Latest in Robotics news thread

[ScienceRocks]

Robofish Grace glides with the greatest of ease

Robofish Grace glides with the greatest of ease

A high-tech robotic fish hatched at Michigan State University has a new look. A new skill. And a new name. MSU scientists have made a number of improvements on the fish, including the ability to glide long distances, which is the most important change to date. The fish now has the ability to glide through the water practically indefinitely, using little to no energy, while gathering valuable data that can aid in the cleaning of our lakes and rivers.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Robot Serves Up 360 Hamburgers Per Hour

No longer will they say, “He’s going to end up flipping burgers.” Because now, robots are taking even these ignobly esteemed jobs. Alpha machine from Momentum Machines cooks up a tasty burger with all the fixins. And it does it with such quality and efficiency it’ll produce “gourmet quality burgers at fast food prices.”

With a conveyor belt-type system the burgers are freshly ground, shaped and grilled to the customer’s liking. And only when the burger’s finished cooking does Alpha slice the tomatoes and pickles and place them on the burger as fresh as can be. Finally, the machine wraps the burger up for serving.

And while you fret over how many people you invited to the barbecue, Alpha churns out a painless 360 hamburgers per hour.

Robot Serves Up 360 Hamburgers Per Hour | Singularity Hub

 

[Mr. H.]

Robot Serves Up 360 Hamburgers Per Hour

No longer will they say, “He’s going to end up flipping burgers.” Because now, robots are taking even these ignobly esteemed jobs. Alpha machine from Momentum Machines cooks up a tasty burger with all the fixins. And it does it with such quality and efficiency it’ll produce “gourmet quality burgers at fast food prices.”

With a conveyor belt-type system the burgers are freshly ground, shaped and grilled to the customer’s liking. And only when the burger’s finished cooking does Alpha slice the tomatoes and pickles and place them on the burger as fresh as can be. Finally, the machine wraps the burger up for serving.

And while you fret over how many people you invited to the barbecue, Alpha churns out a painless 360 hamburgers per hour.

Robot Serves Up 360 Hamburgers Per Hour | Singularity Hub

Great idea for a consistently busy establishment. But during the "slow" hours, all the ingredients must remain cold. And I bet cleaning that equipment is a bitch.

 

[ScienceRocks]

NASA's RASSOR robot could mine the Moon for water and ice

Raymond Wong

NASA's RASSOR robot could mine the Moon for water and ice | DVICE
Wednesday, January 30, 2013 - 5:12pm

Now that NASA is pretty sure there's water on the Moon and Mars, the next step is extracting it for us to use. It's not like NASA can just send some astronauts up with jackhammers, though: digging on the Moon will require a robot, so it's a good thing NASA has just the right one for the job.

RASSOR, short for Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot, is a tank-like robot with spinning digging drums for arms. The 100-pound prototype robot is designed to dig up lunar soil and transfer it to a processing unit for automatic water and ice extraction. The goal is to ultimately turn the chemicals within the soil into "rocket fuel or breathing air for astronauts working on the surface" of the Moon. Sounds like a good start for a lunar colony, doesn't it?

 

[Mr. H.]

You ignoring me?

Clean the equipment, bitch.

 

[ScienceRocks]

You ignoring me?

Clean the equipment, bitch.

We need another robot to clean the damn thing?

 

[ScienceRocks]

Veebot’s Needle Wielding Robot to Automate Blood Draws

Veebot?s Needle Wielding Robot to Automate Blood Draws | Singularity Hub

Taking blood is a fine art. Even the most experienced practioner may require more than one stab to find a vein—seems only natural to wonder, might a robot do the job better? Mountain View’s Veebot thinks so. Veebot wants to take the art out of needlework with their robotic venipuncture machine.

In the litigious healthcare industry, if they get it right, one imagines there will be a market—maybe a big one. According to Veebot, there are two million reported needlestick injuries a year. 20% to 25% of all venipunctures miss the mark on their first attempt. The danger may seem minor—two tiny pinpricks instead of one.

But there’s more to it than just that.

The problem is failed “sticks” don’t only result in a little discomfort and a second attempt. Sometimes practitioners miss the vein and hit a nerve instead causing temporary to permanent damage depending on the depth of the miss.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Veebot’s Needle Wielding Robot to Automate Blood Draws

Veebot?s Needle Wielding Robot to Automate Blood Draws | Singularity Hub

Taking blood is a fine art. Even the most experienced practioner may require more than one stab to find a vein—seems only natural to wonder, might a robot do the job better? Mountain View’s Veebot thinks so. Veebot wants to take the art out of needlework with their robotic venipuncture machine.

