fuel tank.Machina Labs

“The main challenge of these tanks is that the geometry is complex,” Mehr says. “Sixty years ago, NASA was bump-forming them with very skilled craftspeople, but a lot of them aren’t around anymore.” Mehr explains that the only other way to get that geometry is with dies, but for NASA, getting a die made for a fuel tank that’s necessarily been customized for one single spacecraft would be pretty much impossible to justify. “So one of the main reasons we’re not using toroidal tanks is because it’s just hard to make them.”

Machina Labs is now making toroidal tanks for NASA. For the moment, the robots are just doing the shaping, which is the tough part. Humans then weld the pieces together. But there’s no reason why the robots couldn’t do the entire process end-to-end and even more efficiently. Currently, they’re doing it the “human” way based on existing plans from NASA. “In the future,” Mehr tells us, “we can actually form these tanks in one or two pieces. That’s the next area that we’re exploring with NASA—how can we do things differently now that we don’t need to design around human ergonomics?”

Machina Labs’ ‘robotic craftsmen’ work in pairs to shape sheet metal, with one robot on each side of the sheet. The robots align their tools slightly offset from each other with the metal between them such that as the robots move across the sheet, it bends between the tools. Machina Labs

The video above shows Machina’s robots working on a tank that’s 4.572 m (15 feet) in diameter, likely destined for the Moon. “The main application is for lunar landers,” says Mehr. “The toroidal tanks bring the center of gravity of the vehicle lower than what you would have with spherical or pill-shaped tanks.”

Training these robots to work metal like this is done primarily through physics-based simulations that Machina developed in house (existing software being too slow), followed by human-guided iterations based on the resulting real-world data. The way that metal moves under pressure can be simulated pretty well, and although there’s certainly still a sim-to-real gap (simulating how the robot’s tool adheres to the surface of the material is particularly tricky), the robots are collecting so much empirical data that Machina is making substantial progress towards full autonomy, and even finding ways to improve the process.

An example of the kind of complex metal parts that Machina’s robots are able to make.Machina Labs

Ultimately, Machina wants to use robots to produce all kinds of metal parts. On the commercial side, they’re exploring things like car body panels, offering the option to change how your car looks in geometry rather than just color. The requirement for a couple of beefy robots to make this work means that roboforming is unlikely to become as pervasive as 3D printing, but the broader concept is the same: making physical objects a software problem rather than a hardware problem to enable customization at scale.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.

Enjoy today’s videos!

I think it’s time for us all to admit that some of the most interesting bipedal and humanoid research is being done by Disney.

[ Research Paper from ETH Zurich and Disney Research]

[ Unitree ]

This robot is from Kinisi Robotics, which was founded by Brennand Pierce, who also founded Bear Robotics. You can’t really tell from this video, but check out the website because the reach this robot has is bonkers.

[ Kinisi Robotics ]

Thanks Bren!

Finally, something that Atlas does that I am also physically capable of doing. In theory.

Okay, never mind. I don’t have those hips.

[ Boston Dynamics ]

They say it can “run,” but I’m skeptical that there’s a flight phase unless someone sneezes nearby.

[ Carnegie Mellon University ]

The lights are cool and all, but it’s the pulsing soft skin that’s squigging me out.

[ Paper, Robotics Reports Vol.2 ]

Roofing is a difficult and dangerous enough job that it would be great if robots could take it over. It’ll be a challenge though.

[ Renovate Robotics ] via [ TechCrunch ]

Kento Kawaharazuka from JSK Robotics Laboratory at the University of Tokyo wrote in to share this paper, just accepted at RA-L, which (among other things) shows a robot using its flexible hands to identify objects through random finger motion.

[ Paper accepted by IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters ]

Thanks Kento!

It’s one thing to make robots that are reliable, and it’s another to make robots that are reliable and repairable by the end user. I don’t think iRobot gets enough credit for this.

[ iRobot ]

I like competitions where they say, “just relax and forget about the competition and show us what you can do.”

