Items tagged with Robot
Tesla isn't content with just building electric cars like the Model 3 (and upcoming Cybertruck), solar panels, and massive Powerwall battery storage units. Last night at the company's AI Day, CEO Elon Musk unveiled plans to develop a prototype Tesla Bot. The Tesla Bot could be lumped into the same category as the Boston Dynamics Atlas at a basic design level. They're both bipedal robots that are shaped and sized similarly to humans. However, the Tesla Bot has more streamlined and human-like proportions -- or at least that's what Tesla's concept renders show currently. According to Tesla, the robot will stand 5' 8" tall and weigh 125 pounds. In addition, it will be able to carry up to 45 pounds...
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We always love it when Boston Dynamics releases new videos showcasing its advanced robots. While the robots are meant to perform everyday tasks handled by humans, the company knows how to show its humorous side, as it did with Atlas and Spot robots dancing to "Do You Love Me" by The Contours back in December. Today, the Boston Dynamics team showed off twin bipedal Atlas robots running through a parkour course like seasoned pros. They jumped, ran up and down stairs, walked along a balance beam, and performed multiple backflips. Heck, one of the robots even celebrated by "brushing off" his shoulders as he "admired" his accomplishments. Looking at the impressive performance of the Atlas robots,...
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Watch out, Boston Dynamics; you're not the only one out there with an impressive yet creepy-looking robot dog. The folks at Xiaomi today unveiled the CyberDog, and it looks similar to Boston Dynamics' Spot. According to Xiaomi, it will offer 1,000 units of the "bio-inspired" CyberDog "Fans, engineers, and robotic enthusiasts to jointly explore the immense possibility of CyberDog." Xiaomi goes on to add that it will "set up the 'Xiaomi Open Source Community' to constantly share progress and results with developers around the world, and promises to establish a robotics laboratory to provide a platform for engineers to continue the pursuit of future innovations." The brains behind the operation...
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While robots are cool, the jury is still out on whether they will want to kill us pesky humans if the robot uprising occurs. This is not helped by the fact that we are making more robust robots that can walk and move as well as if not better than humans. Enter Cassie: a bipedal legs-only robot devised at Oregon State University that just traversed five kilometers in under an hour. Since 2017, students at OSU have worked on Cassie under the direction of robotics professor Jonathan Hurst, using a 16-month $1 million grant from the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense. Hurst, who founded spin-off company Agility Robotics, explained that “The Dynamic Robotics...
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A robot hand called Dactyl has successfully solved a Rubik's cube using a training regime that the AI behind the scenes created. The deal here isn't so much that it was able to solve the Rubik's cube, but that it did the task with a new level of dexterity. The robot arm was able to solve the '80s puzzle game with a single hand. Solving the puzzle cube with a single hand is a big deal, according to roboticist Dmitry Berenson from the University of Michigan. The manipulation required to rotate the parts of the cube is much "harder" than rotating the entire cube. Robots traditionally only manipulate objects in simple ways. Roboticists use simulation to reduce the amount of real-world training...
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DJI is well known for making flying drones, but flying, camera-equipped aircraft isn't all that the company has on its plate. Last month, it unveiled the OSMO Action camera aimed directly at GoPro. DJI is back with a new educational robot that is aimed directly at teaching people to build and code called the RoboMaster S1 that will ship in June for $499. DJI says that RoboMaster S1 is intended to introduce new users to the fun and possibilities of robotic technology with powerful brushless motors, a chassis capable of moving in all directions, a high-precision gimbal, and interactive programming modes. Users will also learn to assemble designated and custom hardware, learn to maneuver the...
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When the future robot overlords rise up, they will need pets to do their bidding. Perhaps this is where Boston Dynamics' SpotMini robots come in. SpotMini robots look sort of like dogs and can dance, fetch you a beer and even walk up/down stairs. We've seen one twerking its shiny metal butt to Uptown Funk in the past. One significant upside to the robot dogs, compared to real dogs, is that they can walk themselves thanks to an autonomous navigation update last May. SpotMini has also proven unbothered by harassment from its human handlers. The latest video from Boston Dynamics shows a SpotMini and nine of its pals teaming up to tow a box truck. Boston Dynamics says that the truck was towed across...
