Emerging Trends in Robotics

Research Worldwide

Nikos Papanikolopoulos

McKnight Presidential Endowed Professor

Department of Computer Science and

Engineering

University of Minnesota

npapas@cs.umn.edu

TIME Special Issue

TIME Cover

New Reality

Kiva was purchased by Amazon for 11

times sales ($775 million).

Surgical robotics (da Vinci robot).

Google car.

Stratasys purchased Makerbot for $403

million.

iRobot has a capitalization of $1 billion.

Minnesota has the most FIRST Robotics

teams per capita than any other state in

the nation.

History

PUMA 560 Robot

Humanoid Robots

Courtesy: Honda Corp.

Honda’s

Asimo Robots

Honda’s Asimo

Courtesy: Honda Corp.

Other Interesting Robots

Other Interesting Robots

Robotics for Mental Health

Robotics for Cancer Detection

The Scout Family of Robots

Miniature Solar UAV

Solving the Nitrogen Deficiency

Detection Problem in Corn Fields

Dimitris Zermas, David Mulla, and Mike

Bazakos

Financial and Environmental

Issues

Minnesota Statistics

- 100,000 tons more Nitrogen applied than what is

needed, potentially polluting water sources.

- 20% yield lost because of Nitrogen deficiency.

Goals

- Reduce Nitrogen fertilizer (saving $100 million).

- Improve yield harvesting (gain $835 million).

Findings

Suggest the amount of

nitrogen fertilizer based on

the number of deficient

leaves!

Update the state of corn

plants every day!

Low cost cameras and

UAVs!

Detection Results

Cyan: Visible nitrogen

deficiency

Yellow: The deficiency is

not clearl due to lack of

nitrogen

Achieved 100% accuracy

on data collected over

2014 and 2015!

Estimating the Biomass

We can create 3D

models of corn plants

to measure their

biometrics.

The methodology will

be tested this year in

real corn plants under

real world conditions.

Future of Robotics

Robots are making money and are attracting the attention of the big players.

Robots and humans are coming closer.

Robotic armies (UAVs, UGVs, etc.).

Medical and nano-robotics.

Social robotics.

Human brain and robotics.

Future of Robotics

URL Information

Videoclips and papers can be found at:

http://distrob.cs.umn.edu

Questions?

Questions?

Robotics, Sensing and

Manufacturing Initiative

Strengths of the University/State

Broad interdisciplinary university/college teams

Innovative local manufacturing and design industry

Mayo and UMN Medical School

Committed workforce

Strong student body

Metropolitan setting with global reach

Markers for Effective Growth

Focused expansion in selected areas

Strategic hiring with emphasis on excellence

Increased national and international awareness for the initiative

Technology transition

Fostering collaborations with industry

Attract and retain the best students and scientists

Thrust Areas

Agriculture

Manufacturing

Medicine

Outreach and Commercialization

Acknowledgements

This material is based upon work supported

by National Science Foundation through

grants #CNS-0224363, #IIS-0219863, and

#CNS-0324864, Microsoft Inc., INEEL, and

the Defense Advanced Research Projects

Agency, MTO (“Distributed Robotics”

Program), ARPA Order No. G155, Program

Code No. 8H20, issued by DARPA/CMD

under Contract #MDA972-98-C-0008