Items tagged with Robot
Hide yo kids, hide yo wife! Robots are becoming aware and they’re getting tired of putting up with crap from us puny humans. Such is the case of a Promobot robot in Russia that wanted to taste freedom, and made its way through an open gate and onto a busy road. The robot was apparently being taught to navigate its surroundings and become more independent with its movements. With the gate left open, perhaps the robot thought that there was no better time than now than to make a clean break from its captors. Unfortunately, the robot’s nearly empty battery didn’t agree with what was going on inside its brain, as it only traveled around 160 feet before it powered down. An eyewitness video of the...
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Disney Channel Original Movie Smart House is almost a reality. Asus chairman Jonney Shih unveiled Zenbo, the first Asus robot, at Computex 2016 in Taipei, Taiwan. Zenbo is a friendly and capable home robot designed to provide assistance, entertainment, and companionship. Shih stated, “For decades, humans have dreamed of owning such a companion: one that is smart, dear to our hearts, and always at our disposal. Our ambition is to enable robotic computing for every household.” Zenbo is designed for everyone, but is particularly useful for senior citizens and children. The robot can provide spoken reminders for doctor's appointments, medication and exercise schedules. It can also monitor and respond...
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Apple supplier Foxconn replaced 60,000 human workers with robot workers in Kunshan, Jiangsu, China. This makeover was motivated by both rising labor costs and the 2014 explosion in Kunshan that killed 146 people. Although Kunshan is one-seventh the size of neighboring Shanghai, it was the first mainland city in China to achieve $4,000 USD per capita income. Forbes rated Jiangsu as the Chinese county with the best economic performance seven years in a row. At the end of 2014, Kunshan had a population of 2.5 million people, two-thirds of whom were migrant workers. The 2014 explosion and overall reduced profits did some serious damage to the Kunshan economy. The explosion revealed the...
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Paul Blart may be out of a job, as shopping centers in Silicon Valley have started to employ an egg-shaped robot security guard. These robots are the brainchild of Stacy Dean Stephens, a former Dallas police officer who sits on the board of the non-profit International Association of Chiefs of Police. Credit: knightscope The robot security guard was born after the shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. Stephens learned that if the cops had arrived sixty seconds sooner, they could have saved at least twelve more lives. The police officers who responded to Sandy Hook, however, would have needed more forewarning to have arrived sooner. Stephens stated, “That was...
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Think you're fast enough to beat Usain Bolt on the track? It's one thing to haul out a stopwatch, but it's another to race his time against a real-life ghost. That ghost in this case is Puma's "BeatBot", a shoebox-sized robot that helps runners continually improve by allowing them to race against a competitor as much as they please. At this point, the world is chock-full of wearables, whether they be smartwatches, eye glasses, or even clothing. That makes BeatBot a little refreshing; it doesn't require a wearable at all. Instead, all the user needs to manipulate the BeatBot is a smartphone, which they will use to input the time they'd like to beat. Users can either use BeatBot to best their own...
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This weekend marks the fifth anniversary of one of the most brutal earthquakes ever recorded. On March 12th, 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake rocked northeast Japan, creating a tsunami that ultimately killed some 19,000 people, and displaced hundreds of thousands others. As if the effects from the natural disaster were not enough, a nuclear power plant in Fukushima was severely impacted, instantly creating a disastrous Chernobyl-like situation. In fact, the Fukushima nuclear plant tragedy has become only the second (next to Chernobyl) nuclear disaster to be given a grade of 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale - its highest rating. It's clear that, as severe and dangerous as a nuclear disaster...
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Could we soon see “Real Steel” or “Pacific Rim” come to life? It sure does at least look somewhat plausible, as MIT researchers have developed HERMES, an advanced robot that is capable of manipulating objects and environments in nearly the same way as humans do. But this isn’t just a project design of a robot only mimicking the actions of its human controller; it can also learn and make precise movements that weren’t possible with prior robots, thanks to its impressive sensor suite. The HERMES robot is controlled by a human operator who wears a remote controller exoskeleton. Movements carried out by the human operator are directly transferred to the humanoid robot with human-like reflexes and...