In the litigious healthcare industry, if they get it right, one imagines there will be a market—maybe a big one. According to Veebot, there are two million reported needlestick injuries a year. 20% to 25% of all venipunctures miss the mark on their first attempt. The danger may seem minor—two tiny pinpricks instead of one.

But there’s more to it than just that.

The problem is failed “sticks” don’t only result in a little discomfort and a second attempt. Sometimes practitioners miss the vein and hit a nerve instead causing temporary to permanent damage depending on the depth of the miss.

 

[editec]

That's what I've been trying to tell folks.. Low skilled sweat labor is pretty much dead. Those robot hamburglars are gonna have a ball flirting with the customers during the break.

But they'll always be jobs TEACHING robots to assemble customized or new menu items.

We have a MONSTROUS societal shift about to take place... As large and disruptive as the industrial revolution.. And all we want to talk about is how evil rich folks are responsible for taking all the jobs away.. We're being badly misled..

Oh, its going to be far FAR worse than the shift to industrialism, I think.

As to your faith that there will always be jobs teaching robots (which I presume you mean there will always be programmers?).

Yes, but the number of people capable of doing that effectively will continue to be a smaller and smaller part of the population.

Computer technology's assault on the value of human labor AND human intellectual activity, too, is speeding up, not slowing down.

The vast majority of the human workers (doing both menial and intellectual labor) is becoming redundant.

It isn't JUST factory workers whose jobs are threatened.

I know many of you doubt this.

But consider for example, how much easier it is now do do basic REAEARCH.

I can now find data in micro-seconds that twenty years ago, it might have taken me months to find.

I can now have statsitical analysis done for me that formerly I'd have had to hire a statistican to do for me.

The value of human labor, both meanial and intellectualy labor, is eroding right before your very eyes, kiddies.

Tell youself this won't effect special YOU, if that helps, but denying that this trend isn't going to effect all of us sooner or later is desperate denial of the truth that by now every one of you should be able to see.

Think back just 20 years.

What can you do more cheaply and easily now, thanks to changing technology, than what you did back then?

 

[ScienceRocks]

Robots can be a very good thing as our society could be fed not needing to pay someone(giving him benefit), so it's easier to give everyone food as it becomes a moral issue.



US military’s BigDog robot learns to throw cinder blocks, grenades…
By Sebastian Anthony on March 1, 2013 at 9:04 am
US military?s BigDog robot learns to throw cinder blocks, grenades? | ExtremeTech

Boston Dynamics, the robotics company behind AlphaDog, Petman, and Cheetah, has now outfitted its BigDog robot with an arm that’s capable of flinging 50-pound (23kg) concrete blocks across a room at high speed.

This really is as terrifying as it sounds — but if you don’t trust me, watch the video below.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Researchers create an Internet for robots

Researchers create an Internet for robots

Software engineers at five European universities have developed a cloud-computing platform for robots. The platform allows robots connected to the Internet to directly access the powerful computational, storage, and communications infrastructure of modern data centers—the giant server farms behind the likes of Google, Facebook, and Amazon—for robotics tasks and robot learning. Read/Comment

 

[ScienceRocks]

Researchers create an Internet for robots

Researchers create an Internet for robots

Software engineers at five European universities have developed a cloud-computing platform for robots. The platform allows robots connected to the Internet to directly access the powerful computational, storage, and communications infrastructure of modern data centers—the giant server farms behind the likes of Google, Facebook, and Amazon—for robotics tasks and robot learning. Read/Comment

 

[ScienceRocks]

Fearsome UK Robot Aircraft Is Semi-Autonomous and Will Fly in 2013
Fearsome UK Robot Aircraft Is Semi-Autonomous and Will Fly in 2013 | Singularity Hub

There’s a robotic arms race on. We recently covered the US Navy’s X-47B drone, a stealth jet capable of landing autonomously on an aircraft carrier. Well, not to be outdone by its trans-Atlantic ally, the UK’s Ministry of Defense (MoD) is said to be soon testing a superdrone called Taranis. The drone is designed to fly intercontinental missions at supersonic speeds, undected by radar—and almost completely free of human direction.

