Thrish’s first PhD student, Allen Jiang, successfully defended his thesis, Robotic Granular Jamming, on April 4, 2014. 
Author Archives: Allen
The London Robotics Network Launches
The London Robotics Network is an open network of people around London interested in robotics. We organise meetings, events and networking for the London robotics community.
Our vision is to bring together all of London’s robotics community to exchange ideas, find opportunities, mentor and support one another and enjoy ourselves building robots and doing robotics.
London is filled with creative minds working in robotics, which is one of our generation’s disruptive technologies. The fusion of cheap computers, low-cost prototyping, and widespread sensing has made this a boom time for robotics, and it is time that we, the roboticists of London, had a meeting place to gather and discuss our successes, our discoveries, our challenges and the burning plastic smell of our failures. The London Robotics Network is this space.
The founders come from industry, academia, and government, and represent a diverse range of robotics interests – from hardware engineering through to bio-inspired dragonfly robots. We welcome membership (free of charge to individuals) from all backgrounds and interests – to join, please register on our _connect forum, and express your interests in a post.
The LRN is open to everyone interested in robotics and robot-like things. We want to avoid specialisation and try to bring together people from different communities. We’re about the people, not their organisations, and we’re as interdisciplinary as possible.
The Network will meet from time to time, both informally and formally, as the members see fit – please make your preferences known. Our first proposed meeting is a Plenary session at Imperial College on the 30th of September, where several of our founders will speak briefly of interesting robots they have developed and invite an open discussion on how to develop the Network.
Introducing the Core-Snake
The Core-Snake is a variable stiffness laparoscopic camera that uses granular jamming to alternate between soft and rigid states. The soft state enables it to be flexible and dexterous, while the rigid state enables it to be a stable platform for the camera.
Developed by Allen Jiang at the Centre for Robotics Research (CoRe) at King’s College London, Department of Informatics.
Presented at the Hamlyn Symposium on Medical Robotics 2013
Tutorial: Maxon Epos USB-CAN + Labview
Maxon Motor controllers allow users to chain the controllers together through a CAN bus connection. The first “master” controller can be connected to the computer via other methods, such as USB. This allows users to easily control all of their motors from a single computer from either the Epos software or Labview.
Below is a tutorial which provides detailed instructions on how to properly set up and configure the EPOS2 controller nodes, as well as how to integrate everything in Labview.
CAN Bitrate Configuration (courtesy Maxon Motor UK Ltd)
The DARWIN Project at the Cheltenham Science Festival
King’s College London is a festival partner at the Cheltenham Science Festival. Located at The Times Area 42 tent, KCL’s booth features the DARWIN Project, an EU grant on teaching a humanoid robot to grasp objects and use tools.
G. Cotugno attaching a data glove onto a festival participant.
Over the course of 3 days, the KCL team managed to talk to over 600 festival participants, with many more taking informational pamphlets. The Times tent provided free entry to members of the general public aged 14+ years old.
The DARWIN Project, featured at the King’s College London, Department of Informatics, Centre for Robotics Research booth
Maria Fox and Thrish Nanayakkara on Robosapians
Professor Maria Fox and Dr. Thrishantha Nanayakkara discuss the current state of the UK’s tech and manufacturing industry in an article with The Work Foundation titled “The rise of the Robosapiens.” The emphasize that investing in education and engineering will help UK become a leader, rather than a passer-by, in the next generation.
This article was written as part of an invited talk by The Work Foundation’s annual debate, “Will robots and enhanced humans steal our jobs?”
Full article here: http://www.theworkfoundation.com/blog/1209/The-rise-of-the-Robosapians
Follow the debate here: https://twitter.com/search?q=%23stealingourjobs
King’s College London featured on BBC TWO Newsnight (2013-05-30)
In a piece on how killer robots may affect the future of military warfare, BBC 2 reports on how robotics is used today and how they may develop into weapons. The UN Human Rights Council in Geneva is debating on the ethical use of “killer robots,” with UN rapporteur Christof Heyns calling for a halt to their current use.
Featured here is King’s College London’s Centre for Robotics Research, which is focused on humanitarian and medical robotics. In fact, most robotic research has little to do with military applications, despite the common stigma. Professor Maria Fox from the Department of Informatics emphasizes that “terminator-style robots” is not the type of machines anyone working in the field envisage.
KCL Qualifies for the DARPA Robotics Challenge
DARPA, the United States defense research agency known for their self-driving car grand challenge, recently launched a new challenge: the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC). This time, the target is to create and control a humanoid robot to transverse and operate in an environment designed for humans. With recent events such as the Fukashima disaster, DARPA hopes to have robots capable of performing search, rescue, and repairing tasks in places too dangerous of human workers. The DRC competition involves a virtual controls track, with the top teams of this area to win a million dollar humanoid robot, the ATLAS robot by Boston Dynamics. The virtual controls track focuses on methods and algorithms to control a robots movements and decision making to navigate and manipulate its way through various situations. Considering humanoid robots have existed for decades, and natural walking and manipulation has barely been achieved, this is no easy task. Any organization capable of entry to the DRC competition gains international recognition for their innovative abilities.
As the only team from the UK to enter, King’s College London’s DRC team consisted of just several Msc students co-supervised by Ph.D students and academic staff. Through their hard efforts and dedication, the team overcame multiple obstacles such as having a small team and low resources. With just two computers just powerful enough to run the simulations and control schemes, the team spent hundreds of hours in the lab to put King’s College London in the spotlight. With over 100 competitors in the DRC competition, King’s College London is among the 20% to pass through the qualification round. KCL is now competing in league with top organizations, such as MIT and NASA JPL.
For more information about the team: https://thrish.org/projects/kings-drc-team
Thrish interviewed by Askimo – Learning by Demonstration (4/4)
Robotic Learning based on demonstration
Thrish interviewed by Askimo – AI (3/4)
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Thrish interviewed by Askimo – Human-Robot Interaction (2/4)
Human-Robot Interaction in Theory
Thrish interviewed by Askimo – Robotic Surgery (1/4)
Robotic Surgery
