Other Recent Articles
This Week in Bionically Enhanced Critters
As loyal longtime readers of RobotCentral already know, on Mondays we like to review the week’s advances in robotic animal parts. This past week had some truly exciting and disturbing developments.
Our robotic ornithologist readers will appreciate that Beauty the Bald Eagle will soon have a new bionic beak. Idaho Biologist Jane Cantwell has [...]
Robots and Your Prostate: What Could Possibly Go Wrong
Leonardo da Vinci was known for many things: painting, sculpting, and of particular interest to RobotCentral readers, a French king commissioned him to build a walking mechanical lion. Which for some reason could produce a chest full of flowers on demand (probably because Leo had not yet invented the chainsaw). But he also [...]
4May2008 | David Hahn | 0 comments | Continued
MoD Grand Challenge: Go Find the Bad Guys
In 2004 and 2005 came the DARPA Grand Challenges–competitions in which vehicles were expected to traverse hundreds of desert miles completely autonomously. In 2007, DARPA brought the robots into a suburban setting for the Urban Challenge.
Last August, we discussed ELROB, the European Land Robot competition in which robotic vehicles were challenged with [...]
They’re Here
This week, an attack by robots crippled a local business. The destruction made it impossible for customers to enter the attraction-based establishment. What’s worse, the robots systematically replaced revenue-generating advertisements with very inappropriate ones.
The business was forced to shut down while it fixed the wreckage and replaced the ads. Only time will tell [...]
Break-Dancing, Stair-Falling, and now Baton-Twirling
Ask a symphony musician what the difference is between a conductor and a chimpanzee, and the musician will likely tell you that some chimpanzees have been shown to be able to communicate with humans. Perhaps a robot can gain their respect, and on May 13th, Honda’s multi-talented ASIMO Robot is going to try. [...]
25Apr2008 | David Hahn | 0 comments | Continued
MIT’s Technology Awakens Mobile Devices–Robots Next?
The SynTactic Analysis using Reversible Transformations (”START”) system is a super information-finding technology that was developed by Boris Katz and his associates of the InfoLab Group at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. It’s a system that’s been running since 1993–long before Google came along.
The system has two syntactic modules: One for [...]
Mechanical Works of Art Grace Air, Water
In an effort to improve the technology of bionics, Festo’s Bionic Learning Network has produced several proof-of-concept robots. Two such proofs are the AquaJelly and the AirJelly. The structure and kinematics of these projects are based on their biological model, the jellyfish. The results are nothing short of elegant. Watching these [...]
23Apr2008 | Ray Renteria | 0 comments | Continued
Artificial Companion Mitigates Alzheimer’s
Paro Robots U.S., Inc. will be distributing Japan’s Intelligent Systems’ artificial life form Paro in the US and Canada. Modeled after a baby harp seal, it is designed to provide therapeutic services to patients with Alzheimer’s disease, other forms of dementia, and emotional complications stemming from the prolonged recovery associated with severe injury [...]
22Apr2008 | Ray Renteria | 0 comments | Continued
Colin Angle on the Business(es) of Robotics
Blogging from RoboBusiness in Pittsburgh this week. Much to my disappointment, the Convention Center does not have wireless access, so blog postings are coming out when possible.
Colin Angle, Co Founder and CEO of iRobot spent 45 minutes romping through robotics market business concepts. He presented 21 (I only captured 20 for some reason) [...]
The Wiimote Slices and Dices–Literally
If a soldier has to worry about which joystick controls steering and which controls speed he’s going to spend less time thinking about the bomb he’s trying to disarm. David Bruemmer and Douglas Few, both engineers from the US Department of Energy’s Idaho National Lab in Idaho Falls, have modified an iRobot Packbot [...]
8Apr2008 | Ray Renteria | 0 comments | Continued-
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