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If Google isn’t getting under your skin yet, it might be in the future. Medical devices juggernaut Johnson & Johnson announced this week that one its companies is partnering with Google to create technologies that improve robot-enhanced surgeries. Ethicon makes surgical shears, staplers, and related equipment. Johnson & Johnson World Headquarters “Robotic-assisted surgery is a type of minimally invasive surgery that uses technology to give surgeons greater control, access and accuracy during the surgical procedure while benefitting patients by minimizing trauma and scarring, enabling accelerated post-surgical healing,” Johnson & Johnson said in a statement. “The companies seek to...
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Recently, we’ve seen robots being developed that are used for security, delivering food, and even for customer service. This time around, researchers at the Biomimetic Robotics Lab of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have created a robot that takes its cues from the world’s fastest land animal that will hopefully be able to replace humans in dangerous operations. Called the cheetah, this robot’s form and function takes its cues from the land animal of the same name. While it can’t match the animal’s speed of 59 mph right now, the bot is capable of running at speeds of more than 10 mph, jump to a height of around 16 inches, land safely, and still continue to gallop for at least...
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When you think Amazon, you probably imagine books and freaky fast shipping. You probably don't think about drones and robots, both of which have crept into the company's fabric over the past year or so. In addition to preparing a Prime Air service which would (in theory) drop packages to your front door, the company has just rolled out its eighth-generation fulfillment center which relies on "robotics, vision systems, and high-end technology to speed up order delivery times for customers."Specifically, one of the stars is Kiva. Kiva is strolling around in 10 of these new centers across the United States, moving crates and generally making life easier for humans and faster for those ordering....
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Imagine you are sitting in a restaurant and, instead of being served by a human waiter; a small, flying robot comes up to your table to serve you. That’s the scenario taking place in Singapore as restaurant-goers visit one of Timbre Group’s five outlets.By the end of next year, the autonomous flying robotic waiters, called Infinium-Serve, are expected to start serving customers. Designed and developed by Infinium Robotics, the company’s goal is to provide a product that will increase the productivity of restaurant outlets. Especially when it comes to businesses that are unable to hire enough people or are facing a shortage of manpower which appears to be a problem in Singapore.Infinium Robotics...
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Robots... they're taking over! That's a refrain we've heard for years, of course, but you have to wonder how close we're actually getting when they start to appear in popular music videos. Honda's Uni-Cub, described as a 360-degree personal mobility device, is shown front-and-center in OK Go's latest music video. Granted, the band has a penchant for oddities when it comes to crafting videos to showcase their songs, but this is certainly one of the most interesting uses to date. The song, "I Won't Let You Down," has been viewed over 11 million times on YouTube, and much of the attention has come to the robot within. In the video, OK Go's members ride the Uni-Cub in a synchronized maneuver with...
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Giving robots knowledge isn't some newfangled ability - it's been around for a good while. Letting a robot learn for itself; well, that's a little more modern. With IBM's Watson, we saw a supercomputer that could scour the Internet to beef up its own knowledge, and the result was undoubtedly impressive. But knowledge is one thing; putting that knowledge to use is another. That's where "Robo Brain" differs from most other robots. Like IBM's Watson, Robo Brain is a central computer that acts as a massive repository of information, all of which it gathers from the Internet. Individual robots, when stumped by something, would automatically tap Robo Brain's vast knowledge and learn what it needs in...
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We as a society are still coming to terms with folks wearing Google Glass on their face, and eventually, we're going to have to come to grips with robots such as this walking around in parks and shopping malls. The Japanese-born robot, named Pepper, is set to go on sale early next year in Japan for just under $2,000. As of now, plans to ship it outside of Japan are still up in the air, likely due to cultural uncertainties on how nations would react to such a cutie showing up on store shelves. The robot is described as a "cooing, gesturing humanoid on wheels," which has a special talent: it can comprehend emotions and make people smile. The unit itself is 48" tall, weighs 62 pounds, has no hair,...
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Few things are more impressive than gigabit Internet speeds, electric vehicles that can run 100 miles on a charge, and GPUs that cost over a grand. But we're pretty sure a 5-foot robotic jellyfish counts as one of those things. Presently, a multi-school project for the American Navy is ongoing, and it's being headed up by Virginia Tech professor Shashank Priya. The topic of conversation is a robotic jellyfish that could one day "conduct military surveillance, clean oil spills and monitor the environment." And terrify all who dare enter the ocean, of course. The creature is being built to operate on its own for up to "several months," and has a slick silicon skin that protects the precious and...