Named after the Celtic god of thunder, Taranis is a £142.5 million ($223.25 million) project under development by British aerospace firm BAE and the MoD since December 2006. BAE says Taranis will “push the boundaries” of stealth and autonomy.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Window Cleaning Robots Making Their Way To Skyscraper Happy United Arab Emirates



Source: Serbot

These robotic window washers are not afraid of heights, high winds, or hard-to-reach places. Gekko Façade and its sister, solar panel cleaning robot Gekko Solar, imitate their lizard namesake by clinging to high places that would unnerve the most intrepid of humans. Which is why the humans could very soon be out of the job.

Gekko Façade is better than window washers, hanging precariously outside office windows on a swinging platform. Not only for the sheer glass it can cover – 576 square meters per hour – but its suction cup feet allow it to stay safely attached while it cleans with a rotating brush, even on curved surfaces. It’s sufficiently nimble to get to all those hard to reach places like a Spiderman Roomba. Of course, it doesn’t always perform death-defying cleaning stunts. Gekko Façade can clean flat surfaces as well.

Gekko Solar is the insect-like robot that crawls across solar panels, cleaning along the way at a rate of 3,000 square meters per hour. And Gekko Solar does more than just clean solar panels. A contactless voltage measuring device allows it to check the efficiency of each panel while it’s operating. Faulty panels can be easily identified and replaced. The Gekkos use very little water while cleaning which is more environmentally friendly and economical than conventional washers and saves users money.

Window Cleaning Robots Making Their Way To Skyscraper Happy United Arab Emirates | Singularity Hub

 

[LoudMcCloud]

To get an idea of what you would study look up Artificial General Intelligence or Strong AI. The guy that has the most videos on AGI looks like a neanderthal. lol. No offense. He's pretty sharp.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Video: DARPA tire-changing robot, almost as good as a mechanic

Adario Strange

Wednesday, April 3, 2013 - 12:17pm


Video: DARPA tire-changing robot, almost as good as a mechanic | DVICE

Sometimes it seems like a lot of the robots we find in development are dedicated to carrying out exceedingly specific, and often impractical tasks that offer little in the way of addressing some of our most basic needs. But a new video demonstration from the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) offers hope that one day the vital task of emergency roadside assistance may come via an automaton.

In a new video posted this week, DARPA shows off its Autonomous Robotic Manipulation (ARM) actually changing a tire. The demonstration is designed to illustrate how humans can work in tandem with robots using only "task-level instructions" rather than requiring the human operator to deliver specific, step-by-step guidance to the robotic system.

 

[LoudMcCloud]

In ten years, it will have doubled in power 5 times.

 

[ScienceRocks]

PETMAN tests chemical suit

Back in October 2011, Boston Dynamics released a video of PETMAN – a surprisingly realistic humanoid robot. This was intended for eventual use in testing protective clothing worn by the military. The machine has since been redesigned with a head and other upgrades. These include sensors to detect leaks within a suit, along with artificial perspiration to simulate the micro-climate experienced by a real person. With its added clothing, PETMAN has been undergoing validation experiments and will soon be tested inside an exposure chamber with sarin, mustard gas and other deadly chemicals.

PETMAN tests chemical suit

 

[ScienceRocks]

Huge six-legged robot built in UK by enthusiast
By Zoe Kleinman

Technology reporter, BBC News

BBC News - Huge six-legged robot built in UK by enthusiast
Boy 'lived as a robot' for two months Watch

A giant-mantis robot with hydraulic legs has been unveiled by a designer who spent four years creating it.

Matt Denton, from Hampshire, estimates his "very expensive toy" has cost him hundreds of thousands of pounds.

He says a mining company and a marine research organisation are now interested in his design and he hopes it might be used at science fairs.

During its development the machine had one outing, at a music festival, where Mr Denton says it was well received.

"It's an entertainment vehicle," he said. "But I hope it will inspire people."

 

[ScienceRocks]

Robotic Insects Make First Controlled Flight

Robotic insects make first controlled flight

May 2, 2013 — In the very early hours of the morning, in a Harvard robotics laboratory last summer, an insect took flight. Half the size of a paperclip, weighing less than a tenth of a gram, it leapt a few inches, hovered for a moment on fragile, flapping wings, and then sped along a preset route through the air.