Newsgroups: comp.robotics
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From: nivek@frc.ri.cmu.edu (Kevin Dowling)
Subject: FAQ V.1
Message-ID: <NIVEK.92Mar5130748@scythe.frc.ri.cmu.edu>
Date: Thu, 05 Mar 92 18:07:48 GMT
Organization: Field Robotics Center, CMU
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[This is really version 1.0 of this FAQ. There are some blank spots,
missing addresses etc. If you have information immediately accessible
please drop me a line. I have very little from Europe, Asia and
the rest of the world, and I know there is stuff out there!  - thanks, nivek]

This is the comp.robotics Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list.

This FAQ addresses commonly asked questions relating to robotics
including pointers to organizations, periodicals, schools, robot
companies, and companies using or building robots,
resources for building robots, questions about specific robots (Hero's
and Pumas), and simulators.

Changes, additions, comments, suggestions and questions to:
	nivek@ri.cmu.edu

aka: 	Kevin Dowling
     	Robotics Institute
	Carnegie Mellon University
	Pittsburgh, PA 15213

Acknowledgements follow FAQ.
____________________________________________________________________________
Robotics related Organizations:

IEEE 
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Service Center
445 Hoes Lane
Piscataway, NJ 08854-4150
(201) 981-0060

Society of Manufacturing Engineers, (SME)

American Society of Mechanical Engineers, (ASME)

National Service Robot Association (NSRA)

Robotics Industry Association (RIA)

__________________________________________________________________________
Robotics Conferences:
Proceedings should be available in most good libraries or by
interlibrary loan.

Annual Conference of IEEE, Robotics and Automation

Annual Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems

Annaul Symposium on Industrial Robots

Biannual Symposium International Symposium of Robotics Research

Biannual Autonomous Intelligent Systems

___________________________________________________________________________
Robotics Publications:

	IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics
	IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation
	IEEE Control Systems Magazine
	IEEE Computer Magazine
	IEEN Transactions on PAMI
	IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics
	Cost: Have to join IEEE and then subscribe. Student rates are low.

	International Journal of Robotics Research
	MIT Press
	28 Carleton Street
	Cambridge, MA 02142
	Cost: $50/year to individuals

	International Journal of Robotics and Automation

	Robotics and Autonomous Systems

	Robotics and Computer Integrated Manufacturing

	Robotics Today
	Industry trade journal

	Robotics World

	Robotica - japanese journal

Useful and Relevant magazines:

	Sensors
	Trade magazine devoted to sensing devices. Publishes annual directory.
	Cost: Free to qualified subscribers, $55 otherwise
	Helmers Publishing
	174 Concord Street
	PO Box 874
	Peterborough, NH 03458-0874
	(603) 924-9631
	
	Machine Design
	Free to qualified subscribers

	Design News

Our lab at CMU gets 40-50 trade magazines and journals and while no
one reads all of them very often articles and pointers are passed
on to people in the lab. This has worked well. 

Trade magazines:
Usually free, mostly ads or industry news. Many articles written by
advertisers. Great sources of product information.
Motion Control
GPS World
RF Design
Sea Technology
Laser Focus
POB
Broadcast Engineering
Embedded Systems
EE Times

All these are free
	
_____________________________________________________________________________
Mobile robots:  Companies and addresses - synopsis

TRC
15 Great Pasture Road
Danbury, CT 06810
(203) 798-8988
Labmate research platform - $7500, plus additional optional sensors
etc. Other prodcuts for hospital markets and floor cleaning machines.
(Helpmate and RoboKent respectively)

Denning Mobile Robotics Inc.
21 Concord Street
Wilmington, MA 01887
(508) 658-7800
Mobile robots - synchronous drive bases for research platforms.
Building automated camera platforms for newsrooms, working on
floor cleaning machines with an industrial partner.

