Robotic Automation

In order to make assembly lines more flexible, while still using relatively simple grippers that could be easily exchanged, the research team first had to research and write an algorithm that allowed the gripper robots to adapt to different objects and trajectories intelligently. Rather than giving them articulated grippers the scientists exchanged the grips being used, ...

The units were developed by a collaborative team including local firm Houben & Van Mierlo Architecten, and the Eindhoven University of Technology. The pods will be purchased and let out by a real estate company upon completion. The first house will be a single-floor, three-room house measuring 1000 square feet (95 square meters), to be followed by four multi-story uni...

To help address this issue, Ford is teaming up with Agility Robotics to explore a brand-new frontier in the world of autonomy — and a new way of thinking about how we make deliveries. Together, we will work toward making sure self-driving vehicles are uniquely outfitted to accomplish something that’s proven surprisingly difficult to do: Carry out that final step of getti...

Now Ford has come up with a way of taking the stress out of even that situation – taking inspiration from the means by which new car technology helps drivers to avoid accidents on the road. Available in most Ford models, Pre-Collison Assist technology uses a forward-facing camera and radar to detect vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists in the road, and automatically app...

Discovering a new way of embedding artificial muscles and electrical adhesion into soft materials, researchers at the University of Bristol have created stretchable, skin-like robots that can be rolled up and placed in a pocket. The advance could lead to the creation of new thin and light robots for environmental monitoring, deployment in hazardous environments, robot gr...

The vast majority of these “junk” satellites – communications, weather, military – have operational lifetimes lasting a few years – about five to 10 years, after which there is no system for bringing them back or clear them in any way. (See simulation of space debris around Earth below.) Some have previously proposed to build robots that can travel to those obsolete s...

Ponte Vecchio will be a general-purpose GPU designed for HPC modeling and simulation jobs, as well as AI training. It will be manufactured on 7nm technology and Foveros 3D and EMIB (Embedded Multi-die Interconnect Bridge) packaging. It will have high-bandwidth memory as well, Intel said in a blog. Intel also launched a oneAPI initiative to deliver open programming to ...

Samsung City hosts a total of four different types of robots, which are being developed for use in fields ranging from elder care to retail. Enlightening demonstrations introduce the first exciting products of the company’s ‘Samsung Bot’ robotics platform, as well as the mobility-focused Samsung GEMS. Samsung Bot Care is the healthcare-specialized robot, which can mea...

As part of designjunction during the 2018 London Design Festival the French architect and her team constructed Mud Shell, a sturdy domed shelter from bags of hay attached to a wooden lattice that was then sprayed with a mixture of clay and fibre using a drone. The project The resulting structure can be constructed rapidly, in this case just four days, from cheap, ligh...

The robot was unveiled at a computing conference in Hangzhou, China, last week, and it will start work at its first hotel in the city next month. It has a curved aluminum casing covering a set of wheels, and it uses cameras and lasers to navigate. It’s less than a meter (3 feet) in height and quite slow, trundling behind humans at a pace of one meter a second. The Spa...

The common risk with water pipe inspection is that the robots move on rubber tires or treads that can damage the inside of the pipe and ultimately dislodge rust particles that will end up in our water. The idea was to solve this issue and that’s why the TRACT project started developing a new kind of inspection robot driven by a propeller that would avoid contact between ...

Carnegie Mellon University is going to the moon, sending a robotic rover and an intricately designed arts package scheduled land in July 2021. The Carnegie Mellon robot is a four-wheeled robot in development by a team led by William “Red” Whittaker, a professor in the Robotics Institute. Equipped with video cameras, it will be one of the first American rovers to explo...

"LED lightbulbs play a key role in clean energy," said Stuart (Shizhuo) Yin, professor of electrical engineering. "Overall commercial LED efficiency is currently only about 50 percent. One of the major concerns is how to improve the so-called light extraction efficiency of the LEDs. Our research focuses on how to get light out of the LED." Fireflies and LEDs face simi...

Made to upgrade the abilities of standard CNC machines and 3D printers, the FAP800 range is the latest in a long line of lasers developed by the company over the past four years. According to Endurance CEO and co-founder George Fomitchev, “We see a big vacuum that a lot of makers want to xpand the abilities of their 3D printer and CNC machines.” “I was very upset wit...

For this year’s edition of Hannover Messe, the German company showcased three new versions of its technology that could benefit materials transport and handling applications. SupraJunction enables an electromagnet to pull a plate carrying glass containers over a pool of water without touching it. This contactless transfer process maintains container integrity, making ...

The UK Cards Association found that UK shoppers spent around £154 billion on online purchases in 2016. Companies do not have to deliver all of these products in 15 minutes, but they need to offer fast delivery to remain competitive. Rapid technological advances are improving services across the supply chain and are increasing productivity in manufacturing facilities....

The Bluefin-21, designed by Bluefin Robotics, has now joined the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. The innovative AUV uses sonar pulses to sweep the ocean floor at depths of up to 4,500 m. The resulting signals are converted into high resolution images, which can be analyzed on board the mother ship. The Bluefin-21 is more commonly used in offshore...

Two of our favorite things, 3D printing and robots, have joined forces and the results are incredible. The Joris Laarman lab has revealed a robotic 3D printer that builds out freestanding, supportless metal pieces. The MX3D-Metal is an industrial robotic arm connected to a welding machine; this set up allows the MX3D-Metal to perform multi-axis printing tasks with met...

