robots

Robotic prostheses have reached a whole new level. We've seen different sorts of them over the years, many of them typically revolving around the hand rather than an entire arm. Les Baugh is different. He lost both arms at the shoulders a handful of decades ago in an accident, and thanks to the hard working scientists at John Hopkins University, he has received a robotic replacement. Baugh has been fitted with two robotic arms he is slowly learning to control.

Continue Reading

It is the place where your online shopping wishes and dreams come true, so Amazon aptly calls them fulfillment centers. But if you're thinking of happy elves busily packings gifts to be delivered by flying reindeer, you are definitely thinking of the wrong holiday. In Amazon's eighth generation fulfillment centers, the buzz and the noise don't come from cheery creatures with pointed ears but from robots of all shapes and sizes, working in unison to meet the hectic surge of demands this Cyber Monday.

Continue Reading

We knew the West Antarctic ice was melting, but it's taken a school of robotic dolphins to figure out why, with researchers at Caltech using ocean gliders to explore the ocean eddies responsible. The six foot long robots take advantage of changes in buoyancy to soar through the water, rather than propellers, and swam the Southern Ocean off the coast of the Antarctic Peninsula for two months, diving to depths of around 1.2 miles before surfacing again to report their findings around temperature and salinity via radio links to the Caltech team.

Continue Reading

If robots of the future start trying to become our new overlords, we could probably trace it back to this day. Well, sort of. Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IMHC) is teaching its Atlas robot a few kickass moves. Or at least is trying to. The latest stunt this humanoid contraption is trying to pull off is that iconic stance from 1984's Karate Kid, popularly known as "The Crane". But while it seems to have its arm movements down to a T, it still needs a lot of work on its legs.

Continue Reading

Those windup toy birds have received a modern makeover, and it is called the Bionic Bird. This device looks like a bird and flies like a bird -- flapping wings included -- and is controlled using a smartphone rather than a remote. The Bionic Bird is the first of its kind, says the maker, and is bid as the "only furtive civilian drone." Indeed when you see it, the first thing that will pop in your mind is There goes a bird, not oh look, a drone.

Continue Reading

Speaking this week on the future of Google and the technology-infused world at large, Larry Page made some rather interesting comments on you and the way you'll be working. Not at a job you don't like. Not in a menial labor job that can be done by robots. Artificial Intelligence, he suggests, will be a big factor in two key game-changers in our society. One is in taking the place of workers at jobs they didn't want to be at in the first place.

Continue Reading

The presence of robots in our lives is growing rapidly, and with them come all sorts of marvelous prospects and horrifying possibilities. Though we've had small robots vacuuming our floors and augmenting our military for a while now, the average person doesn't expect to interact with an intelligent machine while out grocery shopping or otherwise running errands. That'll be changing soon enough, with different companies adding robots to their worker lists. There's the Butlr robot being utilized by Starwood Hotels, for example, and soon to join it will be the OSHbot at Lowes hardware stores.

Continue Reading

As fears continue to grow over the recent outbreak of Ebola, scientists and researchers in the U.S. are hoping to develop a strategy for combating the virus' spread through the use of robots and autonomous vehicles. November 7th will see workshops put together by the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue that brings robotocists together with members of the medical and humanitarian aid communities to hopefully find a solution.

Continue Reading

We've already adjusted to the reality of having small robotic vacuums clean our carpets for us, and so it wont take much to welcome the Keecker HomePod into our homes. Keecker is essentially a home-based robot, which will roll from place to place on command to projector images onto walls and otherwise serve as a mechanical media butler. Because of the HomePod's connected nature and integrated cameras, it can also double as a home surveillance system when the user isn't at home, combining the best of many Internet of Things systems into a single robot.

Continue Reading

Robotics seem like a great idea, but there’s always that Terminator scenario in the back of our minds. “What if the machines really do become self-aware?”, we ask silently while grinding our teeth to avoid bawling like scared children. If the machines someday do push us to the brink of extinction, it might be this one that ultimately seals our fate.

Continue Reading

The idea of domestic robots isn't new, but Intel and Trossen Robotics are aiming to make it actually happen with the 3D-printed Jimmy powered by the chip firm's new Edison development board. Trossen has been offering the original Jimmy for some time now, a $16,000 'bot powered by an Intel Core i5 chip, but its new little brother - the HR-OS1 - promises to come in at a tenth of the price and, so the theory goes, open up the space to those who aren't adept at robotics programming.

Continue Reading

Remember the words of warning given to use by the wise Weird Al Yankovic, for today, Canada’s Department of National Defense is summoning iRobot with defense contracts. They’ll be working primarily with 20 iRobot 510 PackBot CBRN Recce Systems, each of them working to detect Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear and Explosives.

Continue Reading