I love events like ICRA because you get to see how truly diverse the field of robotics has become. Along with humanoid bots, robot arms, and automated cars, this year also saw Intuitive Surgical, makers of the DaVinci robot surgeon system, sponsor an award for best research in medical robots. The winners included papers on wireless microbots, cardiac catheters, robot force fields (can’t wait to read that one), and a technique for teaching surgical robots to repeat motions faster and smoother than humanly possible. That last was from the Abbeel Lab at Stanford, who recently taught a Willow Garage PR2 robot how to fold towels. There’s still a lot of great news coming out of this year’s conference, so stay tuned to Singularity Hub as we bring it your way. And we’re always looking for an insider’s perspective, so if you made it up to Alaska and have any pics or videos from ICRA 2010 make sure to pass them our way!
[image credit: ICRA]
[source: ICRA]