Lookie! Lookie! We got the guy at the iRobot booth to give us a sneak peek at the latest from iRobot, the Scooba! Check out the video below the fold (click Read More). The going price for the Scooba will be $399.
Another main theme of the talks on day 1 was the business development and opportunities in robotics. The first speaker in this series was Neena Buck from Strategy Analytics who talked about commercial opportunities and constraints for mobile robotics. Buck started off by showing how the…
Check out these shots of the packaging and floor display for iRobot's new Scooba. I should have picures and video of the robot actually running tomorrow.
Today's second keynote address, by Matt Mason, of the CMU Robotics Institute, was quite amazing. He showed off several of CMU's robotics related projects. The robotics department at CMU is primarily research focused and has 65 faculty. Mason calls robotics, "where computing meets the real …
Pictured is Dr. Takanori Shibata with his robot seal named Pero. Japan is currently working on several different types of robots: humanoid robots, home robot, pet robot, welfare robot, but Dr. Shibata has chosen the latter, welfare robots, for his project. The seal robot used to prevent dementia a…
This morning's first keynote address was by Walter Weisel, the Chairman and CEO of Innova Holdings. He started off with a very impressive audio/visual "look back" at robotics. Weisel has been in the industry for over 30 years and worked with Joseph Engleberger, the "father of mode…
Well, finally managed to scrounge up an internet connection. This is a $500 dollar conference, people - we shouldn't have to pay the hotel next door to use their WiFi! I'm sitting in a panel right now relating to Developement Issues in Intelligent, Mobile Robotics. I've got quite a bit of news to…
In response to our earlier post about the Vex Robotics Programming kit, it seems that they may realy be available this time. Everyone's favorite electronics (cell phone?) store, Radio Shack, now lists the item as "In stock" for website and phone orders. The word I'm getting is that it isn…
This fits squarely into the, "umm ... why?" category of items. ThinkGeek is selling a collection of "static statues of really slick robot designs," with each one being, "around 500 microns in size." That's about 3x the width of your hair. And lest ye be concerned they …
The privately held LiftPort Group Inc. made one of it's milestones in its quest to build a space elevator. A robot has successfully climbed up a 1,000 ft long 'rope' to a teathered baloon. The rope was actually an ultra strong carbon nano-tube ribbon that will eventually be stretched from a platfor…
Note: Lest ye be confused, this is actually a few years old. FYI. I stumbled upon this via Del.icio.us. It's a beautifully rendered short film with this premise: "What if we could build a system to help police in developing nations?" The solution, presented in breathtaki…
Check out this great page, the "Unmanned flight machines for fight & monitoring" Gallery. It's in German, so I've linked to the Google translation. It shows a huge list of UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) along with descriptions. A lot of these I've never seen before. Also included are…
Oh man, I want one of these! Unveiled on September 18th at, "An exhibition of major achievements of the national 10th Five-Year program," The "Huitong" robot, "possesses functions including sense of sight, audio dialogue, sense of force and sense of balance. This humanoid r…
A team of folks from across the pond, University of Southampton, claim to have invented the best artificial hand so far. That's quite a claim for the 6 motor device. The, "team has designed a prototype that uses six sets of motors and gears so each of the five fingers can move independently.&q…
A robot has been invented that can weed crops. The robot strolls down crop rows, distinguishing between weeds and the good plants, removing the weeds. It was invented by a Swedish guy from Halmstad University, named Björn Åstrand (the abstract for his PhD thesis is here). In a world whe…
I know I posted recently about the Predator drone killin' some Iraqi baddies, but that was a picnic compared to this! "Robotic warplanes, finding and attacking targets by themselves, have been successfully tested. "In early August, two American Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAVs)…
