Delphi Automotive’s self-driving car completed its 3,500-mile trip from San Francisco to New York, setting the North America record for longest drive ever by a driverless car. No incidents were reported.
6 Hot Deals on Drones
There’s some awesome deals on drones right now, and we suggest you take advantage.
Is robotic welding inevitable’?
A Frost & Sullivan report predicts wide adoption of welding robotics, but the U.S. lags amid worker uncertainty.
As drone use flourishes, the FAA waivers, and Amazon is forced offshore
Funding continues to flow to drone ventures worldwide even as news from the FAA suggests many years before true autonomous flight will be allowed and Amazon feels they must develop their drone plans offshore. DroneDeploy, a San Francisco startup, just received $9 million in Series A funding adding to the $2 million in seed funding…
“Anyone who focuses on technology hasn’t grasped how autonomous driving will change our society”
The way that consumers interact with cars as well as the way that they operate cars will transform most functions in commuting, travel, communications, car ownership and many other as-yet unknown ways. Dieter Zetsche, chairman of Daimler and head of Mercedes-Benz Cars, said at this year's CES in Las Vegas: “Anyone who focuses solely on the…
Watch Shep the Drone Herd a Flock of Sheep
“Shep” the drone quickly herds a flock of 120 sheep across a field and through a narrow gateway.
Magnets and Magnequench
In a recent television broadcast a story is told about the importance of rare earths and magnets. Molycorp and Magnequench are the lead businesses in the story. Problem is, most of the facts of the story were incorrect. There are numerous articles on the web that report the facts as they took place. One in […]
Intuitive Surgical gets big endorsement and new competition
UPDATED 3/29/15: For over two years, Intuitive Surgical has been sued, tried, analyzed and criticized about the efficacy of their da Vinci surgical robots. But they have continued to thrive, grow and improve their products. Proof of the success of their efforts came the other day when they won a $430 million contract from the…
Apple iDrone Quadcopter Coming in 2016?
A German designer has created mockups of what he thinks an Apple drone should look like. Check out the realistic design.
Making the correct robotics choices at the best price
Because of the many options in the field of robotics, end users sometimes face a dilemma in choosing between entry-level and high-performance features. People have different perceptions of how to define performance, speed, power or expensive controls. The best approach is to use a defined set of sizing and selection criteria to determine the required […]
5 Experts Who Say Elon Musk is Wrong About AI
Will artificial intelligence help improve the human race or wipe it out completely? The debate continues.
9 new robotics research reports
A flurry of 10 costly robotic research analyses offered by a variety of vendors were recapped in a previous post. Here are 9 additional reports for your review and consideration. [ComputerWorld wrote that Apple supplier Foxconn expects robots to take over up to 70% of its assembly line work within three years. Foxconn CEO Terry Gou confirmed…
Deep Learning Primer
The technology that unlocks intelligence from big data – deep learning – is explained in this video by Max Welling, a professor at the University of Amsterdam, and a founder of the Dutch deep learning startup Scyfer. Even though I have a software and systems background in demographic data, this short video was a necessary and…
Careful robotic hand picks its way through technical, competitive challenges
A robotic hand developed at TU Delft copies biological movement to nimbly handle fruit for the growing international market.
10 Essential Spring Cleaning Robots
Spring cleaning doesn’t have to be a chore. Here are 10 robots that can automate Spring cleaning and help you enjoy the outdoors.
Model Dazzles with Crystal-Studded Robot Hand
Open Bionics 3D printed a custom robot hand studded with Swarovski crystals for Grace Mandeville, who donned the prosthetic at London’s Wearable Tech Show.
Raising the profile of scientists and engineers through FIRST Robotics
This guest blog was contributed by Bishop-Wisecarver Corp. “The average kid on the street can tell you the names of a dozen football players or basketball players or Hollywood stars. None of them can tell you the name of any famous living scientist or engineer.” —Dean Kamen, inventor, in an interview with CBS News Right now, […]
Doing the heavy lifting: when Cartesian robots make the most sense
Compared to a Cartesian robot, a SCARA or six-axis system will generally deliver higher performance out of the box at a higher cost and with greater programming requirements, but with a smaller footprint, less weight and less rigid arm extension. On the other hand, a Cartesian system provides building blocks to create a solution that […]
Electrically operated gripper efficiently handles small parts
The EGP from SCHUNK is more compact that typical electric grippers to grab small parts. Now, a new version, the size 25 EGP — weighing 110 g with a stroke of 3 mm per finger — can grab with 40 N to handle workpieces to 200 g. It’s as efficient as pneumatic alternatives and (with integrated electronics) acts in just 0.09 sec. Other features include […]
Five ways to get the most out of pneumatic grippers
Pneumatic grippers still dominate robotic and industrial-assembly applications. That’s because pneumatic grippers are reliable, come in myriad sizes, grip quickly, and produce considerably more force than similarly sized electric grippers. They’re also less expensive and simple to control, according to Peter Farkas, president of American Grippers Inc. (AGI). “Pneumatic grippers are the most common end-effector […]
Villanova University, NGO develop low-cost mine removal robot
Decades after war’s end, Cambodians still suffer from unexploded ordnance. Villanova and Golden West are working on an alternative to putting humans in harm’s way.
Sensor-driven armband used to direct robots
ThalmicLabs' MYO gesture-based armband is making inroads driving robots, moving robot arms and on the arms of a Dutch trance music producer, DJ and radio personality. Clearpath Robotics and Energid Robotics and Machine Vision have both recently launched gesture-based interfaces using ThalmicLabs' MYO armband for users of their robots and robot arms. But the best…