Robotics

MIT researchers are trying to get computers to correctly interpret hand signals used by crews aboard aircraft carriers so that robot planes can follow them.

As Northrop Grumman continues to develop its X-47B robot stealth plane, which is aimed at carrier use, Yale Song and colleagues at MIT are working on a machine learning system that could allow autonomous planes to understand crew directions.

In its research presented in the journal ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems, the team used a database of abstract representations of 24 gestures often employed by carrier personnel. They trained an algorithm to classify gestures, including posture and hand position, based on what it knew from the database. … Read more

The Roomba robot maker is replacing its Scooba 380 with the 390, a longer-lived floor cleaner with a simplified design. Like previous Scooba models, it can clean sealed hardwood floors, tile, and linoleum surfaces.

Its power management system ensures the machine's battery will operate for 30 percent longer than earlier models, according to iRobot. As with the 380, it can clean 850 square feet per battery charge.

Design improvements include color-coding for parts that users have to maintain, such as the tank, cleaning head, and brush. The device's handle latch is now easier to open.

The 390 can be limited to certain areas of your home with iRobot's Virtual Wall barriers, and will also automatically avoid drop-offs at the top of a flight of stairs. You can see more 300 series behaviors in the PR vid below. … Read more

The twin-armed Dextre has managed to retrieve tools and release launch locks on the Robotic Refueling Mission (RRM), an experiment to show that satellites can be refueled by a robot.

Dextre used a wire-cutting tool to sever a wire fastening a mock gas cap to the RRM module, a feat of considerable precision given the fact that Dextre is some 12 feet tall and the wire clearance was only 0.039 inch.

"It's the robotic equivalent of threading a needle while standing on the end of a diving board," the Canadian Space Agency quoted its president, Steve … Read more

HANOVER, Germany--The future of cars--or at least one possible future of cars--is on display here at CeBIT.

The Robotics Innovation Center at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) is showing off an electric-car prototype designed to test new technologies.

For one thing, the car can lengthen itself and lower the profile of its podlike passenger compartment when it's time for fast driving, then shorten its wheelbase when it's time for tight-turning urban driving. For another, it can toe its tires in as much as 90 degrees, letting it rotate in place or drive sideways for painless … Read more

HANOVER, Germany--Who says robots don't have a sense of aesthetics?

Fraunhofer Institute showed off a robot that drew people's portraits here at the CeBIT tech show. It drew a big crowd, too--metaphorically speaking--with a steady throng watching its slow progress.

The robot actually didn't have a sense of aesthetics. Instead it had a camera, an algorithm to convert a digital photo into outlines, and an ability to draw those lines very precisely on a whiteboard.

Check the video below to see it in action. It's a thing of trigonometric beauty in its own way. … Read more

BOSTON--Robot engineers would do well to play with video games and other well known machine interfaces to get their creations out of the labs and into the marketplace, according to robotics pioneer Rodney Brooks.

Speaking at the Human-Robotics Interaction (HRI) 2012 conference here, Brooks said that academics too often expect the users to adjust to robots and don't foresee how people will use the robots they design.

The former director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brooks was a co-founder of iRobot, which sells the Roomba vacuum cleaner and robots to … Read more

DARPA is quickly becoming the supplier of my nightmares.

As if the monstrous AlphaDog wasn't intimidating enough, it now has a feline friend, the "Cheetah," that will certainly have you running for the hills. Chances are you won't be able to outrun it, though.

Created by Boston Dynamics, Cheetah is allegedly now the fastest legged robot on the planet. DARPA released a video today showing the bot running at various speeds on a laboratory treadmill, ultimately hitting its maximum speed of 18 mph. This breaks the previous land-speed record of 13.1 mph set back in 1989. … Read more

HANOVER, Germany--Who knew an industrial robot could be so cheap?

That's one of the messages that Robotation Academy staff hope to lodge in the minds of the people who attend its training programs here at the vast trade-show fairgrounds. Deutsche Messe, which operates the gargantuan CeBIT show just now getting under way this year, also runs the academy year-round as part of a project to encourage adoption of robotics in manufacturing.

Deutsche Messe likes to drum up business for industries that might buy a booth at its trade shows, but the organization found that a "huge percentage" … Read more

Now robots can perform live music.

The University of Pennsylvania General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Lab, which has attracted millions of viewers of its videos online, today released its latest demonstration of robot power.

The video shows a group of small quadcopter performing the theme song to James Bond movies. Introduced at the TED conference, the movie shows about ten of the flying robots emerge from boxes on the floor and start playing different instruments. … Read more