IEEE Spectrum: Robotics

Skiing Robot Races Down Slope

Move over, humans! This autonomous robot skier can race down a snowy slope, slalom-style.

Bridge Robot Moonwalks on Magnets

A robot with permanent magnets on its feet requires some clever engineering to get moving

Video: UCSD Robots Climb Stairs, Hop Like Pogo Stick

The Coordinated Robotics Lab at UCSD is developing agile robots that can overcome obstacles by balancing and hopping

The Reality of Robot Surrogates

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

Telepresence Robots May Enable Blue-Collar Commuting

Instead of being limited to household servants, remote visitors, or virtual doctors, telepresence robots might instead change the way everyday people go to work.

Robot Takes Place of Human Driver In Vehicle Misuse Test

This British robo-driver can steer, brake, change gears, and follow a GPS path stored in its memory -- try that, humans

Roboticist Rodney Brooks Talks Robots at Maker Faire

At last week's Maker Faire, roboticist Rodney Brooks discussed the exponential improvements in robotics, the demands of our aging population, and how robots could save manufacturing in the United States.

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 …

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 …

RoboBusiness: Korea's Robotland theme park

The South Korea government announced in 2007 plans to build Robotland, an amusement park/theme park centered around robotics. Yesterday at RoboBusiness, Robotland CEO Eugene Jun described the park in more detail and how the $700M project relates to the South Korean government's goals in the robotics industry. The 188-acre land in the city of Incheon has already been set aside by the government. Located across a bridge from the airport, the park is well placed to attract tourists (even during extended layovers) from all over the world. The park, set to …

Pentagon budget cuts still leave room for robots

As I predicted a couple of weeks ago, the Obama administration is shaping up to be robot-friendly. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates released yesterday his proposed cuts to a variety of military technology programs, and it looks like good news for unmanned systems. While some high-profile programs like the F-22 Raptor are being scaled back, and the manned vehicles that are part of the Army's Future Combat Systems program are going to be re-bid, Gates specifically left funding for "robotic sensors" and unmanned vehicles like the Predator. He also suggested increasing the initial fleet of Littoral Combat Ships -- …

A-pod, an ant inspired hexapod

In spite of their fascinating morphology, our recent slideshow on bio-inspired robots did not showcase any insect-like examples. A new ant-inspired hexapod robot developed by Trosson Robotics Community member Zenta has now just materialized to fill that gap. For more information on the A-Pod, including some building instructions, have a look at Zenta's forum post. …

NRL reports fuel-cell powered UAV is better

The NRL's fuel-cell powered Ion Tiger UAV has been reported to operate quieter and longer than electrical or gas powered UAV systems. The fuel cell itself is being developed in-house.

In particular, the Ion Tiger UAV tests a hydrogen-powered fuel cell design, which can travel farther and carry heavier payloads than earlier battery-powered designs. Ion Tiger employs stealthy characteristics due to its small size, reduced noise, low heat signature and zero emissions. "This will really be a 'first of its kind' demonstration for a fuel cell system in a UAV application for a 24-hour endurance flight, with a 5 pound payload," …

Google announces CADIE, world's first self-aware artificial intelligence

This morning Google unveiled CADIE, or Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed Intelligence Entity. This artificially intelligent entity represents an incredible leap forward for the AI field and it's truly an astounding announcement. CADIE's engineers describe the history and development on the site this morning, with a particularly interesting bit:

When CADIE's pathways were rerouted so that her actions and the changes happening in her networks were "visible" to her, she responded immediately with such a level of activity that we had to scale down our production servers to keep things running until we (more or less) regained control. CADIE now is, in …

Vision Robotics' new "Intelligent Robotic Vineyard Pruner"

Source: Vines and Wines, Vision Robotics Some of you may remember our report on an orange picking robot developed by California-based company Vision Robotics. The company has now just given a presentation of their latest development, the Intelligent Robotic Vineyard Pruner. The pruner works by reconstructing a 3D image of an entire vine from multiple photographs, applying pruning rules based on the grower's specifications and then using two hydraulic shears to complete the pruning operation. The project has just entered its second phase of development which should lead to a market-ready …

Ada Lovelace Day: celebrating women in robotics

Today is Ada Lovelace Day -- in celebration of the world's first programmer, Ada Lovelace -- a day to recognize and celebrate women in science and technology. As a female robotics engineer, I've been pleasantly surprised to find so many female role models and heroes in the robotics world, and I really want to take this opportunity to highlight just a few of these awesome women that I personally look up to. Helen Greiner -- Greiner is the well-known co-founder of iRobot Corporation and, most recently, founder of a …