Items tagged with Robot
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...
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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:...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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....
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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...
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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....
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With all this talk of the new Terminator flick, we can't begin to think of a more timely announcement for this particular news bit. The HAL (Hybrid Assistive Limb) Cybernetic Suit, described as an exoskeleton and designed to give average humans superhuman abilities, is just about to hit mass production. If you'll recall, we first caught wind...
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Hard to believe, but we think we just found the perfect date for the Robotic Einstein that was unveiled earlier this year at TED. Einstein, meet HRP-4C. (Psst... you can call her Harley.) The "female" humanoid was recently introduced by a team of Japanese scientists at Tsukuba City, and while it'd be easy to take one glance, affirm that she's...
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