• First response, law enforcement ground robot market to grow

    The current market for first responder and law enforcement ground robots is estimated at $203 million; just-published research says that the market is poised for a significant growth; first responder robots cost about $50,000 and up, which is the cost of a person for one year; the challenge for vendors is thus to find applications where the robot is used 24x7 365 days per year

  • Boston Dynamics developing humanoid and robot cheetah

    Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded Boston Dynamics, an advanced robotics developer, a contract to build “Cheetah,” a fast and agile robot capable of chasing and evading; the eighteen year old engineering company is also working on a humanoid robot named “Atlas” based on the design of “PETMAN,” an anthropomorphic robot for testing chemical protection clothing used by the U.S. army

  • Robot marathon announced -- 26.2 miles to robotic glory

    Japan’s Vstone company has announced its Robotic Challenge: the bipedal bots will race around a 100 meter track for 422 laps, either remotely controlled or operating completely autonomously, by following a painted line; the contest is unlikely to feature sprinting or even jogging competitors; rather, this race will go to the strong and steady robot that can survive the repeated wear and tear on its servos

  • Manhole covers help orient urban robots

    It is critical for robots to check their calculated position every now and then against a known GPS position — because robot wheels can slip (their rotations are counted to give position estimates) or a robot’s leg stride can be miscalculated, leaving dead reckoning dead in the water; the solution: have robots in urban environments orient themselves by manhole covers; manhole covers are amongst the more permanent of objects in our built environment and, better still, they are made of metal — and so are easily detectable by a simple metal detecting scanner

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  • Foreign orders for Mass.-built bomb-disposal robots

    Massachusetts-based robot maker received orders for twenty-seven additional bomb-disposal robots from unnamed international customers; the company has delivered bomb-disposal robots to more than twenty-five countries

  • Police robot ends Wisconsin standoff

    Last Friday, a Northrop Grumman police robot was sent to investigate an SUV parked on the shoulder of a Milwaukee, Wisconsin, highway; the robot approached the two potentially dangerous suspects holed up in an SUV, transmitted instructions from a hostage negotiator sitting safely in a nearby truck, and punched out the rear window of the suspects’ stolen car, helping police end the standoff peacefully

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  • Fully robotic, remotely controlled bomb-disposal hand nears

    Engineers have developed a robotic hand that offers remotely controlled, highly dexterous movements that could lead to a breakthrough in areas such as bomb disposal; the robotic hand can be remotely controlled by a glove worn by an operator connected to a computer; this can then communicate via a wireless connection with the hand offering real time comparable movements

  • USAF looking to emulate fruit-flies for killer insect swarm drones

    The U.S. Air Force is studying how fruit flies maneuver within a heavily instrumented “simulation tunnel” in order to develop tiny, potentially lethal insect-sized flying robots; tiny military swarm droids could scatter across towns or cities to locate or spy on persons of interest to the U.S. military; they might even be able to land on the back of someone’s neck and blow his head off using some kind of tiny warhead

  • DARPA looking for a game interface to end all interfaces

    A soldier in the field has his or her hands and voice fully taken up managing their weapons, sensors, and communications; DARPA wants to help: the Pentagon’s push-the-envelope research unit asks for idea on how to develop an interface which would allow soldiers to run, leap, or otherwise navigate about virtually without needing to do so physically

  • Increasing counter-IED role for robots

    U.S. and coalition military operating in Afghanistan have experienced about 10,500 roadside bomb incidents so far this year, up from 8,994 in 2009 and 2,677 in 2007; robots continue to play ever-more important combat roles in the air and on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq, and their responsibilities will only continue to grow

  • Robotic attachment uses balloon, coffee to grasp objects

    DARPA-funded research yields a new robotic gripping attachment which relies on ground coffee and a party balloon; The manipulator presses a soft balloon full of loose coffee grounds down on the object to be gripped; the air is sucked out of the balloon, causing the coffee granules to press together and lock into a rigid shape — causing the object to be securely grasped by the manipulator; the object can be released as desired by ending the suction on the granule-filled bulb

  • Robots compete in self-destruction

    One Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics states that a robot must protect its own existence; a competition was held last weekend which aimed to subvert that law: participants were challenged to build a robot that attempts a simple, menial task but fumbles it or fails, before destroying itself

  • USAF develops UAVs that fly themselves

    A U.S. Air Force project will allow UAVs to fly themselves — in multiple-aircraft formations — without colliding; the USAF is working to develop systems that unmanned aircraft can use to sense the presence of other aircraft and take action to prevent collisions that are safe enough so that UAVs can perform any Air Force mission

  • Multi-touch control search-and-rescue robot swarms

    The new Dream controller for Microsoft Surface could help speed up search-and-rescue operations; . when disaster strikes, search-and-rescue teams must quickly gather and assimilate the data needed to find survivors; a team of robots can help scout out for persons stuck in rubble or create new maps of the landscape; first responders, though, need ways to control those robots, and process incoming information quickly

  • Insect-size air vehicles to explore, monitor hazardous environments

    High-performance micro air vehicles (MAVs) are on track to evolve into robotic, insect-scale devices for monitoring and exploration of hazardous environments, such as collapsed structures, caves and chemical spills