PETMAN has to be the most physically capable humanoid robot in terms of flexibility, range of motion and robustness. It has been developed by Boston Dynamics, the same people who created BigDog, and is intended to tryout military equipment. Check out this video in order to see the robot, walk, move…
Robotiq Adaptive Gripper The Robotiq adaptive gripper, is a gorgeous heavy-duty dexterous hand for industrial manipulation and research. As you can see in the video below, it can manipulate objects of various sizes and shapes without issue. This type of robot is used in research and in i
The recently released Deus Ex: Human Revolution video game is raising some very interesting questions regarding Cyborgs, bionic implants (or augmentations as they are referred to in the game). The documentary below explores the similarities between the fictitious augmentations and the cu
iRobot has been working for some time now on an inexpensive (relatively speaking) military robot that would allow soldiers to explore hard-to-reach areas without risking their lives. You can see the results of their efforts in the video below, the iRobot 110 throwable robot. http://www.youtube.c
What happens when a 14 year old Formula 1 enthusiast emails Mercedes-Benz asking for a contribution for a new 58 000 $ bionic arm? If Matthew James (from Woking , UK) serves as a reference: he gets it. Matthew was born missing part of his left arm and hand and is now the owner of a very advance
Swarmanoid Swarm robotics -using several simple collaborating robots to accomplish very complex tasks, instead of using a single very complex robot- is becoming increasingly popular. The Swarmanoid project is a perfect example of what can be achieved by using a swarm of small robots. As
The August issue of National Geographic magazine features a fascinating article on robots, find it on newsstands July 26th 2011. In "Making Robots Human," the author Chris Carroll explores the world of robotics, and the advances in technology that allow robots to speak, blink, smile and perform
Jedi Bot is a robot arm wielding a foam "lightsaber" that will try to attack or defend itself from human opponents. This system used the Kinect in order to track its opponent and was put together by students from Stanford. Of course, this is not the first robot wielding a lightsaber, but
PR2 from Willow Garage is now able to help people with disabilities to perform everyday tasks such as manipulating objects shaving and more. The video below illustrates the scope and the results of the Robots for Humanity project that Willow Garage, the Healthcare Robotics Lab at Georgia Tech,
In previous posts, we reported on the aggressive quad-rotors from the University of Pennsylvania which are capable of doing amazing things quite effortlessly. Achieving such impressive results required a lot of hard work, testing and trial-and-error. The video below focuses on the "error" part
The Fit Bot by fits.me started as a human male-shaped robot that would adjust to a man's body size in order to test fit clothes when buying at on-line retailers. Now, they developed a female version of the robot that can don ladies' clothes in a "prettier"way. Fits Me Robot Detail As shown in t
Thomas Nierhoff, a masters student at the Technische Universität München (TUM) programmed a humanoid robot to play pool. Of course we have seen PR2 play pool in the past but this robot does not need any special accessories to hold the pool cue. As shown in the video below, the robot can be very ac
Tim Heath is a robot maker and hacker. We wrote about his work in the past with cellphone robots. Now he is into a new project that requires a completely new set of skills: marriage. Cellphone-based Quadcopter, one of Tim's Projects Much like hacking together robots out of cell phones and v
As we reported in the past, DLR is the proud creator of Justin a very advanced humanoid robot. Lately they have been working in a very robust robotic arm and hand system. The videos below show how they punish their robots with hammers and baseball bats in order to demonstrate how well they e
Get the Second Nao at Half Price This is an incredible promotion from RobotShop and Aldebaran. If you purchase a Nao H25 by June 15th 2011, you can get a second one at half price. This represents savings of almost 8000$. As you may already know, Nao is an awesome humanoid robot that can be u
Another important announcement for the field of robotics was made at Google IO 2011 that complements the announcement for the Android Open Accessory Kit. As shown in the video below about Cloud Robotics (this presentation is very interesting and explores somewhat involved robot programming), the
