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Plug-and-play artificial compound eye for robotic applications
Sabine Hauert
20 May 2013
Flies have small brains that would not be able to process high-resolution images such as those that we see with our own eyes. Instead, they've perfected the use of compound eyes, composed of a dense m...
Is the commercialization of UASs passing the US by?
Frank Tobe
20 May 2013
Forget the debate about the military use of drones (but if you must know, here’s a comprehensive FAQ on the issue)....
Are accelerators the new incubators and angel investors?
Frank Tobe
19 May 2013
... Tech startups can lead to big business. Last year Y Combinator reported their top 21 projects were worth $4.7 billion! Just last week Airware, a Y Combinator startup, received the biggest round of...
Accelerators and opportunities for robotics startups
Andra Keay
19 May 2013
New accelerators are opening and existing programs are expanding. It’s an exciting time to be a robotics or hardware startup. In my next post I’ll talk about some of the sorts of startups that inv...
Academic and industry collaboration (Part 3): Interview with Minoru Asada
Florian Röhrbein
17 May 2013
Established experts in the field of robotics were recently interviewed by a group of scientists from the ECHORD project at Technische Universität München. Motivated by the fact that indust...
Countdown to Maker Faire
Andra Keay
17 May 2013
I’m setting up at Maker Faire with Robot Garden (a new robotics hackerspace and accelerator) and hope you’ll all come see Robot Garden @ iGate in Booth #2675 in Expo Hall. We might not be able ...
SLAM on a multi-degree of freedom biomimetic whiskered robot
John Payne
17 May 2013
http://youtu.be/EfZKYQeFyfg
This video depicts the map created by a whiskered robot as it moves about a confined space. It relates to research done by students and faculty of the University of Bris...
Measure your pulse in real-time with Fujitsu’s facial imaging technology
DigInfo TV
16 May 2013
Fujitsu has developed technology which can measure a person's pulse in real time by analyzing video of their face.
"As blood circulates through the body, the amount of light absorbed by the face vari...
Robotic bartender assembles personalized drinks, monitors alcohol consumption, and takes social mixing to a whole new level
Hallie Siegel
16 May 2013
You're at a busy bar. You order your personalized cocktail through a smart phone app; a drink dispenser measures out the beverage according to your instructions and a Kuka robotic arm give it a shake ...
Gecko adhesives allow flying robot to perch on walls
Sabine Hauert
15 May 2013
The Airburr, a light-weight flying robot from the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems (my PhD lab) at EPFL, was designed to fly in cluttered environments. Unlike most flying robot, which avoid contact a...
Airware gets $10.7M from Andreessen Horowitz and Google Ventures to build autopilot systems for UASs
Frank Tobe
15 May 2013
Airware, a Newport Beach, CA start-up offering autopilots for unmanned aerial systems (UAS) enabling UAS manufacturers to rapidly develop diverse and price competitive solutions while maintaining thei...
This week’s military news
Frank Tobe
15 May 2013
... The Northrop Grumman X-47B unmanned aircraft made its first aircraft carrier launch this week. Landings come later.
... The US Navy’s Naval Research Lab (NRL) flew a UAV for 48 hours, break...
A flurry of bad publicity for Intuitive Surgical
Frank Tobe
14 May 2013
UPDATED 5-14-2013: Scroll to bottom of article to see updates.
One of robotics' biggest stars, Intuitive Surgical (NASDAQ:ISRG), and their da Vinci robotic surgical systems, is receiving a lot of...
Low-cost robots like Baxter, UR5 and UR10 successfully entering small and medium enterprises (SMEs)
Frank Tobe
14 May 2013
Much has been said about the need to augment the skills and increase the productivity of small factory workers by using robotic assistants called co-robots. Europe funded an SME (Small and Medium-size...
ROS Industrial celebrates one-year anniversary
Frank Tobe
13 May 2013
ROS-I is developing and promoting a manufacturer-independent open-source library of drivers and the transfer of established components from research to industry - not just h/w interfaces and MS, IOS a...
Othermill: a new high quality CNC circuit board fabricator
Frank Tobe
13 May 2013
Otherfab, a spin-off from San Francisco-based Otherlab, an engineering, energy, education, math, computation and design research facility, surpassed their Kickstarter goal and is well on their way to ...
ICRA 2013 robot photo essay: “Anthropomatics – Technologies for humans”
Hallie Siegel
10 May 2013
The theme at this year's ICRA conference in Karlsruhe, Germany is "Anthropomatics – Technologies for Humans". Coined by a Karlsruhe informatics professor about 10 years ago, anthropomatics is the sc...