[ MBZIRC Maritime Grand Challenge ]

I kid you not, this used to be my job.

[ RoboHike ]

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.

Enjoy today’s videos!

I think it’s time for us all to admit that some of the most interesting bipedal and humanoid research is being done by Disney.

[ Research Paper from ETH Zurich and Disney Research]

[ Unitree ]

This robot is from Kinisi Robotics, which was founded by Brennand Pierce, who also founded Bear Robotics. You can’t really tell from this video, but check out the website because the reach this robot has is bonkers.

[ Kinisi Robotics ]

Thanks Bren!

Finally, something that Atlas does that I am also physically capable of doing. In theory.

Okay, never mind. I don’t have those hips.

[ Boston Dynamics ]

They say it can “run,” but I’m skeptical that there’s a flight phase unless someone sneezes nearby.

[ Carnegie Mellon University ]

The lights are cool and all, but it’s the pulsing soft skin that’s squigging me out.

[ Paper, Robotics Reports Vol.2 ]

Roofing is a difficult and dangerous enough job that it would be great if robots could take it over. It’ll be a challenge though.

[ Renovate Robotics ] via [ TechCrunch ]

Kento Kawaharazuka from JSK Robotics Laboratory at the University of Tokyo wrote in to share this paper, just accepted at RA-L, which (among other things) shows a robot using its flexible hands to identify objects through random finger motion.

[ Paper accepted by IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters ]

Thanks Kento!

It’s one thing to make robots that are reliable, and it’s another to make robots that are reliable and repairable by the end user. I don’t think iRobot gets enough credit for this.

[ iRobot ]

I like competitions where they say, “just relax and forget about the competition and show us what you can do.”

[ MBZIRC Maritime Grand Challenge ]

I kid you not, this used to be my job.

[ RoboHike ]

Boardwalk Robotics is announcing its entry into the increasingly crowded commercial humanoid(ish) space with Alex, a “workforce transformation” humanoid upper torso designed to work in manufacturing, logistics, and maintenance.

Before we get into Alex, let me take just a minute here to straighten out how Boardwalk Robotics is related to IHMC, the Institute for Human Machine Cognition in Pensacola, Florida. IHMC is, I think it’s fair to say, somewhat legendary when it comes to bipedal robotics—its DARPA Robotics Challenge team took second place in the final event (using a Boston Dynamics DRC Atlas), and when NASA needed someone to teach the agency’s Valkyrie humanoid to walk better, they sent it to IHMC.

Boardwalk, which was founded in 2017, has been a commercial partner with IHMC when it comes to the actual building of robots. The most visible example of this to date has been IHMC’s Nadia humanoid, a research platform which Boardwalk collaborated on and built. There’s obviously a lot of crossover between IHMC and Boardwalk in terms of institutional knowledge and experience, but Alex is a commercial robot developed entirely in-house by Boardwalk.

“We’ve used Nadia to learn a lot in the realm of dynamic locomotion research, and we’re taking all that and sticking it into a manipulation platform that’s ready for commercial work,” says Brandon Shrewsbury, Boardwalk Robotics’ CTO. “With Alex, we’re focusing on the manipulation side first, getting that well established. And then picking the mobility to match the task.”

The first thing you’ll notice about Alex is that it doesn’t have legs, at least for now. Boardwalk’s theory is that for a humanoid to be practical and cost effective in the near term, legs aren’t necessary, and that there are many tasks that offer a good return on investment where a stationary pedestal or a glorified autonomous mobile robotic base would be totally fine.

“There are going to be some problem sets that require legs, but there are many problem sets that don’t,” says Robert Griffin, a technical advisor at Boardwalk. “And there aren’t very many problem sets that don’t require halfway decent manipulation capabilities. So if we can design the manipulation well from the beginning, then we won’t have to depend on legs for making a robot that’s functionally useful.”

