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DRC is not just about building robots; it’s about building community
Gill Pratt and DARPA Robotics Challenge
03 Jun 2015
Something remarkable is happening in Building 9 here at the Fairplex in Pomona, Calif. Imagine a long, giant warehouse-like building divided into 24 bays, within which people from around the world are...
Amazon challenges robotics’ hot topic: Perception
Frank Tobe
02 Jun 2015
Capturing and processing camera and sensor data and recognizing various shapes to determine a set of robotic actions is conceptually easy. Yet Amazon challenged the industry to do a selecting and pick...
Automated vehicle crashes
Bryant Walker Smith
29 May 2015
Earlier this month, the Associated Press reported on several past crashes involving automated vehicles. (Per SAE Standard J3016, I use the term "automated vehicle" instead of "autonomous veh...
Two media critiques about our future with robots
Frank Tobe
26 May 2015
After years of alarmist comments from robo-ethicists, futurists, technologists, business leaders and pundits, including Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking, two journalists bring some reality to...
Why Tesla’s purported liability ‘fix’ is technically and legally questionable
Bryant Walker Smith
26 May 2015
An interesting article in last week’s Wall Street Journal spawned a series of unfortunate headlines (in a variety of publications) suggesting that Tesla had somehow “solved” the “problem” ...
Swiss-based ABB to manufacture robots in US
Frank Tobe
24 May 2015
Robot manufacturing started in the US in 1961 when 26 Unimates - the first industrial robots - were made and deployed at a GM factory in Ewing, NJ. But, over the years, manufacturing and manufacturers...
Architectural robots: The shape of the robots that will shape your home
Petr Novikov and DOM
21 May 2015
While robots are being deployed in factories at a high pace, their presence on construction sites is close to nil. However, there are many architectural robotics research projects in academia, and du...
WeRobot 2015 Panel 1: Anthropomorphizing robots, with Kate Darling
Tech Policy Lab University of Washington
20 May 2015
As we increasingly create spaces where robotic technology interacts with humans, our tendency to project lifelike qualities onto robots raises questions around use and policy. In this We Robot 2015 pa...
Robocar roundup: Google deploys nextgen cars on city streets; Mercedes Freightleiner tests in NV
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
19 May 2015
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Google has done over 2.7 million km of testing with their existing fleet, they announced. Now, they will be putting their small “buggy” vehicle onto real streets in Mountain View. The c...
Consumer and B2B drone making is big business
Frank Tobe
08 May 2015
Lobbying for drone special interests rose from $35 million in 2011 to more than $186 million in 2014. But that is dwarfed by investments in drone makers such as DJI and 3DR, who just raised $75M and...
Talking Machines: Interdisciplinary data, with David Blei
Talking Machines
07 May 2015
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In Episode 10 we talk with David Blei of Columbia University. We talk about his work on latent dirichlet allocation, topic models, the PhD program in data that he’s helping to create at C...
Teaching robots to behave ethically
Bertram Malle and Footnote
05 May 2015
What should a robot nurse do when a cancer patient begs for more morphine but the supervising doctor is not available to approve the request? Should a self-driving car prevent its owner from taking ov...
Competing robotic warehouse systems
Frank Tobe
01 May 2015
As sales via online retailers steadily increase, so too does the speed with which customers want their goods delivered. Amazon, eBay, and Google all have massive and speedy warehousing operations atte...
True AI, or clever simulation? Transcendence movie has Johnny Depp crossing the Singularity
Michael Savoie
01 May 2015
I was inspired to write this article after recently watching Transcendence starring Johnny Depp and reading this article “Death is Optional.” What will the world look like when we cross the sing...
Chinese shopping for global robotics ventures
Frank Tobe
30 Apr 2015
April has seen Chinese VCs acquiring robotic ventures, buying out competitors, seeking funding to scale up production, and shoring up industry gaps....
Five women robotics experts from Silicon Valley share their stories
Andra Keay
29 Apr 2015
Melonee Wise, Erin Rapacki, Katherine Scott, Steffi Paepcke, Dale Bergman. What do these five women have in common? Aside from robotics, not much - they are all role models in robotics in quite dif...
sUSB Expo 2015 Livestream
Robohub Editors
29 Apr 2015
The sUSB is livestreaming from San Francisco, featuring top names in the unmanned and remote sensing field, including Patrick Egan, Chris Anderson, Whitney Brooks, Michael Drobac, and Andra Keay, a...
Steffi Paepcke on Robots, women and design: Opportunities abound
Open Source Robotics Foundation
29 Apr 2015
This piece was written by Steffi Paepcke as a precursor to the Silicon Valley Robotics panel titled “Women in Robotics: Challenge or Opportunity?”
