4 robots have set sail to give us more information on our blue planet
It’s a well-known fact that we know more about outer space than we do about our oceans here on earth. With only about 10% of our oceans mapped out, we could use some help getting the facts on the waters that cover more than 70% of our planet.
On November 17, 2011, a couple pairs of robots called the Wave Gliders left San Francisco’s St. Francis Yacht Club Continue reading
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.
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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
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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.
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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!
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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.
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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,
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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.
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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
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Watch a clip from Tokyo’s 3D Expo
Nobuhiro Takahashi and his team at the University of Electro Communications in Tokyo have created a huggable robot. The ¨Sense-Roid¨ is shaped like a human torso that is embedded with pressure sensors. The robot is capable of reciprocating a human’s hug with the help of air compressors by being connected to a jacket that is worn by the human user.