With an anticipated 39.5 million domestic/household robots expected to be in our homes by 2021 (IFR, 2018), Cranfield University is calling for members of the public to comment on a survey launched to identify people's views on robot ethics.
With its low ceiling draped in soft, green netting, Jianguo Zhao's lab at the Colorado State University Powerhouse Energy Campus is hard to miss. Watch the lab's walking, grasping, flying, perching, shape-shifting robots in motion, and the reason for the netting becomes all too clear.
Imagine there's a flock of aerial robots searching for a lost hiker. They have to cover a large area of remote bush and a central commander won't work because they're so spread out.
In a world first, Swinburne's Repairbot project has achieved a major milestone, using a robot to successfully 3-D print a replacement lug on an automotive headlamp assembly.
When workers in Germany call in sick, back pain is often to blame. It frequently affects employees in logistics, manufacturing and services where physically strenuous patterns of movement are part of the daily job routine. In a bid to prevent back problems, Fraunhofer researchers have come up with ErgoJack to offer a smart soft orthosis that supports workers with real-time motion detection. A prototype of this smart vest will be presented live at Hannover Messe from April 1 through 5, 2019, at Booth C24 in Hall 17.
Global courier service FedEx on Wednesday announced plans to test a "SameDay Bot" autonomous delivery device designed to carry purchases from retail shops to local customers.
Virtually every organization is wrestling and experimenting with automation. But most are missing the benefits that come from deep and systemic change. One of the largest failings, in our estimation, is that organizations aren't spending the time necessary to deeply understand the work they're considering automating. They aren't deconstructing jobs so the specific tasks that can be automated can be identified. And without deconstruction, companies risk significant collateral damage and minimizing their ROI as they attempt to automate entire jobs.
More than 700,000 Multiple Launch Rocket System submunitions have been demilitarized since the Army started using an automated nine-robot system conceptualized, built and programmed by Sandia National Laboratories engineers.
Looking like a delegation of toasters from space, a generation of electrically powered, self-driving mail trucks will roll out of a suburban Detroit industrial park later this year. Their mission: revolutionize mail and package delivery.
Europe has an estimated EUR 100 billion worth of unexploited mineral resources lying at depths of 500-1,000 m. Following centuries of active mining, the continent's more accessible mineral deposits are mostly depleted. However, there are still deep-lying resources in abandoned flooded mines and in unmined underwater deposits that can't be exploited using conventional dry mining techniques.
Edge Hill University's robot, Robbie, has become a soap fan after watching episodes of popular UK drama Emmerdale to learn about dementia.
People are prepared to save a robot at the cost of human lives under certain conditions. One of these situations is when we believe the robot can experience pain. This has been indicated in research led by the team of Sari Nijssen of Radboud University, in collaboration with Barbara Müller of Radboud University and Markus Paulus from LMU Munich, which will appear in Social Cognition on 7 February.
A new design in firefighting robots, already successfully tested in the field, could make firefighters' jobs less dangerous and address one of the biggest challenges with firefighting robots – the ability to maneuver in a burning structure.
A prototype robot that uses intense suction to climb around the outside of aircraft and inspect them for damage has successfully been trialled at Cranfield University.
A Korean research team has proposed a new paradigm for a wearable hand robot that can aid people with lost hand mobility. The hand robot collects user behaviors with a machine learning algorithm to determine the user's intention.