Companies

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Ever Seen a Packbot Fly? Check this out!

Okay, so the video isn’t exactly “fresh” but the real news is that  iRobot recently kicked off a video channel on YouTube called iRobot iTube which I just read about on the ieee Spectrum site.

7Jan2009 | Ray Renteria | 0 comments | Continued
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Robot Birds You Can Shoot Down Again and Again

WowWee’s been accelerating its pace of product releases since the release of ith the Rovio with a new projector technology, a new upcoming RoboSapien called “JoeBot” (which has some mixed reviews), and my favorite, a robot bird you can shoot down again and again with an accompanying laser gun.

7Jan2009 | Ray Renteria | 0 comments | Continued
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Have you Seen This Robot?

A robot was stolen from a Portland State University professor’s car earlier this week and he wants it back–no questions asked.  The $5,000 robot was donated to the university by Parallax Incorporated.    Poor little guy.

6Jan2009 | Ray Renteria | 0 comments | Continued
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Formidable Consumer Robot Platform Gets Ready to Take the Stage

The South Korean company Roboware has a monumental hit on their hands with their robot E3–for Emotional, Entertaining, and Eductional.  The combination of a good technology architecture and a sound business model is what will make this robot a winner among personal and field consumer robots.
In an interview on Engineering TV, Roboware CEO Mike Kim [...]

5Jan2009 | Ray Renteria | 0 comments | Continued
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Ingenious Device lets Robots See Over Walls

Imagine a little box just 4 inches tall squirting out a rigid mast 8 feet straight up!    A configuration is available that will allow a larger unit that can lift 200lbs 20 feet.  The unit is from GeoSystems Inc and is called a Situational Awareness Mast (SAM).  Travis Deyle at Hizook brings several sources together [...]

4Jan2009 | Ray Renteria | 1 comment | Continued
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Robot Fighter Thoroughbred Set to fly this Fall

Northrop Grumman unveiled the first of two aircraft of an unmanned combat air system (UCAS) during a ceremony for Navy officials, state and local government representatives, suppliers and Northrop Grumman employees.  The aircraft represents a milestone in the progress toward the development of an autonomous combat aircraft designed to be deployed from the deck of [...]

1Jan2009 | Ray Renteria | 0 comments | Continued
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Japanese ZMP Inc. Enters Autonomous Vehicle Space

The Japanese company ZMP Inc. has recently announced its intention to deliver a research tool called the ZMP Car Robotics Platform by April, 2009 at a meager cost of about $5.5K per unit.   The platform is a complete 1/10th scale vehicle.
The platform is comprised of a stereoscopic camera, NEC Corp’s image processing board, WiFi module, [...]

1Jan2009 | Ray Renteria | 0 comments | Continued
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Grass-Eating Robot Might be Your Next Lawn Pet

Lawnmower robots will be novelties until their owners don’t have to drop delimiters to create a boundary around the property to be maintained.  Still, we have to go through this phase to get the early adopters on-board to subsidize the growth of the market.  Check out this great write-up at RobotStockNews.

27Dec2008 | Ray Renteria | 2 comments | Continued
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Robot Gets Trained for Europa

In Authur C. Clark’s novel 2001 - A Space Odyssey a returning Astronaut receives an invitation and a warning when leaving Jupiter and its moons;  “All these worlds are yours - except Europa. Attempt no landings there.”   It looks like we’re preparing a robot to land on the icy moon.

26Dec2008 | Ray Renteria | 0 comments | Continued
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PR Bot Still Making People Smile

If the value of a robot is determined by the amount of emotional response it evokes, then Elektro is priceless.   The robot built in 1937 has been stimulating the imagination of those who have seen him for over 70 years.  Read about his life in this month’s New Scientist.

26Dec2008 | Ray Renteria | 0 comments | Continued