Robohub.org
News
Robohub Digest 08/16: Olympics, problematic crowdfunding, and NASA’s space robotics challenges
Jana Witt and Kassie Perlongo
05 Sep 2016
A quick, hassle-free way to stay on top of robotics news, our robotics digest is released on the first Monday of every month. Sign up to get it in your inbox....
Surveying flooded mines with UNEXMIN: Interview with Norbert Zajzon
Luís Lopes
01 Sep 2016
The UNEXMIN project (Underwater Explorer for Flooded Mines) started February 2016. It is an EU-funded project, from the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. Luís Lopes, from the La Palma...
Livestream: NASA’s final sample return robot competition
Robohub Editors
31 Aug 2016
After five years of competition by more than 40 different teams from around the globe, NASA’s Sample Return Robot Challenge has reached its final stage. The top seven teams will compete for the $1.3...
Artificial intelligence expedites breast cancer risk prediction
Robohub Editors
30 Aug 2016
Researchers have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) software that reliably interprets mammograms, assisting doctors with a quick and accurate prediction of breast cancer risk. The AI computer s...
The Drone Center’s Weekly Roundup: 8/29/16
August 22, 2016 – August 28, 2016
News
A U.S. drone strike in Yemen reportedly killed five suspected members of al-Qaeda. According to witnesses who spoke to the Associated Press, the strike t...
Introducing the Octobot: The first autonomous, entirely soft robot
Harvard SEAS
25 Aug 2016
By: Leah Burrows
A team of Harvard University researchers with expertise in 3D printing, mechanical engineering, and microfluidics has demonstrated the first autonomous, untethered, entirely soft r...
Tackling the European refugee crisis with solar-powered UAVs: A fully autonomous 26 hour search-and-rescue flight
Philipp Oettershagen
24 Aug 2016
One year after having demonstrated the 81-hour continuous solar-powered flight that is still the current world record in flight endurance for all aircrafts < 50kg total mass, the AtlantikSolar UAV ...
The Drone Center’s Weekly Roundup: 8/22/16
At the Center for the Study of the Drone
As growing numbers of countries around the world acquire and deploy military drones, the task of tracking where they are based and how they are being used b...
People favour expressive, communicative robots over efficient and effective ones
Adriana Hamacher
19 Aug 2016
Making an assistive robot partner expressive and communicative is likely to make it more satisfying to work with and lead to users trusting it more, even if it makes mistakes, a new study suggests....
Natural scale caterpillar soft robot is powered and controlled with light
Robohub Editors
19 Aug 2016
Researchers at the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw, using the liquid crystal elastomer technology, originally developed in the LENS Institute in Florence, demonstrated a bioinspired mic...
NASA Space Robotics Challenge prepares robots for the journey to Mars
Robohub Editors
18 Aug 2016
The Space Robotics Competition is open for teams to develop and display the abilities of an R5 robot by assisting in the procedures for a NASA mission to Mars, offering a $1 million prize pool for ...
Talking Machines: Generative art and Hamiltonian Monte Carlo, with Doug Eck
Talking Machines
17 Aug 2016
In episode fifteen of season two, we talk about Hamiltonian Monte Carlo, take a listener question about unbalanced data, plus, speak with Doug Eck of Google’s Magenta project....
Everything you need to know about drone racing
By Matt Windsor
This past weekend, 145 competitors from around the world gathered on New York City’s Governors Island for the second annual U.S. National Drone Racing Championships. The winner wa...
The Drone Center’s Weekly Roundup: 8/15/16
August 8, 2016 – August 14, 2016
At the Center for the Study of the Drone
Earlier this month, hundreds of drones descended upon New York’s Governors Island for the second annual U.S. Nationa...
Last call for startups – Robot Launch 2016
Andra Keay and Silicon Valley Robotics
13 Aug 2016
The robotics industry is maturing. The quality of startups in particular has really changed over the last 2-3 years, and this is backed up by the increasing investment levels, with over $1 billio...
Biohybrid robots built from living tissue start to take shape
Victoria Webster
12 Aug 2016
Think of a traditional robot and you probably imagine something made from metal and plastic. Such “nuts-and-bolts” robots are made of hard materials. As robots take on more roles beyond the lab, s...
Exoskeletons: From helping people walk to controlling robots in space
SPARC
11 Aug 2016
44 million people aged between 15 and 64 report a basic activity difficulty, with the most prominent disabilities centered around lifting and carrying, walking, bending, sitting or standing. Strokes a...
European Robotics League posts first major tournament results
Marta Palau Franco
11 Aug 2016
The European Robotics League (ERL) is a European-based common framework for robotics competitions in the fields of Industrial Robots (ERL Industrial Robots), Service Robots (ERL Service Robots) and Em...
