Robotics
Robot force sensors enable automation of tough tasks
Seiko Epson announced the development of its S250 series of high-precision force sensors. The S250 series, which will be rolled out worldwide from early June, will be available as an option for the company's six-axis and SCARA robots. Employing Epson's proprietary piezoelectric quartz sensing technology, the new force sensors are durable and sensitive, allowing them to accurately and consistently sense minimal amounts of force in six directions.
AI technology enables logical dialogue in Japanese
Hitachi announced that it has developed a basic AI technology that analyses huge volumes of Japanese text data on issues that are subject to debate, and presents in Japanese both affirmative and negative opinions on those issues together with reasons and grounds. In this research, Hitachi applied deep learning to the process of distinguishing sentences representing reasons and grounds for opinions, eliminating the need for a dedicated program to ...
British companies lead the way in counter-drone technology
The policing of the restricted airspace over airports is becoming increasingly complex and challenging due to the proliferation of consumer drones – and we have already had several incidents of high profile near misses between consumer drones and commercial aircraft. The US Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) is currently reporting more than 100 drone sightings within the vicinity of US airports each month.
‘Jackrabbot’ learns pedestrian behaviour
In order for robots to circulate on sidewalks and mingle with humans in other crowded places, they’ll have to understand the unwritten rules of pedestrian behaviour. Stanford researchers have created a short, non-humanoid prototype of a moving, self-navigating machine. The robot is nicknamed “Jackrabbot” – after the jackrabbits often seen darting across the Stanford campus.
Cyborgs could be part of the future stages of human evolution
Our excitement with and rapid uptake of technology – and the growing opportunities for artificial brain enhancement – are putting humans more firmly on the path to becoming cyborgs, according to evolution experts from the University of Adelaide. In their new book The Dynamic Human, authors Professor Maciej Henneberg and Dr Aurthur Saniotis chart the full scope of human evolution, with a look at the past, present and future development...
Teaching robots to experience animal-like feeling of pain
A pair of researchers with Leibniz University of Hannover has demonstrated the means by which robots might be programmed to experience something akin to pain in animals. As part of their demonstration at last week's IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation held in Stockholm, Johannes Kuehn and Sami Haddaddin showed how pain might be used in robots, by interacting with a BioTac fingertip sensor on the end of a Kuka robotic arm that...
Not everything you dream of, but everything you ask for
The Innorobo event, taking place this week in Paris, aims to initiate dialogue on the role of robots in our society and to show the impact of new technologies in our professional and personal lives every day.
Sensors and robots are destined to be together
The drones and robots market is expected to grow at CAGR of 9.4% between 2015 and 2021, reaching a total revenue of $46bn by 2021. In its latest report, Yole Développement (Yole) highlighted that: “More and better sensors means more and better robots.”
Elastic actuator could create harmless robots
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart are presenting a motion system - a so-called elastic actuator - that is compliant and can be integrated in robots thanks to its space-saving design. The actuator works with hyperelastic membranes that surround air-filled chambers. The volume of the chambers can be controlled by means of an electric field at the membrane.
Rebuild Eric: The UK's first robot
Curator Ben Russell's dream is to rebuild the UK’s first robot, Eric. Built in 1928, Eric holds a unique place in our history. He was everything we now imagine a robot to be – a talking, moving mechanical person. But then Eric disappeared and no-one knows what happened to him.