An Autonomously Navigating Wheeled-Legged Robot

Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed a hybrid robot that combines the features of wheeled and legged robots, using reinforcement learning techniques.

Credit: Joonho Lee

Autonomous mobile robots could speed up goods delivery across different locations, addressing disruptions in supply chains. However, wheeled or legged robots may sometimes be enough to ensure efficient and independent deliveries.

Researchers at ETH Zurich’s Robotic Systems Lab have introduced a hybrid robot that merges the features of wheeled and legged robots. The robot employs reinforcement learning techniques to switch seamlessly between driving and walking, adapting to various terrains.

The robotic system developed by the team improves upon a previous design from team CERBERUS, which included members from the indoor drone company Flyability and won the DARPA Subterranean Challenge in 2021. Unlike the CERBERUS robot, their new model features a simplified design and a more sophisticated AI-powered navigation system.

The researchers equipped their robot with the ability to navigate autonomously by developing, training, and testing various hierarchical reinforcement learning techniques. They ultimately created a neural network-based controller capable of processing diverse inputs and quickly generating new navigation strategies for the robot within milliseconds.

The ETH Zurich-developed robot drives using its wheels on easy, smooth terrain, which helps conserve energy. When encountering complex terrains that are challenging or impossible for wheels alone, such as steps, it switches to walking mode.

The neural network-based controller, developed and trained by the team, processes sensory data to identify the most efficient travel method for different terrains. This integration allows the robot to utilize the advantages of both wheeled and legged robots effectively.

The controller designed by the team does not use traditional planning and model-based control techniques. These conventional methods often struggle in real-world environments filled with uncertainty and random disturbances.

Reference: Learning robust autonomous navigation and locomotion for wheeled-legged robots. Science Robotics(2024). DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.adi9641.

The post An Autonomously Navigating Wheeled-Legged Robot appeared first on Electronics For You.

View more at https://www.electronicsforu.com/news/an-autonomously-navigating-wheeled-legged-robot.

Credit- EFY. Distributed by Department of EEE, ADBU: https://tinyurl.com/eee-adbu
Curated by Jesif Ahmed

Advanced Loggers Boost Efficiency Across Industries

The loggers series enhances efficiency, optimizes manufacturing, and maintains product integrity in logistics, pharmaceuticals, etc.

BrainChild Electronics has launched the X2 series of temperature and humidity data loggers designed to cater to the diverse needs of various industries. These devices allow manufacturing operators to integrate them into smart manufacturing systems, thereby optimizing conditions on production lines. This capability enhances decision-making and operational efficiency, proving indispensable for industries striving for precision and control in their manufacturing processes.

In logistics and warehousing, the X2 series becomes critical for maintaining the integrity of goods during storage and transportation, particularly in cold chain logistics. The biotechnology and pharmaceutical sectors also benefit immensely from these loggers, especially for crucial applications such as the storage and transportation of vaccines, where maintaining stringent environmental conditions is paramount to ensure product effectiveness and safety.

The series loggers also play a pivotal role in creating interconnected networks within production lines. By capturing essential data, these devices facilitate the analysis of trends and formulating strategic production plans. Their precision and reliability are crucial for maintaining data integrity, which is vital for achieving the anticipated benefits of smart manufacturing systems. The comprehensive database established by these loggers helps prevent incorrect data analyses and potential operational errors.

The design of the X2 series includes several advanced features: a compact structure for flexible installation, temperature accuracy of up to ±0.3°C, a battery life of 13 months, and the capacity to store up to 80,000 data entries. The devices also feature a One-Key Start/Stop function, scheduled start/stop capabilities, and a USB interface for setting parameters and downloading reports. They offer temperature and humidity readings displayed on an LCD screen, configurable sampling rates, and high power efficiency. The company claims to complement these loggers with various backplanes for diverse installation needs and IP65 protection, enhancing their utility for accurate, real-time monitoring and analysis.

The post Advanced Loggers Boost Efficiency Across Industries appeared first on Electronics For You.

View more at https://www.electronicsforu.com/news/advanced-loggers-boost-efficiency-across-industries.

Credit- EFY. Distributed by Department of EEE, ADBU: https://tinyurl.com/eee-adbu
Curated by Jesif Ahmed

JOB: Hardware Engineer At AMETEK In Bengaluru

APPLY HERE

Location: Bengaluru

Company: AMETEK

Job Summary

AMETEK seeks a talented and motivated Hardware + Firmware Power Electronics Engineer. The ideal candidate will have a strong background in power electronics design, including hardware design and firmware development. The candidate should have experience with a variety of power electronic circuits, including inverters, converters. The candidate should also have experience with embedded systems and programming languages such as C/C++.

