Robohub.org
c-Mapping-Surveillance
194 Chinese robot companies
Frank Tobe
18 Aug 2015
In China, the robotics industry is booming. Companies are deploying thousands of robots in all types of factories, particularly in the auto industry. Chinese companies that manufacture robots and the...
Field and service robotics: Live tweets and pics from #FSRToronto
Robohub Editors
24 Jun 2015
FSR, the biannual single track meeting on field and service robotics, is on now in Toronto. With 42 papers on a range of applications and keynotes by Chris Urmson (Google[x]), Paul Newman (Oxford...
Parrot grows both consumer and commercial drone business
Frank Tobe
10 Apr 2015
Previously known for consumer products for smartphones, tablets and cars, Paris-based Parrot recently branched into both the consumer and commercial drone businesses....
FAA exemption permits drones for oil and gas inspections
Frank Tobe
17 Mar 2015
Sky-Futures, a UK-based company offering drone inspection services to the global oil and gas industry, through their Houston office, was awarded an FAA exemption allowing their drones to fly in US air...
ep.
172
podcast
3D SLAM, with John Leonard
Audrow Nash
27 Dec 2014
In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks with Professor John Leonard from MIT about his research on dense, object-based 3D Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM)....
Enter the abyss with OpenROV, the $899 open source kit
Ben Fisher
26 Dec 2014
The OpenROV submersible is a low cost and open source kit designed for exploration and education. Originally launched on Kickstarter in 2012 it has now grown into a dedicated global community launch...
Ocean-going robot fleet successfully completes fish-tracking mission
National Oceanography Centre (NOC)
04 Dec 2014
The second phase of an ambitious project to gather valuable information on ocean processes and marine life using a fleet of innovative marine robots has just reached its conclusion. Co-ordinated by th...
OpenStreetMap support in Gazebo
Open Source Robotics Foundation
22 Oct 2014
During her internship as part of the Gnome Outreach Program for Women, Tashwin Khurana developed a tool for downloading data from the OpenStreetMap database to produce a corresponding world file fo...
British National Oceanographic Centre launches major unmanned exploration mission
Dronologista
06 Oct 2014
Collecting oceanographic data is usually accomplished by a combination of satellites, buoys and research ships. All those methods have their limitations (e.g. buoys are only gathering info from a fixe...
Real-time appearance-based mapping in action at the Microsoft Kinect Challenge, IROS 2014
Mathieu Labbé
03 Oct 2014
Last month at IROS the SV-ROS team Maxed-Out won the Microsoft Kinect Challenge. In this post Mathieu Labbé describes the mapping approach the team used to help them win....
Liquid Robotics continues its growth by partnering with Boeing
Frank Tobe
24 Sep 2014
Sunnyvale-based Liquid Robotics continues their growth-by-partnering formula by striking another collaboration, this time with Boeing....
PrecisionHawk raises $10M
Hallie Siegel
18 Sep 2014
According to a press release from today:
PrecisionHawk, an information delivery company that uses a small, lightweight UAV and cloud-based software to collect, process and analyze aerial data, today...
UAV Surveys Argyle Diamond Mine in Australian | Aibotix
Hallie Siegel
04 Sep 2014
According to a press release:
East Kimberly Region, Australia / Kassel, Germany, September 4, 2014 – CADS Survey, an Australian supplier of marine, pipeline, and civil surveying services, C.R.Ken...
Martha Stewart: Why I love my drone | TIME
Hallie Siegel
30 Jul 2014
Last year, while celebrating my birthday in Maine, I was given a drone fitted with a high-definition camera. After a quick introduction to the mechanics of operating the contraption and a few words ab...
Drone Startups: Maps Made Easy
Dronologista
30 Jul 2014
Aerial mapping can be quite time-consuming and expensive. Even if you are employing a UAV to do it, it might take hours for all the post-processing, time-stamp shifting and deleting blurred photos. An...
Rescue drone that finds survivors using their cellphones’ WiFi signals
Dronologista
25 Jul 2014
Search and rescue operations are increasingly using drones, and the speed and ease with which UAVs can be launched is especially important when applying them as an emergency response tool. Jonathan C...
Drones against illegal fishing
Dronologista
24 Jul 2014
Image source: Flickr
With industry losses worth US$23 billion per year, illegal fishing represents a major global problem. One out of three bluefin tunas are caught illegally, as are around 20% of a...
Winners of hurricane-tracking UAS design challenge announced | NASA News
Hallie Siegel
09 Jul 2014
From a NASA press release:
A team of students from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) in Blacksburg captured first place in NASA's University Aeronautics Design C...
