According to Industrie.com, the Swiss-Swedish company, ABB, has launched a touchpad allowing the guided repair and maintenance of robots. This tablet PC allows all minor operations to be carried out without necessarily using a technician on site. It explains in detail the procedure to follow in…
Pirobot is a robot prototype which can focus on a ball of a specific color until it gets it and then concentrates on a second ball. In the video below, Pirobot only sees the green ball; it follows it with its eyes (with its camera) until it can finally hold it in its hands. Immediately afterwa…
We've already introduced you to PR2 in the past, the open-source robotic platform by Willow Garage. Recently we saw that the PR2 was able to autocalibrate on its own. Well, now it can also fold the laundry! The PR2 faced the test of folding 50 towels and succeeded with 100%. For now it only fold…
Do you remember Truckbot HTC G1 which we told you about in early March? Well, here is a new version of this little robot from Tim Heath and Ryan Hickman, this time flashier, in green transparent plastic and mainly, with improved capabilities. Truckbot used to respond to commands via a laptop. …
The Japanese laboratory, Kobayashi Lab, at Waseda University is in the process of developing SCHEMA, a new humanoid robot. It's 1.19 m tall and has 14 degrees of freedom, 6 in the arms and 8 in the head. The aim is to create an emotional humanoid. To achieve this, Schema has been given several …
Dino Segovis has created an all-terrain robot on a roomba platform. The "Urban Roverbot" is a mobile robot which is not satisfied with rolling on flat surfaces, that would be too easy :-) No, the prototype by Segovis is inspired by Mars Exploration Rover and can roll on broken ground amongst st…
American designer Norio Fujikawa has just completed the fantastic concept of a surveillance robot in the form of a spider. Kanibot has 6 legs, a video camera + a camera, motion sensors and an antenna to communicate with its base. Kanibot can venture on almost any terrain like a real spider. …
Rather than resorting to human guinea-pigs to practice the dental profession, Japan has decided to create its own guinea-pig robot, always ready to be operated on in the mouth. Hanako the female robotic patient can salivate, have a runny nose, move her eyes and express pain by speaking. She ope…
The robotics community welcomes a new player: Contineo Robotics. The company will develop robotic hands adept at delicate manipulations, robotic platforms and control systems. The hands will be primarily designed for first responders as well as for military use for handling bombs or explosives.…
Honda has just unveiled its new model of the Asimo humanoid robot: the P4. Careful though, it's not a new version in the literal sense since this model is based on one developed in 2000. The P4 measures 1.60 m in height like the P3 but it has lost weight: from 130 kg to 80 kg. Asimo P4 has 34 …
Yesterday we were telling you about Make Faire 2010 in Newcastle, Great Britain, and a certain Skateboard on two wheels. Its designer, XenonJohn, has just provided all the instructions for making one on his instructables page. He says he's been inundated with emails and requests, as many from th…
Robovie R2 is a little humanoid desktop robot which has an iPod Touch in its stomach which allows instructions to be sent to it. It has a video camera, two microphones and speakers. This prototype, which should be commercialized soon, has been created by IRC (Intelligent Robotics & Communic…
Researchers at McGill University in Montreal (Canada) have just created DNA nanotubes which can deliver "tiny drugs" to diseased cells. The method used: the researchers take the DNA out of its biological context and rather than using the genetic code for life, it acts as a kind of building block f…
The Biorobotics Lab at Carnegie Mellon University has just created an especially evolved prototype of a snake. This snake is able to climb on a vertical bar by crawling like a real snake would. It's one of the first prototypes of its kind in the world to achieve such a feat. http://www.youtube…
The Robust Robotics Group at MIT has created a QuadCopter which can travel about according to vocal instructions. The technician in the video below gives the following order to a helicopter robot: "Go across room 124, then face the windows and go up." This drone carries out the order without di…
Here is an Optimus Prime (self-robotized character from the film Transformers) which is 2.50 metres tall. It is made of 5000 recyclable parts taken from cars, boats, a dishwasher, motorbike, television and other pieces of metal. It still weighs 550 kg though. Along the same lines as with Robos…
