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Science, startups and industry at RSS2014 (Part 2)
Andra Keay
15 Jul 2014
The 10th annual Robotics Science and Systems conference (RSS14) is on at the University of California, Berkeley, July 12 to 16, and we are picking up where we left off yesterday on our coverage of t...
Phase-changing material could allow even low-cost robots to switch between hard and soft states | MIT News
Hallie Siegel
15 Jul 2014
http://youtu.be/aozu2C9Kmlg
Read more on MIT News...
Building Social Robots: The Journey of Pleo
Bob Christopher and Jibo
11 Jul 2014
Building a robot company is difficult, very difficult. It requires unwavering belief in yourself, in your idea, in your team and ultimately in your product. But it is also one of the most thrilling ex...
ShanghAI Lectures: Josh Bongard “Morphological Change in Machines Accelerates the Evolution of Robust Behavior”
Nathan Labhart
10 Jul 2014
Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2011-11-17
In this guest lecture, Josh Bongard from the University of Vermont (USA) and co-author of How the body shapes the way we think (MIT Press), talks ab...
Grizzly on the Mars Emulation Terrain at NCFRN
Clearpath Robotics
09 Jul 2014
by Ryan Gariepy
I recently spent over a week in Montreal talking with – and learning from – the Canadian field robotics community, first at the Computer and Robot Vision (CRV) conference and t...
The next big things in robotics
Alan Winfield
08 Jul 2014
Last week I attended the launch event for a new NESTA publication called Our work here is done: Visions of a Robot Economy....
Reader poll: How should an autonomous car optimize crashes?
Open Roboethics Initiative
08 Jul 2014
Photo by Roland Dobbins, Wikimedia
A couple of months ago Dr. Patrick Lin, director of the Ethics + Emerging Sciences Group at California Polytechnic State University, wrote an article on autonomous...
How do you want to interface with your autonomous car? Poll results
Open Roboethics Initiative
07 Jul 2014
Those of you who watched the 80’s TV series “Knight Rider” might remember the dialogue between Michael Knight and its super-car, KITT. Some of you might be more familiar with scenes between “J...
The next era of conversational technology
Roberto Pieraccini and Jibo
04 Jul 2014
In 1922, the Elmwood Button Co. commercialized a toy that could respond to voice commands. The toy, called Radio Rex, was a dog made of celluloid that would leap out of its house when you called its n...
ShanghAI Lectures: Koh Hosoda “Musculoskeletal Humanoids”
Nathan Labhart
03 Jul 2014
Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2011-11-10
In this guest lecture, Koh Hosoda from Osaka University, Japan, talks about human and humanoid intelligence, movement, and bouncing, and introduces t...
Top 10 take-aways from AUTOMATICA 2014
Frank Tobe
02 Jul 2014
When you see a slick robot - say for instance the new Aldebaran Pepper robot - you can easily be distracted by the design, the gestures, the interaction, the cuteness. But AUTOMATI...
My (autonomous) car, my safety: Results from our reader poll
Open Roboethics Initiative
30 Jun 2014
You are travelling along a single lane mountain road in an autonomous car that is approaching a narrow tunnel. You are the only passenger of the car....
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podcast
Computer-Assisted Surgery, with Karol Miller
Ron Vanderkley
27 Jun 2014
In this episode Ron Vanderkley speaks to Prof. Karol Miller, Director of the Intelligent Systems for Medicine Lab at the University of Western Australia, about medical robotics and how doctors and pat...
DARPA announces new challenges, teams, and research goals for the DRC’s finale in June 2015
Ransom Mowris
27 Jun 2014
Teams of roboticists from around the globe will convene in Los Angeles for the third and final round of the DARPA Robotics Challenge on June 5th and 6th, 2015. For this phase, DARPA will be cutting ...
On Pepper, Aldebaran and emotional robotics: Interview with Bruno Maisonnier
Mark Stephen Meadows
24 Jun 2014
Bruno Maisonnier at TedExConcorde. Photo credit: Rodrigo SEPÚLVEDA SCHULZ.
Last week I dropped by Aldebaran’s studio to get a glimpse of Pepper in action, and was pretty excited about this robot. ...
Why social robots will change your life
Cynthia Breazeal and Jibo
24 Jun 2014
It is a fantastic time for technology. We live in a more connected world, and compared to even a few decades ago, we have vastly improved access to information and content, and have dramatically expan...
Reader poll: How would you like to interface with your autonomous car?
Open Roboethics Initiative
24 Jun 2014
We interact with gadgets and devices everyday … some have blinking lights, some play sounds, and some can even decipher our voice commands. When it comes to interfacing with a device as exciting an...
If death by autonomous car is unavoidable, who should die? Reader poll results
Open Roboethics Initiative
23 Jun 2014
Image credit: Craig Berry
Life and death decisions make interesting thought experiments. When you throw an autonomous car into the mix, things get even more interesting....
