national roboticsweek 2021 Beetle Camera Wireless Steerable Vision System Instructions
- June 6, 2024
- national roboticsweek
Table of Contents
2021
Beetle Camera
Wireless Steerable Vision System
Coaches: Vikram Iyer, Ali Najafi, Johannes James, Sawyer Fuller,
Shyamnath Gollakota
Hometown: University of Washington
Stats: This robotic camera was designed to be as light and energy-
efficient as possible so it can be carried by an insect. It can be controlled
to turn and look in different directions and would allow researchers to study
insect behavior.
Fun Fact : The team also designed an insect-scaled robot to carry and
test the camera system.
icebox
Icy Proof-of-Concept Robot
Coaches: Devin Carroll and Mark Yim
Hometown: GRASP Lab at the University of Pennsylvania
Stats: IceBot has a chassis and wheels made out of ice, to prove that it
is possible to use as a material. IceBot brings us closer to having a robot
that can explore distant planets and self-repair, building new parts out of
local materials.
Fun Fact: The team tried molding, 3D printing, and CNC machining the ice
but found that cutting ice with a drill was the most effective and efficient
method of shaping it.
SlothBot
Conservation Robot
Coaches: Magnus Egerstedt and the team
Hometown: Georgia Institute of Technology
Stats: SlothBot aims to be as energy-efficient as possible while
monitoring weather, temperature, carbon dioxide, and other environmental data.
It moves slowly on a 100-foot cable, moving into the sunlight when its
batteries need recharging. It’s designed to be slow so that it is extremely
energy efficient and can monitor data for long periods of time.
Fun fact: SlothBot’s adorable 3D printed shell helps protect its
electronics from the elements.
Tumbling Magnetic Microrobot
Tiny Colon Explorer
Coaches: Elizabeth E. Niedert, Chenghao Bi, Georges Adam, Elly Lambert,
Luis Solorio, Craig J. Goergen, and David J. Cappelleri
Hometown: Purdue University
Stats: These tiny robots could be used to deliver medicine to a targeted
location. They are too small to carry batteries, so they tumble like miniature
wheels while powered by an external rotating magnetic field.
Fun fact: The team chose the colon as the location to test the robot in
vivo since it is easily reached and very messy.
Squidbot
Squid-Inspired Underwater Robot
Coaches: Caleb Michael Christianson, Yi Cui, Michael Ishida, Xiaobo Bi,
Qiang Zhu, Geno Pawlak, Michael T. Tolley
Hometown: University of California San Diego
Stats: Squidbot is a squid-like robot that propels itself by generating
jets of water, similar to how a real squid moves. This robot travels
underwater untethered and with its own
power source, and can carry a sensor such as a camera to collect data as it
travels.
Fun Fact: A race between Squidbot and a real squid would be no
competition: Some squid travel about 36 feet per second, while Squidbot’s top
speed is one foot per second.
OSIRIS-Rex
Asteroid-study Robot
Coaches: Very large team with members from NASA, The University of
Arizona, Lockheed Martin, Arizona State University, CSA-ASC, CNES, KinetX,
MIT, ULA
Hometown: NASA
Stats: The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is traveling to Bennu, a carbonaceous
asteroid whose soil may record the earliest history of our solar system. Its
job is to collect a sample, map the asteroid, document the sample site, and
more.
Fun Fact: NASA is collaborating with Japan’s JAXA, trading information
about this mission and JAXA’s very similar Hayabusa2 asteroid study.
Shimon
Multitalented Musical Robot
Coaches: Gil Weinberg, Guy Hoffman, Mason Bretan, Marcelo Ciccone
Hometown: Center for Music Technology @ Georgia Tech
Stats: Shimon was originally developed to improvise on the marimba, but
has recently been programmed to also generate lyrics, sing, and even analyze
spoken lyrics and respond to them—allowing him to be challenged to a rap
battle. Shimon uses deep learning, a class of machine learning algorithms, to
generate his own words. He even has an album on Spotify!
Fun fact: Shimon is trained on datasets of 50,000 lyrics from jazz,
progressive rock, and hip-hop. 
iRobot® Roomba® i3 Wi-Fi®
Connected Robot Vacuum
Coach: CEO Colin Angle
Hometown: iRobot
Stats: The i3 navigates and maps your home in neat rows using state-of-
the-art floor tracking sensors. Reactive Sensor Technology tells the robot
where it can and cannot reach. Roomba® i3 learns your cleaning habits to offer
up personalized schedules.
Fun fact: Roomba® i3 Robot Vacuum is compatible with Clean Base®
Automatic Dirt Disposal.
OpenBet
Open Source Smartphone Robot
Coaches: Matthias Muller and
Vladlen Koltun
Hometown: Intel
Stats: OpenBet is an open-source 3D printed smart robot that it is
possible to build for less than $50. It adds to your existing Android
smartphone, and all of its plans are freely available online. An Arduino nano
microcontroller allows the phone to communicate with the vehicle body.
Fun Fact: The team was inspired by projects such as Google’s Cardboard VR
device, allowing home users to tinker with technology that typically has a
higher cost of entry.
ShodoFranka
Chinese Calligraphy Writing Robot
Coaches: Sen Wang, Jiaqi Chen, Xuanliang Deng, Seth Hutchinson, Frank
Dellaert
Hometown: Borglab @ Georgia Tech
Stats: ShodoFranka is a highly dexterous robotic arm that approaches the
art of Chinese calligraphy as a trajectory optimization problem. It can write
any Chinese character given only its Unicode symbol.
Fun Fact: The robot emulates real calligraphy artists in resetting their
brush with a “dip-ink” function. After a stroke is written, this behavior
restores the brush to a predictable state for more a predictable painting
outcome.
Bleeker
Cartoon Robotic Dog
Coaches: Jonathan Mahood
Hometown: A Small Town North of Toronto
Stats: Bleeker: The Rechargeable Dog is a comic strip by Jonathan Mahood
about ten-year-old Skip Smalls, his friend Lila, and Bleeker, his electronic
dog.
Fun Fact: The comic was originally called Hoover: The Rechargeable Dog,
but he was renamed Bleeker in honor of artist Jonathan Mahood’s
grandfather—Bleeker was his middle name!
Read Bleeker : The Rechargeable Dog at
gocomics.com/bleeker