The 2022 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2022) will be held on October 23–27, 2022 in The Kyoto International Conference Center, Kyoto, Japan. The IROS is one of the largest and most impacting robotics research conferences worldwide. It provides an international forum for the international robotics research community to explore the frontier of science and technology in intelligent robots and smart machines. The theme of IROS 2022 is “Embodied AI for a Symbiotic Society’’. In addition to technical sessions and multi-media presentations, IROS conferences also hold panel discussions, forums, workshops, tutorials, exhibits, and technical tours to enrich the fruitful discussions among conference attendees.
Together with Microsoft and Nvidia, the participation of Extend Robotics is in the XR & Robotics Workshop: FIRST INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP: HORIZONS OF AN EXTENDED ROBOTICS REALITY .
Through exciting talks, interactions, and poster presentations, the hybrid workshop seeks to bring together researchers from the worlds of XR and Robotics, from Mechanisms and Control, AI/ML, HCI, Ergonomics, Human Factors, with the twin goals of presenting the advances in XR technologies and discussing how XR can help address challenges in robotics.
It seeks to highlight the advances in the theoretical and experimental bases of perception, cognition, and behaviour in XR technologies, including MR environment and interaction design, data representation (virtual models, rendering, video, point-clouds, 3D reconstruction, ambient sensors), sensory substitution (tactile, auditory), natural gesture and intention understanding, real-time data transmission (bandwidth, latency, etc.), etc.
The workshop will address the aspects of XR-mediated interaction in robotics, e.g., XR in telesurgery, XR for robot learning, tele-health, rehabilitation, industry, teleoperation (disaster response, space, agriculture, etc.).
Extend Robotics is thrilled to have published an extended abstract for the poster session in the workshop. The list of the poster presentations are in this link.
Our CEO and Chief Designer, Chang Liu, has given an exciting talk as a keynote speaker. Advanced 3D Graphics for VR-based Robotic Teleoperation
This talk describes how Extend Robotics combines cutting edge real-time volumetric telepresence with interactive digital twin, to achieve intuitiveness for robotic teleoperation, allowing users to immersively visualise the remote workspace in 3D, while controlling the robot with natural gestures. This technology unlocks the next generation human robot interface, utilising only consumer VR equipment such as Meta Quest to operate a wide range of commercial robotics systems.
Detail in the link here
Industry 4.0 is really about smarter and more connected world with smart factory, autonomous systems , IoT, and machine learning. The goal is to transitions from the traditional rigid production lines automation that simply repeat predictable movement, into The real-world contingent situations, that requires highly intelligent tasks performed in complex dynamic environments. Although this is an inevitable trend, the time frame to ultimately achieve the level of intelligence that is flexible and robust enough to be widely trusted, is still unclear.
In a parallel world, The Teleoperated robots represents a completely different angle entering the market, to deal with complementary applications that are hard or even impossible to automate.The concept is nothing new. It was invented 50 years ago, to allow skilled operators to remotely perform physical tasks. The aim is to remove human from hazardous or hard to access workspace, in critical applications such as
- Da Vinci Surgical Systems
- Nuclear maintenance and decommissioning, Dexter robot in JET Fusion reactor
- Space robotics
- Military bomb disposal applications.
This puts the teleoperated robots to the opposite corner of the spectrum, which still does not fulfil the productivity need for real-world applications.
The gap is that we need an uniform solution, which could remove those barriers of adopting teleoperated robots in complex dynamic applications and combine it with automation to drive up the labour efficiency. This will enable the next generation accessible tele-automation robot, that could scale rapidly to a wide range of applications to provide productivity improvements.
This is exactly where 3D graphics and XR technologies could bring us.
with recent research such as this paper from Brown University already proving that with VR-based 3D perception and intuitive position control could result in
- Faster task completion time,
- Lower cognitive workload
- Higher usability and
- User satisfaction
Which already suggest less accident and higher efficiency. With the recent advancement in Metaverse, XR technologies is rapidly approaching maturity, standardization, and affordability .
Longer term, our vision is to develop Uber-like cloud platform, connecting robots with VR operators across the globe.
Ultimately, we will become the next Tesla in robotics, unlocking progressive, data-driven autonomy with large amount ofreal world data from the cloud platform.
We are now in the first phase of developing an intuitive & scalable human robot interface software, to lay the solid foundation to realise that vision.