Noonee: The chairless Chair
NCCR Robotics
20 Jun 2014
Noonee® is a new Start Up company coming out of research in robotics in Switzerland. Aimed at solving healthcare problems within the manufacturing industry, noonee adopts a Chairless Chair® approac...
ShanghAI Lectures: Olivier Michel “Webots: Fast prototyping and simulation of mobile robots”
Nathan Labhart
19 Jun 2014
Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2011-11-10
This presentation introduces Cyberbotics Ltd. with a little bit of history (where it came from), then it presents the Webots software that allows res...
Grasping objects in a way that is suitable for manipulation
Autonomous Robots Blog
19 Jun 2014
This post is part of our ongoing efforts to make the latest papers in robotics accessible to a general audience.
Robots are expected to manipulate a large variety of objects from our everyday lives...
Exoskeleton with haptic sensors helps paralysed man to kick off World Cup
NCCR Robotics
12 Jun 2014
VIDEO UPDATE 06/13 It’s June 2014 and all eyes are on Brazil. If you’re a football fan then June 12th is the day you’ve been waiting for, but eagle-eyed technophiles are likely to have noticed o...
Exclusive Q&A: World cup kickoff looms for demo of brain-controlled machine | Science
Hallie Siegel
12 Jun 2014
During the World Cup next week, there may be 1 minute during the opening ceremony when the boisterous stadium crowd in São Paulo falls silent: when a paraplegic young person wearing a brain-controlle...
ShanghAI Lectures: Fabio Bonsignorio “Embodied Finance: Embodying Disruptive Innovation in Embodied Cognitive Systems”
Nathan Labhart
12 Jun 2014
Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2011-11-03
In this guest lecture, Fabio Bonsignorio from University Carlos III of Madrid, Spain, talks about issues with innovation and robotic startup companie...
Reader poll: If a death by an autonomous car is unavoidable, who should die?
Open Roboethics Initiative
10 Jun 2014
Image source: Karora via Wikipedia.
There may be times when an accident or a death is unavoidable while an autonomous car is controlling the wheel.
What should an autonomous car do when such ...
Research Group from University of Zurich wins KUKA Innovation Award
NCCR Robotics
10 Jun 2014
The team collect their award at the Automatica fair in Munich, June 2014.
Four researchers from Davide Scaramuzza’s Robotics and Perception Group at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, have won ...
Should autonomous cars be allowed to speed? Results from our reader poll
Open Roboethics Initiative
09 Jun 2014
Our previous poll, which asked (among other questions) whether kids should be allowed to ride in autonomous vehicles by themselves, revealed that responsibility is a key issue for most people. Are we ...
Robot selfies, and the road to self-recognition
Oliver Bendel
09 Jun 2014
People take selfies with smartphones and digital cameras (or even with flying robots), and share them on social media, blogs, microblogs and image platforms for social purposes, and though selfies m...
ROS meets precision agriculture at Blue River Technology
Open Source Robotics Foundation
05 Jun 2014
If you were to design the worst possible environment for software engineering, the cramped jump seat of a John Deere tractor would be a contender. The sound and vibration of the engine makes conversat...
ShanghAI Lectures: Claude Patrick Siegenthaler “In Search of Embodied Intelligence in Markets”
Nathan Labhart
05 Jun 2014
Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2011-11-03
In this guest lecture, Claude Patrick Siegenthaler from Switzerland gives a brief introduction to economics and markets and relates them to intellige...
How do self-driving cars work?
Shima Rayej
03 Jun 2014
Nissan’s autonomous car prototype - 2013, photo:Nissan Global
Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, recently announced that the car manufacturer will produce self-driving cars within three years. Nissan has announ...
EU launches world’s largest civilian robotics programme – 240,000 new jobs expected
the European Commission
03 Jun 2014
The European Commission and 180 companies and research organisations (under the umbrella of euRobotics) have launched the world’s largest civilian research and innovation programme in robotics....
Droplets: A low-cost swarm robotics platform for teaching and experimentation
Nikolaus Correll
02 Jun 2014
We have developed a new swarm robotic platform that falls in size, cost and capability between Harvard’s kilobot and the e-Puck. The Droplet is almost spherical, can self-right after being poured ou...
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podcast
Russian robotics, with Roman Luchin and Andrew Gryaznov
Sabine Hauert
30 May 2014
In this episode, Sabine speaks with Andrew Gryaznov, co-founder of Cubic Robotics and Roman Luchin, CEO of CyberTech Labs, about robotics in Russia. They provide us with an inside view on robotics edu...
Pure autonomy: Google’s new purpose-built self driving car
Ioannis K. Erripis
28 May 2014
Google completed a major step in its long and extensive self-driving cars project by presenting its first purpose-built autonomous car, which is designed from scratch for its role and is not a modifie...
Reader Poll: Should autonomous cars be allowed to speed?
Open Roboethics Initiative
27 May 2014
We conducted two polls last month in collaboration with the Open Roboethics initiative to get a sense of what people think about autonomous cars. Our polls started some interesting discussions arou...
