Nao, by Aldebaran Robotics, has been busy this holiday season and prepared some cool presentations for us all to enjoy! Below, its official holiday greeting. Robots can have the jitters too. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqZHkxbiXWA After conquering its stage fear, Nao was able read A Chri
Aldebaran announced recently an update to the very popular Nao. The little robot has now a more robust body, longer curved arms that allow for further reach, an improved motion engine that allows for smoother movements, a cooler head with better heat management, improved speech recognition
Heartland Robotics, a company founded by Rodney Brooks (founder and former Chief Technological Officer at iRobot, and MIT professor) is developing what should constitute a true robolution. Their main objective is to change the way we currently view robots by making them ubiquitous. Heartland R
Many new things happened at Willow Garage recently. So let's go ahead and have a look at all the awesome news. ROS Turns Three The Robot Operating System celebrated its third anniversary. It has come a long way since its beginning and should go even further in the future. See the video below for
A paper presented by a group of computer engineers from Vanderbilt University at the Humanoids Conference in Nashville describes how robots can be used to diagnose and treat emergency room patients. Medical Droid from Star Wars While human would still take care of the most serious patient
Robot arms skilled at wielding knives and carving meat, can be a bit scary, specially for us fleshy humans. Nevertheless, the HAMDAS-R by Mayekawa Manufacturing is a very impressive machine. It is capable of de-boning ham using a razor sharp knife by adapting to the shape and size variat
Inverted pendulums (i.e. balancing a stick on a moving platform) never ceases to fascinate humans, especially when it is done by a robot. Pencil Balancing Robot The robot illustrated in the video below is capable of balancing a pencil on its tip. The motion of the pencil is tracked by two im
About a week after the Open LiDAR project was announced, the Neato XV-11 has been hacked and now its juicy LiDAR data can be used by everybody. This effectively makes the Neato XV-11 not only one of the most advanced vacuum cleaner robots in the market, but also, the cheapest LiDAR available.
Kinect Hacked The Kinect was quickly hacked a few weeks ago and now, the development around this sensor is advancing very fast. The Kinect is a 3D camera made by Microsoft that not only senses a full colour video, but also sees the depth of objects and scenes. [vimeo 17007842] In the robotics …
Some time ago, we announced the nomination for the Top Ten Coolest Robots of 2010. You voted and now the results are in. Let's have a closer look at the ten lucky robots and find out which one is the big winner. #10 Google Car and Bae Systems Taranis Tied These two robots are tied in the number
For quite some time now, Festo, a leading pneumatics company, has been innovating in the robotics field by creating impressive and very unique robots inspired by nature. The video below, is a good summary of their innovative work. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X5KdVS1LFk Make sure you also hav
Everybody knows that robots take jobs that are simply too dangerous or that human do not want to do, filming and taking pictures of bikini models is definitely not one of them. Nevertheless, a very lucky hexacopter UAV got this highly coveted job. UAV Photographing Bikini Model If you want to…
HRP-4C, HRP-4's older sibling, did a nice dance demonstration along with some human fellows. The female robot comes from the well known humanoid robot family made by Kawada. Although the HRP-4C is by far the most human-like of the family, it still has a long way to go in facial expressions, moti
HRP-4C, HRP-4's older sister, did a nice dance demonstration along with some human fellows. The female robot (or gynoid) comes form a large humanoid robot family made by Kawada. The HRP-4C nevertheless, is by far the most human-like of all the brothers. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcZJqiUrbn
iRobot and the University of Chicago released a video of their universal robotic gripper. This gripper that can conform to the shape of seemingly any object. Once it conforms to an object it uses vacuum to become rigid and grip it. This exploits the property of granular materials such as coffee to …
By combining one of their holonomic (omnidirectional) youBot mobile platforms with the Titan, their largest and strongest robotic arm, Kuka created the strongest mobile robot ever. Giants planet-defending robots, here we go! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcZJA3XyVjQ Via Hizook.