Real World Interface (RWI)
New Hampshire
Small synchronous drive bases, primarily for research purposes. Approx $6K

Cybermotion
5457 Jae Valley Road
Roanoke, VA 24014
(703) 982-2641
John Holland's company. Mobile K2 bases making use of ingenious
torque-tube synchronous drive system. [Holland has patents for robot 
synchronous drives, not clear how Denning and RWI are using
this for their products, although Holland consulted on first Denning
designs.] Security maarkets and research platforms, manipulators for
base as well. Map building and following software.

Yamazaki Construction Company, Tokyo Japan.
LR1 robot - small research robot, basically a VME cage on wheels with
some ultrasonic sensors and a nice constant force suspension. has
shown up at IEEE R&A conferences $30K.

Robosoft, Asnieres, France

Mecos Robotics, Winterthur, Switzerland

Nomadic Technologies
858 La Para Avenue
Palo Alto, CA 94306
(415) 493-7700
fax (415) 493-7064
Mobile base and sensors (IR, Laser ranging, touch, GUI software
development)

Odetics,
Anaheim, CA
6 legged, (pantograph) Walking machine.
_____________________________________________________________________________
Robot Manipulator companies - [ Adept, GMF/Fanuc, Staubli etc ]

CRS Plus,
830 Harrington Court
Burlington, Ontario
Canada L7R 3Y2
(416) 639-0086
fax (416) 639-4248
-Sells several manipulators. 5-DOF around $25K, 6DOF around $33K.
Sell end-effectors as well (electric, vacuum and penumatic)
Wrist can be bought separately. Controllers use RAPL, a VAL-like
language. Fairly open architecture. 3Kg payloads +/- 0.05mm
repeatability.

Motoman [Hobart/Yaskawa]
3160 MacArthur Boulevard
Northbrook, IL 60062-1917
(708) 291-2340, fax (708) 498-2430
--Large industrial manipulators for welding, painting, palletizing,
dispensing, etc. Can be floor, ceiling or wall mount units. Payloads
for the 8 robots in the K-series range from 3kg to 100kg and
repeatability of 0.1 to 0.5 mm over that same range. They are vertical
jointed-arm type manipulators. (i.e. 4 bar linkage to reduce arm
intertias). 3 S-series robots are SCARA-type manipulators with
payloads of 50-60kg and varying workspace sizes
--Yaskawa also bought the rights to RobotWorld, Vic Schienman's unique
gantry design robot system. This system allow a number of mobile
modules in the same workspace to zip around at speeds up 80"/sec (3G
accel). RAIL and C can be used in a multilevel programming
environment. 0.002" Accuracy, 0.0005" repeatability. Neat stuff.

Adept Technology
150 Rose Orchard Way
San Jose, CA 95134
(408) 432-0888
fax (408) 432-8707
--High speed direct-drive and harmonic-drive SCARA style arms. 0.001"
(.025mm) repeatabiliy. Payloads from 4-25kg Can be used in clean room
and food applications as well. Adept sells vision systems and
controllers also.

Antenen Research
PO Box 95
Hamilton, OH 45012
(800) 323-9555
(513) 887-4700
fax (513) 887-4703
--New and used robots for manufacturing, research and training.
Used at savings of 40% - 70%. Also lots of parts and accessories.

Asea Brown Boveri (ABB), Vesteraas, Sweden

mecos Robotics, Winterthur, Switzerland
_____________________________________________________________________________
Other organizations doing robotics.

Most large aerospace companies have groups working in or looking
into robotics. Martin Marietta (Denver), Rockwell International
(Downey, CA), Boeing (Seattle) to name a couple.

Redzone Robotics (Pittsburgh) have focused on hazwaste and nuke
manipulator applications but branching out into mobile applications.
Primarily protoypes and not manufacturing.
Redzone Robotics
2425 Liberty Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15222-4639
(412) 765-3064

Vision Applications
NY, NY
Small, low cost fovial camera systems. Development stages. Unique
integrated, super small camera/pan/tilt device. Miniature active
vision systems, video telephones.