It certainly helps that Boardwalk isn’t at all worried about developing legs: “Every time we bring up a new humanoid, it’s something like twice as fast as the previous time,” Griffin says. This will be the eighth humanoid that IHMC has been involved in bringing up—I’d tell you more about all eight of those humanoids, but some of them are so secret that even I don’t know anything about them. Legs are definitely on the roadmap, but they’re not done yet, and IHMC will have a hand in their development to speed things along: It turns out that already having access to a functional (top of the line, really) locomotion stack is a big head start.

Alex’s actuators are all designed in-house, and the next version will feature new grippers that allow for quicker tool changes.Boardwalk Robotics

While the humanoid space is wide open right now and competition isn’t really an issue, looking ahead, Boardwalk sees safety as one of its primary differentiators since it’s not starting out with legs, says Shrewsbury. “For a full humanoid, there’s no way to make that completely safe. If it falls, it’s going to faceplant.” By keeping Alex on a stable base, it can work closer to humans and potentially move its arms much faster while also preserving a dynamic safety zone.

Alex is available for researchers to purchase immediately.Boardwalk Robotics

Despite its upbringing in research, Alex is not intended to be a research robot. You can buy it for research purposes, if you want, but Boardwalk will be selling Alex as a commercial robot. At the moment, Boardwalk is conducting pilot programs with Alex where they’re working in partnership with select customers, with the eventual goal of transitioning to a service model. The first few sectors that Boardwalk is targeting include logistics (because of course) and food processing, although as Boardwalk CEO Michael Morin one of the very first pilots is (appropriately enough) in aviation.

Morin, who helped to commercialize Barrett Technologies’ WAM Arm before spending some time at Vicarious Surgical as that company went public, joined Boardwalk to help them turn good engineering into a good product, which is arguably the hardest part of making useful robots (besides all the other hardest parts). “A lot of these companies are just learning about humanoids for the first time,” says Morin. “That makes the customer journey longer. But we’re putting in the effort to educate them on how this could be implemented in their world.”

If you want an Alex of your very own, Boardwalk is currently selecting commercial partners for a few more pilots. And for researchers, the robot is available right now.

Boardwalk Robotics is announcing its entry into the increasingly crowded commercial humanoid(ish) space with Alex, a “workforce transformation” humanoid upper torso designed to work in manufacturing, logistics, and maintenance.

Before we get into Alex, let me take just a minute here to straighten out how Boardwalk Robotics is related to IHMC, the Institute for Human Machine Cognition in Pensacola, Florida. IHMC is, I think it’s fair to say, somewhat legendary when it comes to bipedal robotics—its DARPA Robotics Challenge team took second place in the final event (using a Boston Dynamics DRC Atlas), and when NASA needed someone to teach the agency’s Valkyrie humanoid to walk better, they sent it to IHMC.

Boardwalk, which was founded in 2017, has been a commercial partner with IHMC when it comes to the actual building of robots. The most visible example of this to date has been IHMC’s Nadia humanoid, a research platform which Boardwalk collaborated on and built. There’s obviously a lot of crossover between IHMC and Boardwalk in terms of institutional knowledge and experience, but Alex is a commercial robot developed entirely in-house by Boardwalk.

“We’ve used Nadia to learn a lot in the realm of dynamic locomotion research, and we’re taking all that and sticking it into a manipulation platform that’s ready for commercial work,” says Brandon Shrewsbury, Boardwalk Robotics’ CTO. “With Alex, we’re focusing on the manipulation side first, getting that well established. And then picking the mobility to match the task.”

The first thing you’ll notice about Alex is that it doesn’t have legs, at least for now. Boardwalk’s theory is that for a humanoid to be practical and cost effective in the near term, legs aren’t necessary, and that there are many tasks that offer a good return on investment where a stationary pedestal or a glorified autonomous mobile robotic base would be totally fine.

“There are going to be some problem sets that require legs, but there are many problem sets that don’t,” says Robert Griffin, a technical advisor at Boardwalk. “And there aren’t very many problem sets that don’t require halfway decent manipulation capabilities. So if we can design the manipulation well from the beginning, then we won’t have to depend on legs for making a robot that’s functionally useful.”

