iRobot

Would you mind if your doctor were treating you through a display on top of a robot? What if that display could save your life?

Well, that could be the case if you find yourself at one of seven U.S. and Mexican hospitals that have deployed the RP-VITA telepresence robot, which obtained FDA approval earlier this year as the first of its kind.

RP-VITA, which stands for Remote Presence Virtual + Independent Telemedicine Assistant, is now on hand at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, five other medical centers in the U.S., and one in Mexico City, developers iRobot and InTouch Health announced today.

"During a stroke, the loss of a few minutes can mean the difference between preserving or losing brain function," the companies quoted Paul Vespa, director of neurocritical care at the Reagan Center, as saying in a release. … Read more

Mimicking the human grasp is no easy feat. Robotic hands tend to be clunky and expensive.

But now, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is showing off a robotic hand that's dexterous enough to pick up keys and tough enough to survive being hit with a baseball bat.

The video below shows a prototype from DARPA's Autonomous Robotic Manipulation project. Instead of trying to reproduce the human hand in robot form, the prototype focuses on function. It has three fingers that are able to pick up small objects such as keys and credit cards, and it can even grasp objects with tweezers. … Read more

LAS VEGAS--How would you feel if you were hospitalized and your doctor were talking to you through a 5-foot robot?

RP-VITA (Remote Presence Virtual + Independent Telemedicine Assistant) is a remote-, iPad-operated telepresence bot. It's become the first self-navigating communications robot to receive FDA certification, developers InTouch and iRobot said at CES 2013.

The machine is approved "for telemedicine consults inclusive of active patient monitoring in high-acuity environments where immediate clinical action may be required," InTouch said in a release. Specifically, it's cleared for "active patient monitoring in pre-operative, peri-operative and post-surgical settings, including cardiovascular, neurological, prenatal, psychological, and critical care assessments and examinations." … Read more

LAS VEGAS--I used to try cleaning my godmother's pool with long, unwieldy nets and hoses, and always gave up in frustration.

iRobot's Mirra 530 would have been a huge help. Now being shown off at CES 2013, it improves upon the company's Verro pool bots.

With its rotating brushes, Mirra is designed to scrub any type of in-ground pool without using the pool's filtration system, a concept aimed at saving energy.

Unlike the $1,099.99 Verro 500 PowerScrub, the $1,299.99 Mirra has wheels instead of treads and a more powerful suction and filtration system. … Read more

You gotta hand it to the marketers who come up with robot acronyms. Can it get any better than Extreme Access System for Entry (EASE)?

Sounds innocuous enough, right? Until this little critter tries to float into your room to spy on you. It's one of two bots unveiled by CyPhy Works, headed by iRobot co-founder Helen Greiner.

EASE and PARC (that's Persistent Aerial Reconnaissance & Communication), a communications relay, are compact flying machines that can fly between 3 feet and 1,000 feet while remaining tethered to their human controllers via microfilaments. … Read more

Japan is again trying to field some more robots to work at the heavily damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, but this walker from Toshiba froze during a press demo.

Tetrapod is a quadruped designed to withstand high levels of radiation, but it couldn't seem to take the glare of cameras.

The wireless remote-controlled machine recalls Boston Dynamics' BigDog robots, with legs than can tackle uneven terrain. It can carry up to 44 pounds of equipment and has an onboard camera and dosimeter.

It's designed to survey the plant's highly radioactive buildings and debris, and can apparently withstand a 100 millisievert environment for a year. … Read more

Your Roomba can do double duty as an air-quality tester and even a cat transporter, so why not a fragrance factory too?

Robot Add-ons has a nifty little accessory for your favorite robot hockey puck: RoomAroma is a stick-on fragrance that sweetens the air in your home while Roomba cleans up.

It's quite an innovative way to improve your air without bothering to plug in air fresheners, and it attaches to Roomba in a snap. It's no wonder the two guys behind Robot Add-ons are from iRobot. … Read more

The people have spoken and the machines are immortalized.

More than 17,000 humans voted online for the 2012 inductees to the Robot Hall of Fame, and they chose a mixture of friendly and terrifying bots, depending on your perspective.

Come on down, Wall-E, BigDog, Nao, and PackBot. You've earned a place among the stars.

Although the 12 nominees were selected by robotics experts, it was the first time that popular votes chose the inductees to Carnegie Mellon University's hall of immortal robots. … Read more