Welcome to robotics research and development
The sun may be setting on what David Letterman would call “Stupid Robot Tricks,” as intelligent machines are beginning to surpass humans in a wide variety of manual and intellectual pursuits. In March 2016, Google’s DeepMind software program AlphaGo defeated the reining Go champion, Lee Sedol. Go, a Chinese game that originated more than 3,000…
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Scientists at the US Army Research Laboratory (ARL) and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU) have developed software to ensure that if a robot falls, it can get itself back up. This means future military robots will be less reliant on their soldier handlers. Based on feedback from soldiers at an Army training…
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The image recognition technology that underlies today’s autonomous cars and aerial drones depends on artificial intelligence: the computers essentially teach themselves to recognize objects like a dog, a pedestrian crossing the street or a stopped car. The problem is that the computers running the artificial intelligence algorithms are currently too large and slow for future…
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Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing (ARM) has selected eight technology projects and six workforce development projects resulting from ARM’s first formal project call that was announced in October 2017. The 14 ARM projects have been selected for funding and will kick-off in the coming months, pending final contract negotiations. It’s expected that about $5.4 million in total…
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The Festo Bionic Learning Network has released it latest biomimicry innovations to support ongoing research in engineering, manufacturing, and materials science drawn from natural systems. Here are the 2018 additions to the Festo Bionic Learning Network: A transforming spider that rolls or creeps A robotic fish that autonomously maneuvers through acrylic water-filled tubing A semi-autonomous flying…
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Researchers at MIT, who in 2017 designed a tiny computer chip called “Navion” to help honeybee-sized drones navigate, have now shrunk the chip design even further, both in size and power consumption. Navion is just 20 square millimeters in size and consumes just 24 milliwatts of power. However, the Navion chip is still able to process in real-time…
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Agility Robotics announced at the Robotics Summit & Showcase two free simulators for its Cassie bipedal robot. The simulators will help evaluate the physical capabilities of the Cassie bipedal robot and test control methods. In the opening keynote of the Robotics Summit, Agility Robotics co-founder and CEO Damion Shelton said a simulation library using MuJoCo…
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Researchers from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University and the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have shown how a multi-layered structure can allow robots to mimic an octopus’ kinematics, creating and eliminating joints on command. The structure can also allow robots to rapidly change their…
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More than 650 fluid power manufacturers, users and academics have come here to Aachen, a small western German city, to talk about the future of hydraulics and pneumatics technology, as well as current R&D projects. However, last night, what everyone was talking about was robots. The closing keynote at the 11th International Fluid Power Conference…
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Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu and JD.com from China are in a global competition with Google/Alphabet, Apple, Facebook, Walmart and Amazon from the USA and SoftBank from Japan. All are agressively searching for talent, intellectual property, market share, logistics and supply chain technology, and presence all around the world. These leading tech-savvy companies have many things in…
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