TecHKU is back at the Faculty of Engineering’s Advanced Robotics Lab, where we covered the Atlas robot, the DARPA Robotics Challenge team, and the M2 Robotics team. This time, we spoke to the undergraduate team representing HKU in the first ever Amazon Picking Challenge at the upcoming International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2015 in Seattle, Washington.

The four Engineering undergraduates, Marco Chow (MechEng Year 3), Tommy Hu (MechEng & CS Year 3), Yibo Chen (EE Year 3), and Chao Cao (CE Year 2), are part of Team Ali baba, a HK-Shenzhen-US development team that is working on a robot that will be competing against 31 other teams this week.

Handling millions of orders worth $61 billion a year, Amazon’s massive warehouses have been known for its highly automated environment, with orange Kiva robots zipping around tall yellow shelves to manned workstations. Such automation have allowed warehouse workers to get through more customer orders. But it still takes human effort to pick the correct items from the shelves according to a customer’s shopping list. This is the problem the Amazon Picking Challenge wants participants—no, robots—to solve.

Programming a Universal Robotics (UR5) robot, the four students have been developing unique software algorithms and hardware designs for it since last December. The list from which the robot will read items off of is a subset of 25 pre-selected everyday products which you can buy on Amazon.com. From Oreos and Cheez-It crackers to school glue, outlet plugs, and dog toys, the robot will need to recognise those items, pick them out from the shelf, and carefully lower it into a bin behind it—all in a fully automated process. The team scoring the most points in 20 minutes wins.

While the Shenzhen robotics company Dorabot, Inc. works full-time on the UR5, the team at HKU is responsible for three main aspects of the robotic arm—motion planning, computer vision, and the gripper.

Cao’s focus in this competition is motion planning. “The last few weeks I was trying to find out the optimal place to mount the robot so that it can reach the largest area as it can.” An aspiring robotics engineer who has been in the M2 Robotics Team, Cao found the experience rewarding. “When I was working here I learnt a lot about an open source system called ROS (Robot Operating System). In the future, many robots will use this system. I think it will be helpful in my future career.”

In order to let the robot “see” the items it is picking, it has to recognise the colour and depth information of the objects under time constraint. Chen, the team member responsible for computer vision, said accuracy is the most challenging part. “Some boxes look alike. The cameras need time to detect the object. If they don’t have enough time, they will give an error,” he said. Expressing excitement towards attending his first robotics conference, Chen said this is also his first time designing real-time vision for a robot. “Prior to this project, all things I learnt in computer vision are all from books and papers—no implementation,” he said. “This is actually my first time to really [get my hands on] some projects.”

Under the guidance of Dr Zheng Wang, a new Mechanical Engineering staff recruit for the Faculty’s Advanced Robotics Initiative (ARI) whose research interests include soft robotics, Hu said the gripper is what makes their entry unique. “The gripper [Marco and I] are working on now uses pneumatics. It mimics how your arm muscles work by contracting and pulling on a tendon that eventually closes the hand around the object,” said Hu. “You need a lot of advanced sensors so that you’re not grabbing [the item] so hard that you’re crushing it.”

Apart from their interest in robotics, the team said it is also under the advice of Dr Jia Pan that they have joined the competition. Like Dr Wang, Dr Pan is a new staff recruit for ARI specialising in Computer Science. His PhD advisor from UNC Chapel Hill specialises in path planning optimization and is helping the HKU team.

The competition, which has commenced yesterday and will last till Thursday, attempts to facilitate communication between industrial and academic robotics communities. “I hope to know the trend of robotics,” said Cao. “And also to have a chance to talk to professionals and other teams to see how they achieve the same goal.”

We wish Team Ali baba all the best at the Amazon Picking Challenge!

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Natalie Lung

A final-year Journalism and Computer Science student at HKU. News and Internet junkie with deep appreciation for the performing arts. Favourite music genre: retro, house.

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• Blog: Final Pitches at Startup Weekend HKU #2 - October 19, 2015
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The not-so-secret doorway is usually wide open. No, you are still not supposed to waltz in uninvited.

While the place may seem like a factory, members in the team personalize their space.

Chim Lee explains the Electronics sphere of Robotics. Each circuit board may take upto 5-7 hrs to solder. One Robot has at least 30-50 of such boards which add up to a lot of hardwork and patience.

The team joined the Robocon competition this year. The theme of the 2014 Robocon is parenthood, so all tasks simulate playground activities for children with the help of a parent robot.

The team made exact prop replicas to prepare for the tasks:

A baby robot the team made is required to climb up to the top of this ladder.

Another task: The baby robot is required to walk on the pole walk set from one to the other till it reaches the end.

In this task the parent robot will put the baby on the swing and push it forward. The baby will need to maintain balance.

At the back, is a see-saw that will have a similar parent & baby robots interaction.

