robots

It swallowed a pit from a plum.

And over the course of three test drives through our house, the Roomba 560, the new top-of-the-line Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner cleaner from Burlington, Mass.-based iRobot, also gobbled up three rubber bands, two stray edamame, seven coins, a couple of beads and a grapefruit-size wad of pet hair.

And that was just what I found in the dust bin. An additional chamber that captures fine particles and sits next to the air filter captured a disc of dust that would cover a butter dish. The house was dirtied on purpose for this … Read more

Robotics company iRobot announced Monday that it has filed two lawsuits concerning its PackBot military robot and former employee Jameel Ahed, the founder and president of Robotic FX.

Ahed's Illinois-based company sells the Negotiator, a tactical surveillance robot that has been purchased by Illinois state police.

Robotic FX's Negotiator is "a knock-off version of the combat-proven iRobot PackBot robot," said an iRobot statement on the matter.

"We are currently reviewing our legal options and intend to aggressively defend our position," Ahed said in an e-mailed statement.

"Robotic FX sold its first Negotiator Tactical … Read more

"Open the donut box and pass me a glazed, Hal."

"I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave."

Keeping your diet in check and working out is a great way to lose weight, but robotic assistants are always a huge help.

The weight maintenance sociable robot project at the always fascinating MIT Media Lab has one goal: to help you shed pounds. The talking, face-tracking, eye-contact-making weight-loss coach is designed for in-home use.

The MIT Media Lab site has a video of the robot in action.

Daily and long-term exercise patterns and eating habits are … Read more

We just couldn't pass up showing you this how-to video from Carnegie Mellon University's Robot 250 program.

As part of the lead-up to Pittsburgh's 250-year anniversary--a city with strong roots in robotics--the Heinz Foundation, Intel and the Grable Foundation are sponsoring a series of events from Carnegie Mellon to educate citizens on robotics and their city's robotic heritage.

In addition to opening up robot-building to students for education, average citizens and artists have been invited to participate in various events that will run through 2009.

The robotic cucumber hand comes from an event hosted by a … Read more

Carnegie Mellon University would like to give families in the Pittsburgh area the chance to build a robot.

In celebration of the city's 250th anniversary in 2008, the Robotics Institute at CMU wants to inspire people with Robot 250, in which citizens will have access to robot parts and educational how-to materials.

The program, which started this summer as a series of community events, will run through 2009 and focus on robotics education around the themes of the environment, neighborhood and play, and history and heritage.

"Our goal is to raise the technical literacy of the entire southwestern … Read more

Less than three months from its qualifying race, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency announced Thursday the 36 semifinalists that will compete in the Urban Grand Challenge, a robot race over mock city streets with a $3.5 million purse. The semifinalists have been whittled down from 89 original contestants.

DARPA also said that the qualifying and final events will be held at a military training facility in Victorville, Calif., home of the Route 66 Museum, the San Bernardino County Fair and a state penitentiary. The Urban Grand Challenge is the third in DARPA's series of robot car races … Read more

WASHINGTON--We tend to hear more about the growing number of human bodies being shipped off to combat to Iraq and Afghanistan, but the U.S. Army is also dispatching more and more robots.

Since the conflicts began five years ago, the military branch has been steadily stepping up deployment of both unmanned ground and aerial vehicles, Col. John Burke, the Army's director of unmanned systems integration, said Wednesday.

Burke, who was speaking at the second day of a confab here hosted by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, touted the machines' surveillance capabilities as a proven success, at … Read more

It's a common combat-after-dark feature on YouTube: the greenish, hot white blob--representing the human circulation system--bolts from cover and is promptly cut in half by 20mm fire.

Now that same thermal imaging technology is lighting up some even tougher foes, termites.

The Australian company Termicam presents Termibot, a thermal video equipped robot that searches out termite nests by homing in on their thermal signature--and it does it without tearing your house apart. That's right, the heat generated by these busy little buggers shows up right through the baseboards.

Thermographic devices detect infrared radiation emitted by an object based … Read more

More and more, scientists are looking to nature to inspire efficient design. Take the engineers at DaimlerChrysler, for example, who built a more aerodynamic car modeled after the tropical boxfish. (It's still a concept car.)

Now, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are taking cues from the bluegill sunfish to build a mechanical fin that could one day be used on a more advanced robotic submarine, or autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV). They're modeling the bluegill sunfish because it has a distinctive style of motion that involves a constant forward thrust with no backward drag, unlike a human … Read more