Feb 06
IBM has been in the news frequently this month, the latest of which involves a new contract with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency — better known as DARPA — … Continue reading
Feb 05
This might seem like something out of Mission Impossible, but DARPA seems to be committed to bringing this concept into life. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has awarded a $3.5 million contract to IBM, just so that it can develop self destructing chips. The idea is that these chips will be able to effectively kill themselves either at a specific time or when they receive a remote signal.
DARPA Taps IBM To Develop Self Destructing Chips original content from Ubergizmo. 
     |
Feb 05
From robots to mind-reading, new programming languages to advanced communication systems, DARPA has fingers in many, many pies. And now, it’s making all its open source code available by publishing the DARPA Open Catalog.
| |
Feb 04
DARPA has announced the launch of a public website offering anyone access to its open source offerings, the Open Catalog. With this comes the hope easy access will facilitate more … Continue reading
Jan 27
Google can’t stop buying robotics companies. In the past two months, eight of the 12 companies the search giant has acquired have "robotics" in their name or descriptions. Here’s your complete breakdown of the robot army presently at Google’s command.
| |
Jan 23
Artificial whiskers made of incredibly thin carbon nanotubes could give robots cat-like sensing abilities and allow hair-thin distributed sensors to track weather patterns and more, researchers at Berkeley claim. The … Continue reading
Jan 23
Google’s purchase of bonkers robotics company Boston Dynamics
| |
Jan 15
There are several teams participating in the DARPA Robotics Challenge. The contest is to see what team can create a robot that is capable of performing a set of specific … Continue reading
Dec 22
The teams have broken down their robots and packed them up in crates and suitcases, loaded them into trucks and taken them on airplanes and gone home. Some will lick their wounds and rebuild to fight another day. The lucky ones will get a million dollars each from DARPA to continue developing their bots.
| |
Dec 21
DARPA’s Robotic Challenge Trials wrapped up earlier today, and the robot that reigned supreme is SCHAFT. The squat 209 pound, 4.85 foot-tall robot smoked the competition, scoring 27 points, besting its next closest competitor by 35% in overall points.
The challenge is focused on demonstrating advancements in robotics which could improve disaster response efforts. For the competition, the bipedal humanoid robots had to perform each of the following tasks:
- Drive a utility vehicle at the site.
- Travel dismounted across rubble.
- Remove debris blocking an entryway.
- Open a door and enter a building.
- Climb an industrial ladder and traverse an industrial walkway.
- Use a tool to break through a concrete panel.
- Locate and close a valve near a leaking pipe.
- Connect a fire hose to a standpipe and turn on a valve.
In the end, SCHAFT beat out numerous teams from DARPA’s home nation, taking the top spot in the terrain, ladder, debris, and fire hose tasks.
Here’s Team SCHAFT explaining a bit about what makes their robot special:
The time-compressed footage shown below is SCHAFT practicing its tasks prior to this weekend’s event.
Florida Institute for Human & Machine Cognition’s (IMHC Robotics) robot did quite well, coming in second place, taking first place in the door and wall challenges.
While it’s the end of the line for some of the robots, the top eight teams will get funded to move on to the final rounds in 2014.
[via LiveScience]
Who's in charge here?
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.