M-blocks are small, robotic cubes that assemble themselves into a functional unit that can easily shift configuration. Controlled remotely by a programmer, M-blocks have no external moving parts; instead, smart mechanics and magnetic placement help the blocks to jump, flip and roll over each other. Read more about how MIT researchers designed these reconfigurable, modula...

This is what happens when NASA gets their hands on a Boston Dynamic Atlas humanoid: Valkyrie. Unlike Atlas, Valkyrie is untethered and wears a battery backpack. Although Valkyrie was designed for the DARPA challenge and despite a less than stellar placement, it is not unforeseeable that NASA send humanoids to assist in space exploration. In the mean time, Valkyrie is ri...

University of Pennsylvania students Elizabeth Beattie, Nick McGill, Nick Parrotta and Niko Vladimirov designed and built a powered, upper body exoskeleton called the Titan Arm. Their lightweight, low-cost and tether-free arm is destined for healthcare applications such as rehabilitation and mobility assistance. It enhances its wearer’s strength and provides feedback for ...

A research team at Harvard University has been testing a soft body robot it created that is capable of withstanding fire, freezing cold temperatures and even been run over with a car. As you can see in the video the robot is made of a rubbery like material that is squishy and can bend and contort into different shapes. Research team leader Michael Tolley believes this ty...

Researchers at MIT are developing Supernumerary Robotic Limbs (SRLs), which are worn to give a user an extra set of limbs. Shoulder mounted limbs help the user in carrying out above-the-waist tasks, like opening a door when your hands are full, or lending a hand during a construction project. The shoulder mounted arms uses two inertial measurement units (IMUs) worn on...

Researchers at the Wyss Institute in Harvard, US, have created the first self-folding robot that can function without external assistance. The robot was designed in partnership with engineers at MIT and is made of sheets of paper and plastic with embedded electronics. The robot incorporates shape memory polymers that contract when heated to 100 degrees celsius. As the st...

Ken Matsudaira, the famous Japanese actor, struck a pose with his “twin” brother Real Android Matsuken in Tokyo this week. Smiles were on both faces but there was a slight difference between the two: Real Android Matsuken is the sibling Matsudaira’s mother never heard of before! Despite the resemblance, Real Android Matsuken is an android! It was developed for an adverti...

Industrial robots, such as Kuka’s LBR iiwa, are becoming more and more specialized and possess an increasing range of capabilities that are truly impressive. However, a vast amount of labor intensive processes are still carried out by hand, particularly in the food industry. A team at Norwegian research institute SINTEF has taken up the challenge to develop a poultry deb...

MiRoR is a six-legged, miniature robot designed to execute repair and maintenance functions in restrained and hazardous environments, currently in development under the EU Seventh Framework Program. MiRoR can walk, and MiRoR can repair; in addition to its six capable legs, MiRor enjoys a stiffness-controlled, flexible arm allows that enables snaking tasks. Behind this he...

Daniela Rus is not the kind to accept defeat, or should we say predicted defeat. In 2011, when addressing to MIT Sr John Romanishin, with in mind the idea of producing modular robots, she received a simple yet firm answer that it “can’t be done”. Same opinion given by Hod Lipson, a robotics researcher at Cornell University. Not accepting discouragement and moving forward...

FARO Technologies, Inc. has just released the FARO Laser Line Probe HD. The power of the new high-definition 3D scanner seamlessly combines with the FARO Edge measuring arm to create what the company claims is the “most affordable, high performance contact/non-contact portable measurement system on the market.” As a recognized world leader in 3D measurement and imaging, ...

OC Robotics produces Snake-arm robots that are capable of navigating cramped, maze-like spaces either too dangerous or too small for human presence. An engineer remotely steers the flexible Snake-arm with a joystick to carry out maintenance and inspection operations. OC Robotics can equip the snake-arm with client-specific inspection and process tools ranging anywhere fr...

ERO, a robot designed by Omer Haciomeroglu (from Sweden’s Umea Institute of Design), in collaboration with Atlas Copco, will undoubtedly change the lives of many demolitionists dealing with concrete! The 2013 International Design Excellence Award (IDEA), dedicated to attracting attention to projects impacting on the quality of life and the economy, didn’t miss that grea...

Nature is a great source of inspiration for designers, engineers and roboticists, from Festo’s ants and gecko gripper to Harvard’s monstrous Kilobot robo-swarm. Recently we came across Stanford University’s bio-inspired “MicroTug” robots which are truly impressive. These miniature machines can pull almost 2,000 times their own body weight. The robot’s designers make use ...

In our most recent quarterly e-magazine, read our special feature on cobots and how they are bringing true human-robot collaboration to the factory floor. We spoke to Jose Saenz, project coordinator for the European collaborative industrial robotics project known as VALERI. The project “was set up to develop autonomously operating robots for the aerospace industry, which...

China’s state-controlled news agency Xinhua claims that the superpower has developed a laser cannon for shooting down small, low-flying drones. The cannon’s designers at the China Academy of Engineering Physics, a government defense agency, believe that in just five seconds it can spot and shoot down a drone flying up to 112 mph anywhere below 1,600 feet within a 1.2 mil...

Researcher at MIT’s Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems have come up with an algorithm that allows independent agents (for example robots) collectively develop a machine-learning model without data aggregation. Machine learning is where computers learn new competences by looking for patterns in training data, it is the technique most autonomous robots use to ...

The Human Brain Project (HBP) has a lofty mission: to build a working supercomputer model of the human brain. The unsuspected contributor? Robots. Find out how researchers are using robots to forward the HBP, how the field of neurorobotics is evolving and more in our the first edition of our e-magazine, special edition: Robotics.