The latest version of this skittery little sprawling robot can climb walls and crawl like a turtle We’re always impressed by the way David Zarrouk (a professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev by way of UC Berkeley’s Biomimetic Millisystems Lab) manages to extract a ton of functionality from the absolute minimum of hardware in his robots. In the past, we’ve seen clever designs like a steerable robot that only uses a single motor, and a multi-jointed robot arm that uses […]

A casual Q&A with a robotics PR expert and a robotics journalist Image: iStockphoto Evan Ackerman is a journalist who has been covering robotics (and some other stuff) for the last 11 years. Last time he counted, he’d written well over 6,000 articles, which seems like a lot. Tim Smith is the CEO of Element Public Relations, a boutique PR firm in San Francisco specializing in emerging technologies. Element has particular expertise in robotics, given their work with Willow Garage, […]

Researchers wager on a possible Deepfake video scandal during the 2018 U.S. midterm elections Illustration: iStockphoto A quiet wager has taken hold among researchers who study artificial intelligence techniques and the societal impacts of such technologies. They’re betting whether or not someone will create a so-called Deepfake video about a political candidate that receives more than 2 million views before getting debunked by the end of 2018.  The actual stakes in the bet are fairly small: Manhattan cocktails as a reward for the “yes” camp and […]

Your weekly selection of awesome robot videos Photo: Tech United Eindhoven Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We’ll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months; here’s what we have so far (send us your events!): RSS 2018 – June 26-30, 2018 – Pittsburgh, Pa., USA Ubiquitous Robots 2018 – June 27-30, 2018 – Honolulu, Hawaii MARSS 2018 – July 4-8, 2018 – Nagoya, Japan AIM 2018 – July 9-12, 2018 […]

DRAGON can change its shape to move through complex environments and even manipulate objects Photo: JSK Lab/University of TokyoDRAGON is able to autonomously decide how to transform when given the constraints of the space it needs to pass through. There’s been a lot of recent focus on applications for aerial robots, and one of the areas with the most potential is indoors. The thing about indoors is that by definition you have to go through doors to get there, and […]

Your weekly selection of awesome robot videos Photo: Festo Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We’ll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months; here’s what we have so far (send us your events!): RoboCup 2018 – June 18-22, 2018 – Montreal, Canada RSS 2018 – June 26-30, 2018 – Pittsburgh, Pa., USA Ubiquitous Robots 2018 – June 27-30, 2018 – Honolulu, Hawaii MARSS 2018 – July 4-8, 2018 – Nagoya, Japan […]

Alphabet’s DeepMind neural networks can grasp a three-dimensional scene from just a handful of two-dimensional snapshots Image: DeepMind Researchers at Alphabet’s DeepMind today described a method that they say can construct a three-dimensional layout from just a handful of two-dimensional snapshots. So far the method, based on deep neural networks, has been confined to virtual environments, they write in Science magazine. Natural environments are still too hard for current algorithms and hardware to handle. The article doesn’t speculate on commercial applications, and the authors weren’t available for interview. That gives me […]

A drone surveillance system trains to watch out for humans stabbing or punching each other Images: University of Cambridge/National Institute of Technology/Indian Institute of Science/IEEE Drones armed with computer vision software could enable new forms of automated skyborne surveillance to watch for violence below. One glimpse of that future comes from UK and Indian researchers who demonstrated a drone surveillance system that can automatically detect small groups of people fighting each other. The seed idea for researchers to develop such a drone […]

Some 400 engineers are working under the radar at AutoLab AI with former Autodesk CEOs leading the pack Illustration: iStockphoto What exactly is the “future of autonomous manufacturing?” According to venture capitalist and AutoLab AI cofounder Lior Susan, stealth startup AutoLab AI is building it, but isn’t defining it yet, at least not publicly. That kind of cryptic chatter doesn’t usually get Silicon Valley talking—more likely yawning, or at most mumbling about vaporware. But AutoLab AI, according to Axios, already […]

Your weekly selection of awesome robot videos Image: NASA Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We’ll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months; here’s what we have so far (send us your events!): RoboCup 2018 – June 18-22, 2018 – Montreal, Canada RSS 2018 – June 26-30, 2018 – Pittsburgh, Pa., USA Ubiquitous Robots 2018 – June 27-30, 2018 – Honolulu, Hawaii MARSS 2018 – July 4-8, 2018 – Nagoya, Japan […]

Knowing how to give good hugs is an important life skill, even for robots Image: Alexis Block Hugs make us feel warm and safe and comforted and loved. They’re pretty great, if you’re into that sort of thing. If we need a hug and another human isn’t available, we can sometimes get a little bit of satisfaction from hugging inanimate objects like stuffed animals, but it seems like robots (that can hypothetically hug us back) might be able to be […]