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Artificial muscles give soft robots superpowers
Wyss Institute
07 Dec 2017
By Lindsay Brownell
Soft robotics has made leaps and bounds over the last decade as researchers around the world have experimented with different materials and designs to allow once rigid, jerky mach...
The stories we tell about technology: AI Narratives
The Royal Society
07 Dec 2017
By Susannah Odell and Natasha McCarthy
Technology narratives
The nature, promise and risks of new technologies enter into our shared thinking through narrative – explicit or implicit stories about...
Videos from the International Conference on Robot Learning
Robohub Editors
06 Dec 2017
The first International Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL) happened mid-November in Mountain View, California.
You can now watch all the videos online, including talks by J. Andrew Bagnell (CMU),...
Vote for your favorite in Robot Launch Startup Competition!
Andra Keay
02 Dec 2017
In the lead up to the finals of the Robot Launch 2017 competition on December 14, we're having one round of public voting for your favorite startup from the Top 25. While in previous years we've had ...
Call for robot holiday videos 2017
Robohub Editors
01 Dec 2017
That's right! You better not run, you better not hide, you better watch out for brand new robot holiday videos on Robohub! Drop your submissions down our chimney at editors@robohub.org and share the ...
Model-based reinforcement learning with neural network dynamics
BAIR Blog
01 Dec 2017
By Anusha Nagabandi and Gregory Kahn
Enabling robots to act autonomously in the real-world is difficult. Really, really difficult. Even with expensive robots and teams of world-class researchers, rob...
Humanoids 2017 photo competition and winners
Sabine Hauert
29 Nov 2017
The Humanoids 2017 conference earlier this month hosted an excellent photo competition. I was lucky to be one of the judges, along with Erico Guizzo from IEEE Spectrum, and Giorgio Metta as awards cha...
#ERW2017: “Robot Discovery” central event in tweets
SPARC
29 Nov 2017
The European Robotics Week 2017 (ERW2017) Central Event organised in Brussels saw the “Robots Discovery” exhibition hosted by the European Committee of the Regions on 20-23 November, where robotic...
European Robotics Week 2017: Live coverage
Robohub Editors
24 Nov 2017
We hope you're enjoying the European Robotics Week! If you're still looking for events to attend over the weekend, make sure to check out the map of 1000 happenings all over Europe....
We built a robot care assistant for elderly people – here’s how it works
The Conversation
24 Nov 2017
By Conor McGinn, Trinity College Dublin
Not all robots will take over human jobs. My colleagues and I have just unveiled a prototype care robot that we hope could take on some of the more mundane w...
The advantage of four legs
Oliver Mitchell
23 Nov 2017
Shortly after SoftBank acquired his company last October, Marc Raibert of Boston Dynamics confessed, “I happen to believe that robotics will be bigger than the Internet.” Many sociologist...
Announcing the shortlist for Robot Launch 2017
Andra Keay
22 Nov 2017
The Robotics Hub, in collaboration with Silicon Valley Robotics, is currently investing in robotics, AI and sensor startups, with checks between $250,000 and $500,000. Current portfolio companies inc...
DART: Noise injection for robust imitation learning
BAIR Blog
22 Nov 2017
By Michael Laskey, Jonathan Lee, and Ken Goldberg
In Imitation Learning (IL), also known as Learning from Demonstration (LfD), a robot learns a control policy from analyzing demonstrations of the p...
ANDROIDS through the eye of a 19th century wooden camera
Wanda Tuerlinckx and Erwin R. Boer
19 Nov 2017
Wanda Tuerlinckx and Erwin R. Boer have fused their scientific and photographic interests in robots and traveled the world since 2016 to visit roboticists to discuss and photograph their creations. Th...
Efficient data acquisition in MATLAB: Streaming HD video in real-time
Florian Enner
16 Nov 2017
The acquisition and processing of a video stream can be very computationally expensive. Typical image processing applications split the work across multiple threads, one acquiring the images, and anot...
The race to own the autonomous super highway: Digging deeper into Broadcom’s offer to buy Qualcomm
Oliver Mitchell
14 Nov 2017
Governor Andrew Cuomo of the State of New York declared last month that New York City will join 13 other states in testing self-driving cars: “Autonomous vehicles have the potential to save time an...
Smart soft robotics for stroke rehabilitation
Adam Stokes
09 Nov 2017
The culmination of work by Alistair C. McConnell (lead-researcher) through his PhD and the SOPHIA team, the Soft Orthotic Physiotherapy Hand Interactive Aid (SOPHIA) forms the foundation for our futur...
How will robots and AI change our way of life in 2030?
