Act 2 is underway.
Last semester, we built IKARUS, our rapid prototyping platform, the beginning of ORBIT.
Now comes the next chapter: HELIOS.
This is only a first glimpse.
A few details. A few fragments. A few signals of what is taking shape behind the scenes.
The full reveal is still to come.
Video by @michelelsasser
#ORBIT #HumanoidRobotics #SpaceRobotics #Robotics #Engineering #MechanicalEngineering #ETHZurich #Innovation #DeepTech #Automation #Teaser
Last semester, we built our first rapid prototyping platform, IKARUS, the beginning of ORBIT and our Act 1.
Now the project is moving into its next phase, and things are getting more serious.
With that, we invite you to join us for Act 2. Big things are coming.
In the meantime, enjoy our new branding and logo, brought to life through the great work of @raffinerie_ag .
Stay tuned. Act 2 has only just begun.
https://www.orbitrobotics.ch
#ORBIT #HumanoidRobotics #SpaceRobotics #Robotics #Engineering #MechanicalEngineering #ETHZurich #Innovation #DeepTech #Automation #RaffinerieAG
At ORBIT we do a lot of prototyping. This means 3D printed parts, threaded inserts and iteration. A part that often goes unseen is one of the most important. Bearings, they help us take the radial loads off of our motors and into the structure.
We are fortunate enough to have a brilliant partner for our bearings, Friedrich Braun GmbH have been generous enough to supply us with the bearings we need to build our robots.
You can see in the image of the upper arm assembly where the hidden bearing lies, carrying all the weight whilst drawing no attention to itself.
A very big thank you to Friedrich Braun GmbH for their support and trust in us!
#robotics #innovation #engineering
Have you ever wondered how to ensure humanoid robots can safely interact with their environment? 🤔 We can tell you we did.
After our most recent exams our know-how in robotics has blossomed to a new level. We have applied a new, more compliant control architecture to ensure exactly that - humanoid robot safety! 🤖
Compliance with human and non-human interactions is a large priority for us. To deploy in orbital environments we can't afford to damage any sensitive instruments or equipment. 🛰️
To achieve this we started with the hardware. All our motors are easily back-driveable, low gear ratio QDD (quasi direct drive) motors. The low gear ratio means there's low reflected inertia, so the output shaft is easy to back-drive — external forces can move the joint with little resistance from the motor side. ⚙️
In the control architecture we introduced a joint level impedance controller and feed-forward gravity compensation. The joint level impedance control allows our system to act like a mass-spring-damper the kp term acts as the spring's stiffness and the kd term as the damping coefficient. We set both
kp and kd very low so the arm responds very gently to displacement; upon being displaced it will gently return to its initial position. 🦾
To compensate for gravity we first had to make a precise model of our robot with correct masses and inertias, then we used the Pinocchio library to run RNEA (Recursive Newton-Euler Algorithm) to compute the inverse dynamics compensation torque. This allows us to precisely hold and achieve positions despite gravitational effects. 📐
Stay tuned to see how a tendon-based design can achieve even better compliance! 👀
#engineeringstudent #robotics #ethz #innovations #humanoid
We would like to express our immense gratitude to Acer for their support in our robotics research journey.
Without them we would've been seriously bottle-necked by our lack of high performance compute hardware. Their generous sponsorship of an Acer Predator Orion 7000 allowed us to get started on our machine learning, training and validation.
This partnership also gave us the opportunity to demo IKARUS, our humanoid test platform, to the Acer sales partners in the event site KKL Luzern. It was a hugely rewarding experience to give dozens of people their first human robot interaction, first teleoperation experiences and shaking a robot's hand is so normal to us but so foreign to the vast majority of the public.
We are very pleased that we could do our part in getting today ever closer to the future. Again a big thank you to Acer for their continued support and stay tuned, there's more cool robotics to come!
#ethz #engineeringstudent #robotics
We’re proud to share our first fully functioning arm: IKARUS.
IKARUS combines a 5-DoF robotic arm, a 17-DoF dexterous ORCA hand and a 2-DoF head equipped with a RGB camera. Designed for precise teleoperation with a MetaQuest VR device, IKARUS is able to conduct fine manipulation with the camera stream serving as visual feedback to the teleoperator.
From initial CAD sketches to a fully assembled prototype, IKARUS was developed over the course of one month. Early assemblies relied on 3D-printed dummy motors to validate the mechanical design and system integration. Once the final motors arrived, the system was reassembled and brought up on hardware, enabling validation of both low-level motor control and high-level control algorithms on the physical system.
