Robotics
iRobot to develop new communications relay robot
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March 5, 2008 Most notably known to consumers for its Roomba robot vacuum range and an assortment of home help bots, iRobot has received an award under the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) LANdroids program to develop a small, mobile communications relay robot that would empower US warfighters with communications. Read More
Kitchen cleaning Readybot Robot Challenge
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Few people rate kitchen cleaning among life’s highlights. To combat our dislike for dirty dishes, a group of veteran Silicon Valley engineers started the Readybot Robot Challenge aimed at constructing a general-purpose mobile robot capable of cleaning the kitchen. Read More
Extra-terrestrial off-roading: NASA lunar truck concept vehicle
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March 3, 2008 NASA has released images of its latest lunar exploration concept vehicle - a six-wheeled, variable height, stand-to-operate surface rover prototype designed to provide ideas for the future as part of the long-term goal of establishing an outpost on the moon by 2020. Read More
Rodent-like robots - BIOTACT attempts to mechanically replicate the impressive whiskers of the rat
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Robotics researchers are taking design tips from one of nature’s less majestic creatures: the rat. The EU funded €5.4 million BIOTACT project, which was launched at the beginning of this year, is seeking to replicate the rat’s highly efficient whisker system, which can accurately determine the shape of objects and help capture prey. Read More
New competition robotics solutions from Innovation First
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February 11, 2008 Educational and competition robotics product producer, Innovation First, Inc has announced the introduction of the new VEX RCR Mini robotics platform and VEX 802.11 Wi-Fi Control System. The VEX RCR Mini provides a low cost robotics solution for elementary, middle and high school students and the VEX 802.11 Wi-Fi Control System enables simultaneous operation of hundreds of robots wirelessly. These new additions expand upon the company’s VEX line of products, which help promote science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education amongst students and hobbyists. Read More
Georgia Tech offers Robotics Ph.D
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February 1, 2008 With the global robotics market expected to significantly expand over the next five years, including gains in both the service and personal robotics fields, the College of Computing at Georgia Tech has announced that it will now offer the first interdisciplinary doctoral degree in robotics in the US. Read More
Applied Robotics introduces Smart Gripper 2.1
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January 11, 2008 Employee-owned Applied Robotics has released a new intelligent closed-loop direct-drive gripper known as Smart Gripper 2.1. Designed to deliver precise gripping capabilities with a powerful programming interface, it offers easy integration with commercial robots and Its gripping fingers can be designed by the user to ensure custom use. Read More
WowWee's Rovio: 3-wheeled, Wi-Fi enabled robotic home surveillance
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January 9, 2008 Have you every wondered exactly what your cat or dog gets up to when you’re not home? WowWee Robotics, the pioneering company behind Robosapien, has unveiled its new WiFi-enabled, remotely-controlled robotic webcam platform at the International CES. Known as Rovio, the 3-wheeled telepresence allows you to interact with its environment, surveying the home or office remotely through streaming video and audio transmitted via the Internet to your cell phone, PC or video game console. The self-docking robot has the ability to act semi-autonomously using NorthStar smart navigation - a directional system that works like a micro-GPS, enabling Rovio to know where it is, locate the position of other objects, and accurately navigate through its environment under its own control. Read More
Pleo: the dinosaur brought back to life
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January 7, 2007, We’ve had AIBO and i-SOBOT , now meet Pleo, a puppy-sized robot dinosaur with a programmable personality and cute, realistic looks. The first in a planned series of “Life Forms” designed by a team of designers and engineers at UGOBE, Pleo boasts two 32-bit microprocessors, four 8-bit subprocessors, 14 motors and more than 100 custom-designed gears with interactivity with its owners made possible via on-board Infrared and camera vision systems, two microphones, two speakers and numerous sensors including one in the mouth for "food" detection. Read More
Honda's ASIMO: am I seeing double?
