On August 5th four years have passed since Curiosity landed on the Red Planet. Even though it has endured significant wear and tear the rover is fully functional and NASA extended the exploration mission for another two years.
The all new L-A series fixed-wing professional mapping drones were recently announced by French company Lehmann Aviation. The lineup has been completely redesigned and consists of three types of UAS capable of fully autonomous operation, each of them sporting unique features for applications such as precision agriculture, mining and construction, terrain mapping and DEM, as well as other professional as well as personal usage scenarios.
The new drones promise to be even more efficient, easier to use and more reliable than previous models. Their entirely new unique modular design allows for interchanging or upgrading parts on-the-fly, further enhancing cost effectiveness for their owners.
This summer brings us the new Visual Components Essentials which is set to replace the current lineup of factory design and simulation products. The workflow has been completely redesigned with speed and simplicity in mind, complemented by new features such as automatic 2D drawing and bill of materials generation, new export formats and more. The software aims to be a complete tool not only from an engineering standpoint but also for marketing and sales purposes, being able to generate accurate and meaningful presentations.
There are a lot of changes under the hood as well, the simulation engine takes advantage of the latest hardware technologies for an increased level of realism, while the new open architecture and API make it easy for developers to create custom applications based on the Visual Components engine.
by Sven Schmidt-Rohr
Until recently robot programming was characterized by three different, typically very distinctively deployed programming techniques: teach pendant programming, graphical offline programming and textual programming.
Teach pendant programming is the simplest method, performed online directly at the location of the physical robot. By means of buttons and joysticks, a user can move the real robot into different states of its joints and/or pose of its end-effector. The user can record such poses one after another and then select different modes to connect these poses into a continuous robot motion trajectory (path).
EasyEDA is a free online tool for drawing circuit schematics, designing PCB layouts and generating fabrication files. An integrated fabrication service allows users to print their PCBs, effectively supporting the entire workflow of designing a new electronics board. Vast libraries of components and models are available, additionally open source models can be loaded and customized. The integrated SPICE circuit simulator allows for quickly analyzing the circuit and generating reports.
The smart and cute Little Robot Friends are searching for your attention on Kickstarter with more sensors, new features and even more cuteness. The robots are compatible with Arduino and can be easily customized from iOS and Android mobile apps. They are highly interactive and are ideal for STEM education being instantly appealing to kids who can learn about electronics and programming simply by playing and having fun.
The new Little Robot Friends | Image credit: Aesthetec Studio
The cute electronic characters were created by Canadian company Aesthetec Studio and the first generation hit the market in 2014. Along the revised Curvy, Spikey and Ghosty comes Crafty — a new character geared towards rapid prototyping of new robots.
Intel Galileo boards are adding some unique features to the ever-expanding Arduino hardware universe. On-board connectivity and versatility for certain usage scenarios represent, in my opinion, key aspects of these boards. This article focuses on how to install a Debian Linux distribution on the Intel Galileo Gen 2, as well as an analysis of the board’s performance as a mini computer stacked up against a Raspberry Pi 2 used for reference.