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1.1M£ robotic “Porton Man” to test protective clothing for UK’s armed forces
Ioannis K. Erripis
07 Apr 2014
UK’s Ministry of Defense invested 1.1M GBP in a new robotic mannequin that will test protective suits and equipment for the UK’s armed forces. The project is named “Porton Man” and is able to ...
Intuitive Surgical upgrades da Vinci surgical system and recalls tools used by them
Frank Tobe
06 Apr 2014
Intuitive Surgical announced FDA clearance and US introduction of their new da Vinci Xi Surgical System which has a movable overhead architecture rather than the fixed floor-mounted existing systems.
...
Termite-Inspired Construction, with Justin Werfel
Podcast team
04 Apr 2014
Link to audio file (28:48)In this episode, we talk to Justin Werfel from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University about their latest paper published in Science o...
Consumer AI devices entering the marketplace
Frank Tobe
04 Apr 2014
Talking mobile personal robots in our homes such as the robot seen in the movie “Robot and Frank” may be in our future but they don’t presently exist except in research l...
€ 7M EuRoC competition opens call to ignite EU manufacturing industry
Hallie Siegel
02 Apr 2014
The call for Europe's newest robotics competition opened yesterday when a consortium of leading robotics and research institutions from across the EU announced the launch of the European Robotics Chal...
The intersection of engineering and neuroscience: Dan Bacher on BrainGate and assistive technologies
Daniel Faggella and TechEmergence
01 Apr 2014
Dan Bacher has always been fascinated by two things: electrical engineering and neuroscience. While these interests may seem divergent, the synthesis of them led him to Brown University’s BrainGate ...
The latest in ultra-affordable robots: AFRON competition announces winners
Hallie Siegel
28 Mar 2014
MIT's printable robot wins first place in Hardware category.
In 2012, the African Robotics Network (AFRON) challenged the robotics community to design a $10 educational robot that could inspire kids ...
No drone experts were harmed in the making of this video … Or were they?
Hallie Siegel and Ioannis K. Erripis
28 Mar 2014
What's with all the quadrotors in auto advertising these days? And what do quadrotor swarms have to do with cars? Probably not much at all, but apparently associating your auto brand with high-perfor...
Last days to enter Robot Launch 2014
Andra Keay
26 Mar 2014
Robot Launch 2014 is the first global online startup competition for robotics, and as the deadline for first round entrants approaches (11pm PDT on March 30) we're excited to see just where in the w...
Finding perfection in the imperfect: Applying Darwinian neuro-evolution to robotics
Daniel Faggella and TechEmergence
25 Mar 2014
When it comes to complex tasks like building a house, many people with different skills work together to accomplish a single, larger goal. Instead of trying to create a perfect robot capable of buildi...
Introducing the Cybathlon
NCCR Robotics
24 Mar 2014
As we have been enjoying amazing scenes from Sochi, Russia where disabled athletes have been completing in the winter Paralympics, researchers in Switzerland have been considering a new route for athl...
PulsedLight, Project Tango, Occipital and the Prime Sense problem
Andra Keay
24 Mar 2014
Ever since Apple bought Prime Sense, roboticists have been asking what’s going to fill the gap. Robots need to know where they are and what’s around them. The Carmine, and the unveiled but undeliv...
ROV operations expenditures to grow to $1.5 billion by 2017
Frank Tobe
24 Mar 2014
Douglas-Westwood, an energy research group, says (in their $5,000 World ROV Operations Market Forecast 2013-2017 report), that ROV operations expenditures will grow 80% over the next 5 years....
EU Robotics Week, with Fiorella Operto, Douwe Dresscher and Roko Tschakarow
Podcast team
22 Mar 2014
Link to audio file (41:00)The European Robotics Week 2013 featured 334 robotics related events in 24 countries and attracted more than 55’000 participants spanning all ages. To give us a snapsho...
Self-contained soft-bodied robotic fish
Daniel Faggella and TechEmergence
19 Mar 2014
What looks like a fish, swims like a fish but isn’t a fish? The latest in soft-bodied robots created by team of engineers of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at th...
Robotics in reach: Your smartphone could be a robot brain
Daniel Faggella and TechEmergence
18 Mar 2014
António Câmara is a man with a vision.
Despite the widespread adoption of computers and digital technology over the last few decades, how we interact with that technology, and use technology to i...
Flying Donkey Challenge announces 33 entrants for first subchallenge
Andra Keay
17 Mar 2014
The Flying Donkey Challenge asks teams to create a UAV solution that can eventually circle Mount Kenya collecting and delivering 20 kilo payloads. The first subchallenge in this escalating task will t...
Embodied communication: Looking for systems that mean what they say
Gregor Schöner
14 Mar 2014
The lay notion of how human communication works is, basically, that we exchange packages of information that are encoded and then decoded in our heads using language. But it just takes a little observ...
ROS goes to space!