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December 14, 2007 Honda has announced a further update to its advanced humanoid robot platform. The latest incarnation of ASIMO has added intelligence technology allowing it to autonomously perform services such as carrying a tray or pushing a cart, work together with fellow robots to share and complete tasks through a constant sharing of information, and even predict the movements of oncoming people and decide for itself how best to stay out of the way. Read More
iRobot announce new mapping payload for PackBot
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December 13, 2007 Known for an array of intelligent machines from home helpers to military aides, iRobot has just announced an upgrade to its PackBot with the addition of a Mapping Kit. They new payload is designed enhance the ability of soldiers to manage the dangers of search, surveillance and reconnaissance missions. Read More
Robotic concerto: Toyota expands vision for intelligent helper machines
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December 7, 2007 Toyota has unveiled two additions to its growing family of partner robots - a new mobility robot and a humanoid robot that's dexterous enough to play the violin. According to the company's release, the violin playing robot can perform a variety of delicate tasks with its arms and hands - each of which contain 17 joints - including being able to mimic the human ability to achieve vibrato on a violin. The new Mobility Robot - which shares its design platform with the I-Real personal transport concept recently tested by Gizmag at the Tokyo Motor Show - is capable of transporting its owner or following in their footsteps as a porter, autonomously avoiding obstacles at speeds of up to 4mph. Read More
QinetiQ trials remote-controlled fire fighting vehicles
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December 5, 2007 QinetiQ has developed specialized remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) with fire fighting capabilities that can operate in environments that would be unsafe for firefighters. Currently undergoing a six month trial commissioned by Network Rail and the London Fire Brigade, the vehicles are designed to combat the specific issue of fires close to railway tracks that involve Acetylene cylinders - a problem that has been on the rise in the past year causing major delays to commuters. Read More
Remote controlled, multi-tasking climbing machine
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November 21, 2007 Robotics offers the perfect solution for dangerous tasks that can involve risk to life and limb and often impose huge economic costs. Climbing, in a range of scenarios, is one of those tasks and machines are increasingly offering a safe and efficient alternative in a number of industrial situations. Following several field deployments in 2007, International Climbing Machines (ICM) has announced the success of its uniquely designed climbing machines - portable, remote-controlled devices that can scale virtually any vertical or inverted surface - in difficult assignments including remote measuring and climbing the surfaces of C-5 and C-137 airplanes, decontaminating a vessel in a Nuclear Power Plant, and demonstrating the machines’ ability to climb and remove paint from concrete walls for the Department Of Energy (DoE).
Team Tartan takes DARPA Urban Challenge win
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November 4, 2007 The man-most-likely finally got to stand atop the victory dias in the DARPA Urban Challenge today when Tartan Racing’s Chevy Tahoe Boss gave Red Whittaker the victory everyone thought would be his in the 2005 Grand Challenge. Tartan Racing won the US$2 million prize for first, while Stanford Racing’s VW Junior won the $1 million second place prize, reversing the order from the last DARPA Challenge. Third was Team Victor Tango’s Odin. The event was a massive triumph for the educational system of Pennsylvania which provided the dominant winner of the event (from Carnegie Mellon) and the most ingenious and successful of the underfunded “Track B” teams which came from University of Pennsylvania and Lehigh University (Ben Franklin Racing Team). Read More
Six teams finish the DARPA Urban Challenge
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November 3, 2007 The DARPA Urban Challenge finished here this afternoon with an astounding six teams completing an array of missions over a demanding 60 mile urban course. The logical placegetters in the event were the first three to clear the course, quite some time ahead of the others - Junior (Stanford University's VW Passat), Boss (Carnegie Mellon's Chevrolet Tahoe) and Odin (Virginia Tech's Ford Escape hybrid). No winner has been named on the day, with DARPA due to announce the final placings tomorrow morning at 10am, though Tartan Racing’s Red Whittaker seemed very confident after the event after a completely clean run with no infringements or hiccups and a total time more than 20 minutes faster than the nearest competitor. The calm and confidence after the event did not reflect some of the issues the team experienced on the starting line Read More
Saturday's DARPA Urban Challenge finalists trimmed to 11 teams
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The finalists for Saturday’s landmark DARPA Urban Challenge were announced here today and the biggest surprise was that the final field was trimmed to just 11 starters, a decision taken by Grand Marshall and DARPA director Dr Tony Tether in the interests of securing a winner. “It’d be a great shame if one of the robots took out another robot,” said Tether as the final 11 contestants were announced. Most pointedly, Tether also introduced Team Tartan as the team that would be the Number One seed “if we were to give a ranking to the number one", before presenting the plate to Dr William “Red” Whittaker of Team Tartan (pictured). Read More
KUKA Robotics introduces new robotic palletizing solution
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October 11, 2007 KUKA Robotics Corporation has announced a new robotic packing solution for pallets designed to virtually eliminate package damage caused by conventional palletizers without impacting on speed. Read More
Asimo's world tour continues
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October 8, 2007 ASIMO is quite possibly the world’s busiest non-human celebrity with recent appearances in Estonia, the Isle of Man, Barcelona and even Disneyland in the US as part of a stage show. His world tour continues with a trip now planned to the land downunder, Australia. Read More
Robotic surgery in zero gravity
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September 26, 2007 Silicon Valley based independent non-profit research and technology development company SRI International has announced it will conduct the first ever robotic surgery demonstration in a simulated zero-gravity environment. Read More
Adept Quattro high-speed packaging robot
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September 24, 2007 Vision-guided robotics specialist Adept Technology has unveiled a new high-speed kinematic robot with a unique four arm design exclusively for high-speed pick-and-place applications. The Adept Quattro s650, is being exhibited in fully automated cells at three major international shows from September 24 to 27, 2007.
