Robohub.org
c-Consumer-Household
Shopping via telepresence makes for good PR; how long before it’s mainstream?
Michael Savoie
29 Sep 2015
Robots are great for doing dull, dirty, and dangerous jobs, and few jobs are more dangerous and downright dull (at times) than waiting in line to buy the latest tech gadget. Last week in Palo Alto,...
Dobot’s robot arm: Industrial precision at low cost
Dobot
23 Sep 2015
Unsatisfied by the low cost, low precision and poor functionality desktop robotic arms on the market, a group of six hardcore robot makers decided to quit their high-paying industry jobs, and build th...
Virtual assistants are the testbeds for tomorrow’s personal robots
Mark Stephen Meadows
22 Sep 2015
Virtual assistants are setting the bar for the kind of user experience people will expect from the social robots of tomorrow....
CoCoRo: Tracking the development of the world’s largest autonomous underwater swarm
Thomas Schmickl
04 Sep 2015
The EU-funded Collective Cognitive Robotics (CoCoRo) project has built the world’s largest swarm of 41 autonomous underwater vehicles (AVs) that show collective cognition. Throughout the first half ...
BUDDY goes into final hours of crowdfunding at +500% of goal; announces new US offices
Blue Frog Robotics
04 Sep 2015
BUDDY, the world's first affordable companion robot, has reached a crowdfunding milestone. With just hours to go on the BUDDY crowdfunding project on Indiegogo, backers have contributed over $501,63...
Silicon Valley’s Crowne Plaza hotel launches Savioke robot delivery service
Adriana Hamacher
05 Aug 2015
Leading hotel operator the InterContinental Group is introducing delivery robots at its Crowne Plaza San Jose-Silicon Valley property. The robots, made by local startup Savioke, will deliver snacks, t...
Japanese telcos vie for share in consumer robot-as-a-service business
Hallie Siegel
29 Jul 2015
View image | gettyimages.com
Yesterday a second Japanese telecommunication firm entered the consumer robot-as-a-service market when the state-owned Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NT...
Robot as marketing strategy: Bosch takes a bet on Rotimatic’s consumer flatbread maker
Andra Keay
22 Jul 2015
First it was robot vacuum cleaners; now it's robot kitchen appliances. Robots are back in the popular imagination as household helpers, and industry seems to be taking a bet on leveraging that int...
BUDDY opensource companion bot meets 100K crowdfunding goal in 1 day; now >200% funded
Blue Frog Robotics
15 Jul 2015
[tweetquote]BUDDY has something to smile about.[/tweetquote] The new open source companion robot by Blue Frog Robotics, launched an Indiegogo campaign on July 7th and sailed past its $100K crowdfu...
Talking Machines: The economic impact of machine learning, with Baidu’s Andrew Ng
Talking Machines
04 Jun 2015
In episode twelve we talk with Andrew Ng, Chief Scientist at Baidu, about how speech recognition is going to explode the way we use mobile devices and his approach to working on the problem....
Residential robotic vacuum cleaner market poised for stellar growth
Vipassa Kakroo
28 May 2015
Although robotic vacuum cleaners have been on the market for over a decade now, it is only recently that they have started to become pervasive. Innovations in technology have allowed manufacturers to ...
Shadow Robot’s Dexterous Hand can do more than cook up a storm
Adriana Hamacher
07 May 2015
The Shadow Robot Company has been perfecting its robot hands for almost two decades, but it took just a short demo by the world’s first robot chef last month to propel this small, London-based start...
Why are JIBO, Pepper, Siri, Google Now and Cortana so important?
Frank Tobe
16 Mar 2015
There's a race going on to see which AI solution providing personal assistance is welcomed by businesses, end users and consumers, and whether this will be physical or virtual....
Robots to serve guests in Japanese hotel | The Telegraph
Hallie Siegel
09 Feb 2015
Guests checking into a new hotel close to the Japanese city of Nagasaki this summer may find themselves complaining that the service is just a little .... robotic.
With due cause. In a paradigm-s...
HoloLens: Microsoft’s Holographic Goggles | WIRED
Hallie Siegel
22 Jan 2015
In several months, Microsoft will unveil its most ambitious undertaking in years, a head-mounted holographic computer called Project HoloLens. But at this point, even most people at Microsoft have nev...
Natural language: The de-facto interface convention for social robotics
Mark Stephen Meadows
21 Jan 2015
Social Robotics: The UX of Natural Language
A very smart and snotty journalist told me that he had spoken with Aldebaran's Pepper system when he was in Boston. Much to his chagrin, the robot didn't ...