ROSCon 2015 recap and videos – Part 5
Open Source Robotics Foundation
09 Aug 2016
ROSCon is an annual conference focused on ROS, the Robot Operating System. Every year, hundreds of ROS developers of all skill levels and backgrounds, from industry to academia, come together to teach...
Marty: the little walking robot that’s more than a toy
Alexander Enoch
08 Aug 2016
Update: Only 4 days left to crowdfund Marty! They are over 70% towards reaching their goal! ...
The Drone Center’s Weekly Roundup: 8/8/16
News
A U.S. airstrike in Yemen killed three members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. In a statement, U.S. Central Command announced that the strike took place in Yemen’s central Shabwa provi...
Interview: International Ground Vehicle Ground Competition (IGVC) winner on “Bigfoot 2” Husky UGV
Clearpath Robotics
08 Aug 2016
By: Chris Bogdon
The International Ground Vehicle Ground Competition (IGVC) is an annual event that brings together teams of college students from all over the globe to compete in an autonomous gro...
Wall-climbing robots create a carbon fiber hammock (with video, images)
Robohub Editors
04 Aug 2016
Maria Yablonina's project, called Mobile Robotic Fabrication System for Filament Structures, demonstrates a new production process for filament structures, like carbon fiber, by crawling up the wall ...
Microswimmer robot chains can decouple and reconnect in magnetic field
Robohub Editors
02 Aug 2016
Drexel University researchers, led by MinJun Kim, PhD, a professor in the College of Engineering, have successfully pulled off a feat that both sci-fi fans and Michael Phelps could appreciate. Using a...
The Drone Center’s Weekly Roundup: 8/1/16
July 25, 2016 – July 31, 2016
News
The U.S. Air Force has created a new training course for officers responsible for ensuring that the communications between drones and pilots are secure. The Elec...
Robohub Digest 07/16: Tesla’s Autopilot question, lethal robots, RoboCup, and a brave 10-year-old
Jana Witt and Kassie Perlongo
01 Aug 2016
A quick, hassle-free way to stay on top of robotics news, our robotics digest is released on the first Monday of every month. Sign up to get it in your inbox....
Flying robots perform 100th show on Broadway, using new localization technology and algorithms
Bill Keays and Markus Waibel
29 Jul 2016
Since April, a troupe of eight flying machines has been performing in a Cirque du Soleil Broadway show called Paramour. This group of quadcopters has now completed its first 100 shows in front of a li...
‘IDSC Tailsitter’ flying robot performs vertical loops and easily transitions between hover and forward flight
Robin Ritz
28 Jul 2016
The IDSC Tailsitter has been designed at the Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control, ETH Zurich, as a testbed for novel control algorithms for tailsitter vehicles. The goal of the project is to dev...
Talking Machines: Machine learning and the Flint water crisis, with Jake Abernethy
Talking Machines
27 Jul 2016
In episode fourteen of season two, we discuss Perturb-and-MAP and answer a listener question about classic artificial intelligence ideas being used in modern machine learning. Plus, we speak with Ja...
The Drone Center’s Weekly Roundup: 7/25/16
News
A federal judge ruled that the Federal Aviation Administration has the authority to require Austin and Bret Haughwout to turn over documents relating to two homemade drones. In 2015, the Haugh...
What’s new in robotics this week? SoftBank spending $32 billion on ARM
Emmet Cole and Robotiq Inc.
22 Jul 2016
Softbank spending $32 billion on ARM; tactile intelligence is the future of robotic grasping; a 'cyborg' robot is built out of sea slug muscles and 3D printing; a German robot grills up sausages and...
ROSCon 2015 recap and videos – part 4
Open Source Robotics Foundation
21 Jul 2016
ROSCon is an annual conference focused on ROS, the Robot Operating System. Every year, hundreds of ROS developers of all skill levels and backgrounds, from industry to academia, come together to teach...
Why football, not chess, is the true final frontier for robotic artificial intelligence
Daniel Polani
20 Jul 2016
The perception of what artificial intelligence was capable of began to change when chess grand master and world champion Garry Kasparov lost to Deep Blue, IBM’s chess-playing program, in 1997. Deep ...
Law-abiding robots? What should the legal status of robots be?
Anders Sandberg
18 Jul 2016
News media are reporting that the EU is considering turning robots into electronic persons with rights and apparently industry spokespeople are concerned that Brussels’ overzealousness could hinder ...
The Drone Center’s Weekly Roundup: 7/18/16
At the Center for the Study of the Drone
A cache of personal documents seized during the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in 2011 includes several letters that refer to the drones used by the U...
Driving, flying, and climbing in a sand and gravel pit
Tim Barfoot
18 Jul 2016
In June, the University of Toronto (as part of the NSERC Canadian Field Robotics Network) carried out a set of field trials at an old sand and gravel pit in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. This involved thr...