Quadrotor allegedly seen spying on French team’s closed practice at World Cup
Dronologista
13 Jun 2014
UAVs, or drones, have been making their presence known in sports for some time now, mostly for aerial filming of open air games and races. But they are starting to show up for other uses in sports now...
Aerial drone maps show Philippine typhoon devastation, aid in reconstruction
Adam Klaptocz
07 May 2014
A drone's eye view of the many coconut trees that were uprooted when Typhoon Haiyan struck the Philippines.
Photo Essay
Six months ago, Typhoon Haiyan devastated the Philippine’s South East coast....
Underwater ROV aids in investigation, searches for victims in South Korean ferry tragedy
Hallie Siegel
02 May 2014
The search and rescue team involved in the recent South Korean ferry tragedy has deployed a remotely-operated underwater robot to help in the investigation and hopeful search for possible survivors in...
PulsedLight, Project Tango, Occipital and the Prime Sense problem
Andra Keay
24 Mar 2014
Ever since Apple bought Prime Sense, roboticists have been asking what’s going to fill the gap. Robots need to know where they are and what’s around them. The Carmine, and the unveiled but undeliv...
ROV operations expenditures to grow to $1.5 billion by 2017
Frank Tobe
24 Mar 2014
Douglas-Westwood, an energy research group, says (in their $5,000 World ROV Operations Market Forecast 2013-2017 report), that ROV operations expenditures will grow 80% over the next 5 years....
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...
Packbot: Serving the Military and World Cup Football
Daniel Faggella and TechEmergence
19 Feb 2014
PackBots will be deployed in Brazil during the 2014 World Cup Soccer season to bring a high-tech approach to security. The nation’s government has secured a $7.2 million deal with PackBot’s crea...
Overhead transmission line inspection robots
Frank Tobe
01 Feb 2014
Japanese start-up HiBot, a maker of various types of robots for commercial use such as industrial pipeline cleaning, also developed a high transmission line inspection robot name Expliner. Last week ...
Snap 2014: Aerial drones and 3D mapping software for civil engineering surveying
Frank Tobe
06 Jan 2014
An Irish surveyor tested results (and had those results peer reviewed through the local university) of surveys done by drone and software vs. doing it by hand (which took days longer). The surveyor is...
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...
Lay of the land: Unmanned systems coming to commercial agriculture
Rich Tuttle
25 Oct 2013
Yamaha is testing spraying vineyards in Napa Valley through a COA with the FAA. Photo courtesy Yamaha Corp.
With the global market for unmanned systems in agriculture on the rise, companies that ma...
Matching technology to value creation: Drones in agriculture
Robert Morris
24 Oct 2013
‘Drones in agriculture’ has been a topic hot lately, but is it a real business?
As a former Army UAV platoon leader and a current founder of an aerial data collection start-up, I believe so, bu...
DARC talks about the elephants in the room – freight planes and fighters
Andra Keay
23 Oct 2013
It was fitting that Missy Cummings had the last word at the DARC drones and aerial robotics conference in NY. As an ex-TopGun navy pilot who saw drones taking over her job, she was the one to talk abo...
Ten lessons for farm drones
Chris Anderson
22 Oct 2013
3D Robotics's Vice President of Sales and Marketing John Cherbini prepares to launch a plane at Small Vines Wines in Sebastopol, Ca Sept. 13, 2013. The plane can help day-to-day operations on a farm...
Start-up profile: Knightscope
Frank Tobe
19 Oct 2013
What happens when you mix big data analytics, a policeman, homeland security, some funding from an insurance company and robotics?
You get Knightscope, a Santa Clara, California start-up developin...
Robotic cornucopia: Robohub focuses on the state-of-the-art and the future of agricultural robotics
Hallie Siegel
18 Oct 2013
With an ever-increasing need to feed the world's hungry, the agricultural sector has long been an important boon to the field of robotics: the sector's widespread acceptance and use of automation tec...
Maps & apps
Frank Tobe
08 Oct 2013
Image: senseFly
... Two events, from different parts of the world, on the same day and subject: geographic information systems (GIS) and global positioning systems (GPS) and the use of “layering”...
Students hope their ship inspection robot will significantly reduce dry-dock time for maritime transport industry, improve safety for inspectors
Students take a research tour with Damen ship repairs in Rotterdam.
A team of students from ETH Zurich and ZHdK have developed a prototype for a robotic ship inspection unit that is capable of cond...
