For 25 years, the field of robotics has been bedeviled by a fundamental problem: If a robot is to move through the world, it needs to be able to create a map of its environment and understand its place within it.
In the finale of RoboCup 2011, two Virginia Tech robots took top honors in the adult-size and child-size categories. The full-size humanoid CHARLI-2, making its public debut at RoboCup, won the adult-size robot soccer match
I have swelled with joy and anticipation every time I watched those orange sparks arcing across the launch pad and setting the shuttle engines ablaze. It evokes sadness, because one of our proudest national accomplishments is now complete.
A disabled Japanese man on Friday embarked on an ambitious trip that will take him to a mediaeval French World Heritage site with the help of a cutting-edge robotic suit.
An abandoned dog that lost all its paws to frostbite is now able to walk again thanks to four prosthetic limbs.
Robots, nanotechnology and other manufacturing of the future can reposition the U.S. as a global technology leader and revitalize the nation’s flagging economy, President Obama said Friday morning.
Drivers of Volkswagens could soon forget about fender benders or lane drifting on the Autobahn — their cars will take care of those little problems.
Individually, they aren’t much to look at. But Kilobots aren’t supposed to be taken in individually--they’re designed to swarm in the thousands, and at $14 a pop they very well may be doing so soon.
The x-Ar arm reimagines a Steadicam’s spring system to make arms and tools feel weightless, diminishing the risk of repetitive-stress injuries without motors, batteries or external power.
Today in things that may leave you scratching your head: the SWITL, the robotic hand that can pick up, move, and put down sol-gel materials without altering their shape or arrangement in the least.
Prosthetic hands typically come in three varieties: purely cosmetic models; hooks and other low-cost that provide a limited range of motion; and electronic versions that better mimic natural hand movements yet can cost tens of thousands of dollars.
Everyone’s favorite surgical robot daVinci, known for his football-lacing and paper-airplane-making skills (and, like, landmark surgeries or something) is also a bit of a party animal, it seems.
After walking across the stage at his graduation with the help of exoskeletal legs, Austin Whitney strolled straight into a new career: bionic leg tester.
UC San Diego researchers have struck upon a novel idea that could make Android phones 11 times more efficient than they are currently: a custom-tailored processor that is optimized to run the most widely used apps on a given phone.
Imagine a swarm of microrobots—tiny devices a few hair widths across—swimming through your blood vessels and repairing damage, or zipping around in computer chips as a security lock, or quickly knitting together heart tissue.
Nudging open a door with its extendable arm, a bomb-disposal robot became the first robot to enter a reactor building at Japan’s stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, confirming high radiation levels that are unsafe for humans.
Somewhere in the greater Washington D.C. area, there's a sportswriter for GWSports.com who likely wants to crawl under his or her desk and not come out for a while, lest they be mocked for being bested by a robot.
Penguin populations are mysteriously diminishing, but if penguin biologist and president of the Polar Oceans Research Group, Bill Fraser, has his way schools of advanced underwater robots will discover the reason why. The autonomous, underwater robot
By looking to the neural networks of spiders, crabs, lobsters, and worms, European researchers are building better gait-governing systems for robots. Mimicking the rhythmic nerve impulses of some invertebrates
Finally, some news that Japan is actually using its rescue robots. The red Wall-E-esque ‘bot seen here is on the scene at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, according to a media report from Japan.
The combination of vulnerability to earthquakes and a natural affinity for robotics has led to a surplus of Japanese rescue robots
There are more than 2,000 ground robots fighting alongside flesh-and-blood forces in Afghanistan, according to Lt. Col. Dave Thompson, the Marine Corps’ top robot-handler. If his figures are right, it means one in 50 U.S. troops in Afghanistan...
Are robots our friends or deadly enemies? Robotic expert Hans Moravec from the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute, says intelligent robots today are no smarter than the average insect. But, don't feel too safe about that, after all army a
In a leap bridging today's construction with that of the world of tomorrow, Daniel Mellinger, a University of Pennsylvania Ph.D. candidate, has created a stunning network of jaw-dropping aerial robots he calls "quadrotors" that can assemble struc
Someday soon a robot may be one of your best friends. The European Commission's "Beyond Robotics" project workbook states its mission as "Developing cognitive robots whose 'purpose in life' would be to serve humans as assistants or 'companions
Move over buddy, Mr. Robby Bot is here to replace you. Nightmare at the Acme factory? Well, not quite yet. But sooner than some would suspect, they may be joining the unemployment lines—kicked to the curb by that nice, quiet bucket-of-bolts down the
Nowadays it seems robots are doing everything. During 2010 the commercial robot revolution expanded from simply mowing lawns and vacuuming rugs to conducting symphonies, fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with NATO troops in Afghanistan, serving customers
Getting kids to stop lying is hard enough, now engineers are building robots specifically programmed to lie. No doubt those in the field of ethics are ready to tear their hair out. Robots are being built that happily lie to each other…and that's pre
War would be a lot safer, the Army says, if only more of it were fought by robots. And while smart machines are already very much a part of modern warfare, the Army and its contractors are eager to add more. New robots — none of them particularly hu
Waldo—a drug-dispensing hospital robot—suddenly went berserk at the at University of California, San Francisco Medical Center. The rampaging robot sent a terrified doctor and horrified patient scurrying for safety. Hospital authorities are completely