Responsibilities

• Design and develop power electronic circuits for various applications.
• Develop embedded firmware for power electronic systems.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to integrate power electronic systems into larger systems.
• Test and validate power electronic systems to ensure performance and reliability.
• Provide support for manufacturing and production of power electronic systems.
• Stay current with new technologies and advancements in power electronics.

Requirements

• Masters / bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering or related field
• 1+ years of experience in power electronics design and development, preferably in product development environment.
• Good knowledge about electronic/electrical components, knowledge about analog/digital components/circuits understanding with analysis/trouble shooting skills.
• Experience with firmware development for embedded systems.
• Knowledge of programming languages such as C/C++
• Experience with control algorithms & communication protocols such as CAN, SPI, I2C
• Familiarity with relevant regulatory requirements and standards
• Good knowledge in usage/functionality of lab related equipment/instruments like Oscilloscopes, function generators, LCR meters, power analysers, digital multimeters etc
• Should understand product development life cycle and processes, design/test specification, root cause analysis, good electronics debugging/troubleshooting skills, board bring-up processes, traceability management, and Defect management.
• Good component level analytic skills on PCBA’s, high power electrical/electronic Circuits
• Experienced in writing formal Verification and Validation planning documentation, test procedures, descriptions, and reports.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to collaborate effectively in a cross-functional team environment.
• Ability to adapt to changing priorities and work effectively in a fast-paced, deadline-driven environment.

The post JOB: Hardware Engineer At AMETEK In Bengaluru appeared first on Electronics For You.

View more at https://www.electronicsforu.com/career/hardware-engineer-ametek-bengaluru.

Credit- EFY. Distributed by Department of EEE, ADBU: https://tinyurl.com/eee-adbu
Curated by Jesif Ahmed

JOB: Electronics and Embedded Systems Engineer At Neuralzome Cybernetics In Bengaluru

APPLY HERE ON LINKEDIN

Location: Bengaluru

Company: Neuralzome Cybernetics

About the Job

As an Electronics and Embedded Systems Engineer at Neuralzome Cybernatics, you will be responsible for designing, developing, and testing firmware and hardware for various control boards.

Responsibilities

• Working on building/interfacing controllers for different motor.
• Work on interfacing various sensors, electronics and electrical components for controlling the robot.
• Working with different mcu communication protocols.
• Designing and prototyping PCBs and writing firmware for it.

Qualifications

• Writing firmware for stm32 microcontrollers using STM32CubeIDE in embedded C/C++.
• PCB designing (KiCad preferred) and prototyping (i.e. sourcing components, assembling, and testing).
• Knows Scripting in python.
• Experience in working with timers, PWM, I2C, SPI, UART, CAN, Modbus and Ethernet.
• Experience with working on different motors (BLDC, PMDC), encoders (Optical encoder, Hall Effect Encoder absolute & incremental), motor drivers (H bridge), and controllers (PID).
• Experience working with power supply, buck/boost converters, batteries, BMS, contactors etc.
• Ability to independently design, test, and ship hardware.
• (Preferred) 1 – 2 years of experience working with robots (i.e. mobile robots, robotic arm etc…).

The post JOB: Electronics and Embedded Systems Engineer At Neuralzome Cybernetics In Bengaluru appeared first on Electronics For You.

View more at https://www.electronicsforu.com/career/electronics-embedded-systems-engineer-neuralzome-cybernetics-bengaluru.

Credit- EFY. Distributed by Department of EEE, ADBU: https://tinyurl.com/eee-adbu
Curated by Jesif Ahmed

Wearable Electrocardiogram Reference Design

The Wearable ECG reference design measures heart rate data and movement and enables IoT connectivity for health management.

Electrocardiogram (ECG) heart data, which provides a detailed look at heart function beyond simple beats per minute (BPM), is increasingly utilized in fitness applications and medical device technology. With the growing significance of medical remote patient monitoring, the integration of wearable ECG features has become essential. Our Connected, Wearable ECG Demonstration Board is designed to facilitate the development of sophisticated fitness trackers and can also be incorporated into medical wearable systems for remote monitoring and diagnostics. The Wearable ECG reference design from Microchip measures complex heart rate data and computes other cardiac-related metrics. Additionally, it tracks patient movement using an onboard accelerometer. 

The ECG Demo Board is a platform designed to assess the capabilities of the Microchip ATSAML22N18A ARM-based microcontroller, along with other components like the BTLC1000-MR110CA and ATECC508A, within a wearable ECG context. It uses Atmel Studio’s integrated development environment to provide straightforward access to the ATSAML22N18A’s features and showcases its integration in an ECG setting. Equipped with the BTLC1000 BLE module, the board facilitates communication with tablets, smartphones, or PCs, enabling IoT capabilities.

The ECG Demo Board operates in several modes. The Normal mode is the default setting and includes three specific sub-modes: ECG mode, which is the primary default, Standalone (DEMO) mode, and USB (DATA) mode for data transfer. Additionally, the board features a Low-Power mode designed to conserve energy during operation.