Zeno robot learns through artificial intelligence
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September 18, 2007 For the last decade Honda’s ASIMO humanoid robot has been the most visible public face of personal robotics but Hanson Robotics and Massive Software have partnered to change all that with the arrival of Zeno, a robot that can see, hear, talk and remembers who you are. Read More
M-ELROB robot challenge seeks European entrants for 2008
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September 4, 2007 Europe’s answer to America’s DARPA challenge is currently seeking entries for 2008. The Military European Land Robot Trial (M-ELROB) is calling for European civilian entrants keen to test their robot minions against several military scenarios in front of a panel of judges. The aim is to find robotic solutions that can be deployed in the near future to help save soldiers’ lives. Read More
Honda's new generation ASIMO robot goes to Disneyland
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August 30, 2007 A new version of Honda’s popular humanoid robot, ASIMO, is now appearing in its very own stage show at Disneyland in California. Twenty years in the making, the first generation ASIMO has undergone numerous improvements and has even appeared as a spokesperson for Honda , featuring in a series of television advertisements in the UK. Read More
Toyota’s new Tour Guide Robot
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Toyota has unveiled a new Tour Guide Robot that features completely autonomous motion, jointed fingers, image recognition and complex verbal communication skills. Both Toyota and Honda (which has spent more than 20 years developing Asimo the humanoid robot), will leverage their already established global sales networks to become key players in the robotics market over coming decades. Toyota will become the largest car manufacturer in the world this year and with cars getting smarter and smaller and robots evolving to be able to carry people, a new era of convergence in personal mobility is on the horizon. The direction is predictable, but who knows what form it will take… and we can't wait to see what they do next.
Location and semi-finalists announced for DARPA Urban Challenge
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August 10, 2007 It might not have the publicity, crowds or glamour of a Formula 1, NASCAR or MotoGP event, but the DARPA Urban Challenge is unquestionably the most important motoring event that will take place on Planet Earth this year viewed from an historical perspective. That's because the competing cars will be driven entirely by computers and the ground-work is being done to finally remove the most unreliable part of the automobile - the human being that drives it. The rules of engagement have been known for some time, but now the venue has been named - the Urban Challenge will take place in Victorville, California at the site of the former George Air Force Base on November 3, 2007. Thirty-six semi-finalist teams have also been named to compete at the National Qualification Event (NQE) will take place at the same location, October 26-31, 2007. Read More
A robot that walks on water
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July 27, 2007 The NanoRobotics team at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) are working on a robot that walks on water, mimicking the Basilisk, or "Jesus Lizard" that's famous for its ability to dash across a water surface on its hind legs. Researchers see amphibious potential in the water-walking robot, as well as a possible efficiency boost in comparison to a boat, because a vehicle that runs across the surface of water experiences very little viscous drag. Computer simulations have been encouraging, demonstrating a few possible efficiency gains in the design and motion over the evolutionary model provided by the Basilisk, particularly with the option of using two or more sets of running legs. Several leg designs have been tested (see one in action in this video (MP4)) but the researchers are still working on an operating prototype. Read More
Lightweight robot bridges gap between industrial and domestic functionality
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July 13, 2007 We all know how important it is to get along with colleagues in the workplace and robots it seems, are no different. With this in mind, industrial robotics manufacturer KUKA has developed a Light Weight Robot (LWR) that hints at a new era where intelligent machines perform service-oriented roles alongside humans. Though still designed for a role in industry, the LWR is able to “sense” its human counterparts and work alongside them in a more harmonious fashion. Read More
RoboCup 2007 underway in Atlanta
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July 3, 2007 RoboCup 2007 kicks-off today in Atlanta where nearly 300 teams from 37 countries are gathered to compete in the annual showcase of artificial intelligence at the Georgia Institute of Technology. RoboCup presents an ideal platform for the demonstration of robotic traits such as multi-agent collaboration, strategy acquisition and real-time reasoning and not only that – it’s an engaging spectator sport. In addition to competitions for small, medium, humanoid and four-legged robots, this year’s tournament sees the debut of the Nanogram League, a competition involving soccer-related agility drills for microscopic robots. Read More
