This morning Sphero revealed a project called Sphero RVR, a do-it-yourself robot. This robot works with simple-to-use software and 3rd-party hardware, and is part of a Kickstarter right out the gate. In less than 12 hours, the project reached $145k of its $150k goal (with 30 days left to go).
The researchers at MIT are continually working on advances in robotics, and they are now showing off a new robot that combines vision and touch to teach itself to play the game of Jenga. Jenga is a game that has a series of stacked wooden blocks in layers. The goal is to push the blocks out of the tower without making the tower collapse.
Sony's aibo robot dog is getting a new sibling, with a limited-edition aibo chocolate edition adopting a three-color coat. The new version - which has only been confirmed for Japan at this stage - arrives alongside a new version of Sony's software for the entertainment robot, which will turn the pup into a miniature guard dog.
Amazon has supplied its warehouse workers with safety vests that let nearby robots know when they need to slow down. The wearable was designed by Amazon Robotics and is intended to keep warehouse workers safe when they must enter a space where robots roam. Between sensors in the vests and the robots' obstacle avoidance tech, the machines are better able to avoid collisions.
Humans are worrying that robots are out to get their jobs but they may have failed to imagine that said robots could also be fired. OK, it’s not exactly that dramatic but when a hotel that made a name for itself for employing more than 200 robots “retires” half of them, you can be something’s amiss. As it turns out, Japan’s and the world’s first robot hotel may have bitten a bit more than they could chew and may now have to rely on hopefully non-robotic humans to keep things running smoothly.
A company called UBTech has unveiled a pair of robots at CES 2019 that the firm calls its most advanced robots ever. The bots are a new version of the Walker bipedal humanoid robot and Cruzr, a cloud-based rolling humanoid service robot. Walker now has arms and hands while Cruzr has improved performance and reliability.
PepsiCo has introduced snackbot, a robot that will deliver snacks to college students. This autonomous outdoor vehicle looks like a large cooler on a set of six wheels, each featuring a flag with a number that makes it possible to tell the snackbots apart. The robots will be dedicated to delivering Hello Goodness' portfolio of snacks and drinks targeted at students who don't want to make a trip to the store.
Researchers have created a 3D printed robotic hand that can play simple musical phrases on a piano by moving its wrist. The hand was developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge and uses 3D printed soft and rigid materials together to replicate bones and ligaments.
Of all the major consumer electronics companies, LG is perhaps the one that’s most obsessed with robots. Not the cutesy but practically useless robot dogs like the new Sony Aibo but ones that are designed to assist customers and reduce worker injuries. The strangest of them all, however, is the CLOi SuitBot, which doesn’t look like a robot at all. LG has now redesigned the janky-looking half-exosuit into one that looks more like a somewhat futurist back brace instead.
Toyota and NTT DOCOMO have announced that they have teamed up for a test of the T-HR3 humanoid robot. In this test, the T-HR3 robot was controlled using a 5G connection from a remote location. The remote controller and the robot were 10km apart.
Quadruped robots are out there right now, and other than helping out in a disaster or carrying loads for humans, a decent usage scenario for the robots is unclear. A company called ANYbotics has found a usage scenario for its quadruped robot called ANYmal out in the ocean on an offshore platform.
Now that Stanford's made a glove for robots so that they might have a sense of touch, what's next? It's not a great time to hand a robot a sharp metal object, of that you can be sure. A paper was published this week in the scientific journal Science Robotics by chemical engineer Zhenan Bao and her team on what makes this robot hand work.