--NASA Centers
Jet Propulsion Labs (JPL)
Pasadena, CA
Hazardous-environment robots, teloperation, control, space and
planetary missions.
Tony Bejczy
Chuck Weisbin
Larry Mathies 
Henry Stone

Ames Research Center (ARC)
CA
Mike Sims - AI work


Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC)
MD
Lots of FTS work until program was cancelled but nice robotics lab

Johnson Space Center
Houston, TX
More of an operations house but lots of shuttle RMS work.

Langley Research Center, (LaRC)
VA
Jack Pennington - vision, inspection, 3-D sensors

______________________________________________________________________________
Graduate Program in Robotics:

Preface - Any good school will undoubtedly offer some robotics courses within
the engineering programs. Mechanical and Electrical engineering and
Computer Science departments are all good candidates for coursework
in Robotics. A number of schools have established track records and
a focus on robotics however and we list some here.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science both have strong
robotics efforts. Asada, Slotine, Brooks, Raibert and others
are known and respected for their work.

Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)
The Robotics Institute is a 150 person organization that offers
a PhD in Robotics but students from other programs (engineering and
computer science mostly) do research in the Institute as well. Lots
of mobile robot work, computer integrated manufacturing, rapid
prototyping, sensors, vision, navigation, learning and architectures.
Program is taking four qualifiers and a program of research leading to
a thesis and the degree.
Facilities include about 10 mobile systems with more under design and
construction. Many manipulator systems and lots of compute
cycles/person.
Hans Moravec - Mobile Robots Lab
Takeo Kanade - Vision and Autonomous Systems Center
Red Whittaker - Field Robotics Center
Steve Shafer - Calibrated Imaging Laboratory
Pradeep Khosla - Advanced Manipulator Laboartory
Matt Mason - Manipulation Laboratory
Tom Mitchell - Learning Robots Lab
Mel Seigel - Sensors Laboratory (non vision)
and others.....

Graduate program contact:
Graduate Admissions Coordinator
The Robotics Institute
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213

University of Pennsylvania.
UPenn offers Masters and PhD programs in Robotics and Robotics related
fields of study. These programs are offered through the Departments of
Computer and Information Science, Systems Engineering, and Mechanical
Engineering and Applied Mechanics. The bulk of the robotics research
is conducted in the inter-disciplinary General Robotics and Active
Sensory Perception (GRASP) laboratory. Active areas of research are
Telerobotics, Multiple Arm Control, Robotic Vision, Leanring Control,
Multi-agent Robotics and Mechanical Design. Leding Faculty members 
are Drs. R. Bajcsy and R.P. Paul.

--Stanford University
Palo Alto, CA
Mechanical Engineering -
Bernard Roth (kinematics of manipulators)
Larry Liefer (rehabilitation, user interfaces)
CS Department
Nils Nilsson
Mike Genesereth
Jean-Claude Latombe (path planning and geometric reasoning)
Leo Guibas (geometric reasoning)
Tom Binford (vision)
Yoav Shoham (agents)
Oussama Khatib
Aerospace Robotics Laboratory
Bob Cannon (teleoperation, free flyers, space robotics)

Univeristy of Southern California (USC)
Long history of robotics with interested faculty in CS, EE, ME, and ISE.
People include: 
George Bekey - founder of IEEE R&A
Michael Arbib - head Brain Simulation Laboratory
Ram Nevatia - Computer Vision Laboratory
Ari Requicha - Programmable Automation Laboratory
About twenty other faculty member associated with the Institute for
Robotics and Intelligent Systems and many others associated with 
USC's Information Sciences Institute (ISI). Brochure can be obtained
from: 
	Ken Goldberg, Asst Professor
	IRIS, Dept of Computer Science
	Powell Hall Room 204
	Univeristy of Southern California
	Los Angeles, CA 90089-0273
	Internet: goldberg@usc.edu

--University of Maryland
Dave Akin - 
Work in teleoperation and telerobotics. New facility includes large
neutraul bouyancy tank for underwater and space work.

