A Silicon Valley homebrew robotics club has added vacuuming capabilities — via a small vacuum-bot stowaway — to its prototype house-cleaning robot. In a newly released video the Readybot picks up clutter from a family room floor, and then releases its pet Roomba to perform the finishing touches.
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Scientists at the University of Pittsburgh have demonstrated a robotic arm being operated by a monkey’s brain activity. Signals transmitted by a microcontroller implanted in the monkey’s brain enable the animal to robotically feed itself pieces of fruit in an effortless and natural manner.
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R&D think tank SRI International claims to have created the first robots to use electrically-controllable adhesion (”electroadhesion”) to reliably climb walls.
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The U.S. Army is backing a project to develop robotic insects aimed at enhancing the military’s situational awareness capabilities. The autonomous, multifunctional miniature intelligence-gathering robots will be capable of operating in places too inaccessible or dangerous for humans.
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ASIMO, Honda’s amazing 51-inch tall humanoid robot, is preparing to conduct the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in a performance of “Impossible Dream.” Along with renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma, the mechanical marvel will open a special concert performance for young people in Detroit on May 13.
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A Silicon Valley homebrew robotics club has released a video demonstrating its kitchen-cleaning robot. The robot scrapes dishes, loads a dishwasher, and scrubs a counter-top with “human-sized” arms and a few simple tools.
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Harvard University’s tiny microrobotic fly, hailed by its creators as “the first robotic fly that is able to generate enough thrust to takeoff,” will be showcased at New York’s Museum of Modern Art starting Feb. 24.
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Sex with robots? Stephen Colbert, news anchor of Comedy Central’s “Colbert Report,” interviewed the author of a recently published book on this intriguing subject last Thursday.
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The personal robot market will be worth $15 billion by 2015, ABI Research forecasts. Although single-function personal robots like iRobot’s “Roomba” vacuum cleaner (depicted at left) will decline in price, some people will begin spending as much on multi-task humanoid robots as they do on cars.
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Some 35,000 high school students from over 1500 high schools in eight countries today began competing in the annual US FIRST student robotics contest.
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A robot built by Kawasaki Japan Cube-Kun reportedly can solve Rubik’s Cube puzzles in less than three minutes, on average.
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Heathkit, which produced and sold mobile robots aimed at hobbyists and students back in the 1980s, is about to reenter the educational robot business. Heathkit’s new “HE-RObot” incorporates an onboard computer running Windows XP Professional on a Core 2 Duo Processor.
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Toyota Motor Corp. this week unveiled a pair of robots aimed at supporting people in their “everyday life,” including a violin-playing model claimed to achieve “human-like dexterity.” Toyota describes the violin-playing robot as an “easy to become familiar with bipedal robot, capable of performing a variety of tasks with its hands and arms.”
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