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MIT has been working on robots going back for years, and with each new generation, the bots get more capable. The MIT Biomimetic Robotics Laboratory has trotted out a new robot that is called the Mini Cheetah, and as the name implies it is a smaller version of the full-size Cheetah robot. MIT has produced a new video that shows the Mini Cheetah prancing around in a deer-like manner. The larger Cheetah robot has various potential uses, including carrying loads for soldiers or workers out in the field. It might also be used for transporting injured people on a battlefield or disaster situation. Mini Cheetah is too small for that sort of work, but it is exceptionally agile. MIT says that the Mini...
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To snack or not to snack? That used to be the question. Now college students do not need to choose between grabbing a treat and breaking up a study session. The PepsiCo Hello Goodness Snackbot, a self-driving robot, will now deliver snacks on select college campuses. Students, staff and faculty at the University of Pacific in Stockton, California can now order snacks from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. through the Snackbot app. The robot will deliver goods at 50 designated areas across the campus. The Snackbot can go more than 20 miles on a single charge and includes a camera, headlights, and all-wheel drive to help it navigate. It is important to note that the Snackbot app is currently only available for...
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Robots are virtually commonplace today, finding use helping in industry, healthcare and lots of other applications. Denver Broncos fans who frequent Broncos Mile High Stadium might get to meet a robot that does something that could be a dream come true for lots of football fans. This bot won't only hold your beer, it will get you a beer. This beer-dispensing robot is called the Bud Light Bot, and it will debut at this weekend's game in the United East Club level where it will hand out draft cold ones during the game. If you are expecting to see a Bender-style robot standing there handing out beers through a door in his shiny, metal chest, prepare for disappointment, however. It's just a robotic...
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This robot with the fake hand on it has one job; and that job isn't to learn to grasp objects or hold tools. This robot is meant only to find that stripe wearing, child frustrating, bespectacled Waldo from the kids books. Perhaps the scientists will next time devise a robot AI that reads the last chapter of the new novel from your favorite author and tells you what happens. This bot is called "There's Waldo" and it uses machine learning to find Waldo and point him out. The robot was built by Redpepper and uses a Raspberry Pi along with pyram Python Library. The bot automatically goes over the page of the book when booted up and snaps a picture with its attached camera. That photo is then scanned...
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When we think of Boston Dynamics, we think of a company that is bringing us even closer to Skynet. The company produces robots that are capable of incredible feats that make them move and function more like a human (in the case of Atlas) or like a dog (with SpotMini). The company is cranking it up another notch with the latest iterations of these two robots. With Atlas, the humanoid robot is becoming more fluid in its motions and is seen taking a casual jog outside with strides that more closely mimic that of a human. Atlas is seen running on flat land and even up a slight incline. Impressively, it is also shown jumping over a log and landing solidly with both feet. Remember, this is...
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Apple has installed a new robot ahead of Earth Day to help recycle all the iPhone models that are turned in and recapture some of the valuable materials inside the smartphones. The robot is called Daisy and it is designed to more efficiently disassemble iPhones and help Apple to meet its goal of making its products with only recycled or renewable materials. "At Apple, we’re constantly working toward smart solutions to address climate change and conserve our planet's precious resources," said Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives. "In recognition of Earth Day, we are making it as simple as possible for our customers to recycle devices and...
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A security flaw that was first discovered in 1998 by Daniel Bleichenbacher has resurfaced, putting at risk some of the most popular websites and services, including Facebook and PayPal. Called ROBOT, the 19-year-old vulnerability can be exploited to perform RSA decryption and signing operations with the private key of a TLS server, and can still be used against many HTTPS hosts in today's Internet landscape. "For hosts that are vulnerable and only support RSA encryption key exchanges it's pretty bad. It means an attacker can passively record traffic and later decrypt it," security researchers Hanno Böck, Juraj Somorovsky (Hackmanit GmbH, Ruhr-Universität Bochum), and Craig Young (Tripwire...
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We have seen Boston Dynamics robots pull off some pretty wild stunts over the years, from fetching beer, to walking up stairs, to being brutally assaulted by its human handlers and taking it in stride. However, this latest achievement by a Boston Dynamics Atlas robot simply left our mouths agape. The video starts off impressively enough, with the nearly 6-foot tall Atlas robot jumping onto a short platform, and then from one platform to another. It then jumps down again, only to jump up onto a platform roughly 3-ft tall (give or take a few inches) but the last platform is taller, almost twice as tall. What happens next is nothing short of amazing. Just watch the video... Your eyes do not...
