Unveiled today at the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show, Ozobot is a robot that’s all about playing games. The diminutive robot is capable of recognizing and responding to lights, colors, and shapes; it uses this to react to stimuli in mobile games. Basically, it’s like Nintendo’s ROB for your iPad.
Look at that picture on the right. Looks innocuous enough, right? Well, wait until you see this thing in motion. Quite scary. But, scariness aside, there is something to say about the WildCat robot. It may just be the way to cover long distances across all sorts of terrain at a rather rapid pace.
A graduate student at UC San Diego by the name of Nick Morozovsky has invented a rather unique alternative to in-person power line inspections. Meet Skysweeper: a mechanical inchworm that consists of little more than some 3D printed components, an arduino motor, and a store-bought battery.
One enduring trend in the world of robotics is for researchers to base their designs on real-world creatures. The six-legged Abigaille – based on a real-world gecko- is no exception. Designed by Canadian researchers, it may one day operate on the hulls of spacecraft for maintenance and repair.
According to entrepreneur Mike Sha, in the near future we’ll be handing all our money over to robots. Sort of – the Bay Area entrepreneur’s startup, SigFig, has developed a set of algorithms designed to manage a user’s financial portfolio automatically. He’s not the only one with the idea, either.
The moon isn’t exactly known for its balmy temperature, and its nights are especially bad. They last about 14 days, during which temperatures can drop as low as -180 degrees Celsius. Scientists in China may have designed a rover capable of surviving such extreme conditions…by hibernating.
Where the deployment of exploratory drones is concerned, one of the biggest challenges lies with getting a robot down to the surface of a planet or moon. NASA has come up with a rather novel solution: Super Ball Bot, a wire mesh, ball-shaped robot that can roll around of its own volition.
Although Google may be entering into the manufacturing sector in the long term, for the time being, it’s entering its new robots in contests. Several bots developed by Google-owned organizations today dominated the early stages of the DARPA Robotics Challenge.
For decades, robots and humans have worked separately from one another on factory floors as a matter of safety. Now, however, companies like GM and BMW are looking to close the gap between man and machine. They’re looking to create integrated work-spaces, where robots and humans can work in tandem.
If you’ve ever wondered how touch screens are tested for accuracy, Intel this week provided a bit of insight into the process. Turns out, they’ve invented The Oculus, a simple robotic array designed for one purpose: playing video games. That’s cool and all, but…how exactly does that work?
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