VW sensor-driven Passat for 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge
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June 19, 2007 One of the world’s most unconventional car races gets underway on November 3 with the running of the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge. A variety of teams will be entering their “smart” vehicles on a course covering 60 miles of simulated urban driving conditions – the aim being to post the fastest time while, of course, observing traffic regulations. This requires participating vehicles to merge into traffic, cross roundabouts and negotiate busy intersections – all without drivers or remote control - meaning that all cars will be navigated and driven by computers and sensors. Stanford won the last Grand Challenge using a VW base vehicle and one of the favorites for this year’s event is this customized Passat built by Volkswagen’s California-based Electronic Research Laboratory (ERL) with assistance from Stanford University. Read More
Rogun the robot learns to recognise faces
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June 18, 2007 Around-the-home robot servants are almost starting to become practical - we've had the robot PA, the robot vacuum and the robot beer fridge, now meet Rogun - a robot babysitter and security guard with the fascinating ability to recognise familiar faces. The diminutive humanoid will happily wander around playing with the kids, broadcasting video of them wirelessly to the net so you can see what they're up to while you're at work. He'll also act as a wireless internet or videophone terminal, and keep watch when nobody's home, calling your mobile phone if there's a stranger in the house. Read More
The World’s Largest and Strongest Robot
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June 13, 2007 German industrial robot manufacturer KUKA Robotics has created the world’s largest and strongest robot. The KUKA KR 1000 titan 6-axis robot has a total of nine motors, which together deliver the power of a mid-sized car, giving it a payload capacity of 1000 kg. Combined with its reach of 3.2 meters and its ability to withstand a static torque of 60,000 newton meters (Nm), the Titan is ideally suited for bridging distances of up to 6.5 m and ensuring precise handling of objects such as engine blocks, stone, glass, steel sections, components for ships and aircraft, marble blocks, and precast concrete parts. Read More
Cyborg machine-insects prepare for the battlefields of the future
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May 31, 2007 Cyborgs and bionic humans have long been the domain of science fiction with the concept popularised by the seventies TV series, Six Million Dollar Man, about a cyborg working for the OSI. As technological development funded by military spending has accelerated in recent times, we’ve seen the development of the bionic eye, the bionic hand and the bionic arm, with lots of work also being done in the area of exoskeletal robotics to help soldiers run faster and longer and carry heavy loads. Now it appears that we’re about to see the concept of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Cyborgs morph. Whilst UAVs have been among the most successful and high-profile innovations in military technology over the past decade, the arena of unmanned aerial technology is about to become a whole lot stranger as hybrid insect-machine "cyborgs" become a reality. The prospect of a remote controlled dragon-fly capable of transmitting video and other environmental data from the front-line still seems like the stuff of science-fiction, but research into hybrid insect-machines is accelerating under the auspices of DARPA. Read More
The inhumane treatment of robots
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May 9, 2007 The development of robots for the U.S. Military is primarily so they can do jobs that keep humans out of harm's way. One of the world’s foremost roboticists, the delightfully eccentric Mark Tilden, recently encountered an interesting response while testing an autonomous landmine-detecting robot according to the Washington Post. Tilden is best known as the designer of Wowee’s Robosapien, RoboReptile ad infinitum range of robotic toys, but has worked for NASA and more recently Los Alamos National Laboratory where he is developing a five feet long stick-insect-like autonomous robot designed to step on landmines, get itself blown up, then intelligently adapt so that it can continue onwards with its remaining legs and step on more mines. During a demonstration, where the robot was continually blown up until it was down to one leg, Tilden was ordered to stop by an Army Colonel who was distressed at seeing the crippled robot hobbling toward the next landmine. With his judgement clouded no doubt by seeing humans engaged in the real thing, the Colonel declared the demonstration was inhumane. Read More
Remote-controlled robot uses thermal imaging to detect and eradicate termites
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May 8, 2007 Hasta la vista, termites. Due for release later this year, the Termibot carries video and thermal imaging cameras where human pest controllers can't go. When a telltale heat or moisture signature is detected, Termicam breaks termite nests open to confirm the infestation, then pumps pest control chemicals directly into the source. It's an ingenious non-invasive pest control device - but its appeal won't be limited to exterminators. Read More
