Last year, Amazon announced the next step for its growing robotic workforce. A new system, dubbed Sequioa, linked robots from across a warehouse into...
During the past 50 years, the frequency of recorded natural disasters has surged nearly five-fold.
In this blog, I’ll be exploring how converging exponential technologies...
In March 2011, Japan was hit by a catastrophic earthquake that triggered a terrible tsunami. Thousands were killed and billions of dollars of damage...
Roboticists have long turned to nature for inspiration, but their creations have generally been conspicuously un-lifelike. Now, breakthroughs in the design and manipulation of...
While CRISPR, nanobots and head transplants are making headlines as medical breakthroughs, a number of new technologies are also making progress tackling some of...
Visit Singularity Hub for the latest from the frontiers of manufacturing and technology as we bring you coverage of Singularity University's Exponential Manufacturing summit.
If you've...
Google just acquired Boston Dynamics. It’s the eighth robotics company the California tech titan has purchased in six months and, by far, the biggest deal. For two decades, Boston Dynamics has been nearly synonymous with robotics.
Last year, I visited a warehouse behind a typically fashionable San Francisco café where two startups, Bot & Dolly and Autofuss, were busy making the insanely immersive visuals for the film Gravity (among a host of other projects) using naught but assembly line robots, clever software, and high-def cameras.
A few months later, I found myself in another warehouse—this time some forty minutes south of the city—where robotic arms, built and programmed by Industrial Perception, used advanced computer vision to sort toys and throw around boxes.
What do these companies have in common?
According to the New York Times, they were just secretly acquired by Google—along with five other robotics firms over the last six months—to design and build a fleet of super-advanced robots under the direction of Andy Rubin, the man behind Google’s mobile operating system, Android.
Investing in emerging technologies can be a risky endeavor. Of the hundreds or thousands of “revolutionary” ideas out there, a significant fraction will fail. For most of us, it’s probably wisest to cheer from the sidelines. But Frank Tobe, founder and editor of the Robot Report, wanted to get in on the action without getting too caught up in the details of every company he owned—that is, he wanted to diversify by investing in the robotics market as a whole.
Last December, we visited two very cool companies at the intersection of high tech and art—Bot & Dolly and Autofuss. In an industrial space behind their café, Front, the two companies use robotic arms, software, and cameras to produce multimedia experiences the likes of which you’ve never seen. And they’re at it again. Bot & Dolly recently released a mindblowing short film titled, “Box.” The visuals alone are striking—but a peek behind the curtain makes them stunning. None of what you’re about to see was done in post-production. Had you seen the film shot live, it would look no different than the video.
Harvest Automation has built a robot to do something not especially difficult or sexy: move potted plants around in nurseries and greenhouses. It’s a task the company decided to tackle with its first robot, dubbed Harvey, not because humans can’t do it, but because they don’t.
Maker of the epic ocean-going robot, Wave Glider, Liquid Robotics announced it’s engineered and will ship the next generation this fall. The new Wave Glider SV3 combines Liquid Robotics’ proprietary wave-energy harvesting tech (see here for more) with good old fashioned solar power to ensure the glider is master of its own destiny in any conditions.
Five years after the DARPA Grand Challenge robotic cars are already hitting the roads and states are preparing for their eventual arrival. Now DARPA...
CES 2012 was a mammoth display of the trend toward smart, connected devices for every form of consumer activity: toys, appliances, entertainment, health, mobility,...
A new generation of architects is on the march. Leaving their rulers and compasses behind, these builders are trading in their blueprints for algorithms...
Mark Micire's PhD dissertation puts robotic control at his fingertips. The UMass Lowell student developed a command and control program for the Microsoft Surface...
The Robotics Industries Association wants to remind the American public that automation can create jobs for people just as easily as others worry they...
Students at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena have made an awesome looking bipedal humanoid robot using nothing but Legos! "Pinocchio", as the robot...
Dean Kamen's FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) is a vibrant collaboration of high school students, teachers, and sponsors that pits teams against one another in...
Over the weekend the 18th annual FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) was officially launched. This competition challenges and inspires high school student teams to build...
Yesterday, Boston Dynamics announced it was retiring its hydraulic Atlas robot. Atlas has long been the standard bearer of advanced humanoid robots. Over the...
ROBOTICS
Is Robotics About to Have Its Own ChatGPT Moment?
Melissa Heikkilä | MIT Technology Review
"For decades, roboticists have more or less focused on controlling robots’...
COMPUTING
To Build a Better AI Supercomputer, Let There Be Light
Will Knight | Wired
"Lightmatter wants to directly connect hundreds of thousands or even millions of...
COMPUTING
The Best Qubits for Quantum Computing Might Just Be Atoms
Philip Ball | Quanta
"In the search for the most scalable hardware to use for quantum...
Robotic exoskeletons could help disabled people regain their mobility, factory workers lift heavier loads, or athletes run faster. So far, they've been largely restricted...
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Cognition Emerges From Stealth to Launch AI Software Engineer Devin
Shubham Sharma | VentureBeat
"The human user simply types a natural language prompt into Devin’s...
Robots doing feats of acrobatics might be a great marketing trick, but typically these displays are highly choreographed and painstakingly programmed. Now researchers have...
