Robot

Home robot Kuri is aping David Bailey, with Mayfield Robotics' cutesy creation adding the ability to snap videos of your family and then filter out the best footage. Dubbed Kuri Vision, the feature - which will be included when the Bosch-backed robot launches by the 2017 holidays - takes advantage of an upgraded eye camera added by the Mayfield team. However, it's more than just a GoPro on a wheeled tripod.

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The average consumer can buy a robot that vacuums their carpet, cleans their grill, but how about one that exists solely to educate? Thus enters Professor Einstein, a personal robot measuring more than a foot tall with an appearance like the man after whom it is named. Professor Einstein offers various facial expressions, understands what you're saying to it, and responds to your queries. The team behind it claims their product is one of the 'most advanced' personal-tier robots currently available.

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iRobot had a great idea to automatically map the smart home, but may have permanently damned it by fudging its announcement. The domestic robot-maker is best known for its Roomba robot vacuum cleaners, which over progressive generations have gone from navigating by trial-and-error - effectively bumping their way around rooms - to generating increasingly detailed maps of each owner's home. It's that mapping data that iRobot wanted to leverage, through deals with third-parties.

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Toyota has finished its first domestic robot trial in the US, putting a prototype Human Support Robot in the home of a paralyzed US war veteran. The robot, known as the HSR, is part of Toyota's "partner robots" project, exploring how technology can enable those with limited mobility and other restrictions to live more productive and independent lives. For vet Romy Carmago, in Florida, that means a robot nurse-cum-butler to help in ways he's unable to.

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Researchers have managed to create a sort of 'robot' that can move without requiring a power source, instead gaining its mobility skills via increased humidity levels. This was accomplished using a sheet of graphene oxide cut into a vaguely insect-like shape, including four legs. After exposing the graphene oxide sheet to a flash of bright light, researchers found that it will 'bend' when the air around it experiences a large humidity increase.

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Anki's Cozmo may have looked like a toy by way of Wall-E when it launched last year, but the personality-filled robot has bigger ambitions than mere entertainment. Launching today is Cozmo Code Lab, an incredibly simple way to unlock the many talents of the robot, even if you can't string together a single line of code.

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A new type of consumer-tier robot has launched, and it is called Q.bo One. This model, unlike ones before it, is open source and designed for anyone to build. The robot utilizes a simple programming language called Scratch, while the hardware itself is based around Raspberry Pi and Arduino. Multiple cameras, microphones, lights and speakers, among other things, makes Q.bo One suitable for a variety of tasks.

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Even before this current generation of smart home appliances and the Internet of Things wave, homes of the future were already flaunting the rolling robot discs that is the Roomba. But Roombas only take care of the unwanted materials inside the house. For unwanted things outside the house, like weeds in your garden, there's Tertill. Perhaps taking its name from a certain green, slow-moving reptile, Tertill is described as a solar-powered weeding robot. That it looks like a Roomba is no coincidence, as it was created by Joe Jones, the same man behind iRobot's Roomba.

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Sony might not be a name you'd immediately associate with robotic toys, but it does, or rather did, have a few under its name, from the dog-like Aibo to the the "dancing" Rolly to, more recently, the KOOV robotics kit. It isn't done yet, however, and a Toio product may be just over the horizon. Aimed at very young learners, Toio mixes papercraft, tiny rolling robot cubes, and a system that resembles a gaming console, complete with controllers and even cartridges.

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Washing clothes today is far easier and less time consuming that it was mere decades ago, and that's thanks to improved technologies boosting cleaning quality and drying times while decreasing energy consumption. Modern technology has done little to reduce the human element involved in clothes washing, though, meaning you still have to retrieve the dried clothes, fold them, and put them away. Laundroid may change that.

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Who says all drones can do is fly and crash? While nothing in its formal definition limits it as such, drones these days have mostly been associated with unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs. Robosea, however, is introducing a new kind of UAV, an unmanned aquatic vehicle. BIKI doesn't look like a helicopter but more like a fish, because that is exactly what it is. Meet the world's first bionic underwater robofish drone.

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Airline pilots beware! Yours might be the next job in line to be replaced by robots. Well, maybe not yet soon. In the future, however, robots might indeed take over some tasks deemed either too menial or too distracting for humans. For now, however, DARPA's ALIAS robot, short for Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System, is content to be a co-pilot and trainer. And to prove its flying chops, it successfully landed a passenger plane. Well, a simulated Boeing 737 cockpit, to be precise.

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