Normal mode is the default operational state after a system reset, during which all system components are activated and ready for use. In this mode, users can measure ECG parameters and step counts, read and write to serial flash, and choose to operate in either USB or Demo mode. Additionally, this mode allows for interfacing with a mobile app, enabling a range of interactions and data management options.

Low-Power Mode on the ECG Demo Board is designed to minimize power consumption when the board is not actively being used. This mode is exclusively accessible from the ECG monitoring mode and activates automatically if there is no interaction for five seconds while in the ECG monitoring mode. During Low-Power Mode, the Super-Low Contrast Display (SLCD) is turned off, and all unnecessary peripherals, clocks, and external components are disabled to conserve power. However, PTC Monitoring and RTC remain enabled with the SleepWalking feature to maintain essential monitoring. Entry into Low-Power Mode is blocked while in DEMO or USB modes, which require continuous operation for their specific functionalities.

Microchip has tested this reference design. It comes with a bill of materials (BOM), schematics, assembly drawing, printed circuit board (PCB) layout, etc. You can find additional data about the reference design on the company’s website. To read more about this reference design, click here.

The post Wearable Electrocardiogram Reference Design appeared first on Electronics For You.

View more at https://www.electronicsforu.com/electronics-projects/wearable-electrocardiogram-reference-design.

Credit- EFY. Distributed by Department of EEE, ADBU: https://tinyurl.com/eee-adbu
Curated by Jesif Ahmed

ATS Schematics and Logic Analysis for a Substation 415V AC Auxiliary Supply Panel

In modern electrical power systems, ensuring a reliable and continuous supply of electricity is critical, particularly in facilities where downtime can result in significant operational disruptions and financial losses. Low... Read more


The post ATS Schematics and Logic Analysis for a Substation 415V AC Auxiliary Supply Panel appeared first on EEP - Electrical Engineering Portal. Credit: EEP- Electrical Engineering Portal. Visit:


http://dlvr.it/T7lp5q

A Software Update Speeds Up Circuit Testing

XJTAG 4.0 has introduced enhanced speed, multi-TAP capabilities, and design improvements for more efficient engineering and production testing.

XJTAG has released version 4.0 of its software suite, focusing on speed enhancements through improvements to the user interface and increased throughput of JTAG chains under test. This version enhances efficiency for engineers setting up projects and production line operators running tests.

The new feature is the multi-TAP performance enhancement provided by Optimised Scans. Multi-TAP refers to the XJLink2 controller’s ability to operate multiple JTAG chains concurrently to test entire circuits. In version 4.0, running different chains at varying clock speeds is possible. This feature allows each scan to be loaded more effectively, ensuring that slower chains do not reduce the data transfer rate of faster ones. While devices on separate chains execute each test step together, the optimised data transfer improves test times.

The primary users of the version 4.0 software suite will be engineers and production line operators. Engineers responsible for setting up and configuring projects will benefit from the enhanced speed and efficiency of the software, especially with features like the multi-TAP performance enhancements that allow for the operation of multiple JTAG chains at varied speeds. This facilitates more efficient testing across entire circuits, ensuring optimal data transfer rates.

Production line operators will find the software valuable for running tests more effectively, as the updates enable parallel testing and better visualisation of outputs. The improvements in the user interface, such as the redesigned Boards screen in XJDeveloper and the more intuitive Test Reset Sequence editor in the JTAG Chain Debugger, make the software easier to use during the testing processes on the production line. Additionally, the ability to display independent JTAG chains simultaneously in XJAnalyser offers operators a clearer view of board setups, enhancing the overall testing procedure. 

The latest updates also include significant enhancements to the software’s design and user interface, such as a more intuitive and user-friendly Test Reset Sequence editor in the Chain Debugger, allowing easier waveform manipulation based on user feedback.

The post A Software Update Speeds Up Circuit Testing appeared first on Electronics For You.

View more at https://www.electronicsforu.com/news/a-software-update-speeds-up-circuit-testing.

Credit- EFY. Distributed by Department of EEE, ADBU: https://tinyurl.com/eee-adbu
Curated by Jesif Ahmed

ATS Schematics and Logic Analysis for a Substation 415V AC Auxiliary Supply Panel

In modern electrical power systems, ensuring a reliable and continuous supply of electricity is critical, particularly in facilities where downtime can result in significant operational disruptions and financial losses. Low... Read more

The post ATS Schematics and Logic Analysis for a Substation 415V AC Auxiliary Supply Panel appeared first on EEP - Electrical Engineering Portal.

View more at: https://electrical-engineering-portal.com/ats-schematics-logic-analysis-substation-415v-ac-auxiliary-supply-panel Credit- EEE - Electrical Engineering Portal. Distributed by Department of EEE, ADBU: https://tinyurl.com/eee-adbu
Curated by Jesif Ahmed.

