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DARPA’s Gill Pratt on Google’s robotics investments
Gill Pratt and Robohub Editors
19 Mar 2014
When Google bought Boston Dynamics last December, the news made headlines, but it was not the first time the Internet giant has invested in DARPA-funded robotics. As part of Robohub's Big Deals series...
Self-contained soft-bodied robotic fish
Daniel Faggella and TechEmergence
19 Mar 2014
What looks like a fish, swims like a fish but isn’t a fish? The latest in soft-bodied robots created by team of engineers of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at th...
ShanghAI Lectures 2013, Lecture 8-II – Education and Industry Session
Fabio Bonsignorio
18 Mar 2014
Lecture 8-II: Education and Industry Session
This lecture hosted by Prof. Samia Nefti-Meziani from the University of Salford, Manchester, UK, is about higher education and industrial impact of the ...
Robotics in reach: Your smartphone could be a robot brain
Daniel Faggella and TechEmergence
18 Mar 2014
António Câmara is a man with a vision.
Despite the widespread adoption of computers and digital technology over the last few decades, how we interact with that technology, and use technology to i...
NAO Next Gen now available for a wider audience
AJung Moon
13 Mar 2014
As of yesterday, you can get the adorable and versatile humanoid robot NAO from Aldebaran Robotics for yourself, even if you are not an academic or a hardcore developer. According to Génération R...
Lifehand 2 prosthetic grips and senses like a real hand
NCCR Robotics
12 Mar 2014
Amputee Dennis Aabo Sørensen wearing sensory feedback enabled prosthetic in Rome, February 2013 (Lifehand 2, Patrizia Tocci).
Roboticists and doctors working in Switzerland and Italy have come toget...
Machine consciousness: Fact or fiction?
Igor Aleksander and Footnote
10 Mar 2014
My workday is over. What do I want to do now? I picture calling my wife to suggest dinner at that nice Italian restaurant and imagine the taste of gnocchi quattro formaggi. Then I remember promising ...
Micro bio-bots powered by beating heart cells
Daniel Faggella and TechEmergence
10 Mar 2014
Photo by Alex Jerez Roman, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
A paper in Nature Communications earlier this year reports on "bio-bots". These tiny machines inspired by sperm, are ...
ShanghAI Lectures 2013, Lecture 8-I – Ontogenetic development: From locomotion to cognition
Fabio Bonsignorio
10 Mar 2014
Lecture 8-I: Ontogenetic development: From locomotion to cognition
In this lecture, hosted at the University Carlos III of Madrid in Spain, I show how it is possible to ground ‘understanding...
The gateway to advanced neuroprosthetics: Jessica Feldman talks BrainGate and BCI
Daniel Faggella and TechEmergence
07 Mar 2014
If the human brain is considered a computer, what does that mean for science and our lives? Could we repair damaged areas, replace damaged parts, or even upgrade our own minds? It might sound like lit...
ShanghAI Lectures: Shuhei Miyashita “Tribolon: Scalable Self-Assembling Robots”
Nathan Labhart
06 Mar 2014
Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2010-12-02
Self-assembly is of crucial importance in the biological realm at all scales. This talk introduces a series of self-assembling robots developed in ou...
Quadrocopter failsafe algorithm: Recovery after propeller loss
Mark Mueller
04 Mar 2014
UPDATE 04/03/2014:
In this video update, we show that a quadrocopter can be safely piloted by hand after a motor fails, without the aid of a motion capture system. This follows our previous video, ...
Engineers build brain-controlled music player
Daniel Faggella and TechEmergence
04 Mar 2014
Imagine if playing music was as simple at looking at your laptop screen. Now it is thanks to Kenneth Camilleri and his team of researchers from the Department of Systems and Control Engineering and th...
Academic and industry collaboration (Part 4): Interview with Raffaello D’Andrea
Florian Röhrbein
28 Feb 2014
In this 4th interview of our four-part ECHORD series, conducted last June, Sascha Griffiths from TUM talks to Raffaello D'Andrea, Professor of Dynamic Systems and Control at ETH Zurich and technical c...
ShanghAI Lectures: Serge Kernbach “Collective and Modular Robotics: Fundamentials and Frontiers”
Nathan Labhart
27 Feb 2014
Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2010-12-02
Collective systems play very important role on Earth, and we encounter them in all sizes, scales and forms; in biological and technological areas; in...
Using geometry to help robots map their environment
Autonomous Robots Blog
26 Feb 2014
This post is part of our ongoing efforts to make the latest papers in robotics accessible to a general audience.
To get around unknown environments, most robots will need to build maps. To help the...
From disembodied bytes to robots that think and act like humans
Colin Allen and Footnote
25 Feb 2014
When IBM’s Watson supercomputer triumphed over two top Jeopardy champions in February 2011, the media buzzed with talk of artificial intelligence (AI), just as it had fourteen years earlier wh...
ShanghAI Lectures 2013, Lecture 6 – Soft Robotics and Bioinspiration II
Fabio Bonsignorio
24 Feb 2014
Lecture 6 - Soft Robotics and Bioinspiration II
In this second lecture hosted by the Scuola Superiore S. Anna, Matteo Cianchetti builds on the previous lecture to talk about building soft actuato...
