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c-Research-Innovation
Two Horizon 2020 projects researching EU Digital Industrial Platform for Robotics
Carlos Hernandez Corbato and Sara Tucci-Piergiovanni
18 Apr 2017
Market pull for better factory automation and the ever-increasing relevance of software in every domain are triggering a rethink in how we develop software for robotics. Techniques such as Model Driv...
Explained: Neural networks
MIT News
18 Apr 2017
In the past 10 years, the best-performing artificial-intelligence systems — such as the speech recognizers on smartphones or Google’s latest automatic translator — have resulted from a technique...
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232
podcast
Kickstart Accelerator, with Roland Siegwart and Matthias Hüni
Audrow Nash
17 Apr 2017
In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks with Roland Siegwart and Matthias Hüni about Kickstart Accelerator, a Swiss Startup Accelerator. Siegwart leads the Autonomous Systems Lab at ETH Zürich and is on...
Engineering highly adaptable robots requires new tools for new rules
the National Science Foundation (NSF)
13 Apr 2017
Northwestern University mechanical engineering professor Todd Murphey and his team are engineering robots that one might say could make robotic assistance as seamless as "humanly" possible. With suppo...
The startup Launch Pad Competition blasts off at Automate 2017
Oliver Mitchell
13 Apr 2017
What does Magic Johnson and a twenty foot robot have in common? You guessed it, Automate 2017. While this might seem like an odd pairing, it accurately reflects the current state of the robotics indu...
CSAIL launches artificial intelligence initiative with industry
CSAIL MIT
12 Apr 2017
From self-driving cars to the internet of things, artificial intelligence (AI) has reached new levels of sophistication in recent years. With that in mind, this week MIT’s Computer Science and Artif...
Registration now open for 2nd annual Robotic Art Competition
Robohub Editors
11 Apr 2017
The 2017 second annual robotic art competition with $100,000 in cash prizes is now open for team registration. An international competition for all ages, the contest’s goal is to challenge teams to ...
Sports-concussion dilemma: Robot doctors could be the answer in rural America
UT Southwestern
07 Apr 2017
From bustling cities to tiny farming communities, the bright lights of the local stadium are common beacons to the Friday night ritual of high school football. But across the sprawling stretches of ru...
Robolliance on-hand for ISC West’s Unmanned Security Expo
Robohub Editors
03 Apr 2017
This week (April 05-07, 2017), the Sands Expo Center in Las Vegas will host ISC West 2017 in what they say is "the largest security industry trade show in the U.S.", drawing an estimated 29,000+ secur...
Grow a house with plant-robot hybrids
Horizon Magazine
30 Mar 2017
Robots and plants are being intricately linked into a new type of living technology that its creators believe could be used to grow a house....
The cheap arm project: An affordable, open-source robotics project
Dominic Cassidy and Guido Bugmann
30 Mar 2017
What do you get when you put together wood and rope? Well according to Plymouth University's Professor Guido Bugmann: a low-cost, open source, 2 meter tall robot! All buildable for under £2000. The C...
Robot’s Delight: Japanese robots rap about their artificial intelligence
Dylan Glas
28 Mar 2017
"Robot’s Delight - A Lyrical Exposition on Learning by Imitation from Human-Human Interaction" is a video submission that won Best Video at the 2017 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot...
Toward printable, sensor-laden “skin” for robots
MIT News
27 Mar 2017
In this age of smartphones and tablet computers, touch-sensitive surfaces are everywhere. They’re also brittle, as people with cracked phone screens everywhere can attest.
Covering a robot — or...
Engineers design “tree-on-a-chip”
MIT News
22 Mar 2017
Trees and other plants, from towering redwoods to diminutive daisies, are nature’s hydraulic pumps. They are constantly pulling water up from their roots to the topmost leaves, and pumping sugars pr...
Worm-inspired material strengthens, changes shape in response to its environment
MIT News
21 Mar 2017
A new material that naturally adapts to changing environments was inspired by the strength, stability, and mechanical performance of the jaw of a marine worm. The protein material, which was designed ...
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230
podcast
bots_alive, with Bradley Knox
Audrow Nash
18 Mar 2017
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Bradley Knox, founder of bots_alive. Knox speaks about an add-on to a Hexbug, a six-legged robotic toy, that makes the bot behave more like a character. They di...
Security for multirobot systems
MIT News
17 Mar 2017
Distributed planning, communication, and control algorithms for autonomous robots make up a major area of research in computer science. But in the literature on multirobot systems, security has gotten...
Robotic science may (or may not) help us keep up with the death of bees
Frank Tobe
10 Mar 2017
Beginning in 2006 beekeepers became aware that their honeybee populations were dying off at increasingly rapid rates. Scientists are also concerned about the dwindling populations of monarch butterfli...
