osito robot

Moket

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futurescope:

Combat Exoskeleton Marches Toward Afghanistan Deployment

Lockheed appears to be on track for deploying combat versions of the HULC exoskeleton into Afghanistan in early 2013 or even late in 2012.
The HULC can assist speed marching at up to 7 mph reduces this somewhat; a battery-draining “burst” at 10mph is the maximum speedA soldier with a pack would normally go at 3 mph maximum and cover 10-12 miles in a day. Exoskeleton Soldiers could also carry lightweight foldable electric scooters on their exoskeleton that would enable 60-100 mph on roads. If the bike had motocross like capabilities it could still go about 30-60 mph on rougher terrain.

[read more @wired @nextbigfuture]

Video: Cute office robot helps you find your stationery.

The Hitachi EMIEW2 uses cameras and voice recognition to help out in offices. Using it’s “locate and guide” function, the robot can scan the internet to identify a wide range of items, so if you ask it to go and find your 3-hole punch it should be able to go and get it for you. It can also access network cameras to scan an entire office for that stapler Jerry borrowed last week and then lost.

(Source: singularityhub.com)

37 notes | 1 week ago

thatssostanford:

A recap of Stanford’s third annual Robot Block Party. It ain’t a party until dancing robots and driver-less cars walk in.

7 notes | 1 week ago

130

motherfuckinscifi:

Fog Mecha by samsonsreaper

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wildcat2030:

Electrical engineers, psychologists, surgeons and more work together creating robots of the future at the University of the West of England. There are small robots and big ones; flying robots and swarming robots; even whiskery robots. The variety is astonishing, and the variety is the point of the place. Prof Chris Melhuish, director of the Bristol Robotics Lab, says the scientists at the lab come from 17 countries and have a range of specialisms. “As well as electrical engineers and mechanical engineers, which you’d expect, we’ve got microbiologists, neuroscientists, surgeons, even psychologists,” he says. Dr Alex Lenz shows me Bert, a robot who he has taught to pick up a metal leg from a table. “Get leg three”, he commands and Bert obeys. The robot sees the leg on the table in front of him and calculates a route to pick it up. Importantly, the leg can be anywhere. This is not a pre-programmed action, but a new manoeuvre worked out each time by the robot. (via BBC News - Robots of the future designed at new Bristol laboratory)

81

wildcat2030:

“Please don’t put me in the closet,” cries the robot. Last week, we wrote about a study that looked at whether humans attribute moral accountability and emotions to robots. This week, we’ve got a study from the same group, the Human Interaction With Nature and Technological Systems Lab (HINTS) at the University of Washington, that takes a look at what kind of relationships children are likely to form with social robot platforms, and it involves forcing their new robot friend into a dark, lonely closet. The 90 children in this study were separated into three groups by age: 9 year olds, 12 year olds, and 15 year olds, with an equal mix of boys and girls. As with the previous study, the robot involved in the research was Robovie, a vaguely humanoid robot that was secretly teleoperated to give it the appearance1 of a sophisticated (but not necessarily unrealistic) level of autonomy and interactivity. (via Do Kids Care If Their Robot Friend Gets Stuffed Into a Closet? - IEEE Spectrum)

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futurescope:

Chinese Restauranteur Boasts 18 Robot Workers

A restaurant in Harbin, China staffs 18 robots; one to welcome customers as they arrive, others to cook the food, and more to deliver plates to tables. The owner says the robots, which cost between 200,000~300,000 yuan ($32,000~$48,000 USD), can display 10 different emotions and speak simple phrases.
The robot stops automatically if a customer gets in its way thanks to ultrasonic range sensors, and will sound an alarm if it needs to be repaired. And it knows to return to its power source when it gets low on juice (its batteries have a life of around 5 hours).

[source]

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joshbyard:

Italy’s Answer To American Robot Quadrupeds? A Robot Centaur:

The researchers acknowledge that their robot still needs improvements before it can achieve the performance levels of Boston Dynamics’s famed quadrupeds, BigDog and AlphaDog, which can climb slopes, walk over icy surfaces, and even keep their balance after getting kicked. “We haven’t kicked our robot yet,” says Jonas Buchli, team leader of the HyQ project and a locomotion software expert. “But it’s starting to look eerily similar [to the way BigDog walks] … It looks almost like an animal.”
The IIT team is working with an Italian company to equip the robot with an on-board hydraulic system, which would eliminate the tether, an upgrade that should happen over the next several months. Another improvement is to add more sensors, including a Velodyne LIDAR, for mapping and navigation. (The researchers will describe HyQ’s systems in research papers but do not plan to make all hardware and software open source.)
And soon, HyQ will get a pair of manipulation arms, becoming, in effect, a kind of robotic Centaur [see CAD images below showing conceptual designs of the arms in stowed and extended configurations]. “We want to combine the advantages of both legs and arms,” Buchli says. ”Adding manipulation to a stable locomotion platform opens up some interesting possibilities.”

(via Italian Quadruped Robot Goes for a Walk - IEEE Spectrum)