We’ve been thinking about them for a while…
Hiro, a humanoid robot developed by professor Osamu Hasegawa at the Tokyo Institute of Technology has been proclaimed a ¨world first¨for its ability to ¨learn¨from its environment and research relevant information on the web.
Continue reading
Look who’s roaming the red carpet
The paparazzi bots are five autonomous robots, each standing at the height of an average human. These robots won’t vacuum your floor or take out your trash but they will play on your lust for the limelight, provided you catch their interest.
icub meets Spain’s Prince and Princess of Asturias, Don Felipe and Doña Letizia at the Campus Party Milenio, Granada
The event is being celebrated from the 12th -26th of October to mark the the millennium of the Kingdom of Granada. With over 600 experts from 22 countries of the
Continue reading
MIT professor Sherry Turkle says no but she’s intrigued about some of the deep and meaningful emotions they can provoke in humans.
Turkle stresses that although we are still very far from the point where robots are indistinguishable from humans- as in the movie Blade Runner, based on Phillip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?- humans are capable of forming attachments to robots. During the interview Turkle discusses some of the issues raised through her studies with Cynthia Breazeal, founder and director of the Personal Robots Group at the MIT Media Lab.
Continue reading
Who couldn’t use the help of a CoBot?
The CoBots are being developed my Professor Manuela Veloso and her team at the CORAL (Cooperate-Observe-Reason-Act-Learn) research group at Carnegie Mellon University. Tasks are easily assigned to them through a special program online and then they are ready to navigate carefully through the workplace delivering items from one office to the next.
Continue reading
November 28th-December 4th, 2011
Are you curious about the growing application of robotics in Europe? There’s no need to to be a robotics expert to attend the events that are part of this year’s first ever eu Robotics Week. Events will include: exhibitions, lab tours, public talks, and competitions all organized locally in cities through out Europe.
¨I’m now filming your bionic hand with my bionic eye¨
Protagonist of Eidos-Montreal’s new video game Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Adam Jensen is a crime fighting cyborg in the year 2027. Like real-life cyborgs, the video game character underwent radical surgeries to merge his body with mechanical parts after a devastating accident.
Continue reading
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
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