What do consumers want? Better batteries, not wearables | Fortune
Hallie Siegel
15 Jan 2015
You wouldn’t guess it wandering the endless displays of gadgets here at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show, but the top tech need on the mind of most Americans isn’t sharper televisions, smar...
SoftBank/Aldebaran Pepper robots go on sale in February
Frank Tobe
15 Jan 2015
IEEE/Spectrum Senior Editor Erico Guizzo describes in a recent post (and two videos) how Aldebaran's two-year Pepper project is coming to fruition....
25 holiday gift ideas for RoboGeeks (2014)
Robohub Editors
21 Nov 2014
[tweetquote]Need some gift ideas for that special robot geek in your life?[/tweetquote] We polled the Robohub team for their favorite ideas, from stocking stuffers to once-in-a-lifetime gifts, so you'...
Over 70,000 robotic vacuum cleaners sold on a single day
Frank Tobe
20 Nov 2014
Just last month Rod Brooks chided me that robotic vacuum cleaners were already mainstream in response to what I had written: that they had just recently moved from niche to mainstream partly because ...
Ground Drone Project: Urban mobile robot chassis
Phillip Walker
13 Nov 2014
The Ground Drone Project wants to make a [tweetquote]low cost ground robot chassis for hobbyists and inventors that is capable of traversing challenging obstacles[/tweetquote]. The project’s origina...
Nestlé 1st big buyer of Softbank’s Pepper robot
Frank Tobe
03 Nov 2014
Earlier this year Softbank announced the launch of Pepper, a robot created specifically for SoftBank and the Japanese market. Last week Nestlé announced that it will use Pepper to sell its Nescafé ...
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 ...
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...
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 ...
Why is Japan the first to get Dyson’s new 360 Eye?
Reno Tibke
10 Sep 2014
This post originally appeared on Akihabara News.
The Dyson 360 Eye autonomous vacuum cleaner went public in Tokyo on September 4th, and it got a lot of attention - enough to make almost any prod...
Recent robotic vacuum launches change industry from niche to mainstream
Frank Tobe
10 Sep 2014
Recent robotic vacuum cleaner product launches by Dyson and Samsung have transformed what once was a niche market of early adopters and robot enthusiasts into a marketplace of serious consumer produc...
Housework 2.0: The battle of the robot vacuum cleaners begins!
Hallie Siegel
05 Sep 2014
The public may be expecting to see robot cyborgs battle it out in distant galaxies, but back here on earth the battle of the robots is taking on a distinctively quotidian reality. The double announcem...
Dyson launches new robotic vacuum cleaner
Frank Tobe
04 Sep 2014
James Dyson announced his new 360 Eye robotic vacuum cleaner, which goes on sale in Japan later this year for $1,250. It will then be available in the UK, Europe, China and Australia later in 2015....
Korean Yujin Robot launches meal transport robot
Frank Tobe
01 Sep 2014
Korean-based Yujin Robot continues to release thoughtful new products. They just announced a meal-transport robot designed to operate in eldercare and other hospitality and health care facilities....
Has Dyson’s robotic dream become a reality?
Adriana Hamacher
01 Sep 2014
[tweetquote]Has Dyson finally cracked its 16-year mission to create a robot vacuum cleaner?[/tweetquote] The company’s teaser video hints at a new release which looks a lot like a rival for the be...
Wearable fashion toy Linkitz teaches girls how to program | TechCrunch
Hallie Siegel
25 Jul 2014
MIT PhD Lyssa Neel is using socializing and accessorizing to get get girls interested in programming. Neel’s invention, Linkitz, is a wearable electronic toy that allows kids to rearrange, take ap...
Jibo raises $1M in first week of crowdfunding campaign
Hallie Siegel
23 Jul 2014
On July 15th, Jibo launched a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo with the goal of raising $100,000 towards developing their new social robot for the home. Less than one week later, Jibo surpassed the ...
JIBO: A game changing social robot
Frank Tobe
20 Jul 2014
JIBO, a 2013 Boston startup, launched an IndieGoGo campaign last week and is off to a rousing start, lots of favorable press, and, as of the time of this writing, has raised more than $700,000 over th...
The second wave of social robots is here
Andra Keay
16 Jul 2014
Cynthia Breazeal’s Jibo launched today and coming on the heels of Pepper, Aldebaran and Softbank’s new social robot, and Jimmy from Intel. It seems like we’re seeing a second wave of social robo...
