Episode 1: Riveria students visit Karelics
At Karelics, one of our main missions is to shed more light on the fact that the 21st century is already shaping up to be the century of robotics and is high time we already made the general public aware to the existence of intelligent robots that can be our day to day helpers and can make our lives better and easier. We believe that as robotics developers, it is our duty to educate the world on the benefits of integrating intelligent robots into our daily routine and not only this but it also our duty to show the future generations of robotics developers what are the latest advances we are making in our journey towards building our Karelics Brain, a self contained software made with the purpose of making any robot out there smarter.
Antero posing for the camera and showing off all of his new, cool looks
With these in mind and after our latest successful tests with the alpha build of our Karelics Brain which we have managed to deploy on URobot’s Antero, we thought it was the best time to already show the world what a truly intelligent robot can do nowadays. On the 13th of April 2021, a small group from the Riveria vocational school and the Joensuu Robotics Association visited the Karelics’ testing hall and got to be the first ones to see our robot in action. They were very interested and asked about many different aspects regarding what makes Antero so smart under the hood. Some of the main things that they wanted to know about were: how can Antero move holonomically, what are the main computing units that power the robot and how are the tasks handled between them, what is this ROS we have been talking about and what are the main features that makes it such a powerful development tool for robotics. The answers to all of their questions have been enthusiastically provided by the guys from our Brain team in Joensuu, who are responsible for implementing the core functionalities for Karelics Brain, our solution for making any robot as smart as Antero!
Joni and George, 2 of the developers from our team in Joensuu, presenting the main features of Antero
After our visitors got acquainted with how Antero manages to accomplish so many complex tasks it was time for them to actually see the robot in action. They got to observe how our developers test new functionalities in simulation, using tools as Gazebo and Rviz and also how does the robot behave in a real environment, while navigation through a scaled version of a construction hall that we have built in our testing hall, to which we have also added virtual walls and tags.
Antero autonomously navigating through the environment
Our guests were excited to see how well the robot performs during the demo that was shown and they continued asking lots of questions about how the robot handles different scenarios, like seeing that it cannot go through a gap or that it cannot accomplish a path it has previously planned. Again our developers were quick to answer and provide all the information that our guests were looking for.
The whole visit ended with our guests sharing some warm cups of coffee while exchanging more ideas about Karelics Brain, Antero and robotics in general. We discussed how much do they think the whole industry of smart robot helpers is going to grow in the future and how eager do they think the world would be to adopt such technologies to be used during daily routine. They seemed quite optimistic about a near-future in which smart robots could really be a part of our lives and not only that, but they would actually make our lives a lot easier by automatizing many tasks and providing help we didn’t even know we could get before.
We are happy to say that the first encounter of Antero with the outside world has been a total success. Our guests were excited to hear more about our progress in the future and they said that they can’t wait to see what else our robot brain will enable robots to do next. We are grateful to them for visiting us and being so interested in our work and we wish them the best of luck in their future robotics endeavors. And Antero was also quite thrilled about the whole experience and it just wants to meet more and more people…what can we say, it is a bit of a show-off when it comes to letting everyone know how smart it is! 🙂
