July 2, 2018
Parrot reenters the consumer drone space with the innovative new Anafi Parrot was one of the first (if not the absolute first) companies to take a crack at the consumer drone space. The AR Drone came out in 2010 (!), and Parrot followed it up a solid upgrade in the AR Drone 2.0 a few years later. Since then, we’ve seen the Bebop, some clever flying toys, and had a bunch of fun with the fixed-wing Disco. But at this […]
June 26, 2018
UC Berkeley and CMU researchers demonstrate dynamic walking on stepping stones Photo: UC Berkeley Like humans and most terrestrial animals, legged robots need the ability to move over rugged terrain to be useful in applications such as disaster response and search and rescue. However, designing control algorithms that can handle discrete footholds (like rubble or stepping stones) is challenging, because there are strict constraints on foot placement that can’t be violated and the motion of these systems are governed by […]
June 25, 2018
Axed engineers say IBM isn’t always smart about artificial intelligence Illustration: IEEE Spectrum; Images: IBM; iStockphoto IBM, a venerable tech company on a mission to stay relevant, has staked much of its future on IBM Watson. The company has touted Watson, its flagship artificial intelligence, as the premier product for turning our data-rich but disorganized world into a smart and tidy planet. Just last month, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty told a convention audience that we’re at an inflection point in history. Putting […]
June 11, 2018
Safe and reliable swarming drone tech could be making its way into consumer drones Photo: Cirque du Soleil/Richard TermineIn 2016 Verity Studios worked with Cirque du Soleil to bring flying lampshade drones to its show Paramour. Verity Studios, which took precision drone swarm technology from ETH Zurich and turned it into a spectacular live event display system, has announced a round of Series A funding totaling US $18 million from Fontinalis Partners, Airbus Ventures, Sony Innovation Fund, and Kitty Hawk. This […]
June 7, 2018
Researchers explore whether robots can become useful sacred objects in a religious context Photo: Gabriele Trovato/Waseda UniversityA robot with the appearance of a Christian Catholic saint can pray together with users and cite parts of the Bible and stories of the life of saints. Robots appear to be in the middle of a gradual but persistent transition from automated tools that perform specific tasks to artificially intelligent entities that we interact with socially and emotionally. It’s not at all clear […]
May 31, 2018
In Vanuatu, delivery drones will fly vaccines to isolated villages beginning in September Photo: UNICEFCurrently, health workers in Vanuatu often hike over mountains to deliver vaccines–but drones can fly over them. This September, delivery drones will begin to fly the friendly skies of Vanuatu. And this isn’t a one-shot demonstration, like many of the stunts we’ve seen from the likes of Amazon and Google. This is an attempt to make drones part of the medical infrastructure. The South Pacific island […]
May 16, 2018
Inflatable spikes and goosebumps help this robot communicate Photo: Cornell We humans think we’re pretty clever with all of the different ways that we have of communicating with each other. We vocalize, we have expressive faces, we gesture. It seems like plenty of modes of communication, but we’re missing out on a few that are routine for animals, including texture: Animals can express emotional states through skin changes, like when cats cause their hair to stand up, or when a […]
May 15, 2018
Everything is better with lasers, especially tiny robot insects Photo: University of Washington For robots of all sizes, power is a fundamental problem. Any robot that moves is constrained in one way or another by power supply, whether it’s relying on carrying around heavy batteries, combustion engines, fuel cells, or anything else. It’s particularly tricky to manage power as your robot gets smaller, since it’s much more straightforward to scale these things up rather than down—and for really tiny robots […]
May 3, 2018
Your weekly selection of awesome robot videos Photo: Mike Collett/Promus Ventures 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!): Applied Collegiate Exoskeleton Competition – May 05, 2018 – University of Michigan, USA NASA Robotic Mining Competition – May 14-18, 2018 – Kennedy Space Center, Fla., USA ICRA 2018 – May 21-25, 2018 […]
May 2, 2018
This robot also encourages functional rehab by taking you on in a cup-grasping contest Photo: Dani Machlis/BGU Physical rehabilitation is not something that anyone does for fun. You do it grudgingly, after an illness or accident, to try and slowly drag your body back toward what it was able to do before. I’ve been there, and it sucks. I wasn’t there for nearly as long as I should have been, however: rehab was hard and boring, so I didn’t properly […]