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Two weeks after taking Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for a short drive around the National Diet Front Garden in central Tokyo, the Leaf packing Nissan's Autonomous Drive (AD) technology has hit the public highways for the first time.
The drive took place on November 25 with the modified Leaf entering the Sagami Expressway, southwest of Yokohama, at 40 km/h (25 mph), before driving at speeds of 80 km/h (50 mph). For the spin, Shinzo Abe relinquished his seat alongside Nissan Vice Chairman Toshiyuki Shiga to Yuji Kuroiwa. Kuroiwa is the Governor of Kanagawa prefecture, which will be home to Nissan's Autonomous Driving proving ground.
Sweden has just become the latest in a series of countries to announce that they will play host to self-driving cars in the next couple of years. England, Japan, Singapore and the good ol' U.S. of A. have already announced that they will host fleets of auotonomous automobiles, but Sweden's 100-car strong automotive army will be the first manufactured by Volvo.
For the first time in a long time, the talk of the tech world doesn't involve an iPhone or an iPad or some new smartwatch. Amazon's bold Prime Air initiative to use drones to deliver parcels by 2015, took everyone by surprise. (Especially us Americans who were recovering from our Thanksgiving feasts and crazy shopping madness.) Optimistic as Bezos and company's plan is, we cautioned the roadblocks that could prevent drones from being used for commercial deliveries anytime soon, namely heavy regulation by the Federal Aviation Administration.
If you think Amazon's ballsy enough to announce a drone delivery service, think again. Naturally, the United Postal Service (UPS) aka the world's largest parcel service and FedEx are also doing their homework on the possibilities of using unmanned aircraft, according to The Verge. A UPS rep told the tech and culture website:
"The commercial use of drones is an interesting technology and we’ll continue to evaluate it. UPS invests more in technology than any other company in the delivery business, and we’re always planning for the future."
Google has revealed it has taken over seven robotics companies in the past half a year and has begun hiring staff to develop its own product.
A spokesman confirmed the effort was being headed up by Andy Rubin, who was previously in charge of the Android operating system.
The spokesman was unwilling to discuss what kind of robot was being developed.
But the New York Times reports that at this stage Google does not plan to sell the resulting product to consumers.
SAN FRANCISCO — BigDog, Cheetah, WildCat and Atlas have joined Google’s growing robot menagerie.
Google confirmed on Friday that it had completed the acquisition of Boston Dynamics, an engineering company that has designed mobile research robots for the Pentagon. The company, based in Waltham, Mass., has gained an international reputation for machines that walk with an uncanny sense of balance and even — cheetahlike — run faster than the fastest humans.
Well, not exactly. The prototype can't quite manage its own public relations yet, but it can, apparently, "see" in the same way a bat or dolphin can.
In the future, Mustang Sally might be a robot.
Ford Motor unveiled its first self-driving car this week -- well, a prototype anyway. The Automated Fusion Hybrid Research Vehicle, developed with the University of Michigan and State Farm insurers, will help the storied US automaker "test the limits of full automation and determine the appropriate levels for near- and mid-term deployment," Raj Nair, group vice president, Ford global product development, said in a statement.
Leave it to DARPA to turn disaster relief into a competitive sport for robots, and for Google to walk away with the prize. On Saturday, 16 robotics teams from around the world competed in the DARPA Robotics Challenge Trials for 2013, as part of DARPA’s project for developing robots capable of autonomously navigating disaster areas and doing useful work using tools and materials at hand. The two-day event was streamed live on December 20 and 21 from Florida’s Homestead Miami Speedway. Google’s Schaft humanoid robot scored 27 points and won first place as it navigated an obstacle course which was made to simulate a disaster area, while carrying out a series of tasks.
If the research being conducted at UC Berkeley is any indication of where robotics is headed, taking a punch from a robot could soon be akin to getting socked in the jaw by Superman. The Berkeley Lab is reporting that they have developed robot muscles that are 1,000 times the strength of the average human. This does not bode well for those of you prepping for the robopocalypse.