Andra Keay
09 Nov 2017
At #WebSummit 2017, I was part of a panel on what the future will bring in 2030 with John Vickers from Blue Abyss, Jacques Van den Broek from Randstad and Stewart Rogers from Venture Beat. John talked...
Robust distributed decision-making in robot swarms
Michael Crosscombe
06 Nov 2017
Reaching an optimal shared decision in a distributed way is a key aspect of many multi-agent and swarm robotic applications....
1000 local events expected during the European Robotics Week 2017
SPARC
06 Nov 2017
The importance of robotics for Europe's regions will be the focus of a week-long celebration of robotics taking place around Europe on 17–27 November 2017. The European Robotics Week 2017 (ERW2017) ...
Happy Halloween!
Robohub Editors
31 Oct 2017
Happy Halloween everyone! Here's a selection of this year's robot videos and tweets to get you in the mood....
Can artificial intelligence learn to scare us?
MIT News
28 Oct 2017
Just in time for Halloween, a research team from the MIT Media Lab’s Scalable Cooperation group has introduced Shelley: the world’s first artificial intelligence-human horror story collaborat...
Congress’ automated driving bills are both more and less than they seem
Bryant Walker Smith
27 Oct 2017
Bills being considered by Congress deserve our attention—but not our full attention. To wit: When it comes to safety-related regulation of automated driving, existing law is at least as important as...
New RoboBee flies, dives, swims, and explodes out the of water
Wyss Institute
27 Oct 2017
By Leah Burrows
We’ve seen RoboBees that can fly, stick to walls, and dive into water. Now, get ready for a hybrid RoboBee that can fly, dive into water, swim, propel itself back out of water, and ...
Overview of the International Conference on Robot Ethics and Safety Standards – with survey on autonomous cars
Vladimir Estivill Castro
26 Oct 2017
The International Conference on Robot Ethics and Safety Standards (ICRESS-2017) took place in Lisbon, Portugal, from 20th to 21st October 2017. Maria Isabel Aldinhas Ferreira and João Silva Sequeira ...
Humanoids 2017 photo contest – vote here
Serena Ivaldi
24 Oct 2017
For the first time, Humanoids 2017 is hosting a photo contest. We received 39 photos from robotics laboratories and institutes all over the world, showing humanoids in serious or funny contexts....
How to start with self-driving cars using ROS
Ricardo Téllez
24 Oct 2017
Self-driving cars are inevitable.
In recent years, self-driving cars have become a priority for automotive companies. BMW, Bosch, Google, Baidu, Toyota, GE, Tesla, Ford, Uber and Volvo are investin...
Join the Robohub community!
Sabine Hauert
24 Oct 2017
As you know, Robohub is a non-profit dedicated to connecting the robotics community to the public. Over nearly a decade we’ve produced more than 200 podcasts and helped thousands of roboticists comm...
Talking Machines: The pace of change and the public view of machine learning, with Peter Donnelly
Talking Machines
19 Oct 2017
In episode ten of season three we talk about the rate of change (prompted by Tim Harford), take a listener question about the power of kernels, and talk with Peter Donnelly in his capacity with the Ro...
Shaping animal, vegetable and mineral
Wyss Institute
19 Oct 2017
By Leah Burrows
Nature has a way of making complex shapes from a set of simple growth rules. The curve of a petal, the swoop of a branch, even the contours of our face are shaped by these processes. ...
Robohub Podcast
Audrow Nash
16 Oct 2017
I am happy to announce that Robots Podcast will be renamed to "Robohub Podcast"....
Udacity Robotics video series: Interview with Felipe Chavez from Kiwi
Robohub Editors
13 Oct 2017
Mike Salem from Udacity's Robotics Nanodegree is hosting a series of interviews with professional roboticists as part of their free online material....
Teleoperating robots with virtual reality
MIT News
12 Oct 2017
Certain industries have traditionally not had the luxury of telecommuting. Many manufacturing jobs, for example, require a physical presence to operate machinery....
Why engineering schools globally need more creative women
At McMaster University, 40 per cent of assistant professors in engineering are now women and the school is working hard to make the profession more equitable for women.
(Shutterstock)
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Robotic bugs train insects to be helpers
Horizon Magazine
10 Oct 2017
by Aisling Irwin
Tiny mobile robots are learning to work with insects in the hope the creatures’ sensitive antennae and ability to squeeze into small spaces can be put to use serving humans....
Aerial manipulator for contact inspection selected for innovation prize
Anibal Ollero
05 Oct 2017
The European project AEROARMS is one of 10 innovations selected to compete for the Innovation Radar Prize in the "Industrial & Enabling Tech" category. AEROARMS is a European project that proposes to ...
