Showing posts with label Robotics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Robotics. Show all posts

Getting Robots To Move Like People For Better Interaction

8:13 PM

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As robots get smarter and more capable and make their way from manufacturing assembly lines to a much wider variety of applications, we will be interacting with them in more and more situations. Currently, robots tend to move with jerky, stop/start motions, which can make it difficult for humans, who are accustomed to the fluid and dynamic movements of other humans, to easily recognize what the robots are doing. 


In an attempt to create robots that can better interact with humans, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology are getting robots to move in a much more human-like way.

rammu

RoboMara 2011 - Autonomous Bot Wins Marathon By A Nose

9:32 PM

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The RoboMara or robot marathon has just come to a close in Osaka Japan, with a pair of bipedal bots battling it out in surprisingly close dash to the finish. After 422 laps of a 100-meter track, two robots found themselves only inches apart as coming out of the final turn.


The Vstone team took first place, with an autonomous robot very literally walking a thin red line to victory thanks to a head-mounted camera, finishing with time of 54 hours, 57 minutes, 50.26 seconds. Seeing as how this is the very first robot marathon, I guess that makes it a world record time too. 

rammu

Robots Ready to Run Full Marathon

12:55 AM

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Vstone, an Osaka-based technology firm, is organizing the world's first marathon for robots. As many of you will already know, a marathon is 42 kilometers (or about 26 miles), and these little mechanical men are ready to run the whole thing.


The miniature bipedal robots (some autonomous, some remote-controlled) possess a far shorter stride than the average runner, so they won't likely be clocking in under anything close to four hours. They'll have to complete a total of 422 laps of a 100-meter track to make up the distance.

rammu

Super Skin Powered by Stretchable Solar Cells

10:23 PM

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Last September we covered a story about a pressure-sensitive artificial skin developed at Stanford University that is so sensitive it can "feel" the weight of a butterfly. As part of a goal to create what she calls "super skin," Stanford researcher Zhenan Bao is now giving the artificial skin the ability to detect chemical and biological molecules. 


Not only that, she has also developed a new, stretchable solar cell that can be used to power the skin, opening up the possibility of an artificial skin for robots that can be used to power them and enable them to detect dangerous chemicals or diagnose medical conditions with a touch.

rammu