By the expression on that box; someone definitely had a burst of creativity and put in some time to decorate the 3D printer in the lab.

Chim Lee attaching together newly printed 3D pieces. The wonder of 3D printing: assembly complete in less than a minute.

We played with this 3D printed clockface.

A software simulation of a quadcopter on the powerful Gazebo software on Linux. Gazebo can do all kinds of robotics simulation, even the DRC Atlas uses it to test run new code.

In a gazebo simulation, the quadcopter detects the impending object and turns around automatically.

When the going gets tough, 24-7 McDonalds rescues the day!

The M2 Robotics lab is funded by the Mechanical Engineering Department. McDonalds takeaway not included.

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Vaibhav Bahadur

A second year student in Computer Engineering at HKU. The kid philosopher, an avid reader, guitar enthusiast and cartoonist.
bahadur.vaibhav@gmail.com

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• A Tour of the HKU M2 Robotics Team Lab - March 30, 2014
• When UBS Holds a Competition - February 5, 2014

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Donald Lam

Editor in Chief
A second year student in Computer Science at HKU. He owns a Nokia phone and is a bit of a Microsoft fanboy in denial.
dlamty@gmail.com

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After securing the 9th place in the DARPA Virtual Robotics Challenge back in June last year, Team HKU has purchased her own Atlas robot and finished 12th in the Miami trials 20 – 21 December 2013.

The software engineering behind the robot is everything. Amongst the team of coders, five were actually undergraduate students.

We sat down with Chim Lee, a year 2 Electrical Engineering local student in the 3-year curriculum, and Rita Liu, a year 2 student from Guangzhou studying Computer Science in the 4-year curriculum, who together with Jacky Yu, Jackie Chan and Tommy Hu, are the undergraduates who helped program the HKU Atlas.

Getting On Board

They had no prior robot programming experiences in their secondary schools. They were invited to join the Atlas team back in March 2013 by Professor Robert C. Roberts, who they had previously consulted when they encountered a postgraduate level question.

“We are both in the M2 robotics team,” said Chim. M2 is the HKU student robotics team. It was a problem that they ran into while programming robots for the M2 team.

To solve the problem, they soon started their own research with their M2 teammates, focusing on the filtering algorithm: the algorithm that removes noise and enable more accurate system control for the robot to move.

And Professor Roberts, impressed with their work and their sound programming knowledge, put their names down on the recruitment shortlist.

Fun with Leap Motion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHLW-TkG7O4
Here’s a video clip of Atlas being the sure-win robot in paper scissor stone. The secret lies with the camera sensors on the robot’s hand. After detecting your hand gesture, the robot will immediately pose its hand to the hand sign that beats yours. Technically, it is cheating because it reads your hand sign before posing its, but that’s in milliseconds, so you don’t even notice it.

Learn As They Go

The hand of Atlas, developed by Sandia National Labs, has 28 degrees of freedom, with many tactile sensors all over its fingers and palm, including two cameras.

This became their full time jobs in the latter half of the last summer vacation. They learnt about the complicated interface of the open source Robot Operating System (ROS), and co-wrote many parts in the controlling of the robot’s right hand.

“It was a bit of C++, a bit of python, a bit of everything. You can use a lot of languages in ROS.”

As always, programs freshly written for a robot, especially one as expensive as the Boston Dynamics Atlas, are first tested on a simulation program before they are run on the robot to avoid damage.

Their work was fun and there was little pressure. They still went back to the laboratory regularly to help out when school started. They both agree that it has been a precious and remarkable experience, working with postgraduate students and professors.

About the Author

James Lam

Regular Contributor

Second Year, Mechanical Engineering

Robotics is now attracting more and more attention from research centers, the consumer, industrial and manufacturing sectors worldwide. Identified by the Faculty of Engineering as one of the key emerging technology areas, HKU is seeking to play a larger role in this field.
We interviewed our Dean of Engineering, Professor Norman C. Tien to learn more about the university’s push to make robotics the next big thing in Hong Kong.

Furthermore, check out the extraordinary tale of Prof. Tien’s Startups, his mentor, and the vision he shares for HKU students in Up Close and Personal with Prof. Tien.

The First Step

In Conversation with Prof. Tien in his office

Research and development in pursuit of this competition will help HKU produce cutting-edge software technologies in machine control, computational intelligence and human/machine interfaces. Application areas include industrial automation, medical applications, disaster response technology and hazardous operations.

“Atlas is only the starting point.” said Prof. Tien. The success of the ARI will put the university front and centre in the world robotics. Through this project, HKU has also built collaborative relationships with other world-leading institutions and pioneers such as Case, Tokyo and Edinburgh, contributing to the innovation of robotics in the world. Ultimately, the ARI will change the technological landscape of Hong Kong.

