DARPA’s Autonomous Robotic Manipulation (ARM) program, which was announced back in 2010, aims to build a robot that can do a variety of manipulation tasks with minimum operator input. One of the toughest tasks for the hardware team is developing a reliable and low-cost hand for the robot. iRobot and researchers at Harvard and Yale appear to have come up with a solution.

Their hand that you see above has fingers capable of surviving hits from a baseball bat and that can lift 50 pounds as you will see in the video. From a basketball to a pin, its three fingers can pick up a variety of objects. And it costs just $3,000. In comparison, the average cost of a military-grade robot hand in 2010 was around US$50,000.

But a lot of research and development is still left in the ARM program. While the hardware team will focus on building a complete robot, many others will be working on AI software which will require some serious work.

The software system must enable the GFE (Government Furnished Equipment; i.e. the robot) to perform the Challenge Tasks following a high-level script with no operator intervention. For example, the operator would issue a command such as “Throw Ball.” That command would in turn decompose into a sequence of lower-level tasks, such as “find ball,” “grasp ball,” “re-grasp ball, cock arm, and throw”.

Check out the video below to see the hand in action. It’s not creepy like an earlier DARPA product.

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Be it a big Jellyfish like robot or a creepy looking record breaker or anything else, man has always tried to recreate what he sees around him. What the folks over at Festo were inspired by this time was the complex design of the dragonfly and the aerodynamic tricks it has been showing off for 300 million years. With that in mind, they created the BionicOpter.

The BionicOpter has a wingspan of 63 cm and measures 44 cm from tip to tail. It weighs just 175 g, made from aluminum, polyamide (sintered) and terpolymer (deep-drawn ABS), and each of its four wings, which can be turned up to 90 degrees from the horizontal, features a polyester membrane covering a carbon fiber frame.

It is equipped with an ARM microcontroller, inertia, acceleration and position sensors, servo motors, two LiPo batteries and a 2.4 GHz wireless module. The robot’s software and electronics take care of all the complex motion sequences and all that an operator on the ground has to do is control the steering. Everything put together and the BionicOpter moves up and down, forward and backward, and to the side with ease.

Check out the video below to see the robot in action. It’s certainly cool, but not as perfect as the one which nature has designed. The BionicOpter seems to be pretty shaky.

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Do you own a busy gambling den and/or casino? Are your staff taking unnecessary “bathroom, breaks”, taking winnings for themselves or cheating the system? Perhaps you just want a more secure, calculating system with little chance of human error? Then what you need is Yaskawa Motoman Robotics new SDA10F blackjack dealing robot.

The sophisticated robot uses its own vision system to recognize cards to aid with dealing and general Blackjack duties. See it in action in the video below:

While this is certainly a cool idea, it likely doesn’t come cheap either. What do you think of this unique robotic Blackjack dealer?

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You can thank Gael Langevin, a French sculptor, for this creation. He’s been working on this project for the past year and now you can download the open source plans for free from Thingverse. For now, you can only get the plans for “InMoov,” which is a robot hand you can print and animate. You’ll need some building skills, but you can build this and use it. You will also need to supply some “cables or fishing rods” if you want to control it, but at the very least, you’ll need servos and Arduinos for movement.

After Mr. Langevin puts in some more work into the project, he plans on releasing his plans for the torso and head for this 3D printed robot also through Thingverse. It’s only a matter of time before we are able to download some increasingly advanced AI and we really will have our own personal robot slaves companions in our homes to help us with some daily tasks. Let’s just hope that our 3D printed friends adhere to Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics.

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Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have made a breakthrough in human brain controlled robotic arm manipulation thanks to a new study.  The patient assisting with the study was a 52 year old paralyzed woman.

The researchers placed two sensors on the motor cortex portion of her brain, and each sensor was able to pick up the electrical impulses of approximately 200 brain cells.  This then allowed the woman to control the robotic arm after only two days of training.  Over that time her skills steadily increased and after only 3 months of use, her task completion rate climbed to a never before seen 91.6 percent with task completion time being as much as 30 seconds faster.

While mind controlled robot manipulation is not new technology, the amount of coordination which was seen in this study was impressive.

The one problem that is holding back progress on the issue is the fact that scar tissue will form and build up around the sensors places on the brain.  This tissue over time impedes the signal that is transmitted to the computer.  While thinner sensors would help with this issue, researchers are trying to think even farther ahead with wireless sensors.

There is no timeline of when this technology will be a practical solution for those suffering from paralysis and fitted with prosthetics, but the new developments are encouraging and will hopefully be available for consumers in the not-too-distant future.

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Robots are invading just about every aspect of modern life. They are helping with noodles, outrunning athletes and even replacing pack mules. This time around, they are making their way to our vineyards as well. French inventor Christophe Millot has created “Wall-Ye”, named after Pixar’s own WALL-E.

