Newsgroups: comp.robotics
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From: nivek@frc.ri.cmu.edu (Kevin Dowling)
Subject: FAQ 3/12/92
Message-ID: <NIVEK.92Mar12123418@scythe.frc.ri.cmu.edu>
Date: Thu, 12 Mar 92 17:34:18 GMT
Organization: Field Robotics Center, CMU
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[ This is the third update of the comp.robotics FAQ. I've posted it
weekly since things have been changing rapidly - I will probably
post it only on a monthly basis from now on. If you have information
that will fill in blank spots please send it.
  Changes include a topic list, more complete items in each section.
I'm continuing to add things incrementally. Thanks to those who've
sent information. ]

This is the comp.robotics Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list.
This FAQ addresses commonly asked questions relating to robotics.

Topics:
	Related professional organizations
	Conference listings
	Publications
	Mobile robot companies
	Manipulator companies
	Other organizations doing robotics
	Graduate Programs in Robotics
	Sensors
	Suppliers and sources for Parts
	Hero Robots
	Puma Manipulators
	Simulators
	Acknowledgements

Changes, additions, comments, suggestions and questions to:
	nivek@ri.cmu.edu
aka: 	Kevin Dowling
     	Robotics Institute
	Carnegie Mellon University
	Pittsburgh, PA 15213
____________________________________________________________________________
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 Robots Association (NSRA)
900 Victors Way
PO Box 3724
Ann Arbor, MI 48106
(313) 994-6088

Robotics Industry Association (RIA)
(same address as NSRA)

Advanced Robot Technology Research Association (Japan)
Kikai-shinko Bldg
3-5-8 Shiba-Kohen, Minato-ku, Tokyo
(03) 434-0532
fax (03) 434-0217
Has joint research programs with member companies.
About 20 Japanese compnaies including:
Ishikawajima-Harima, Oki Electric, Kawasaki Heavy Industry, Kobe
Steel, Komatsu, Sumitomo Electric Industries, Toshiba, JGC, NEC,
Hitachi, Fanuc, Fujitsu, Fuji, Matshushita Research Institute, Mitsui,
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Mitsubishi Electric, Yaskawa

Center for Autonomous and Man-controlled Robotic and Sensing Systems
Charles Jacobus, CAMRSS director
ERIM
PO Box 8618
Ann Arbor, MI 48107
(313) 994-1200 X2457
Member companies include: Ball Aerospace, Coulter Electronics, ERIM,
Fairchild, Ford Aerospace, Geospectra, Grumman, Industrial Technology
Institute, KMS Fusion, Michigan State, UofM.
__________________________________________________________________________
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

	Robotics World

	Robotica - British journal

Useful and relevant trade magazines:

	Usually free, mostly ads or industry news. Many articles written by
	advertisers. Great sources of product information. Our lab at
	CMU receives 40-50 trade magazines and journals and while no
	one reads all of them articles and pointers are passed
	on to people around the lab. This has worked well. 

	Sensors
	Helmers Publishing
	174 Concord Street
	PO Box 874
	Peterborough, NH 03458-0874
	(603) 924-9631
	Trade magazine devoted to sensing devices. Publishes annual directory.
	Cost: Free to qualified subscribers, $55/yr otherwise
	
	Machine Design
	Design News
	Motion Control
	GPS World
	RF Design
	Sea Technology
	Laser Focus
	POB
	Broadcast Engineering
	Embedded Systems
	EE Times
_____________________________________________________________________________
Mobile robot companies:

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.
  Denning also has a number of products including a position scanner, 
  and IR beacons

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.
Intelligent Robot Lab
Kaika Building 
2-7-1 Sotokanda
Chiyoda-ku 101 Tokyo
Japan
phone:  81-3-5256-0715
  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.

