Icra2024
ICRA 2024 Recap
I attended the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation from May 13th to 17th. It was hosted in Yokohama, Japan. Including the expo and competitions, over 9,000 people attended. Here are some of my notes broken into categories:
ICRA EXPO
There were over 130 booths not including the robot demo area and 10 competitions.
Humanoids
There was a lack of North American based humanoid companies attending this year. It’s normal for Tesla and Boston Dynamics to not attend with a booth, but Agility, Sanctuary AI, Figure AI, and Apptronik also did not have booths or hardware. [Boston Dynamics did Spot demos in partnership with a Japanese firm, while Agility and Sanctuary AI gave short talks]
From the US, we had Westwood Robotics with THEMIS
I didn’t remember to stop by the booth and ask about the price for THEMIS. The very small sized humanoid they also make, named BRUCE, is around $15,000.
From Japan, we had both Kawasaki and THK. Kawasaki was showing some research versions of their humanoid and quadruped. These were made with off the shelf planetary actuators from China.
THK was showing a prototype humanoid meant to showcase their new cycloid actuators (which are planned to be for sale).
From China, we had Fourier Intelligence, Unitree, LimX Dynamics, and LEJUROBOT.
https://youtu.be/KoAEaZm1Hw4?si=pVu7D7F9tByOlbf3&t=87
Fourier Intelligence’s GR-1 starts at around $199,000. The most impressive thing about the GR-1 is the straight leg walking. It’s controlled using reinforcement learning. Unfortunately, the upper body looked fairly easy to break.
Unitree posted the G1 unveil video during the middle of the welcome reception. The next day they had the robot in person and their CEO gave a short talk.
The G1 wasn’t walking well during demonstrations. I am assuming it was because either the center of mass wasn’t trimmed correctly, or this prototype had just been beaten up so much when they filmed the unveil trailer. Feeling the drives, they are all planetaries. I think most of them are from Unitree’s cheaper/smaller quadrupeds. They still felt nice and back drivable, but not quite as nice as the larger H1. Unfortunately, this G1 did not have the three fingered hand, which is what I am most excited to see in person.
LimX only had their small point foot bipeds, but they were super cute. They were even letting people push them around. Once again, the walking controller is RL.
https://youtu.be/UpNid_rWDnI?si=4yo9_J8cN2fowMx3
LEJUROBOT brought two of their Kuavo humanoids. I wasn’t paying too much attention to this company, but on the last day of workshops I got to see this robot walk and jump. It seemed pretty stable.
A few other Chinese companies had smaller humanoids, but I didn’t get a chance to take a closer look.
Wheeled Mobile Manipulators (humanoids without legs)
This seems to be the fastest growing category of robots. When we started using Digit in warehouses, we ourselves found it strange that there were no two armed robots on wheels to compete with us.
Rainbow Robotics RB-Y1
- Per arm payload of 3 kg
- Robot mass of 131kg
- Research version $80,000 / Commercial version $120,000
Tokyo Robotics Torobo
- Per arm payload of 7 kg in worst case posture
- 20 kg per arm at the instantaneous (when the elbow is bent at a right angle)
- Robot mass of ~160kg
- $120,000 + $10,000 (head and computer)
- Waseda University was demoing cooking scrambled eggs, folding laundry, and wiping a table using this robot
Actuators
Planetary gear actuators still dominated the expo. Shanghai Wuji Technology, Westwood Robotics, Pulsar, DEEP Robotics, CubeMars, and Angel Robotics all had planetary actuators. (I am sure I missed a couple vendors there were so many.)
THK and ROBOTIS had cycloids. Hebi had a new actuator that they confirmed was just a strain wave.
Hands
Inspire-Robots RH56DFX
- 6 actuated DoF
- Force sensors on each actuator
- Clutch to stop over torque when backdriving
-
5kg payload
- 540g weight
- Optional two DoF Wrist
- <$6,000 each
- Every humanoid robot in China uses these hands (you will start to recognize these)
Seed Robotics RH8D (Adult size)
- This company is a spin-off of RT Labs, and like them, use Dynamixel servos
- 8 actuated DoF
- Optional built in pressure sensors
- Palm ToF distance sensor (cool idea!)
- Max payload of 2.5kg
- Mass of 620g
- €5,599 each (no pressure sensors)
Tokyo Robotics Torobo Hand
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAfd-eYOvo4
- 10 actuated DoF
- 23 pressure sensors
- Size = huge
- $50,000 each ($100,000 for left and right pair) without controller PC
New Shadow Hand
- I am a bit disappointed by the form factor as well as the lack of wrist
- Stereo camera-based fingertip tactile sensors
- Torque controlled actuators
- Robust (they showed hitting it with a baseball bat)
- If you have to ask the price you can’t afford it (the five finger shadow hand was $110,000 each + $110,000 for tactile sensors)
AIDIN Robotic Hand
- 15 actuated DoF
- 6-axis F/T sensor on each finger tip
- Mass of 1.3kg
- Payload of 15kg
- Forgot to ask about cost
Lab/Company Visits
AIST Tokyo Waterfront
The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) is a research facility with just under 3,000 employees. There are several locations all around Japan; the AIST Tokyo Waterfront office is located in Odaiba. On this tour, we got to see a robot designed to develop new medicines, a motion capture research lab, a miniature silicon fab, and a convenience store of the future.
