Real Transformer Robot

Danny’s fully automated Lego Rubik’s cube solver

 This robot can automatically acquire, analyze and solve a shuffled Rubik’s cube!
 
 

Military tests rocket-powered bionic arm

A rocket-powered bionic arm has been successfully developed and tested by a team of mechanical engineers at Vanderbilt University as part of a $30 million military program to develop advanced prosthetic devices for next generation of super-soldiers.The mechanical arm mechanical arm with a miniature rocket motor can lift (curl) about 20 to 25 pounds, three [...]

Aggressive bees may track future of flying robots

Angry bees that fly like mini-missiles could map the futures of unmanned aircraft and planetary explorer robots, thanks to new University of Queensland research backed by the Queensland Governmen t.

Robots to Save Japanese Culture?

Roboticists at the University of Tokyo and Kawada Industries have made great strides programming complex leg movements in biped humanoid robots with the necessary stability to pull off intricate dance maneuvers. HRP-2, weighing in at 5 feet and 125 pounds, uses a video motion-capture system to record dance lessons replicate them convincingly. In the video [...]

Could Robots Replace Humans in Mines?

Why do human beings still risk their lives burrowing miles under ground and doing one of the dirtiest and most dangerous jobs in the world?
It’s an increasingly urgent question, given the recent high-profile mining accidents in Sago, W.Va., and Huntington, Utah. A small corps of engineers and robotics experts envision a day in the not-too-distant [...]

Amazing dancing Japanese Robots

 

Robot Medic Will Deploy by 2009, according to DARPATech

 One of the first announcements at this year’s three-day DARPATech conference is going to be hard to top: the first portable self-contained surgical robot will be deployed in the next two years. Brett Giroir, director of the research agency’s Defense Sciences Office also announced that the system, called Trauma Pod, has successfully “treated” a mannequin during a test, [...]

Amazing Actroid Female Robot

The amazingly realistic female android, named Actroid DER 2, was demonstrated at the AKIBA Robot Festival here in the Akihabara district of Tokyo. 

Can cyborg moths bring down terrorists?

At some point in the not too distant future, a moth will take flight in the hills of northern Pakistan, and flap towards a suspected terrorist training camp.
But this will be no ordinary moth. Inside it will be a computer chip that was implanted when the creature was still a pupa, in the cocoon, meaning that [...]

Autonomous Vision-based Exploration and Map

This video shows the progress of a robot as it explores a real-world environment. It uses a stereo camera (and no other sensors) to detect obstacles and localize itself. It makes its own decisions about where to go, based on its expectation of the value of visiting any particular location. The environment is an indoor [...]

SuperBot Modular Robots

Wei-Min Shen of the University of Southern California’s Information Sciences Institute recently reported to NASA significant progress in developing “SuperBot,” identical modular units that plug into each other to create robots that can stand, crawl, wiggle and even roll. He illustrated his comments with striking video of the system in action, video now posted on [...]

Domo Robot Helping to Clean Up

Sharing a joke could help man and robot interact

A MAN walks into a bar: “Ouch!” You might not find it funny, but at least you got the joke. That’s more than can be said for computers, which, despite radical advances in artificial intelligence, remain notably devoid of a funny bone.
Previously AI researchers have tended not to try mimicking humour, largely because the human [...]

Exploration and Development in Space: Men vs. Robots

How will the actual movement of humans into space eventually play out? Will humans develop a rocket version of the Conestoga Wagon, or theMayflower? Or will humans even play a part in the next century of space development, when robots may make far more sense for initial exploration?
 Techno blogger Al Fin tackles these questions in his [...]

Robot Domo Making a Drink

Swarm theory

A single ant or bee isn’t smart, but their colonies are. The study of swarm intelligence is providing insights that can help humans manage complex systems, from truck routing to military robots. 
 Read the article at National Geographic. 

New Laws of Robotics proposed for US kill-bots

A new set of laws has been proposed to govern operations by killer robots. The ideas were floated by John S Canning, an engineer at the Naval Surface Warfare Centre, Dahlgren Division – an American weapons-research and test establishment. Mr Canning’s “Concept of Operations for Armed Autonomous Systems” presentation can be downloaded here (pdf). Read  the article at The [...]

Our Civilization: Robotics

This will not be an invasion of Intelligent Machines, but rather it will be an expression of our own Civilization. - Ray Kurzweil
 

Technological Future: Human Evolution

Life and intelligence must never stagnate; it must re-order, transform and transcend its limits in an unlimited progressive process. Our goal is the exuberant and dynamic continuation of this unlimited process… – Max More 
 

Robot wars

WAR is expensive and it is bloody. That is why America’s Department of Defence wants to replace a third of its armed vehicles and weaponry with robots by 2015. Such a change would save money, as robots are usually cheaper to replace than people. As important for the generals, it would make waging war less [...]

Farms Fund Robots to Replace Migrant Fruit Pickers

Vision Robotics, a San Diego company, is working on a pair of robots that would trundle through orchards plucking oranges, apples or other fruit from the trees. In a few years, troops of these machines could perform the tedious and labor-intensive task of fruit picking that currently employs thousands of migrant workers each season.Read the [...]

Humanoid Robot Domo Helping with Chores

Introduction to Humanoid Robot Domo

Assistive robot adapts to people, new places

In the futuristic cartoon series “The Jetsons,” a robotic maid named Rosie whizzed around the Jetsons’ home doing household chores–cleaning, cooking dinner and washing dishes.Such a vision of robotic housekeeping is likely decades away from becoming reality.But at MIT, researchers are working on a very early version of such intelligent, robotic helpers–a humanoid called Domo [...]

‘Guessing’ robots navigate faster

Robots that use educated guesswork to build maps of their surroundings are being tested by US researchers. The approach could let them navigate more easily through complex environments such as unfamiliar buildings, the researchers claim.
Navigation is one of the biggest challenges faced by mobile robots. One popular technique, dubbed SLAM (simultaneous localisation and mapping), involves [...]

Sizing up the coming robotics revolution

When it comes to robots, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab is one of the places in the world where the magic happens.
Rodney Brooks is the Panasonic professor of robotics at MIT and the director of CSAIL. He is also the co-founder and chief technology officer of iRobot and one [...]

Researchers Dream of Humanizing Android

Household androids, like flying cars and Martian colonies, have disappointed generations of science-fiction enthusiasts by failing to materialize. Most research in robotics has drifted toward robots that, like Mars rovers and Roombas, have no resemblance to anything living, let alone human. And while it may be cute, let’s face it: Asimo can’t dance.
Bucking the trend, [...]

Armed Robots – Swords