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Is that Megatron walking the streets? Nope, it is just Jeff Bezos piloting a massive robot named Method-2 at the Amazon Machine Learning Automation, Robotics and Space Exploration (MARS) conference. Bezos recently tweeted, “I just got to pilot an awesome (and huge) robot thanks to Hankook Mirae Technology. Nice! #MARS2017”. The 13-foot, 1.5-ton Method-2 was created by robotics expert Vitaly Bulgarov. Bulgarov has worked on films such as Transformers, Robocop and the Terminator series alongside South Korean company Hankook Mirae Technology. According to Bulgarov's Facebook page, “Everything we have been learning so far on this robot can be applied to solve real-world problems”. I just got to pilot...
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As difficult as a Rubik's Cube puzzle is to solve to a human, it might not seem like that complicated of a problem. We're talking about a mere 6-sided cube with 9 segments on each side. How hard could it be? Well, for humans, most people would take several minutes, but at least one dedicated solver can make it happen in just under 5 seconds. Surely a computer could be an order of magnitude better than that? You'd be surprised. Infineon has just announced that with its AURIX microcontroller and its own processors, the Rubik's puzzle can be solved in 0.637 seconds, which is a new world record. Considering the fact that PCs can calculate hundreds of thousands of digits of Pi in a handful of...
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Is it possible to arrest a robot? Do robot’s even have the ability to make unlawful decisions? Philosophy aside, Russian police just made the first robot arrest in Moscow at a political rally. The “Promobot” was arrested at a rally for Russian parliament candidate Valery Kalachev, but it is currently unclear why the robot was detained. The Moscow police have not released an official reason for the arrest, however, local Russian media sources claim that the robot was “recording voters" opinions on [a] variety of topics for further processing and analysis by the candidate's team”. A Promobot representative hypothesized that the robot was detained because “perhaps this action wasn't authorized”....
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You put your left foot in, you put your left foot out, you put your left foot in and you shake it all about… The Hokey Pokey may be a song and dance that we all learned in elementary school, but a new Boston Dynamics robot is coming close to replicating some of the movements and balancing techniques that we humans take for granted. So we present to you the latest version of the Atlas humanoid robot, which stands 6.2-feet tall and weighs 330 pounds — pretty much equivalent to your typical NFL offensive lineman. In a short video clip released over the weekend, Atlas is seen balancing on one foot atop a 2-centimeter-wide strip of plywood. The robot seemingly handles the feat with aplomb, flailing...
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If you've ever wanted to know what the offspring of Wall-E and Eve would look like, the answer has just been birthed thanks to the help of Anki. If you’re familiar with Anki’s Overdrive — which is a modern take on slot car racing — then you know that the company has a penchant for designing intelligent, robotic gadgets that appeal to both kids and adults. The Cozmo is no different, bringing with it a Pixar-inspired design and the ability to interact intelligently with its handler. Capable of fitting in the palm of your hand, Cozmo looks somewhat like a miniature forklift, or as Anki calls it, a “supercomputer on treads.” The Pixar similarities extend to Cozmo’s OLED face, which is a dead ringer...
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Robots can drive cars, perform experiments on Mars, and carry out delicate surgeries, but did you also know that they can spread a mean marinara? Zume Pizza, a food delivery startup, currently uses two robots to help make pizzas at its Mountain Valley, California location. Zume Pizza was founded by Alex Garden, former president of Zynga Studios and a formal general manager at Microsoft's Xbox Live. In September 2015 he brought on Julia Collins as his chief executive officer and co-founder. Collins was previously the vice president and CEO of Harlem Jazz Enterprises. The company had a rather secretive beginning. Last June, Garden started recruiting engineers under a pseudonym and building his...
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Many parents want to teach their children how to code, but do not know how to go about doing it. Sphero, the company behind the BB-8 toy robot based on the droid from Star Wars: The Force Awakens, has released the Sphero SPRK and its corresponding app. The toy robot is intended to inspire a love of robotics, coding, and STEM principles while teaching the power of cause, effect, and conditions in programming. Students can learn and program a variety of concepts through the Lightning Lab app. The Sphero SPRK can navigate a maze, program a painting, mimic the solar system, and even swim across water. Sphero used its own C-based coding language called OVAL. The Lightning Lab app also enables users...
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