The Robotics Roundup is a weekly newspost going over some of the most exciting developments in robotics over the past week.
In today’s edition we have:
- Agility’s Latest Digit Robot Prepares for Its First Job
- A Sowing, Pruning, and Harvesting Robot for Synecoculture Farming
- A robot that makes and launches paper planes to test designs
- New Yorkers friendlier than expected as robots take out the trash
- OpenAI connects ChatGPT to the internet
Agility’s Latest Digit Robot Prepares for Its First Job
Agility’s Digit bipedal robot platform is soon to be deployed for it’s first round of real-world testing. This robot differs from most humanoid/bipedal platforms in that instead of being intended to be a 1 to 1 replacement for a human, Digit has replaceable single-purpouse manipulators in place of hands, and a robust digitigrade leg design. This means that while digit can share the strengths of a humanoid platform (similar workspace and footprint to a human) it can also benefit from the usage of manipulators designed especially for it’s task.
A Sowing, Pruning, and Harvesting Robot for Synecoculture Farming
Researchers at the Sony Computer Science Laboratory have developed a new robotic design capable of complex plant tending processes. Robotics has been a growing presence in agriculture for some time now, and this platform showcases many of the reasons why robotics are such a great boon for the industry. Dr. Masatoshi Funabashi’s design simplifies the work intensive process of Synecoculture, allowing the simultaneous growing of multiple healthy crops in a single field.
A robot that makes and launches paper planes to test designs
Engineers from the CREATE Lab (Computational Robot Design & Fabrication Lab) in Lausanne, Switzerland have developed a robot capable of automated design and testing of paper airplane designs. Although this particular platform may not have a particularly practical purpose at this time, the designers of the project hope that this technology can serve as a proof of concept for the design of similar systems for full scale aerospace platform design.
New Yorkers friendlier than expected as robots take out the trash
In spite of New Yorkers reputations for rudeness, a report conducted by Cornell University showed that people tend to be quite polite and helpful to robots encountered in their daily life. An important aspect of this report is human’s tendency to assign human-like qualities and motivations to the very un-humanlike robotic trashcans.
OpenAI connects ChatGPT to the internet
OpenAI’s ChatGPT platform just got much more capable for users enrolled in the plugin waitlist. The addition of plugins supporting web access greatly expand ChatGPT’s abilities, as currently the neural network’s knowledge is limited to events that occurred prior to the end of 2021. This new capability also comes with some additional risks of misinformation, and possibly new unforeseen ways to abuse the ChatGPT platform.