Boosting Robot Skills With Sound Data

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Olin College of Engineering have explored using contact microphones to train ML models for robot manipulation with audio data.

Two-stage model training. AVID and R3M pretraining leverages the large scale of internet video data (blue dashed box). We initialize the vision and audio encoders with the resulting pre-trained representations and then train the entire policy end-to-end with behavior cloning from a small number of in-domain demonstrations. The policy takes image and spectrogram inputs (left) and outputs a sequence of actions in delta end effector space (right). Credit: Mejia et al.

Robots designed for real-world tasks in various settings must effectively grasp and manipulate objects. Recent developments in machine learning-based models have aimed to enhance these capabilities. While successful models often rely on extensive pretraining on datasets filled mainly with visual data, some also integrate tactile information to improve performance.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Olin College of Engineering have investigated contact microphones as an alternative to traditional tactile sensors. This approach allows the training of machine learning models for robot manipulation using audio data.

In contrast to the abundance of visual data, it is still being determined what relevant internet-scale data could be used for pretraining other modalities like tactile sensing, which is increasingly crucial in the low-data regimes typical in robotics applications. This gap is addressed by using contact microphones as an alternative tactile sensor.

In their recent research, the team used a self-supervised machine learning model that was pre-trained on the Audioset dataset, which includes over 2 million 10-second video clips featuring various sounds and music collected from the web. This model employs audio-visual instance discrimination (AVID), a method capable of distinguishing between diverse types of audio-visual content.

The team evaluated their model by conducting tests where a robot had to complete real-world manipulation tasks based on no more than 60 demonstrations per task. The results were very encouraging. The model demonstrated superior performance compared to those relying solely on visual data, especially in scenarios where the objects and settings varied significantly from the training dataset.

The key insight is that contact microphones inherently capture audio-based information. This allows the use of large-scale audiovisual pretraining to obtain representations that enhance the performance of robotic manipulation. This method is the first to leverage large-scale multisensory pre-training for robotic manipulation.

Looking ahead, the team’s research could pave the way for advanced robot manipulation using pre-trained multimodal machine learning models. Their approach has the potential for further enhancement and wider testing across diverse real-world manipulation tasks.

Reference: Jared Mejia et al, Hearing Touch: Audio-Visual Pretraining for Contact-Rich Manipulation, arXiv (2024). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2405.08576

The post Boosting Robot Skills With Sound Data appeared first on Electronics For You.

View more at https://www.electronicsforu.com/news/boosting-robot-skills-with-sound-data.

Credit- EFY. Distributed by Department of EEE, ADBU: https://tinyurl.com/eee-adbu
Curated by Jesif Ahmed

SMD Lead Bending Option For 5 W Wirewound Resistors

The robust design and wide operating temperature range make these resistors ideal for automotive, industrial electronics, and power supply applications. 

Vishay Intertechnology, Inc has unveiled that 5 W devices in its AC and AC-AT series of cemented, axial-leaded wirewound resistors now feature a pick-and-place-friendly SMD lead bending option, the WSZ lead form, which transforms these devices into surface-mount components. The Draloric AC05 WSZ and AEC-Q200 qualified AC05-AT WSZ resistors, also available in a non-inductive version (AC05-NI WSZ), are designed for fast-switching circuits and exhibit excellent pulse capability.

The key features include:

• Peak power up to 5 kW for a 1 μs pulse load
• Broad resistance range from 0.10 Ω to 10 kΩ
• Operating temperature range from -55 °C to +250 °C
• Wirewound construction for high mechanical resistance
• Thermal shock resilience at elevated temperatures

The WSZ lead form enables these resistors to be assembled on PCBs alongside other surface-mount components, enhancing the pick-and-place process, reducing assembly times, and lowering costs. These devices are ideal for use as snubber and inrush current limiting resistors in pre-charge/discharge applications across automotive and industrial electronics, energy meters, and power supplies for white goods. 

Engineered for challenging operating conditions, the AC05 WSZ and AC05-AT WSZ feature a robust, non-flammable silicone cement coating that meets UL 94 V-0 standards. These RoHS-compliant, halogen-free devices come with tin-plated terminations, ensuring compatibility with both lead (Pb)-free and lead (Pb)-containing soldering processes. Samples and production quantities of the AC05 WSZ and AC05-AT WSZ are currently available, with lead times set at 12 weeks.

For more information, click here.

The post SMD Lead Bending Option For 5 W Wirewound Resistors appeared first on Electronics For You.

View more at https://www.electronicsforu.com/news/smd-lead-bending-option-for-5-w-wirewound-resistors.

Credit- EFY. Distributed by Department of EEE, ADBU: https://tinyurl.com/eee-adbu
Curated by Jesif Ahmed