It was very jarring going from the hallway of a typical government office through two automatic doors into a perfect replica of a 7/11 convenience store. Everything was exactly reproduced, down to the appliances in the kitchen. My favorite part (not pictured) was that some of the researchers had their desks setup in the middle of the aisles. The desks with high end gaming PC’s were just inches away from the drink section. There were many robot arms, one of the RT Corp upper bodies (that was packaging fried chicken back on the Expo floor), a Kawasaki Nyokkey, several Fetch’s, and several Torobo’s.
After following the tour guide through to the stock room, they did a really cool demo of a 3D scanner. This setup was made up of several DSLR’s and a lazy Susan. It could produce a NeRF of any object in about 5 seconds. It was used for scanning every product on the convince store shelves. The tour guide mentioned that NeRF’s handle transparent items well, such as the many PET bottles that get sold in convenience stores.
CNRS-AIST JRL Laboratory
Maybe not as well known in the West, but LAAS-CNRS is a powerhouse in the humanoid controls world. They developed both Pinocchio and Crocoddyl. They also claim to be the first people in the world to run a whole-body MPC in real time on a humanoid (Whole-body Model-Predictive Control applied to the HRP-2 Humanoid).
The Joint Robotics Laboratory is a collaboration between CRNS and AIST, located in Tsukuba. They have an impressive menagerie of humanoids: : HRP-5P, 2x HRP-2kai, Unitree H1, Kawasaki friends, Bruce, and HRP-4CR. I was most interested in seeing HRP-5P, as it was KAWADA and AIST’s lasted humanoid (and they only made one!)
Here is roughly the demo I got to see. Rohan Singh trained a walking controller using reinforcement learning. Oregon State University used a similar method on Cassie, but many people said that it would never work on a “full-size humanoid.” At over 100kg, it doesn’t get more full-size than HRP-5P. It is also position controlled with high gear ratio harmonic drives, which makes dynamic walking even more difficult. [Learning Bipedal Walking for Humanoids with Current Feedback]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgfNzGAkk2Q
KAWADA
KAWADA (robotics division) is a company that assembled humanoids for the University of Tokyo starting around 1998, before working with AIST on the HRP project. KAWADA made the following humanoids (in order of year): H6, H7, Isamu, HRP-2P, HRP-2, HRP-3P, HRP-3, HRP-4C, HRP-4, HRP-5P. They have shifted their focus to making industrial robots. NEXTAGE is a two arm robot based on the torso of HRP-2. It’s available for under $60,000 (thanks to the weak yen).
After talking to members of the CNRS-AIST JRL Laboratory and KAWADA, it sounds like KAWADA only manufacturers the humanoids instead of designing them as well (except for NEXTSTAGE which is now designed in house). They still take contract jobs, and joked they would make another HRP-2 if we paid for it.
Matsuo Laboratory University of Tokyo
I accidently left before the photo was taken!
The Matsuo Laboratory at University of Tokyo is a relatively large AI focus researched lab. I was impressed that they even accepted undergrad’s as well as grad students from around the world.
They demonstrated a Toyota Human Support Robot (HSR) picking objects off the floor and reasoning about where to put them. The demo was also shown on the expo floor back in Yokohama.
(I really wanted to visit the JSK lab at Utokyo, but ran out of time)
My Favorite Things I saw
Torobo / University of Waseda cooking eggs
Why? Excellent impedance control allowed the robot not to be super rigid. If someone applied force to the hand, the robot didn’t just tear their arm off.
RT Corp fried chicken robot
I didn’t get a good picture on the expo floor. This is running with real food.
Why? This robot is made of off the shelf Dynamixel’s, yet it has been deployed by several companies. It just makes me smile watching it use it’s Real Sense camera to find an easy to grab piece of chicken.
Autorobot Laboratory’s fingertip sensor
This fingertip sensor is like Gel Sight or Toyota Research Institute’s Soft Bubble Gripper, in that it uses a camera to track the deformation of a soft pad. What really impressed me with this specific gripper was the small size, the performance, and the price. The small size (well and cheap price) is because instead of using a stereo camera, they actually just use a single camera combined with a mirror. I am not sure what material they use for the flexible pad, but they did mention it would not wear out like Gel Sight. When they gripped a coin, I could read every word in the depth image. It was extremely impressive! They said they expect the price to be around $600 USD.
The demo shown above combined two of their fingertip sensors with their parallel gripper. They programmed it to hold the cable tightly in only certain directions. This allowed me to slide it length wise, but if I pulled upwards the jaws would apply slightly more pressure, keeping it in place. I don’t usually pay much attention to contact sensing, but this demo really showed why it’s important.
The Best Papers
I was running around between talks, the expo hall, and tours; so I didn’t get a chance to check out as many papers as I wanted. I will update this section as I look back through the ICRA proceedings.
[Hardware papers are extremely rare and we need more of them!]
Barry: A High-Payload and Agile Quadruped Robot
StaccaToe: A Single-Leg Robot that Mimics the Human Leg and Toe
[I got to see the talks associated with both these papers]