IEEE Spectrum: Robotics

AWE Robotic Wall Reconfigures Itself Into Workspace, Lounge

The age of robotic furniture is upon us.

For Willow Garage, Robotics Is Personal

For a Silicon Valley start-up, the future of personal robots is bright¿and open source

Navigation by the Soles of Your Feet (and the Seat of Your Pants)

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Vibrating driver's seats and shoe inserts are proving that humans can gather information using unusual parts of the body

iRobot Launches Healthcare Robotics Division

During the TEDMED conference in San Diego, CEO Colin Angle announced the company was adding a Healthcare division to its Home and Government/Industrial robotics businesses.

Hackers Can Use Your Robot to Cause You Harm

Details have been released on how at-home robots sold today are designed with very little security in mind. How these common every day robots can be hacked, the many negative ways in which it can harm us, and how the problem will only get worse has been detailed in this first ever paper.

Project Romeo: A new humanoid personal assistant robot

The Reality of Robot Surrogates

How far are we from sending robots into the world in our stead?

Robonica Offers A New Spin on Robotic Toys

A new company called Robonica is taking a new approach to robotic toys by introducing a gaming infrastructure and community around their soon-to-be-released robot Roboni-i.

A Permanent Display of Robots

The Roboworld exhibit opens at the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh

Intuitive Automata's Robot Helps You Lose Weight

In the world of weight loss solutions, a countertop robot with big blue eyes might just be the thing to help you stay healthy and eat right.

Little Humanoid Robot Makes Coffee For Master

How do I get one of this?

Personal Robots Market Will Grow To Over $5 Billion by 2015, Telepresence Next Big Thing

The global personal robots market will grow to more than $5 billion in 2015 -- and the next big thing is telepresence

Aldebaran Robotics seeking beta-testers for its Nao humanoid robot

The French robotics company is inviting robot enthusiasts in France and the UK to try Nao -- for a fee

Spectrum Podcast: Rutgers students launch underwater robot to cross Atlantic Ocean

Using glider AUV technology, researchers at Rutgers University hope to be the first scientists to successfully navigate an AUV across the entire Atlantic Ocean over the course of seven months. Ari Daniel Shapiro reports on the project in an excellent Spectrum podcast, explaining the technology behind the glider and what the goals of the mission are. Gliders use low-power variable buoyancy systems to glide up and down through the water column for months at a time and carry payloads of different kinds of sensors to collect oceanographic data. These are primarily water quality sensors -- salinity, temperature, optical quality, …

How Roomba moves

I am a confessed Roomba evangelist. One of the most frequent questions I get is how Roomba knows where to go -- does it build a map? Does it do rows of your carpet? Why is it spinning in circles? Since I'm friends with a few past and current Roomba engineers, I've always known that Roomba is mostly random. It does have a few behaviors -- for example, wall-following, or the spiral pattern it uses when it starts up or when it's in "dirt detect" mode -- but mostly, it wanders, as anyone who's spent time watching their Roomba with …

Festo's robot penguins

A robot penguin and its 3D Fin RayÂ® structure. Source: Festo Following up on a previous post, Festo's latest creation deserves a closer look. To start with the obvious: Why robot penguins? Penguins are amazingly efficient swimmers: According to tests by Festo's engineers, their body shape shows a flow resistance 20 to 30% lower than the hydro-dynamically most favorable known technical bodies. If penguins were to run on gas, their energy efficiency would allow them to swim 1,500 kilometers through icy Antarctic waters - on just one liter (0.26 US gallons) of fuel! Festo's …

Friday afternoon YouTube robot silliness

Happy Friday, everyone! There's really nothing insightful or informative about this post, other than some robot video amusement for your afternoon. Our first video is from the group Flight of the Conchords, who have created a song that describes life after the coming robot Armageddon. Personally I'm prepared to welcome my new robot overlords, thanks to my Old Glory Robot Insurance, but it's interesting to see the situation from the robots' side. Be sure to watch through the end for the binary solo. Our next …

Paro the Robotic Seal Could Diminish Dementia

First long-term study seeks to prove the benefits of a cybernetic pet

RoboBusiness: Keepon dancing robot's place in autism therapy

Among the attractions at RoboBusiness last week was Keepon, a little yellow puffball robot. I had the opportunity to speak with Marek Michalowski, one of Keepon's developers, about the robot's place in autism therapy and its totally sweet dance moves. Keepon, originally developed by Hideki Kozima, is a "BeatBot." The little robot was made famous by a Wired music video showing it dancing -- and indeed, a lot of Michalowski's work has involved teaching Keepon to respond to musical beats. But believe it or not, Keepon was actually originally developed for autism therapy. It's a relatively …

Boston Dynamics to develop two-legged humanoid (and a new hopping robot in their spare time)

Boston Dynamics, makers of our beloved BigDog robot, have just announced their newest project: to build a bipedal humanoid robot called PETMAN. As part of a $26.3M Army contract, the Protection Ensemble Test Mannequin will be "the first anthropomorphic robot that moves dynamically like a real person.â¿¿
A rendering of PETMAN in its test chamber. Image courtesy Boston Dynamics. PETMAN is designed to test the suits used by soldiers to protect themselves against chemical warfare agents. It has to be capable of moving just like a soldier -- walking, running, bending, reaching, army crawling …