The new robot currently moves through treads and is equipped with cameras for navigation and inspection of vines. Checking for bugs, disease, temperature variations and soil problems are tedious jobs that Wall-Ye is more than capable of- and that’s just the starting point. Eventually it is hoped that they can improve the vineyard robot in ways that will allow it to prune and even pick grapes. Even so, it takes a lot of the difficult chores off the hands of vineyard workers and is considered a major aide as is.

Wall-Ye might be a great help for vineyards that can afford him, but he isn’t exactly cheap. The robot costs €25,000, or roughly $32,000. Depending on how reliable Wall-Ye is, and how much maintenance it requires, it could eventually pay for itself it could replace one or two traditional workers. That being said, the robot will likely only grow more expensive when it starts learning new abilities like picking and pruning.

What do you think of the idea of robots being employed for the more tedious tasks in life? A good idea or something that will inevitably make global unemployment issues worse?

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It’s called the Plant Host Drone (PHD) and it’s a wheeled robotic plant holder that will actively seek out the sun’s rays, moving over to where it (and the plant it holds) can soak in some sunlight. The PHD was developed by Stephen Verstraete, a scupltor from Belgium, and it is designed to look like a trilobite. It moves around on a RP5 tank-tread platform, finding the areas of higher light intensity. Like a Roomba, it also has collision switches to prevent it from bashing into your walls, doors, banisters and furniture.

If you want to have a sun-seeking plant holder of your own, Verstraete has posted the schematics online and you can make your own. If you’d prefer a little more guidance, he plans on producing a DIY kit of some kind for about $32. While it would incredibly logical sense for the PHD to be solar-powered, it is just regular battery-powered at the moment. Verstraete says that he is thinking about an optional solar kit though.

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At this point in time, robots aren’t very good at tasks that require intuition, common sense or human judgement, but they are fantastic at performing repetitive tasks on a consistent basis. We’ve already seen robots take over many of the functions at many factories, and now there’s a robot chef that is taking over the noodle-making process for a number of Chinese restaurants.

The robot is called Chef Cui and it has been in production since March. The robot doesn’t produce the dough for the noodles, but it does do a fantastic job at “shaving” the noodles off the block of dough. They say that it operates in much the same way as a set of windshield wipers. Bearing a vague resemblance to Ultraman, Chef Cui is far cheaper than its human counterparts.

In China, hiring a (human) chef to slice noodles costs the typical restaurant owner “more than 30,000 RMB (US $4,700)” a year. By contrast, Chef Cui only costs between 10,000 RMB (US $1,500) and 13,000 RMB (US $2,000) and that is presumably a one-time cost. I imagine the robot uses very little in terms of electricity and given its relatively simple task, there’s probably not much maintenance involved either. And the kicker? “The noodles made by this robot are as good as the man-made ones.” Indeed, the restaurant owner says that Chef Cui “is a great machine, and it is better than man.”

We tend to associate robot helpers with Japan, but it looks like China has a few robotic assistants in the works too. Today, it’s noodles. Who knows what tomorrow can bring?

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This car has a touchscreen panel. That car has reduced emissions. This car has park assist. But do you know what they all lack? A little robot that’ll help you along your way, but that’s exactly what the BYD Qin brings to the highway.

On display at the Beijing Auto Show, the Qin is a plug-in hybrid car from Chinese automaker BYD. The car itself isn’t terribly exciting as far as sedans go, but there is a little pop-up robot on the dash that serves as a central control point. It’s almost like having R2-D2 on your X-Wing, except this one looks a little more like EVE from WALL-E and it sits on your dashboard.

By interacting with the bot via voice commands, you gain control over the wireless Internet, location services, music downloads, and even driver fatigue prevention. The bot apparently has built-in cameras to keep an eye on how you’re doing. All said, you get more of a human-like interaction with your car via this bot, rather than simply speaking into the empty space in your car. It’s not exactly novel to see more and more electronics shoved into our vehicles, but this could be among the several steps we’re taking toward having robot chaffeurs. After all, we already have self-driving cars.

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The robot has wheels that are larger than its chassis and it has a gyroscopic stabilization system that keeps it steady while in the air. This helps it recover from the inevitable impact after jumping and tumbling onto the new surface. The jump itself is achieved by way of a carbon dioxide-powered piston and the jump is accurate enough to get the Sand Flea through a second story window.

The application here is primarily for the military, especially since the Sand Flea is capable of sending video back to its operator up to 650 yards away. This is fantastic for getting over walls and into buildings, offering the military much safer recon work. I imagine the military would replace the white wheels for black ones for better camouflage, but this 11-pound design looks seriously solid and versatile.

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