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)

IS Robotics
238 Broadway
Cambridge, MA 02139
(617) 876-2999
FAX (617) 876-2822
West coast sales office 
4353 Park Terrace Drive
Westlake Village, CA 91361 USA
email:  robots@isx.com
phone:  (818) 597-1900
  IS Robotics specializes in small (many models less than 10lbs)
  cheap (<= 7K$) off the shelf and custom
  mobile robots primarily for AI &  Artificial Life research.

Robosoft, Asnieres, France

Mecos Robotics, Winterthur, Switzerland

Odetics,
Anaheim, CA
  Six-legged, (pantograph) Walking machine.
_____________________________________________________________________________
Robot manipulator companies:

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.

Zebra Robotics
Jeff Kerr
Palo Alto
Small mainpulators with integral force control

Sarcos
UT
Spinoff of University of Utah, (CED). teleoperated systems,
manipulators. Audio-animatronic work as well. Beautiful force
reflecting work and systems.

Kraft Telerobotics
Kansas

Schilling

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
2425 Liberty Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15222-4639
(412) 765-3064
  A spin-off of CMU's Robotics Institute, Redzone has focused
  on hazwaste and nuke manipulator applications but branching out into
  mobile applications. Primarily protoypes and not manufacturing.

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.

Mechanical Engineering Lab (MEL)
Tsukuba City
  Kazuo Tanie: Robotics and cybernetics

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

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

Southwest Research Institute
San Antonio, TX
Robotics and Automation Department
Some large systems for servicing aircraft (painting, praying,
deriveting etc)
______________________________________________________________________________
Graduate Program in Robotics:

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

University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI
  Artificial Intelligence Lab (Elec. Eng. and CS) relevant to robotics
  includes machine vision, systems and control, multiple cooperating
  agents (arms and mobile), and application of SOAR to robots (arms and
  mobile). (in conjunction with SOAR groups at CMU and elsewhere)

Stanford University
  Palo Alto, CA
  Mechanical Engineering:
	Bernard Roth (kinematics of manipulators)
	Mark Cutkosky: destrous manipulation and concurrent manufacturing
	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,
	flexible manipulators)

University 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
	University of Southern California
	Los Angeles, CA 90089-0273
	Internet: goldberg@usc.edu

University of Maryland
  Space Systems Laboratory. Large Neutral Bouyancy Tank,
  teleoperations research, 
	Dave Akin - director
  Dave has flown shuttle experiments.	

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

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

Rennsalear Polytechnic Institute (RPI)-?
  Center for Intelligent Robotic Systems for Space Exploration (CIRSSE)
	George Saridis
	Arthur Sanderson
	Jon Wenn
  Appro. 20 PhD and 30 MS students working in the center. Path
  planning and multi-arm control are current focus.

University of Utah
Center for Engineering Design
Steve Jacobson, director
hands, manipulators, biomedical applications, teleoperation

University of Kentucky
Center for Robotics and Manufacturing Systems
(founded 1990)

University of Alberta
Center for Machine Intelligence and Robotics


Univeristy of Wisconsin
Center for Space Automation and Robotics (WCSAR)

University of Kansas
Space Technology Center (Telerobotics)

University of Paris
  INRIA (Nice) just started a Phd program in Robotics.

University of California at Berkeley
	John Canny
	Sankar Sastry
	H. Kazerooni - master/slave systems
	Richard Muller - micro mechanisms

Harvard
	Roger Brockett

Oxford
	Oxford has a large robotics group. Mobile robots, path planing
	and more.
	Mike Brady

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

Cornell
  Ithaca, NY
  Mechanical Engineering
	Sam Landsberger
	Jeff Koechling
	Bruce Donald

Purdue ?

___________________________________________________________________________
Sensors:
	This list covers only the most frequently requested types of
robot sensors. These include point-range sensors, cameras, and
acoustic devices. See Sensors magazine directory for a large and
comprehensive list.

Laser rangefinders:
	ERIM
	Odetics
	Perceptron
	Schwarz Electro-Optics

Sonar sensors:
	Polaroid
	Siemans
	Massa

Cameras:

Pan/Tilt devices-

____________________________________________________________________________
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 robots:

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 manipulators:

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) Found in many university labs as well.