Let me get the basic statistics out of t...
Video describes accelerating robot deployment in China
Frank Tobe
27 Apr 2015
In response to rising labor costs combined with a shortage of workers, China has begun to provide incentives to encourage businesses to utilize robots to replace factory workers....
Yesterday I looked through the eyes of a robot
Alan Winfield
20 Apr 2015
Yesterday I looked through the eyes of a robot.
It was a NAO robot fitted with a 3D printed set of goggles, so that the robot has two real cameras on its head (the eyes of the NAO robot are not in ...
Drought and desertification: How robots might help
John Payne
17 Apr 2015
Groundwater levels in California's Central Valley are down to historic lows and reservoirs have been depleted following four consecutive years of severe drought in the state. California is set to i...
Why Google’s robot personality patent isn’t what it appears to be
Mark Stephen Meadows
16 Apr 2015
[tweetquote]Google’s new patent: Less about creating robot personalities than collecting yours.[/tweetquote]...
Will motion sickness really be a barrier to self-driving cars?
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
14 Apr 2015
Earlier this week I was sent some advance research from the U of Michigan about car sickness rates for car passengers. I found the research of interest, but wish it had covered some questions I think ...
Should robots make life/death decisions? UN to discuss lethal autonomous weapons next week
Open Roboethics Initiative
10 Apr 2015
Should robots be allowed to make life and death decisions? This will be the topic of heated debate at the United Nations (UN) Palais des Nations in Geneva next week (April 13-17th, 2015). As part of...
The future of work: Robots, unions and globalization
Frank Tobe
08 Apr 2015
Last week Bloomberg News asked the question: What's destroying middle-class wages? and suggested three hypotheses: robots, unions and China.
This week SingularityHUB launched a series exploring th...
Delphi completes trans-continental drive, and Hyundai goes big
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
08 Apr 2015
Most recent robocar press has been about the Delphi drive from San Francisco to New York, which is now completed. Congratulations to the team. Few teams have tried to do such a long course that invo...
Domino’s April Fools Day spoof not so far-fetched
Frank Tobe
08 Apr 2015
"Domino's rolls out driverless delivery vehicles" blared the headline on the Dominos UK website on April Fools Day. They even provided a short video clip of the phony vehicle delivering pizz...
March money flow recap
Frank Tobe
06 Apr 2015
The first three months of 2015 are doing quite well for robotics-related companies. March fundings and acquisitions to CyPhy Works, Hansen Medical, Clearpath Robotics, DroneDeploy, JR Automation and L...
When is an ice cube not an ice cube?
Frank Tobe
06 Apr 2015
Japanese advertising agency wins award for Suntory Whisky ad campaign using CNC-milled ice cubes and a 3D printing app from Autodesk....
Ability to self-repair isn’t the same as consciousness: Analyzing Automata from a tech standpoint
Michael Savoie
04 Apr 2015
I recently had a chance to view Automata and wanted to share my thoughts on the movie based upon the current and future state of robotics and artificial intelligence. As a film, this was a tough one...
Peter Asaro: Challenges and approaches to developing policy for robots
CIS Blog
02 Apr 2015
As part of the Center for Information Technology Policy (CIPT) Luncheon speaker series, Peter Asaro gives a talk on developing policy for robots. ...
Deep Learning Primer
Frank Tobe
02 Apr 2015
The technology that unlocks intelligence from big data - deep learning - is explained in this video by Max Welling, a professor at the University of Amsterdam, and a founder of the Dutch deep learnin...
“Anyone who focuses on tech alone hasn’t grasped how autonomous driving will change society”
Frank Tobe
01 Apr 2015
The way that consumers interact with and operate cars will transform most functions in commuting, travel, communications, car ownership, and many other as-yet unknown ways....
Matternet launches drone delivery platform
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
31 Mar 2015
I often speak about deliverbots — the potential for ground-based delivery robots. There is also excitement about drone (UAV/quadcopter) based delivery. We’ve seen many proposed projects, including...
Delphi’s cross-country trip, and a raft of other robocar news
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
31 Mar 2015
There has been a ton of robocar news in the last four weeks. Below is just a small subset of the now constant stream of news items and articles that appear about robocars....
Europe agrees on regulatory drone framework to move industry forward
Ben Fisher
28 Mar 2015
There is not a week that goes by where regulation isn't a hot topic when it comes to drones. But for any regulated industry where technology is advancing greater than new rules can be agreed upon, it...
