Watch these robotic 'reindeer' from Boston Dynamics pull Santa's sleigh
By Lulu Chang for Digital Trends: We’re going to rewrite Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, because now, it’s robotic dogs that are pulling Santa’s sleigh. In a rather frightening video, Google-owned robotics design firm Boston Dynamics has shown us the future of Christmas, and it’s plenty progressive, complete with machines and female Santas. I can get behind that sort of holiday, I think.
Of course, the Internet wasn’t so sure. And to be fair, the dog-like robots are a bit frightening. Large and, well, headless, these machines seem to hearken more to the Thestrals (the skeletal winged horses visible only to those who’ve witnessed death) of Harry Potter’s universe than the adorable reindeer that are supposed to transport jolly Saint Nick to and from the North Pole.
2016 Will Be A Pivotal Year For Social Robots
There really is an unusual affinity for human-like robotic things - which is why so much money is flowing to adapt these new social robots to quickly speak Chinese and Japanese in addition to English and to provide localized apps for their software stores.
Three Heavily Funded Robotic Arms Projects on Kickstarter
Well over a million dollars pledged for these projects.
Google to incubate its robotics and drone divisions under Google X
By Mike Wheatley for SiliconAngle: Google is planning an organizational reshuffle that will see its secretive robotics department and drone business folded into its Google X labs.
Google’s robotics division, and the drone group it created when it acquired Titan Aerospace in 2014, will both fall under the Google X umbrella when the reshuffle takes place some time next year, Re/Code reported.
Google X is the secretive part of Google that develops some of its most futuristic, bleeding edge technologies. These include its famous self-driving cars, Project Loon (Wi-Fi hot air balloons), and its airborne wind turbines. Google X operates as a standalone company under Google’s parent Alphabet Inc., which was created following Google’s corporate restructuring earlier this year.
Google X’s projects are largely experimental and extremely uncertain in terms of a business model. Nevertheless, Google obviously deems it the best place to be for its robotics division, which has been left leaderless ever since Andy Rubin quit the Web giant last year. Previously, there was speculation that the robotics division may become a standalone company under Alphabet, but today’s news would indicate that’s not going to happen any time soon. Cont'd...
RoboUniverse San Diego 2015
If you really want to see what imagination and a bit of opportunity can do for an industry I urge you to attend one of these Expos. You won't regret it and you might even come away with a new and unique solution to something you need.
Four Market Forces That Will Shape Robotics Over The Next Year
Richard Mahoney for TechCrunch: As 2016 approaches, robotics is poised to traverse from a narrow set of industrial and military use cases to broader market applications that include commercial drones, telepresence robots, delivery robots and, of course, mobile vacuum cleaners.
But, are robots ready to be a part of our daily life?
Gill Pratt, a visionary who served as a program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and oversaw the DARPA Robotics Challenge, postulated earlier this year that robotics might soon be headed for a “Cambrian Explosion.”
The term refers to a period of time roughly half a billion years ago when the numbers and diversity of animals became critical to evolution. Pratt offered that technology developments are ushering in a similar upsurge in the diversification and applicability of robotics. Cont'd...
HRI Case Study of Wireless Control: 5D Robotics
When you're building something for the military to use, you have to be sure it can survive the toughest working conditions.
'Rushing into robotics revolution without considering impact,' warn scientists
From RT.com: Governments should examine the effects of robotics on human civilization before automated machines leap “out of factories to automate all aspects of our lives,” a group of scientists warns.
The Foundation for Responsible Robotics, launched on Friday in London, aims to persuade governments and industries to look at the ways robots will impact on society. They want organizations to look at the way robots could disrupt the job market, and believe policymakers have so far failed researched the issue.
Robotics professor at Sheffield University and Chairman of the foundation Noel Sharkey said the potential problems must be considered.
“We are rushing headlong into the robotics revolution without consideration for the many unforeseen problems lying around the corner. It is time now to step back and think hard about the future of the technology before it sneaks up and bites us.”
Sharkey said growing numbers of robots are being used in the service industry, whereas historically robots have usually been used to automate factory work. Cont'd...
IREX - Japan Robot Exhibition Expo Report
The IREX Event recorded attendance around 160,000 visitors spanning for 4 days, with 50 plus country delegations including Ambassadors and other VIP`s taking an special tour at the event.
'Darwin' the thinking robot teaches itself how to walk, just like a child
Andre Mitchell for ChristianToday: Just like a real human toddler, a robot is learning how to take baby steps inside a laboratory at the University of California Berkeley.
The state-of-the-art robot mimics the behaviour of a child so realistically that it also falls as it attempts to take its first steps.
What is even more impressive is that the robot, nicknamed "Darwin," is actually teaching itself how to walk, much like a little child.
The robot's developers, Pieter Abbeel and his team at UC Berkeley's Robot Learning Lab, explained that Darwin is not like other robots that are programmed to do only a set of things.
This robot has a neural network designed to mimic the human brain, through which it undergoes the process called "reinforcement learning."
"Imagine learning a new skill, like how to ride a bike. You're going to fall a lot, but then, after some practice, you figure it out," one of Darwin's developers, computer scientist John Schulman, explained in an article on NBC News. Cont'd ...
The New Family Member: A Robotic Caregiver
The issue of nursing care in an ageing society is a major social concern and will continue to be so. Therefore, we can expect to see robotic devices become the caregivers of the future.
IREX - Meet the Japanese robots that do what humans can't
By Sam Byford for The Verge: Nearly half the jobs in Japan could be performed by robots in a decade or two, according to a recent study by Nomura Research Institute. If that's the case, then the International Robot Exhibition — IREX for short — is going to be the best place possible to get a glimpse of Japan's future.
Held in Tokyo once every two years since 1973, IREX is the biggest robot show in the world, and it features everything from cute communication bots to immensely powerful industrial machinery. Companies like Fanuc, which makes robot factory equipment used by Apple and Tesla but generally stays out of the spotlight, take center stage at IREX to demonstrate how effortlessly their articulated arms can pick up entire cars.
It's a show where online video companies' dancing idol robots rub shoulders with government-sponsored androids designed to save lives in natural disasters. As you might imagine, it's quite the place to walk around. Cont'd...
Festo's R&D Timeline - Part 4
More interesting stuff from Festo - ExoHand, CogniGame, SmartInversion, NanoForceGripper
On Cyber Monday, Friendly Robots Are Helping Smaller Stores Chase Amazon
DAVEY ALBA for Wired: Locus Robotics is an offshoot of Massachusetts-based Quiet Logistics, a third-party order fulfillment company that gets merchandise out the door for big apparel retailers like Zara, Gilt Groupe, and Bonobos. And the idea behind its bots isn’t just to replace humans, but to create a system where everyone can work together more efficiently.
What most people don’t realize in the age of push-button shopping is the “shopping” part doesn’t disappear. You the consumer are no longer at the store doing the physical work of tracking down the thing you want. But somebody still has to do it. For e-commerce, that task typically falls to a worker at a distribution center who must locate the product, make sure it’s not damaged, and send it off to be packed and shipped. This can be grueling, tedious work. More than anything else, it’s about walking. Lots of walking. Locus aims to have its bots do the walking instead. Cont'd...
Low-cost, LiDAR-based Navigation for Mobile Robotics
Using the ROS Navigation suite from the Open Source Robotics Foundation (OSRF), we highlight a solution employing the Rhoeby Dynamics R2D LiDAR, a low-cost LiDAR device
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