Toyota has built the Human Support Robot, a 70 pound ‘droid designed to help the elderly and less-able around the home. The tablet-and-voice-controlled unit can open your curtains, fetch items and even pick up after you, thanks to its single telescopic arm that stretches up to 2.5 feet. A tablet slot on top of its head lets you use the hardware as a telepresence device, although we’re more interested in teaching it some attitude so we can live out our “sassy housekeeper” sitcom fantasies in peace.
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Toyota builds assistive robot to help the disabled around the home originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 Sep 2012 13:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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At a robot dancing competition in Bejing, this particular robot might remind some others of the late and great King of Pop, Michael Jackson, especially when it takes to the dance floor. Paraded at the first Beijing College Student Robotics Competition, 99 teams from Beijing and Taiwan participated in the two-day competition, where among the sports thrown into the mix included boxing, athletics, football and golf. Needless to say, the dancing category did have its fair share of ups and downs, where students programmed their metallic embodiments to dance out what is deemed to be a collection of difficult movements, especially where robots are concerned. While we would not be getting a robot that can dance like Michael in such a lifelike manner anytime soon, at least this is a start – and a good one, I am sure. It will still take a very, very long time for the field of robotics to have advanced to a level where a robot’s movement is so realistic to that of a human, and we cannot even tell the difference.
If you hate having creepy crawlies around, then you might be loathe to have this robot snake being inserted into your body as though it was some sort of Matrix nightmare come true. There is a very good reason for having this robot snake slither through your entire body though, especially when it is supposed to help you sniff out cancer. This cancer-sniffing robot was developed by engineers at Britain’s OC Robotics, where it can identify as well as remove hard-to-reach tumors. Of course, it will not run in an automated manner, but rather, the robot snake itself will be guided by a nearby surgeon, and the patient need not worry about being carved open – meaning there will be no scars to speak of, at least externally, after the procedure.
I am quite sure that you know just how the photosynthesis process works – during the day, plants will use their leaves to gather as much sunlight as possible, releasing oxygen into the air along the way while they keep themselves nourished. Having said that, it is always good to make sure your plants receive the optimal amount of sunlight, and just in case you figure out that one of your potted plants seem to stop growing no matter what kind of fertilizer you “feed” it, perhaps all it needs is just a wee bit more sunlight than normal. How about creating one of the Plant Host Drones for yourself?