Beyond 5G: NSF awards $6.1 million to accelerate advanced wireless research
the National Science Foundation (NSF)
10 Mar 2017
The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced a $6.1 million, five-year award to accelerate fundamental research on wireless communication and networking technologies through the foundation's Platfo...
Leg over wheels: Ghost robotics’ Minitaur proves legged capabilities over difficult terrain
Alex Kirkpatrick
07 Mar 2017
Ghost Robotics—a leader in fast and lightweight direct-drive legged robots—announced recently that its Minitaur model has been updated with advanced reactive behaviors for navigating grass, rock, ...
Mind control: Correcting robot mistakes using EEG brain signals
CSAIL MIT
06 Mar 2017
For robots to do what we want, they need to understand us. Too often, this means having to meet them halfway: teaching them the intricacies of human language, for example, or giving them explicit comm...
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229
podcast
IASP 2016: Skolkovo, Waterproof Drones, and Underwater Vehicles, with Albert Efimov, Anastasia Uryasheva and Borris Rozman
Audrow Nash and Christina Brester
05 Mar 2017
In this episode, Audrow Nash and Christina Brester conduct interviews at the 2016 International Association of Science Parks and Areas of Innovation conference in Moscow, Russia. They speak with Alber...
Sneak peek inside two Robotics Innovation Facilities (RIFs) in Europe
Kassie Perlongo
03 Mar 2017
Robotics Innovation Facilities, or RIFs, are robotic labs, financed via the ECHORD++ project by the European Commission. They offer access to high-tech robotic equipment and expertise at zero risk; us...
Bristol professors to play role in creating robots for dangerous nuclear sites
UWE Bristol
01 Mar 2017
The University of the West of England (UWE Bristol) is part of a consortium which has received a £4.6 million grant to build a new generation of robots for use in nuclear sites. The funding from the ...
3D-printed houses and cars on the horizon as manufacturing goes large
Horizon Magazine
01 Mar 2017
Housebuilders and makers of car parts in a few decades time may need nothing more than a large robotic arm, some raw ingredients and a programmable design, thanks to the next-generation of 3D printing...
Boston Dynamics’ newest robot: Introducing Handle
Kassie Perlongo
28 Feb 2017
Handle is a research robot standing 6.5 ft tall, travels at 9 mph and jumps 4 feet vertically. It uses electric power to operate both electric and hydraulic actuators, with a range of about 15 miles o...
Robust bipedal Cassie to transform robot mobility
Kassie Perlongo
24 Feb 2017
Cassie is an advanced legged mobility robot. Created by Oregon State University spin-off, Agility Robotics, Cassie's engineering team has big plans for this robot to assist rescuers in disaster relief...
Drones for good 2.0: How WeRobotics is redefining the use of unmanned systems in developing countries
Waypoint
22 Feb 2017
Robotics undoubtedly has the potential to improve lives in the developing world. However, with limited budgets and expertise on the ground, putting this technology in place is no small task. Step forw...
Discovering optimal strategies for fast robotic walking and climbing
NCCR Robotics
17 Feb 2017
Chances are that you’ve never given much thought to how insects walk, or what combination of leg movements–or gaits–is most stable or fastest, but, if like a group of scientists from Ramdya, Flo...
Switzerland invites international startups to disrupt key industries
Robohub Editors
16 Feb 2017
Kickstart Accelerator, one of Europe’s largest multi-corporate, zero-equity technology accelerators and an initiative of digitalswitzerland, has today announced that applications are open to inte...
NAIST OpenHand M2S released
Felix von Drigalski
16 Feb 2017
The NAIST OpenHand M2S was developed by a team of students as part of the school’s annual CICP project (read the blog post about it here), in which students can propose and organize their own resear...
Researchers add a splash of human intuition to planning algorithms
CSAIL MIT
09 Feb 2017
Every other year, the International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling hosts a competition in which computer systems designed by conference participants try to find the best solution to a...
Seek and destroy: Microrobotic probes test out immune system defenses
Simone Schürle
06 Feb 2017
Robotics, by definition, has been a discipline to aid other fields, such as manufacturing and space exploration. Over the past decade, it has become increasingly important in life sciences; a field th...
Transparent, gel-based robots can catch and release live fish
MIT News
02 Feb 2017
Engineers at MIT have fabricated transparent, gel-based robots that move when water is pumped in and out of them. The bots can perform a number of fast, forceful tasks, including kicking a ball underw...
TERESA project adds a vital component to human-robot interaction: social intelligence
Shimon Whiteson
02 Feb 2017
TERESA is a 3-year research project funded by the European Union and carried out by six institutions from four European countries. Its goal is to develop a new socially intelligent semi-autonomous te...
Wearable AI that can detect the tone of a conversation
CSAIL MIT
01 Feb 2017
It’s a fact of nature that a single conversation can be interpreted in very different ways. For people with anxiety or conditions like Asperger’s, this can make social situations extremely stressf...