More Corporate Interest

“The local government supported technology quite well and there has been a lot of money put in to it.” said Prof. Tien, “If anything, I think the problem in Hong Kong is more that, in terms of innovation, technology, research and development, too much of it is from the government, the percentage is too high.”

“The business side and the corporations need to do more, they need to participate more.” He feels that while the great government support has been most helpful in kickstarting the research and development (R&D) scene, direct participation from private companies and the industry is even more important.

Most of the R&D being done in Hong Kong and by the universities in Hong Kong is too dependent on government funding. Meanwhile in countries like the US, universities receive funding from corporations.

Therefore, the fact that the HKU Atlas ARI program is largely funded by private donors is rather groundbreaking.

A New Industry

“To have your economic prosperity linked to one or two industry, is a risk. Logistics and trade is still large in Hong Kong but it’s slipping… Finance is still preeminent in this region. If you look at the economic base in HK, you need to diversify.”

Universities in Hong Kong are not giving R&D in areas of engineering or science enough priority. Advancements in these areas have been comparatively underwhelming. Companies tend to depend on universities in the US or Europe which has more established R&D programs.

Prof. Tien explained that there is always a time in the development of any society where there is a boom in the number of people and resources going into other academic areas, but he is positive that the trend is reversing as we speak.

“I think the global economic crisis has ‘helped’. It made people think, I won’t be able to do well in the finance industry.”

“It’s natural from the engineering point of view to push for the technology sector… The economic wealth created around the world has so much been because of different technologies that come by.”

Through the development of robotics technology, either through software engineering or hardware and design innovations, Hong Kong will be able to attract more manufacturing and technology companies to invest and become a mini Silicon Valley of Asia.

This reduces the dependence on the finance and banking industry while generating greater economic output for Hong Kong.

About the Author

Sundararaja N. Valiyapan

Regular Contributor

Second Year, Energy Engineering

sunthar9@connect.hku.hk

The HKU Atlas Weight (incl. powerpack): 150 kg Height: 1.88 m Power: 480V 3-phase at 15 kW Interface: 10 Gbps Fiber Optic Ethernet, C++ and ROS APIs Price: HK$15 million, includes a maintenance contract

Follow @BostonDynamics A spin-off engineering company from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that specializes in building dynamic robots. See the company’s other robots such as BigDog, PETMAN, RISE, SquishBot, and many others here. The company also develops tools for human simulation. DI-Guy is a human simulation product used for simulation-based training, used by even the US armed forces.

The HKU Advanced Robotics Initiative http://engg.hku.hk/home/robotics/

Atlas’ Housewarming On the HKU u-vision channel: click to watch the video

With the use of the recalibration software, the research team had restored Atlas’ sense of balance.

In fact, four days before the much publicized mishap on the 13rd, Atlas had a problem with his left ankle as well. It was a electrical connector problem separate to that on the 17th. Due to this “nerve damage”, the corresponding actuator misbehaved, driving his ankle, which has 2 DoF(Degree of Freedom), to the extreme rotation. They could not make him walk until the problem was solved.

More Recent Challenges

These maintenance challenges no doubt have a negative effect on Team HKU’s preparations for the upcoming DARPA robotics challenge.

“It was anticipated that these prototypes would have need for fixes, as problems are discovered.” Said Prof. Newman, “we expect that all teams are having similar maintenance challenges.”

Only recently, Atlas has developed yet another problem. Some of the hydraulic seals that keep in the pressurized liquid used to transmit mechanical power, have been ruptured and he was leaking hydraulic fluid rapidly, requiring constant refills.

The leak came at an untimely moment as one of the requirements to enter the DARPA challenge trials this December was to have Atlas demonstrate certain required behaviors in 10-minute runs.

Fortunately, the HKU Atlas managed to run for 10 minutes between hydraulic fluid refills and got itself an assured spot in the competition. Atlas has been serviced to replace the ruptured hydraulic seals since then.

Looking Forward

The countdown to the DARPA showdown is at 39 days now and Team HKU is optimistic about putting on a good show in the States.

In fact, HKU has been doing quite well in terms of software engineering progress. We were the first of the seven competing institutions to get the robot’s head, body and hands all working. In the DARPA simulation trials back in June, Team HKU finished 9th in the world.

Most recently on the university’s Information Day for undergraduate admissions, the Advanced Robotics Laboratory had opened its doors to the public and shown off our Atlas, back in prime shape.

“We are developing the software with CASE Western Reserve, with Tokyo and with Edinburgh… and we are putting ourselves up there with MIT, with Caltech, with Carnegie Mellon.” Said Prof. Newman, “Atlas puts HKU and Asia on the map for robotics.”

Video Footage of the Oct 17th incident from PressTV:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0o7BGYBH58

About the Author

Donald Lam Follow @dtylam

Editor in Chief

Second Year, Computer Science