The job of undersea archaeologists just got a whole lot easier. A team of Estonian engineers today unveiled a small, pill-shaped turtle robot dubbed U-CAT. Equipped with four flippers and an on-board camera, U-CAT is designed to make the job of exploring deep-sea shipwrecks both easier and considerably more affordable.
Some of you may have noticed that this year’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade had a very special guest in attendence to get things started: a robot. Known as SONIC, the robot is the result of work by the Woodlands High School’s local robotics club in Texas, winners of the FIRST robotics competition.
For the time being, manned space travel is out of the question. If we’re to truly explore the universe, unmanned probes are currently our best bet. Unfortunately, unmanned space exploration comes with its own array of challenges, the greatest of which is…well, robots aren’t all that smart yet.
Most flying machines imitate creatures of the sky with their designs. That might not be wholly necessary. Turns out not everything without wings is grounded – researchers at New York University have created a flying robot modeled after a jellyfish. It works very, very well.
The core robotics technology used to maintain the International Space Station is finding a new use back on the blue planet – breast cancer treatment. A device under development at the Centre for Surgical Invention and Innovation is using space-age robotics to automate the breast biopsy process.
So, there’s kind of a problem with current storm warning systems: they’re awful and horrendously archaic. A group of students aged 8 to 13 participating in a global Lego robotics competition noticed this. Together, they’ve devised an application designed to modernize storm warnings.
The next time you go to a hospital, you might not be speaking to a doctor – not directly, anyway. An increasing number of hospitals in California and several neighboring states have started to phase in robots that allow Doctors to communicate remotely with their patients.
The concept of a robot that’s actually capable of reading a user’s thoughts sounds like a sci fi pipe dream. It’s not, though: the University of Cincinatti’s Anca Ralescu and her team last week revealed that they’re working on a piece of technology which, when completed, could change the world.
Ladies and gentlemen, meet Robo Faber. Designed by LA-based Matthias Dörfelt, this little robot is designed to be a self-portrait of the artist’s creative style, and is programmed to replicate it until the end of time…or until it breaks down and stops working. Whichever comes first; really.
The age of robots isn’t just coming. It’s already arrived – none of us really noticed. Truth is, most of us have probably interacted with a robot very recently. The interaction just didn’t register, claims former Willow Garage Rsearcher Leila Takayama, because we expect too much from machines.
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