We love Festo's creations. The most recent addition to their family of soft, flexible, nature-inspired robots is the SmartBird. As shown in the video below, at first sight, the robot looks like a regular sea gull (albeit a silver one). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnR8fDW3Ilo This autonomous
As you might remember, Robonaut 2 was sent to the ISS a few weeks ago. As shown in the video below, the human astronauts had a big surprise when they finally opened the storage crate that contains the humanoid robot. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hkagxtiy1-M It seems the naughty robot got o
Robotiq Gripper with Yaskawa Arms It is always exciting to see Quebec robotic innovation. Robotiq is a Quebec company that developed a very interesting robotic gripper that can adapt to various types of objects as shown in the video below. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87skD0jny78 Even more impr
After defeating Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings at Jeopardy!, Watson, the robot by IMB, went on to become a physicians helper. What would be the most suitable job for a robot that can quickly search trough an immense database and find the answer to a question? We do not know. But diagnosing illnes
There have been two noteworthy developments in the last week for Aldebaran and Nao, their humanoid platform. Let's have a look at this exciting news. Nao Charging Station As announced in Tokyo last weekend, Nao get's a charging station that allows the robot to autonomously recharge itself when ne
Skynet is slowly becoming a reality. A Google researcher suggests that the future of robotics is in cloud-computing. This means that robots could offload their more complex tasks to remote servers that could do the heavy computations. It also means that robots could instantly learn new skills
Hiroshi Ishiguro hits us again with a new creepy robot. The Japanese roboticist has been populating the Uncanny Valley with his creations for some time now. This time, he brings us a smaller version of the very scary robot Telenoid R1. Although this new version is much smaller than the ori
One small step for a robot... We'll let you figure out the rest. Robonaut 2 by Nasa an GM Robonaut 2, a.k.a. R2 for short, was developed by NASA and GM in order to help humans perform their job, whether it is on the ISS or down on earth. This robot became the first, but certainly not the
IBM Watson Watson, a super computer from IBM is challenging the human Jeopardy! champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter in the first Man vs. Machine Jeopardy! competition. Below you can see a nice teaser for the competition. The first round already took place on Monday, February 14th 201
Hanson Robotics Zeno Human-like Robot Usually, human-like robots come from Japan or Korea, but Lately, Hanson Robotics (from the USA) has been working hard on producing remarkably accurate human-like heads for robots. These heads can express emotions through facial expressions, can talk and
SaRTrE Volvo Auto Train Volvo is testing their new Safe Road Trains for the Environment, which basically means, cars that drive autonomously. The system is intended to be used on highways where a lead (human driven) truck will be followed by autonomously driven cars. The cars will receive instr
Since the Kinect was released, lots of robotic applications have been developed around it. One of them is the teleoperation of humanoid robots using skeletal tracking. The pioneer in humanoid robot control using the Kinect is Taylor Veltrop, who controlled his Veltrobot (based on the KHR family) u…
Some time ago, Aldebaran Robotics launched their developer program for their popular Nao humanoid platform. The idea is to prepare the little robot for mass commercialization by releasing it to a select group of developers who will create applications for it. The robot is sold to the devel
From RobotShop we wish you all a happy new year. May 2011 be filled with all the robots you always wished to have. If you are looking for creative and original ways of celebrating the new year, the THKR-4 is a very good choice to have at your New Year's party. This robot is one of the competito
Internet of Things Hans Vestberg, CEO of Ericsson, believes there will be over 50 Billion "connected devices" by 2020. The world's leading telecom provider says that "in the future everything that would benefit from being connected will be connected". This effectively creates the upcoming Inte
So far Robots have been programmed to avoid things when navigating in their environment. Sébastien Lengagne of Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Tsukuba, Japan developed a method for robots to use objects (which would otherwise be seen as "obstacles")
