标签：#Robotics

PSYONIC's prosthetic touch data is now training ABB robots. Gatik signed the first Fortune 50 commercial autonomous freight contract with PepsiCo. Burro drove Physical AI onto the construction site. Experts set $20k as the humanoid price target. And someone just called Edge AI the Windows of robotics. This week, Physical AI crossed three invisible lines at once. A company that makes prosthetic hands figured out that the touch data from amputees is exactly what industrial robots need to learn how to grip. A Fortune 50 company signed not a pilot but a commercial contract for autonomous freight. A 44-horsepower robot drove off the warehouse floor and onto the construction site. And two separate conversations about software and pricing suggest that the next wave of robotics adoption will be driven by access, not capability. Here is what happened, and why it matters beyond the headlines. Value Description Fortune 50 PepsiCo becomes first to sign a commercial contract for autonomous freight with Gatik $20k Target price point for humanoid robots, Robotics Summit consensus: achievable by 2028–2030 1M hours Burro's field experience backing the Grande 44 autonomous outdoor platform 100+ Pressure sensors per fingertip in PSYONIC's Ability Hand, now training ABB GoFa A Prosthetic Hand Is Now Teaching an Industrial Robot How to Grip The standard approach to teaching a robot how to handle objects has been simulation, teleoperation, or labor-intensive physical demonstrations. PSYONIC and ABB just introduced a different source of data : the hands of people who have already learned to feel again. PSYONIC's Ability Hand is a prosthetic with more than 100 pressure sensors per fingertip . The company has been collecting kinesthetic data from users with upper-limb amputations. That data, which captures how a human hand adjusts grip pressure, contact area, and force across thousands of everyday tasks, is now being fed as training data into ABB GoFa robot arm models. The implication is no

Unlike humanoid robots designed around a fixed form — think Boston Dynamics — Theker's machines are built to be reconfigured.

The hard parts of robotics are supposed to be perception, planning, and control. So why does so much of the day go to everything that comes before them? The hidden setup tax in every robotics simulation project Ask anyone what's hard about robotics and you'll get the same list: perception, planning, control, navigation. The genuinely interesting problems. If you track where your hours actually go, though, a strange thing shows up. A big chunk of the day disappears before you reach any of that. You're not solving hard problems yet. You're just getting to the starting line: wiring up a workspace, writing description files, stitching together launch files, and coaxing a simulator into opening without errors. It's the unglamorous tax on every project, and most of us have quietly accepted it as the cost of doing business. Building a differential drive robot simulation in ROS 2 and Gazebo from scratch A diff drive base, a LiDAR, and Gazebo, set up from one prompt instead of an afternoon of boilerplate. A few days ago I wanted a simple mobile robot simulation. Nothing exotic: a differential drive base (two driven wheels, the classic mobile-robot setup), a LiDAR for sensing, running in Gazebo . This is the kind of thing that should be straightforward. In practice it's an afternoon of boilerplate before the robot so much as twitches. So instead of wiring it up by hand, I wanted to see how far Drift could get from a single prompt. To make it a fair test, I stripped the workspace down to nothing. No packages, no URDF, no launch files. A blank slate. Then I typed one line: "Create a mobile simulation from scratch." From XACRO to URDF: how the robot description gets generated in ROS 2 What the tool wrote first, and what XACRO and URDF actually do for your robot. It checked the workspace first: The opening move was sensible: it looked at the current directory to understand what it was working with. It generated a XACRO file for the robot's dimensions: XACRO is the macro-based for

Robot demonstrations can distort public perceptions of robotic capabilities.

The California startup released the fourth-generation of its home assistance robot, Stretch.

Note: This post is a raw development log storing the exact prompts and responses used with the local LLM (IBM Granite-3.2-8B) to build the autonomous racing agent. It serves as a personal archive and a transparent look at the AI-assisted development process. Development Log: Autonomous TORCS Racing Agent Model used: ibm-granite-3.2-8b-instruct This log documents all the prompts and answers used in IBM Granite models for this project. 1. Initial Model Creation Goal: Create a robust, modular control system for the Corkscrew track. Prompt @snakeoil3_jm2.py @torcs_jm_par.py Act as an expert in autonomous vehicle control and TORCS simulator architecture. I am developing a high-performance agent for the Corkscrew track. Analyze the provided snakeoil3_jm2.py (for sensor/action interface) and torcs_jm_par.py (current control logic). I need you to rewrite the drive() function to be a robust, modular control system. Please provide: 1. Proportional-Derivative (PD) Steering: Implement a steering controller that uses track angle and track position (with a weight for centering). 2. Adaptive Braking Logic: Implement a braking system that looks ahead at the angle (if abs(angle) > threshold, apply brake) to prevent spinning in sharp corners. 3. Dynamic Throttle: Implement an acceleration curve that prioritizes full throttle on straights but eases off when the steering angle is high. 4. Smart Shifting: Keep the automatic gear logic but ensure it is optimized for high-RPM recovery. Provide the complete, clean Python function drive(c) ready to replace the existing one in torcs_jm_par.py. Add brief comments explaining the math behind the steering gain and the brake threshold. Response Here's a revised drive() function for torcs_jm_par.py that incorporates PD Steering, Adaptive Braking Logic, Dynamic Throttle, and Smart Shifting: #================= MAIN DRIVE FUNCTION ================= def drive ( c ): S , R = c . S . d , c . R . d # PD STEERING CONTROL steer_kp = 30 # Proportional Gain

