IEEE Spectrum: Robotics

How To Make a Humanoid Robot Open a Door

Roboticists know that some things are still hard for humanoid robots to do. Like walk, or run, or... open doors.

The Amazing Androids of Hiroshi Ishiguro

To understand how the human mind works, a Japanese researcher is building androids that look just like real people

Lessons From a Mechanical Child

A child humanoid robot called iCub is helping Swiss scientists study cognition, learning, and mobility

First Video of Boston Dynamics PETMAN Biped

PETMAN, the self-balancing bipedal robot designed by Boston Dynamics, emerges from the lab for its first prototype demonstration.

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?

Thomas and Janet: first kissing humanoid robots

Developed by the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, the theatrical robots performed the first robot kiss during a performance of Phantom of the Opera.

Anthropomimetic Robot Copies Inner Structures of Human Body

This humanoid copies not only the overall form of the human body but also its inner structures and mechanisms. Cool or creepy?

Robots: The Expensive Way to Prepare Cheap Food

A robot restaurant loses money on every bowl of ramen soup, but gains invaluable attention for a Nagoya robot manufacturer

ALSOK's advertising robot An9-PR

Doppelgänger Dance

The big picture

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.

Is telepresence the best application roboticists can come up with?

Several robotics companies are working on telepresence robots designed to help people communicate. I say: boring.

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 …

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 …