--New York University (NYU)-?
Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences.
Zexiang Li - Dextrous Manipulation

California Insititute of Technology (Caltech)
Pasadena, CA
Joel Burdick - serpentine manipulation

Rennsalear Polytechnic Institute (RPI)-?
Center for Intelligent Robotics Systems in Space Environments (CIRSSE)
George Saridis
Arthur Sanderson

Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
The Institute of Robotics
Postgrad diploma in Mechatronics
G. Schweitzer

Purdue-?

University of California at Berkeley -?

Cornell-?
Mechanical Engineering
Sam Landsberger
Jeff Koechling

___________________________________________________________________________
Sensors:
There is just so much in this category I'm not sure how to address
this other give some proximity sensing (acoustic, IR and laser
ranging) with some brief mention of some others.
sonar sensors - polaroid and others
range sensors - point range devices
tactile bump sensing - 
cameras - 

____________________________________________________________________________
Robot parts: Suppliers of useful mechanical and electrical components.

--Winifred Berg

--Small Parts Inc.
6891 NE Third Ave
PO Box 381966
Miami, FL 33238-1966
(305) 751-0856
fax (305) 751-6217
Lots of neat small supplies from materials, metal stock, to fasteners,
tools etc. 

--Servo Systems
115 Main Road
PO Box 97
Montville, NJ 07045-9299
(201) 335-1007
fax (201) 335-1661
Surplus pieces and prices, motors, actuators, geardrives, controllers,
robots, encoderstransducers, amplifiers. 

--Nordex
50 Newton Road
Danbury, CT 06810-6216
Gears, cams, universals etc.

--Seitz
Box 1398
Torrington, CT 06790
(203) 243-5115
drive components, gears etc.

--Stock Drive Products
55 Denton Avenue
New Hyde Park, NY 11040
(516) 328-0200

--Edmund Scientific
101 E. Gloucester Pike
Barrington, NJ 08007-1380
(609) 573-6250 order
(609) 573-6260 customer service
Lots of optics, science and educational items. A little high priced, but
nice selection.

--Allied Devices
____________________________________________________________________________
Hero robot questions:
Heros are no longer being made but Heath still offers some replacement
parts.  They had about 8 years of sales: 4,000 Hero Jr's, 3,000 Hero
2000's, 14,000 assembled Hero 1's. Ones with less capability didn't do
as well but higher priced ones did ok.

Heathkit
Benton Harbor, MI
(800) 253-0570 order line
tech line (616) 982-3980



_____________________________________________________________________________
Puma questions:

Pumas are probably the most common robot in university laboratories
and one of the most common assembly robots. Designed by Vic
Schienman many years ago it was produced for many years by Unimation
(later purchased by Westinghouse and sold at a loss later to Staubli,
a Swiss company)

Useful reference:

B Armstrong, O Khatib, and J. Burdick
The Explicit Dynamic Model and Inertial Parameters of the PUMA 560 Arm
Proceedings IEEE Int. Conference on Robotics and Automation, April 1986
San Francisco, CA pp510-518
_____________________________________________________________________________
Simulators:

[There have been some summary posts in this area too, Anyone?]

Deneb/IGRIP

Silma/Cimstation. John Craig VP of R&D

Technomatix/Robcad


_____________________________________________________________________________

Thanks to:
Hans Moravec, Maki Habib, Ken Goldberg, David Stanton,
John Nagle, Sean Graves, Sjur Vestli, Mark Yim, Rich Wallace



--

aka: Kevin Dowling			Carnegie Mellon University
tel: (412) 268-8830			The Robotics Institute
adr: nivek@rover.ri.cmu.edu		Pittsburgh, PA 15213