Chris Hadfield launches Canada’s new five dollar bill … from outer space
Hallie Siegel
10 May 2013
Earlier this month CSA Astronaut Chris Hadfield revealed the new Canadian $5 bank note in a live videostream from the International Space Station to the Bank of Canada's Ottawa head office. Why all t...
Live streaming of plenary talks at ICRA
Sabine Hauert
07 May 2013
View live stream here.
The IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) is one of the most important conferences in robotics. This year's edition is taking place May 6-10 in Karl...
KUKA acquires US integrator and toolmaker
Frank Tobe
05 May 2013
... For an amount “in the low double digit million Euro range,” KUKA has acquired the engineering services, toolmaking and integration divisions of US-based Utica Enterprises. 300 people a...
The Swinging Blind Juggler
Markus Waibel
03 May 2013
How do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!
Child's Garden of Verses by Robert L. Stephenson...
First controlled flight of an insect-sized robot
Sabine Hauert
02 May 2013
Researchers from the Wyss Institute and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard have developed a millimeter-scaled insect robot that can autonomously control its flight. Their findin...
Online job postings for robotic positions up 10% compared to the same 90-day period in 2012
Frank Tobe
01 May 2013
... More than 14,000 jobs were advertised online requiring knowledge or use of robotics in the U.S., according to WANTED Analytics™, a source of real-time business intelligence....
17 robotic innovations among 2013 Edison Award winners
Hallie Siegel
01 May 2013
Last Thursday in Chicago at a ceremony attended by 400 international business leaders and innovators, the Edison Awards - which honours game-changing new products and services - announced its 2013 win...
SOINN artificial brain can now use the internet to learn new things
DigInfo TV
01 May 2013
A group at Tokyo Institute of Technology, led by Dr. Osamu Hasegawa, has succeeded in making further advances with SOINN, their machine learning algorithm, which can now use the internet to learn how ...
Campaign to Stop Killer Robots: Let’s all stop them, shall we?
AJung Moon
27 Apr 2013
Killer robots.
Looking at the two words together is enough to conjure up images of chaos and destruction. They're an image far too familiar in science fiction settings such as Isaac Asimov or Ar...
Rethink Robotics and Aldebaran both launch robots for research, teaching and custom development
Frank Tobe
26 Apr 2013
Rethink Robotics just launched a version of their Baxter robot armed with a new SDK providing educators and researchers with almost limitless capabilities at an affordable cost. Using ROS and the new ...
Rethink Robotics introduces Baxter Research Robot
John Payne
26 Apr 2013
Rethink Robotics has announced the availability of a bundle, called the Baxter Research Robot, which includes their Baxter robot and a Software Development Kit, for US$22,000....
iRobot stock jumps 15% on Q1 earnings and 2013 projections
Frank Tobe
24 Apr 2013
iRobot’s stock (ISRG:NASDAQ) jumped 15% today on yesterday’s earnings report which exceeded analysts’ expectations for both the quarterly earnings and the annual projections....
Video interviews from Robot Block Party 2013
AJung Moon
24 Apr 2013
On April 10th, Robot Block Party 2013 took place right after We Robot conference.
Of course, I had an extra day to spend at Stanford University after the conference and couldn't miss out on the eve...
EPFL’s Festival Robotique draws a record 17,000 visitors
Robohub Editors
24 Apr 2013
The 6th Annual Festival Robotique in Lausanne, Switzerland drew a record number of visitors this past Saturday, making it one of the largest public science events in the country....
Academic and industry collaboration (Part 2): Interview with Hiroshi Ishiguro
Florian Röhrbein
22 Apr 2013
The second interview of this four-part series about collaboration between academia and industry was conducted at the CITEC Summer School 2012 at the Center of Excellence “Cognitive Interaction Techn...
Robots make the cover of Time Magazine
Frank Tobe
20 Apr 2013
... The cover of the April 22 issue of Time Magazine shows robots chiseling out the words “Made in the USA” and the story is “Manufacturing is back—but where are the jobs?̶...
New funding sources for robotics
Andra Keay
19 Apr 2013
New funding sources for robotics seem to be popping up everywhere. Today’s launch of Genesis Angels, the new $100 million VC fund, which is based in Israel but operating globally, is hot on the heel...
Ryan Calo on spyware for your brain
CIS Blog
18 Apr 2013
Ryan Calo discusses how researchers at Oxford, Geneva, and Berkeley have created a proof of concept for using commercially available brain-computer interfaces to discover private facts about today's g...
All eyes on Intuitive Surgical suit
Frank Tobe
17 Apr 2013
Updated April 17, 2013:
...In first day of trial in State of Washington, in their opening arguments, lawyers stated their cases:
[Plaintive] that Intuitive Surgical designed a watered down train...
