Robotster

Giants puts soul in solo by a soulless Robot?

admin — Thu, 17 May 2012 13:37:00 +0000

There are many fields, especially science and technology, where robots have substituted human beings and are doing a commendable job. Now, Giants has come up with a robot that can play or perform a solo for you. No doubt, the machine is accomplished with a quality mechanism, which is quite dexterous in playing different beats and jazz. But the matter of concerns for most of the followers of classical music is the lack of feel and soul in the music produced by a robot. You will have to put your heart or soul out while performing not only the jazz but other kinds of music, and you cannot expect such a concert from a soulless machine. The new robot may prove effective for the soulless or emotionless rock- music, but surely not for the spiritual or classical melody.

Microsoft Robotics Studio available free for download

admin — Thu, 17 May 2012 13:36:00 +0000

Robotics is the future of market. Until today developing a robotic application was a tedious job because their was no common development platform to provide you with an ease of developing. Microsoft has recently launched a set of cool tools called Microsoft Robotics Studio. These tools will provide all the developers with a Windows-based development environment for creating robotic software for a wide variety of hardware platforms. These new tools feature a visual programming language that enables nonprogrammers to easily program robots using a drag-and-drop environment, a 3-D tool that simulates robotics applications in physics-based virtual environments, using the licensed PhysX (TM) engine from AGEIA (TM) Technologies Inc and a lightweight, services-oriented runtime that enables applications to communicate with a wide variety of hardware. The users have appreciated these entire features and more than 10,000 copies of this software have already been downloaded. The Microsoft offers this software absolutely free for educational and personal use. How Microsoft plans to turn its free toolkit into a business is unclear. It will charge $399 for every developer who uses the Microsoft Robotics Studio to create a commercial robot. About 30 commercial partners have already signed aboard, so they will buy the software. Such a common platform will surely speed-up the development of robotics as it provides the developers with wild opportunity of experimentations.

Biometric Robot Lobsters to explore the ocean world

admin — Thu, 17 May 2012 13:35:00 +0000

A new exhibition called Design Life Now: National Design Triennial 2006 started a few days ago in which some of the most amazing robots designed on Biomimetic approach are displayed. The top of the list is a lobster robot that mimics the real living lobster. The robot lobsters are from the Biomimetic Underwater Robot Program at the Marine Science Center of Northeastern University. These robots offer greatest performance and adaptability in the environment, which they are set to operate. These creepy looking robots will be of great use to monitor the environment or search for mines under deep waters where it is risky for humans to go.

Service robot, possible replacement for future servants

admin — Wed, 16 May 2012 13:35:00 +0000

Man has mastered (to some extent) the machine and is still in his pursuit to perfection by producing more intelligent machines (robots) to assist him to complete even the complicated tasks on the given guidelines. The Korea Institute of Industrial Technology (KITECH) is currently working on SeRoPi (Service Robot Platform Initiative), a smart and intelligent service robot that easily can recognize articles, bend over to capture and position on the place (with extended arms) in response to your commands, which probably could replace your future servants. The SeRoPi is 125cm in height and features on two main wheels, in addition to a supplementary wheel, to move around the ordained route at 2m/s. Unfortunately, there isn’t much information available, including the pricing and availability, right now. One aspect that wonders me is the weight (that is 60kg) of the smart robot. Whether the SeRoPi be able to balance such heavy weight on the wheels? We can only hope for that, but to be frank I am not fully convinced about it.

‘Slip-Sensing’ robotic hand can grasp delicate objects without crushing or dropping them!

admin — Wed, 16 May 2012 13:34:00 +0000

This robotic hand can grasp delicate objects without crushing or dropping them! This artificial hand is designed with fingertip sensors in the UK. This latest incarnation of a previous prototype not just has improved sense of touch, but also does its job more like a real hand! Congratulations, Neil White, an electronic engineer at Southampton University for developing this amazing hand. Neil and his colleagues who designed this hand hope that this robotic prosthetic limb could one day provide amputees a greater dexterity and deftness of touch. Neil said, We’ve added new arrays of sensors that allow it to sense temperature, grip-force and whether an object is slipping. What is needed is to connect the robot’s motors to an amputee’s arm, shoulder or chest- nerves. And, the amputee can easily forget about his being handicap.