IKARUS is ORBIT’s first act. We’re taking all the learnings gathered during this semester and applying them to the development of a full system to embody our vision. A humanoid-like robot designed for zero gravity environments. A companion to astronauts that will automate their most repetitive maintenance tasks, and allow them to focus on science.
Stay tuned — and in the meantime, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
#robotics #humanoid #engineering #ETHZ #AI #innovative
With 12 hours remaining until our second major review with Professor Robert Katzschmann and Doctor Ronan Hinchet we managed to completely destroy our shoulder link on our robot arm. We were catapulted back to what felt like square one, it was a surreal sensation, no anger no panic, just unbreakable focus. We didn’t concede, we locked in.
By 3 AM we had managed to reprint the link and assemble the arm, by 5 AM the motors were recalibrated, by 8 AM we were able to work on our demo again. At 10:30, half an hour before the review, we had our first working demo. The proverb “When the going gets tough, the tough get going” comes to mind, we really got to prove our metal in this trial by fire.
The actual review taught us a lot. We got to hear what insights Professor Robert Katzschmann and Doctor Ronan Hinchet had for us and our work. We had each sub-team present their work and be questioned by the supervising PhDs. It was a brilliant catharsis we got to experience in the culmination of our months of hard work. We have raised our own bar and are now more invested than ever to shatter expectations.
#engineeringstudent #robotics #humanoid #innovations #zürich
IKARUS is taking shape.
Boards wired. Drives tested. Prints refined.
Now that we’re assembled it’s time to integrate our embedded control to precise teleoperation.
We’re quickly approaching our final touches until we’re fully operational. These snapshots show a sneak peek of what’s to come next week. This is the transition point between fragments and a functioning limb.
More to follow as IKARUS approaches full-stack activation.
#robotics #assembly #ETH
Designing robots is hard; building robots is harder.
We’ve managed to bring our hardware from 3D model concepts into reality.
With our motors finally arriving, they brought the challenge of connecting them to our microcontroller and electrical infrastructure. Avoiding our own hubris, we decided to seek specialist assistance. We are immensely grateful to Rolatech AG for sponsoring us with their invaluable experience and expertise in creating the foundation for our electrical system. They helped us with cable routing and power distribution for our motors and microcontrollers.
We’re getting close to something big! Stay in the loop! Stay in ORBIT!
#Rolatech #ETH #Humanoid
MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT: ORBIT is incredibly excited to announce @nvidia as a new project sponsor!
NVIDIA plays a crucial role along the entire robotic stack. By leveraging their simulation tool Isaac Sim™️, we’re able to test and iterate on our first prototype, IKARUS, in high fidelity physical environments. The Jetson™️ edge computing platform serves as the on-board brain for our robot, sending commands to all the motors and processing sensor streams. This same platform will soon be running our own fine-tuned version of NVIDIA’s GR00T AI world model, for our robot to think and act autonomously.
This partnership began after meeting the University recruitment team at the @amiv_eth x @nvidia Industry Talk. We were able to explain our project and vision of space deployed humanoids. A fascinating exchange led to another, the following day at NVIDIA’s Zürich office where they agreed to support us. A huge thanks to them!
#NVIDIA #ETH #humanoid
How do you go from indefinite optimism to definite optimism? You research.
ORBIT did exactly that at the Swiss robotics day at EPFL. Getting up at 4 in the morning is definitely not what you think of as fun but we couldn’t contain our excitement. Experiencing first-hand the cutting-edge technologies we’d only seen in videos or read about was eye-opening, and talking directly to the experts behind them was even more inspiring. We had the chance to validate our approaches and learn about future hurdles. This conference felt like foreshadowing for what lies ahead for ORBIT. We’re definitely optimistic 😉
#SwissRoboticsDay #ETH #humanoid #engineering #innovation #optimistic
Together, we build, code, wire, and coordinate every part of Ikarus’ journey.
Meet the teams behind our humanoid robot:
Mechanical:
They design, develop, and construct the physical realization of Ikarus. Every movement and action is made possible by the Mechanical team.
Software:
They write the code that allows Ikarus to move smoothly by following the motion of the teleoperator.
Electronics:
They wire the nerves — power distribution, sensor inputs, communication, encoder feedback — ensuring everything flows smoothly.
#ETH #mechanical #software #electrical #engineering #innovation #humanoid
