Investing
DARPA Urban Challenge Team Develops Autonomy-In-A-Box Product
Team Gray may not have advanced to the finals but they’ve got their sights on bigger targets. With their latest autonomy in-a-box they may be positioned to become the Microsoft and IBM of autonomous vehicles. Chief Engineer Paul Trepagnier explained that the Autonomous Vehicle System, or AVS for short, is a completely self-contained unit comprised [...]
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Ugobe CTO John Sosoka: Inside Pleo at Maker Faire 2007
Robot Central recently had the opportunity to have a candid one-on-one talk, arranged by Jonas Lamis, Executive Director of SciVestor and contributor to Robot Central, with John Sosoka, CTO of Ugobe, makers of Pleo at Maker Faire 2007. I fully admit that I was sure I would be talking to John about just another fancy [...]
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Observations of Adoption Trends in Robotics
Selling products to businesses is a relatively quantifiable endeavor. A business customer calculates the cost of his investment and compares it to his projected increased revenue. If his revenue exceeds his cost then the purchase is deemed to have been worth the investment. The higher and sooner the return, the better the investment. Most of [...]
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DARPA Urban Challenge Yields its first Commercial-Grade Innovation
In 2004 the guys from Velodyne who make subwoofers entered a robot into the 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge under the name of Team DAD (Digital Auto Drive). Back then, their primary obstacle avoidance system was their proprietary stereoscopic vision system mounted on the roof of their Toyota’s cab. In 2005 they invented a new kind [...]
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Matt Trossen: Robotics Must Become a Software Problem for Mainstream Adoption
Robot Central had an opportunity to speak with Trossen Robotics CEO Matt Trossen about everything from his days as an IT Analyst to the maturing of the personal robotics industry. It was clear after just a few minutes that Matt Trossen wasn’t interested in opening an average on-line robot store. Trossen is a man on [...]
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Texas Company’s Technology Makes Robots Teachable
Robot Central had the opportunity to speak with CTO Sergey Popov of Skilligent about their robot learning technology. We were intrigued with the prospect of a robot that could be taught skills and behaviors without any conventional programming. I’ve asserted that Human Robot Interaction is about to reach a tipping point that will make personal [...]
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Google puts $30M on the Table to First who Lands and Drives Robot on Moon
The world is abuzz with today’s news that Google will back the Lunar X Prize. The $30M prize money is broken out into a $20M Grand Prize, $5M Second Prize, and $5M in bonus prizes. The offer is good through 2012 after which the grand prize will drop to $15M through 2014. After that, the [...]
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Microsoft and Tmsuk Create Robotic Alliance: Showtime?
Several days ago we learned that Microsoft is creating a technical alliance with Japan robot player Tmsuk (pronounced “tim suck”) to establish a standard robotics platform. It represents the first time a strategic relationship has been established between a major software platform maker and a robot manufacturer. At stake is the effort to bring robots [...]
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Harvard Makes Progress on “Biohybrid Materials for Soft Robotics”
A team of scientists in the Disease Biophysics Group at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences has been working on interfacing biological material such as heart muscle tissue with man-made polymers. The team has figured out how to grow muscle tissue in a structured way so as to be able to begin applying [...]
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New $37 Million Order for TALON EOD Robots, Spares
WALTHAM, MA, August 29, 2007 – Foster-Miller , Inc., a QinetiQ North America company, announced today that the Naval Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technology Division (NAVEODTECHDIV) in Indian Head, MD, has raised the ceiling of its $257 million IDIQ (indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity) contract to $290 million and ordered another $37 million of TALON® EOD robots and [...]
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