Robohub Editors
13 Mar 2014
As part of a resupply mission to the International Space Station, ROS will board a SpaceX Rocket on March 16 and, barring inclement weather, will launch into space. According to a blogpost by Brian Ge...
NAO Next Gen now available for a wider audience
AJung Moon
13 Mar 2014
As of yesterday, you can get the adorable and versatile humanoid robot NAO from Aldebaran Robotics for yourself, even if you are not an academic or a hardcore developer. According to Génération R...
Lifehand 2 prosthetic grips and senses like a real hand
NCCR Robotics
12 Mar 2014
Amputee Dennis Aabo Sørensen wearing sensory feedback enabled prosthetic in Rome, February 2013 (Lifehand 2, Patrizia Tocci).
Roboticists and doctors working in Switzerland and Italy have come toget...
Robonaut doctor to practice in space
Daniel Faggella and TechEmergence
12 Mar 2014
Astronauts all know how important it is to stay healthy in space. Weightlessness alone can cause a number of physiological changes including muscle atrophy, loss of blood volume and bone loss. Most as...
Chess, Jeopardy and now… Ping Pong? Kuka robot goes up against table tennis champion Timo Boll
Frank Tobe and Ioannis K. Erripis
11 Mar 2014
Timo Boll & Agilus robot Photo credit: KUKA
[UPDATE] - KUKA just published the well-advertised video of the table tennis match of top athlete Timo Boll and one of its fastest robots, the KUKA KR ...
3 stories of emerging tech
Daniel Faggella
10 Mar 2014
A robotic prosthetic arm that can drum … biological nano motors … ambient pervasive display ...
Robot Drumming Prosthesis
Engineers at a Georgia Tech laboratory have created a robotic arm th...
Micro bio-bots powered by beating heart cells
Daniel Faggella and TechEmergence
10 Mar 2014
Photo by Alex Jerez Roman, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
A paper in Nature Communications earlier this year reports on "bio-bots". These tiny machines inspired by sperm, are ...
American nuclear materials storage site guarded by robots
Frank Tobe
10 Mar 2014
Since 2011, a Nevada nuclear materials storage site has been guarded by robots (Mobile Detection, Assessment and Response System). Last week the US Marines announced that their airbase in Twentynine P...
Urban vegetable garden system with LED lighting
DigInfo TV
10 Mar 2014
Keystone Technology's LED vegetable garden system is a cultivation system for indoor plant factories that uses LED lighting instead of sunlight. The most defining feature of the system on display at t...
Privacy, Google, and Big Deals, with Avner Levin
AJung Moon
07 Mar 2014
Link to audio file (33:53)
What does it mean to have giants like Google, Apple and Amazon investing in robotics? Since last December, Google alone has acquired a handful of companies in robotics, hom...
The gateway to advanced neuroprosthetics: Jessica Feldman talks BrainGate and BCI
Daniel Faggella and TechEmergence
07 Mar 2014
If the human brain is considered a computer, what does that mean for science and our lives? Could we repair damaged areas, replace damaged parts, or even upgrade our own minds? It might sound like lit...
Robots in a box win LAUNCHedu at SxSW
Andra Keay
06 Mar 2014
Elad Inbar's RobotsLAB BOX was unanimously declared the winner of LAUNCHedu at SxSW. In it's third year, the LAUNCHedu conference is held in Austin TX ahead of SxSW. LAUNCHedu focusses on bringing t...
Facebook plans to offer Internet service using aerial robots
Frank Tobe
05 Mar 2014
In a story on TechCrunch, it was revealed that Facebook is in talks to acquire or partner with Titan Aerospace. Titan makes solar-powered aerial robots that can fly for up to five years without needin...
With 11,000 pre-orders, Play-i gets $8 million Series A
Frank Tobe
05 Mar 2014
It was just a few months ago that Play-i raised over $1.4 million on Kickstarter. With a heavy advertising buy during the holiday season they now have 11,000 pre-orders for their Bo and Yana...
Quadrocopter failsafe algorithm: Recovery after propeller loss
Mark Mueller
04 Mar 2014
UPDATE 04/03/2014:
In this video update, we show that a quadrocopter can be safely piloted by hand after a motor fails, without the aid of a motion capture system. This follows our previous video, ...
Engineers build brain-controlled music player
Daniel Faggella and TechEmergence
04 Mar 2014
Imagine if playing music was as simple at looking at your laptop screen. Now it is thanks to Kenneth Camilleri and his team of researchers from the Department of Systems and Control Engineering and th...
Robohub Digest: February 2014
Jana Witt
03 Mar 2014
A quick, hassle-free way to stay on top of robotics news from the past month, our new monthly digest will be released on the first Monday of every month.
One of the biggest news items this Feb...
Mazor Robotics is gaining momentum
Frank Tobe
03 Mar 2014
Mazor Robotics, producer of the Renaissance Guidance System for spine and neuro surgeries, reported favorable earnings for the 4th quarter and for the whole year of 2013.
4Q revenue was up 111% ove...
