NASA’s International Space Station welcomes its first non-human crew member
The humanoid robot R2, developed by NASA and General Motors, was launched as part of the STS-133 mission on the Discovery shuttle on February 24, 20011. Up until last week R2 was asleep, packed away in its box but now R2 is active and ready to be up and running. R2 even has its own twitter account!
Continue reading
Check out the worm-bot
This robot is modeled after the Caenorhabditis elegans, a tiny roundworm whose very simple nervous system allows it to carry out complex body movements. Its designer Dr. Jordan Boyle, from the schools of Computing and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Leeds, hopes that this robot can one day be used for rescue missions.
Continue reading
Europe supports new biological approaches for Information and Communications Technology
Evolvable hardware, artificial cells, bidirectional interfaces between mechanical and living entities. These are all examples of how biology can be applied to ICT.
Tony Prescott, professor of cognitive
Continue reading
Instead of stealing our jobs, robots might keep them around and even make them easier
Robots are becoming more intelligent at the same time as they’re becoming more affordable. An article in The Economist discusses the need for executives of large companies to start considering the management of robots and other non-human resources.
With a struggling global economy, job availability is an overwhelmingly serious concern world-wide.
Continue reading
An interdisciplinary field where live cells provide building blocks for engineers.
Tissue engineering
provides a means for
Continue reading
Check out this video explaining what makes human faces so special and how this relates to a European robotics project
Our faces paint a portrait of our inner emotions for the rest of the world to see. Whether we like it or not, our facial expressions give others information about the way we are feeling. A stranger’s smile might cause you to smile back and start a friendly conversation with them during a ride on the metro, while another’s scowl might be a good indicator they’re not in the mood to talk. As subtle as these non-verbal cues may seem,
Continue reading
Image: Craig ONeil
Take a ride in a car with reasoning abilities
Rüdiger Dillmann and his team at the Humanoids and Intelligent Systems Lab at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology are working on creating cognitive automobiles that have an understanding of traffic situations and can respond accordingly.
Continue reading
Let’s talk about sex (with robots)
7000 USD can now buy you alternative forms of intimacy with a companion/sex robot developed by the American company TrueCompanion. Some people may find the idea of this revolting, perverted or just plain weird but with sexuality playing such a fundamental role in our lives
Continue reading
While intelligent machines are capable of defeating the chess and jeopardy pros, there are tasks a six year old can beat them at in seconds
When we look at the picture on the left, it’s obvious that something’s wrong with the picture on the bottom. The human brain’s capability to integrate knowledge is what allows us to recognize that keyboards and computers fit well together while plants and computers… not so much.
Christof Koch, Cognitive and behavioural biology professor at the California Institute of Technology and Giulio Tononi, professor in consciousness science at
Continue reading
Check out this group on Vimeo to see some videos featured in a Robot Film Festival held in New York City on July 16th and 17th, 2011
The annual festival doesn’t just aim to showcase awesome robots, it also aims to encourage interdisciplinary collaboration by providing an opportunity for researchers to translate their work to the general population and help explore the ethical and sociological issues everyday robots could have on society