A Laboratory of the Future Human Experience
Spielberg will be mighty pleased with an effort that would remind him of his very own “War of the worlds”. Only, this time around, the subject is a robotic manifestation and no visitor from outer space. With a warning board that screams “might scare the living hell out of children, parental discretion mandatory”, there is little you need to do to endorse the obnoxiousness of the weird looking Walking Head Robot.
Continue reading… “Walking Head Robot”
Robotics is one facet of science that drives the fascination of even laymen who comprehend little about its intricacies and endless possibilities. And that’s precisely why progress of any kind in this field draws a lot of attention.
Continue reading… “Wheelchair Mounted Robotic Arm”
To assist humans around the house, robots will need to be able to deal with the unfamiliar. But while researchers can preprogram robots to do increasingly sophisticated tasks, they face a much bigger challenge in teaching them to adapt to unstructured environments. A robot developed at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, however, is able to learn to use objects that it has never encountered before.
Continue reading… “The U-Man Robot Learns to Use Tools”
Designed by a team at Cranfield University in Bedfordshire this ultimate boy toy can climb a 407mm vertical wall, go down a 40 per cent side slope and operate in up to 610mm of water. You can use it to drive over obstacles, cross rivers and do all the things you wouldn’t want to do while in the car yourself. (Video)
Continue reading… “To Boldly Bike Where No Man Has Biked Before”
Soft and squishy chemical robots will one day squeeze through tight spots then expand to 10 times larger, offering an advantage over rigid robots. Once a mission is complete, a chembot would biodegrade.
The chembots could get into a building through a crack, for example. They could explore a cave or crevice and dismantle an explosive. Or they might climb ropes, wires or trees. Another tiny idea: One chembot could pack a smaller chembot into a situation, then release it for even more minute explorations.
Continue reading… “Chembots – A New Kind of Formable, Squishy Robot”
For the first time, the Laboratory for Autonomous Flying Robots (awesome, I know) at the Berlin Institute of Technology has used three autonomous helicopters to transport a load together, cooperating without any human intervention. It’s a big step forward for collaborative robots, which many experts believe is the wave of the future.
Continue reading… “Helicopter Robots Collaborate To Work Together”
Retail management is a critical operation. It involves effective use of human resources to provide greater customer’s satisfaction. To help retailers, Kiva Systems has developed a set of low-cost mobile robots.
Continue reading… “Robots Ensure Effective Retail Management”
The Sintef Group, a research company based in Trondheim, Norway, announced that it’s designing a robot based on snakes.
The 1.5-meter long robots, which are made of aluminum, are being designed to inspect and clean complicated industrial pipe systems that are typically narrow and inaccessible to humans. The intelligent robots have multiple joints to enable them to twist vertically and climb up through pipe systems to locate leaks in water systems, inspect oil and gas pipelines and clean ventilation systems.
Continue reading… “Scandinavian Scientists Designing Robotic Snakes”
EVERY scar tells a story, yet a huge gash on Mars has long proven very hard to read. Now a peek beneath the planet’s surface reveals that the scar is the largest known impact structure in the solar system – gouged out by a collision that reshaped the Red Planet.
Continue reading… “Getting Smashed”
All The Cool Robots Are Wearing Black These Days
Artist Fiddian Warman built some robots controlled by a neural network. Neural networks can learn, so he’s been playing them classic punk records in an attempt to turn them into robotic versions of his younger self. The robots are 2 metres tall and have the ability to pogo.
Continue reading… “Artist/Roboticist Teaching Neural-Net Bots to Love (and Dance to) Punk Music”
Navi Bear
Every day we come across “random” type gadgets that are quite funny most of the time. The latest of these bizarre products is a GPS enabled Teddy Bear.
Continue reading… “Navi Bear – The GPS Teddy Bear”
One day robots will rule us. But until they do, we have to make do with cool little robo slaves like Sega-Hasbro’s Ampbot.
Just over two feet tall, he has an iPod cradle on his back for carrying your tunes about. He’ll play them through his stereo speakers, with a total power of 12W.
Continue reading… “Ampbot – Automated Music Personality Robot”
