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Are agricultural robots ready? 27 companies profiled
Frank Tobe
12 Nov 2014
Agriculture is one of our most important industries. It provides food, feed and fuel necessary for our survival. With the global population expected to reach 9 billion by 2050, agricultural production...
Artificial intelligence is a tool, not a threat
Rodney Brooks
11 Nov 2014
Recently there has been a spate of articles in the mainstream press, and a spate of high profile people who are in tech but not AI, speculating about the dangers of malevolent AI being developed, and ...
Would you trust a robot to take care of your grandpa?
Open Roboethics Initiative
11 Nov 2014
One of the driving forces of social, interactive robotics is the issue of impending labour shortage, which is projected to be one of the major and inevitable consequences of the ageing population phe...
The Future Starts Here: Robots, Botox, and Google Glass
Tiffany Shlain and Ken Goldberg
10 Nov 2014
[tweetquote]Why do we fall in love with some technologies, while others creep us out?[/tweetquote] Unravelling this mystery leads Ken Goldberg and Tiffany Shlain to vampires, zombies, and Sigmund Freu...
Transport Canada relaxes commercial drone regulations, increases focus on academic use
Diana Marina Cooper
10 Nov 2014
Last week, Transport Canada announced upcoming changes to the regulatory framework surrounding drones. Transport Canada’s exemption notification simultaneously signals a relaxation of commercial dro...
Google news: Rubin leaves; Pichai promoted to #2; and Google invests in Magic Leap
Frank Tobe
31 Oct 2014
Andy Rubin leaves Google; Sundar Pichai promoted to #2 man at Google; and Google invests in $542 million B funding for Magic Leap....
RoboLaw: Why and how to regulate robotics
Andrea Bertolini
29 Oct 2014
The issue is often raised whether robotics needs to be regulated. While some believe that there is no need to intervene because regulation may stifle innovation, others believe that indeed there is ne...
Rethinking iRobot, Samsung and Dyson robotic vacuum cleaners
Frank Tobe
29 Oct 2014
At a break in a conference in San Diego, I was sitting enjoying my tea, when up walked Rodney Brooks (of Rethink Robotics and Baxter fame) and said (with a mischievious smile):
I have a bone to pick ...
When it comes to regulating robotics, multiple questions are at issue
Frank Tobe
28 Oct 2014
Earlier this month the Brookings Institute published a paper by Ryan Calo titled "The case for a federally regulated robotics commission". As much as I appreciate the thoughtfulness and readability of...
Designing Jibo: Subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful
[tweetquote]What is a social robot supposed to look like?[/tweetquote] We have asked ourselves this question many times during the last year. HUGE design was fortunate enough to be partnered with th...
Tesla’s auto lane-changing, Audi’s self-driving race car and other recent announcements
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
22 Oct 2014
Tesla is certainly an important company to watch. As the first successful start-up car company in the USA, they are showing they know how to do things differently, taking advantage of the fact that th...
Driven by care needs, will it be the booming senior population that spurs wider acceptance of robots?
Abate De Mey
19 Oct 2014
Tony Prescott, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience and Director of the Sheffield Center of Robotics believes that [tweetquote]the medical industry could be at the forefront of changing the public per...
Robocars: A natural fit for retirement communities
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
18 Oct 2014
As people get older, they start losing their ability to drive: they start having trouble seeing in the dark and they stop driving at night; they also make mistakes, causing other people to hit them, a...
The feeling of what it is like to be a robot
Alan Winfield
17 Oct 2014
Philosopher Thomas Nagel famously characterised subjective experience as “something that it is like to be…” and suggested that for a bat, for instance, there must be something that it is like to...
25 women in robotics you need to know about (2014)
Just last week at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella gave women some questionable career advice: "It's not really about asking for the raise, but knowing...
Balance of privacy and control key to acceptance of robot bath assistants
Open Roboethics Initiative
15 Oct 2014
While the past decade has witnessed the emergence of various prototypes and research projects involving bathing robots, the public acceptance of the concept seems to largely depend on one socially sen...
What would you want your robot home to do for you?
Open Roboethics Initiative
14 Oct 2014
The devices that we interact with in our everyday lives are getting 'smarter': we wear smart watches, carry smart phones, and many of us are now living in smart homes that are equipped with intellige...
Nursing Grandma with a robot
Mark Stephen Meadows
13 Oct 2014
[tweetquote]All this talk about being replaced by robots is getting old.[/tweetquote]...
Safety concerns for collaborative robots
Frank Tobe
03 Oct 2014
At a daylong workshop on Collaborative Robots by the Robotic Industries Association (RIA), two main themes were expressed: worker safety and almost universal expectation for rapid deployment of colla...