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:

--Deneb Robotics, Inc.
1120 E. Long Lake Rd., Suite 200
Troy, MI 48098-4960
United States
(313) 689-7763
Product:	IGRIP
Platforms:	SPARCs(SGI's?)
Cost:		US$50-$60,000.

--Silma/Cimstation
1601 Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road
Cupertino, California  95014
(408) 725 8908                           
Product:	CimStation
Platforms:	SGI-4D, SUN SparcStation, Apollo, Intergraph,
		Computervision (others?)
Cost:		base system around $65000 (!)

[The following comparison was edited from a review by Dan Hudson]
IGRIP and Silma both provide "complete" systems:

	Basic CAD Tools: 2D and 3D solid & wireframe, IGES interface
	Robot Modelling: generate the required governing
	equations (iterative or closed form)
	automatically for "many" classes of robots
	Path Generation
	Kinematic Simulation with Collision Detection
	Dynamic Simulation (CimStation only at this point) 
	I/O Operations

The packages are pretty close in their capabilities. There are a few 
significant differences which helped us chose between them.

IGRIP Pros:
	-Interface:  Out of all the systems, I thought IGRIP
		     had the slickest interface.
	-Cost:  IGRIP is much cheaper than CimStation. [Also see Comutek]

CimStation Pros:
	-Most Advanced:  CimStation appeared to be on the
			"leading edge" of the commercially available
			simulation packages.
	-John Craig:  of "Introduction to Robotics" by
			Addison/Wesley fame is head of Robotics R&D.
	-Open Architecture:  CimStation is not a "traditional"
			program.  I look at it as more of a Robotics
			Simulation "Environment".  Silma has created
			a programming environment called SIL complete with
			its own iterative language (just like PASCAL
			with graphics and robotics extensions).  CimStation
			is built out of this language.  The beauty
			of it is that you have access to it
			also and can add your own functionality;
			a site specific path planner for instance.  As an
			added bonus, you can also write code in C, compile
			it, and add it to the system.

It was VERY important that we have a system that was expandable, so we
chose CimStation.  If an open architecture is not important, IGRIP
(or one of the other systems) may be better suited to your application.

--Comutek
1223 Peoples Avenue
Troy, NY  12180
ph# 518 276 2817
fax# 518 276 638
contact:  Vinay Joshi
Products: Work-Out
Cost: Around $25000.

--Robot Simulations/Workspace
[From: "Newsletter of the Australian Robot Association - Jan 1991]
``"Vision in Design" of Punchbowl N.S.W. announces the Australian
availability of version 2.0 of the "Workspace" robot-simulation software
developed by "Robot Simulations" in the U.K.  The software, which runs on
an IBM-compatible personal computer, is claimed to provide features similar
to those available on much more expensive programs that require workstation
hardware.  Version 2.0 is said to be faster than the initial version and to
offer such capabilities as automatic collision detection, 3D solid shaded
colour graphics real-time display of simulations, and an expanded library
of inverse kinematics algorithms for standard robots.  Up to nine robots
and associated machinery may be simulated simultaneously.  Custom-designed
robots having up to nine links can be simulated.''

Technomatix/Robcad
[address?]

GMF Robotics
2000 S. Adams Road
Auburn Hills, MI  48057
ph# 313 377 7000
Products: OLPW-200
Platforms: ?
Cost: ?

Auto Simulations, Inc.
655 Medical Drive
Bountiful, UT  84010
ph# 801 298 1398
telex 801 298 8186
contact:  Teresa Francis, ext 330
Products: AutoMod II
Platforms: ?
Cost: ?
_____________________________________________________________________________
Acknowledgements:
[People who responded directly to me or the net]

Hans Moravec, Maki Habib, Ken Goldberg, David Stanton,
John Nagle, Sean Graves, Sjur Vestli, Mark Yim, Rich Wallace
Dan Hudson, Sanjiv Singh, Matt Stein.


--

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