This family-friendly humanoid robot designed by Aldebaran Robotics is also a multi-functional robot with features including microphones, HD cameras, Wi-Fi connectivity, Hi-Fi speakers, pressure sensors, a voice synthesizer and much more. It has made appearances at events including the Shanghai Expo in China with a synchronized dance routine, at Robocup participating with its own football team, in the UK teaching autistic children, and even demonstrating a stand-up comedy routine in December 2011. Read more at http://realitypod.com/2014/10/the-top-five-mind-blowing-robots-of-2014/#TajsM2ZH5iDAbyEE.99
This robot created by artist and researcher, Patrick Tresset, is a sketcher shaped like an arm that is able to draw portraits of people. It was primarily designed for Tresset’s “New Work” gallery installation which occurred in London in 2011. Read more at http://realitypod.com/2014/10/the-top-five-mind-blowing-robots-of-2014/#TajsM2ZH5iDAbyEE.99.
Another robot by Aldebaran Robotics, this emotional humanoid bot is designed to be able to assess moods, and interact with humans. It is able to shake hands, dance and display messages on the display screen on it’s chest. Read more at http://realitypod.com/2014/10/the-top-five-mind-blowing-robots-of-2014/#HQIHMayVl2ASCduX.99.
is composed of two snake-like machines that attach via magnets to a UAV. After being carried to the site by the quadcopter, snake bots can detach themselves, slip through the holes and cracks of a collapsed building, for instance, and slither to their destinations.
It was inevitable that funding for these projects by the US Military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) would lead to spin-offs finding their way into private startups. There are now at least another three companies developing exoskeletons for commercial use and the focus is on creating them to help people with spinal injuries. A Swedish company, Ekso Bionics, makes a 20kg titanium and aluminium suit that costs $100,000 a pop, which has helped several crippled individuals walk again for the first time.
The post Tips and Tricks: Using Windows 10 IoT Core for Raspberry Pi 2 appeared first on Make:.
Photographs from the Eyewitness series
Continue reading...
Reciprocal collision avoidance has become a popular area of research over recent years. Approaches have been developed for a variety of dynamic systems ranging from single integrators to car-like, differential-drive, and arbitrary, linear equations of motion. In this paper, we present two contributions. First, we provide a unification of these previous approaches under a single, generalized representation using control obstacles. In particular, we show how velocity obstacles, acceleration velocity obstacles, continuous control obstacles, and LQR-obstacles are special instances of our generalized framework. Secondly, we present an extension of control obstacles to general reciprocal collision avoidance for non-linear, non-homogeneous systems where the robots may have different state spaces and different non-linear equations of motion from one another. Previous approaches to reciprocal collision avoidance could not be applied to such systems, as they use a relative formulation of the equations of motion and can, therefore, only apply to homogeneous, linear systems where all robots have the same linear equations of motion. Our approach allows for general mobile robots to independently select new control inputs while avoiding collisions with each other. We implemented our approach in simulation for a variety of mobile robots with non-linear equations of motion: differential-drive, differential-drive with a trailer, car-like, and hovercrafts. We also performed physical experiments with a combination of differential-drive, differential-drive with a trailer, and car-like robots. Our results show that our approach is capable of letting a non-homogeneous group of robots with non-linear equations of motion safely avoid collisions at real-time computation rates.
Like C-3PO and R2-D2, some robot pairs are a match made in mechanized heaven. Now, a new team, Fetch and Freight, can eliminate much of the efficiency-botching human labor from warehouses, getting that Amazon shipment to your door faster than ever.
| “ | This is a Fantasia-like anthology of robots. The most noble are Presence, Deprive, and Nightmare. Nightmare is the story of an evil, cybernetic overlord that rises one night and unleashes its robotic servants. Deprive is a science fiction tale of a young girl who has been abducted by an invading army of robots, and only a mysterious cyborg can help her. Presence is about a young toy-maker who makes a beautiful, female cyborg. When she becomes "a bit too real", he destroys her, only to be haunted by her spirit for the rest of his life. | ” |