Robohub turns two!
Robohub Editors
01 Oct 2014
How did another year sneak up on us so quickly? Today marks Robohub's second anniversary, and this post looks at how far we've come! This is no doubt thanks to the many, many incredible volunteers who...
Reader poll: How much control should a bathing robot have?
Open Roboethics Initiative
01 Oct 2014
http://youtu.be/0ac2qwStrdo
A few years ago, researchers at the University of British Columbia (AJung Moon, Peter Danielson and Mike Van der Loos) studied the public acceptance of a number of diff...
Building a robotics company
Clearpath Robotics
30 Sep 2014
By Ryan Gariepy
As we’ve made more of a name for ourselves within various startup communities, we’re commonly asked how we moved from our beginnings with little resources and no connections to ...
Poll shows bots seen more as appliance than companion, but still good for whole family
Open Roboethics Initiative
29 Sep 2014
Primary reasons for considering to purchase a robot for the home
Why would you want to buy a robot for your home? When we asked our readers this question, the majority (75%) said that they’d wa...
Commercial drone regulations: Canada vs. US
Diana Marina Cooper
29 Sep 2014
When Canadians attempt to characterize aspects of Canadian culture, it’s not uncommon to draw comparisons with the US. I recently noticed that as I respond to questions about the Canadian regulation...
Vision-enabled package handling
Frank Tobe
29 Sep 2014
Capturing and processing camera and sensor data and recognizing various shapes to determine a set of robotic actions is conceptually easy. Humans do it naturally. But it is difficult for a machine.
...
Quadrotors vs CGI: A Q&A with the makers of Sparked
Hallie Siegel
24 Sep 2014
If you thought "SPARKED" - the new short film by Cirque du Soleil, ETH Zurich, and Verity Studios - is too real-looking to be CGI, you were right. But why go to all the trouble of using quadrotors to ...
DHL UAS parcel delivery gets first test
Frank Tobe
24 Sep 2014
DHL launches first authorized autonomous delivery flights by "parcelcopter" to and from the North Sea island of Juist, 7.5 miles off the coast of Northern Germany....
A call for debate on robot policy
Andra Keay
24 Sep 2014
The 1953 New Yorker cartoon that started the “Take me to your leader” meme showed two aliens newly arrived on earth asking a donkey to, effectively, give them policy guidance. This is exactly what...
Live webstream: Risks and opportunities for the auto re/insurance industry
Robohub Editors
24 Sep 2014
Today between 08:30-17:00 CET This live webstream by the Swiss Re Centre for Global Dialogue brings together a comprehensive spectrum of perspectives and expertise on advanced driver assistance syste...
New quadrocopter video points to a future for flying machines in entertainment
Markus Waibel
22 Sep 2014
We've seen robots on stage before: Humanoids have been featured in theater productions in Switzerland, Austria, and Japan, and industrial robots have played parts in dance performances and other stage...
Automata: The new “sci-fi” blockbuster set to put robot ethics under a spotlight
Adriana Hamacher
19 Sep 2014
A major new sci-fi movie, Automata, promises to not only provide a feast for the eyes (see below for a clip from the film), but an overdue opportunity to spotlight some of the ethical dilemmas arising...
Reader poll: Home robots — appliance or companion?
Open Roboethics Initiative
17 Sep 2014
While vacuum robots continue to dominate the ‘robots at home’ market, with Jibo taking on the role of the top 5 most funded Indiegogo crowd-funding campaign, and Pepper expected to arrive at ...
Project Hieroglyph: Science fiction for better futures
Joey Eschrich
16 Sep 2014
It seems like our most popular visions of the future always end with environmental collapse, authoritarian oppression … and the ever-popular zombie apocalypse. Science fiction, what Clive Thompson c...
Impact of robocars perceived as net positive even if jobs are displaced
Open Roboethics Initiative
15 Sep 2014
Will robots take away our jobs? Will we be better off with robots even if they do?
One Forbes article published last year by Chunka Mui focused the jobs issue on autonomous cars. In the article tit...
ReWalk IPO gets $36 million; Corindus private placement gets $26.6
Frank Tobe
15 Sep 2014
ReWalk, the Israeli developer of exoskeletons, joins Ekso and Cyberdyne as publicly-traded companies on international stock exchanges. Their IPO Friday sold 3 million shares at $12 per share. The stoc...
Unbounded robotics closes down
Frank Tobe
15 Sep 2014
For confusing reasons, Unbounded Robotics has shut down. Their $35,000 UBR-1 single-armed mobile robot that was shown late last year with great fanfare is no longer offered for sale.
"Why?" is the...