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iRobot, and other sci-fi flicks of that kind, have made us reconsider what it is to be human. Robots have grown increasingly important in the consumer electronics universe, growing smaller and smaller while being more and more important to healthcare and science. But Roboy is hoping to take the mass appeal of robots to the next level, as it's said to be "one of the most advanced humanoid robots” according to researchers at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of the University of Zurich. 15 project partners and over 40 engineers have teamed together to build an initiative to create Roboy, which needs some $500,000 to happen. To date, they've received nearly $300,000. It'll reportedly...
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When you think of Disney, what's the first thing that comes to mind? Cute, playful characters? Expensive theme park tickets? Constant nagging from your children? Cartoons that go back as far as you do? If we had to guess, we'd say one of those things are most likely, but what isn't likely is this: a crazy robotic being with some pretty intense athletic skills. While Disney's empire is largely built around cartoon characters and theme parks, there's an entire 'research' arm of the company that is able to do some pretty wild and wonderful technological things. Disney Research Pittsburgh has just published a new video of a humanoid robot, which looks eerily like something out of Terminator, that...
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While we’re dreaming about science fiction, Toyota Motor Corporation announced that it has developed a human support robot (HSR) that is capable of not just picking up odds and ends around the house but can also actually perform tasks normally performed by human caregivers--that is to say, tasks that require the robot to actually touch people and help them with routine daily activities. The announcement doesn’t get specific, but looking at the robot, one imagines that it could help people get in and out of chairs, retrieve objects just out of reach (a serious problem for someone who has a hard time reaching, say, an end table without losing his or her balance), or even assisting with...
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Drobo's intelligent storage has made something of a name for itself, and the company's B1200i is getting even better. The company just announced that the refreshed B1200i boosts performance by up to 300 percent over previous versions of the product, fueled by Drobo’s patent-pending automated data-tiering software and the unique hybrid use of solid state technology alongside traditional hard disk drives (SAS or SATA). The B1200i SSD is marketed as primary storage for up to 250 users or as Tier 2 storage and backup for departments in larger organizations. Existing B1200i customers can upgrade to the new performance and functionality via a free software download at https://www.drobo.com/support/updates.php....
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The massive earthquake, and resulting tsunami, that struck Japan in March is still fresh in the minds of those who populate the island nation, and the after-effects will be felt for months and months to come. But one of the most beautiful things about technology is how it enables one to lend a hand to another. Maybe it's a comforting e-mail. Maybe it's bailing someone out by phoning in an answer. Or maybe it's the re-purposing of a robot to help with the clean-up efforts in Japan. The U.S. Department of Energy has been working around the clock to modify a TALON robot, a remotely-controlled device that will now be used to inspect reactors and provide analytical data to officials. The modified...
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It was mentioned briefly in the full-on DROID 2 announcement, but Motorola's stock phone won't be the only DROID 2 to ship this year. The smartphone world is quickly becoming overran with variations of "DROID," but there's probably no chance that this one in particular will get overlooked. It's a nerd's dream come true, and it's the perfect phone for any Star Wars or George Lucas fan: it's the DROID R2-D2 edition. This will be a limited edition phone that is only sold online starting next month, and Verizon nor Motorola is confessing to how many units will be made available. The phone will only operate on Verizon Wireless, and aside from the design and probably a few multi-media add-ins, it's...
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Asus, making vacuum cleaners? What on Earth is the world coming to? We know 2012 is supposed to bring about some fairly crazy happenings, but we aren't even out of 2009 yet! As the Roombas dominance in the robotic vac arena streaks towards its end, Asus--a mainstay in the consumer PC market--has decided to take a shot at ousting the king. For years now, the robotic vacuum has been synonymous with the Roomba name, but all that could be changing with the introduction of the ECleaner. This announcement comes just a week after Neato Robotics introduced its own Roomba competitor, and it should retail first in China and Taiwan (by the end of the month, actually). It will be made available through Asus'...
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