Berkeley's new robot "muscles" take advantage of the rare properties of vanadium dioxide, a compound that changes from an insulator to a conductive metal at 67 degrees Celsius. That transition yields an incredible amount of strength. According to Berkeley Labs, their robo-muscles are "...able to catapult objects 50 times heavier than itself over a distance five times its length within 60 milliseconds — faster than the blink of an eye."
The world of professional sports isn't necessarily the first place we'd want to see mind-control, but at this year's World Cup, at least one person on the field will be moving things with their mind. As the World Cup kicks off, a teenager paralyzed from the waist down will use a mind-controlled exoskeleton to take the ceremonial first kick.
The exoskeleton is part of Duke University' Walk Again Project, which aims to get paralyzed teens walking again. Since the patients receiving the exoskeletons can't send nerve signals to their legs, operating their lower limbs will instead be enabled through the use of a mind-reading headset. Brain waves detected through the patient's scalp will be sent wirelessly to the exoskeleton, which will then move accordingly.
Bosch shows automated park assistance at CES(Phys.org) —CES in Las Vegas, in full swing, has a number of gadgetry themes at this year's show, not least of which is automotive technologies that pave the way for driverless cars which, in the interim, complete tasks with driverless autonomy. Yesterday's highlight came from technology suppliers Bosch, which has been working on self-parking technology to shape the future of automated driving. What's not to like? Every year, says a Bosch promotional video, we waste an entire day on parking. Bosch has developed a way to give people that day back. That way consists of a parking function that can be remotely activated by the driver, The driver can activate the function outside the car by pressing a button on the key or via smartphone app. Press and the car drives itself into and out of parking spaces.
Well-known drone-maker Parrot has been drawing quite a few onlookers to its booth at CES with two high-flying additions to its robotic lineup: the MiniDrone and the Jumping Sumo. The MiniDrone is a small quadcopter that can fly in the air and roll along the ground using detachable wheels, while the Jumping Sumo is a remote-controlled ground bot that leaps into the air using a high-powered piston.
International Climbing Machines (ICM) has announced two new wall climbing robots will be joining its original Climber robot this year. Targeted at inspecting dams, wind turbines, and submarines, the MINI robot will be used to squeeze into tight spaces, while the MAXI model will be used to tackle large surfaces.
A robot gripper invented by researchers at the University of Chicago and Cornell University is now available commercially from Empire Robotics as VERSABALL for industrial automation, scheduled to ship later in January.
Company officials believe the technology might also be useful for prosthetic devices that can assist with work tasks, for in-home assistive devices, and in mobile military robots.
Georgia Tech uses human arm sensors to make robots safer | Cutting Edge - CNET NewsA control system helps robots quickly adjust to subtle changes in the way their operators move, which could improve safety in manufacturing settings.
Imagine you work in a manufacturing plant where your job is to hang a car door on a hinge with the help of a large robot. You're using a lever to guide the bot to the precise drop-off location, so you need to be close enough to see what you're doing. Chances are, you want this bot to be as intelligent as possible, unless of course you're willing to risk life and limb for some kind of disability pay.
Well, the good folks at Georgia Institute of Technology are working hard on the intelligence factor -- devising a control system to make robots smarter and ultimately safer.
The researchers are using arm sensors on mortal humans (mortality being a weakness that's tough to work around) to train the robots to mimic, respond to, and even predict the person's movements so that the two can work side-by-side more seamlessly.
"It turns into a constant tug of war between the person and the robot," Billy Gallagher, a recent Ph.D. graduate in robotics and project head, said in a school news release. "Both react to each other's forces when working together. The problem is that a person's muscle stiffness is never constant, and a robot doesn't always know how to correctly react."
The new telepresence robot from a Willow Garage spinoff wants to be be a boon companion for you and your family, and be a bargain to boot.
LAS VEGAS -- With the unveiling Wednesday of Suitable Technologies' Beam+, telepresence robots are becoming more affordable for many of the people who need them most.
