Items tagged with robotics
Sure, you can summon Alexa to order a pizza, but if you want a beer, you will have to get up and march your backside to the refrigerator, and get it yourself. Might that change one day? Who knows, but perhaps things are trending in that direction. There is talk of Amazon developing an Alexa-enabled robot that could...
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NASA has had an exciting month; it announced early in June that it intended to open the ISS to private astronauts tours for $35,000 per night. In addition, NASA has now announced that on June 14 a robot called Bumble became the first Astrobee robot to fly under its own power in space. Astrobee robots are free-flying...
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It was just another day for Boston Dynamics, the engineering and robotics design company that gets its jollies from pushing around its mechanical creations. There is a method to the madness—can these piles of metal and electronics maintain (or regain) their balance when shoved around or hit with a hockey stick? That's...
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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...
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Remote controlled cars are fun, but the ones you may have found at Toys R Us (RIP) back in the day do not hold a candle to the RVR Robot, the latest project by Sphero, a robotics firm that makes an assortment of fun gadgets. Pronounced "rover," the RVR is well on its way to being fully funded on Kickstarter.
The...
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We tend to associate NVIDIA with graphics cards, and more specifically, the graphics processing units (GPUs) that go inside them, but the company has a much broader focus. For example, NVIDIA is heavily invested in artificial intelligence technologies. As part of that, NVIDIA recently opened up a robotics lab in...
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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
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Boston Dynamics has wowed us over the years with the capabilities of its robots. From its humanoid Atlas, to its "robotic dog" called SpotMini -- and everything in between -- Boston Dynamics continues to push the envelope for what's possible with our future robot overlords.
Last week, we witnessed Atlas jumping over...
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It's been a while since we've talked about Boston Dynamics here at HotHardware. The last time we checked in with the company, its SpotMini robot dog was walking autonomously through a "mock" house, while the humanoid Atlas was seen taking a causal stroll through the woods.
This time around, Boston Dynamics has given...
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Just a few weeks ago, Samsung said it was investing $22 billion into several breakthrough technologies over the course of the next three years, including research efforts into artificial intelligence (AI). We're now seeing where some of that money is going—Samsung announced it is building a new AI research center in...
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We have seen some truly amazing things in the field of robotics, like a dog that can walk itself and a stickman robot that can perform acrobatics. Those are nifty, though not exactly practical for home consumers. What is practical, however, is a new app-enabled robotic ball by Sphero that is designed to help teach...
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Like any industry, technology follows trends that pave a path into the future. As it stands right, the two biggest trends are artificial intelligence (AI) and, related to that, robotics. It's no surprise that Facebook is increasing its investments into those sectors, both by hiring a handful of top-level computer scientists and by building
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A company called Seismic, a wearable robotics spin-off from SRI International, is showing off a new wearable suit that is meant to help the wearer boost their muscle power by working with the user's muscles. Tiny motors embedded in the suit are designed in a way that contracts like human muscle. These tiny motors are...
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It has been a long time since NVIDIA was singularly focused on graphics chips. These days the company has its tentacles in multiple different markets, with an especially big interest in artificial intelligence. As part of that, NVIDIA is rolling out Isaac, a new platform designed to power the next generation of...
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Imagine if at the end of a Cirque du Soleil performance the participants took their bows, then ripped off their faces to reveal a robotic skeleton. That would be incredible, right? As farfetched as that scenario sounds, don't be surprised if someday in the future, acrobatic stunts are performed by robots. We've seen...
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We often joke about the mechanical uprising of intelligent electronics, but behind the laughter is a bit of nervousness. Should the sci-fi scenario ever come to fruition, humans are royally screwed. Proof of this exists in spades at Boston Dynamics. Last week the robotics firm demonstrated a pair of SpotMini robots...
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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...
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We often hear about the eventual robot uprising, especially when it comes to the advances being made in artificial intelligence. Bright minds like Tesla co-founder Elon Musk and Shark Tank star Mark Cuban warn of the potential downsides, hinting at a possible Skynet scenario playing out in real life. But if you ask...
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It might not quite be Skynet, but Saudi Arabia this week made an announcement concerning one of its newest citizens. However, we aren't talking about a human in this case; Saudi Arabia has granted citizenship to a humanoid robot named Sophia. The announcement was made at the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh, and...
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There is something eerily frightening about watching a toy robot puncture a tomato with a screwdriver while laughing hysterically to a soundtrack of Chucky, the possessed doll from those cheesy Child's Play horror flicks from the late 1980s into the late 1990s. But that is exactly how security researchers at IOActive...
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If you grew up playing the MechWarrior franchise of video games, the giant MegaBots robot beatdown that is coming soon will get you excited. MegaBots is a company that sought to pit country-against-country in a battle using giant robots and massive paintballs. The first two teams set to fight it out are the Americans...
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SoftBank has made yet another notable purchase in the land of tech, this time for Boston Dynamics, an engineering and robotics design company that has built some eerily lifelike robots. Google's parent company Alphabet had been shopping the robotics firm for more than a year after acquiring the company in 2013 and has...
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