2021 Beetle Camera Wireless Steerable Vision System - iRobot

2021

Beetle Camera
Wireless Steerable Vision System

Coaches: Vikram Iyer, Ali Najafi, Johannes James, Sawyer Fuller,
Shyamnath Gollakota
Hometown: University of Washington
Stats: This robotic camera was designed to be as light and
energy efficient as possible so it can be carried by an insect.
It can be controlled to turn and look different directions and
would allow researchers to study insect behavior.
Fun Fact: The team also designed an insect-scaled robot to
carry and test the camera system.

2021

IceBot
Icy Proof-of-Concept Robot

Coaches: Devin Carroll and Mark Yim
Hometown: GRASP Lab at the University of Pennsylvania
Stats: IceBot has a chassis and wheels made out of ice, to
prove that it is possible to use as a material. IceBot brings us
closer to having a robot that can explore distant planets and
self-repair, building new parts out of local materials.
Fun Fact: The team tried molding, 3D printing, and CNC
machining the ice but found that cutting ice with a drill was
the most effective and efficient method of shaping it.

2021

SlothBot
Conservation Robot

Coaches: Magnus Egerstedt and team
Hometown: Georgia Institute of Technology
Stats: SlothBot aims to be as energy efficient as possible
while monitoring weather, temperature, carbon dioxide, and
other environmental data. It moves slowly on a 100-foot cable,
moving into sunlight when its batteries need recharging.
It’s designed to be slow so that it is extremely energy efficient
and can monitor data for long periods of time.
Fun fact: SlothBot’s adorable 3D printed shell helps protect its
electronics from the elements.

2021

Tumbling Magnetic Microrobot
Tiny Colon Explorer

Coaches: Elizabeth E. Niedert, Chenghao Bi, Georges Adam, Elly
Lambert, Luis Solorio, Craig J. Goergen and David J. Cappelleri
Hometown: Purdue University
Stats: These tiny robots could be used to deliver medicine to a
targeted location. They are too small to carry batteries, so they
tumble like miniature wheels while powered by an external
rotating magnetic field.
Fun fact: The team chose the colon as the location to test the
robot in vivo since it is easily reached and very messy.

2021

Squidbot
Squid-Inspired Underwater Robot

Coaches: Caleb Michael Christianson, Yi Cui, Michael Ishida,
Xiaobo Bi, Qiang Zhu, Geno Pawlak, Michael T. Tolley
Hometown: University of California San Diego
Stats: Squidbot is a squid-like robot that propels itself by
generating jets of water, similar to how a real squid moves.
This robot travels underwater untethered and with its own
power source, and can carry a sensor such as a camera to
collect data as it travels.
Fun Fact: A race between Squidbot and a real squid would be
no competition: Some squid travel about 36 feet per second,
while Squidbot’s top speed is one foot per second.

2021

OSIRIS-Rex
Asteroid-study Robot

Coaches: Very large team with members from NASA,
University of Arizona, Lockheed Martin, Arizona State
University, CSA-ASC, CNES, KinetX, MIT, ULA
Hometown: NASA
Stats: The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is traveling to Bennu, a
carbonaceous asteroid whose soil may record the earliest
history of our solar system. Its job is to collect a sample, map
the asteroid, document the sample site, and more.
Fun Fact: NASA is collaborating with Japan’s JAXA, trading
information about this mission and JAXA’s very similar
Hayabusa2 asteroid study.

2021

Shimon
Multitalented Musical Robot

Coaches: Gil Weinberg, Guy Hoffman, Mason Bretan,
Marcelo Cicconet
Hometown: Center for Music Technology @ Georgia Tech
Stats: Shimon was originally developed to improvise on the
marimba, but has recently been programmed to also generate
lyrics, sing, and even analyze spoken lyrics and respond to
them—allowing him to be challenged to a rap battle. Shimon
uses deep learning, a class of machine learning algorithms, to
generate his own words. He even has an album on Spotify!
Fun fact: Shimon is trained on datasets of 50,000 lyrics
from jazz, progressive rock, and hip-hop.

2021

iRobot® Roomba® i3
Wi-Fi® Connected Robot Vacuum

Coach: CEO Colin Angle
Hometown: iRobot
Stats: The i3 navigates and maps your home in neat rows
using state-of-the-art floor tracking sensors. Reactive
Sensor Technology tells the robot where it can and cannot
reach. Roomba® i3 learns your cleaning habits to offer up
personalized schedules.
Fun fact: Roomba® i3 Robot Vacuum is compatible with
Clean Base® Automatic Dirt Disposal.

2021

OpenBot
Open Source Smartphone Robot

Coaches: Matthias Muller and Vladlen Koltun
Hometown: Intel
Stats: OpenBot is an open-source 3D printed smart robot
that it is possible to build for less than $50. It adds onto your
existing Android smartphone, and all of its plans are freely
available online. An Arduino nano microcontroller allows the
phone to communicate with the vehicle body.
Fun Fact: The team was inspired by projects such as Google’s
Cardboard VR device, allowing home users to tinker with
technology that typically has a higher cost of entry.

2021

ShodoFranka
Chinese Calligraphy Writing Robot

Coaches: Sen Wang, Jiaqi Chen, Xuanliang Deng,
Seth Hutchinson, Frank Dellaert
Hometown: Borglab @ Georgia Tech
Stats: ShodoFranka is a highly dexterous robotic arm that
approaches the art of Chinese calligraphy as a trajectory
optimization problem. It can write any Chinese character given
only its unicode symbol.
Fun Fact: The robot emulates real calligraphy artists in
resetting their brush with a “dip-ink” function. After a stroke is
written, this behavior restores the brush to a predictable state
for more a predictable painting outcome.

2021

Bleeker
Cartoon Robotic Dog

Coaches: Jonathan Mahood
Hometown: A Small Town North of Toronto
Stats: Bleeker: The Rechargeable Dog is a comic strip by
Jonathan Mahood about ten-year-old Skip Smalls, his friend
Lila, and Bleeker, his electronic dog.
Fun Fact: The comic was originally called Hoover:
The Rechargeable Dog, but he was renamed Bleeker in
honor of artist Jonathan Mahood’s grandfather—Bleeker was
his middle name!
Read Bleeker: The Rechargeable Dog at gocomics.com/bleeker