Over the last few years, a range of companies have built telepresence robots -- devices that roll around, connecting people remotely through the use of video screens and microphones. But until now, many of the robots have been too costly for all but a few people, and have mainly belonged in the corporate world.
The Beam+, however, will start at $995 (for the first thousand units) and then will cost $1,995. This could make the robots accessible for many senior citizens, families, and others who want the ability to communicate over video regardless of where they are.
BYU engineer Dah-Jye Lee has created an algorithm that can accurately identify objects in images or video sequences — without human calibration.
“In most cases, people are in charge of deciding what features to focus on and they then write the algorithm based off that,” said Lee, a professor of electrical and computer engineering. “With our algorithm, we give it a set of images and let the computer decide which features are important.”
The quiet life of a farmer is under assault, and has been for quite some time. First, mega-farms drove the majority of family farms out of business. Next, the price-gouging, genetically-modified seed corporation Monsanto played out its costly, destructive drama on the national stage. Now a new threat is looming, one that might just put every last farm worker in the world out of a job: robots.
From crop dusting mini helicopters to berry-plucking rovers reminiscent of tiny tanks, these robo-workers are poised to take over almost every aspect of farm management. Pictured above is Wall-Ye, the tiny tank designed to trim grape vines and navigate vineyards. The time is fast approaching when there will be a robot for every job on the farm. While they go about their primary jobs, robots can also serve as data collectors, creating detailed reports on the health of every plant, how it's been trimmed, and when it was last harvested. Crop dusting drones can also keep an eye on livestock and even take part in herding.
In the UK, the powers that be have seen the writing on the wall. Rather than run from this robotic farming future, the British Parliament has established its very first "agri-tech" strategy. With a budget of $263 million, the commission will help to commercialize agriculture robots and to bring farmers up to speed. What might be bad news for farm hands, states the commission, could ultimately be good for individual farms hard-pressed to make a profit. Ideally, the implementation of robots would shift farm work from low-wage, back-breaking work to a more specialized, higher-wage career for those able to make the adjustment to the robot-driven farming of the future.
If someday soon it's possible to have a hot pizza delivered to your door by a drone, it may be because of work now underway on the remote and sandy shores of the Texas Gulf Coast.
There, where the extra-salty waters of the Gulf of Mexico push their way onto the fertile fields of the historic Kenedy Ranch along Laguna Madre, a team of acclaimed scientists and engineers is carefully researching how to fly airplanes without pilots. They're conducting their research on behalf of the Federal Aviation Administration in this unpopulated area, mainly so no one gets hurt.
To be clear, they're not there to expedite an order of pepperoni with extra cheese to your house. In fact, many of the researchers bristle at the suggestion that in just a few years the work they're doing with unmanned aircraft could lead to drones buzzing among birds, treetops and tall buildings, making restaurant and retail deliveries in major metro areas such as Dallas-Fort Worth, 500 miles to the north.
Instead, they say, the real benefit of unmanned aircraft will be in police work, firefighting and other public services - in which remote-control machines can gather intelligence without putting humans at risk.
"There's so many needs for these things today - the forest fires, hurricanes," said John Hugeley, mission commander for a series of unmanned test flights conducted last week by Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. "But I'd rather see us crawl, then walk, then run."
Recently, we’ve seen science fiction become more like science fact, at least in the field of robotics. From giving us artificial muscles that make us stronger, to creating exoskeletons that can allow the paralyzed to walk, technology is constantly pushing the boundaries on how robotics can help us in our daily lives. Now, scientists at CMU, Harvard, the University of Southern California, MIT, and BioSensics have developed a robotic ankle that can assist those with injuries or illnesses that affect their lower legs.
The robotic ankle device is made with soft materials, unlike existing exoskeletons. What makes it unique is that its artificial muscles are actually a series of pneumatic tubes which are configured like real muscles. These tubes also act like real muscles, expanding and contracting as sensors above the knee tell them what to do, based on the motion of the person wearing the device. This creates a natural motion in the ankle, moving it in a way to create normal walking movement. Not only does the device provide support for walking, it also helps condition the real muscles underneath.
