The biggest thing holding drones back right now (especially small, inexpensive drones) is arguably battery life. It’s really bad. For a drone that can hover and carry any sort of payload, you’re looking at 10, maybe 20 minutes tops. And even fixed-wing drones don’t do all that much better. This is such an issue that CyPhy Works has developed d... continue reading
Humans, robots, and anything else with legs can have issues with navigating terrain that’s rough, sticky, or slippery. Navigating dangerous terrain like this isn’t necessarily a problem, as long as there’s a little bit of advanced warning. Imagine the difference between walking out onto an icy sidewalk that you _are _expecting, as opposed to w... continue reading
French robotics company Aldebaran unveiled its newest robot, a friendly humanoid named Pepper that seems determined to make everyone smile. Pepper talks, gesticulates, and zips by on wheels. And it has an “emotion engine,” designed to understand how people are feeling and react accordingly. Aldebaran built the robot for SoftBank, the Japanese... continue reading
Having to plug things into wall outlets is a recurring irritation of modern life. There are never enough of them, they’re never where you need them to be, and when you do plug into one, you end up with tangles of cords strewn all over the floor. Now Japanese researchers might have a solution, and it involves robots (of course). Their idea is to... continue reading
Supernumerary Robotic Limbs (SRLs) are robotic limbs that, when worn, give you more limbs than you’d normally have. In other words, they’re not robotic limbs designed to replace biological limbs that you might be missing, but rather robotic limbs designed to augment the number of limbs that you have already. MIT researchers have been developi... continue reading
Researchers have long been interested in fast-running robots with powerful, agile legs. In particular, several groups have focused on bio-inspired designs based on cheetahs. But when a team at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) set out to create a new sprinting robot, they didn’t look at big cats; instead, they fou... continue reading
Early this year, Google unveiled its Project Tango smartphone, a mobile device equipped with a depth sensor, a motion tracking camera, and two vision processors that let the phone track its position in space and create 3D maps in real time. The device is particularly useful for robots, which have to navigate and locate themselves in the world.... continue reading
A slew of sci-fi celebs and all-star scientists will descend on Washington, D.C. for The Future Is Here, a festival celebrating the technology of tomorrow, science fiction and outer space. The event, produced by Smithsonian magazine, features talks on everything from robots to human evolution, as well as a live jetpack demonstration. The cas... continue reading
There are some things a robot can’t do, but catching a flying object is no longer one of them. With its four-fingered, three-jointed hand, a new robot can catch a ball, a bottle or a tennis racket thrown in its direction in less than five-hundredths of a second, researchers reported in the journal IEEE Transactions on Robotics. Fast-reacting r... continue reading
Imagine a day when a form of artificial intelligence could deliver a speech as compelling as one given by a human. A nonprofit organization called XPRIZE, which designs competitions to encourage the development of innovative technology for the benefit of humanity, announced it will award a prize to anyone who can develop an artificial intelli... continue reading