It certainly helps that Boardwalk isn’t at all worried about developing legs: “Every time we bring up a new humanoid, it’s something like twice as fast as the previous time,” Griffin says. This will be the eighth humanoid that IHMC has been involved in bringing up—I’d tell you more about all eight of those humanoids, but some of them are so secret that even I don’t know anything about them. Legs are definitely on the roadmap, but they’re not done yet, and IHMC will have a hand in their development to speed things along: It turns out that already having access to a functional (top of the line, really) locomotion stack is a big head start.

Alex’s actuators are all designed in-house, and the next version will feature new grippers that allow for quicker tool changes.Boardwalk Robotics

While the humanoid space is wide open right now and competition isn’t really an issue, looking ahead, Boardwalk sees safety as one of its primary differentiators since it’s not starting out with legs, says Shrewsbury. “For a full humanoid, there’s no way to make that completely safe. If it falls, it’s going to faceplant.” By keeping Alex on a stable base, it can work closer to humans and potentially move its arms much faster while also preserving a dynamic safety zone.

Alex is available for researchers to purchase immediately.Boardwalk Robotics

Despite its upbringing in research, Alex is not intended to be a research robot. You can buy it for research purposes, if you want, but Boardwalk will be selling Alex as a commercial robot. At the moment, Boardwalk is conducting pilot programs with Alex where they’re working in partnership with select customers, with the eventual goal of transitioning to a service model. The first few sectors that Boardwalk is targeting include logistics (because of course) and food processing, although as Boardwalk CEO Michael Morin one of the very first pilots is (appropriately enough) in aviation.

Morin, who helped to commercialize Barrett Technologies’ WAM Arm before spending some time at Vicarious Surgical as that company went public, joined Boardwalk to help them turn good engineering into a good product, which is arguably the hardest part of making useful robots (besides all the other hardest parts). “A lot of these companies are just learning about humanoids for the first time,” says Morin. “That makes the customer journey longer. But we’re putting in the effort to educate them on how this could be implemented in their world.”

If you want an Alex of your very own, Boardwalk is currently selecting commercial partners for a few more pilots. And for researchers, the robot is available right now.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.

Enjoy today’s videos!

The title of this video is “Silly Robot Dog Jump” and that’s probably more than you need to know.

[ Deep Robotics ]

It’ll be great when robots are reliably autonomous, but until they get there, collaborative capabilities are a must.

[ Robust AI ]

I am so INCREDIBLY EXCITED for this.

[ IIT Instituto Italiano di Tecnologia ]

[ LimX Dynamics ]

[ Nature ]

[ Agility Robotics ]

Robots that try really hard but are bad at things are utterly charming.

[ University of Tokyo JSK Lab ]

The DARPA Triage Challenge unsurprisingly has a bunch of robots in it.

[ DARPA ]

The Cobalt security robot has been around for a while, but I have to say, the design really holds up—it’s a good looking robot.

[ Cobalt AI ]

All robots that enter elevators should be programmed to gently sway back and forth to the elevator music. Even if there’s no elevator music.

[ Somatic ]

[ ABB ]

[ Extend Robotics ]

The recorded livestream of RSS 2024 is now online, in case you missed anything.

[ RSS 2024 ]

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.

Enjoy today’s videos!

The title of this video is “Silly Robot Dog Jump” and that’s probably more than you need to know.

[ Deep Robotics ]

It’ll be great when robots are reliably autonomous, but until they get there, collaborative capabilities are a must.

[ Robust AI ]

I am so INCREDIBLY EXCITED for this.

[ IIT Instituto Italiano di Tecnologia ]

[ LimX Dynamics ]

[ Nature ]

[ Agility Robotics ]

Robots that try really hard but are bad at things are utterly charming.

[ University of Tokyo JSK Lab ]

The DARPA Triage Challenge unsurprisingly has a bunch of robots in it.