ShanghAI Lectures: Xiao’an Li “Action Skill Developmental Learning for Autonomous Soccer Robots”
Nathan Labhart
20 Feb 2014
Robocub 2013 in Eindhoven.
Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-12-17
In the past decade, soccer robots have been developed greatly, and some of the robot soccer games have been showing more ...
Why intelligence requires both body and brain
Colin Allen and Footnote
18 Feb 2014
Western philosophy has traditionally separated mind from matter and brain from body. In recent years, however, cognitive scientists have turned the assumption on its head that we can study the mind b...
What do teachers mean when they say ‘do it like me’?
Autonomous Robots Blog
17 Feb 2014
This post is part of our ongoing efforts to make the latest papers in robotics accessible to a general audience.
Teaching robots to do tasks is useful, and teaching them in an easy and non time-i...
ShanghAI Lectures 2013, Lecture 4 – Evolution: Cognition from scratch
Fabio Bonsignorio
10 Feb 2014
This week we publish the fourth of the ShanghAI Lectures 2013 Edition on Robohub — we will release a new lecture from this series every Monday until the series is complete. Please use the comments ...
Industry and Society, with Rezia Maria Molfino
Per Sjöborg
07 Feb 2014
Link to audio file (33:13)
In today’s episode Per Sjöborg speaks with Rezia Molfino from the PMAR group at University of Genova about how all robots are service robots, it's just that they serv...
ShanghAI Lectures 2013, Lecture 3: Cognition and embodiment
Fabio Bonsignorio
03 Feb 2014
This week we publish the third of the ShanghAI Lectures 2013 Edition on Robohub — we will release a new lecture from this series every Monday until the series is complete. Please use the comments s...
How biotech might pool the power of the human brain – with Proteo.me CEO Ivo Georgiev
Daniel Faggella and TechEmergence
22 Jan 2014
Artificial intelligence has it’s advantages. Systematically, over decades of research and development, AI has come to dominate human intelligence in a number of specific and often limited tasks. Yet...
ShanghAI Lectures: Alois Knoll, Mary Ellen Foster, Manuel Giuliani “Joint-Action Science and Technology”
Nathan Labhart
16 Jan 2014
Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-12-10
The success of the human species critically depends on our extraordinary ability to engage in joint action. Our perceptions, decisions and behaviour ar...
Emotive communication with things – EmoShape Founder Patrick Levy Rosenthal
Daniel Faggella and TechEmergence
14 Jan 2014
Photo credit: Image Agency
Why do people who use Facebook spend so much of their online time there? Why do people want to share, to comment?
Patrick Levy Rosenthal asked himself these answers and wa...
Swiss to invest almost CHF30 million in digital fabrication research over next 4 years
Hallie Siegel
13 Jan 2014
Photo credit: Gramazio & Kohler, ETH Zurich
Over the next four years, the Swiss will invest almost CHF30 million to build a new National Centre of Competence in Research for digital fabrication i...
New-tech grippers hit the market
Frank Tobe
13 Jan 2014
Empire Robotics, a Boston-based start-up, is beginning to sell their VERSABALL kits, a new-tech jamming gripper enabling adaptive gripping operations with a single inexpensive tool.
Filled with a g...
7 consumer robots to look out for from CES 2014
Shima Rayej
11 Jan 2014
This year’s CES in Las Vegas showcased some of the latest technologies from both established and up-and-coming robotics companies. Drones, telepresence robots, automated cleaning devices and enter...
Interdisciplinary Teams, with Giulio Sandini
Per Sjöborg
10 Jan 2014
Link to audio file (41:58)
In today’s episode Per Sjöborg speaks with Giulio Sandini, director of the Robotics, Brain and Cognitive Sciences department at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT)...
Micro-robotics and medicine: Interview with Toshio Fukuda
Hallie Siegel
07 Jan 2014
An international leader in the field of robotics and automation, Toshio Fukuda is best known for his pioneering work on micro robotics systems — including microsensors and micro actuators — a...
GLXP Update: Penn State Lunar Lions now in #3 spot
Robert Morris
07 Jan 2014
What are they putting in the water in the Keystone state? It turns out that Penn State Lunar Lions team announced plans to get launched to the moon as well. They have made a deposit for a ride in ...
Robots at home: Interview with Assistobot CEO Tjin Van Der Zant
TechEmergence and Daniel Faggella
05 Jan 2014
Tjin Van Der Zant helped found “Robocup at Home” in 2006, and since then the organization has spread to include a number of new locations everywhere from Brazil to Thailand. As a professor at the ...
Mapping in the Cloud
Markus Waibel and Gajan Mohanarajah
23 Dec 2013
UPDATE: New video of a collaborative, cloud-based mapping experiment. Mapping is essential for mobile robots and a cornerstone of many more robotics applications that require a robot to interact with...
Cubli – A cube that can jump up, balance, and walk across your desk
Gajan Mohanarajah and Markus Waibel
20 Dec 2013
2022 update: A new, one-wheeled version of the Cubli has been developed. The one-wheel Cubli is a three-dimensional pendulum system that can balance on its pivot using a single reaction wheel, as it i...
