It’s back to school today Re/Cappers, as our lead story features a fusion of robotics and LiDAR that only the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute could produce.
No, really, probably only them, because they’re as familiar with both technologies as Robocop is with miscreants. Timeline goes something like this…
2014
CMURI creates The Robot Perception Lab, transforming research related to localization, mapping and state estimation for autonomous mobile robots.
2018
LiDAR simulation for off-road environments arrives, creating hybrid geometric models and realistic simulations for robots operating in natural terrains. The institute also presented papers at IROS 2018, including work on underwater SLAM systems and LiDAR-camera calibration.
2021
Created specifically for small-scale robots, a lightweight 3D localization and mapping system for solid-state LiDAR enters the picture.
2024
A tightly coupled LiDAR-inertial odometry system for off-road and indoor environments graces us, alongside a NeSLAM Project harnessing LiDAR data for real-time neural SLAM.
Here and Now
They’ve been tinkering with a combination of LiDAR & vision sensors to bolster the navigation of autonomous vehicles. Oh, then there’s this minor errand of overseeing an AI-fueled drone fleet’s fight against wildfires.
Okay, now exhale, and realize that within the CMU Robotics Institute…are 56 labs and groups, doing stuff like this…
CMURI’s Kantor Lab focuses on robots for agriculture and forestry. Image credit Carnegie Mellon University
56! That’s like, the number of times you should watch Wall-E.
What’s Cappenin’ This Week: Autonomous LiDARobots for first response, digital twins are way more + than - for batteries, BIM dreams green, diploma-deserving drones, and an AEC Error of the Week that wishes it raised the roof instead of dropped it.
Mini ‘Cappenins: Apple’s Airpod photogrammetry, what makes us human in the AI age, contech firms’ funding rounds, Trimble platform, AI copilot for architects, and an RCN pod on a surveyor’s journey in technological transformation.
Last week: A mysterious Dutch church summons Detective Scanner, GIS helps allay the opioid crisis, IoT in construction has more use cases than hard hats, integrated metrology might be so good that robot dances will occur on the manufacturing floor, and a Fault Disney AEC Error of the Week.
There is a type of disarray, if not mayhem, first responders face when confronting severe building damage and collapses. Just take room assessment, which is puzzling at best, dangerous and wasteful (repeat searches and assessments are common) at worst.
But researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute may have wired up quite the robotic remedy.
UCMRI’s new toy processing geometric properties, and hopefully not soon concussing an unknowing custodian. Image credit Carnegie Mellon University
They’ve concocted a new LiDAR-based method for autonomous aerial robot exploration and multirobot coordination, in which door detection is profoundly easier (it’s more probable that humans would be in a room than a hallway in a disaster.) Click below for the point cloud process, why LiDAR was chosen over cameras, what the heck saddle points do, how these robots communicate, and much more wondrously neat stuff.
You know those brunches when you’ve been waiting on your benedict for longer than a LotR movie, the host is on the verge of tears, a manager is on the verge of ungovernable rage, and the chef did a houdini with a bottle of bourbon?
That restaurant is the battery industry. Despite great intentions and dogged persistence, it simply, can’t, keep up; not with the soaring demand of consumer electronics, electric vehicles, renewables, and more.
But it might start, and not with a D battery, but a DT one!
Of course one would be seeing red with these old workflows! Image credit PreScouter
BDTs (battery digital twins) utilizes sensor data to feed computational models, which simulate the battery’s mechanical behavior. But the real moneymaker is predictive, wherein the models forecast potential variations in different circumstances framed around physics/laws of nature (heat, time, and so forth). And that is where the plethora of batteries called upon by our built world, can perform heroically.
Get charged up with Technology Networks’ powerful exploration of benefits, manufacturing challenges, use cases, financial data, and more below.
The built environment is our modern physical world, and what is more prized than that?
But like air travel, just because something’s amazing doesn’t mean it’s yet perfect.
A principal downside of all we have forged is emissions, as 39% of global energy-related carbon emissions come from…just buildings. So how about some information modeling to reduce them?
How much of that 22% are those doom clouds from Nixon-era trucks hitting the gas on the freeway. You know the ones. Image credit New Buildings Institute
Dr. Jinying Xu sure thinks so, and her guess is plenty educated, what with being a Marie Skłodowska–Curie fellow in the University of Cambridge’s Engineering Department. Absorb her outstanding analysis of BIM as a means of carbon management, below, delving into AEC/FM, tools, challenges, collection methodologies, standardization, and beyond.
It’s not that DroneEd isn’t rising; it’s just that its many hindrances make for a tortoise pace, compared to the hare that is global, multi-industry demand.
And it was all too evident in the passionate conversations of a University Roundtable hosted by Commercial UAV Expo.
How’s about a fourth option, one with walls and degrees? Image credit Gulf Coast State College
Helmed by Jay Seidel, Fullerton University professor and Director of the Fullerton Drone Lab, the discourse covered varied terrain. Student recruitment and retention, curriculum debates, legal/insurance ramifications, and administrator misunderstanding were central topics. Read the detailed Commercial UAV News analysis below, in hopes of things getting more, well, uplifting for drone academia.
If a roof collapses in an arena, and no one’s around to hear it…Image credit KC Yesterday
Designed by architect Helmut Jahn in the early 1970s, Kansas City, Missouri’s Kemper Arena was meant to be the venue equivalent of KC BBQ. Instead, it resembled leftover hospital sloppy joes.
June 4 of ‘79 brought with it a storm packing some almighty winds. The arena's roof, designed with the drainage capacity of a kitchen sieve, decided it was over this "supporting" business. In a dramatic finale that would make even the most seasoned WWE wrestler jealous, a 200 by 215-foot section of the roof took a swan dive into the arena below.
Thankfully, the only spectators to this structural spectacle were a few very alarmed pigeons. That’s right folks, the joint was empty.
But wait, it gets better. This collapse happened during the American Institute of Architects' annual convention in Kansas City. The timing! One minute they're patting themselves on the back for innovative design, the next they're watching their prized pony faceplant on national news. It's like winning "Best in Show" at Westminster, only to have your champion poodle trip over its own fancy haircut on the way out.
What Went Awry
The Kemper Arena's roof, designed to hold water like a temporary reservoir, suddenly found itself in a game of "How Much Can You Hold?"
See, the roof had only eight drains, far fewer than required by the local code. So as the storm raged on, water began to pool on the roof. The hangers, which were supposed to support the roof, were already fatigued from years of oscillation and stress. And when one hanger finally gave in to the weight of the water, that 200x215-ft portion of the roof collapsed into the arena, sending a pressure wave that blew out walls as a death metal act does to eardrums.
We could've spotted that sagging roof faster than you can say "structural integrity" using a combination of 3D laser scanning and photogrammetry. These technologies could have created a highly accurate digital twin of the Kemper Arena, allowing engineers to monitor the structure's health in real-time.
Drones could have captured detailed imagery in any hard-to-reach locale, for photogrammetric analysis and spotting potential drainage issues long before they became a ponding problem.
BIM could have taken this digital twin to the next level, simulating every raindrop, gust of wind, and pigeon landing to see how that roof would persevere. Advanced metrology techniques could have been employed to precisely measure and track any deformations or movements in the structure over time, providing early warnings of potential failure.
The Kemper Arena was back in business within a year, but its collapse unveiled precious lessons. Like, maybe design a roof that doesn’t double as a kiddie pool, and consider the weather patterns of a place nicknamed "Tornado Alley" so that its architect Helmut Jahn wouldn’t need a helmet on if he were watching a show go on.
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