Researchers at the University of Washington develop Brain-Computer Interfacing Technology

admin — Wed, 16 May 2012 10:14:00 +0000

Rajesh Rao, associate professor of computer science and engineering, and his students have developed a technology that can create an interface between the human brain and a humanoid robot. The technology developed suggests that an individual can control humanoid robots at a remote location provided both of them are connected to each other via internet. The equipments used to demonstrate the achievement include a cap dotted with 32 electrodes. The electrodes pick up brain signals from the scalp based on a technique called electroencephalography. The invention is just a beginning of the new trend. The number of commands is limited and research work is still going on to further improve the technology. This kind of interface will find a great application in our daily routine as these robots will be able to serve us and render great help in our household works. It will prove to be a gift for the disabled people as it will provide them with extra hands that they can control just like their own body parts. The robots are fed with the noisy brain signals generated by our brain when subjected to a surprise pattern. The team is making more efforts to make these robots a part of our daily routine by implementing changes that make them fit to survive in human environment. You can have a look at the video demonstration of this new technology.

Transport Robot can reach out any terrain

admin — Tue, 15 May 2012 10:13:00 +0000

Now this is amazing. As you can see in video, this transport robot is capable of lifting heavy loads and transport them safely to any desired location. It can walk in snow, in muddy areas and even can climb on an elevated piece of land. The robot features four legs to walk and can maintain a perfect balance even if disrupted by a sudden push. The robot will find great applications in industry as well as household. It may be brought in use for military applications to transport goods in hard to reach places.

Robotic Prostheses Transforms Apparent Deficits into Startling Advantages

admin — Tue, 15 May 2012 10:11:00 +0000

Can machines-improved humans beat the performance of regular folks…? I think yes. A South African sprinter, Oscar Pistorius, whose both legs are amputated below the knee, completed a 100-meter sprint in just 11.16 seconds that is only 1.4 seconds more than the record of the fastest human alive. The reason for the awesome performance is that Pistorius is using some high tech gear to compensate for his missing legs. He is currently using Cheetah-brand Foot Modules, that are the carbon-fiber based prosthetics shaped like an upside down question mark sign. These prosthetics work by flexing when in contact with the ground and then regaining the shape with 95% efficiency. After some training and hard work the user can meet and sometimes exceed the performance of normal humans. Such prosthetics can also be used for some other adventure sports such as climbing. The director of the Biomechatronics group at the MIT media Lab, Hugh Herr, who also has suffered a bilateral amputate has replaced his missing feet with some ice climbing equipment that he uses to change his own daily height based on his mood.

2006: The Rise of the Machines

admin — Mon, 14 May 2012 10:11:00 +0000

The year 2006 has seen some of the most advanced technology being developed. Japan has overwhelmed the world with some of the best high-tech robots. I earlier told you about the Top Ten finalists of the 2006 Robot Award as announced by METI. Well, here is my list of some of the best robots that rocked the world in 2006. (1) Transport Robots: Robots that can perform on any ground conditions. (2) Service Robots: Robots designed to relieve you of your hardly working servants. (3) Robotic Bacteria: Robots for Medical Diagnosis (4) RIDC-01: The Robotic maid that comes from our loved cartoon show ‘Richie Rich’ (5) Robovie-M V3: A Robot that can fight (6) Reborg-Q: A robotic security system that can detect and track any intruder (7) Ubiko: Robot from UBIX that can welcome your clients and can also do some advertising work (8) Star Fish Robot: The Four Legged Robot that can sense any injury in its body (9) RB2000: A Robot that can perform some gymnastics All these machines have some of the best technology integrated into them and I am sure you also would have liked them as much as I did. Let’s look forward to 2007 for some better technology.

‘Snake-Like Robot’ and ‘Steady-Hand system’ to equip operating rooms of the future!

admin — Mon, 14 May 2012 10:09:00 +0000

Robots are increasingly coming to equip our future operating rooms. Among all the new high-tech medical tools, Johns Hopkins University researchers have come up with a snakelike robot! This robotic assistant is capable of helping surgeons in making incisions and tie sutures with greater dexterity and precision — operating especially in the narrow region like throat. This is not just all! Scientists have come up with another robot – the steady-hand system – that is capable of curbing a surgeon’s natural tremor. It precisely allows a doctor to inject drugs into tiny blood vessels in the eye, dissolving vision-damaging clots. Johns Hopkins-based, National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center for Computer-Integrated Surgical Systems and Technology team have built these and other projects.