The United Nations recently issued a report asking for a global ban on Lethal Autonomous Robots (LARs), which would be extremely intelligent robots that can seek out and kill human targets without the direction or command of an actual human. But these robots don’t actually exist, so why the need to issue a ban on [...]
If you grew up watching reruns of The Jetsons or had Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots, then you expected your future to be filled with helpful, and frankly awesome, robots that would perform your grudging daily tasks. So where are they? They may actually be closer than we think. With the introduction of inexpensive prototyping [...]
Penguins have never failed to interest humans, and in an effort to capture the daily habits, struggles, and emotions of penguins in their natural environments in three different colonies – Antarctica, Falkland Islands, and Peru’s Atacama Desert – the BBC is employing robot penguins to infiltrate each colony and record everything using a special spy [...]
It was more than 10 years ago when the Roomba, iRobot’s independent robotic vacuum cleaner, revolutionized floor cleaning in a huge way. Now, the concept of autonomous vacuum cleaning is no longer limited to floors and other flat surfaces. Meet the AutoMee S robot from Takara Tomy, which is a scaled-down version of the Roomba, [...]
Not all robots have the ability to be smart and sneaky at the same time, but a team of researchers have been able to devise a robot endowed with the ability to move and sneak intuitively, using background noises as a cover-up. The CSIRO Autonomous Systems Laboratory, based in Brisbane, Australia, has yet to name [...]
With the primary objective of studying cognitive development of one-year olds or infants in general, the Machine Perception Lab of the University of California has developed a robot baby called Diego-san. Dr. Javier Movellan, leading the team at the Machine Perception Lab, has explained their foremost motives in the creation of Diego-san. According to him, [...]
Humanoid robots are definitely getting more sophisticated and more graceful, with abilities to mimic the smooth, natural movements of humans as opposed to the jerky, stop-sudden motions of their earlier predecessors. Welcome Roboy, a soft humanoid robot integrated with the most advanced features in humanoid robotics, according to the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory researchers at the [...]
Roboticists at the University of Tokyo have designed a humanoid robot that imitates the muscular movements of a real human. Created primarily to shed more light on the anatomy of the human body and show how muscles expand and contract or generally respond to movements, the humanoid robot has been nicknamed “Kenshiro” by the researchers. [...]
Sexbots are not really a novel thing, but now robot girlfriends – and boyfriends – are designed to be more sensitive, so that they are able to communicate about topics that really interest their human users and even respond accordingly to specific sensations. TrueCompanion founder Douglas Hines talked to HuffingtonPost on the possibility of human-on-robot [...]
We’ve seen a lot of robots and robot-inspired devices as of late, including the CIROS Humanoid Robot that can chop up a fresh salad for you and the robot book scanner that can zip through 250 pages per minute, but this robotic water snake is something else entirely. The ACM-R5 snake bot, created to mimic [...]
The Japanese have developed a book scanning device capable of running through 250 pages per minute, translating to a full scan of a full-length novel in less than one minute. The researchers over at the Ishikawa Oku Laboratory have devised the BFS-Auto, capable of rapidly flipping each book page precisely and producing a high-resolution scanned [...]
For many of us, preparing a meal or loading the dishwasher can seem like Herculean tasks, especially on days when we feel like being lazy. Thankfully, a team of researchers from the Center for Intelligent Robotics at the Korean Institute of Science and Technology is in the process of refining CIROS, a robot designed with [...]
Darpa has unveiled their latest humanoid robot, the Pet Proto, which is hugely reminiscent of the PETMAN humanoid built by Boston Dynamics. In a video released by Darpa on Wednesday, the Pet Proto exhibited impressive athletic skills, as it hurdled over wooden blocks, trudged up stairs, and jumped without losing its balance. This new humanoid [...]
A group of scientists at Chiba Institute of Technology (Japan) have built a Robotic Wheelchair for the disabled. “This robot can make a variety of movements, using its four-wheel drive and five axes. Normally, it rolls along on its wheels, but if there’s a step or ditch, it can get over the obstacle by using [...]
Written on 15 Oct 2012 by Vincent AbryAldebaran Robotics NAO robot is dancing the Gangnam Style. Nice hack by a geek from developer.aldebaran-robotics.com.
Written on 11 Oct 2012 by Vincent AbryThe Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, has been working on a project funded by the Pentagon to create a robot based on Earth’s fastest land mammal, the cheetah. The Cheetah Bot, as the team at DARPA call it, recently clocked 28.3 mph before it tripped, which breaks any previous human or robot speed [...]
Written on 10 Sep 2012 by Vincent AbryAs a follow-up to the i-SOBOT humanoid robot, Takara Tomy is now developing a new robot – and it’s the quintessential man’s best friend. The i-SODOG is a robot dog designed with realistically-moving joints that feature specially designed servo motors. This robotic canine, while it comes with its own remote control, is also controllable via [...]
A taxidermied cat who flies like a quadrotor drone, are you serious ? Well, that’s probably the WTF of the month. “Orville was created by artist Bert Jansen, and was presented at Amsterdam’s KunstRai art fair.” My god, this weird world is becoming more and more crazy each day. Or are people on drugs more [...]
Written on 03 June 2012 by Vincent AbryNow that the summer season is drawing near, Zuma Beach lifeguards in Malibu are testing a robotic lifeguard designed to respond to distraught swimmers before an actual rescuer can arrive on scene. The robotic lifeguard, which appears to be no more than a remote-controlled buoy, is called EMILY, an acronym for Emergency Integrated Lifesaving Lanyard. [...]
IEEE Spectrum has published an interesting story last Tuesday, which centered on a miniature robot designed to double up as your friend. Researchers from Yamagata University in Japan have devised a way for people never to be alone again – creating a portable telepresence robot that individuals can carry with them anywhere, through a backpack-like [...]