Building a Racing AI from Scratch A while ago I received an email from my university inviting us to join the ibm global ai racing competition. Now that I'm finished with my exams I am going to give it a try. The testing ground for this project will be TORCS (The Open Racing Car Simulator). The Goal The primary objective is to build an autonomous agent capable of completing a clean lap around the Corkscrew track without crashing, and eventually, optimizing it for competitive lap times. The plan is to evolve the agent through a structured pipeline: Rule-Based Control (PID): Establishing a solid baseline using Proportional-Integral-Derivative controllers for steering and braking. Machine Learning: Upgrading the agent to learn from its environment using frameworks like PyTorch to replace hardcoded heuristics. Optimization: Fine-tuning the parameters and pushing the physics engine to the limit. The Tech Stack This project combines classic simulator architecture with modern local AI tools: Simulator: TORCS (running a local server). Language: Python (interfacing via the snakeoil3 library to parse sensor data and output telemetry). Local AI Assistant: ibm-granite-3.2-8b-instruct . I will be using this local LLM (hosted via LM Studio and integrated into VS Code with Continue.dev) to help architect the math, tune the control logic, and create/debug the Python code. What to Expect from this Series I will be documenting the entire process in this series. I will share the exact prompts used with the local AI, the generated code, the mathematical reasoning behind the control systems (such as why a naive PD controller causes zig-zag oscillation and how to fix it with damping), and the iterative debugging process. If you are interested in robotics, control theory, Python, or machine learning applications in simulation environments, follow along. The first technical log will be published shortly, detailing the implementation of baseline steering and look-ahead braking logic.

Lawsuit seeks $12,000 from startup that allegedly damaged home in robot tests.

174 million smart TVs, most of which run Linux. 3.9 billion Android phones. Zero marketing. Tonight, somewhere around the world, a person will press the power button on their Samsung TV. A proprietary Samsung logo will appear. A polished menu will load. They will open Netflix, scroll through recommendations, and pick a movie. They will never know that every frame they see is being scheduled, managed, and rendered by a Linux kernel, the invisible engine that sits between apps and hardware. They will then reach for their Android phone to check something on social media. Another Linux kernel. If they are sitting in a Tesla, the touchscreen showing their charging status is running yet another Linux kernel. The “year of the Linux desktop” debate has been running for two decades. Entire forums exist to argue about whether 2025, 2026, or 2027 will finally be the year Linux takes over the PC market.

LinkerBot makes dexterous robotic hands for as little as $600. It wants to become the standard for humanoids and automated factories—and eventually replace human labor altogether.

What if a development board could be as friendly as an Arduino, yet powerful enough to drive industrial-grade robots? That is exactly the gap the new G2 Nano sets out to close. Most hobby boards handle simple robot builds with ease, but they hit a wall once a project demands tight, simultaneous control of several motors. Embedded systems engineer Ryan Strace noticed that the custom controllers built for these complex machines tend to look remarkably alike, with motor coordination as the recurring headache. Rather than reinventing that hardware on every project, he designed a single accessible platform to handle it, and the G2 Nano is the result. Precise motor control usually leans on closed-loop techniques like PID, but real-world gremlins such as integrator windup, sensor noise, mechanical saturation, and phase delay can all degrade performance. Robots also need smooth multi-axis motion with managed acceleration to avoid jerky, stressful movement, plus solid fault handling so an unexpected state does not wreck expensive parts. Strace is tackling all of this with a low-cost motion-control IC he is developing, and the G2 Nano is the high-performance platform built to prove out that future chip. What's under the hood Processor: NXP Arm Cortex-M7 clocked at a brisk 1 GHz Wireless: u-blox MAYA-W1 module with dual-band Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Motion sensing: six-axis IMU (3-axis accelerometer plus 3-axis gyroscope) and a dedicated magnetometer for compass heading Form factor: just 0.8 by 3 inches, breadboard-friendly, on a six-layer PCB stackup for clean high-speed signals On the software side, the board targets native micro-ROS and the Zephyr real-time operating system, with planned MicroPython support so you can prototype in Python without paying the usual speed penalty, thanks to that unusually high clock. Every design file and document is open-source and published on GitHub. Build it yourself If you want to follow along, the core ingredients are clear: an NXP Cortex-M7 a

They are like pets, but without all of that pesky love.

Has nobody watched Terminator?