A group of researchers at Rice University and the University of Southern California are working on creating a power source that is run off of bacteria that spits out electrons. The Shewanella oneidensis microorganism consumes metal and produces a waste product of electrons. In a fuel cell, th…
Researchers at the University of Texas have created artificial muscles that are 100 times more powerful that human muscles. The two different types of muscles both consume Oxygen and release the energy in hydrogen and alcohol to do work. One version converts the chemical energy into heat which cont…
It looks like Spirit, one of the Mars rovers, has gotten itself in a bad situation. It's exploring an interesting feature on Mars called "Home Plate", but the Martian winter is coming on, which means low temperatures and low light levels. Scientists would love to say and continue explorin…
The Air Force no longer wants Boeings X-45 unmanned airplane. The Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems program has been scrapped by the Pentagon, along with the $800 million set aside to build and purchase three of the X-45Cs. Boeing will now probably try and compete against the Northrop Grumman X-47 …
There is a video on New Scientist that shows a robot climbing a tree and other vertical surfaces. This is from the RiSE initiative, a descendent of the BR MURI project. BR MURI, Biomimetic Robots Multi-University Research Initiative, focused on building legged robots that ran. The goal of RiSE, Rob…
Pack animals have a long history in the military. The US was reminded of this fact in 2002, when it had to pull in horses and mules to move gear across the Afghanistan wilderness. TACOM responded by giving grants to two robotics companies, Yobotics and Boston Dynamics. Their mission: to produce a m…
A group of students and faculty at Dartmouth University College have created a robot to function in arctic weather and is solar powered. Such a robot was comissioned by NASA to aid in research in the antarctic. NASA's goal is to use the robot to search for evidence of bacteria in Antarctic snow. T…
Have you ever wondered who created the Predator drone? If so, then you'll want to check out this piece by Red Herring about General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GAAS), the creator of the Predator, and it's plans for the future (including Predator B and C!). The company is privately owned by a 55 y…
Remember the sub-launched robotic plane we talked about before? Well, here's some more information on it, courtesy of Popular Science. The plane will be released from a Trident missile tube on an Ohio-class U.S. submarine, surface, then take off. "The [missile] tubes are as long as a semi tr…
From houseflies to honeybees, insects inspire us with flight skills just beyond the grasp of our technology. Z. Jane Wang, a professor at Cornell University, is working to close this gap between inspiration and implementation. Wang’s recent work is on dragonflies, and here she has found some…
Here's an insightful article from the Wall Street Journal about Lockheed Martin's foray into the robot done market. Lockheed, which helped develop the Dragon Eye, and the Desert Hawk is trying to play catch-up to larger robotic drone makers, like Northrup Grumman and Boeing. There're working on inn…
iRobot and John Deere are continuing work on their R-Gator autonomous vehicle. According to a recent press release, they have selected LynuxWorks to provide an embedded Linux RTOS. One wonders why the R-Gator team selected LynuxWorks over Wind River, maker of the software running on the M…
Need a break from the 6-wheel boggy design? Looking for a Martian rover that offers something new? Then take a look at this month's Popular Science, which poses the question "Is This the Machine That Will Finally Find Life on Mars?"The machine is the latest from Carnegie Mellon Universit…
There's something extremely unnerving about the thought of a tiny robot (rc controlled) driving around the inside of my abdomen. It seems very akin to the robot that too up residence inside of Neo on The Matrix. Regardless, Dr. Dmitry Oleynikov and colleagues at the University of Nebraska Medical …
By now, most people have heard of Ken Gracey's amazing 3.5" tall Penguin robots. He wrote an article on them in last month’s Servo magazine. The CNC drawings were published also and some in the robotics community have already built their own (for example, click here).Max Kurz at the Uni…
Dr. Scott Banks, an engineer at The University of Florida has developed a robot that shoots xray videos of moving patients. This will allow doctors to view the bone structure of their patients as they move. This is especially important for persons with orthopedic injuries. “Our goal is come…
