Robotics

There is only so much you can launch into space, much less land on planets like Mars. Space, weight, and budget all conspire against having more rolling laboratories roving the planet. Not that you'd want to depend solely on a rover either. Big and expensive, they are hardly qualified for cramped spaces and more treacherous terrain. Which is why NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratories or JPL has been developing a companion robot for rovers that would serve as research scouts. But to make them compact and lightweight, the engineers and scientists took inspiration from the foldable properties of paper.

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Clothing looks and feels best when it is tailored, but few people use tailoring services with any sort of regularity. The reasons for that are numerous, and likely involve inconvenience as much (or more so) than the cost factor. The future may hold the solution, though, and that solution may come in the form of machine-produced custom-fitted clothing items made to a buyer’s exact body shape and measurements.

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Back in 2012, the original Qbo robot caught quite a bit of attention. Today, we're being introduced Thecorpora's next generation Qbo robot, appropriately named the Qbo One. Unlike its predecessor, Qbo One won't be zipping around on its own - instead, it's meant to sit atop your desk and interact with you from there.

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Drones are designed to fly, but crashes are a fact of life, whether because of external forces or pilot error. Some commercial drones employ techniques like propeller guards to at least protect the drone, or humans nearby, but they’re not exactly effective all the time. More industrially-inclined drones even have “cages” that protect them but also make them bigger and heavier. Researchers from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, or EPFL, in Switzerland may have come up with an actually effective solution. Unsurprisingly, their inspiration came from Mother Nature herself.

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Spongebob's days as a fry cook will soon be over. Somewhat. But while Spongebob is a fictional character, the robot that will be flipping burgers and putting them on buns definitely isn't. It's called Flippy and it's nothing but a smaller and more dexterous version of a stereotypical robotic arm. But unlike those industrial machines designed more for power, Miso Robotics designed Flippy to be fast, precise, and smart. All for the purpose of having it flip burgers and then, when properly fried, place them on buns.

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Mayfield Robotics' Kuri robot companion may not have launched yet, but it's already getting smarter, adding facial detection as well as IFTTT integration. The personable robot was announced at CES 2017 back in January, a Bosch-backed project to put a friendly AI in the modern connected home. Now, the ways in which Kuri will be able to interact with both people and its environment have been improved.

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Researchers with MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, more commonly called CSAIL, and Boston University have jointly created a robot that can read a human’s thoughts. Thanks to this ability, the robot doesn’t need to learn complex human languages or other ways to get orders from humans — those humans can instead command the robots using nothing more than thoughts and a special electrode cap.

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Robots make the best and the worst security guards. On the one hand, they’re efficient, precise, and unswayed by emotions. On the other hand, they’re also cold, impersonal, and unyielding. They are best used for security-related tasks that require more attention to detail but not so much human interaction. That’s what Cobalt Robotics is attempting with its autonomous mobile robot that can navigate around the area, recognize people, read IDs, and report any suspicious activities, potential security issues, and possible hazards. All without looking like a Terminator set to kill.

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The newest robot from Boston Dynamics rolls on two wheels and has legs like a kangaroo. Or a dog - or any number of other bent-legged creatures who would all look equally wild aboard a pair of one-wheeled shoes. This robot is the latest in a long line of balancing, walking, or otherwise moving robots from the folks at Boston Dynamics.

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It seems that drones have come almost full circle. Originally created more for industrial and military purposes, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), or drones as they are more popularly called, have become a hobbyist product that came in all sizes and prices. With that market almost saturated, drone makers like DJI have turned their attention to even bigger customers. The DJI Matrice 200, or M200, line of drones isn’t something you’ll be able to play with, even if you can afford it. This drone is all work and no fun, targeted at companies and industrial customers, but has a bigger potential to improve the lives of its users significantly.

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Dutch company StyleShoots has introduced its new StyleShoots Live, a so-called ‘smart studio’ that can take videos and stills all on its own. The idea here is that traditional photography shoots require (human) photographers, but as with all things, those humans are being made redundant by artificial intelligence and robotics. With this smart studio, technology handles everything from lighting to adjusting the shots, leaving humans to handle the reviewing and, if necessary, post-processing aspects.

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This weekend, at the Formula E racing series Buenos Aires ePrix event, the organizers behind Roborace held their first on-track test between two specially-designed electric self-driving cars. While not quite as exciting as a race between human drivers, the cars, known as DevBots, still managed to reach speeds as high as 115mph. But as is often the case during tests like this, an accident did occur when one of the cars crashed while navigating a turn.

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