[ DARPA ]

The Cobalt security robot has been around for a while, but I have to say, the design really holds up—it’s a good looking robot.

[ Cobalt AI ]

All robots that enter elevators should be programmed to gently sway back and forth to the elevator music. Even if there’s no elevator music.

[ Somatic ]

[ ABB ]

[ Extend Robotics ]

The recorded livestream of RSS 2024 is now online, in case you missed anything.

[ RSS 2024 ]

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.

Enjoy today’s videos!

At ICRA 2024, in Tokyo last May, we sat down with the director of Shadow Robot, Rich Walker, to talk about the journey toward developing its newest model. Designed for reinforcement learning, the hand is extremely rugged, has three fingers that act like thumbs, and has fingertips that are highly sensitive to touch.

[ IEEE Spectrum ]

[ RoMeLa ]

This clip is from a reboot of the British TV show “Time Team.” If you’re not already a fan of “Time Team,” let me just say that it is one of the greatest retro reality TV shows ever made, where actual archaeologists wander around the United Kingdom and dig stuff up. If they can find anything. Which they often can’t. And also it has Tony Robinson (from “Blackadder”), who runs everywhere for some reason. Go to Time Team Classics on YouTube for 70+ archived episodes.

[ UCL RPL ]

[ UBTECH ]

[ ETH Zurich paper / IROS 2024 ]

When working on autonomous cars, sometimes it’s best to start small.

[ University of Pennsylvania ]

[ MIT ]

[ UCL Robotics Institute ]

Walking in tall grass can be hard for robots, because they can’t see the ground that they’re actually stepping on. Here’s a technique to solve that, published in Robotics and Automation Letters last year.

[ ETH Zurich Robotic Systems Lab ]

There is no such thing as excess batter on a corn dog, and there is also no such thing as a defective donut. And apparently, making Kool-Aid drink pouches is harder than it looks.

[ Oxipital AI ]

Unitree has open-sourced its software to teleoperate humanoids in VR for training-data collection.

[ Unitree / GitHub ]

Nothing more satisfying than seeing point-cloud segments wiggle themselves into place, and CSIRO’s Wildcat SLAM does this better than anyone.

[ IEEE Transactions on Robotics ]

[ Mentee Robotics ]

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.

Enjoy today’s videos!

At ICRA 2024, in Tokyo last May, we sat down with the director of Shadow Robot, Rich Walker, to talk about the journey toward developing its newest model. Designed for reinforcement learning, the hand is extremely rugged, has three fingers that act like thumbs, and has fingertips that are highly sensitive to touch.

[ IEEE Spectrum ]

[ RoMeLa ]

This clip is from a reboot of the British TV show “Time Team.” If you’re not already a fan of “Time Team,” let me just say that it is one of the greatest retro reality TV shows ever made, where actual archaeologists wander around the United Kingdom and dig stuff up. If they can find anything. Which they often can’t. And also it has Tony Robinson (from “Blackadder”), who runs everywhere for some reason. Go to Time Team Classics on YouTube for 70+ archived episodes.

[ UCL RPL ]

[ UBTECH ]

[ ETH Zurich paper / IROS 2024 ]

When working on autonomous cars, sometimes it’s best to start small.

[ University of Pennsylvania ]

[ MIT ]

[ UCL Robotics Institute ]

Walking in tall grass can be hard for robots, because they can’t see the ground that they’re actually stepping on. Here’s a technique to solve that, published in Robotics and Automation Letters last year.

[ ETH Zurich Robotic Systems Lab ]

There is no such thing as excess batter on a corn dog, and there is also no such thing as a defective donut. And apparently, making Kool-Aid drink pouches is harder than it looks.

[ Oxipital AI ]

Unitree has open-sourced its software to teleoperate humanoids in VR for training-data collection.

[ Unitree / GitHub ]

Nothing more satisfying than seeing point-cloud segments wiggle themselves into place, and CSIRO’s Wildcat SLAM does this better than anyone.

[ IEEE Transactions on Robotics ]

[ Mentee Robotics ]