The human arm can perform a wide range of extremely delicate and coordinated movements, from turning a key in a lock to gently stroking a puppy's fur. The robotic "arms" on underwater research submarines, however, are hard, jerky, and lack the finesse to be able to reach and interact with creatures like jellyfish or octopuses without damaging them. Previously, the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University and collaborators developed a range of soft robotic grippers to more safely handle delicate sea life, but those gripping devices still relied on hard, robotic submarine arms that made it difficult to maneuver them into various positions in the water.
Where am I? Like humans, robots also need to answer that question, while they tirelessly glue, weld or apply seals to workpieces. After all, the production of precision products depends on robot control systems knowing the location of the adhesive bonding head or welding head to the nearest millimeter at all times. This means the robot needs some sort of eye. In the automotive industry and many other sectors, specialized sensors perform this function, most of which operate on the principle of laser triangulation. A laser diode projects a line of red light onto the workpiece, from which the light is reflected at a specific angle before being detected by a camera. From the position of the light striking the camera chip, the position and distance of the sensor with respect to the workpiece within the coordinate system can be calculated.
Future robots will assist the elderly while adapting to the culture of the individual they are caring for. The first of this type of robots are now being tested in retirement homes within the scope of "Caresses," an interdisciplinary project where AI researchers from Örebro University are participating.
A robot that reminds older people where they have put things and helps them exercise has been used by residents in three retirement homes in a trial to combat cognitive decline in later age.
Aibo, a $2,899 robotic dog from Sony, just might scamper its way onto some wish lists this holiday season.
The world's most advanced sweet pepper harvesting robot, developed in a consortium including Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) researchers, was introduced last week at the Research Station for Vegetable Production at St. Katelijne Waver in Belgium.
Grapes must be picked at the exact point of maturation, and its plant must have the appropriate intake of water during development so that the wine ends up with desired properties. Controlling those parameters is complicated and expensive, and few can afford to use pressure chambers that measure water potential.
In the movie Terminator 2, the T-1000 robot pours itself through the ceiling of an elevator. That scene started a flow of ideas for Purdue Polytechnic Institute professor Richard Voyles.
With the rising shortage of skilled workforce in agriculture, there's a growing need for robotisation to perform labour-intensive and repetitive tasks in greenhouses. Enter SWEEPER, the EU-funded project developing a sweet pepper-harvesting robot that can help farmers reduce their costs.
Robots will handle 52 percent of current work tasks by 2025, almost twice as many as now, a World Economic Forum (WEF) study said Monday.
There's a lot of hype around the release of Sony's latest robotic dog. It's called Aibo, and is promoted as using artificial intelligence to respond to people looking at it, talking to it and touching it.
For several years, civil society groups have been calling for a ban on what they call "killer robots". Scores of technologists have lent their voice to the cause. Some two dozen governments now support a ban and several others would like to see some kind of international regulation.
A dividing line is emerging in the debate over so-called killer robots. Many countries want to see new international law on autonomous weapon systems that can target and kill people without human intervention. But those countries already developing such weapons are instead trying to highlight their supposed benefits.
Semi-autonomous and autonomous machines and robots can become moral machines using annotated decision trees containing ethical assumptions or justifications for interactions with animals.
A key opponent of high-tech, automated weapons known as "killer robots" is blaming countries like the U.S. and Russia for blocking consensus at a U.N.-backed conference, where most countries wanted to ensure that humans stay at the controls of lethal machines.