جريدة الوطن العربي سياسية – اجتماعية – اقتصادية – فنية- رياضية- مستقلة
Ibrahim ahmed
Now available with a mobile base, the robot is introducing a new field of possibilities
Fully programmable, teleoperable humanoid robot Reachy just became mobile. Already adopted by universities and research centers in the US, Canada and the world, Reachy’s newfound mobility and open source technology makes it a partner of choice for robotics and AI researchers.
Check out Reachy’s new video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsFpiawg-sA
A Unique New Base For Complete Mobility
Already fully programmable via autonomous applications or teleoperable using VR, Pollen Robotics’ humanoid robot just gained mobility. This new feature, that increases Reachy’s general potential, virtually widens its available workspace. The mobile robot is available for preorder for universities & research centers looking to explore applications in the field of robotics and AI.
“We wanted a mobile base with a unique design for Reachy” said co-founder and CEO Matthieu Lapeyre. “Where most robotic mobile bases on the market are square and equipped with 2 standard wheels or 4 mecanum wheels, we chose to focus on a round shape design and a 3 omni wheel mechanism for increased agility and compactness.” Specifically designed to support the interactive service robot, Reachy’s new mobile base also has a smaller volume than similar products. Why such a small footprint? “This allows the robot to move in any direction, turn itself around, go through doors, squeeze through tight spaces…and overall align with our all-time goal: to create robotic solutions that can evolve in the chaos of everyday environment”
In the same way PC manufacturers plan ahead when designing their latest models, with specs that will sustain upcoming technological advances, the mechatronic base has been fitted with enough power, speed and mechanical robustness to anticipate all foreseeable technological advances in the upcoming years.
| Thanks to 3 powerful 120W DC brushless motors, the mobile base can reach speeds above 5.6miles/hour. Each wheel includes one encoder and one Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU). A 2D Time Of Flight (ToF) LIDAR offers navigation with a ranging distance of 30m, a resolution of 0.12°, a high sampling rate (32kHz). Finally, a 24V, 35 A.H LFP eco-friendly battery guarantees autonomy for the robot for an average of 10 hours |
An Open Source Software That Keeps Learning
| Because Reachy runs ROS, navigation became its logical next development. Reachy is integrated with the full ROS2 stack. Lower-level URDF and ROS control hardware interfaces allow you to actuate the motors, compute forward and inverse kinematics, visualize sensor data and simulate your robot (gazebo). Higher-level interfaces allow commands such as planning, grasping (MoveIt) and navigation.In addition, Reachy’s SDK provides a unified API to simply control the robot locally or remotely, using Python. |
“The open source aspect on its own has opened a lot of doors for our company” says co-founder and CTO Pierre Rouanet “Not only does it make our technology accessible, transparent and modular for roboticists and programmers so they can tailor it to their applications, it’s also a symbol of our company ethics and values that we share with the greater community. Researchers can look into our code to understand what’s going on and develop their own algorithms”. What’s more, any work done by Reachy users can be shared, thus encouraging collaboration and advancing difficult topics in interactive robotics.”
Currently Used in research all Around the World
Around 50 units of Reachy have been sold around the world, mostly to academics and research centers. Among them, Cornell University uses Reachy for research on human-robot collaboration and collaboration, Imperial College London to study reinforcement learning algorithms for robot’s versatility, resilience and autonomy. in a different field, the EPFL uses Reachy to explore how a robot can help children with handwriting acquisition using an unusual approach where children are the teachers helping the robot to write better.
The University of Calgary will be the first to use Reachy with a mobile base.“Part of our research addresses the possibility for robots and humans to dance together – Reachy, with its new mobile base can navigate seamlessly and even turn around on itself – or dance, explains Marie Charbonneau, assistant professor at the Human-Robot Collaboration Lab. “Using a humanoid robot allows us to observe how robots and humans interact when in physical proximity. With its expressiveness and reassuring human size, Reachy seemed the right option to us: it is so friendly that you want to interact with it”.
Meeting Reachy in the US this year
Pollen Robotics is a finalist of the prestigious ANA AVATAR XPRIZE, a competition that aims to create an avatar system that can transport human presence to a remote location in real time. The finals will be held in Long Beach, LA County, November 4-5 , 2022 where 20 teams will compete for the third and last round, with a total of $8M in prize. This event will be open to the public.
